The linen slithered along at first, hitching every so often on the wood of the mast, but with a last grunting tug by the unseeable crew, the enormous mainsail rushed up the pole, flourishing wide and majestic over the sea. The sail took to the wind immediately, tearing and rippling through the air. The boat whined madly in response, drifting further and further from the dock – and further from Momo – as it began to rabidly gulp down the breeze.
“Grimli, run faster!” Momo yelled. The dwarf was lagging behind, and the ship was nearly beyond jumping distance. She’d have to turn up the fuel grade to Nether Dokkaebi Premium if she hoped to make it in time.
“My wee legs aren’t built for this, your highn –”
In a flicker of decision, Momo grabbed the dwarf by the waist, hoisted him on her back, and sprinted straight for the ship.
“Your highness!” he cried out. “I urge you to put me down! The distance is too far to jump, we’ll just fall in and drown like a bunch of drunk sailors —”
“You forgot who you’re talking to, Grimli.”
Her feet fell across the dock like rockets of hail. She bolted so quickly that she barely needed to hit the ground to cover the distance; but when she did, the wood screamed in injury, denting to match the heel of her foot. Dozens of brittle gashes trailed behind her like animal footsteps in the snow, holes in the dock that filled with sea water and fog.
The closer she got to the ship, the more consuming the fog became. She could see less and less, but she could hear more; specifically, the sound of shouting voices.
“I thought you killed them all!”
“I did!”
“Then what is that thing coming straight towards us?”
The fog parted, allowing Momo to see again. In the small amount of time it’d taken her to push through the mist, the ship had already climbed far into the sea, allowing for nowhere near a jump-able distance. Well – for other people.
“[Death Monkey Leap]!”
Grimli screamed bloody murder, nearly choking her with his grip as they sailed across the water. Momo reached out her hand and caught the edge of the boat with one arm, keeping herself attached to it with pure finger strength. If she hadn’t been hanging off the side of a moving vehicle, she would have taken the time to marvel at how insanely fit she’d become.
She groaned as she tried to hoist herself up, but with the combined weight of Grimli and her backpack, she couldn’t do it. She flailed her other arm, but it was too short. The moist humidity was quickly wrapping around her fingers, making it harder and harder to keep her grip.
“Damn it…” Momo grunted, squeezing her eyes tight as she flexed her arm even harder. “Just… a little… more…”
Just as she was about to give it a final attempt, a hooded head appeared above her, gazing down at the horned, white-haired parasite who had attached itself to their stolen vessel. Momo paled. The figure was wearing a midnight black, full-coverage mask, giving them the appearance of a void floating between the mist.
The figure reached one long, slender arm out towards Momo’s hand. It looked as if they were about to smash their knuckles down on her, when the hand paused. The figure gasped.
“Wait, Momo?”
—
“Why the hell are you guys stealing a boat?”
“Why the hell are you stealing our stolen boat?”
Sitting at the center of the ginormous vessel, just below the thrashing mainsail, was Momo and an unlikely group of old comrades: Kami the Tiny, Furry Excalibur Thief, Kasula the Retired Model Elf and Dog Owner, Ribeye the Mist Illusionist/Chef, and his wife, who was politely instructing an entire horde of orc children on how to operate a ginormous sailboat.
Oh – and one other person. Vivienne. Who was conveniently tied up and gagged on a chair in the corner. Momo was surprised to see her there for several reasons.
“Why is she tied up?” Momo asked, pointing to the Holy Knight.
“She’s a Kyros-head, why wouldn’t she be?” Ribeye said gruffly. “We caught her hiding out in the cellars. She was planning on hitching a ride with the old pirate gang before we took care of them. We would have killed her, but we figured we’d keep her around in case we needed someone to feed to the sharks.”
Momo did not enjoy the fact that there was ever a need to feed the sharks.
“She’s not a Kyros-head, actually,” Momo clarified. “She’s a necromancer with a weird day job and a weirder backstory. But I’ll let her tell it, not me.”
“That so?” Kami said, blowing smoke out of his pipe. “Still doesn’t answer my first question though. Why are you here, Momo? Aren’t you supposed to be running a kingdom, or did you bore of that like you did with old Nam’Dal? Not that I blame you. Bureaucracy is a bunch of bureaucrap, ain’t it?”
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Momo flushed. “No – no! I’m still very much running the queendom. Just from a distance. Please don’t tell anybody I’m here.”
Kami looked around, gesturing to the thrashing waves surrounding them.
“Who exactly would I be telling?”
“Oh,” Momo squeaked. “Right.”
—
It started to rain only a few minutes after their trip began, so the group retired to the cabins below deck. There were dozens of them, outfitted with sleeping bunks, chests, food rations, and changes of clothing. The pirates had obviously been prepared for a long sail, and Kami’s crew had taken advantage of that, having to prep only some maps and some undergarments.
Momo wished she could claim to have chosen the ship for a smart reason like theirs – that it already came pre-packaged with everything you’d need to take you across the ocean – but truthfully she just thought it looked really cool. And big. And reminded her of a ride at Disneyland.
Kami didn’t have to know that, though.
“Yeah, that’s exactly why I went after it, too,” Momo lied. “I needed a quick way overseas, and this seemed like the best bet. After a lot of careful thought and evaluation, obviously.”
