“Nyk,” she said, lip trembling. “This has to work.”

—

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Momo said, throwing her nerves to the wayside and grabbing Nyk’s slender hand. She pointed it towards the groaning tower. “I don’t have enough Mana to hold the tower together by myself, but I think together—”

“Don’t touch me.”

“Sorry!” Momo said, blushing as she yanked her hand away. Another round of screaming echoed from the crumbling building. “But—look—all I’m trying to say is, if we both throw as much Nether as we can at it, kind of like a sticky spider web, or a bunch of rubber bands, then we can stop it from toppling over.”

Nyk looked intensely skeptical.

“You really think that will work?”

“Not really,” Momo admitted. “But it’s the best idea I’ve got right now.”

The dokkaebi considered it, biting her lip.

“Fine,” she sighed. “You’re lucky Valerica scares the hell out of me.”

She stuck out her hand, curling her fingers. Dark matter began to bubble around her outdrawn digits. Momo had never seen another person—besides Sera—manipulate Nether in that way, but it was as she suspected: all Nether dokkaebis possessed the latent ability. Momo could feel the temperature in their immediate vicinity rocket upwards as more and more Nether congealed around them, the substance giving off a sticky humidity.

“Ready,” Nyk said, her eyes falling closed. “On your command, or whatever.”

Momo nodded, and stuck out her hand in the same way, fingers splayed and waiting. She could feel her body shuddering as she pulled the Nether towards her—her Mana supply already limited from before. She had used quite a lot of it trying to cement the tower back together by herself, but luckily, her Mana regen had improved from level to level, and she could feel that she was already back to nearly fifty percent.

With Nyk’s help, that’d hopefully be enough. It had to be.

“Alright,” Momo said, steeling herself. “Go!”

On her signal, the Nether beamed out of both of their hands, congealing mid-air as it soared towards the building. The black blob landed with a fwip, wrapping around the tower like a wet towel, then rapidly expanding. The black organism dug into the stone crevices, latching itself into the building. Power rapidly drained from the pair of them, and both Momo and Nyk winced.

Momo felt her hand begin to falter; it was starting to tremble terribly.

Stupid hand, Momo thought, forcing it to relax. I can do this.

Despite her growing exhaustion, the plan seemed to be going along just fine. The Nether tightened around the tower, forcing its stone innards that were previously spilling out to bind inwards. The terrified faces of government workers disappeared behind the black, slithering wall, encased inside the tower, safe from harm.

“I—I think it’s working,” Momo stuttered, her body shuddering. Unable to control her legs, she fell to her knees, suddenly nauseous. Bile clawed at her throat. It took all of her willpower to keep her hand in the air, the Nether still spilling from it. There’s still not enough to cover the whole tower. She couldn’t lose her grip now.

Then, a voice came to her as if screamed through a wind tunnel—

Warning! You are out of Mana!

“Get up,” Nyk ordered, gritting her teeth. What might have sounded menacing was weakened by her exhaustion. “I can’t manage this without you.”

Momo could feel her heartbeat pound in her ears. Everything was blurry—the stone tiles of the pavement went from crisp and cold to a messy bundle of splotches. Everything in her body was begging her to let go. Still, she kept her trembling hand afloat.

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

Warning! If you continue to use Mana beyond your limit, you will enter Mana Overdrive!

Mana Overdrive?

She heeded the warning at the last second, dropping her hand. Her shoulders fell with it, then her neck, and her face, plummeting onto the pavement. She could barely feel the pain as her skull hit the ground. Everything was so far and distant—just echoes in a narrow chamber.

Beside her, Nyk groaned, the weight of all of the Nether falling on her shoulders.

“Fuck,” Nyk said.

Nyk fell to her knees next. The two of them looked like a pair of beaten up ragdolls.

As the seconds ticked on, Momo expected to hear the sounds of defeat—of the grand tower clamoring to the ground, shattering into a million pieces like a glass mirror, but, curiously, she heard nothing of the sort. She heard an abundance of exactly that—nothing—silence, as if time had stilled. Hissing with pain, she tilted her face up, and her eyes finally focused.

And then, they promptly widened.

