Breath

The scavenger wasn't staring at it because it was a god. It was certainly extremely uncommon for the average person to see one of course, but the awe had worn off after the third or fourth time he had witnessed something like this, where the army had got it into their heads to put down a local deity for the sake of "throwing off the shackles of divine stewardship".

Well, that was how the propagandists liked to frame it. It was humanity striking back in the face of callous, uncaring gods for the prosperity of all without the need for sacrifices and tributes. None of it had anything to do with the massive potential of divine blood, bones, and body parts for an uncountable number of mundane and esoteric applications. The units that rolled in after the battle were there simply to clean up the mess those in the battle had caused with their "pest extermination". If there was a sudden practical or magical research breakthrough, or a new source of a closely-guarded mystery resource in chronic short supply that was vital for operating one thing or another, then it was simple coincidence and no more. Anything to the contrary was misinformation spread by religious zealots and dissidents who had bought into the lies of the sacred con men who had deceived them.

He didn't have the luxury to care about the morality of the situation. It made his job picking through the scraps of conflict easier when nobody knew how valuable the spoils could potentially be, so the scavenger was naturally hesitant to spread the word of gods being slaughtered for parts. There was trouble enough in dodging the reclamation units already without adding more unknown variables to the mix.

Reclamation units which had been strangely absent this time, though he began to have an idea why.

Campaigns against the divine were campaigns of attrition. The goal was to drown their sacred spirits and holy guardians in a tide of spell-worked steel and human bodies, weakening them with multiple attacks before crushing them once they were sufficiently vulnerable. It didn't matter if the god wasn't killed this time, or if the individual losses in the units assigned to the battle were catastrophic, because they could always come back to finish the job later. A battalion of riflemen could be trained faster than a god could create a new spirit.

These tactics had limits. There were still borders to defend and mundane conflicts, like bandit attacks, that happened with a certain amount of regularity, and it would hardly be useful if one was able to kill a god just to be conquered by a neighboring country while your military was exhausted and depleted. As such, these campaigns had a certain degree of caution built into them. The span between battles could often be measured in weeks, or even months, so as not to deplete manpower too quickly and allow for adequate resupply. When a god was reported killed on the battlefield, scouts would be sent ahead to confirm its death and relay the information back so that harvesting operations could begin. There had been times where a not-quite-dead god had unleashed a nasty surprise on would-be-harvesters, necessitating the usage of scouts.

Thankfully, he had only witnessed one of those, and from a safe distance. The light show had been spectacular to watch.

He had made sure to memorize these safety procedures, as they afforded him a small window to exploit for him to do his own harvesting. Taking a few vials of blood, or a tooth, even locks of hair or small pieces of skin, he focused on collecting items that could easily be carried as he made his getaway before the army arrived in force. Of course, harvesting was usually only after the scouts had already confirmed the god's death for him. He didn't have a death wish, and confronting an angry, injured, and very much living god was absolutely a death wish.

The only reason he was taking such a massive risk now was that he had seen no scouts arrive to confirm this god's death after the battle had ended, but also no activity or movement on the battlefield from the god either, who would usually be immediately attempting to relocate somewhere safer than a corpse-ridden wasteland to recuperate.

He was beginning to think that no one had survived the battle to even make a report. Even if that were truly the case, the military would quickly notice the lack of communication and move in to investigate, and he could not risk losing out on such a rare find. The kinds of things he could pry off a god would pay enough to feed, house, and clothe him for months.

Despite the compelling rationale to get started with the aforementioned "prying pieces off the god to pawn away in the nearest town", he continued to stare at it. It wasn't hard to see why.

The corpse was still bleeding from its many wounds. Great, gushing streams of what looked like brilliant white, liquid fire were pouring forth from the god's body, collecting in dazzling pools around it. He could connect the pieces of what happened in his head:

The god had somehow managed to secure itself a total victory, annihilating the forces sent to kill it to the last man, but was too injured to escape to somewhere safer. Later, it had succumbed to its wounds, with the destruction of its murderers its last act of spite.

He had never seen one bleed before. Every time he had arrived it had been after the scouts, avoiding or distracting a surviving guardian or spirit as he made his discrete harvests before anyone else could arrive or return. As such, the bodies in question were never precisely "fresh" when he saw them. The fact it was still bleeding must have meant it died extremely recently.

He had no doubt it was dead, of course, given that he would be little more than red paste otherwise at this distance. Cautiously, he scanned the clearing before making his way over to the head. That was enough gawking for now. There was work to be done.

He would take some of its hair first, and perhaps its eyes before moving toward other parts. They were just barely small enough to carry easily, and for once he had enough time to cut through the tough, inhumanly strong tissues securing them in place.

Carefully skirting the unearthly pools of blood surrounding the cadaver, the scavenger stood in front of the god's face as he readied his spell-worked carving knife. Normal metals could not cut through divine flesh or even hair, as he had learned on his first, failed attempt, even if the being it belonged to was dead. Lifting a heavy, raven lock, he determined he would move on to the eyes second, as he wanted to ensure he would at least come away with something if, by some stroke of bad luck, there was an interruption partway through.

He had sawn through one, two, three tresses, leaning slightly over the corpse's slightly parted lips, before he determined that it was an adequate minimum to come away with if need be, stowing them one at a time in the sturdily crafted pouches beneath his cloak. Frowning, he shifted his grip as the last lock of hair fluttered in the soft breeze.

The scavenger froze. There was no breeze in the clearing.

The god opened her eyes.