Bel’s heart thumped when she realized that she had underestimated the fish people and had gotten herself stuck in the middle of them. She’d been thinking of them as one-sided creatures, like the dhvaras, but they looked equally comfortable with both fire and water. It was going to make them more unpredictable.

  Whenever she found herself in a bad situation, Bel fell back to Beth’s advice: stab first, and stab the unexpected one.

  Bel turned and pounced, aiming to leap upon the leader on the shore rather than continuing a fight in the water. She’d barely gotten airborne when a whip of water reached out from the lake and wrapped around her ankle. Bel felt a painful wrenching in her ankle as her momentum was turned downwards. Her face slapped painfully onto the surface of the water and she was pulled underwater.

  As she sank, the water turned thick and heavy like mud. Bel struggled and managed to rise to her knees with her head nearly above the shallow water, but the rest of her body was pinned in place. She saw a pair of legs striding towards her as whoever had created the trap came to finish her off.

  Bel wasn’t helpless though – water was one of her own specialties. A quick liquify freed her body, and Bel quickly rose to her feet, delivering a powerful uppercut to her surprised attacker’s chin. There was a flurry of motion around her, but Bel didn’t allow herself to be distracted. She focused on her current opponent, drawing her short sword and jamming it into the creature’s abdomen.

  Stomach’s should be soft, right?

  To her dismay, Bel’s weapon bounced off of the thick, dried skin of the burned water demon. It counterattacked, squeezing twining its fingers together together and swinging down with a two-fisted hammerblow. Bel formed a small buckler on her arm and allowed the brute force attack to slide off of her well-rehearsed defensive stance. As her opponent’s body stumbled to her side, Bel stabbed her sword into the water, cutting through one of the creature’s thick, blubbery legs.

  The water turned dark and cloudy as blood gushed from the open wound, but Bel wasn’t counting her opponent down just yet. It hissed and reeled away from her, but Bel advanced, staying close to her foe. She leaned low and manipulated her metal into a long hook, which she used to trip its uninjured leg. It stumbled as its weight shifted onto its injured leg, and when it fell backwards onto the water Bel jumped on top of it. A quick thrust of her sword through its eye finished the creature off, but she didn’t pause for breath.

  Bel dove under the water, hoping to avoid any reprisals from the creature’s friends. She kicked through the water, gaining some distance before emerging a short distance away. She spun, quickly taking in the state of the battle.

  Manipule was still at a stand-still with the sea monster, but Bel saw a hardening around its eyes that meant it was being overpowered by the gorgon’s petrification. The sea devils were pelting Bel’s friends with a constant barrage of fireballs, but Flann was agilely deflecting most of them. Jan had gone on the attack with his ground manipulation, pinning opponents inside rocky prisons, which reduced the pressure on Flann and Bel.

  Orseis pranced across the muddy ground, fighting off the leader of the sea devils with her divine spear. To Bel, the leader looked faster and stronger than the rest of the monsters, but Orseis was, for once, being clever with her fighting. She kept a good distance from her weaponless opponent, staying close enough that he couldn’t spit a fireball at her but far enough that she was out of reach of his claws. Her spear poked and prodded the leader, frustrating him as Orseis waited for a chance to deliver a killing blow.

  Her instincts were good, but Orseis was the less experienced fighter. The leader awkwardly lunged at the cuttle girl, which was an obvious feint to Bel’s eyes, but Orseis couldn’t help trying to take advantage of it. She overcommitted to a stab with her spear and the leader twisted to the side, leaving the cuttle girl off-balance and far too close to the stronger fighter.

  Bel’s heart skipped a beat when the devil caught Orseis’ spear with one hand. He tugged her forward as he reached out with his free hand, but Orseis quickly let go of her weapon and whipped her tentacles into a flurry of blows that put him back on his guard. Then she kicked mud into his face, jumped back, and summoned her weapon back to her hands.

  The leader opened his mouth to spit fire, but a stone missile from Jan sent him stumbling back, coughing and wheezing as he choked on his own missile. Orseis waved thanks to the old meerkat and resumed her stabbing, this time with more caution. The fight quickly returned to its former stalemate, with the occasional stone bullet from Jan.

  Bel didn’t relax, but she decided to trust her friends. She knew that once Manipule won her fight against the giant sea beast, the tide would turn. All she had to do was keep the rest of the creatures busy and prevent any more surprises.

  Bel located the nearest demon who was spitting fire at Flan and Manipule and used destabilize bonds to send an exploding knife at it. The missile bounced harmlessly off of the demon’s hardened skin, but the explosion that followed vaporized part of the lake. If anything was left of the demon, Bel didn’t see it.

  That got the attention of all of the flaming fish people around her, so Bel ducked under the water to dodge the incoming barrage of fireballs. As she retreated to a deeper part of the lake, Bel saw a few of them swimming after her.

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  Once their flames were extinguished, their bodies quickly swelled back to their original forms. With webbed hands and feet, they quickly caught up to Bel. They opened their mouths when they were a couple of body lengths away, and Bel could see an orange glow emerging from their throats. To her surprise, they managed to spit hot balls of rock at her, despite being under the water.

  The water boiled along the projectiles paths, creating a froth of bubbles as missiles converged upon her position. The attacks were slower in water than in air though, and Bel had plenty of time to raise her shield. A moment after they hit, bouncing from her shield and pushing her back in the water, webbed hands closed over the edge of Bel’s shield, tugging it down as one of the creatures opened its mouth to spit a hot rock into her face. Bel blasted it with a liquid shockwave instead, tearing it in half.

