Karnon transformed back into a human, one of his hooves becoming a shushing finger. "No, no, NO, Reinstated Professor HF! You can't talk to the students now - not while the exam is in session."

  But as the God joked out loud, his hand forced into Henry's view covertly signed three words. 'Wrong. Watch. Remember.'

  Henry weighed the disguised message, which'd been communicated in the same secret language he'd used to offer Karnon a bribe to leave him alone on his first day in Suchi. This was purposeful a choice on the God's part, an indication that someone was eavesdropping. The censorship of calling him 'Professor HF' instead of 'Professor T.' provided a second clue.

  Karnon was most likely setting a trap, but Henry would entertain him for now.

  "I knew it...I knew you'd fuck everything up."

  The God wagged his finger. "On the contrary, young snail, I've saved the day. You were about to commit an atrocity, about to slaughter the poor people with boredom. This usurpation prank, you've been moving so slowly on it that fungus is growing on your shell."

  "Amanita karnoniana."

  "Heh. You try insult me, but that's actually a compliment. Some of history's greatest prankmasters have been fungis. I couldn't dream of being so hilarious." Karnon grabbed Henry by the sides of his head. "Now, Professor HF, the stage has been set for tonight's prank. Enter, cockblocked king!"

  Henry, lifted by his ears, was swivelled towards the area where he'd been teaching Rose. A chill emanating from Karnon's palms flowed through his eardrums to his eyeballs, then his vision zoomed in on the site, right in time for a chubby horseman with a driftwood crown to appear.

  Ramiro reared his mount to a halt. Searching for the Lightning Antelope he'd been chasing, he suddenly recognised the short figure sprinting away, the holy robes materialising around them and the voice barking orders into a Communication Stone. The King, next seeing the two girls scratching their heads, began scanning the area for something else.

  Henry—with his vision forced by Karnon to assume a close-up of Ramiro's face, close enough to discern the beads of adrenaline sweat from almost catching the priceless mount—saw the revelation contained in that last action.

  Any other person in that situation, after recognising the panicking Pope, would prioritise finding the source of such a powerful figure's alarm. Ramiro, though, lingering too long on the masked Silver and Rose for their superficial importance in this regard, had assumed a different conclusion. The King's brow had relaxed from concern to a pleasant surprise, and his instinct had been to search not for danger but for the missing third person connected with the girls, the one whose meeting with the Pope he'd stumbled upon.

  And that was the confession: too few milliseconds had been spent pondering the intermediary question of why these two would ever congregate, for the King already had a perfectly logical answer, they were co-conspirators in dismantling his Empire.

  Henry had been wrong. Karnon wasn't exposing him; the God was informing him that he'd been confirmed as the owner of the WBAE for some time now. Henry's current path would have resulted in failure.

  For how long, by which mistake had he been betrayed, Henry wouldn't bother asking. The Zone Guardians were restricted by higher powers from meddling too much in political matters, and Karnon's actions thus far, like many of his pranks, already flirted with the line of permissibility, the God needing to trick others into performing the critical steps on his behalf.

  Henry supposed, then, he would have to find the answers in watching.

  To Ramiro's entrance, he assumed a state of total outward indifference and, one eye closing, entered his Mental Library to formulate counter-attacks.

  "Draug. Pa." Karnon collected an Elemental and a Fauna Charge, then slapped the earth. "Cue love triangle number two."

  Henry heard a crack from near Ramiro and the girls. Beside them, a massive disc of earth crumbled to reveal a gaping opening to a tunnel, which Karnon must have dug using his Serpent of The Earth form.

  Three Lightning Antelopes leapt out, carrying the abducted Singaporean trio. The kids were jittery and pale from the terror close behind.

  The trickster God waved a twig with the flourish of a conductor's wand. "And the sleep-deprived demon!"

  "Joel!" The girl shrieked at the flute-player, pointing at a giant, clawed hand rising from the tunnel behind him.

  Before the beta-orbiter could react, the hand flattened him with a splat. The impact snapping his bones, his guts spewed out of his melodious mouth like meat from a sausage grinder.

  The two remaining friends were taken by dread. They kicked frantically at their new mounts to move, to move fast. The Lightning Antelopes, however, didn't budge, the creatures having been replaced with inflatable balloon animals, which collapsed under the riders' weight.

