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Hermione nearly rolled her eyes.
She folded her arms and sized up the purple yam standing before her, thinking his reasoning was genuinely something else.
"Join your cause?" she repeated. "Sounds rather grand. However..."
She paused. "I worked hard collecting all these Infinity Stones, and you think you can just open your mouth and get me to hand them over, contributing to your great balance, no less? Lord Thanos, your math is a little too obvious, isn't it? Even con artists don't try to pull something this shameless."
The words were playful, but they cut straight to the point. If you want my things, show some sincerity.
Thanos hadn't even opened his mouth before Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight behind him lost their patience first.
"Insolence!" Corvus Glaive gripped his glaive and barked, voice sharp. "Lord Thanos grants you the highest honor — an invitation to the greatest undertaking in the universe — and you dare be so ungrateful!"
Proxima Midnight stepped forward, cold light flickering in her eyes. "Hand over the Infinity Stones. Considering our lord's appreciation for talent, perhaps he'll still spare your life."
The two of them had found Hermione an eyesore from the moment she arrived. Some nobody who appeared out of nowhere, and yet Lord Thanos, who had roamed the universe unchallenged, treated her with such deference, personally waiting on Titan, dragging them along to stand guard alongside him. It was a humiliation they hadn't forgotten.
Now that Hermione was proving exactly as ungrateful as they'd expected, every bit of that bottled resentment came flooding out.
Ebony Maw's expression shifted. He stepped quickly forward. "Both of you, please calm—"
"Shut up, Ebony Maw!" Proxima Midnight whipped around and cut him off with open contempt. "That so-called Cabbage Witch has scared you witless. Have you forgotten what loyalty even means?"
Corvus Glaive gave a cold snort. "Coward."
Ambushed by both of them, Ebony Maw's expression darkened. He said nothing more and retreated silently to the side.
Hermione appeared not to have heard any of it. She simply looked at Proxima Midnight and tilted her head slightly. "What did you just call me?"
Proxima Midnight assumed she'd struck a nerve. Her smirk widened. "Cabbage Witch. What, got a problem with that?"
"Oh, nothing." Hermione nodded, tone perfectly even. "Just confirming."
The instant the words left her mouth, an invisible shockwave exploded outward from where she stood.
Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight had no time to react. A colossal force slammed into their chests like a battering ram. Both of them were sent flying, launched backward, crashing hard into the ruins hundreds of meters away, raising a churning wall of dust.
Before Proxima Midnight could even begin to struggle upright, Hermione raised her wand with a casual flick and pulled.
Accio.
An irresistible force seized Proxima Midnight. Her body was dragged uncontrollably from the rubble, yanked through the air, and halted directly in front of Hermione, suspended there by something invisible, unable to move.
She fought it desperately. She couldn't twitch a single finger.
Hermione stepped closer and looked her over, clicking her tongue.
"That's all you've got? You're not even as tough as the guy who runs around with a shield. I genuinely don't know where you find the nerve to act this arrogant in front of me."
Before Proxima Midnight could respond, Hermione raised her wand again and drew several sharp lines through the air.
"Sectumsempra."
Silently, wounds split open across Proxima Midnight's blue skin, deep enough to expose bone, their edges curling grotesquely outward, blue blood welling up and running freely.
And they didn't close. The wounds simply bled, as if something had cursed them shut from the inside.
"Proxima!" Corvus Glaive dragged himself out of the rubble. The moment he saw her, his eyes went wide with fury. "What did you do to her?! Why won't the wounds, "
Proxima Midnight's raw power wasn't at the top of the hierarchy, but her regenerative ability was extraordinary. Ordinary injuries sealed themselves in seconds. She shouldn't have been able to bleed like this. It was impossible.
"Curious?" Hermione glanced at him. "Experience it yourself and find out."
Three invisible blades shot toward him.
Alarm screamed through Corvus Glaive's instincts. He could feel the wrongness coiled inside those attacks and refused to take them head-on. He twisted aside to dodge, and in the same motion swept his glaive around in a streak of black light aimed straight for Hermione's throat.
Hermione tapped her wand once.
A mass of twisting, writhing flames materialized from nothing and coiled around the glaive.
The fire seemed alive. It radiated a presence that made something deep in the soul flinch.
The glaive's blade, sharp enough to part atoms, touched the Fiendfyre and began to warp. Visibly. Irreversibly. It twisted, melted, and was gone.
Searing agony blazed up Corvus Glaive's arm. He looked down and saw the flames crawling up the remains of his weapon toward his hand, devouring everything in their path.
He released the glaive with a furious roar.
He stared at his empty right hand. He stared at the puddle of cooled, solidified scrap hardening on the ground.
"My glaive..." The words came out hollow. His eyes were glassy with disbelief, with terror, with something close to despair. "Impossible. This is impossible. How can mere flames possibly..."
Most of his power had lived in that weapon. It was the cornerstone of everything, the reason he could stand anywhere in the universe without fear. And a bizarre fire had reduced it to slag in seconds.
Without it, his strength was halved at best. His standing under Thanos would collapse. He might even be,
The loss swallowed him whole. His eyes flooded red. Reason crumbled. Shrieking like something that had come apart at the seams, he hurled himself toward Hermione with nothing left to lose.
"Enough."
One word. Two syllables. Spoken with absolute authority.
Thanos.
Corvus Glaive went rigid. His charge froze mid-lunge as if something had physically caught him. The red bled slowly out of his eyes, replaced by a churning, bitter resignation, and beneath that, almost buried, a thread of resentment aimed not at Hermione, but at Thanos.
He lowered his head. Stepped back. Looked at neither of them.
Thanos walked forward until he stood before Hermione. He glanced once at his two subordinates, face unreadable, and spoke.
"My apologies, Lady Witch. These two have followed me in conquest for many years. The road has been too easy, their victories too consistent. Their egos have outgrown their judgment. They've forgotten what it means to stand before someone genuinely powerful."
He paused. "Today, you taught them that lesson. I should be thanking you."
His gaze moved briefly to Proxima Midnight, still suspended in the air, still bleeding.
"Even so," he said, his tone unhurried, "would you be willing, as a courtesy to me, to heal her wounds first?"
➤ Next: Cooperation with Thanos
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