No matter how long Momo occupied the position, being reigning Queen of Aloysius never got less weird.
As her hunt for monsters continued, Momo and Kezko took the royal carriage through a battery of towns. Her reception this time around was like night and day compared to her days on the campaign trail. Where she had originally been met with pitchforks and poison darts, she was now greeted with smiles, cheers, and gifts—rose petals at her feet, blood offerings from fountains of Morgana, and even, very occasionally, an entire marriage proposal.
“It is my understanding that you have yet to take a husband,” was the opening line from this town’s suitor: an enterprising young necromancer who had graduated from one of the continent’s new schools of death magic. “I don’t come from much, but I can offer several sheep, and a signed poster of Zephyra from her most recent tour—”
“Actually,” Momo had said, blushing profusely. “I kind of have a pirate at home.”
Apparently, news about her brave victory against Sera’s giant mega-monster had made its way down the grapevine, and public opinion had shot up right with it.
“The people really love you,” Kezko remarked as they waved goodbye to the crowds of Refuge’s End.
The skeletal horsemen had them on a course toward the depths of the forest, where Momo’s next target was purportedly slumbering.
At Kezko’s words, Momo blushed again. Her impulse was to disagree, because, after all, that hadn’t been the truth for a very long time. It had been a hell of an upward battle. But the evidence in front of her was irrefutable.
“I guess so.”
As the carriage ambled over the dirt, Momo took a deep breath, enjoying the quiet of the forest. She had been so consumed by noise these last few days—charitable, well-meaning citizens shaking her hand and yelling in her ear, thanking her profusely for bringing Aloysius out of a dark age; or rather, an overly bright age.
Hearing that sentiment repeated to her over and over had quite the effect on Momo. A gentle fluttering of pride swelled through her. She had been so obsessed over what’d she lost, she’d forgotten what her victory had actually symbolized. For the first time in years, the people of Aloysius were living in relative peace. Sure, she had made a few political fumbles—legalizing all illegal trade was maybe not her smartest move—but overall, things really had changed for the better. She saw it everywhere she went.
Necromancers were no longer the underdog. Skeletons walked alongside men, performing the hard labor that was previously assigned to the prisoners in Jarva’s jailhouses. And—per Momo’s First Law of Undead Labor—even those skeletons were given lunch breaks.
Which they mostly spent staring at walls waiting for their next instruction, but still.
It was the principle of it.
“How are you going to feel, leaving it all behind?”
Kezko ventured the question, looking up from the spellbook in his lap. Hazy sunlight streamed into the window ahead of them, painting him in an unusually bright light, like a dentist’s lamp over a set of particularly gnarly teeth.
“Leaving what behind?” she asked, eyebrows furrowing.
He gestured vaguely to the carriage. “All of it. When you ascend, I mean.”
“Oh.” She averted his gaze.
She had considered it once or twice, but had deliberately stopped herself from dwelling further. She knew that—under typical conditions—lesser goddesses could come and go from the Nether as they pleased. There’d be nothing stopping her from doing the same once she resolved whatever immortal beef was going on up there, and got Valerica to drop the wall barring deities from the mortal world.
“Sumire will take over as queen just fine,” Momo said, and she meant it with her whole being. “Hell, she’s basically been running the place the entire time. Sure, her unique personality might lend to a few… public relations… challenges ahead, but it’s nothing she can’t handle. Morganium will be in good hands.”
Kezko scoffed, slapping the spellbook closed. A plume of dust went up with it.
“I wasn’t asking about the survival of your boring institute of government, you drag. I was asking how you’ll cope with the loss of your humanity.”
He looked at her with a raw intensity. Momo’s stomach tightened.
“The loss of my humanity? I guess that’s one way to look at it,” she mumbled.
“I can’t see any other way to look at it.”
Momo shook her head, then shrugged.
