Even if Momo didn’t particularly share Kezko’s excitement for hunting unkillable things, she could understand the allure of an unknowable opponent. That kind of foe that, like a ripe grape at a vineyard, frothed up a type of ultra-concentrated, finely-distilled fear. A fear so potent that it became a drug—one that kept her so focused her eyes ran dry.
So she watched, unblinkingly, as she sent the skeletons to the slaughter. She knew she had to conserve her strength and her Mana, so it was best to observe the Siren’s techniques from a distance before trying anything of her own. She hid partially behind a column of stone, shooing away a horde of bats, and covered her ears with the palms of her hands.
“I’ll leave you to it, then!” Kezko cried out, shouting at her from the stairway, which he was rapidly ascending. “I’m no good at fighting without a minion to control. I fear I’ll just get in your way. But I have the utmost belief that you’ll do it, my dear!”
“Wait, what?—”
Unfortunately, even distance didn’t save her when the siren opened her lips and released a screeching cry; the skeletons’ skulls exploded, waves of noise detonating bone. Momo cried out, shoving her fingers as deep as she could get them in her ear canals. It felt as if she was being rattled from the inside—as if she was back in Devola’s embrace, her bones teetering in their sockets from a waltz gone wrong.
Even through the pain, she forced herself to survey the damage. And she was glad she did, because she noticed something strange—only the heads of the skeletons had been blown off. They still had access to the rest of their limbs, which were now clumsily limping into the water. It seemed that the siren had somehow finely-tuned her scream to only target the bones in the head—was this the psychic magic Kezko was talking about?
So all I need to do is keep my head protected?
First ideas are rarely the best ones, but Momo’s skull was still ringing, so she went with it; attuning to her sword, she closed her eyes and cast [Nether Cultivator] into the dark, imagining the thickest pair of earmuffs imaginable, the type they’d have lining the walls at gun ranges in the deep south. She wasn’t sure how Nether as a material would block out sound—she wasn’t sure what Nether was made of to begin with—but she figured it was better than the flimsy wax disintegrating against her eardrums.
The all-black earmuffs dropped off the hilt of her sword onto the ground, landing with a loud thump against the rock. She was unpleasantly surprised at their heaviness. She had wanted to make them thick, but thick in the way a good mattress topper was thick, not in the way that a boulder was. Her arms ached just to lift them.
But this is what she got for using Nether to construct clothing; its physical traits were about as reliable as success at a slot machine. You ask for cherries, you get two red clown noses. You ask for earmuffs, you get a well-fitting set of rocks.
Groaning, she managed to heave them around her head, and was instantly grateful at the silence that fell over her. She saw a skeleton’s body get slapped against the cavern wall and explode into shattered bits, a flurry of icicles tearing it apart, and yet her eardrums only heard a quiet thud. While the weight of the headset was unfortunately enormous, due to the Strength training she had been subjecting herself to for weeks, she was able to bear it without crumpling into a ball.
Momo grimaced as she took in the state of her adoptive army. There were only a few skeletons remaining on the beachside, and the Siren clearly hadn’t lost energy taking care of them. If anything, she seemed excited—her smile ravenous, her seaweed locks erect like Medusa’s. To her, this was nothing more than a post-hibernation treat.
As the Siren toyed with the last skeleton, lifting it to her mouth and gnawing at its bones like a dog with a chicken wing, Momo weighed her options. She could use some of the rapier’s mana to raise the skeletal army again, buying her more time and letting her check to see if the Siren whipped out any secret techniques—but that would likely be a waste of the sword’s Mana.
A skeletal foot skidded to a stop in front of Momo. She looked up, and the Siren’s eyes caught hers—two ice-white pupils that blinked sideways, like a reptile. She felt her stare like a piercing arrowhead, chills running down her spine. The siren’s mouth began to slowly open again, wider now, as if she had noticed Momo’s extra protection and was now accounting for it—
Momo thrust her sword in front of her.
“[Infinite Blade of the Nether Demon]!”
A streak of black erupted from her blade, directed straight at the Siren’s neck. It was off by an inch, but that was intentional—she used all her strength to swing the blade to the right, cutting a clean line across the beast’s thick skin.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
The Siren howled, and Momo thanked her lucky stars she had taken the time and the Mana to create the Nether earmuffs, because even through them she felt like her head was splitting in two. Stars danced along her vision, and the rapier involuntarily jumped from her shaking hands, clattering onto the floor.
She whimpered, kneeling to the ground and reaching for it despite the radiating pain circling like a shark in her skull. And the emotion in her chest surprised her—the aching need she felt as she dragged her fingers along the stone floor, searching for the sword—how useless she felt without it. How reliant she was.