  While the pair squirmed around pathetically, a second giant hand joined the first in gripping the tunnel's rim, establishing purchase for the owner to lift themselves out.

  A gargantuan face crested the top first.

  Its skin was porcelain white and deeply wrinkled like toes soaked too long in a bath, its brow ridge jutted out beyond its nose, its hair and beard were pale-pink in colour, and it had no lips. Like an ancient, far distant hominid cousin as of yet unmet, its features lay between human and animal. This proximity created an uncanny sensation in the observer's heart, a conflict between whether what was being seen could qualify as a fellow man, with whom existed the potentials of brotherly communion, or if it were the wild other, who could be only prey or predator. Any ambiguity was resolved by further inspection of its pinkish hair, which actually consisted of interwoven ropes of organ meat.

  A few tresses of these organ ropes stretched out from the demon's face to apprehend the two Singaporean kids. Some bound them in a python-constriction; others punched holes in their bellies and greedily scooped out their innards. The pair died screaming.

  The Doomreaver, having managed to get its torso over the rim, plunked its chest to the ground and dragged itself forward to pull out its lower body. Quickly freeing itself, it got to its feet, rising to 4-stories tall after straightening its monstrous spine.

  From top to toe, it was draped in the organ ropes, like a man in a pink ghillie suit. Some of these ropes, moving with minds of their own, retrieved the entrails extracted from the Singaporean trio to join them and their master.

  Karnon rubbed his belly to feel the laughter inside better. "Hohohohohoho!"

  Henry, pretending he needed to scrap the plans he'd just formulated due to this latest irritating addition, gave up for now and exited his Mental Library.

  Here was the Doomreaver.

  These nuisance invaders from the Infernal Plane accumulated strength by devouring victims and adding their innards to their grotesque armour. This incorporation ability granted them an exponential power growth that could make them troublesome to deal with, and one left unchecked could easily overwhelm a disorganised domain that failed to muster its armies in time. Luckily, by Henry's estimation, this specimen was merely a Tier-4 50,000-man monster. On paper, this made it weaker than the Pope in a direct conflict, although Karnon would no doubt add extra hurdles to impede the man.

  One of these hurdles was already in play: since Silver, a Tier-5 Shaman exceeding the demon's level, had been near the tunnel, the creature was turning Sentient.

  The Doomreaver's eyes flashed purple, awakening with the haze of one emerging from a fever dream. It gave a grunt, which Henry's translated to a statement of astonishment and relief at being released from The Vilified One's bondage.

  The demon consumed the land with its gaze, arriving first upon the Plains Day camping grounds in the distance, where the tantalising spices of thousands—a crescent of golden light struck its breast, tearing open a wound down to its ribcage, from which spilt gallons of blackened blood.

  Staggering, the Doomreaver turned to the one who'd dared to assault it.

  The Pope was collecting constellations for a follow-up spell. Along with the torrents of golden Divine Energy being vacuumed up from the environment, a second, translucent, colourless energy was channelling into his fingers from his chest. This was God Energy, gathered from worshippers and used to augment abilities beyond their ordinary power.

  The Doomreaver rushed at the small man. Its hulking strides closed the distance in seconds, and it aimed its fist at him, putting the entirety of its 27-tonne mass behind the blow. The punch sped at the short man like a semi-truck towards a child in the middle of the road, only, upon collision, to come to an abrupt halt. The demon was locked in place. Its knuckles had been stopped from progressing a centimetre further by the tip of the Pope's index finger, Berbahaya having blessed the monster with a Miracleworker ability that nullified a wounded companion's weight for easier transport.

  The Doomreaver stooped its head down to the impudent man's face and roared with the depth and volume of a foghorn. Globs of acidic spittle rained on the Pope, hissing as they were incinerated by the golden glow of a Miracleworker forcefield.

  Pope Berbahaya, his attention divided between the demon and the environment for potential threats from Karnon, shot a second golden crescent.

  The Doomreaver reeled as its neck was severed down to its spinal cord. Roaring in pain, it immediately retaliated by unleashing its full arsenal of abilities upon him. Its glowing claws slashed, its foot stomped, its mouth vomited up globs of noxious sludge, its organ armour became animated and condensed into an udder-like wall of spiked tendrils that showered him in stabs. But all this might was unable to penetrate the forcefield, and the Pope punished the creature with the next spell to its groin.

