Ch. 223 – Clarity

With the help of her new wings, it took Momo mere seconds to reach Jarva. He was no longer a blightful dot in the sky but something real, tangible—his malignant red pupils locked onto her own; his singular tentacle desperately gripped the hilt of his greatsword. She was so close she could see the wrinkles and folds in his leathery purple skin, the beads of sweat on his rounded forehead. Losing his Excaliburs had clearly taken a physical toll on him.

“Hello,” Momo greeted, because no matter the scenario, she always made time for pleasantries. He looked at her in utter disgust. “This feels overdue, doesn’t it?”

It appeared Jarva did not, in fact, share her opinion on small talk.

“The only thing overdue here is your demise.”

He flung his greatsword forward. She ducked out of the way, and a ray of excruciating light passed her flank. While the strike itself missed her by a hair, the emanating heat of the sunray was nearly unbearable. She could feel an invisible sunburn forming like a bruise under her clothes. The kind that would peel away to reveal bone.

She applied [Focus] once more, just to keep herself from screaming.

This was not your grandmother’s greatsword. Every swing of the beast threatened more than just a flesh wound. It threatened total incineration. With her and Jarva’s power now equally matched, it simply became a game of attrition; who could wear down the other the fastest. She’d have to be careful and—more importantly—fast.

Unfortunately, she didn’t want to just kill him outright. She wanted answers. And she had enough questions to weigh down a freight train.

“While you’re trying to kill me, can you at least tell me this: why is Kyros working with Sera? With a disciple of his sworn enemy? And why did the entire pantheon betray Morgana at the drop of a hat?” Momo asked, readying herself to dodge once more. Luckily for her, Jarva’s feeble mortal body—and subsequently, his lackluster Mana resources—were vastly underdeveloped compared to the godly power at his disposal. He had to recharge for several seconds between every attack, breathing heavily.

To her surprise, between labored breaths, he answered her. “A better question: why wouldn’t they betray her? Who would stay loyal to such a vile creature?” he spat, his chest heaving. “Morgana gave them life—her only real kindness—but then immediately took away their agency. Robbed them of their self-determinism. She forced them to pick from a paltry sum of pathetic domains: crime, fire, water, seasons. It is disrespectful to the very condition of existence to be restrained in such a way. She claimed they were equals, but then treated them as one would treat a servant asking to sleep in the chambers of the queen. Unworthy. Unknowledgeable. Incapable of rising above their rank.”

His pupils dilated to fill the entirety of his blood red eyeballs. “Sera, unlike her peers, is a smart woman,” he said. “She understands this inequality, and shares my master’s aspirations of ending it. Aspirations we will make real upon your death.”

Momo stared at him blankly. His entire proposition sounded completely insane. Freedom? Took away their agency? He made it sound like Morgana was some kind of kidnapper. The type of woman to keep her children in the basement and throw them kitchen scraps. It was a complete inversion of events.

“And what kind of aspirations would those be?” she asked, morbid curiosity overpowering her. “What happens when you kill me?”

“The Wraith Box will activate, and all of mortalkind will be vacuumed up, sealed, and then redistributed. Redistributed equally amongst all of the gods. There will no longer be any such thing as domains. No goddess of the seasons, or god of crime, or anything so ridiculous. Each god will be given a portion of mortals to oversee, and their power would be absolute, limitless, all-encompassing, as long as they play within their allotted section.”

Momo’s jaw dropped. To say she was in disbelief would be a horrifying understatement. “That’s what the gods want? To each have their own… mortal petting zoo?”

“You act shocked, as if this isn’t the universal truth of life as Morgana made it. She created the other gods and mankind for the exact purpose of ruling over them. Dictatorship was the very blueprint of this universe. It is only natural for the captive to rebel against the captor, and for the cycle to repeat. In the same way that you believe it is right and just to overthrow my dictatorship, it is right and just that we overthrow hers, no?”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.” Momo’s hand fluttered, and her rapier materialized at his throat. “Kyros and Morgana were equal partners. I saw it with my own eyes. She made one rule for the universe, then Kyros another. I was there, at the museum, I watched it unfold. Even if you’re right—even if the universe is fucked up and in need of a few repairs—any conditions that led to this sad state of affairs is as much his fault as hers.”

Jarva gradually levitated upwards. Tilting his chin ever so slowly, he found her eyes again. An icy, apathetic chill had fallen over his features. Momo became suddenly uneasy. In her experience, tranquility was always much more frightening than anger.

“Is that true? Did you really watch it happen? Really?” he said slowly. “No. You did not. In fact, I can tell you what you saw. You saw the beginning. You saw the game being set. You did not see them play the game of Creation. You don’t even know who went first. And in such a game, going first matters deeply. Whoever goes first gets an unfair advantage—they get to set the tone for the entire length of the play session. And in the game of Creation, the play session is eternal.”

He swung his greatsword upwards, catching Momo off guard with the sudden movement.

“I am still playing the game,” he said. “And I intend to win.”

The greatsword came crashing down.

She dodged as quickly as she could, but it wasn’t fast enough. He was centimeters from slicing her arm clean off when she was struck with a flash of quick thinking.

She thrust her hand straight towards the tip of the sword.

“[Rift Hands]!”

Not realizing what she had done, Jarva propelled the sword forward into her hand. It disappeared straight through her Nether-painted palm.

Momo grinned.

In her evolution to Nether Demon, her hands had become completely inhuman, mere illusions of Nether which imitated fingers and tendons. Under normal circumstances, the blade would have just swerved through the palm and come out the other side, still blasting her to pieces in the aftershock. But [Rift Hands] was a Nether Demon skill which turned her hands into more than just illusions. It turned them, briefly, into portals to the Nether, swallowing up and teleporting anything that fell inside them. The greatsword and its sunbeam suffered this exact fate, thrust into the depths of the blank, dark afterlife.

As soon as the blade was completely through, Momo disabled the skill, leaving Jarva to tug at a sword that was no longer in this plane of existence. He looked completely baffled. It wasn’t even anger on his face, but distress. A child who had suddenly lost the guiding hand of a parent.

“Master, your voice, I can’t hear it,” he mumbled deliriously. He wrenched his neck from side to side, searching, until finally his eyes landed upon Momo once more. “You. You.”

In a flash, he took his tentacle and wrapped it around Momo’s throat, dragging her upwards. He clenched her windpipe unbelievably hard, with the strength of a maddened god, and Momo was reaching for her rapier when suddenly his grip went limp. His beady eyes faded from red to dull gray. It was as if a phantom had passed him through. Momo recalled Sumire’s words.

“But I think that greatsword—that crystal—is what is enabling Kyros to fully take him over. It’s the forbidden magic that was locked on those islands. Outlawed magic, as agreed upon by the full pantheon—to completely take over the body of a mortal and steer the course of human history. If we get the greatsword away from him, I think we can sever that connection.”

Jarva, without Kyros’s magic, was reduced yet again to a mere mortal. He had a disturbingly clear expression on his face. A wide-eyed clarity.

“My son,” he said, eyes enlarging. “Where’s my son?”

He then began to plummet.