The next thing Momo knew, she was on the edge of a cliff.

She screamed, a rock giving way, then felt stupid as she remembered her wings.

They flapped easily, and she backed away from the cliff’s edge. Steadying her breath, she took in her new surroundings. From what she could tell, she was far above the clouds, on some sort of floating island. Beyond the cliffside, there was nothing for miles and miles—only the night sky, painted with dazzling stars.

“Oh gods, where am I now?”

Moments before, she had been facing down the God of Deception. She recalled him beginning to cast some sort of magic—a type of illusory magic, perhaps?—and now she was here.

She turned her head towards the center of the island. An ivory castle awaited her there, surrounded on all sides by winding, twirling obsidian stairways. Stairways which defied the natural laws of physics, swirling in endless circles like the tracks of a roller coaster. Not only were they inconceivably designed, but they didn’t seem to be leading towards any discernible door, either. Momo’s art-major brain pinged Escher as a definitive influence.

Perched on the stairs’ railings were these peculiar looking ravens; their heads were the same sort of feathered black of Momo’s wings, but their bodies were as white as snow. This high contrast palette seemed to be a favorite of Mordecai’s: the blackest black and the purest white. For a God of Deception, it was all rather obvious.

Momo’s jaw clenched. Mordecai.

Was this his lair?

Momo didn’t care to find out. Instead, she dug into her pocket.

Her body tensed.

The box was gone.

Shit.

Had Sera taken it? Was that who was awaiting her inside? It seemed likely, given the partnership between the two of them. Yet something told Momo she wasn’t here. This wasn’t Sera’s style, leaving her to her own devices like this. Her style was a bit more forceful: as in, grabbing Momo by the collar and violently throwing her through the endless multiverses back to Alois, explosive Wraith Box in tow.

“Fuck it. Fine,” Momo groaned. “I’m coming in.”

She chose one of the staircases at random and began to ascend. She was surprised to find that her body didn’t mind the shift in gravitation at all. She followed the curvature of the stairs with ease, doing several loop-de-loops as she gripped the railing. The birds squawked at her and pecked at her wings as she passed.

Finally, after what felt like an hour of mindless walking, a door appeared out of thin air. It was one of those annoying talking ones, because of course it was.

“I have a riddle,” the door said. “Do you have an answer?”

“Shut up.” Momo clenched her jaw. “I don’t have time for this.”

“That is incorrect!”

“How about this. You let me in, or I chop you in half?”

“That is incorrect!”

Momo rolled her eyes, grabbed her rapier, and sliced her blade straight clean through the black wood.

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“Correct! Violence is always the answer!” the door announced giddily as it glued itself back together. Momo’s jaw dropped in disbelief.

“Seriously?”

The door didn’t honor her with any further explanation, so she just grabbed the doorknob, twisted it, and thrust forward. A scene was then revealed to her that would have driven any sensible scientist to psychosis. It was a room that was inside of itself, kind of like seeing a person with their skin turned inside out. There were doors halfway up the walls, stairways which ended mid-air then resumed in the ceiling. Paintings which only existed in your peripheral vision.

It was also completely devoid of color—save one thing in specific: a throne. It sat in the middle of the room. It was flush with furs, crimson fox pelts and yellow bird feathers. It reminded Momo of the color of Mordecai’s eyes. Of course, that was because those very eyes were staring at her from all angles. The room was littered with them: eyes on the walls like spotted wallpaper, eyes on the dressers in place of knobs.

Momo tilted her neck upwards, checking for eyes on the ceiling. Only there was no ceiling. The tower seemed to go on forever. It climbed on and on, an endless stack of ivory illusion. And at the very top, watching everything like a panotopican, was one last giant eyeball. It had three distinct pupils—red, white, yellow—pinned to her very position. The sight of it, veiny and enormous, sent a shiver down her spine.

The door slapped shut behind her, then dissipated. No way out, then. Momo steeled herself as a plume of dark black smoke collected around the throne. The smoke turned to face her, and revealed itself to be just half of one whole. Mordecai.

The god grinned widely, half his grin vanishing into smoke.

“Hi there, darling. Come closer, won’t you?”

Tempering her nerves, Momo obliged him. She opted to fly, not walk, as walking didn’t seem to get her anywhere in this treadmill of a house. Everything shifted subtly as she moved, the dimensions of the walls subtly scaling with every flap of her wings. Mordecai was the only thing to stay static, even as his throne grew larger then smaller again.

“You know,” he said, perching his chin on his fist. “You are the first of my disciples that I could ever entertain with a home visit. The first mortal ever to enter the Chateau of Shifting Realities. Do you feel honored, Momo?”

Momo swallowed. She had no idea what the playbook was when talking to the God of Deceit. Bluffing seemed like a stupid idea, but telling the truth felt nearly insulting. She had to rethink her conventional table manners.

“Honored would be one word for it,” she said. “I can think of others, too.”

His grin widened.

“What word would you choose?”

“Surprising,” she said.

“Oh?” This seemed to delight him. “Do elaborate.”

“I’m surprised to see you here alone,” she said, not that she could really be sure. She could hardly trust her own eyes. “I thought you and Sera were working together.”

“That’s quite presumptuous. Can’t a god and a goddess scheme in the same direction without being called conspirators?” He snapped his fingers, and the Wraith Box appeared mid-air, twirling in space just above his palm. Momo’s impulse was to grab it, but she restrained herself. It was like he could read her mind, because he laughed. “Oh, you’d really like that back, wouldn’t you?”

She didn’t dignify that with an answer. “So you’re not working together?” she responded instead, careful to be exact with her words. “I was on the ship with your Excalibur, Kami. I know you’ve been amassing those… Wraith Artifacts. Presumably in this effort to overthrow Morgana, like the rest of the pantheon.”

“Presumably,” he said, widening all three of his eyes. “Dangerous word. I am amassing the Wraith Artifacts. True.” Just one of his eyes blinked, the red one. “But not for any political reason. Only as a hobby.” He grinned. “You see, after Sera relayed this whole plan of hers, and everyone else in the pantheon, the daft idiots that they are, joined in with hoo’s and ha’s, I, in my skeptical solitude, discovered something most curious.”

Momo found herself leaning closer as he spoke, hanging on his every word. His voice was so melodious, so oddly seductive. Like a perfectly tuned piano.

“I unearthed Sera’s true plan,” he said casually. “The one she so conveniently kept private from her little god-lackeys.”

The room stopped turning. Momo immediately got whiplash, and her next words came out clumsily from her mouth.

“What is it?”

“Oh, you’d love to know,” he teased, raising his eyebrows provocatively.

He stood from his chair, and the room tumbled forward. Staircases rearranged, drawers fell out of their cases, doors caved in on themselves. Momo found herself doing somersaults through space, a jumble of feathers and limbs, unable to control her velocity—before Mordecai caught her by the wrist. His fingers gripped her; his terrifying face loomed just above hers.

“I have an offer to make you, Momo the Ripper.”