  Karnon topped up his Earthfriend charges for a full stock of ten. "Seems Baby Berby's gotten bored already with his new rattle! Guess I'll have to resort to other measures to keep him stimulated. By the way, Professor HF, you, too - I've packed a sub-prank into this one for your continued pleasure."

  "Not interested."

  The God, winking, broke up into a cloud of blue leaves, scattering and floating away on the breeze.

  -Zhangmei33: Cripple-gege, help!

  Henry glanced at Rose's position, where she was surrounded. Clumps of the Doomreaver's organ armour had separated and morphed into thousands of skinless, skeletonless minions. These gut golems were simulacra of former victims, mostly dwarves. Their bodies had been reconstructed using the preserved brains of the originals encased in pseudo-skulls of interwoven mucosal membranes, and they continued to wield their weapons from life. The ones lumbering toward Rose were trying to coerce her back towards their master fighting the Pope.

  Silver, nearby, was in a similar predicament, both of them about to receive the graphic demise of the Singaporean three.

  Henry's analysis indicated he could only get one of them out. Taking less than a second to choose, he into a cheetah and sprinted into the fray.

  "Jag. Kar. Lar. Blixt. Ask. A. Och. Ra…" Silver, in a daze, was gathering constellations for a .

  One moment, she'd been fuming at Henry for ignoring her again to chat with the stranger; the next, she was engulfed by this demonic horde. Since she'd experienced ambushes while adventuring, her response had been largely automatic. She'd swapped to her combat equipment and searched for an empty space to cast.

  Without any plan beyond the present seconds, she was carefully trying to select the best target for maximum damage. The approaching ranks of golems were illuminated by the flash of an explosion from an unknown source.

  "…For. STORD!"

  A bolt of electricity zapped out from her to strike one of the golems, arcs chaining to those nearby.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Dozens of them seized and spasmed, then lost their form, spilling onto the soil in loose, wet piles of pinkish slush. These squelched as the rest of the horde trod through them to continue the relentless advance.

  Silver, having slain too few, wouldn't be able to complete another mid-length spell before her capture.

  Spotting a cluster of four leading the pack, she took the initiative, charging them while arming herself with a round shield. She blocked a hammer-blow from one, cast a that froze three into meat popsicles, unsheathed a sword from her belt and, the blade igniting in flame, cleaved the last in half from shoulder to navel.

  She sprang back in retreat, activated a Bullet-Time to reevaluate her circumstances. The Doomreaver, obstructed by something or someone, was backing up towards her. Amongst the golem horde, the other girl was about to be caught.

  For some bizzaro reason, that girl was in a state of hysterics. Her face scrunched up, her lips quivering, she seemed on the verge of tears, a bout of ugly crying where one loses all composure and regresses to a bawling infant. Lowering her head in despair, the girl committed suicide, disintegrating into a cloud of soul-lights.

  Silver was baffled. The penalty for dying was only losing a level, and the girl didn't seem the type to be distressed by the Doomreaver's threat to the world's NPCs.

  Regardless, the golems that'd been focused on the girl shifted their attention to herself, instantly doubling the number she needed to contend with.

  She was dead, too.

  "Damn," Silver swore, followed by a subsequent shift in mood that caused her to scowl in bitter annoyance and swear again. "Henry."

  Henry!

  That's right, this death, she blamed entirely on him, whose pretentious voice she could hear mocking her even now after he'd ditched to wherever. There wasn't a single doubt in her heart that all this, whatever the hell this was, was 100% his fault. Her ungrateful, deceitful so-called friend, The ""Invincible"" Cripple, owed her a million explanations and a billion apologies - no, a trillion apologies.

  Just when the fuming Silver was about to activate her own suicide function, a cheetah sprinted out from the horde. It leapt at her, its limbs lengthening and its face morphing into none other than the person she'd been cursing.

  "Accept!" Henry shouted. "Accept!"

  Silver, confused by the command and in general, became doubly so when he grabbed her and yanked her towards him, locking her in a tight embrace. Pressed against his chest, she blinked.

  A hug?

  "Accept! Accept! Accept!"

  Accept what? Silver wondered. The hug? Wait a minute...him? Accept him? Was he finally confessing? The timing was kind of terrible? Then again, Henry was socially inept?

