The air felt different in Morganium.

She wasn’t quite sure what it was. But there was a heaviness to it, a humidity. Everything seemed slower, more laborious: the skeletons dawdled in their work, taking longer breaks than usual to watch paint dry or to count their own fingers. The mortal civilians—the ones that were left, and hadn’t been shipped off as temporary refugees—seemed to tiredly whisper, not yell and cheer, when they saw her float through the city streets.

Maybe it was because the sun was particularly hot that day.

“Momo.”

Sumire’s voice was breathy as she came running out of the tower entrance and toward the center of Morganium plaza where Momo stood. She looked ragged and exhausted, her hair tied up in a loose bun and her cloth armor unusually disheveled. Momo frowned in worry as the two connected in a hug, and she pressed her hand into Sumire’s back protectively.

“What? What is it?”

Sumire pulled back, and Momo gripped her arms, searching her imploringly.

Her mind immediately went to the worst thing she could think of.

“Oh god, did Nia and Vivienne try and—”

“No.” Sumire shook her head decisively. “They’ve been good. It’s the—god—” she wiped her upper brow, sweat dripping from it. “It’s this heat.”

Momo’s adrenaline promptly dissolved.

“The… heat? Sumire, you look like the capital just got struck by a meteor, not a five degree increase in the thermostat.”

Sumire glared at her, more frustrated than angry. “You’ll feel it soon. It feels normal at first, but then it settles in, and suddenly you’re chugging water like there’s no tomorrow.”

As if to prove the point, she pulled a flask from her hip, and tipped it into her mouth.

The water lightly sizzled on her lip.

“Vivienne thinks it’s some kind of city-wide debuff,” she continued, licking the hot droplet away, “But no one has access to the Ruler System except you.”

Momo furrowed her eyebrows, and called to the system. A scroll of parchment floated down from above, and by the time it was in her hands, it felt hot to the touch, like it had been steamed just above a boiling pot of water. She was grateful to not have much feeling in her Nether-fingers anymore.

Morganium — Capital

Control Rating: 99.2%

* 99.2% from positive sentiment towards you

* 0.8% from negative sentiment toward ongoing climate conditions

Active Effects

* [Molten Solar Cloud] Area of Effect cast by deity Kyros. This effect will expire in 0-3-SPELL-ERROR-NO-EXPIRATION-DATE-J5GH2.

“Oh wow,” she muttered. “Now that’s just petty.”

“What is it?” Sumire asked impatiently.

“Kyros. He cast another area of effect on the city. Just like he did on all my holdings back when I was running the campaign trail. Only this time, it’s explosive heat, not brainwashing.”

Sumire sighed, closing her eyes as she digested the information. “So it’s exactly what Vivienne thought. Why would he do that right now, though? We’ve been rebuilding for months. If he wanted to slow us down, or turn the populace against us, he could have done it much earlier, before we sent people over to Drachenheim and Mekna.”

“I think I might know why,” Momo said, biting her lip as her mind drifted to the scroll in her back pocket. “Kezko’s planned worked. I’m… able to ascend now.”

Sumire’s eyes snapped back open. She looked shocked, frozen, for a moment, before slowly raising her hands to grip around Momo’s wrists. Momo watched as honey brown fingers floated through her Nether skin.

“You did it,” she said, and a laugh escaped her. She shook Momo like a stuffed animal. “You jerk. You actually did it. By Nerida, I mean—you’re going to be a goddess? I’ve heard fairy tales about mortals banging deities, but I never expected to be living one.”

Momo blushed and rolled her eyes. “Stop it. You make it sound so gross.”

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Sumire only plowed forward, a large grin painting her face.

“What’s your goddess form going to look like, then? Please tell me you get to keep the horns,” she said, then laughed again. “Wow. Dating a goddess. This must be some sort of personal lifetime achievement. If I ever reach Excalibur, I hope I get a class like [God-Kisser]. Maybe I can get some sort of stacked bonus effect each time we makeout.”

Momo was nearly burning as hot as the sun when she bowed her head. “Oh my god.”

Sumire’s teasing died down as she tightened her hold over Momo’s wrist. “Okay, I’m done. Promise. In that case, of course that’s why he’s pulling this now. Kyros knows how big of a threat you are to him. He’s probably doing everything in his capacity from the Nether to stop you from ascending.”

It was true that deities were very limited in how much direct control they could exercise over mortals. They had plenty of indirect control—influencing classes, skills, and pretty much anything attached to a system—but due to the way Morgana set things up, they couldn’t retaliate with direct attacks against specific mortals without risking an all-out war from whichever god that mortal was representing.

It was a lot of passive aggressive, proxy bullshit.

All of which Momo had gotten very used to.

It wouldn’t be stopping her now.

“We’ll have to relocate the remaining civilians,” Momo said, gazing back at the long winding pavement that she had come from, dotted with mostly shuttered businesses and a few remaining homes. “That, and hire a bunch of water mages.”

