Void Lord: My Revenge Is My Harem

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John's jaw set. "If anyone tries to harm him or accuse him wrongly? What will you do?"

"I will burn the building down," Fizz said sweetly, then coughed. "Kidding. I will politely complain to the nearest teacher and then burn a very small corner."

Snake chuckled, a dry sound like paper that still loved to be turned. "He will not be harmed," he said. "I am old, not careless."

John's jaw moved once. "If it is dangerous, I say no," he repeated, stubborn as a good door.

"It is not," Snake said. "It is walking and placing and leaving. And cookies."

Fizz waved his paw. "Do not stand in the way of commerce," he said. "I need snack money. Snacks make me kind."

John exhaled through his nose. The line in his chest hummed, but it did not protest. He nodded to Hale and Venn. "All right," he said. "We will be quick."

He met Fizz's eyes. Fizz lifted a paw like a promise. "I will be right behind you," he said. "If a cabbage knight appears, scream in letters. I will hear the spelling."

John almost laughed. Almost. "Be good," he said.

"I am the best," Fizz said.

John looked at the old man's face for a long second. He tested the line inside him against it. The line did not bend. It did not buzz. It did not darken. He gave a small nod. "Fine."

Snake clapped his hands once, a soft sound with the force of a door opening. "Good. Then we move."

He stood with the slow grace of someone who had practiced standing until standing felt like a spell. He was not taller than John had thought, but the room fit him as if he were larger. He turned the hookah mouthpiece with two fingers; the little pipe went quiet, like a tea kettle pulled off the fire before it boiled over.

"Hale, Venn," he said again. "He is yours for an hour. He is mine after."

Master Hale gestured toward the door with the smallest bow. "Student John. With me."

Master Venn tossed John a clean linen, because he was the kind of teacher who noticed ink in the web of a thumb. "Wipe that before you sign, or the book will pretend you are someone else," he said, dry as salt.

John took the cloth. He looked at Fizz. Fizz looked back with a mouth full of cookies and eyes full of pride.

"I will be right here," Fizz said, patting his round chest. "I will not sell the office. I will not steal the hat. I will not chew the hookah. I will maybe smell a book. One smell. A scholarly smell."

"Go," Snake told John, the word not an order but a promise that the next word would be come back. "I will borrow your friend for a few minutes."

John paused at the threshold. "If anyone asks where I went," he said to Hale without looking at her, "what should I say?"

"Nowhere interesting," Master Hale said at once. "And say it like you are bored of your own life."

He left with them. The door shut with a small wooden sigh.

The office felt larger by half when it was quiet again. The bubbling pipe, the books piled like small cities, the hat that was very much not just a hat — it all leaned closer now that there was only one big man and one small bright fluffy creature to look at it.

Fizz floated to the desk and sniffed one of the cookies he had not yet destroyed. "Are these made with butter or magic," he asked. "Both are valid."

"Both," Snake said. "Do not tell the bakers. They get jealous."

Fizz nodded gravely and took another bite, cheeks round. Then he set the last cookie back on the plate with great dignity, as if returning a crown he had borrowed for a parade. "Job," he said. "We discuss terms. I am ready. I have paper. I have ink. I have a pen made from a goose that was very rude to me."

Snake folded his hands and smiled into the lines time had made. "So eager," he said. "Good. Eagerness is better than strength. Strength breaks and cries. Eagerness learns and laughs."

Fizz dug in his little bag and pulled out a crumpled scrap of paper he had been saving for a grand occasion. It had three shaky lines on it in his own paw-writing:

Snacks (limit: none)

Money (limit: much)

No one touches my fur.

He smoothed the scrap on the desk. "My terms," he said. "Negotiable, but only the numbers."

Snake tilted his head, pretending to read an imperial charter. "We can work with this," he said. "But the job is not running messages. It is not for errands. It is teaching."

Fizz froze midair. His ears flicked. His whiskers trembled. "Teaching?" he squeaked. "As in… standing in front of children and talking while they listen?"

