Nether Demons are born of negligence and apathy and misfortune
Born of negligence, apathy, and misfortune.
Born of misfortune.
Momo’s hand danced around the page of her notebook, black ink staining white parchment. Her quill painted a picture while her mind toiled around Valerica’s words. It had been three days since she read the letter, and yet her mind was permanently, immovably stuck on one question, like a ship ensnared in a relentless storm—what did these beasts look like?
Twenty-six. That’s how many pages she’d drawn attempting to answer that question. The first three had been self-portraits, sketches of herself with the features removed; humanoid creatures with black wings and soulless, hollow eyes. The next five were just spirals of black. She imagined them like Junji Ito’s Uzumaki. Endless loops of misery, with eyes and lips expanding grotesquely from flesh; terrible to look at, worse to turn your back on.
On some pages, she left small notes scribbled in between the drawings.
—If becoming a Nether Demon caused me to sprout wings, the evil ones must have wings, too, right? And if they have wings, maybe they’re like birds? Evil birds?—
She drew geese with fedoras and twirlable mustaches. Then giant chickens holding bloody daggers. Pelicans wielding scissors. Ghostly albatrosses. Demonic falcons. Harpies with knives for feathers. Page twenty-three, page twenty-four…
By page twenty-six, she had started to grow an affection for them.
It was hard not to, with a description like that—creatures born of negligence, apathy, misfortune—really, the more she recited the line in her head, the more she related to it.
In fact, on one sleepless night in the carriage, her bed rocketing back and forth from the floor to the ceiling, she had a dream about a conversation that went something like this:
“Mom,” cooed the Nether Demon child to its mother. “Can you tell me about the … the Momo again?”
“Oh, darling,” the Nether Demon mother responded, curling the duck-goose monstrosity in its feathered embrace. “You shouldn’t want to hear such terrible tales before bed.”
“But why not? Are Momos really so bad?”
"Oh, my dear. There's nothing quite so dire. They are creatures of darkness, born and bred in the grim, crime-ridden alleys of San Francisco. Offspring of neglectful parents, their only companionship a feral, incontinent cat. Wherever Momos tread, calamity follows."
Momo woke with a start from her dream to feel the carriage’s wheels whine to a stop. Her door flew open, and Chevri’s eager head popped in. She wore an utterly uncharacteristic grin.
“They’re beautiful,” the lizard said, hands full of cat food.
“What—what’s beautiful?” Momo said, rubbing her eyes.
Every time she blinked, she still saw the demons from her dreams.
“What you paid all that money to see, dummy.”
Chevri drew her blinds, and the white light of day blinded her.
“Ow—” Momo winced, shying away from the sun like a vampire. “Give a girl a little warning.”
As her eyes gradually adjusted, the window transformed from a haze of yellow to a canvas of blue skies. Before her stood two imposing mountain peaks, their sharp silhouettes resembling the outstretched hands of a deity. So razor-edged were they that they pierced right through the sunlight, and draped everything under their shadow in utter darkness.
Chevri seized her hand, pulling her from her cocoon of pillows. Yielding to her friend's enthusiasm, Momo grabbed her notebook from the bedside table as they stepped through the carriage doors onto the snow-covered ground.
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They found themselves on a precipice, a narrow strip of land jutting out over a gaping chasm, offering a breathtaking view of the distant Ivories. A fence separated them from the abyss, enclosing a small area adorned with snow-dusted picnic tables, shrines, and golden coins—tokens of prayers and remembrances to lost loves.
It was lovely, but also as dark as midnight, the mountains' imposing shadow blanketing everything below. Any drawing she did here would be as muddy and grayscale as a grainy photograph. She felt a pang of disappointment; Sumire deserved something that did the view justice.
"Come on," Chevri urged, her voice filled with excitement. "I'll show you my favorite viewpoint."
“This isn’t it?”
“Please.” Chevri scoffed. “You paid us to show you the Ivories, not to stare into oblivion.”
