Ch. 144 – A Short Little Poem about Becoming God

A small digital clock spawned just above the tablet. With a humble click, the timer began.

Momo’s eyes widened to the size of baseballs, the situation catching up with her. Oh no. She had been too caught up in the cosmic Cat Mom vs. Cat beef that she forgot the most critical, doomed part of it all: she was expected to write poetry.

This was bad for many reasons. Mainly, Momo’s propensity to write no more than three words before experiencing writer’s block. See, she had spent almost all three miserable years of middle school English shoved in a bathroom stall. Not because anyone put her there – but of her own volition, squatted on the toilet seat, art notebook in hand, scrawling unproportioned portraits of Glee cast members.

She operated under the impression of “I know English, why should I have to take a class in it.”

That axiom stood true for many years, to the great dismay of Mrs. Grainy, her former English teacher, where teacher was a strongly subjective word, as Momo didn’t show up to enough classes to be considered a student. The woman, with her heavily painted skin, drawn on eyebrows, and affection for breaking children’s iPhones, tried failing her on multiple occasions.

Okay – not tried. Succeeded. But nobody in the school administration really cared enough to set Momo back a grade, so she just kept failing upwards and onwards. As it turned out, that phrase seemed to not only apply to incompetent Big Tech CEOs, but also her. Go figure.

Until now. Momo’s hands dripped with sweat as she gripped the provided pen, hovering it over the tablet. Some small part of her felt that Ms. Grainy had put this series of events in motion herself, years ago, using a combination of witchcraft and pure spite. A domino effect that was reaping its reward years later, post-death, in a completely different universe.

Momo wouldn’t have put it past her.

Click. Click. Click.

The clock read forty-five seconds. Momo stilled. How long was I thinking about that woman?

“Crap, crap, crap,” she muttered. She needed to think – and think fast. “[Focus].”

The clock stilled, and something occurred to Momo. Trapping her in a cage of nostalgia wasn’t some kind of weird, artistic choice. It was malicious. Machiavellian. Kyros had designed this place to bring out the most base fears of whoever might try to change his precious laws. He had probably written in the failsafe on the very day Morgana handed him the tablet.

The set dressing was designed to very purposefully, very specifically remind Momo just how small she felt in that English class; how stared at, how perceived, how evaluated. Kyros wanted to transport her – literally and figuratively – into the body of that little girl who trapped herself in a dingy, barely hygienic bathroom, pouring her venomous insecurities out into a 2$ Walmart sketchbook.

But that’s not me anymore, she thought, curling her hands defiantly. Asshole.

The metronome ticked again. Thirty seconds.

“Okay,” she said, inhaling. “A haiku. Right.”

Taking advantage of [Focus], she went back through her memories to the [Madman’s Revival] she witnessed Archibald perform. She pictured herself in the room again, smelled the aromas, watched him lay out a plate of breakfast on top of that poor lizard boy.

“The-world-was-mu-ted,” she whispered, reciting the first part, “while-you-slept-lost-in-slumber.”

Five syllables, then seven. Then…

“Break-fast-brings-you-back,” she said, eyes widening as she remembered the rest.

Five again.

“Okay,” she sighed. “Five, seven, then five. Not hard. Just a short little poem about becoming god.”

She closed her eyes, placed the felt tip of the pen on the tablet’s surface, and wrote.

Morgana's pupils,

Excalibur surpassed, Rise

As Lesser Gods now.

—

Momo awoke, not unpleasantly, to the eyes of a woman boring into her own.

“I swear she didn’t have a pulse a few minutes ago,” Sumire mumbled, poking at Momo’s cheek repeatedly. “And her body was as cold as a frozen-over pond. I guess changing the rules of the universe can have unexplained consequences on the human body.”

“Not sleeping, eating, or going to a physician for months can also have unexplained consequences on the human body,” Radu added sardonically. “But it’s probably a mix of both.”

“The small one’s alive?” Akram muttered.

“I think so. But she hasn’t said anything yet,” Sumire said, then smirked. “Just keeps staring at me.”

Momo blushed profusely.