  It still exploded, even underwater. Much of the force was eaten by Bel’s shield, but the blow was enough to daze her. When her mind cleared, she found that she had been propelled out of the water and was arcing through the air. She slammed back first into a large rock and struggled to clear her dizzy mind.

  A loud crack split the air above her, and her heart jolted from fight. Bel looked up, desperately waving her shield above her head to ward off any blows. The sea monster stared back at her, its jaws cracked open wide enough to bite her in half. Bel stumbled backwards as its head descended, but, rather than enclosing her in a toothy cage, it fell to her side with heavy splash.

  Bel’s addled mind took a second to realize that the creature was petrified; her impact had broken the head from its long neck.

  Bel shook herself and turned back to the battle. She had lost her short sword, again, and her disorder core was mostly empty, but her upheaval core could still make a few exploding projectiles.

  She had lost sight of the swimming demons, so she looked for the closest one that Jan had restrained. She pounced on it just as it broke free of its rocky prison. Its expression of triumph at freeing itself was wiped from its face as Bel slammed it back into the crumbling stone. She emptied the last energy from her disorder core for a final shockwave to quickly finish the creature.

  The fish people who had chased her into the deep part of the lake hadn’t been as close to their exploding comrade, but the force must have still slowed them. The three of them were only now running after her, leaving the deeper part of the lake and returning to the shore where they had summoned the sea monster. Bel took a few moments move from the mud and onto a more stable slab of stone. With improved footing, she threw three destabilized knives at them, one after the other.

  They dove back into the water to avoid the first, but the blast still sent a concussive force into the water. One of them surfaced, holding its ear holes, just as the second projectile exploded, killing it. Bel’s third knife exploded a bit farther to the side than she intended, and the last two water demons surfaced away from the blast.

  They wobbled in the water as they struggled to walk straight, and Bel decided to attack. She pounced upon the closer one, knocking it onto its knees as she landed upon its back. She wrapped her arm around its neck and used her enhanced strength to snap its liquified neck.

  She shoved the lifeless corpse back into the water and advanced on the last demon. It opened its mouth, but she punched it in the gut before it could spit fire at her. As it doubled over, she formed a metal spike with her malleable armor and stabbed it through the neck. It only struggled for a moment before succumbing to its wounds.

  Bel looked up to find her next opponent. She was pleasantly surprised to see that she had run out.

  Flann was putting out a few errant fires, but the sea people had been beaten. The leader was dead, his legs tangled in rocks and a gaping wound in his chest. Jan had impaled several water demons upon stone spikes and Bel saw a couple that had been frozen by Manipule. The gorgon looked exhausted, probably from her contest with the large sea monster, and was getting her clothing messy in the mud. That didn’t stop her from fussing over Orseis though.

  Bel snagged the essence from her last foes and strode back to her friends.

  “Is everyone okay?”

  “My back aches,” Flann complained. “And my knees hurt. Also, there’s no way I’m eatin’ until I wash this stench from my nostrils.”

  “You’ve gotta be prepared,” Jan said. Bel noticed that his voice was more nasal that normal, and saw why when he pointed out stone noseplug that he’d put over his nose.

  Flann waved his staff at the meerkat. “Why didn’t ya make me one o’ them?”

  Jan laughed. “But you were just saying how much better fire was than dirt.”

  “Why you!”

  Bel shook her head at their antics and went to check on Orseis.

  “How’s Ori?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Manipule tutted. “She has a little burn. I’m just cooling and cleaning it.”

  “You were fighting well,” Bel complimented her.

  Orseis grinned. “I learned a lot from wrestling with the delvers.”

  Then her eyes turned watery. “They even gave me this cool hat, but now it’s all messed up.” She held up a sad pile of mud. Bel realized that the hat was hidden somewhere inside.

  Bel looked at the hat. “Don’t bring nice things to a fight. You’ll probably need a new one.”

  Manipule glared at her. “She got this from the human delvers when they were out hunting. It’s sentimental.”

  Bel almost rolled her eyes, but Manipule’s stern expression and Orseis’ sad eyes told Bel that she was being a jerk.

  “I guess we’ll clean it then?”

  Manipule smiled. “Yes. I’ll clean it when we get back, okay?”

  Orseis nodded and handed over the dirty hat to Manipule, who carefully shook it out and slipped it into a pocket.

  I didn’t even know that the hat was sentimental. How was I supposed to know that? Wait, didn’t Manipule say that I was ignoring everyone and only paying attention to the teleporter? Was she right?

  Bel huffed. Now that guilt had starting taking hold of her, she was feeling self-conscious about her social skills. Getting everyone into the unexpected fight was also a failure on her part.

  “Sorry for the extra trouble,” she said, feeling that the apology was poor as the words left her lips. “Did everyone get all the essence from these guys? Should we go report to the cat girls’ boss?”

  Flann scratched his ears. “Y’know, I’m not sure that they’ll be happy with the job we did.”

  Bel’s eyebrows pinched together. “What? Why not? We solved the problem, right?”

  She turned and took in the scene. Gore and bodies everywhere, dead fish slowly floating up from the blood-blackened water, and a horrible stench that clung to the air.

  “Oh… well, whatever. We’ll just leave quickly. Maybe they won’t notice.”