But what was surprising to her was not that she felt this feeling in the pit of her stomach toward the sword, because of course, she was reliant on it—without it, she was just a lump of powerless, exhausted human flesh, a manaless husk of a mage—
What surprised her is… she no longer felt it toward a person.
There was no one coming to save her, and that was okay.
She no longer felt useless alone.
The tips of her fingers found the hilt of the sword, and she grabbed it. She forced her head upward, gritting her teeth, to find the siren decapitated. Decapitated, but more importantly, not dead. And stranger even, it was still singing. Momo’s eyes flicked to its head on the ground—it was still, slack. Then where was that song coming from?
Momo followed the creature’s hands. She expected them to be gripping around its phantom skull, desperate and confused, but they weren’t. They were hiding somewhere behind its back—like a drawing Momo would have done when she was younger, unable to compute the proportions of knuckles and thumbs.
Was its human head just a decoy?
It had to be. If this beast really hadn’t been slaughtered in thousands of years, Momo was sure it wasn’t as simple as just cutting it down to pieces. The myth of the Siren was about misdirection, after all. Beauty was the red herring it used to enthrall and consume.
Unfortunately, this all meant she’d need to get around to its back. Not an impossible task—she could fly, after all—but she was intentionally keeping her distance so she wasn’t too close to its claws. If it managed to separate Momo from her rapier, she’d be done for.
Momo had no other choice. She got a running start, balancing her breathing just like Nia had taught her, before taking off, her wings gliding along the smooth, cold stone of the cavern walls. She did a circle around the beast, keeping a wide berth. It screeched again, sharper, trying to ward her off, but Momo pressed on. She wanted to see where those hands were headed, what they were protecting.
And there it was—or rather, there they were—clear as day, three diamond-shaped glands on the back of the fishwoman’s leathery midsection. The Siren’s hands were cupping over them protectively, leaving only one open—the true mouth, presumably—to scream.
In all her frenetic adrenaline, Momo actually grinned. I’m doing this. I’m doing this alone.
I’m coming, Valerica.
She raised her infinite blade upward, priming to strike down again. She’d do two cuts, one down, another across. It’d be more than enough to shred them.
“[Infinite Blade of The—]”
Her mouth went slack. A sharp, drenching pain washed over her.
She looked down at her stomach. Protruding from her gut was an icicle, sharp as a knife. It had pressed all the way through her robes before exiting cleanly near her belly button. In her shock, Momo slowly turned her head backward toward the cavern wall. A hundred identical icicles protruded out of the wall just as this one had—a wall of frozen spikes—all seemingly appearing out of nowhere.
How did she …?
The Siren screamed again, and the icicles shattered. The one in Momo’s stomach, which had been keeping her where she was, suffered the same fate—and Momo plummeted. She didn’t have the energy to keep her wings afloat, so she dove like a ragdoll into the deep lake, an anchor being pulled down with a sinking ship.
As she sank, her limbs clawing through the waves, she caught sight just how deep the body of the Siren went. Its serpentine form twisted in circles, piling up like rope at the bottom of the lake. Sputtering off the Siren’s tail were tendrils which slipped around the perimeter of the pool, touching every wall, sneaking into every crack and crevice.
Momo noted, somehow, through bouts of delirious panic, that the water she was sinking through alternated between molten and freezing—the cause most likely being the puffs of hot and cold liquid ejecting from the serpent’s hundreds of small glands.
And this, of course, was something they’d conveniently left out of the art textbooks—sirens could evidently control water temperature. That was why the pool hadn’t been frozen over when they entered. That was also why the Siren was able to summon up a horde of icicles seemingly at will, by sending its tendrils through the cavern walls, shooting out water from its glands, and rapidly freezing it.
And all of that was wonderful to realize, but it wasn’t helpful to her in the least. Momo did not know any spells about rapidly changing temperature. She couldn’t turn this water into a pit of lava—and even if she wanted to, that had the added effect of burning her alive.
She felt useless tears leaving her eyes, melting in with the rest of the water. Not sad tears, but angry tears. And they weren’t particularly helpful, either, not practically, but they sent a fervor through her veins—a very human, mortal fervor. The fervor to live.
She had two spells left in her, and she knew exactly which ones they’d have to be.
She pinched her nose, and opened her mouth.
“[Blade Division - Projectiles].”
Her rapier cracked into three pieces, three slivers of demonic black, and sputtered forth through the water, up and up and up. She prayed to Morgana—uselessly, because who prays to a retired goddess?—and hoped they’d find their intended targets.
Then, with her last sliver of Mana, and her last breath, she relied—once again—on herself.
“[Body Double]”