Snake nodded. "As in standing before the next generation and explaining what the elements are, how they argue with each other, and how a wise hand tells them to sit down. You will not be casting for them. You will not be drilling them. You will be telling stories, asking questions, planting thoughts. Elemental theory, in a round voice. You will make them learn until they remember. You will make them curious enough to try."

Fizz's paws flew to his cheeks. He squeaked again, louder. "I… a teacher? A Professor Fizz?"

"Yes," Snake said. "I can see you are a master of elemental magic."

Fizz swayed dramatically, pretending to faint onto the cookie plate, then shot upright with sparkling eyes. "Professor Fizz. Oh, it sings. It shines. It is destiny."

Snake allowed himself the smallest smile. "You will begin with the basics. Why fire hates water but loves air. Why does the earth grow weary under too much lightning? Why ice remembers even when fire forgets. They will listen. They will write. And if they laugh, they will remember."

Fizz puffed up with pride. "I will be the greatest professor in the history of professors. I will write textbooks. I will draw diagrams. No —better— I will set small fires in bowls to prove points."

"No fires in bowls," Snake said quickly.

Fizz sighed. "Fine. But I will draw very convincing pictures of bowls on the board."

Snake leaned forward, eyes sharp again. "One more thing. You will not tell John the details. Not now. He has enough weight on his back. This is your secret to keep, until the time comes when he must see you in that role. Understood?"

Fizz tilted his head. "A secret job? A secret professor? I accept. I will be a mystery wrapped in cute fluff, dipped in knowledge, sprinkled with sparks."

Snake offered a finger. "We shake."

Fizz clasped it with both paws, shaking so hard that crumbs flew. "Deal," he said. "Professor Fizz begins his reign."

A few moments later…

The handle turned at the main door. Master Hale's shadow fell across the floor first, then she herself. John followed, his face clean of ink, a new slate token in his hand and a look in his eye that said he had put his name into a book and the book had felt heavier for it.

"It is done," Hale said. "Rare-talent quota applied. Token marked. Room assigned. And I—" she glanced at Fizz "—did not mention any hats."

"Good," Snake said.

Master Venn held up a folded schedule. "Do not lose this," he told John. "If you do, I will pretend not to know you and you will wander the wrong buildings until winter."

Fizz zipped to John and peered at the slate. "Is it shiny," he asked. "Shinier than the old one. Let me see. Do not drop it. If you drop it we will glue it to your hand."

John gave him the faintest smile. "We won't drop it."

Snake looked between them — the thin, set boy with ink on his fingers and a quiet storm in his palm, and the small fire with jokes and rules — and he felt the old ache he lived with when something rare agreed to start.

He steepled his fingers and cleared his throat in a way that let the room know a page had turned. "John," he said, "go with Master Hale and Master Venn now. They will show you your room. They will tell you where to stand tomorrow and where not to stand ever. They will tell you which stairs bite."

Hale's mouth twitched. "Stairs do not bite."

"They do if you are rude to them," Snake said.

Venn nodded. "First-year east steps have opinions."

Fizz flew a loop around John's head, puffed out his chest, and declared, "And I have a job! A real one! A job so mysterious and so glorious that even you, John, cannot know all the details yet. Ha! Envy me, for I am now Professor Fizz, keeper of secrets, bearer of wisdom, devourer of cookies!"

John arched his brow. "Professor?"

Fizz clapped his paws over his mouth and gasped. "Oops. Forget you heard that. Nothing! No professors here! Just humble fluff. Move along."

John sighed but the corner of his mouth betrayed a smirk.

Snake chuckled once more, the dry paper sound. "Go," he told them. "The day grows late. Tomorrow, the work begins."

John stepped toward the door with Hale and Venn. Fizz followed, already humming what sounded suspiciously like a theme song for himself.

Snake watched them go, the boy and the bright creature. He folded his hands again and whispered into the quiet office, "An old man gets his wish. A young man gets his work. And a small fire begins to teach."

The hookah bubbled once, like agreement.