Momo

The world is filled with ringing. Momo gasps for air, but her chest is tight as if a giant has taken up residence overhead, massive feet on top of her and pressing her further into the ground. Then the weight is gone and she can breathe again. She gulps down the air, struggling to get her lungs to work well enough to concentrate on something else. Warm hands smooth the hair back from her face and her eyes flutter closed. Vae looks down at her, his mouth moving but no sound coming out. Momo blinks up at him, trying to hear him but the fog in her head and the ringing in her ears are making it hard. He shakes his head and starts pressing on her arms and legs, and she swats him away.

“I’m fine,” she says, or she hopes she does. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth. She sits up, wincing at the movement under what will surely be some spectacular bruises on her backside. “Allard,” she cries out, pushing Vae to the side so she can see.

Allard lays on his side several feet away. Norag is checking his head, but she can see he is breathing, and being concerned about the blood coming from the corner of his lips won’t fix anything. From the corner of her eye she sees someone running, and she whips her head around just in time to see the mage and their guards disappearing inside the enclosure. A dome rises around it, translucent gold and glowing in the night. Momo swears, wishing she could hear herself say the words. She repeats them again, forcefully, and swats Vae’s hand away as he tries to push her back down. Grasping his forearm, she instead yanks herself to her feet. The world spins for only a moment before settling down.

“Take care of him,” she calls out and strides toward the dome, banging on it with her fist as though knocking for entry. It is as hard as stone, and her hand aches when she pulls it back. She swears and whirls around to see the damage. The world spins again, and she closes her eyes tightly, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth until it settles.

The townspeople are staggering away from the ragged opening in her beautiful bamboo/vine wall, while the uninjured guards face the opening with swords drawn. Momo picks up her tree limb, gauging its heft with a single swing. “I can’t hear you, but I know you can hear me,” she announces loudly. “Keep moving away from the opening. Norag, get Allard to safety. If he dies I will be thoroughly irked.”

Vae walks beside her, short sword sheathed and broadsword gripped in his hands. Momo studies him, then shrugs. I have no right to tell him how he can die, and he wouldn’t listen to me if I told him to leave this time. Maybe Allard’s right, I think he might have a crush. She gives him another once over, smiling when he tenses, then strides toward the hole in the wall and stops within yards of the stubs of bamboo.

“Please let this work,” she whispers, breathing out the words and using the moment to steady herself.

The first biter appears at the edge of the opening, quickly followed by more. Dead creatures, shambling together in ravenous harmony. Orcs, goblins, humans, elves, and a few more she doesn’t feel comfortable with guessing their identity push into the opening. Some trip over the bamboo, but right their selves and continue on.

Momo shakes out her hands, then her arms, and pushes the highest level of the spell Big Spot out from her body. It has advanced again, and she can see the sparkles pushing out past the bamboo wall. Everything within stops and then drops like a marionette with cut strings.

“Phew,” she moans out. “It looks like that works. But it takes a lot of mana. We have to let a lot of them enter that field before I can cast it each time.”

The ringing is dying down, and she can almost make out her words echoing in her mouth as they leave. She takes a moment to look back toward Allard, but the hulking orc beside him hides his body from view. Is he injured too badly to move?

For just a moment, she considers going back to his side, her oldest and closest friend in this world. Not just this world, she realizes with a start. Despite their possible gap in age, he is the closest friend she has had in quite some time. Vae rests his hand lightly on her shoulder, and she turns back to watch as more biters fall on and over the bodies lining the entrance into their formerly secured village. “I’m going to kick that rogue’s ass when this is done,” she announces to the slathering face falling toward her before casting her spell again. The newest group drops just like the first.

Momo continues, allowing new biters to enter until there are enough and then dropping them. By the time she reaches the bottom of her mana, the pile at the entrance is large enough that new biters are having a hard time getting past. Vae walks ahead, sword angled upward in a ready position, and looks out the hole. He scrunches his face, tilts his head, and waggles his hand at waist level before jumping outside.

“Waggling hand? What does waggling hand mean?” She curses as she runs forward, hopping over corpses as she goes. A fresh biter lunges at her when she clears the wall, and she swings her improvised staff at its head, feeling the skull give away under the hard wood. Less than two dozen bodies still move outside in the dim light, and Momo fights her way toward the one swinging a sword almost as long as her body. She calls out to alert him she is there and they work side by side until there is nothing left but two tired aging fighters.

Momo can hear herself panting and realizes the ringing is almost gone. She smacks Vae’s arm and points toward the opening before leading the way. “What the hell is a waggly hand supposed to mean?”

“It means it isn’t too bad. There weren’t that many left out there. Must be a hundred dead around the wall alone.”

“You and me, we need to come up with some better communication methods,” she says with a sigh, climbing back inside the wall with a groan. “Waggling hand means not too bad. I’ll waggle your hand, stupid elf. Thought you were going to get eaten.”

Momo grumbles and looks around at the mess inside. The townspeople are halfway to the village proper, leaving only Norag and Allard nearby. The largest lump of tension between her shoulders eases when she sees the younger elf’s arm move. Before she can enjoy the sensation, she tenses again, from anger this time. She marches toward the dome, calling all the sprites within hearing range to her.

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“Can you guide my roots,” she snaps out to a ground sprite. It nods its head quickly, and she plants her hand on the ground just outside the dome. “Good, bring this right up under that mage, if you would please.”

Momo trickles some of her mana into her Green Finger, and she can feel as the plant she is growing is pulled through the ground with less effort than it would take to walk through a puddle. With a pop, she feels it come out of the ground on the other side. Pouring the rest of her mana in, she grows her newest creation as quickly as she can, stopping as soon as the shield fades to nothing.