  "Umm, I gu—"

  WHOMP!

  Her answer was smothered by the earth shaking around her, rattling her bones and almost throwing her off her feet.

  The spot where she'd been standing a moment earlier was crushed by the back of the toppling Doomreaver. Its left leg had been severed through the ankle.

  Her previous daze broken by the interruption, she noticed the group invitation Henry'd been spamming at her. Silver accepted. A message popped up in the centre of her vision.

  -Henry Flower: You won't be used to operating at the speeds we're going. Don't question, don't doubt, don't consider alternatives. Follow. Trust.

  She flinched as he scooped her up from behind. Henry, into a gorilla, twisted in a discus-thrower's turn and launched her.

  Around her, the world slowed down, Henry activating her Bullet-Time remotely through a group command.

  Soaring over the heads of the nearest golems, she was struck by a bombardment of colours. Onto the scene which she'd judged hopeless, a kaleidoscopic array of were superimposed. Henry was drawing spheres around several monsters to indicate the ranges of their attacks, along with dozens of lines mapping potential routes to escape. Everything was being adjusted on the fly, created, changed, and discarded. The display gave her a direct peek into the real-time workings of his mind.

  He was fast.

  The strategist for Silver's adventuring group was a prodigy, a genius amongst geniuses. They were not this fast.

  No one was this fast.

  She glanced back. By the Doomreaver squirming to get upright, the golems were colliding with each other as they leapt at the door of a .

  -Henry Flower: Focus. When you land, take the yellow path. Run according to the tempo. It's segmented for each pace; think of nothing but matching the paces. Keep monitoring for instructions. Trust.

  A rhythm track began to play in Silver's ears.

  She looked ahead to a yellow neon disc highlighting her landing point amidst the horde. Two different coloured alternative routes from the same disc were erased.

  -Henry Flower: Stare only at the path. Match your paces to the rhythm. Trust.

  Landing, she did exactly that, putting one foot ahead of the other according to the beat, her peripheral vision filled with dense walls of golems converging in on her.

  Ahead in the path appeared another neon disc.

  -Henry Flower: Duck to waist height.

  Stepping on it, she complied. Nothing seemed to happen at the first until the rest of the neon path changed slightly, the segments shortening and a curve being removed.

  -Henry Flower: Recalibration.

  At a second neon-disc shortly afterwards, he asked her to duck again. She did. A golem's axe-blow glided overhead.

  Thus, micromanaged to the extreme, she was guided through the horde. Henry had her duck, jump, pause, block, spell-shield, and pause and pause. The smoothness with which the attacks were skipped was surreal; she lost the sense of being surrounded by hideous monsters, and, concentrating only on her paces, felt more like she'd returned to playing a childhood game of hopscotch.

  All was well until a multi-step manoeuvre for which Henry'd drawn the arc of each step. During her final leap, a golem lunged at her from the side, its axe swinging to bite into her—an indigo-azure mist of a < Jester's Trade> spilt away from its features to reveal Henry, catching her mid-air.

  His face descended towards hers as went down on one knee. In the backdrop framing his head, the night sky was lit up with the burning fragments of an exploded meteor, and two spears crisscrossed above them. His lips were a few centimetres away.

  Silver's heart skipped a beat.

  At a jerking movement of his arm under her thigh, she glanced to their side. The spine of one of his Spelltomes was raised to block a golem's sword.

  Gulping, she peered back up. Henry's eyes, rapidly analysing one target after another, had none of their usual tiredness; they were alive, they were resolute like a cliff holding back a stormy sea.

  -Henry Flower: Almost out. Up you go.

  "Huh?"

  A swarm of butterflies fluttered in her stomach when Henry threw her above him.

  The rotation of her body gave a glimpse of him below deftly slapping an axe away with a karate chop while also intercepting a spear with the spine of his Spelltome. Activating the Spelltome's ability, he stomped his foot, a wave of Nature Energy fanning out along the ground from his big-toe and liquifying a cone of dirt to mud. A pack of golems about to reach them sank down to their knees. He shoved two of the monsters back into the mud, caught her, dipped under another attack, and used the same motion to rotate past the assailant. into a Gorilla once again, he lobbed her over another group of monsters

  -Henry Flower: .

