Beastkin are a curious bunch of races. They are proud of their animal origins and their ears and tails while at the same time bashful and enraged when compared to the base animals they get their characteristics from. There is no worse way to get mauled by a bear-kin than calling him 'a bear'. Their tails have a special significance. Never grab a beastkin's tail. Depending on the relationship between you and the beastkin this act can be interpreted as a marriage proposal or a challenge to a duel to the death. One can never be sure it will be the former and not the latter. Keep away from their tails.

Excerpt from the Great Compendium of the Races, vol 4.

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"" Kazuya's pained shout echoed in the cavern.

He clutched his childhood friend's body and rocked it back and forth. Skippy jumped on Shinji and started to gnaw on the collar. Motes of mana still flew from the iron tool to the dragon's maw, but the metal did not give in even against dragon fangs.

Despite the heavy pressure he was feeling, Aidan suspected there were more slavers. It made no sense to send only eight. They were in a group of fifteen people. Of course, six were noncombatants, two possible betrayers and judging by the dead guards by the room entrance they had intentions of only capturing the heroes and the princesses.

"Stone Shape!"

He created two walls of stone on each side of the corridor leading to the room they were using, one on the left and one on the right, making an S-shaped passage. It would block line of sight and slow down any attackers. But since the walls were made from the cavern, they didn't block Aidan's cavesense. he could still feel if anything foreign touched the surface of the cavern around them, extending past these makeshift protections.

"Shinji! No, this is not happening!" Pearl's hysterical screams rang inside the camp. The maids were holding her down.

"Your Highness, it is not safe to go outside. Please stay here." Deb tried to calm her down.

"Let me go, I must see Shinji! Let me go, it is an order! I am going to hang you!" She roared at the maids. They did not let go of her.

Skippy growled and crawled back to Aidan's side, stuffed. Aidan understood, the dragon was full and could not devour anything else. He couldn't even fly.

"Skippy, protect Princess Pearl. Stay there and don't let them leave the camp." Aidan commanded the dragon.

He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. Now that the adrenalin of combat was wearing off, it hit him.

"I killed people." He whispered to himself. The face of the wolf-kin slaver grimacing as his lifeblood bled inside his chest was drawn in his eyelids. The slavers caught in the overpowered conflagration didn't even have time to feel the pain.

He tried to control his stomach not to throw up. Was he justified in killing? Absolutely. Even in Yutis it would give him a commendation. But it was still hard.

He closed his eyes and focused back on Dawn's perceptions. It was not the time to sulk.

"Sora!" Dawn called the Beastkin. "I think there are more slavers around. It makes no sense to bring only eight against us." They had more collars than what was needed to capture all the combatants in Pearl's party, but it was too much of a gamble. Slavers are merchants even if they deal in flesh. Something did not add up.

"" Kazuya let go of Shinji, putting him carefully on the ground. ""

"Wait, Kazuya. We have to do this together!"

"" Kazuya vanished.

Aidan's cavernsense spell could barely feel him leaving past the six scorched slavers.

"Where did he go?" Sora asked.

"I don't know, my bet is that he is blinded by vengeance. And he can speak our language."

"Curses! We just lost more than half of our combat force. We need to get out of here." Sora grunted.

"Shinji!" Pearl cried, struggling against the maids. "Let me go!"

"And we won't be able to carry the bodies. We lost all our men but one. I don't know where the other two guards are, but there is a chance they were with the slavers since the beginning. We'll probably have to leave behind most non-essential things to make haste." Dawn pondered. The only male left was Aidan. And skippy, but dragons don't count.

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"I think we will take what... two days to get out?" Sora estimated.

Sounds of combat could be heard far away, ringing through the eternal dripping of water.

"I think Kazuya found something. Or something found him." Dawn stated.

"We are exposed here, even with these obstructions." Sora pointed out.

"I know. Let's retreat inside. I am going to close off the tunnels for a while."

The girls picked up Shinji's body and dragged him inside. In his steel plate armor he was too heavy for them to carry. They also gathered all the weapons and slaver collars.

"Stone shape."

Bars of stone the thickness of a man's leg crisscrossed from wall to wall on both sides of the entrance, leaving only gaps smaller than a hand. Even Skippy would have to squeeze to get through. Anyone behind those bars wouldn't have line of sight to the inside of their room.

Another casting of Stone Shape and the entrance to the camp was closed off. Dawn also made a bench for his male body to sit near the entrance. Keeping control of both bodies at the same time was still very taxing, especially in these stressful situations. But he could move the focal point of the cavesense spell forward a little. And give the impression he was doing something.

