Vivienne led them through the settlement like a morbid tour guide. She knew the name of every single corpse sprawled around the soil as if they were all her distant relatives, recalling their professions, their children and their children’s children, their illicit affairs and late-night necromancy. If it weren’t for the ever-present stench of death, Momo would have considered it a cozy tour through an old, dusty city.

“This one’s name was Hobert,” Vivienne said, squatting by the body of a man with intricate drawings running up his arms. Despite the fact that he seemed intensely dead, his face was bright and dewy, his cheeks flushed. As with all the other bodies that Vivienne had introduced them to, there were no signs of rot or decay. They all looked like they had just woken up from a sweaty afternoon nap.

“Alright, lass, enough of this,” Ribeye said. “What’s the deal with you and this place?”

“Yeah, as much as I hate to say it, I’m with the big guy. I’m getting serious serial killer confession vibes from this whole thing,” Kasula added. Vivienne gave her an affronted look. “No offense.”

The former knight folded her arms defensively.

“Offense taken,” she started, looking towards the ground. “It’s difficult for me to talk about.”

Momo itched to cast [Silent Mindreader], but ultimately thought better of it. She’d feel bad to use it on someone she knew personally. That felt like crossing a boundary, even if it was probably the smart thing to do. So she waited patiently instead, watching as Vivienne carefully contemplated her next words.

“This is where Sera first started her cult,” she finally admitted. “It also served as the first testing grounds for her… projects.”

“Here? In the Vagrant Dunes?” Momo asked, disbelieving. She always figured Sera was an Aloysius native. Not that she was ever particularly patriotic about anything other than herself.

“Yes, here,” Vivienne said. She looked viscerally uncomfortable to admit it. “These people used to all be members. Myself and Nia included, although we scraped by with our lives intact. Our ship landing here was no accident. Sera put an incantation on this place a long time ago, a spell that urges the wind to blow boats heading towards the capital subtly off-course. It’s how she began to build her first undead army. She had an endless supply of wayward pirates to pick from.”

Vivienne’s description sent a chill down Momo’s spine. It was hard to conceive just how many victims that woman had taken in her prime.

Ribeye leaned down and poked Hobert’s cheek.

“It doesn’t add up,” the orc said, pinching the man’s face. “There’s still blood coursing through this man’s veins. His eyes are wide open, mouth agape, teeth white and shiny. Even his cheeks are flushed.” He slapped the man hard across the face in an attempt to wake him, but got no response. The silence was deafening and awkward, and Momo shifted uncomfortably on her heels.

“I assure you he’s very dead,” Vivienne said, glaring at the orc until he stopped his poking and prodding. “It was one of the first spells Sera ever created. [Mummification]. It effectively freezes you as you are at the time of death, so your body never decays. She created it so she could raise undead followers that still looked like normal people. Easier to trick the local guardsmen that you’re not practicing necromancy if all your thralls just look like neighborhood guys named Joe.”

“That’s terrifying,” Momo whispered under her breath. That explained the zombies that Momo found loitering around Lione’s courtyard back in Bruda. She hadn’t seen anything like it since: undead that hovered in that awkward, uncanny phase between life and rigor mortis.

Her stomach turned, bubbling with nausea at the memory. The more Momo learned about Sera, the more she wanted to dig a deep, dark hole, crawl into it, and hide there for the next three years. I’m sure Valerica will have this whole thing solved by then, she thought, lying to herself. It wasn't in Valerica's nature to solve problems that she could shaft onto Momo's plate.

“But why would she do this to her own cultists?” Kasula interjected.

Vivienne grimaced, her mouth tightening into a sharp line.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. Before the nosy group could bother her with any further questions, the former knight stalked off towards an abandoned house, leaving them all to stare at the red, glowing impression of Ribeye’s hand left on Hobert’s cheek.

—

“I don’t like ‘er,” Ribeye said, rolling a six-sided die onto the table. Night had fallen, and they were back on the ship, in the lower cabins. Him and Kasula were playing some card game Momo had never heard of, and Grimli was cursing to himself in the corner as he fiddled with Vivienne’s lended bracelet.

“I think she’s fun,” Kasula said, placing a card on the table. It was a Jester. This was displeasing to Ribeye for reasons Momo could not discern. The orc groaned and threw another die. “I can relate to someone who's outrunning their past. So she doesn’t want to share all her pretty little traumatic memories with us, can you really blame a girl?”

