Momo scowled. She didn’t have time for this. Not only did she have the box to deal with, but Mordecai had made her very aware of the dire straits she had left her queendom in. If Nia really did have access to the Wraith Artifact Set, and Vivienne the Set of Blood Immortality, the combined effects, when at odds, could be cataclysmic.

Her blood ran cold to imagine Sumire caught in the middle of it all.

That image filled her with a new rush of adrenaline. She was going to get out of here. Sure, he was a god. But Momo had been Valerica’s apprentice for over a year now, and no one—even the God of Deceit—did mind games like the master.

Alright.

She looked around her. The walls were white and dimpled, like old painted stone.

But that didn’t matter. This was the Nether. And she was a Nether Demon.

And more importantly, before any of that, she had a teleportation spell.

“[Rift Hands – Create Portal].”

The portal manifested before her, but as she leaned towards her to enter it, it became infinitesimally small. She clenched her jaw annoyedly, clawing desperately at the thing as it dissipated into nothingness. It was that same irking phenomenon from before: every time she so much as moved the length of an eyelash, the room’s dimensions would readjust. The normal-size portal became the size of a molecule.

“Damn it.”

Okay. Back up plan.

She awakened her [Eye of the Nether Demon]. Closing her mortal eyes, the mystic eye revealed what she knew to be true: there were no stone walls confining her, simply shimmering rectangular constructs of Nether.

She made a dragging motion with her hand in an attempt to melt them, just as she had done with the skeleton key, and… it worked. They melted, bubbling into pools of black. She could see the rest of Mordecai’s domain again. She seemed to have been teleported right below his throne, because when she craned her neck up, she could see the tips of his heeled boots, the raw red of his decorative furs. He was sitting upon her cage like a lion tamer, paying her no mind.

Despite Momo’s obvious success, he was suspiciously quiet. She frowned.

Has he not noticed?

It didn’t matter. Ruse or no ruse, she kept her eyes trained on the ever-shifting castle, trying to pin down the few objects that remained static. There we go, she thought, noticing a door about halfway up the eastern wall. It was ajar, revealing a cloudy expanse. If she could make it through that door, she could make it out of Mordecai’s domain, and she’d be free again—back in the inbetween zone. As a bonus, she had lost the Catwalk Communicator, so any chance of Sera tracking her down once she was out would be slim.

Taking a silent breath in, she took a step forward.

Slap. Her face collided with white rock. The walls of her prison had immediately catapulted back around her, shooting higher than they had even before.

“Tisk tisk,” he teased, bending his neck down to look at her. “Thought you had figured out my puzzle, hmm? I give your attempt a five out of ten. Nether Manipulation is an admirably tricky ability, but you’ll find it’s awfully useless in my chateau. Every step you take will lead you into a world of further obscurity.”

She fell to the ground, her head pounding. Even if the walls weren’t really stone, they sure felt like it. A prick of hopelessness gnawed at her. This place was like quicksand—every move only ensnared her more deeply. What if there was no getting out? She hated to consider the deal Mordecai offered her, but he was right. Leaving the souls here would at least be better than handing them over to Sera. There was no telling what she had planned for them.

I can’t believe I’m even considering this.

Valerica would be severely disappointed to know the thought even crossed her mind. She was better than this—she was Momo the Ripper—she didn’t need to move to defeat an enemy. Lord knows she had felled quite a few while taking a nap. All she needed to do was focus. Not literally, of course. That was impossible.

“[Focus],” she murmured.

“What was that?” Mordecai said, hearing her murmur to herself. “Giving up already?”

Ignoring him, Momo’s whipcrack of a magically-enhanced mind evaluated her options. Like a ticking roulette wheel, it eventually settled on [Nether Displacement]. Even if she couldn’t destroy the instantly-reforming walls, making herself impervious to them could be her ticket out.

She whispered the spell to herself and looked down at her hands to see it take effect. Just as she hoped, the Nether around her forearms began to glitter. Not wanting to risk what was possibly her only opportunity to take him by surprise, she abandoned her routine of careful steps and jumped suddenly from the floar, soaring upwards, wings batting feverishly.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

This time, even when the wall rose to stop her, there was no concussive contact between her skull and stone. Her body just floated through the barrier easily, Nether swimming through Nether.

Yes! She grinned.

She flew with reckless abandon, ever-shifting stairways blowing past her peripheral. She could see the door coming closer. At least, that’s how it felt at first. But the seconds dragged on, and despite the constant movement of the things around her—shelves popping in and out of existence, rugs flying through the air—the door was still as far away as it had been before. She was still swimming against the current and making no waves. Damn it.

“How rude.”

She looked down to see Mordecai staring right up at her. He had risen from his throne. His good-natured smile had fallen, replaced with a grimacing frown.

“If the instructions weren’t clear, you were to stay in that cage, think very hard about the wonderful deal I’ve offered you, and then come to the only sensible conclusion,” he said venomously. “What you were not supposed to do is to escape. You are a mortal, I am a god, and mortals are meant to follow orders.” He took a breath in, leveling himself. “Not that it matters. I can do this all day.”