“I’m – I’m alive,” she stuttered. “I think. Did it work?”

“There are no longer monsters pouring out of the sky,” Sumire noted. “So I think you might have done something right.”

Momo felt a thousand pound weight lift off her shoulders.

Sumire removed herself from Momo’s immediate personal space, allowing her a view of the sky above. Thankfully, she hadn’t lied. The giant eyes of a watching titan were noticeably absent, leaving only a remarkably blue atmosphere. Of course, it was diluted just slightly by gray streaks of city smog, but that was normal, everyday pollution. Not the sentient kind.

“It just disappeared, then?” Momo asked. That seemed far too simple. “The grunts and the titan?”

Sumire shrugged. “Sort of. There was this weird moment where I swear I saw some giant hand reach out of the sky and grab the thing – just yank it back in. All sixty five levels of it. Akram doesn’t believe me, but I’m serious. The thing’s nails were painted red.”

Momo blinked. The thing’s nails were painted red.

A smile crept up her face.

“Of course,” she laughed. “Of course they were.”

—

As Momo should have guessed, things were never that simple.

Jarvirium, while still upright, was suddenly undergoing a crisis of authority.

With the loss of the prince, and no message from the King, the knights flailed about, directionless monkeys with their heads cut off. Some turned to alcohol, others turned to ever-predictable power trips, ordering around their lessers to block off the mail chutes which most of the citizens used to travel back and forth from their apartments.

“While I’m very happy he hasn’t shown his face, shouldn’t the King be, I don’t know, trying to kill us right now?” Momo mulled as they pushed through another crowd of disgruntled citizens.

“You overestimate his love for his son,” Sumire said, leading their small pack. She had no problem shoving people around.  “Creatures like him will just have more offspring. He has at least twenty dozen clutches of eggs in line for the throne.”

Momo grimaced. “That’s disgusting.”

“You’re telling me,” Sumire grumbled. “I had to listen to him talk about the fertilization process.”

“But still,” Momo said, swiftly ignoring that for the sake of her mental health. “Shouldn’t he care about securing his capital? Isn’t he obsessed with power?”

They finally broke free of the crowds, ducking into an alleyway. The group of them took a collective breath.

“Yes, you’re right,” Sumire said. She had a grave, deeply concerned expression. “Which is exactly what’s worrying me. If he’s not defending this place, that means he doesn’t think it’s worth defending.”

Momo’s eyes widened.

“What?”

“I don’t think those junkhead knights are keeping the people on the ground for no reason,” Sumire said. “Come on. We can’t stop here. We have to get to the garment district. It’s the closest ring to the outside.”

Not giving Momo time to question her, Sumire pulled at her hand. The rest of them followed suit, letting her direct them through the crowds and the ring-barriers. They had to shove through a few remaining knights to gain entrance to the final ring, but it was nothing they couldn’t handle. Dusk mangled most of them before they even saw her coming, and Sumire’s menacing expression took care of the rest.

Momo was nearly overcome with claustrophobia as they hopped over the barrier into the garment district. The cluttered alley had been busy before, but with the capital in shambles, it was like a pack of oily sardines; every arm was matched to another arm, every knee butting up against an elbow. Shops were boarded up and children were sitting on chimneys, barricades, and all manners of elevated platforms.

Everyone, it seemed, was trying to get a look at the other side of the wall.

“Is there something out there?” Momo said, a chill running up her spine. Something felt off.

“Has to be.”

Moving like an army formation, they fought through the crowds, climbed up an array of spotty ladders, and got nosebleed stadium seats to the sold-out performance that was whatever the hell was going on outside the capital. They were perched on top of a four-story building, stuck between six dwarven children and a wood elf with a smoker's lung.

“I don’t see anything,” Momo said, looking far into the distance. The forests looked as they usually did, dense and woody. The paths leading towards the capital seemed unusually trodden, however. A thousand footsteps pressed into the dirt ground, as if ghosts had trampled there.

Next to her, Radu swallowed.

“Momo, look down.”

Momo tilted her head. And – oh.

From several stories below, an army of very familiar, very dead faces looked back up at her.