  Silver, casting the spell, shot beyond the edge of the horde to safety.

  From the outskirts, she was given her first clear view of the entire scene, the overlay of Henry's fading as he disbanded the group,

  The hulking Doomreaver was visible amongst the minions, clashing with the short stranger from before, shrieking as its arm was severed by a shimmering golden crescent.

  Out of nowhere, the sky flashed white from a lightning strike, and, high above them, an azure blur streaked through a cloud of thousands of spears.

  An instant later, at another flash, the golems on the ground below were decimated by the tail-sweep of a gigantic blue armadillo, dwarfing the Doomreaver. This blow came to a stop against the buckler shield of a tiny woman, but enough force was imbued in it that a fan of minions stretching hundreds of metres behind the woman were flattened like leaves of grass bowing before a tornado.

  Silver frowned.

  Henry to teleport beside her. "Keep running."

  Before she could form a concrete impression of events, she felt a tug as he yanked her away to continue fleeing the pursuing golems.

  Dragged along, she ran her muddled gaze from the back of Henry's head, still swivelling about studying the battlefield, still sharing nothing, to his hand clasping hers, tight and strong.

  Many questions were stumbling and clawing over each other to reach her lips first. Where had Nerin and the Doomreaver come from? Why had he lied about the Pope? Why would a reclusive duellist be so proficient using Commander functions? Would everyone be safe?

  Silver gulped. "Why'd you pick me?"

  She recalled the other girl weeping at the realisation of being left to perish.

  There was a brief delay before Henry replied. "For what?"

  "That girl...Ro—"

  "Of course, I'd save you first." He cut her off a brusquely, the answer being so self-evident that it was profane to ask. "Her dying at level 20 has negligible consequences, while you'd get recognised respawning back at the camping grounds. I don't need an influx of your rabid fans; Suchi has enough crap already."

  A mischievous cackle sounded in the distance behind them.

  Silver, annoyed both with Henry and herself for expecting feeling from a stone—but mostly with him—ripped his stupid hand from hers and shoved it away. "I can run on my own."

  Across the sea of gut golems, the Pope was eviscerating the Doomreaver. Pulses of golden light emanated from him to burn any minions around him to ash. His attention was focused mostly on Nerin and Karnon scuffling around him, the Goddess trying to thwart the God's scheme.

  Several hundred metres away, a mischievous tumbleweed rolled into the Pope's blindspot. Expanding and uncoiling, Karnon emerged holding a white sphere, which he curve-balled at the unsuspecting holy man.

  Nerin materialised in the middle of the sphere's path. "Denied."

  Batting it with the shaft of her spear, she launched the sphere into the stars. It shrank into a spec over the camping grounds, then the heavens howled with the groan of a tower falling into rough seas, as whirling winds that'd been crammed inside the sphere burst from its shell. The explosion radius was large enough to strip naked the thousands of tents of the camping grounds beneath.

  Nerin, surfing on a flying spear, sped towards the azure menace. He summoned a shower of meteors, and she weaved through them, smashing them apart with a shield taller than herself. The next moment, she was on him. They engaged in a blindingly-quick round of melee. She wielded a two-pointed spear to drown him in dozens of thrusts and feints per second delivered in a melodic but unpredictable sequence. He evaded while rapidly shifting between forms and laughing at her failures. His mockery ended suddenly when she pierced his heart.

  Nerin, clutching at his azure hair, drew a sword to slice through his neck, and she was bound by a cluster of vines that his decoy body burst into.

  The Pope, meanwhile, was startled when one of his spells passed all the way through his demonic adversary, ripping open a gaping wound that exposed everything inside: which was nothing.

  Ppppprrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt!

  Air flooded out of the injury site, producing a high-pitched farting noise. The inflatable balloon that had replaced the Doomreaver jetted off into the sky, its arms and legs flailing as it waved a ludicrous farewell.

  A slither of the fart wind ruffled through the Pope's holy robes, lifting the bottom hem from around his ankles over his nipples.

  Simultaneously, Ramiro, who'd been far away galloping towards the camping grounds, happened to arrive back at the holy man's position, after an absurdly strong breeze from the earlier exploding sphere dismounted him and blew him hundreds of metres. Tumbling comically along in the dirt, the King came to a gentle rest against the Pope's bottom half.

