The head of the sea serpent was large enough to accommodate a single body if it opened just right. I wondered if I could give up one of the corpses. It should have had to...

  "We need to take it down."

  "Like hel we do," the man said. At the very least he squared up into a defensive stance. He knew combat.

  "No really, I can see that it's probably eaten something."

  There was a definite shape halfway down the serpent that made me immediately think it has consumed a small fae of some sort. That could have been why it took so much time to find us. The tracking medallions were nearly indestructible if everything I had heard was correct. But anyone that put stock in things made from the mages school... That wasn't going to work out well for them.

  The serpent was long, longer than the cart by a margin and it looks indecisive about what it wanted to do. I could let it swallow one of the corpses but I doubt that it wanted that.

  Dead meat like dry blood didn't have the same potential. Even though each of these were not dead for so long I didn't know exactly what that meant. I tapped into the thrill and immediately, things slowed down. I could see its calculating movements as it attempted to size us up.

  One good cut across the base of its large jaw would do it if it got close enough but...well I had never tried to chop a serpent apart from anywhere but the head. Perhaps today was the time to try. I drew out my machete to its full length.

  Most of the rest of my equipment had been issued by the company but this was special. It was the only wedding gift that I had kept.

  "Attract its attention!" I didn't need him to be subtle.

  He banged his short sword against a shield he had to have picked up from one of the contestants. The loud rap of each hit got the snake turned just right. I visualized cutting across it and then there I was, raising the machete. There had to be a better way to do that but I didn't know.

  I stepped forward, drawing up on the thrill as I sped up. The world slowed to a crawl as I moved my hands into the correct configuration and...

  I sliced cleanly through half of the snake before my blade got lodged into something. It would almost certainly bleed out, but now I had a choice. I could let this all fall into place if l could just.

  The snake moved, writhing as its attack against Martin lacked a certain girth.

  In one small swoop I cut it in half. The front half was still trying to argue that it deserved to live and further deserved to eat my newest lackey.

  I liked him. He was growing on me. Maybe he was growing like a fungus but we would see later about that.

  Martin grunted as the snake slammed into him. This gave me enough room to pull out my cap and dab blood off of the severed portion.

  All in all, I expected a little bit more blood than it was giving. The smell of gastric juices was enough to make me regret some of these choices but it would have to do.

  I ran up, still tapping into the thrill and moved towards its slowed neck.

  There had to be some Faye that believed that serpents could live without half of their bodies. If there was, I would prove them wrong today. True, it would be able to live for quite some time, but that was just because it hadn't realized that it was already dead.

  That didn't help my newest acquisition who only barely stopped the battering with his tiny shield.

  Several arrows appeared in his neck. I breathed a sigh of relief that Vivian had been close to our stock of arrows.

  Thankfully she hadn't been attacked but it was a close thing as Martin held his shield up for dear life.

  In some situations it didn't make sense to attack. Sometimes you had to defend and then react when you could. This was one of those.

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  This snake didn't know it was dead so I would make sure that it got the message.

  I traced a line up its body stopping as I got closer. I was recently certain that a serpent couldn't double back upon itself along the spine.

  The smooth scales of the beast did not want to give me purchase. My speed saw to it that this wouldn't be an issue, so long as I... I could feel the magic leaving my body. It was now or never as I reached the last portion. It was still distracted by Martin which was a small thing. I tapped in pouring on as much speed and power as I could. And cut it. The remaining part of it was no longer than twice my height. It wasn't going to be going anywhere; it wouldn't have the force.

  Without most of its body the serpent lost momentum and was unable to regain it.

  We waited for a tenths minute as the head of the serpent did. It's best to deny the reality that it was faced with. At this point I didn't have to do any more work. I didn't have to outlast it.

  "Did you just slice that serpent up?" Martin was going on me. He was smart enough to not drop his guard. That was one of the few things. I found myself dabbing at the blood dripping from the remains of the serpent. I might have spent it all but I would get all back now.

  It just needed to stop squirming.

  "It's legitimate strategy everyone is all talk about cutting off the head of the snake, but the snake needs the rest of its body too."

  Martin shook himself. "Well I wouldn't have been able to take care of that without you, so thanks for that. This would have been a terrible sabbatical."

  "Sabbatical? Ha! Where did you get this guy from?" Vivian said. "If he isn't a part of this we can keep him."

  "He was... Engrossed in some business opportunities that have recently ended. I was thinking that we could use the extra... Muscle on this job."

  Martin grunted. "The two of your seem to have this situation well in hand but... What are you doing with that cap?"

  I held it up, then returned to dipping it in blood. This would be enough to top me off. I couldn't use so much thrill at once more than a few times in a day no matter how much blood I had absorbed.

  There was, for lack of a better term, a hard cap somewhere. Real fae females did well anyway, regardless of whatever magic stores we could tap into.

  "I feel like we need to set some ground rules here. I was very unclear as what you were doing. Now that I understand what this is all about, this might be a fortuitous opportunity."

  Vivian and I shared a look. "I don't think that this is going to be something very professional. Let's keep this casual. I did appreciate your Shield wall there, so you've got at least one good thing going for you. Don't push it."

  He hailed at a hand and I could tell he was trying to come up with some quip. I was going to have it. Vivian always had better quips than anyone.

  "Well, you might as well drag that into the place where I'm putting all the logs for the pyre. Get what you need from it and we'll move on," Vivian said.

  She was a pragmatic one, or at least that was the sense I got from her. I didn't know if the serpent would be flammable but if it was then it would just help a bit. It was enough work to just get the bodies to burn. Vivian had a trick for that and we would be there to watch it before we moved to the next large or small island.

  "All right. So before you guys about go back out let me bring out the master medallion. I've been walking around trying to help you figure out which way to go and I think that there's about three to four or more left on this island at best."

  Vivian held out a large circular disc that was just large enough to obscure her palm. On it were roughly sixty marbles. As she moved it forward and backwards some of the marble shifted. She kept it level. I could easily see the corresponding positions of the five medallions. The forces between each one to them being a indicator of the general direction, the closer you got the more accurate it got.

  "Three are along the shore? The other one is potentially the opposite direction and into the woods."

  It made sense for us to go along the shore and get the three first. At the very least then she could have some time to determine which direction the other one was. This island was not really that large. It was certainly not large enough to have such a large Predator so either somebody would put that there on purpose or it had come up from the deep. Because of all of the things that were going on. Now I couldn't speak to how it was able to breathe air or if it even had to, but fae beasts were often beyond understanding.

  The worst part about this was that there wasn't a real road between here and there. We could take one of the smaller carts but it would still be pulling the car through sand or having to pull it on dirt next to the Jungle.

  "We'll unload and head toward those three," I said. I took a moment to really pinpoint a series of trees along this path to make sure we didn't miss it. In all likelihood, the beach extended out for several span. It was also completely possible that the beach jetted out in One direction or another. We had landed here first because of it being one of the furthest islands to where we'd come from.

  Now we needed to work our way back. The company had said that it might take a week or so. It would have taken longer if they hadn't given us the seeds medallions but somebody had to clean it up so that they could run this event again in one or two years whenever the courts had already forgotten how many of their sons and daughters had died needlessly to gain some sort of modicum of prestige.

  It hadn't been a mistake. This was a terrible event for all involved, but there was a profit in it.