Iktome Plains dead souls and a really big globe.

Artaax felt as though his entire body was in flames. He had been fighting with a passion akin to one standing upon the verge of death, as though he were actually driven to survive when everything in his mind and in his heart screamed at him to just lay down and be done with it. He couldn't, though. Hopeless as he was, he felt there might be something here. There might be venegeance here, and maybe, maybe it would be enough to make the rest bareable. 

It was just plain insane. Kiwi was so tiny and so inexperienced. It was David versus the Goliath but with David having just graduated from diapers to pull ups. It was his recklessness and his lack of focus that had kept her alive thus far, and it was madness that kept his actual talents at bay. Had he stopped to think for a single moment, he would’ve realized that he didn’t even fully know who this even was he was trying to kill. Was it Kiwi? Was it Wildfire? Was it Bobby for failing to stop her? Was it the cheka for failing to save her? Or was it Thuringwethil herself for being so impossibly cruel as to take herself away from him and subsequently destroy everything he had known and everything he had been?

Artaax jerked her back and forth once, twice, and then threw her down, slamming her into the ground before him. He was quick to follow her frame and stand himself over her, hackles raised and tail raised high like a flag as he stared down at her, teeth bared, face bloodied from her bites and scratches, and the roar in his chest screaming that this was it. This was the end. It was her throat or it was his.

And please god.

Let it be his.