“What's happening?” Clone Momo screamed. “What’s that noise?”
“Shit!” Momo’s eyes enlarged comically as the box began to violently shake in her lap. She had been too caught up in the moment between herself and herself, she had forgotten about the very key reason she was stuck in this stupid alternate reality attic. This is what happens when I don’t have access to my ADHD medication. “I—I got too distracted, crap, it’s happening—”
“What’s happening?! You promised you’d warn me with the hand signal!”
“Well, pretend I’m doing the hand signal, alright?!”
Momo clamped her fingers around the box, jaw clenching as she used her Mana to restrain the burgeoning souls. A chorus of cries was bellowing from within, growing louder and louder with each passing millisecond. The wood of the attic groaned, the floorboards shook. The single window exploded, shattered glass flying into Momo’s wings. She cringed, but kept her composure. There was no more time to procrastinate. She needed to deal with this now.
She asked the System for a review of the [Soul First Aid] skill, and the audio courier quickly obliged, speaking in a hurried tone, like an audiobook set at 2x the speed.
[Soul First Aid II]: You can heal as many soul chains as you’d like simultaneously, but this is limited by your mana count.
Limited by your mana count. She had been reluctant to try this for a reason. She knew her Mana pool was far greater than it used to be—especially with her Excalibur upgrade—but she still had no idea just how much it would take to untie all the souls wound inside.
But it’s not like she had any other option.
As the orchestra of battered soul chains screamed and clawed at their binds, Momo closed her eyes, attuning herself to that sound—focusing on nothing else.
“[Soul First Aid]” she whispered.
Momo wasn’t sure what she had expected to feel, but oh god—it wasn’t this. Blind, crazed pandemonium. Crying and screaming. The type of thing you hear after darkness shrouds a city in the Purge. It felt as if she had been yanked into the center of the cube itself. She lost track of her physical form, feeling only an overwhelming burning sensation; seeing only faces—so many faces—with their wide, pained eyes, their open mouths, their hands, clawing towards her, falling over her shoulders and gripping her limbs.
They were—for all intents and purposes—consuming her.
“Momo?” She could faintly hear the other girl’s probing voice. It was so far away, so distant. Though telling from the strangely relaxed tone of it, Momo could only assume that the cube had stopped its infernal screaming, at least outwardly. She had put a lid on it, temporarily stymied the chemical reaction. “Momo, are you okay? You look a little… paler than usual, and you’re twitching, is that normal? Is that something you usually do, twitch?”
“I just… need a second,” Momo said, more terse than she intended, but all she could feel was pain, everywhere and spreading. “I need—”
She groaned in agony.
With her [Eye of the Nether Demon] wide open, Momo could see the inside of the box now, clear as day. It was blue, night sky blue, and brimming with bodies, floating and twitching and screaming in dead space. Bodies and bodies and bodies, congealed to each other, eating aimlessly at each other’s limbs—and now at hers. The souls were gripping her every molecule, desperate for the salvation she was offering. It was a morgue of the not-yet-dead; it was, aptly, hell, in the true sense. A torturer's heaven.
Momo began to cry.
What kind of person would create this? She knew exactly who, but the why still evaded her. This was cruelty for cruelty’s sake. There had to be some other way to achieve what Sera wanted: to own a slice of mortalkind, to rise above Morgana. It wasn’t like the goal was ethical to begin with, but the means… The means were unbelievably agonizing. No one with a heart could conceive of such a plan. Momo couldn’t find the gall to care about Sera’s reasoning anymore. Whatever the intention, whatever the sob story behind it may have been—it was all null and void. This was evil, pure evil. It chilled her to the bone.
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But I’m going to… She choked back a sob. I’m going to put an end to it.
Despite feeling like her skin was being ripped off, she persisted, locking her jaw. Some of the souls—which looked vaguely human, but distorted and stretched—began to detach their teeth from her, satiated. Their facades floated backwards, growing fainter and fainter, as they were quickly replaced by new, feverish souls, eager to eat from her palms.
“Momo, things are—people are—coming out of that weird box!”
Momo’s eyes shuddered open, realizing only then that they’d been closed. Her [Eye of the Nether Demon] allowed her to see both realities at once; in this one, she saw her clone right in front of her, staring in petrified horror as a man in a Subway uniform slumped onto the ground in front of her. Was that the soul I healed? It didn’t take long for her to find out—as dozens more began catapulting out of the cube and into the small space, flopping like dazed fish on land.