They trudged through the snow until they reached a spiral stone staircase, its weathered railing clinging precariously to the mountainside. Momo expressed concern about its stability, but Chevri brushed off her worries, insisting they proceed.
After a few minutes of walking, they arrived at the top of the staircase. Momo doubled over, hands on her knees, struggling to catch her breath.
The climb had left her utterly winded.
When she straightened up again, she was met with a sight that stole her breath anew—a magnificent tower of gray stone stood before her. Tall, slender, and circular, it appeared ancient, its surface weathered by time, adorned with clinging ivy. Small blue birds perched upon its decrepit window sills.
"Wow," Momo exclaimed, finally regaining her breath. She expected Chevri to respond with her usual chatter, but the young lizard girl remained frozen, a few paces ahead, her expression obscured from view. "Is something wrong?"
Chevri stood in silence for a moment before slowly backing away, her footsteps leaving small imprints in the snow. A faint rumbling began to shake the mountain, so subtle that Momo might have mistaken it for the wind if Chevri hadn't spoken up.
“Yes,” she replied, her voice strained. “Very wrong.”
A shiver ran down Momo’s spine. But something told her to remain silent.
“The wyrm,” Chevri continued, her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s not here.”
Without glancing back, Chevri seized Momo’s wrist.
“We should leave.”
Her voice was trembling. All her usual overconfidence had fallen to the wayside, replaced by the vulnerable truth of what she really was: a petrified little girl out of her depth. Eighteen years old, far from home, utterly terrified. Momo felt a surge of protectiveness wash over her. She was supposed to be a literal queen, after all. Not some kind of glorified summer camp chaperone.
Placing her hand on Chevri’s shoulder, Momo offered a comforting smile.
“I've got you,” she assured her. “You lead the way back down, and I’ll watch your back. Once we're at the bottom, we'll figure out what's happening—”
A rush of powerful wind assailed them, so forceful it swept the snow off the banks and sent Chevri hurtling through the air. Acting on instinct, Momo lunged forward to rescue her, managing to scoop her into her arms before they both crashed to the ground. They skidded against the rocky terrain like two pebbles skipping across water until they collided with the tower. Sharp pain shot through Momo's back upon impact, her wings splaying against the unforgiving rock.
When her vision returned, she immediately looked down to check on Chevri. She released a breath of relief. The girl seemed unharmed.
"Are you alright?" she asked through a wince.
"I'm alive," Chevri replied, clutching onto Momo tightly, her face buried in Momo's shoulder.
Momo coughed, her heart throbbing with pain. "What in the world was that?"
Without moving her head from Momo’s shirt, Chevri pointed a trembling finger upward. Following it, Momo's gaze was drawn to a pair of colossal claws cleaving through the sky. Circling above them was the monstrous silhouette of a wyrm, its scales bathed in an ominous shade of deep black, seamlessly melding with the shadows beneath the Ivories. This wyrm surpassed even the colossal beast Momo had faced in Wyrmeridge—a titanic force of darkness, casting its ominous shadow across the land.
Type: Greater Guardian Wyrm of Darkness. Level 58.
HP: 650 / 650
Momo swallowed hard, a sense of dread creeping over her. Of course.
All she had wanted was to paint her girlfriend a few pretty mountain tops and call it a day. But she had been naive to think she could get away with something so idyllically simple; after all, she was Momo. The demon in her dream really had truly articulated it perfectly:
“Wherever Momos tread, calamity follows.”
As she prepared to force herself upward, she paused, her gaze catching a figure striding purposefully toward them. Cloaked in long, black robes that trailed across the snow, his face concealed beneath a hood, the man moved with an unsettling calmness, as if oblivious to the looming threat of the wyrm.
Soon enough, he stood before Momo, his features obscured by the shadows cast by his hood. His skin appeared weathered and worn, belying his apparently young age, and one eye glinted unnaturally—a shining, twitching prosthetic in place of the missing one.
"I can hardly believe it," he remarked, a grin spreading across his face. "Someone actually made it up here uneaten."