They did not speak of it as hunting at first.
They spoke of it as gathering. A wonderfully crafted lie. Or truth from any standpoint.
Pluto walked ahead, slower than usual, attention stretching past the trees and into the heat-veins beneath them. The forest was no longer only leaves and bark. It had gradients now. Currents. Pockets of lingering warmth where bodies had rested, streaks of fading signatures where someone had run hours ago. The eel beneath his skin shifted faintly, not stronger — just more awake. It buzzed silently. The constant stress had increased activity. It felt less like an antique painting and more like an actual being. Still, its reality was still in its inception. As if it was learning how to exist.
Mira followed, log still in her grip. She had trimmed it down. Balanced it. Tested its weight. The memory of her force sharpening the wood flickered in her mind, not as panic now, but as recall. Something she could perhaps repeat. It... was weird. Pluto hadn't remembered her with the sharpening of wood until a few minutes ago. But it now seemed like deep memory. He scowled.
"We don't rush," she said quietly.
Pluto nodded. "We isolate."
They were not hunting beasts.
They were looking for heat that moved strangely. Heat that paused too long. Heat that doubled back. Human patterns were different from animals. Animals flowed.
Humans hesitated.
He felt one before he saw anything — a thin, vertical warmth through brush to their left. Stationary. Crouched. Watching something else.
Pluto raised a hand.
Mira froze.
He tilted his head slightly. Closed his eyes.
Focused.
The signature was alone. Elevated pulse.
Edged breathing.
Watching prey.
"So?" Mira whispered, understanding.
"Yes."
They circled wide. Slow. Silent. The forest allowed patience. It punished hesitation.
When Pluto saw the man, he was younger than expected. Early twenties. Lean. Holding a chipped stone blade. His focus was forward, not back.
He was stalking something too.
Mira glanced at Pluto.
This was the moment.
Not desperation.
Choice.
Pluto moved first.
He did not charge. He stepped into the man's blind angle, closing distance in measured strides. The eel twitched — a tightening along his ribs — and for the first time he understood it wasn't guiding him. It was aligning.
He struck without flourish.
A shove. A hand at the throat. The stone blade clattered away. Mira stepped in and drove the hardened tip of her log into the man's abdomen, using her force not to sharpen now — but to stiffen the wood at the point of impact.
It pierced.
The sound the man made was brief. More shock than pain.
Pluto held him until he stopped moving.
Silence returned quickly.
They did not look at each other.
The mark formed slowly — a small, dense core settling near the body's chest. Darker than the last they had seen.
Mira hesitated.
Pluto reached down and removed it.
The moment his bloodied fingers closed around the battle seed, something shifted.
Not violently.
A quiet internal pressure.
Like breath drawn deeper than before.
He inhaled sharply.
The eel under his skin tightened once — then loosened.
Mira felt it too. Not the eel, but the air. The forest seemed thinner. Or she was stronger within it.
"Do you feel—"
"Yes."
They stood there longer than necessary.
Observing.
Pluto flexed his hand.
Heat signatures sharpened slightly at the edges. The world didn't expand — it clarified. Lines were clearer. The warmth in the trees separated from the warmth of soil. He could tell which direction the dead man's blood had flowed without looking.
Mira lifted her log.
She focused.
The force did not surge wildly this time. It gathered, almost obedient, along the grain of the wood. The tip narrowed microscopically.
She tested it against bark.
The bark split jaggedly.
Crude but refined.
They did not speak of what that meant.
They moved on.
***
Far from them, two figures moved cautiously between thick-rooted trees.
The remaining members of the trio.
The woman walked ahead, expression tight.
The man behind her scanned constantly
They had found signs — disturbed leaves, blood, a smear half-dried.
"He's close," the man muttered.
The woman shook her head. "No. That's old."
A crack echoed faintly ahead.
They dropped low instantly.
Through brush, they spotted a lone entrant — middle-aged, limping slightly, dragging a broken branch behind him. Exhausted.
The woman raised her hand.
A ripple passed through the air around the log she carried. The wood elongated at the edge, sharpening invisibly. The man rushed first — driving the limping entrant off balance.
The sharpened log came down cleanly.
Quick.
Efficient.
The middle-aged man didn't have time to understand.
They pulled the seed from the body.
The woman's breathing steadied as she held it. She felt something, she felt copied, like she wasn't the only one who could shape matter.
"Faster," she murmured.
"Yes."
They both felt the difference.
And neither asked what it would cost later.
***
Pluto stopped abruptly.
Two new heat signatures pulsed ahead.
Together.
Hunting stance.
He narrowed his perception.
Familiar.
Not in sight — but patterned similarly to the man killed by the plant-beast.
"The trio...or duo rather" he said quietly.
Mira's grip tightened.
"Together?"
"Yes."
Pluto studied the distance. They were not near. But they were active.
And they had just killed.
He could feel the faint disruption — the way fresh death altered surrounding warmth.
Mira stepped closer to him. "We test again."
He looked at the seed in his hand.
"We don't give it yet."
"No."
They found another isolated target before dusk. Older woman. Moving quickly but alone. Pluto tracked her for nearly thirty minutes, refining his perception deliberately. But also because he found himself fighting inwardly to commit such a crime. Measuring range. Measuring clarity.
He realized something.
Distance cost focus.
But if he anchored to the eel's tension — allowed that subtle internal coil — the signatures stabilized.
He could maintain perception longer.
They struck cleanly.
This time faster.
Less hesitation.
The seed formed.
Mira didn't flinch as Pluto harvested it.
They stepped away from the body together.
Two seeds now rested in Pluto's palm.
"Wait," Mira said.
He looked at her.
"Absorb one."
He hesitated only a moment — then pressed one seed against his mark.
It dissolved into him like heat entering water.
The effect was immediate.
The eel did not grow.
But its outline sharpened.
Defined.
His breath deepened again — and when he looked out into the forest, the world shifted slightly.
Heat radiated from living things in layers now. Core heat. Surface heat. Recent contact.
He could see trails that had been invisible before.
Mira watched him.
"Well?"
"I can see where they stepped... lingering heat."
She absorbed the other seed.
The force within her no longer felt as wild at the edges. It condensed. Compact. When she lifted the log and whispered internally for that sharpening — the wood responded almost instantly.
Little delay.
Greater strain.
***
They stood in growing darkness, stronger than they had been hours ago.
And they still held one seed.
Pluto closed his fist around it.
Payment.
But not yet.
Somewhere above, unseen in the canopy, a pair of large golden eyes opened briefly — and then closed again.
The owl was aware.
But it would wait.
And now, so would they.