Momo’s face drained of color. Everything was suddenly grayscale: black and white and utterly terrible. The walls, once a fluorescent pink, looked muddy and tired. The food, unappetizing. Even the view out of the window—majestic waterfalls descending from mountain peaks—felt completely uninteresting. She had the urge to draw the shades over them.

“Is this some kind of joke?” she said, voice hoarse. “What do you mean funeral?”

She gripped onto the side of the booth for support as Venice took a seat once again. The shaking of the cart didn’t seem to affect him; he was unnaturally steady, composed.

“Well, you know.” He waved his hand around noncommittally. “Flowers. Sad speeches. A casket. Crying relatives. Or, in Morgana’s case, apathetic children and a negligent ex-husband.”

Her blood boiled.

“This is a funeral in the godly sense, right?” she asked sternly, finding the seat across from him. She didn’t have the stamina to stand anymore. The severity of her Mana Disease symptoms very annoyingly tended to correlate directly with her state of mind. “Like, the dramatic I’m not dead but I might as well be, kind of way?”

Venice laughed, looking astonished.

“Well, of course. You didn’t think she died, did you?”

Relief washed over her in an instant.

“The thought did cross my mind, yes,” she muttered. “When you said funeral.”

He giggled lightly, as if this was all greatly amusing.

Then he reached into his satchel, perched next to him in the seat, and revealed an envelope. It had Morgana’s signature koi fish and snakes embroidered on the label. Momo’s name was written on the front in cursive. She reluctantly took it from him, frowning.

Peeling off the seal, she pulled out a scroll. It was the same parchment used by the couriers.

A nagging inconsistency bit at her. “Why are you delivering this to me?” she asked, looking up with a skeptical frown. “If Morgana wanted to reach me directly, she could have sent a courier. Same with Valerica. But it’s been radio silence from both of them.”

“Oh, how tragic,” Venice said, eyes widening as he elongated the syllable. “You really are behind. Morgana hasn’t been in charge of things for awhile now. First, she was ill, then she began to decline… Valerica spends all her time looking after her, the darling she is. First Sera took over, then when her plans went up in flames, Kyros slid in to tame the fumes. It’s terribly sad, all of it.” He clicked his fingernails together. “But a simple lesson about the fickle nature of loyalty. Allegiances shifted. The cat won. Morgana lost. Now Kyros is putting the final nail in the coffin. A godly funeral is the biggest white flag in existence.”

He grinned, seemingly amusing himself.

“Entirely metaphorical, of course. The gods can’t kill each other. It’s one of the first laws of the universe.” As he spoke, Momo thought back to that very creation moment—the museum of haikus where she wrote her own rule into the System. “But they can wage masterful psychological warfare. The type of gaslighting to make,”—he paused, then contemplated her thoughtfully—“Regina George weep. That was an apt reference, wasn’t it? I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Earth replicant area recently.”

“If the gods can’t die, then how is Morgana ill?” Momo asked, frustrated. “Did she catch a cold that won’t go away, or something? I don’t get it.’

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“Hmm. Yes. Another thing that’s been lost in translation.” He tapped his fingers to the table, thrumming rhythmically. “Let me see… depressed. I think that’d be the word for it. She’s depressed. Terminally so. And who could blame her? All her children have abandoned her. No, worse, they’ve conspired against her. So she decided to abandon the universe in turn. Left it to fend for itself. It’s a perfectly natural response, really.”

Momo’s lips parted in disbelief.

So there it was. Morgana hadn’t been thrown in captivity, or struck through the heart without some mighty, god-slaying greatsword. No. She’d been taken down with the kind of insidious warfare that Momo was most intimately familiar with: self-sabotage.

Morgana hadn’t lost. She’d given up.

Momo never could have imagined that God herself would be so relatable.

But still, despite his convincing reasoning, the cogs turned in her head. It was hard to believe someone like Morgana would have just willfully decided to raise the white flag.

“But what’s stopping her from taking control again?” she asked, leaning forward. Her despair had been taken over by a detective-like curiosity. “Isn’t the universe hers, rightfully? Isn’t that encoded in the Book of Creation?”

“Well, partially, yes. Her and Kyros have equal stake. She has the right to rule at least half the universe’s mortal subjects. But when the funeral is over, she will withdraw that right, and give it fully to Kyros.”

Momo’s jaw clenched, and she rose from her seat, fire in her stomach. “There’s no way in hell Valerica would sit by and let her do that. I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, down girl,” Venice said with a surprised laugh, lifting his hat to look at her. “Of course Valerica has tried to reason with her, but she rarely has time for that anymore. She’s too consumed with fending off the surplus of Nether Demons. The damn insects have been popping up at every corner of the Nether these days. Godly depression will have that effect.”

The Nether Demons. The empty, unguided, cannibalistic matter of the universe.

Sometimes I forget that I’m not the only one in existence, Momo thought, recalling her class description. The real ones sound terrifying

A look of confusion crossed over her face. “So you mean… Morgana’s condition is causing more Nether Demons to appear? More than before?”

“Precisely,” Venice said, then leaned in, dropping his voice to a low, ominous octave. At this proximity, Momo couldn’t make out a single pore on skin—it was unnaturally perfect and dry, like a plastic toy. “If things keep going as they are, by the time she has that funeral, there will be no Nether left to rule, really. Kyros won his gambit, but he’s going to pay for it dearly, too.”

The way he said it, it sounded more like a prophecy than an idle hypothesis.

A shiver ran down Momo’s back.

“That seems… pessimistic,” she said quietly. “Can’t the gods cast out the Nether Demons?”

“One at a time, surely. But you can think of them as a colony of fire ants. One alone is just dust under your shoe…”

Venice’s fingers walked idly along the table like a happily little stick figure.

“But if you get caught in a horde of them…”

He splattered his hand down, palm flat, shaking the entire cart.

“If Morgana’s condition continues to deteriorate,” he said sharply, staring straight into Momo’s soul. “The entire universe will be nothing more than dust. Dust and fire ants.”

Momo sat there, frozen speechless, as Venice stood. His horns lodged themselves in the ceiling of the cabin, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Well then. It seems I accomplished what I set out to do here. It was lovely meeting you, cousin.”

He brushed off his suit, and turned towards the carriage’s exit. The exit was not to be used while they were actively moving, and much less when they were actively moving up a mountainside. But this did nothing to dissuade him.

His hand on the doorknob, he finished: “If you’re wondering how to get to the Nether without that Mana of yours, try that Nether Nectar. Don’t mind the taste, though. It can be a little…” He snapped his fingers, trying to remember the word. “Prickly.”

He thrust open the door, and wind gushed through, buffeting his clothes. Momo watched, awestruck, as he flung himself onto the side of the road, hopping to the ground as if he hadn’t just exited a moving vehicle. She pressed herself to the window to try and get a better look at him, but he was already gone. All there was to see were trees and clouds and mountain dirt.

She wasn’t sure just how long she stared out the window, but she became aware, eventually, that the food had gotten cold. A lump in her stomach, she picked a few pickles and pieces of cheese off the platter, took them onto a plate, and sat across from where Venice had been.

The invitation, unread, stared back at her. Something about it just felt wrong. As if...

Her eyes widened.

The handwriting.

Valerica