"After thinking for a total of fifteen seconds," Momo began, folding her hands together in a poised, presidential manner. "I'm ready to present my plan."

“We await your genius with bated breath,” Grimli said.

“Gods,” Nyk rolled her eyes. “Get on with it already.”

The creaky wooden rafters whined as Momo stepped to the right, dipping herself over the partition’s protective half-wall to take in the current state of the ribcage. It was no longer in motion. All the bones had settled in place. The only noise now came from the continual crush of Morganium’s infrastructure—wooden planks and stone walls sinking into the ground and crashing into the depths of the caverns.

“We’ll start with the hands. I think Sera would expect us to start demolishing it at the center, or the skull, but that’s the wrong way of looking at it. It’s a skeleton, not a human being with brains and a heart. When this thing comes alive—and knowing our luck, it’s when, not if—my bet is it will try to attack us using its hands. So if it doesn’t have giant fingers to pummel us with, or to use in casting magic, it’s a bit useless, isn’t it?”

Momo looked at Nyk and Sumire—her resident council—for feedback. Neither looked particularly convinced.

“What if it shoots a death beam out of its chest or something?” Sumire said, skeptical. “I’ve never fought a mega-skeleton before, but we can’t expect it to act conventionally.” Sumire gestured to the skeleton’s fists, which still lay inside the chest cavity. “Its hands are still stuck inside its ribcage anyway. And its arms”—she traced a line from its shoulders, which were in the second ring of the city, downward, where the bones concluded in a mess by its wrist—“don’t seem fully assembled. It must have lost a few bones while ascending.”

“We can’t rule out that it might reassemble itself when it fully awakens.”

It was Viktor that spoke, shocking Momo with an inch of her life. The man had been fully unconscious not a minute before. She expected him to be a wailing mess when he returned to life, but he was only lightly sniffling now; it seemed he entered a momentary lucid state when faced with a particularly good problem.

“Okay, well, we have to pick something,” Momo said, growing impatient. She had a bad feeling about all of this. Vivienne was somewhere in the city; so was Nia. There was a chance that the absence of the Wraith Box had caused something to go wrong, and the Husk would never fully activate, but she couldn’t rely on that possibility. “We have a limited Mana supply between us. Let’s just focus on one area of the body first and see what happens.”

“I vote for the pelvic region. Best to separate the legs from the torso,” Viktor said, raising a pointed, confident finger. “If it can’t stand, it can’t step on us. Also, its range of motion is severely reduced.”

“Huh.” Momo tapped her chin, impressed. “True.”

“Yeah, sure, let’s take advice from the guy who turned your capital into a chicken worshiping site,” Nyk added impatiently. Viktor grimaced, hugging Baryte closely to his chest. “I don’t care where we shoot the thing, as long as we just start shooting it.”

Momo frowned. “What do you think, Mire?”

Sumire shrugged. “I do like the idea of blowing his skeletal crotch off. Don’t know if it’s the most practical, but, hey, the entire city is a swamp of rubble now. So why not.”

“Okay. We’ll start with the pelvis, then—-”

A terrible rumbling shook the partition. The skeleton’s torso had begun slowly moving upwards. This time, not as individual bones, but in concert; its skull lolled forward, its mighty neck and shoulders tensed and broadened. Viktor and Sumire clung to the railings while Grimli jumped into Nyk’s arms.

The dokkaebi rolled her eyes, holding him like a negligent mother.

“What’s the saying, Grimli?” Nyk muttered. “Life is what happens while you’re busy figuring out the right way to blow up a skeleton?”

“Shut up, Nyk,” Momo groaned. “Everyone, positions! Go, go!”

Momo lifted Sumire into her arms, putting her in a piggyback position, so she was sitting just above Momo’s wings. They had discussed this formation—the Hot n’ Cold, as they called it—many times before in bed.

(For Sumire, military positioning was the ideal pillow talk.)

“Now we can call it the Flying Hot n’ Cold!” Sumire shouted over the wind as they descended downward. “Your wings add so many wonderful attack-combo possibilities.”

“Let’s attack now, geek out about military formations later, okay baby?”

Sumire laughed maniacally, which Momo took as an affirmative; she swooped down past the Husk’s torso and the pirate thrust out her hands, a torrent of ice shooting forward. The icicles pierced through bone like bullet holes. Seizing the moment, Momo joined the onslaught, hurling fireballs that detonated like small bombs, shattering thick, undead bone into clouds of fragments.

