The chanting wasn't melodic. It was a dissonant, grating drone that seemed to vibrate in Ravi's teeth.
"Cultists," Lyanna spat, strapping on her pauldrons with practiced efficiency. "At least thirty signals, maybe more."
"Forty-two," Celeste corrected, peering through a small brass telescope attached to her staff. "Approaching from the north and west. Pincer movement. They're organized."
Ravi looked at the dark treeline. He could see them now—figures in tattered gray robes, faces hidden by deep hoods, moving with eerie synchronization. Each one held a dagger or a staff that glowed with that sickly purple light.
"They're not trying to be quiet," Ravi noted. "They want us to know they're coming."
"Intimidation tactics," Lyanna said. "Common for the Void-sworn. They feed on fear."
"Well, they're going to go hungry tonight," Ravi said, Hefting the Widowmaker. "Celeste, range?"
"One hundred meters and closing. Magic range in twenty seconds."
"Plan?" Ravi looked to Lyanna. She was the tactical leader.
"Hold the clearing," she decided instantly. "If we run into the woods, we get separated and picked off. Here, we force them to come to us. Celeste, suppressive fire. Ravi, keep them off Celeste. I'll take the frontline."
It was a solid plan. Standard defensive geometry.
Unfortunately, the cultists didn't care about standard geometry.
One of the robed figures stepped forward, stopping at the edge of the clearing light. He was taller than the others, his robes trimmed with bone. He lowered his hood, revealing a face tattooed with shifting black runes.
"The Interlopers," the cultist leader rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves skittering on stone. "You bear the mark of the False King. And you..."
He pointed a gnarled finger at Ravi.
"...you bear nothing. A void in the pattern. An empty vessel."
"I prefer 'minimalist'," Ravi called back.
"Silence!" The leader raised his staff. "The Master demands tribute. The Vessel shall be filled!"
"That sounds vaguely inappropriate," Ravi muttered.
"Attack!"
The cultists didn't charge screaming. They simply raised their hands. Forty bolts of purple energy—Void Bolts—streaked through the air.
"Shields!" Lyanna screamed.
Celeste slammed her staff into the ground. "Aegis Dome!"
A shimmering golden bubble erupted around them, expanding to cover their small campsite.
The Void Bolts slammed into the barrier. Thud-hiss. Thud-hiss. Where they hit, the golden light didn't just crack; it eroded. The purple energy ate away at the mana structure like acid.
"It won't hold!" Celeste gritted her teeth, sweat beading on her forehead. "Void magic destabilizes the mana weave! The shield will collapse in ten seconds!"
"Then we attack before it falls!" Lyanna yelled. "Ravi, on me!"
"Right behind you."
Lyanna dropped the section of the shield in front of her. She and Ravi surged out of the dome just as the cultists fired a second volley.
"Scatter!"
They split up. Lyanna went left, a blur of silver. Ravi went right.
A cultist leveled a staff at him. A beam of pure purple darkness shot out. It was fast. Faster than an arrow.
Ravi's instinct was to block. But he remembered Lyanna's warning: Void magic erases.
He dropped to his knees, sliding across the damp grass. The beam passed inches above his head. He heard a fzzzt noise behind him, and the heavy oak trunk of a tree vanished—not broke, vanished—leaving a perfectly smooth, circular hole.
Okay. Don't get hit. Got it.
He popped up from his slide right in front of the caster. The cultist's eyes widened.
Ravi didn't use the blade. He just shoulder-checked the man.
It was like being hit by a semi-truck. The cultist didn't fly back; he folded. Ribs shattered with the sound of a pistol shot. He collapsed instantly, not dead, but definitely rethinking his life choices.
"One down," Ravi counted.
Three more rushed him with glowing daggers. They moved with unnatural, jerky speed—magically enhanced reflexes.
Ravi dodged a swipe that would have gutted him. He parried another dagger with the shaft of the Widowmaker, shattering the steel blade on impact.
Then he spun. A full 360-degree sweep with the heavy glaive.
The first cultist tried to block with a magical shield. The Widowmaker smashed through the shield and the cultist behind it, sending him pinwheeling into the trees.
The second cultist ducked... too slow. The butt of the glaive caught him under the chin. He was lifted off his feet and flipped backward, landing in a heap.
The third one panicked and tried to cast point-blank. Ravi simply grabbed the cultist's face with his free hand.
"Shh," he whispered. And pushed.