Before anyone inside can react, she is leaping through the opening, her eyes tracking the movements of those still standing. Three guards and a stooped man are hacking at the stem of her monstrosity, and Momo lands a solid hit on the neck of one before the others notice. They spin as one, the unfamiliar man fading from sight while the two remaining guards pull their swords.

“Move!” she hears from an air sprite sitting by her ear. Momo jerks to the side and feels something moving through the air next to her. She can see Vae facing off against the two remaining guards, his broadsword dropped somewhere and short sword in hand. She shakes her head and focuses on the area around her.

“Move forward,” the sprite calls again, and Momo does, lurching forward and dropping to her knee. Her staff sweeps out behind her and something hits the ground with a moan but there is nothing there when she lashes out again.

The sprite lifts off and flies to her right, hovering in place for a second before darting forward and grabbing onto something Momo can’t see. It is straining though, and after a second she realizes the sprite can see the rogue. She rolls forward, ignoring the impact on her bruised backside, and comes to her feet as the sprite is struck by something and slams into the nearest wall.

Momo swipes her hand through the air and grabs onto something narrow that immediately begins to jerk away. She kicks out at knee height and something screams. She kicks again, and something catches her arm holding her weapon. The staff falls to the ground as blood trickles from a cut just below her elbow. Momo ignores it and drops down again, sweeping her leg out. The rogue falls and she jerks him closer, lifting her leg as high as she can and then snapping it down in an ax kick. The man appears with a flicker, dazed and feeling for the knife that has fallen from his hand. Momo lets go of his arm and crawls on top of him.

“You hurt my friend,” she mutters as she punches down at his face again and again. The man stops struggling and then stops moving altogether. Momo stops and laboriously gets to her feet. A sword arcs down and his breathing stops as his head rolls away from his body. Momo looks up at Vae with a frown.

“I want to yell at you for killing him,” she starts, then relaxes with a sigh. “But I know you can’t leave enemies alive in this world. Shame though, he could cause all that trouble in as bad of a state as he was in.”

Vae nods and flicks his sword toward the ground to get the excess blood off. “What kind of plant is that?” He asks, tilting his head back toward the center.

Momo looks at the thick vine punching up through the ground, and the large rounded red head at the top. Thick white lips bisect the curved, white spotted surface, but they are pressed together tightly around something nearly as large as the plant’s head. “It’s a plant I remember from a game I used to play when I was a kid. I needed something hungry. I wasn’t sure if I could grow something just because it was in my memory, but maybe it’s real somewhere. Whatever. It ate the bastard and I’m proud of it.”

“Hmm,” Vae hums, sheathing his sword at his hip. “I like it. And I would like to have that tea more often. We could work on our communication more?”

Momo looks at her bizarre plant creation for another minute, then nods. “I think that might be nice.”

image [https://i.imgur.com/js4cqrN.png]

The sun floats lazily in the sky, ducking behind passing clouds more often than it sits exposed. The air is cool, summer heat over and autumn settling in its place. In different areas around the outside of the village, Momo can hear hammers pounding nails into wood and cheerful voices calling out to each other. It’s taken nearly a month, but the people of Spring Village and Yanniston are beginning to heal. Houses are being built for the newest inhabitants, and gardens extended. The water sprites have begun talking with the ground sprites about rerouting a spring for them to fish from, but Allard has put the brakes on it for now. He has recovered well and stepped into his role as chief fully. He is just as much a worry-wort as before, though. I don’t really want to purify a spring constantly anyway, so I won’t complain about putting the kibosh on that idea for now.

It gives him a distraction to argue with the sprites about it, so she doesn’t intervene. The mayor of Yanniston might try to send someone in disguise to take over the village again, but he hasn’t done anything else and Momo maintains that they all need a break from worrying about it. If he comes, he comes. We can handle him.

“You finished your main story quest after all. This most excellent being is surprised.”

Momo rolls her eyes at the annoying voice without a body. “I wondered when you would show up again.”

There is no movement in the air, but she can imagine that it has moved and is looking down at her from above. “I didn’t think you would finish it, so I wasn’t paying attention. This world is no longer a complete failure and it’s time for you to start up your next quest. You’ve shown that your poor choice of skills is capable of handling things in a crude and unorthodox way, so it is believed that you will be able to do the next part as well. With some effort.”

Momo hums to herself, an old pop song from her teenage years, and pats down the soil around her newest lettuce sprout before checking the next patch.

“I know that you can hear me. And I know you can see the quest that just appeared.”

“I didn’t see it, because I closed the window as soon as it opened. Just as I’m closing it again because you wanted to open it again.” She sits back on her heels and brushes her hands against each other. “I told you before, I’m not here to fix the world. I just want to work in my garden and relax. You have no idea how retirement works, do you?”

The voice stutters, then curses at her before disappearing. Momo waits for a moment, but the low buzz at the back of her brain that she associates with its presence is gone. A different buzz, an audible one, flies past her and a tiny yellow and black insect lands on the leaves of her favorite tomato plant. Momo smiles at it, one of the first she has seen come out of whatever hibernation they went into back when the world shuddered and the crops died. Her mind drifts, picking at the few words she happened to see before closing the quest windows.

“Clean the earth,” She says with a smile, dragging her dirty fingers through her graying curls. “Sounds fun.”

She looks around at her thriving garden, soaking in the sun and the sounds of life all around her. “Well, maybe I have no idea how retirement works either.”