“Nyk,” she said, coughing. “The tower. We did it. It’s… It’s stable.”

As she had hoped for, the Nether blanket had expanded to cover the entire ivory building. Just as Sera had done when building her tower of black back in Nam’Dal, Morganium’s Needle now stood, unmoving, a cylinder of silent darkness. The streets had been cleared by Teddy and the Radu, the citizens now underground in their chicken-coop bunkers, leaving only the crackling of thunder in the sky.

“By Morgana, I regret ever meeting you,” Nyk groaned, laying her forehead on the cold pavement. “I just expended enough Mana to kill a god.”

“If only,” Momo murmured, gazing towards the sky. It was still a frenzy of thunder and lightning. Hail still pulverized the ground. The climate reminded Momo of the sky that loomed over the arena during the Oblivion Crisis—only now, in place of clouds and cloud beasts, was pure maniacal fury disguised as bad weather, lightning charged with murderous intent.

She dragged herself upwards, unsteady.

“We still need to rescue the people inside the tower. Even though they’re no longer in threat of falling a hundred feet to their deaths, there’s probably a bunch of debris blocking their way out. We need to clear it.”

“Momo. Don’t be an idiot. Let your little girlfriend handle it,” Nyk grunted, rubbing her eyes. “If you try to use anymore of your Mana, your horns are going to quite literally fall off.”

Eyeing the situation by the tower’s entrance, Momo knew the dokkaebi had a point. Sumire and her band of would-be firefighters were working with effortless orderliness, trampling over stone and flame, spraying bursts of water into the interior of the tower. The pirate had assembled a group of at least fifteen, and was ordering them around like a proper dictator. Under her keen eye, they were plenty capable of taking care of the fires and emptying the place of survivors.

“Okay,” Momo mumbled, quickly defeated. “You’re right.”

As soon as she was able to walk again, Momo began to schlep herself towards the tower’s entranceway. Her bones felt like brittle silverware that had been thrown in the dishwasher for too many cycles, but she pressed on.

Above her, lightning continued to strike down, turning homes into fireplaces. She had expected the storm to stop, but it only worsened. Residence upon residence came ablaze. Sumire sent a contingent of her water-wielders to deal with the fires, but they couldn’t clear the fires as fast as Nerida could throw her electric javelins. Momo knew that soon enough, Morganium’s inner ring would be little more than a smokey pile of barbecued neighborhoods.

Her brain swimming with possible solutions—fire lightning back at the sky and see what happens, give up, cry, call Azrael and tell him to get his ass back here, ask Dusk to take over queenhood for a bit while she goes on vacation—Momo finally made it to the steps of the tower.

“Momo,” Sumire said, greeting her with another bone crushing embrace. “You look like you were just buried alive. Are you okay?”

“I feel like I was just buried alive. This quite possibly might be our last conversation,” Momo groaned, leaning into the hug. She was too tired to complain about how tight Sumire was holding her. “Are people still trapped inside?”

“We’ve gotten most of them out and below ground. There are a few lunatics who think this is all some message from the holy chicken—they keep clucking and trying to throw themselves down the stairs, yelling bucauwk over and over. I say we take a Darwinism approach to those few.”

“Publicly, as queen, I disagree. Privately, yes, definitely,” Momo muttered. “But good. I…” Pain racketed through her chest. “Need to sit down.” She promptly lowered herself to the ground and began rocking back and forth. “Yep. Good. Perfect. Just leave me like this for a while, and I’ll be just fine.”

Behind her, a house exploded.

“Ach!” Sumire yelled, throwing up a [Holy Enclosure] around Momo and the firefighters. Burnt wood showered over them. The lightning had turned up a notch—going from normal, everyday electricity to something feral and warped. It was as if an electric werewolf claw had come down and tore the building to shreds, flinging wooden gore in every which direction.

Still rocking, Momo looked up at the sky. Her brain and her body was too exhausted to be afraid.

“Quick question. Anyone—really, anyone at all—welcome to answer,” Momo mumbled, watching as the hail began to shower down in refrigerator sized ice cubes, creating meteor-sized craters in the streets. “If you were me, how would you go about stopping a goddess?”