“Honestly, I haven’t felt very human in a long time. The horns. The wings. The gerbil running constant marathons inside my rib cage. Oh, and my hair used to be jet black—now it’s phantom white like somebody’s bed sheets. I’ve looked pale and dead and weird for a while. I don’t think some semantic change from mortal to goddess is going to give me a bigger identity crisis than I already have going on.”
And she didn’t even mention the gem protruding from her neck. Momo had long since sacrificed bodily autonomy for the greater good.
Kezko laughed. “Well, then, I will give it to you that you are certainly more well-prepared than most for such a dramatic shifting of identity. But I do still think it will be a change unlike any you’ve experienced yet. Something much less superficial. For example…”
He reached for her hands, tugging them upward by the wrist and positioning them directly under a sharp ray of sunlight. The Nether skin of her fingers seemed to flicker in and out of existence like Schrodinger’s box. And when the light hit them just right, it was like looking through a portal—Momo could swear she saw a darkened figure standing on the other side.
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Scared, she yanked her hands down. She knew that her transition into the Nether Demon class had done this to her, but it didn’t feel so strange until just then, like her hands were no longer her own.
She glared at him. “What did you just do?”
He raised his eyebrows, offended.
“Me? Nothing! It’s a known fact that Nether distorts in reaction to sunlight. I just wanted to show you… that the closer you inch to godhood, the farther you drift from the material world. You will no longer be able to predict exactly how your body will act.”
He gently laid his hand over her own, and she watched as it fell right through hers, landing on the seat cushion. Her stomach tightened in disbelief. She hadn’t even registered the sensation. How many times had something reached for her, and she hadn’t felt the touch?
“It’s true that goddesses can visit the mortal plane,” he said quietly, and retracted his hand. “But visiting is different from living. They can appear as apparitions, as dreams, as plagues and windstorms. But they cannot live here. Because to mortals, the divine are mere concepts. And concepts have no place here, amongst the dirt and the worms.”
The carriage crawled to a stop, the wheels turning in mud. Kezko looked ahead, out of the window. Momo stared at the side of his face.
“Ah, perfect timing,” he said, and pushed the carriage door open. “Come now. We’ll have to walk the rest of the way. The carriage can’t carry us through this portion.”
As Kezko began padding toward the mud fields, Momo remained in her seat for a moment longer, hands clenched. A single memory was sitting at the forefront of her mind. It was Valerica, descending from the heavens, visiting her on the stolen ship on the Barium Sea. She remembered the way Valerica had reached out and touched her hair, wanting to tousle it lovingly, and it had instead melted right off Momo’s scalp, like a bad chemical reaction.
That’s what Kezko meant, she supposed.
Her insides twisting, she followed him out of the carriage.
—
The mud pits were like quicksand—it felt like an extreme sport just wading through them. So much so, that it forced Momo to really appreciate just how much stronger her body had become. The muscles in her thighs were stiff and pronounced. Her Stamina had nearly tripled. She was no Barbarian Momo, but her fainting spells were now the exception instead of the rule.
She was starting to feel like her body was an actual functioning system again, instead of a militant set of rebellious organs plotting her downfall. It felt good.
“A few months ago,” she began breathily, inhaling as she slowly pulled her leg out of the mud again with a squelch. “I think this legitimately would have killed me.”
“See! This is why I told you to not use your wings to fly over it. What is it you earthlings say? Pain is just weakness leaving the body?” Kezko laughed. He was being carried like a bride over the swamp, sitting comfortably in the cradle of the undead horseman’s bony hands. “Just keep pushing!”
Several minutes later, when her leg finally disconnected from the last stretch of mud, Momo fell to her knees. Blood thumped in her eardrums. She took several seconds to just lie there in the damp grass, forehead planted in the dirt, feeling a level of unparalleled success and achievement. She felt again like her mother in the garden, flopped down with rose stems in her gloved hands. She really had been so blessed that the most manual labor she’d done in her teenage years was carry boxes of maternity underwear to and from delivery trucks.