The cultist flew backward into his approaching friends, knocking them down like bowling pins.
"Strike," Ravi smirked.
Across the clearing, Lyanna was a whirlwind. Her greatsword, infused with holy light now, carved through the cultists. Unlike Ravi's concussive blunt force, her attacks were lethal cuts.
But there were too many of them.
"Bind them!" the tattooed leader shrieked.
The ground beneath Ravi's feet erupted. Shadowy tentacles, solid as iron, shot up from the earth. They wrapped around his ankles, his knees, his waist.
"Whoa!" He struggled, feigning immobility. He could break these. Easily. He just had to flex. But Celeste was watching from the bubble.
"Ravi!" Lyanna saw him trapped. She turned to help, exposing her back.
"Don't worry about me!" Ravi yelled.
A massive Void Bolt, the size of a cannonball, was hurtling toward the distracted Lyanna.
"Lyanna, behind you!"
She spun, but she was off balance. She raised her sword to block, but Void magic would eat through the steel.
Time slowed again.
Ravi looked at the shadow bindings. He looked at Lyanna.
Screw the act.
He tensed his muscles.
Snap. Rip. Tear.
The magical shadow-tentacles, constructs capable of holding a giant, shredded like wet toilet paper. Ravi exploded out of his restraints.
He didn't run. He launched.
He crossed the thirty feet between them in a literal blink. He tackled Lyanna, wrapping his body around hers, shielding her completely with his own broad back.
The Void Bolt hit him square in the center of his spine.
FZZZZZZT.
A sickening sound of energy meeting matter filled the clearing. Purple light exploded outward.
"Ravi!" Celeste screamed from the dome.
Smoke rose from Ravi's back. The back of his shirt was gone. Disintegrated.
Underneath... his skin was pristine. Unmarked.
The Void magic, the force that erased matter, had tried to erase Ravi's skin cells. And his skin cells, denser than diamonds and stubborn as hell, had simply said "No."
The energy had fizzled out against his invulnerability like water on a hot skillet.
Ravi lay on top of Lyanna, his face inches from hers in the dirt. She stared up at him, horror in her eyes turning to disbelief.
"Did it miss?" she gasped. "Please tell me it missed."
"Um," Ravi grimaced, realizing he had just tanked an erasure spell. "It... fizzled? I think the caster botched the spell."
He rolled off her and stood up, revealing his bare, muscular, and terrifyingly uninjured back to the cultists.
The Leader stared. The purple fire on his staff guttered and died.
"The Void..." the leader stammered. "It... rejected him? Impossible. Nothing rejects the Void!"
"Maybe it just doesn't like my cologne," Ravi said, dusting off his pants. He turned to the cultists. His eyes were cold now. No more joking. They had tried to kill Lyanna.
"You guys are really starting to annoy me."
He raised the Widowmaker.
"And you broke my favorite shirt."
"Kill the Abomination!" the Leader screamed, his voice cracking with fear.
The remaining cultists charged, desperate now.
Ravi sighed. "Celeste, drop the dome."
"But—"
"Drop it. Now."
The golden shield flickered and died.
"Cover your eyes," Ravi warned.
He gripped his glaive with both hands. He didn't swing it. He slammed the butt of the shaft into the ground. Hard.
He put maybe five percent of his actual strength into it.
BOOM.
A radial shockwave of pure kinetic force exploded outward from his position. The ground rippled like water. Dirt, rocks, and surprised cultists were blasted backward in an omnidirectional wave.
Trees snapped. The fire was blown out. The remaining cultists were ragdolled, thrown fifty feet into the forest where they landed with heavy thuds and groans.
The clearing was silent again. Dust drifted in the moonlight.
Ravi stood in the center of a small crater, the Widowmaker planted in the earth.
He looked over his shoulder. Lyanna and Celeste were both standing, unhurt, but staring at him with their mouths open.
Celeste looked at her data crystal. It was smoking.
"Did I..." Ravi asked, looking around at the devastation. "Did I overdo it?"
Lyanna stood up slowly. She walked over to him, stepped around him, and put a hand on his naked, unmarked back where the Void Bolt had hit. Her fingers traced the spine that should have been erased.
"Ravi," she whispered, her voice trembling. "What are you?"
Ravi turned to face them. He was tired of the little lies.
"I'm the guy who carries the tent," he said softly. "And I'm hungry. Let's interrogate the one with the face tattoos before he wakes up."