The underground maze was larger than the city.

  The room smelled like battle, the metallic scent of blood mixed with the musty smell of a cave. There weren’t any visible bodies, but that didn’t take away from the fact that there had been a battle close by.

  “The tunnels are the chokepoint.” Psider pointed to his right, my left, and then continued clockwise pointing a lone finger at each of the four tunnels.

  “Coming down!” Starna landed beside me, her staff in her hand, already extended and ready to spray whatever spell she had ready.

  “The last room I was in was that way. “The sharkman pointed behind me. “A pair of humans tried to stab me with that dagger.” He twirled his finger in the air. “I think we should try to find the outer wall and work our way around the edge, then come back here.” He looked at Starna for approval.

  “That sounds like a good plan…” She paused, then pointed her staff to my right. “There’s three somebodies that direction.”

  Psider nodded and started jogging that way.

  “Are you sure you need to have your staff out?” I leaned closer to Starna so I could whisper in her ear.

  The brunette brushed her hand through her hair. “I need to work on internalizing my magic, but I also need to be ready.” She patted the water bottle on her belt. “I can’t rely on this in a fight unless…” THe beautiful Elf smirked. “It’s another Mage. In which case, I’m totally going to douse them.”

  “Because water shorts out magic.” I patted the small bag in my vest pocket that I kept some of Vin’s hair clippings. They were also a great way to destroy magic, but not something that Starna could use.

  The tanned Elf nodded as we continued to follow behind the landshark.

  Three men were waiting for us at the end of the tunnel. Two of them had spears with diamond heads while the other had a crossbow with an unmistakable bolt head. All of them were wearing black leather armor and judging by the metallic smell in the tunnel, they’d used Camadt blood to dampen magic.

  “Lady, the blood!” Psider gestured from the floor to the ceiling, pulling the stone floor up three feet, then he pushed his hands out, driving back the two spearmen. The crossbow bolt lodged in his neck, but it didn’t stop his manipulation of the stone from forcing the spearmen apart.

  The man with the crossbow had another bolt in his hand as he fumbled with the weapon.

  I threw the dagger at him as I ran around the landshark. I ducked under one spear slash, then rolled out of the way of another. Both of the spearmen were behind me and unless they decided to throw their weapons, I was out of their reach.

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  I drew my sword as I sprang to my feet. The crossbowman squealed as he tried to aim, but I knocked the weapon out of his hand with the flat of my sword. He pulled out a dagger similar to the one I’d thrown and started wildly slashing. I stepped back, then started rotating to my left to put the spearmen between us.

  Not that there was much need to worry. Starna was collecting all of the black blood into a globe in the far corner of the room. Psider had pulled the bolt out of his neck and was beating one of the lancers with the butt of their own spear. The other one was trapped under a pile of rocks.

  They’d sent powerless men with diamond weapons to kill Camadt. I twisted to the left as my opponent began to slow down, even though he was trying to keep up the pace of his erratic slashes. I tossed my sword at his face, forcing him to pull his weapon closer to knock the weapon away. That gave me time to step close enough to grab his right wrist and pin the dagger against his collarbone.

  I pulled enough vitality out of him to knock him out for a couple days. I grabbed the crude leather vest to keep him from falling into me and a sense of electric wrong shot down to my toes. The leather hadn’t been cured and it felt like it had been skinned off the body recently.

  The human hit the stone floor hard as I let him drop. They’d skinned Camadt to make their armor and it hadn’t been long since they’d done it. I knew that there was a business in using part of sentient races to make items. Dragon scales were very popular as both weapons and heavy armor. Mebope bones could be processed into a self repairing silver metal that was coveted across the planet. Bones, fangs, claws, hair, and hide were all able to be turned into weapons or armor and it looked like these people were some of those who dealt in the disgusting trade.

  “Are you okay?” I looked over at Starna.

  The beautiful Elf had nearly five gallons of Camadt blood that she’d gathered into a stone bucket. I shook my head as I did the math. The average Camadt had almost two gallons of blood in their body, which meant that the three here had drained at least that many.

  “I’m fine.” Starna picked up the spear closest to her. “Who makes weapons like this?”

  “Hunters.” Psider spit on the unconscious human he was holding by the back of the neck. “They’ll kill anything for their parts.” He looked around the large room. “None of these acted like they were Elementalists, so we’re still looking for at least two more.” The sharkman shook his head as he dropped his opponent on top of mine.

  “What are we going to do with them?” I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like the answer.

  Psider knelt down next to the dead spearman that he’d buried. He wiped the foam out of the man’s mouth, then smelled it. “Cyanide.” The beige landshark shook his head. “The others should have similar fake teeth, we’ll have to pull them out before they wake up.” He ran his hand over the damaged scales on his neck. “Sineater, would you fix this?”

  I walked over and inspected the wound. He’d covered the hole from the crossbow bolt by reforming his fish scales to block it like a scab. It was crude, but effective. I’d seen lots of different ways that different people stopped bleeding.

  It took only a few seconds for me to transfer the wound from him to me, then I went over to the pair of unconscious hunters and split the wound between them. I made sure to spread it out enough so that neither of them would bleed out. Once I was finished, I turned around to look at the Kharm.

  “What are we going to do with them?”

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