"Let the Princess go. Let she mourn." Dawn asked the maids.

Pearl ran to hug her hero, face drenched in tears and snot.

"Shinji, Shinji!" She kept rocking the body and supporting the head in hope it would wake up. The slavery collar was still gripping tight the neck, stopping the blood from coming out.

While Pearl was there crying, Sora brought a healing potion to Dawn.

"Take care of those blisters, your Highness. It won't do to mar your complexion."

Dawn drank the potion and sat to recover her wounds. 'And my lack of control almost burns Lumina' Aidan thought. The academy is too theoretical in this aspect. The cadet mages needed to experience casting in real combat. 'That is something for when and if I meet the headmaster again'.

After a while, even Pearl stopped crying. She sobbed from time to time but she didn't let go of Shinji's corpse. Deb was with her, trying in vain to confort the princess.

Dawn looked at the clutch of maids, they were completely lost. They needed to act.

"Girls, we need to work hard to survive. You want to see the light of the sun again, I am sure of it. You have to be strong and stalwart if you want to support Princess Pearl."

The maids nodded.

"What would you have us do, your Highness?" One of them asked.

"We will carry back only the essential. Spare clothes, sundries are all superfluous. Wine and liquor are also staying behind. Only food and water, and while Deb is with us we won't need to worry about running out of drinkable water. Any of you that received training with a weapon, there are several available from the dead men. I want each of you with at least a dagger. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be sold as a slave."

"You jest, your Highness. The slavers would never dare..."

"They just did. They acted against the crown princess and against myself. The old rules were broken today, wrath and ruin upon them. Yutis and Gohar will see these slavers burn, I promise you. But right now we need to survive. All of us."

The maids went and rummaged through the baggage. There was a lot of useless things like dresses, spare shoes, hair brushes, even a stuffed toy in Pearl's things.

"One backpack per person. We won't even take the blankets, my magic can keep us warm through the night." Dawn commanded the maids.

Pearl stirred at the sounds of people going back and forth. She rose her head and looked at Dawn.

"Lumina, we are taking Shinji with us."

Her face was puffy, the eyes red. It pained Dawn to see Pearl like this.

"Impossible, Pearl. He weighs too much." Dawn shook her head.

Pearl opened and closed her mouth to protest, but Aidan was faster. "What we can do is make a tomb for him here. Bury him deep in the stone. If everything goes well, we can return later to retrieve his body."

Burying Shinji would burn a lot of mana. But it was more respectful than incinerating the body or leaving it behind to maybe rise as a vengeful undead. Lumina shuddered inside Aidan at the thought of an otherworlder undead bent on vengeance. Thinking about how Shinji helped him, Aidan decided to make the tomb. He dug a hole severl meters deep in the middle of the room, shifting the stone to a corner. 

"I can take the collar out. Should I?" Aidan asked Pearl. She nodded. Aidan reproduced the master tool from the collar signature and unlocked it two hours later. Some blood flowed out, congealed.

Pearl watched carefully and then she asked. "Could you have..."

"No. He was disobeying an order and too agitated. I'm sorry, Pearl. There was little I could do for him before the collar broke his neck." The grieving princess nodded.

'Not adamantite neither dragon fangs could dent that thing. I bet those collars are impossible to replace'. Aidan thought. He had no knowledge other than hearsay on slave collars before they met Cythrel.

They wrapped Shinji's body, armor and all, in the blankets they were not carrying back.

Pearl watched in silence supported by Deb. Aidan created a coffin made of stone and placed the shrouded body inside. He poured alcohol over the blanket shroud to act as disinfectant, and the girls put small trinkets in the coffin. It was a custom of the region to give a token gift to the departed. Pearl put her scented soap bar wrapped in a cloth bag. He then sealed the coffin so no air could enter or leave it.

They tossed the slave collars in the hole and then the coffin slowly descended on molded stone supports. They placed the discarded luggage in the hole and then Aidan closed it with the dug out stone. He shaped the mound as a rectangular tomb.

Dawn took her rapier. "What should I engrave, Pearl?"

"" She answered in Japanese.

Dawn engraved the Japanese words slowly. She was acting on borrowed knowledge and those strokes were hard to do. In the end it was readable. Good enough.

Pearl cried a little more, but Deb ushered her forward.

"Let's go, your Highness. We need to return to the surface."

She nodded. They left Shinji's resting place behind, vowing to avenge him.