“Good shot!” Sumire yelled over the whistling wind, slapping Momo on the back.

They dove straight through the misty debris, emerging on the other side to find the left side of the pelvis in a decrepit state. It was cracked right down the middle, the left leg now completely inaccessible. The right leg, on the other hand, was beginning to tremble—the kneecap bobbed upwards, and nearly took Momo out of flight.

“Gods—Momo—be careful where you’re flying,” Sumire chided. “You’ve got a passenger on board, you know.”

Momo rolled her eyes, coughing as the chalky bone-debris filled her airway. “It’s easy to complain from the backseat!”

They did another loop through the air as their mana regenerated. Just as Momo readied herself for another attack on the right leg, a volley of fireballs whizzed past her, detonating against the unsteady kneecap. Startled, Momo glanced back to find Nyk smirking.

“Too slow, cousin.”

The two flying dokkaebis retreated back in the air to appreciate their handiwork. The skeleton’s two colossal legs—which had emerged from the ground in the city’s southern outer rings—now lay utterly motionless. The pelvis lay in fragments. The upper half of the skeleton was still groaning to life, its rigid back bending upwards, its jaw clicking as it opened and closed its toothless, gaping mouth.

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“Arms next?” Momo said quickly. “By the shoulder blade?”

Drowning out Sumire's reply was a resounding bellow from the Husk's clicking jaw. Its voice was a haunting but grainy thing, like a toddler who knew language but hadn’t yet learned how to speak.

“L–legs,” it bellowed. “S–stupid legs.”

Stupid? Momo paused. She hadn’t expected an ancient-looking skeleton to talk like a common pedestrian.

“M–move. D–dumb, s–stupid legs.”

The still-attached bones just below the skeleton’s ribcage wiggled. It was trying to operate a phantom limb and failing.

It was then, gazing downward, that Momo caught sight of the figure. Draped in a dark cape at the very center of the devastated plaza. Someone that hadn’t been there moments before.

“Mire, do you see that person?”

“Oh my god, yeah. Who is that? There’s no way… is it Sera?”

Momo shook her head. “It can’t be. She’s trapped in the Nether. Unless it’s…”

Vivienne?

“I’m going down to check it out. I’m going to put you somewhere safe for a second, okay?”

“I should come with you—”

“No,” Momo nodded fervently as she found a suitable rooftop. It belonged to a submerged apartment building, but seemed stable. “There are too many risks of you falling down there. I won't take that chance again.”

Sumire looked like she was going to protest, but she just sighed.

“Fine.” She descended from Momo’s back and onto the rooftop. “But listen to me, okay?”

She cupped Momo’s cheek and pinched it, then smiled solemnly. There was an unsettling chill in her voice as she spoke.

“Some people just need to die.”

Momo stared at her, taken aback. She hadn’t expected that.

“Even people we want to like. Even people we want to save. I know you want to believe everyone can be redeemed, but some can’t, okay?”

Momo swallowed thickly. She didn’t know what to say. She disagreed, of course, at the core of her. But that conviction had been gradually eroded away, worn down by circumstances.

“No one needs to die. I’m going to figure this out,” was all Momo settled on, her voice tinged with determination.

Sumire seemed poised to interject, raising her hand to speak, but eventually she relented. Momo leaned in to plant a gentle kiss on Sumire's forehead before soaring upward. As she ascended, Sumire swiftly became an indistinct speck amid the surrounding debris.

I have to figure this out.

She surveyed the situation from her perch in the sky. The skeleton’s hands—which had been stuck in the chest cavity—had pushed their way forcibly out of the ribs, joining at the wrist. The beast treated its own body as a disposable wasteland. It groaned monstrously, in a tongue that sounded both familiar and strange, as it broke parts of itself to accommodate others.

Momo descended swiftly, hurtling towards the ground until she landed amidst a swirl of debris in the heart of the plaza.

When the dust settled, she could make out the figure in full. What she saw didn’t surprise her.

“Nia,” Momo said, breathless.

Nia Nightsbane stood hunched over, her once-glistening raven hair matted and heavy. Her body looked like it weighed more than gravity itself, burdened by more than just clothes.

In one tensed hand she held the Soul Splitting Dagger, in the other, the Wraith Mace. A faint band of fluctuating magic bridged the gap between them, wavering in and out of existence. Adorning her feet were what Momo presumed to be the final components of the Wraith Artifact Set: two skeletal boots. She was in the arduous process of removing them.