“Agh, Momo, updates, please! What’s happening? These people are, like, drunk or something!” Mallmart Momo jumped from her sitting position, something she saw in front of her jolting her upwards. “Sir, please don’t walk there, you’ll fall off! Oh—”
Unable to be contained by the small attic space, the bodies began tumbling down the staircase. Some skipped the stairs entirely, falling flat onto the base of the tower, crashing into wheelbarrows and floundering in heaps of hay. Her counterpart shrieked bloody murder.
“It’s okay,” Momo said weakly, trying to comfort her. “It’s the Nether, you can’t—no one can die here. They’re not even going to get hurt. See how they’re just getting back up? No injuries or anything?” She gestured vaguely downstairs, and after taking a look to confirm, her clone nodded slowly, jaw still slack. “Just close your eyes, and, uh—look in the other direction.”
Mallmart Momo looked at her like she was a ten year old library book she had forgotten to return. It was an expression of utter shock and horror. “Oh god, I’m really going crazy. I must be suffering a complete mental break. I knew it would happen before I hit twenty, but I was hoping for a few more weeks. I haven’t even finished season two of Death Note…”
“Momo,” Momo mumbled. “You’re not losing it, and please stop talking about Death Note.”
“Just tell me how I can help,” Other Momo pleaded, falling to her knees. “I don’t know anything about the Nether, or about souls, or necromancy, but I do work in retail. And you’re not exactly a mother giving birth in the Maternity Wear section, but it’s… it’s close enough.”
Momo wanted to reply, but she didn’t have enough strength to get the words out. She could feel herself fading fast, but the rush of knowing it was working—that the people trapped inside that infernal box were healing, even if they were emerging like drunk newborns—allowed her to push on. She’d just keep going until she couldn’t anymore. Then maybe she could take a break, let her Mana regenerate…
Congratulations! For healing and releasing over 50 battered souls like a proper Nether Mother Teresa, you have gained a level in Nether Demon (Purified Variant).
Despite the pain, Momo managed a slight grin. She didn’t care about any potential skills the level up offered; in fact, she wasn’t lucid enough to even catch them. She was only concerned that it improved her fast-depleting Mana pool. She could feel the immediate improvement, too, the magic coursing through her veins with renewed purpose.
This silent glee was obviously not evident in her expression—it probably looked a lot more like the small smile a drunk person might give before passing out on the bathroom floor—because her clone jumped into immediate action.
“Nope. No way. I can’t just sit here anymore,” she said, rising to her feet. “This is officially a situation. I’m going Mallmart manager mode.”
Before she knew what was happening, Momo was being slung over her clone’s shoulder. A feat that didn’t seem like it should be possible, but given the metaphysics—or, lack thereof—in the Nether, or simply Mallmart Momo’s sheer upper body strength, it was happening. The emerging bodies trailed after them as her clone slugged her down the stairs and out into the courtyard. The fresh forest air was welcome in Momo’s nostrils, and she inhaled sharply.
“Good job, deep breaths,” Mallmart Momo coached her.
“Gods, I’m not giving birth,” she finally squeaked out, her head less heavy now. “And I know exactly which policy you’re reciting—”
“Shhh, deep breaths. The fresh air is clearly good for you. I’m glad I brought you out here. Now, in, out. No need to speak. Just focus on breathing.”
It was definitely the Mana, not the fresh air, she thought, but refrained from saying it. She didn’t want to take the wind out of her clone’s sails. Either way, clone-Mo was right. She needed to pace herself. She had done more than enough to temper the box. It was no longer radiating the same explosive chaos as before. So, she reasoned, she could afford a few extra breaths, a few minutes to let herself heal and regenerate.
Maybe she could even allow herself a sip of water, a small snack…
Her thoughts trailed off.
“Momo,” she quietly prodded her clone.
Her counterpart’s eyes widened, surprised to be addressed. She nodded furiously. “Yes?”
“Can you get me something?”
“Of course. What do you want?”
“I think there should be some dead insects in the pantry cabinet,” Momo said, sighing nostalgically. “Just grab a handful.”