Viktor’s table looked like the sight of a mad scientist’s experiment. Feathers were strewn around the defunct bird in a circle, as if they had exploded off of him in a sudden rush. All that remained was a plucky skeleton which looked up at Viktor with bewilderment.

“Oh, my precious little Baryte,” Viktor mewled, scooping the boney bird into his arms. His voice was hoarse and croaky, like he had just swallowed a gallon of water down the wrong pipe. “It’s okay. Shhh. You soared too close to the sun this time, my feathered angel. But I’m here for you.”

“Bu-cuawk?”

“Yes. Yes. Bu-cuawk, indeed, my perfect boy.”

“Viktor?”

Momo regretted intruding on such a personal moment between a man and his bird, but Viktor very rarely lended himself to non-interruptible moments. The man was constantly caught in-between regrettable actions, like a man slipping endlessly on an icy driveway but never quite regaining his balance.

Viktor whipped around, his mouth hanging from his jaw and his eyebrows nearly flying off his face. He looked like a man caught in a crime – and he quite probably was. Only Momo wasn’t sure which crime to start with.

I guess I get to decide what is and isn’t a crime now, it occurred to Momo. Weird.

“A Nether demon! Baryte, don’t look! Shield yourself!”

Viktor clasped a hand over Baryte’s notably empty eye sockets.

“Oh, oops,” Momo said. She forgot she was Imp-ed up. “[Demorph].”

Viktor gasped as Momo’s natural form appeared. His eyes went first to her horns, then her face.

After a moment, he let out a long breath. “Oh, it’s only you,” he said. “What a relief. I thought I would have to defend my dear chicken from the wrath of a real threat.”

A real threat? She hadn’t grown literal horns to be disrespected like this.

“Seriously?” she mumbled, mildly incensed. “The new queen of Morgana’s Mortal Queendom upon Alois showing up unannounced at your window isn’t threatening at all to you?”

“Oh, is that what you’re referring to yourself as now? How endearing.”

“I’m not referring to myself as that. I’m literally that –”

Ignoring her, Viktor petted the top of Baryte’s head, cooing softly to him. “Oh, Baryte, how lucky we are today. Our dear friend Momo, who we saved from such unfortunate circumstances when she first arrived on this plane, has once again come to repay us with her kindness.”

“That’s not what I’m here for, Viktor.”

Viktor looked up from the bird’s head, eyes narrowing.

“You’re not?” he said. “What else could you be here for? Money? I fear you’re out of luck if that is the case. The construction of the Avian Altar and the Feathered Hall of Reverence went over-budget, and I’m still waiting on the returns from the Hen House and the Sacred Coop to fund the next phase of expansion.”

“Next phase of expansion?” Momo groaned. “No way. Viktor, why did you need four separate buildings dedicated to worshiping your bird? I could understand one – I’d do the same for Dusk – but four?”

Viktor gasped, affronted. “Baryte is worthy of much more than four small, mortal-built structures. I take offense at this entire proposition. If this is how you want to treat my bird, then you can kindly leave.”

Momo looked at him with as much respect as a preschool teacher affords a cranky toddler at nap time.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, doing her best to be resolute. “I’m – I’m handling this.”

She tossed a few textbooks off of a dusty chair, pulled it in front of Viktor, then sat, facing him.

“I want to know everything that happened from when I left Nam’Dal to right now,” Momo said, pointing an accusatory finger straight at his button nose. “You have ten minutes.”

—

As it often goes with reality when compared to fiction, whatever insane scenario Momo could have dreamt up to happen since she left was far less ridiculous than the truth.

“I used the chicken to power the Sunbeam,” Viktor said, seemingly proud of this achievement in animal abuse. “Baryte didn’t mind at all. No, he was such a dear boy about it, very polite. Just in and out of the machine in a few minutes.”

“Are you serious?” Momo said for the first time in a very long upcoming series of times.

