Void Lord: My Revenge Is My Harem

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Fizz evaluated the scene in a blink. "Ray," he sang out, "congratulations, you are about to learn a valuable lesson about hubris and ears."

Rhea did not waste a syllable on wit. "Left," she snapped to John, already going right. "Blind."

John gave the world a sideways suggestion. The ridge-back felt ground become unhelpful and shifted to compensate. Rhea Flame landed a line of heat low along the belly where its plates were as thin as pride. Fizz didn't try for flame; he snapped a bubble of compressed air into the open mouth exactly as it inhaled.

Choke. Gag. Rage.

Ray tried to rise to take advantage of the opening he had not made. His ankle folded drama-queen style. He hissed and coughed at the same time, which is impressive if you are a kettle and less so if you are a noble.

"Get down," John yelled, and the command sat properly in Ray's bones. He went down. For once, learning was fast.

John drove a stake of hush right under the beast's front left shoulder — a two-inch void-push that was just enough to turn a leap into an argument. The creature overreached, stumbled, and showed the seam at the base of the neck where even ridiculous designs put a hinge.

Rhea's knife flashed. Fizz flared a decoy fire spark so the remaining eye looked wrong for half a heartbeat. The knife landed where it meant to. Ridge-back met math. Math won.

Ray lay panting on the ground. Fizz drifted over him with the smug concern of a cat doing triage on a rival. "Are we proud of our choices," he asked sweetly. "On a scale from 'I have all my limbs' to 'please tell my comb I loved it,' where are we?"

Ray glared up with the devotion of a man who had just seen the underside of his own coat from farther away than he liked. "Do not," he croaked, "lecture me. I don't need it."

Rhea strode over, seized his ear between forefinger and thumb, and applied the ancient cousin-magic that turns men into obedient papier-mâché. "You are joining us," she said without heat. "Say yes."

He writhed with dignity. "No."

She lifted his ear higher and adjusted her grip to engage the soul. "Say yes."

"Ouch! Ouch! It hurts." Ray's stubborn will collapsed like bad pastry. "Yes," he squeaked.

"Excellent," Fizz said. "You will worship me with the proper respect. Do not worry, I offer a beginner track."

"I do not worship lint," Ray snapped, then remembered he had just crumpled into the dirt and reached for a different sentence. "I will… listen."

"Good enough," Rhea said. She released the ear and dusted her hands like a judge declining an appeal. "We kill one more together. If you fail to be a team, I send you back with a note pinned to your collar."

Ray turned a careful color that clashed with his pride but did not ignite it. He stood, tested the ankle with a wince, and nodded once.

They formalized it at a game trail—chalk on a board hung from a nail banged into a root by a proctor who understood symbolism. Team: Lord Fizz, field addendum: Rhea Flame, Ray Flame. Fizz insisted on drawing a tasteful soup bowl next to the name. The proctor erased the soup bowl without comment.

"Target," John said, scanning the brush.

"Snarl ape," Rhea said. "Three-class by rank, four-class by temper, zero-class by intelligence. It eats hands."

Fizz's whiskers perked. "We bring it a glove," he said. "We give it wind for breakfast."

They found one soon enough. You always hear snarl apes before you see them because the black jungle itself tries to leave the room. It hung from a low branch like a bundle of muscle that had cut a bad deal with gravity. Its arms were too long for anyone's moral comfort. Its teeth looked like it had tried to be a shark and failed the audition.

"We need a plan," John said.

"Bait," Rhea said. She laced flame through a curtain of dry creeper on the far side, low and showy, not hot enough to spread. The ape's head jerked toward the light the way dumb danger loves spectacle.

"Lets air for the ankle," John said.

"Shin," Fizz said.

"Pride," Ray muttered, and for the first time today he and competence occupied the same square of the board.

They moved without announcing that they were a team because teams that say they are a team are usually not. Rhea cast two quick fans of heat —not burning fire, only heat— to make the ground uncomfortable where the beast would want to land. John pulled the meaning out of one patch of soil, just a thumb-width domino that would topple the creature's handsome plan to charge.

Fizz cupped water from nowhere and whipped it in a flat disc at the creature's eyes. Ray, chastened but not defanged, drew flame along his forearms like gauntlets and held it — not projecting, not wasting, compressing for once as if fire could be a tool instead of a tantrum.

The snarl ape launched.

It hit John's patch of altered ground and found that one of its favorite answers had become a question. Its left hand slid. Its right foot overcompensated and landed in Rhea's heat. Pain translated into its body like an insult. It opened its mouth to narrate its feelings. Fizz's water disc slapped into the throat instead of the eyes, closing voice without drowning breath. The ape gagged, neck arched, underjaw high.

Ray stepped in —not bravely, because bravery is expensive, but correctly— and hammered the compressed flame under the chin with both fists. The heat bit into the soft hinge. The head snapped up farther. Rhea laid a single line of real fire across the exposed tendon as if stitching a sentence closed. John hit the knee with an inch of hush and the knife found what knives are always trying to find.

Snarl ape collapsed on the ground like a tent when you cut one pole.