As Lione stared at her in wide-eyed silence, Momo contemplated how to best frame the discussion. Given the woman’s obvious state of mental disarray, it didn’t seem wise to just dive right in and hand over the all-killing death cube. But Momo also didn’t come here to just sit and lie to the woman’s face. If she was going to get the information she required, she needed Lione to be honest with her. On purpose or by accident, Momo didn’t care.

In absence of a table, Momo took one of the teacups off the platter, handed it to Robert, and then unfurled Lione’s letter in its vacancy.

“Thank you for the tea, but I’m good, actually. Super hydrated. What I really want to talk about is this line you wrote here,” Momo said, creasing the parchment with her thumb. “The thing you and Sera were never able to create. The Wraith Box, you called it. You said it wasn’t possible, that it couldn’t be achieved—at least not on this plane of existence.”

Lione gazed at the page. Momo noticed that an odd, hazy cloud of gray hung over her eyes as she studied her own words. Her pupils were small, unfocused, flitting around her eye like a fruit fly stuck in a mason jar. It seemed almost as if she had never seen the letter before. In place of a verbal response, she plucked a tea cup off the platter, drank the noxious green liquid, and exhaled. Puffs of boiling steam exited through her nostrils.

“Want to hear a fun fact?” she said. Momo’s question seemed of no consequence to her. “This tea is made from the same nethergel as Robert. Hence the color. Cool, right? You shouldn’t be scared of it. It’s completely edible. I designed it to mirror the earthly Aloe Vera plant. Of course, it’s not an exact copy, so there is a slight chance of paralysis from the waist down. But the chance really is slight, I assure you. Something in the point zero zero realm.”

Lione bent the cup in Momo’s direction, offering her a sip. Momo smiled politely at her and shook her head no, internally horrified. She enjoyed having full access to her limbs at all times, especially around people of unreliable sanity.

“Oh come on, it’s just a sip,” Lione insisted, bringing the cup to Momo’s lips and pressing lightly. “I’m sure you need it after spending all that time in the hot desert. You must be so dehydrated. Come on. Please.”

In a flash of abrupt violence, Nyk slapped the teacup out of Lione’s hands, sending it cratering towards the ground. Momo expected to hear it shatter, but the sheer amount of paper coating the floors muffled its fall. The cup simply rolled and rolled, eventually coming to a stop and laying in a soggy pool of its own liquid.

“Well,” Lione interjected, frowning mildly. “That was impolite.”

Nyk unsheathed a knife from her garter, brazenly holding it an inch from Lione’s throat. “Look, lady, we’ve spent a lot of time prancing around the desert, and I’m getting really tired of following this pipsqueak around. So you can either help us out with the deadly little riddle in Momo’s pocket, or we’ll find ways to make you talk. Your pick.”

That’s weird, Momo thought, observing Lione’s physical reaction to the threat. The expression on her face didn’t change a bit, but her hands balled into fists, her cheeks went hot red, the hairs on her arms stood on edge, her throat bobbed uncomfortably. The threat seemed to register in her body, but not in her mind. It was like watching someone in a coma fight off a looming grizzly bear.

Either the woman was heavily traumatized, holding back her rage for unknown reasons, or under some kind of spell. With Momo’s luck—probably all three.

Momo got up from her chair and pushed Nyk’s knife off of Lione’s throat. The dokkaebi reluctantly let her. Lione didn’t seem grateful, or like she even noticed.

“Nyk, please be quiet,” Momo whispered harshly. “Lione, you can talk at your own pace. Sip your tea, take your time. I know it’s been a difficult few months for you. Blob-death, jail, therapy, redemption arc, moving continents. I’d be having a meltdown like twenty-four seven. I’m honestly just impressed.”

Momo glanced at Nyk.

“And I’m sorry for Nyk’s behavior,” she added. “She’s just… like that.”

Nyk snarled. Momo ignored her, turning her head again to maintain eye contact with Lione. Eventually, after several, awkward seconds, the duchess broke from her haze. Her pupils cleared, dilating back to a normal size. She blinked several times, as if exiting a dream.

“Huh. Odd. I was just in the kitchen, and now I’m…” she gazed at her lap, seemingly surprised to see herself sitting in a chair. “No apology necessary. I thank you for waking me up. I was in quite the daze. When did I… get here?”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Momo’s eyebrows rose. “Waking you up? Were you sleeptalking? And you invited us inside a few minutes ago. Robert broke your door down, well, exploded it, then you led us down here.”

“I see. And no, not quite like sleeptalking, but more so like talking while being drugged with eighteen shots of distilled nether nectar,” Lione said, wincing as she massaged her temples. “It’s Sera’s presence. It hopelessly warps my mind. Instantly undoes all the progress I’ve worked so hard to achieve in therapy.”

Her eyes fell towards Momo’s lower torso, near where the box lay in her pocket.