“Momo.” Kezko snapped his fingers into her ears. “Up, up. You’re not allowed to get mad at me this time. I’m giving you a head start.”
Momo weakly rose from the ground. “What on earth are you talking about?”
She raised her head, and her breath caught in her chest and she saw it slumbering there, in a wide pool of mud—an undulating ball of brown, a liquid mass that was expanding and contracting with each breath. It was as big as an elephant, but with no discernible limbs. The only thing Momo could make out were its eyes and a pair of nostrils: two closed slits, and two open valves puffing out air.
“Now this is just disgusting, Kezko,” she whispered to him. “This is a mythic monster?”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover. It looks like a simple creature, but after you’ve slashed at it enough, and find that your sword has done nothing but become increasingly sticky, you come to realize—how do you kill a swamp? And then you realize, you don’t. And by the time you’ve come to that inevitable conclusion, you’re already floating around its digestive tract.”
Momo narrowed her eyes at him. “Helpful as always.”
But she didn’t need his help. Not that he would offer it if she did. He was already floating away on his skeletal escort, plodding through the mud back to the safety of the carriage.
Because after a few of these fights—first the Siren, then a griffon, and most recently, a thousand year old chimpanzee-goat hybrid—Momo had realized that these monsters were far from unkillable. It was just that the fear they perpetuated was so thick, no one ever really gave it a try. They were like school bullies, only very ancient, and often disgusting.
She did once a once over on the bubbling pile of dirt.
I think I have a skill that will take care of this one.
Silently, she called to the Nether for a skill list. She tapped the parchment with her finger, filtering it to only show the new skills she’d gotten in the last week.
From Nether Demon (Purified Variant) (lvl. 8):
[Nether Teleport]: As a Nether Demon, you can teleport from one replicant area to another without issue. Use this to escape dicy confrontations or simply fast travel. Cooldown of 17 Nether minutes.
From captive souls (Soul Cannibal):
Captive Soul: The Husk | Inherited Skill: [Summon Undead – Husk]
Captive Soul: Shir Griffin | Inherited Skill: [Ripping Talons]
Captive Soul: Goatchimp of the Ancients | Inherited Skill: [Earthquake Stomp]
Captive Soul: Siren of Astervad | Inherited Skill: [Temperature Control]
Extracting her rapier from its sheath, she tapped the tip of it in the mud. The beast seemed to register even the slightest wrinkle in its pool, because it immediately grunted to life, its eyes snapping open. Momo grimaced.
Oops.
Within a second, the mud beast had rushed upward in a fierce torrent of brown, and formed a tidal wave primed to swallow her. Instead of dodging, she decided to stay the course, flinging her sword up so it sliced right through the torrent of bubbling mud.
“[Temperature Control — Heat]!”
Lava-hot heat pulsated through the blob, and the mud began to rapidly dry mid-air. In a matter of seconds, it looked as if someone had freeze-dried the tidal wave. It was frozen just above Momo’s scalp, like a sculpture of clay baked in a kiln. Its two eyes were staring at her from above, rapidly shooting around, confused and unsettled.
She reached out, caressing the cracked surface.
“I know you’re just a sentient pile of mud,” she said softly. “But I still feel kind of bad. Those big puppy dog eyes…” She frowned, biting her lip. “Don’t worry. This is only temporary. I’m just going to borrow your soul for a little bit, and then once all of this is said and done, you can come hunt me down in whatever form you’d like. Pinky promise.”
She drove her sword into the mud, and it crumbled like a tower of sand. It was almost beautiful, the way it cracked slowly at first, then shattered so completely.
She stood in the shambles of it, her legs painted with dried mud, her feet hidden away. The quiet hum of the forest birds sang as she claimed another soul for her sword.
Captive Soul: Ancient Mudbubbler | Inherited Skill: [Festering Mud]
I’m sure that will come in handy for some stupid reason that I can’t yet predict.
She sheathed her rapier, and looked up toward the sky.
Just as Kezko had predicted—another piece of parchment was caught in the wind.