“Smart lass,” Kami said, ripping open a package of dried fish and snacking on one. He offered it to Momo, but considering it smelled like ripe death, she declined. “We had the same motive. After we stole off with the Wraith Mace, we set out to complete the weapon set. Locate the rest of the Wraith Artifacts.”
Momo’s brow creased. “A weapon set? Like how the Bracelet of Blood Immortality you gave me was part of an armor set?”
And the amulet I have locked up at home, Momo recalled. She hadn’t thought about the talking bracelet or the talking amulet in a while, since she couldn’t make use of either with her lack of Neculai-based class. Not that she'd love to wear them even if she could. She wasn’t a fan of having talking voices in her head at all times.
I can’t believe those are both part of some crazy powerful vampire armor.
Kami nodded. “Just like that. The Wraith Artifacts are all weapons that involve different body parts of the Mist wraith. The teeth, the tongue, the hooded shawl. The weapon we’re hunting next – the Soul Splitting Dagger – is located somewhere in the Vagrant Dunes, according to the books written by its creator.”
Soulsplitting Dagger? That sounds like…
Momo instinctively gripped the Wraith Box in her pocket. It wasn’t actually made of wraiths, as far as Momo knew. It was built with a 100% Sera-branded insanity (and a lot of souls cut up like chopped liver.) But there was still a small chance, given his fascination with the species and their violent tactics, that Kami knew something about how to disable it.
On the other hand, this was nothing like last time.
The Oblivion Stone had been an anomaly. A stain in the floorboards of the universe, and Momo had been the ever-convenient bleach and mop. This box was different – it was a weapon. A weapon of mass destruction created by a desperate god. It was simple in the worst way, where all it took was the wrong pair of necromantic hands to decimate entire cities; suck the souls of hundreds of thousands of innocents.
And therein lay the problem, evident from the way he was twirling the tip of a dagger in his hand as they spoke: Kami liked weapons. She didn’t know if he’d actually use the Box, but she knew he’d be interested in it. After all, he was a collector. A voracious one. Momo trusted him and his group not to kill her, but steal from her? She wasn’t so sure.
Kami cleared his throat, sensing something puzzling her.
“What brings you across the seas, my queen?” Kami said after a moment, his gaze as sharp and clear as a knife. “You never did tell me.”
Momo grimaced. She knew she couldn’t bullshit him.
“I’m searching for someone,” she said. “A frenemy.”
That made Kami laugh. He blew another smoke ring from his pipe, smirking.
“I hate to ask, but considering this is you I’m talking to – does this frenemy just happen to hold the fate of the universe in their hands?”
Momo laughed nervously. She gripped the devilish, swirling box of black in her pocket even harder.
No, but I do.
—
Momo wasn’t sure why Kami’s plan for crewing the ship had involved child labor, but she wasn’t exactly surprised when it started surfacing immediate problems.
“The kids are refusing to work,” Gita, Ribeye’s wife and Head of the Children, complained, pointing to the protesting kids all sitting, arms crossed, at different places about the deck. “I tried tempting them with all their favorite stews and rabbit legs, but they won’t budge.”
“You said they would, Gita,” Kami said coldly. “Their parents assured us they’d be up for the job.”
Momo didn’t feel it was her place to interject, but as often happened, she did anyway.
“Was there a reason you paid for a hundred children to run an entire galleon… instead of just… paying the parents to come do the work instead?” Momo said slowly, not even believing the words that were coming out of her mouth.
Gita looked at her as if she was stupid.
“Paying a hundred gold-class thieves to man a ship for a month would have run us under the floor in debt. A terrible investment. Instead, their parents are paying us to run their kids’ sailing summer camp. They get the punks off their desk for a month, we get a free crew.”
Momo gaped.
“Right,” she said. “Of course. Summer camp.”
—
After much protesting about ethics and morals and child labor from Grimli, Momo finally convinced him to do a repeat of their original plan, but with the children, not the pirates.
“Listen here, kids,” he said grimly. “I’m going to play you a song…”
He proceeded to play [Holy Ballad of the Dreamer], which Momo quickly followed up with [Crowd Control], and before long, the kids were laughing and cheering as they trimmed the sails and monitored the tide. It was a marvelous sight of teamwork, and Momo only felt a smidgen of guilt at the morality of the whole situation.
After all, this was just what was to be expected at summer camp.
Soon enough, she got a notification from the courier.
Congratulations! For shamelessly brainwashing a hundred children into manning your stolen ship, you have reached level 2 in [Demagogue].
[Cult of Personality] has upgraded to [Cult of Personality II], allowing you to now have 3 Loyal Followers total. Loyal Followers also now have access to the spell [Evangelize], which allows them to more easily convince people to your cause by temporarily increasing their Charisma by fifteen points.
Since you also have the title [Ruler] and the title [Queen], you have gained the skill [Spy on Foreign Policy] which allows you to use your Ruler System to get a rundown of the laws and culture of any foreign nation you are inhabiting, excluding the laws of The Nether, which are proprietary information that can only be viewed at the Creation of the Universe Museum.
Momo shook her head. She had to start being a better person quickly, or her next class was going to be Evil Dictator.