“I can feel her presence here, now, sitting somewhere within you,” she said, eyes fixed to Momo’s robe. “I started feeling its effects a few days ago. Likely ever since you arrived in town. It’s just been so incredibly potent. It probably seems difficult to believe, but my house was in perfect form until just last weekend. All my ingredients were properly stored, my experiments organized. Now it just looks as if a hurricane passed through. Every time I try and clean, I just wake up in the same situation again. Under Robert’s pitying gaze, with a pounding headache.”

She gestured towards the perimeter of the room, where storage containers, drawers, cabinets, and wicker baskets were all laid about, their wooden innards exposed like gore. Momo even noticed a bed she hadn’t seen before. It was half-broken, the headboard concave. It certainly didn’t look slept in.

“Anyways. That riddle in your pocket that your companion mentioned,” Lione said. “That must be it, isn’t it? The source of the presence. Show me it, please.”

Momo reflexively reached for the cube. She could feel it pulse uncomfortably, like a continuous electric shock of Mana; it was as if the souls trapped inside were screaming louder than usual. Something about this apartment – or likelier yet, the person inside of it – was activating something. It felt like a ticking time bomb.

Shit. Momo froze, her face starting to sweat. Could this be what Sera was waiting for? Did she want me to deliver it to Lione? I’m so confused.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Momo said. “It might kill you.”

“It’ll be fine,” Lione insisted, waving off her concern. “Just put it on the platter.”

Momo looked at Nyk, who shrugged. Under normal circumstances, Momo would consider putting the ultimate weapon of mass destruction in the hands of its former superfan a big no-no, but these weren’t exactly normal circumstances. She needed to do something.

With a sigh, she took it out of her pocket, but settled on keeping it held in her hand.

Lione gasped, her face going white as sheet paper. She reached out with a trembling finger, hovering just centimeters from the box’s crackling surface. Thankfully, she stopped herself just short of touching it.

“Is that… is that what I think it is?”

“Yes,” Momo said. “It is. The Wraith Box. The big bad box of badness. Sera managed to create it. I don’t know how, but she managed. And I really need to figure out how to turn it off before it blows. Can you help?”

Lione bit down on her lip, her hand shaking with a violent intensity. Momo could tell she was fighting off the urge to touch it with every bone in her body.

“That’s it,” Nyk said, getting up from her chair. “Enough of this. We’re tying the bitch up.”

—

Momo didn’t know Nyk had meant it so literally.

Grabbing one of the water tanks hanging around the apartment, Nyk tied Lione’s middle section around it with rope. She also tied her hands and covered them both in kitchen mittens. “Just in case she tries anything funny,” Nyk said.

To Momo’s surprise, Lione complied. She seemed at least half-aware that she wasn’t in control of her actions. Her eyes kept going in and out of the haze. Her words were sometimes lucid, sometimes garbled. Whenever she got particularly manic, Robert went to her side and began petting her hair. That seemed to calm her down considerably.

“I know this isn’t what you want to hear,” Lione began, hesitant. “But there’s no way to undo it. We’re just mortals. Sera is a goddess now. The amount of power it took to fissure all of those chains together is something only a person of her power is capable of. The same goes for undoing such magic.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. But does that mean Valerica could take it apart?” Momo asked, hopeful. “Or hells, Morgana, even?”

“No,” Lione sighed. “And that’s probably why they haven’t tried to. They know the nature of that device threatens Morgana’s very domain. If Valerica were to hammer it with raw magic, it would simply reflect that magic back at her. If she were to try and bring it to Morgana through the Nether, the box would open a tear between the two worlds, releasing the souls in an in-between zone, and possibly compromising the entire realm.”

Lione paused, inhaling deeply.

“There is no easy way out. If there was, Sera wouldn’t be a one of a kind evil fucking genius,” she said, wearing the slightest hint of a smile. “The only way to deal with it is to disassemble it here, on this plane, with the accuracy of a surgeon’s scalpel. To release each soul, one by one, back to the Nether. But there is no mortal with that kind of power and that finesse. And there is no goddess with it, either. At least not one that can reach it. And Sera knows that.”

“No… No. I don’t accept that. There has to be an answer,” Momo said, anger rising in her chest. She turned to Nyk. “Didn’t you transport it here? If it was going to explode between the planes, it would have done it then.”

Nyk nodded. “It’s true. I did.”

Lione tried to shrug, but the rope was too tight, so she just shimmied awkwardly. “That doesn’t help us. Sera probably installed a safeguard so it wouldn’t go off the first time it was triggered. Look, I can’t help you disable it, but I can tell you this. When we designed the box initially, it required a very specific condition to be met in order to activate. It was the only way that it would work as intended. Without it, the device would sit, dormant, a prison of screaming chains.”

Lione paused. Momo felt a sense of sudden, heavy dread pricking at her skin.

“And?” she asked. “What was that condition?”

Lione swallowed thickly, the clouds around her vision building once more.

“In order for the husk to flourish, the soul who is marked for death must die.”

The rope snapped.