“Get off me,” she grunted as her foot popped out of one of the sizable boots. The next followed quickly, and she tossed it into one of the jagged fissures. “Finally. Useless things.”

When Nia looked up to finally face her, she scowled. It was an exhausted, tired scowl. A Sera type of expression, not befitting the overconfident assassin Momo first met in Nam’Dal.

“You ruined my legs,” she spat. “I was planning on using those.”

Encircling her entire form was a faint, eerie silhouette of the colossal skeleton. It seemed as though it held dominion over her—or she, over it.

“Sorry, not sorry,” Momo said with a shrug, stepping forward.

Nia thrust her hand upward, an evidently taxing action—her arm quivered with fatigue. Momo felt the ground quiver beneath her feet as the skeleton's arm mimicked the motion, extending high into the sky.

It took Momo a moment to triangulate just where it was dangling above, but once she did, her blood ran cold. It was hanging just above where she had left Sumire.

“Stop—” Momo cried out. “Don’t you dare.”

“Doesn’t feel very good, does it? Having someone take something from you.”

Momo shook her head, ignoring the comment. “You don’t need to do this. You’re sitting in rubble, Nia. You wanted to conquer my queendom? Good job, you did. If you want me to leave, I will. But there’s nothing more for you to gain. Nothing except murder for murder’s sake. That’s not who you are, is it?”

Doubt flickered in Nia's eyes. Beneath her facade of wearied bravado, Momo detected a hint of agreement. A slight bit of apprehension.

“Your entire body is trembling,” Momo said quietly, not wanting to risk setting off the girl any further. “I don’t completely understand what kind of magic this is—but these artifacts, even if they’re allowing you to control that thing—they are destroying you. Do you really want your life to end with you floundering around in rubble? Accomplishing nothing? That’s not the Nia that I met in Nam’Dal. You had aspirations.”

“I still do,” she said, wincing as she raised her trembling arm an inch further. “You just don’t see the full picture. You never did. I’m not doing this for Sera anymore,”—she took in a shaky, labored breath—“I’m doing this for me.”

“Doing what for you?”

Before Momo could react, Nia plunged her hand downwards. It took an entirely different path than Momo expected. Instead of smashing into the apartment where Sumire stood, it surged through one of the decrepit chicken churches.

Its fist of bone broke through layer upon layer of dirt and stone. A strange smile passed Nia’s face as she curled her fingers; she had caught something. She raised her arm, and the skeleton’s gigantic fist emerged from the ground, swimming with people in its tight grip—screaming, moaning civilians.

Momo gasped. No. It shouldn’t be possible. Sumire said they were safe—

“Power,” Nia said, a soft, fading smile on her face. “Power is what I want for me. The ability to not be fucked with. No one will ever hurt me or Vivienne. Never again. Never again.”

She thrust her tightly wound fist into her open mouth, and, like a particularly convincing mime, pretended to swallow. Gazing upwards with horror, Momo saw the titanic skeleton mirror the same behavior; only there, in the sky, it was not just a gesture, but a terrible reality; an enormous jaw clenched down. The screaming ceased.

“Nia, what have you…” Momo’s hand found her mouth, it trembled in disbelief. “What just—”

An explosive surge of magic sent Momo hurtling backward. She gasped sharply upon impact as her head collided with the jagged edge of a boulder. Through blurry vision, she witnessed Nia ascending, a vibrant green aura from her weapons seeping into her veins, now visibly emanating from her pallid skin.

It was clear, now: as the Husk devoured, Nia received. It wasn’t just a soulless mutant that Sera was building. She was feeding her chosen descendant—her daughter. By making an immortal monster, she was bearing an immortal child, too.

Sera, for all her evil, was just doing as mother’s did.

Except for one small detail.

“Nia!” Momo shouted out as she crawled forward, trying to gain her footing again. “Without the Wraith Box, this isn’t sustainable,”—she grabbed onto a rocky ledge and pushed herself up, harsh winds barraging her face—“you can’t contain that much power on your own.”

“You don’t have any clue about my potential.”

Nia flexed her surging muscles, bringing her fist down with greater force. The impact shook the ground violently, erupting like a volcanic explosion. Debris, resembling boulder-sized hail, rained down, blanketing the entire city in a smoky veil.

Like a child devouring a buffet, she fisted more and more people—and their chickens—into her hands. One batch after another fell victim to Nia’s cannibalization.

Cannibalization—the word gave Momo pause, and she widened her eyes in disbelief.

She knew how she could end this.