“Yes. Yes I can,” Ribeye said gruffly. Kasula laid another card down. He growled at it, thumping his fist so hard on the table that the cards and dice flew right off of it, dribbling on the floor before getting lost to the cabin’s many nooks and crannies. Kasula sighed.

“It’s impossible to gamble with this guy,” she said.

“It’s impossible to gamble with a cheater,” he said, glaring at her. Without waiting for a response, he angrily stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Kasula just laughed. She turned the card around, and Momo saw it flicker in the light. The appearance of the Jester changed to a Queen. It wasn’t magic – it was just some kind of physical trick. A cheat card. Momo rose an eyebrow at her, surprised.

“You must think me naughty,” Kasula said with a grin. “You’d be right. But I just can’t help myself. I love getting a rise out of him.”

Momo shook her head. “That seems like a bad i–”

“Oh this stupid piece of metal gra’v’da!” Grimli shouted, throwing Vivienne’s bracelet to the ground. His chest rose and fell dramatically, and he wiped a stream of sweat from his brow. Momo and Kasula stared at him, bewildered, until he registered their presence.

“Um, you good?” Kasula asked.

“Oh, your highness, please excuse my outburst,” Grimli said, his cheeks reddening as he ignored the elf and stared straight at Momo. “It’s just… this contraption. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever worked on. I fear it will require a genuine dwarven engineer to recalibrate, and I’m not sure there are any of those left in this part of the world.”

“Wait, dwarven?” Kasula said. “That doesn’t look dwarven to me.”

The elf rose from her chair, leaned down, and grabbed the bracelet.

“I thought it might be a fake you got at some market, but…”

She gave it an inquisitive look, twirling it around her finger. A white light shone from her hand, that same type of effervescent magic that Momo saw her use to calm down Ribeye. In response, tiny clicking noises echoed from inside the device, and small, golden gears and notches began to shift in and out of it. It was like watching the exposed innerworkings of an old fashioned watch. After a few moments, it stilled, clicking into a final position.

“There,” she said, like it was no work at all. Grimli had gone completely pale. She placed it in Momo’s hand. “Now tell me, dear Grimli, how in the hell did you come across a genuine paragon communication device?”

You have acquired a [Catwalk Communicator]

A discreet communication device used by paragons to communicate with backstage staff, sponsors, and agents. Signals can be rerouted based on the target’s Nether vibrations. This communicator is property of Elf La Mode and should only be used in official capacities.

Momo received the information through her audio courier, but in a different voice than usual. Gone were the uncanny valley tones of AI Megan Fox, replaced by an ethereal voice that sounded suspiciously like Valerica. It wasn’t quite Valerica – it wasn’t nearly as condescending – but it definitely had her fingerprints on it. Momo supposed it was another of her myriad changes to the system administration functions.

I really wonder about this woman’s priorities.

“It’s not mine,” Grimli said. “It’s Queen Momo’s. Er, well, not quite hers either. She got it off that eerie blonde. But she wanted me to try and reroute the signal to reach her pet lesser goddess.”

Kasula raised an eyebrow. “You keep pets in high places.”

“Not a pet,” Momo said, cheeks burning. I hope Valerica didn’t hear that. “She’s more like… a mentor. She was originally an Excalibur Necromage, but she got promoted to Lesser Goddess. She lives somewhere in the Nether now. Sera was using this bracelet to communicate with Vivienne, so we know it’s possible for messages to flow between here and there. But there haven’t been any incoming messages since Vivienne left the cult.”

Kasula hummed. “Using a catwalk communicator to commune with the Nether. That’s… ingenious, really. I don’t know a thing about rerouting the signals on these things, but my older sister does. She’s a paragon. The real deal. She’s also a conniving little shit. Altered her bracelet to let her communicate with her boyfriend over in Aloysius. She made a whole business out of doing the same to the other girls' bracelets. The entire runway show became a criminal enterprise.”

Momo got up from her seat, excited. That sounded promising. “Could she help us reroute it? Being able to talk to Valerica on the fly would be really helpful. It might be the only way we’ll be able to predict what Sera will do next.”

Kasula stilled, then evaded Momo's gaze. Her shit-eating smile had dulled into something blank and foreboding. “Well, maybe. But no way in hell am I coming with you.”