“Already on it. I have some contacts in the sea scavengers who are happy to put up some self-filling wells and artificial waterfalls in exchange for a little gold from our treasury.”

Momo smiled at her affectionately. She really would make the perfect queen.

“I told you, you don’t need me.”

Sumire frowned at that, the harsh sunlight painting her face in an ethereal light. “Needing and wanting are two different things, Momo.”

—

“Momo the Reaper, huh,” Nia hummed. “Sounds silly.”

Momo tore the parchment from her hands with a groan.

“I thought you’d be nicer without the handcuffs.”

“I was never nice.”

The unlikely pair of them sat in one of Morganium’s last surviving taverns, a shoddy shack of a building with sunlight spilling through cracks in the ceiling.

After Sumire and Momo took some time to catch up, Momo had decided, without much reason at all, to seek out her former trainer. They had met at the tavern an hour ago, and had downed about three beers since.

“You can be nice,” Momo mumbled into her glass. “Sometimes.”

The choice of venue for their conversation wasn’t completely by accident. All the business’s patrons were now skeletons, beer slopping from their steins through their empty chest cavities onto the floorboards. It was hardly a place to escape the heat, but the constant source of hydration made it good enough for Momo.

That—and, due to its mouthless patrons—it was awfully quiet.

The perfect place to drunkenly decide on life changing decisions.

“Never nice. Just truthful,” Nia corrected. “Sometimes that truth is nice to hear, sometimes it’s not. But don’t go calling me something as patronizing as nice.”

“I know, I know,” Momo said, looking into the murky brim of her beer. “Truthful. That's why I want you to help me make this choice. I don’t want to pick the convenient choice. I want to pick the right one.”

Nia laughed darkly, stretching her now-free hands. After a long period of probation, Sumire had finally deemed her too much trouble to lock up, and removed the mana-depleters.

“Not sure why you came to me about picking the right choice,” she said, waving her hand to get the attention of the skeletal barkeep. “I’m the only person in this city that’s still officially considered a prisoner of war. If you really wanted sound advice, you would have gone to Viv. No, you want something else—that’s why you came to me. Now out with it.”

The barkeep served up a cold daiquiri, and Nia downed it in one long sip. Momo frowned, because she was right. Her gut, not her head, had taken her to Nia.

“I don’t want…” she started quietly. “To kill Kyros.”

Nia’s glass paused at her lips, and she looked at Momo with an unusual curiosity.

“That’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say,” she said, placing the cup down firmly on the bartop. “Your buddy Valerica presents you with a perfect plan to destroy the guy who’s made your existence here a living hell, and you’re suddenly feeling merciful?”

She held up a hand before Momo could respond.

“That was a stupid question. Of course you’re feeling merciful. You’re always feeling merciful,” she said bitterly. “I would be dead, floating around the Nether without a thought in my beautiful head if you weren’t. How lucky I would have been then. But no.”

“You seriously wish you were dead?”

“Of course not. Of course I don’t. Because of you, I’m no longer Sera’s stupid little puppet. I get to hang out with my sister everyday. I teach knife skills to adorable little shitheads at the orphanage. My life has never been better. And that is deeply infuriating,” she grumbled. “So mercy’s great and all. But where does it get you with Kyros? If you don’t want him dead, then what do you want?”

Momo paused, her mind really mulling over the thought.

“For everyone to… get along?”

It even felt stupid leaving her mouth. She kept going before Nia could slap her.

“I want to find a way to end the war forever,” Momo said, nervously playing with her fingers. “But I don’t want to do it Valerica’s way. If we do it Valerica’s way, then Morgana ends this whole thing exactly as she started it. Alone. She literally created the other deities in order to be less lonely. To have friends. And sure, they’re fighting right now, and maybe have been for the last few eons, but that doesn’t mean she actually wants to murder them.”

When Nia didn’t interrupt, Momo felt emboldened to continue, taking a long breath in.

“I just—I guess what I’m saying is, I know what I want to do,” she stuttered. “I want to solve this some other way, with reconciliation, not conniving plots. But I’m…”

“Scared of losing the person who made you believe in yourself in the first place?”

Momo swallowed thickly, and nodded.

“And you’re coming to me because I did exactly that,” Nia muttered. “And you want to know how it feels, now, on the other side of it.”

Momo lowered her head in embarrassment, cheeks reddening. She quietly whispered “yes.”

Nia picked up her glass and examined it intently. The ice cubes inside wobbled in the water.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you,” she said. “It’s terrible. It felt like a part of me was being surgically removed when I finally let go of needing Sera’s approval.”

Momo’s stomach churned.

“But.”

Nia’s voice hitched, and she set down her glass, turning to Momo.

She took in a breath.

“The freedom I felt in the aftermath,” she said quietly. “Has been nothing short of a miracle.”