Anele threw the last scrap of wood into fire pit, rubbing her nose with the heel of her hand. She'd dug the pit with her bare hands, scraping out sand and knuckling the bottom until it was compact. The dents her knuckles had imprinted on the pit were a little darker than the sand around them, like glossy scarabs moving four abreast. Anele kicked sand over them, burying the three ant-eaten logs she'd found in the last two hours.

A fire would have been good for warmth, but bone mites were attracted to people who slept by fires, elephant-eaters naturally drifted towards warm earth, and monarch vultures were ridiculously light sensitive. All hard lessons. When Anele patted down the mound of sand, she did so with hands pocked around the wrist by dozens of tiny bites. When they started to itch, she smeared the soul clay on her forearms down to her wrists. The itches cooled, even the bite of the evening wind melted away from her hands. No, a fire was dangerous in the Desert of the Middle Spire. Besides, she had something better in mind. But first, she'd need a spark.

"Wake up," she said.

Her bones stirred slightly in response, like a tiny tremor running through her body, but it settled again.

"To hell with you too, then." Sighing, Anele cracked her stoneiris open.

She flicked her dagger out of its loop with a finger, grabbed it hilt down, and drove it into the sand. Her arm was buried elbow deep in the sand, but with her spiritual sight open, she could make out the faint white outline of her forearm. Her network of veins was a little sharper, crawling along the fainter flesh. Her bones looked as solid as white gold in her spiritual sight, glowing as bright as the pearlmoon.

A second figure glowed just under the point of her dagger, a squirming little thing as thick as a finger.

"Your pardon, friend." Anele thrust her arm deeper, and the dagger went through the worm.

Souls were relative things when it came to size. A regular viper, living only off mice and hares, might have a spirit the size of a knuckle, but an elephant-eater's diet put the soul of a dragon in its long body. So when Anele's dagger drank the worm's spirit, it wasn't like trying to hold the chaotic fire of a mandrill inside her veins. A pale gold swam up the spiritual essence of her fingers, leeching colour into it. Anele focused on holding the worm's soul below the wrist. It floated inside her fist like gold smoke, much more concentrated than if she'd let it fill her whole body. It was still uncomfortable. The sensation reminded her of swollen veins in her feet after a long day of walking.

Funny, that. Anele remembered more near-death beatings than she had any right to survive; she'd probably even forgotten the worst ones. It still surprised her that small discomforts still registered.

Pain was funny like that. It even whispered loud.

Groaning, Anele sank down to her haunches. Her knees popped like thunderclaps, and the strain of the day's walking ached through her feet in thick pulses. Her whole body complained.

"Yeah, to hell with you too," she said, and threw her dagger point first into the mound of sand.

Now came the worst part. She leaned forward, pressing her hands on either side of the glowing glass blade. She closed her eyes as her braids fell loosely around her face, tickling the many scars that crossed her temples and cheeks. Alone in a dark desert, under the silver-blue light of the pearlmoon, Anele opened her stoneiris.

Her third eye washed away the night's shadows. Her skin disappeared in her natural sight, until her flesh was as clear as a light mist. For a moment, she watched the blood flow through her veins in ribbons of pale syrup, twisting around bones that shone like rods of white gold in the moonlight. Opening one's natural eyes cost nothing, but opening the stoneiris was like tearing open a red wound. Likewise, moving her gaze from her forearm to the dagger in the sand was only a little easier than dragging a mountain a metre to the left.

She saw the logs of wood buried in the earth, dark shapes saturated with untapped power. They were only the twisted, termite-eaten remnants of a tree that had long died in the desert, but each fibre of wood guarded that sliver of earthy power. Anele put one finger on the hilt of her dagger and pushed a piece of her soul into the blade.

The knock-on effect pushed the worm's trapped soul out the tip of the blade, through the sand, into the dry wood. A fire ignited under the earth.