imparted a gentle arc to the ball’s accelerating flight that sent it around the other two sellers to crack sickeningly against the fleeing man’s skull. Like the trick billiards ball it was originally designed to be, it ricocheted off the man’s head, bounced off the wall, and flew spinning through the air to slap back into my waiting palm.
“Fancy a game of dodgeball?” I asked the remaining two. Of course, the scale-covered troll, unworried by anything I could hit him with smaller than a forklift, grinned. “Riiiight,” I said to myself, unenthusiastically. I flung the cue ball, hoping to catch the brute in the eye, but he just ducked a little and the ball clacked harmlessly off the thick plates on his skull. A sort of coughing, grinding noise was coming from him, and I realized he was laughing at me.
I sent a wash of heat over my right hand and, since this time I wasn’t diverting resources to repair my dubiously important brain, I was able to focus it into a cutting blade of plasma. We’d see who was laughing through the cauterized hole in his throat as soon as I— For the second time in maybe ten minutes—or eight minutes and forty-three seconds, as Paige later pointed out—I was hit from behind by the enraged Felis monk. I think I only survived because I was merely in the way. The monk bowled over me, a ragged growl coming from deep in his chest as he charged straight for the troll. The brute held the big metal pry bar in one rough-scaled fist and swung it like he was swatting a bug. I stayed down and watched as the monk checked his charge, a brief stutter in momentum, then barreled into the troll.
Even though the troll was two feet taller and had likely a hundred pounds on the monk, he was still rocked by the blow. And when he tried to shove back, the monk used that extra weight against him, grabbing his arm and flipping him onto his back. The troll tried to roll away and get to his feet, but the lynix scrambled onto his ridged back and locked his arms and legs around the brute in a vicious chokehold.