  And at that precise instant, Karnon, squatting beside the colliding pair with a mischievous grin, pantsed the holy man, exposing tonight's mystery guest, a set of divine genitals.

  To an underage observer, King Ramiro's head vanished into a pixelated censorship mosaic. He went in deep, getting a faceful, a cheekful, a noseful of holy crotch.

  Karnon lifted his blue eyebrows smugly. "A cockblocked king."

  From the grinning God's forehead sprouted a spearpoint, Nerin stabbing him through the back of his skull.

  Ppppprrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt!

  Karnon The Inflatable expended his gas on the shaft of her weapon.

  Around them, hundreds of other farts added their flatulent fluting after a brief hailstorm punctured holes in the golems, which had also been transformed into inflatables.

  Ppppprrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt!

  Ppppprrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt!

  PpppprrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRrRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt!

  The Goddess trembled with hate. "YOU BLUE FUCK!"

  Swearing, she vanished.

  To the harmonies of the flatulent chorus, the Pope and Ramiro, dislodging himself from the former's crotch, shared a look of bewilderment. With equal measures of rage, confusion, wariness, and horror stirring in their hearts, there was no room to appreciate or laugh at the God's absurd jest.

  The farting puttered out. Nothing more followed, the prank having concluded.

  The two enemies separated with a silent compact never to mention this debacle. Ramiro, picked up by Queen Suhita's hunting party, returned to the camping grounds to deal with the aftermath of them being blown-down. The Pope was retrieved by a retinue of Church guards; leaving, he gave a farewell nod at a silhouette in the distance.

  Henry continued watching through a pair of binoculars until they were gone.

  He then asked Silver for a Memory Sphere of her perspective in order to check whether Karnon, while making his vision zoom in before, had fabricated Ramiro's reaction. She complied, but, perhaps due to his refusal to explain, her mood had been soured. Calling him a stone, she shoved a manuscript at him of her latest adventure to edit, then ragequit for the night.

  In the quiet after everyone's departure, Henry lingered at the site alone, his brain working in overdrive to dissect Karnon's lame prank for the path forward that the God had coded into it after Henry's failure.

  Wrong. Watch. Remember - Henry'd watched, and now the task was to remember.

  More crucially, he needed to consider. Although he wasn't afraid of making pacts with devils, lunatics were an entirely different matter. The unpredictable was his enemy, too. It also wasn't obvious who in this game the God was trying to destroy; the ultimate target could very well be himself.

  Whatever the eventual path, Henry would take his time before committing to it. His tentative answer, though, was no: he was withdrawing, he was done with this Zone's politics, with trying to rearrange a trash heap into a less horrid configuration. Wu-Wei.

  Sighing, he began the long walk back to the camping grounds, using his own two feet instead of an Earthfriend form. The stars were pretty. Suchi's heat almost became pleasant at night.

  "Hah."

  Sparing one laugh at the absurdity of the situation, he kicked a deflated gut golem on his way out.

  An azure fly landed on his shoulder, buzzing mischievously. "Hihihihihihi. So you did understand the humour, my protégé? Yes, it was very high-level stuff. See, it was a double entendre. 'Cockblocked king' had both a metaphorical meaning of El Saviour Chubby Cheeks being blocked from his conquest aspirations and a literal meaning of being physically blocked by a—"

  "Not interested," Henry interrupted him in anger, half genuine, half in case anyone was still eavesdropping. "I'd warn you not to stall your Ascension too much longer. This Plane won't be safe forever."

  "Oh, you figured that out? That's why I like you, Professor T.: you know me better than anybody else. Hihihihihi—"

  The God's snickering was cut short when Nerin, having landed silently beside them, grabbed his fragile insect form and crushed him in her fist.

  Henry gave a cautious glance at the tiny woman.

  He hadn't been particularly surprised by her presence after the encounter with the Pope. When he'd contacted her to protect him from Karnon this evening, she'd rejected him on account of being busy. That would've been because she was already tied up performing her Zone Guardian responsibilities, defending Suchi's leader from entities like Karnon while he ventured out from the sanctuary of Suchi's walls.

  "You failed," he said.

  The Goddess, nodding, opened a palm smeared with a squished pellet of azure insect poop.

  Both of them sighing, Nerin flew off to resume her guard duties and Henry returned to his solitude.