“Of course I am. I am a Mage. I would not lie about my magical feats,” he harrumphed. “My research led me to discover that I could evolve Baryte to become more powerful than any source of natural magical power. By using the beast companion system, I have turned him into a Nuclear Bird, strong enough to power an entire city.”

That gave Momo pause. “Power an entire city? What do you mean?”

“Ah, dear Momo, your feeble, untrained mind will not understand,” he said, looking thoughtfully to the side like he was the subject of an interview. “I have invented something called a Chickenductor. It causes magical currents of light to pass through waylines embedded in the soil, effortlessly powering machinery that previously required high levels of magic.”

Waylines? Momo pursed her lips. Magical currents? What is he on about?

“My mind is understanding fine,” Momo lied, giving him a grave look. She breezed past the hilarity of Chickenductor, trying to hone in on his story like a shepherd herding sheep. “I still don’t see how this has to do with you completely destroying Nam’Dal and turning it into a chicken-worshiping factory, though.”

“It has everything to do with it,” he argued, raising his hands dramatically upwards. “You see, one of my agents discovered a piece of discarded dwarven engineering while doing field research on my behalf. When he returned it to me, I was able to use the Chickenductor to power it – and the results were astonishing. It demonstrated the potential to change everything.”

Dwarven engineering? That could be Grimli’s vehicle, Momo thought immediately, her eyes widening. It didn’t surprise her in the least that Viktor was the one to steal it – sorry – find it. But is he exaggerating the usual Viktor amount, or is there actually something that special about it?

“Anyway,” Viktor continued, playing nervously with the button of his cloak as he spoke. It was an uncharacteristically anxious tick for a typically confident-beyond-sanity man. “Once I revealed the results to the public, they were immediately blown away by the sight. Their ignorant minds could barely handle what was in front of them. As a consequence, they founded a religion around my dear Baryte – the Holy Chicken – and I simply let them believe it. No harm, no foul.”

So he stole a piece of dwarven technology, shoved his dynamite chicken inside of it, then used the result to emotionally manipulate the populace.

Momo wasn’t sure whether to be disgusted or impressed.

She settled on disgusted.

“I think that’s a lot of foul, actually,” Momo said dryly. “You took advantage of their amazement and completely reshaped the city under their feet. That’s terrible. You manipulated them.”

“Manipulated? What slander,” he huffed. “I simply catered to their needs. They wanted an altar to pray to the chicken. I provided one. They wanted a temple to hold ceremonies, so I gave them that too. And so what if I required a membership to the Church of the Feather to enter those buildings? They were happy to provide. And so what if I needed to tear down a few buildings –”

“Entire districts–”

“I needed space for more chicken coops! What else was I to do? Everybody in town suddenly wanted their own chicken. Good fortune, it’s said to be. Good fortune to own your own chickadee. So I had to be a good mayor. I had to provide. Do you know how exhausting it is to field every single desire from every single citizen?” he said, pressing his hands to his cheeks and pulling at his skin. “It’s killing me. It’s destroying me.”

He looked down into the cradle of his arms.

“It killed my dear Baryte.”

Momo worried her lip under her teeth. Her anger flared and faded abruptly, seeing that sorry look on his face. She felt an uncomfortable sort of recognition listening to him, like hearing a prophecy that hits a bit too close to home.

That could be me, she thought. One wrong step, and she could be the Mole Man, caught in her tower of shame, a city of restless chickens screeching desperately from below.

She was beginning to understand just how difficult it was to please the masses. Refuge’s End had been a sampling; Mole City was a whole mouth-watering platter of chaos and distrust. While she didn’t totally buy Viktor’s pure, kingly intentions, the madness he had descended into was obviously not a front. It was a consequence.

He had given his everything, his chicken, and then some.

“Look. I – I get it. I don’t love how you ended up here, but I’m here now. We’ll fix this,” Momo said softly, putting a hand over Baryte’s face, cupping his skeletal cheek. “Starting with the chicken.”