He snapped his fingers again, and she was back in another box. Only this one was much smaller. It was more of a tomb, a white casket with the lid firmly sealed. Her anxiety spiked for a second thinking she’d die of asphyxiation. But, of course, that was just Mordecai’s delusions playing tricks on her. There was no oxygen in the Nether to begin with. She’d sooner die of a sanity deficiency.

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” Momo mumbled. “But if it isn’t obvious, I’m not interested.”

Casting [Nether Displacement] again, she sat up in the coffin, her head floating through the lid. He scowled, snapping his fingers again. Seconds later, she was in another confined box, spike-laden walls closing in on her from every direction. She floated through them, and then through the next room, and the next room, until he let out a sharp, annoyed huff.

“You are grating me, Momo.”

“I’m grating you? You’re the one who just tried to put me in a blender.”

“Simply metaphorically,” he grumbled.

He began to pace back and forth, running his hand anxiously through the black mop of smoke that trailed to his left. When Momo opened her mouth to retort, his head snapped in her direction, an atypical fury surging in his three pupils.

“Silence,” he said. “If I hear another noise out of you, I will find a way to blend your very atoms out of existence.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it.

This was an opportunity, she realized. She had taken the God of Deceit off his A-Game using her most tried and true tactic: being annoying. And as such, he was too distracted to notice that he had left her unconfined. She was simply sitting a few feet behind him on the floor, with a full view of the entire villa.

And best of all, she had noticed something.

The tower, as she had noted before, was brimming with eyes. Each room she had been teleported into had a variety of watching eyeballs plastered over the walls. And when she accidentally fumbled and tripped over them—nudging them in the sockets—Mordecai would always make some sort of idle complaining sound. One time, he had even winced. She suspected it was giving him some sort of migraine.

It’s a vulnerability. It weakens his control.

Testing her theory, she raised her hand in the air slowly. Adrenaline filled her fingertips as she noticed that the tower’s typically-frenetic household objects were moving at a much slower pace. Stairways were groaning about at the speed of snails. The feathers and furs floated languidly. Of course, they were still moving, but she was definitely getting somewhere.

She stifled an excited smile. She couldn’t tip him off. She needed to plan a very precise move that would push him over the edge. A move that would constrain his ability, even for just one single second, to keep his magic stable. That would be enough to dull the effects of the shifting house; it would be enough to escape.

She craned her head upwards, and that’s when the idea hit her.

Victory was glaring right back at her.

Just as Momo had noticed when she first entered Mordecai’s palace, there was, at the very tip of the infinite tower of white, a giant eyeball. A three-pupilled eyeball. She hadn’t thought much of it at first—it seemed like just the kind of illusion he’d create to give visitors a sense of unease—but looking at it now, it was like witnessing a beautifully wrapped present. A cornea-shaped golden opportunity.

But how do I reach it?

If this were any other place, she’d simply fly to it and strike it. But seeing how far up it was, that would be impossible. She could try launching an [Abyssal Blast], or a [Nether Fireball]. She had any manner of attacks fit for a giant, unmoving object.

But she couldn’t judge how far away the eyeball really was, so there was no telling if those spells had the reach to hit it. And if they fizzled mid-way, Mordecai would notice, and Momo’s single opportunity for victory would vanish. She needed to decide her skill of choice very carefully.

“What to do with you, what to do with you…”

As Momo’s mind churned, Mordecai’s pacing came to a halt. He was fixing Momo with a stare now, and it sent a chill down her spine. His happy-go-lucky nature was all but dead. A coin had flipped, and it had landed on something quite dour.

“I think I’ve decided,” he said breathlessly. “If you won’t free the souls in the box, I will break it open myself. I was very much hoping to do this humanely with your assistance, so as to avoid any accidental nuclear-type effects, but you’ve left me with no other choice. I can’t risk the others getting their hands on it first.”

His three eyes spun around his face like a fidget spinner, and he began to stalk towards Momo.

“The treasure will be mine. Now, hand it over.”

Shit.

She had no other choice but to act. Luckily, his monologue had given her enough time to decide exactly what skill was required. There was only one option.

She grabbed her rapier and flung it upward.

“[Infinite Blade of the Nether Demon]!”

His face paled as the blade shot upwards, an infinite streak of black ink. It pierced the iris in seconds, bursting through retina. Mordecai screamed, falling to his knee in anguish. The black smoke that hid half of his body dissipated in a rush, revealing the grotesque picture beneath—a skeleton constructed of purely eyes, hundreds of them, all gazing in different directions, all blinking back sympathetic tears.

“You!” he screeched, raising a trembling hand towards her. His body heaved as he spoke, anguish pouring over him. “You would be nothing without me, nothing, and you dare—oh, I will grind you to dust, to inconsolable pebbles of pain—I will make Morgana regret ever taking you in, you ratty, greedy little mouse of a mortal—”

But Momo was already at the doorway. She looked back for only a moment to take in his true form. She shuttered, bit her lip, and then took to the skies.