As it turned out, love was a particularly potent ink for Momo, who possessed quite a lot of it.

  She considered herself lucky that skill books were not born of something altogether more commonplace, like spite, which for most people was in high supply, but for Momo was a bit like a rare, elusive flavor of jelly bean.

  Some people held grudges, other people didn’t realize they were holdable at all.

  Momo was of the second sort.

  (Maybe except for when it came to a certain bald necromancer. But it wasn’t Momo’s fault that some truly despise-able people, like Sera, had a talent for attracting hatred so unstoppably.)

  Still, even if Momo was well-suited for the task, she figured it would still be best to begin with something simple. Skills she’d learned earlier in her necromancy career, like [Disguise].

  So she started with a four-page spread dedicated to Phil, her late bear-friend. She learned two things while penning that drawing of Phil—one, that the bear skeleton was almost anatomically indistinguishable from that of an overly-inflated dog, and two—that her choosing Phil to be the subject of the book was no mere coincidence.

  In fact, there was no one person—or rather, bear—she could have chosen.

  Because, as became immediately apparent, spellbooks preyed on memories. Siphoned them from you like a siren. Momo could feel the sensation lurking at the edges of her mind, like two clawing fingernails digging into the cardboard of her skull. The fingers pried and pried, until they found an opening, then sucked a smidge of her consciousness out of her body.

  It was very disconcerting.

  She was well-accustomed to consciously expelling mana outward. She was not accustomed to it digging back into her, like she was a shallow grave, and the spellbook was a very persistent shovel.

  Using [Eye of the Nether Demon], she closed her eyes, placed her consciousness in a corner of the living room, and observed this process from afar as her body worked—watched as around half of her mana would flow through her pen into the parchment, soaking it with ink, while the other half would softly repel from the page, and slink back through her hand, re-entering her bloodstream.

  And at that exact moment that it re-entered her body, she’d get a jolt—like a sharp scratch along her knee, or an unconscious twitch of her eyeball—and she’d see a bright flash of a memory.

  She’d see Phil; or Sumire; or Valerica; and she’d feel exactly how it felt, in that moment, to use whichever skill she was trying to communicate on the page.

  Her mana would take that flash of memory, and distill it like vapor—essentially stealing the DNA of the spell from her subconscious mind, and laying it out on paper.

  “Ouch!”

  She was torn back into her body. Her eyes popped open, and she half-expected her hand to be on fire. She whined, shaking it violently—but there was no flame there. Just raw, unamused mana crackling at her fingertips. The blue specks of light were looking at her as if to say stop it.

  [Purify] was proving to be a difficult spell to commit to paper.

  This wasn’t completely surprising, seeing as it was a God-level endeavor, and she had only started spellbookcraft two hours before. But still.

  It felt like getting her hair ripped out of her skull, over and over.

  She gazed melancholically down at the page. Etched together with zig-zag lines was the outline of a Nether Demon. Since the creatures were pure black, they took a lot of ink, and consequently a lot of mana. She had drawn herself straddling the demon, pressing her open palm to its chest, funneling magic—no, mana—no, something else—

  She groaned, winding her ink-soaked fingertips through her white hair. Hmph. This was the problem, wasn’t it? She didn’t understand this skill. With the other spells, she just knew, innately, how to use them. The System had provided the knowledge to her like a neat little blueprint. But she had created [Purify], and she had no idea how she’d done it.

  It wasn’t some kind of exact science she could replicate —not an amount of chemical x and chemical y to be measured in a beaker—but a feeling, an emotion, an overwhelming urge to free something.

  A shock of painful lightning coursed through her, and her pen unconsciously pressed deeper into the parchment, leaving a dimpled mark. A violent splotch of black.

  She blinked at it.

  And then she brought the page up, and tore it in two.

  Left on the book was half of the demon, the white outline. In her palm was the blackened splotch.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The urge to free something.

  She padded slowly to the window, pushing it upwards with a loud creak until the noises from the front lawn flooded into the room—chirping birds, wailing sirens, the crush of the waves near the cliffside, and the raging wind.

  She stuck her arm through the open slit, and let go of the piece of paper.

  It was swallowed immediately by the current, flying high then low then out of sight.

  She closed the window with a soft click, and heaved out a sigh. When she returned to her chair, she looked at the skillbook, torn in two, and noticed a soft glow around the edges—not blue, but pure white, like Godly magic.

  A smile, nervous at first, then excited beyond belief, crept up her face.

  ***

  “What do you mean they’ve just left?”

  Kyros’s voice echoed like a vulture’s call over the massive green field.

  He was out of his domain for once, out of his comfort zone, and it was obvious in his fidgeting—his bony knuckles kept clicking together like small metronomes.

  “They have,” Ytra repeated, her lips a placid line across her face. “Done just that, your highness. I have been keeping count of the nether demons ever since the infestation began, and they had concentrated in enormous numbers here.” She gestured around the Little Slice of Heaven, where the ceremony for Kyros’s ascension was to take place. “But now they’ve all moved… Somewhere else.”

  “And where…” Kyros took Ytra roughly by the chin. “Do you suspect that they went?”

  Ytra was undeterred by his manhandling.

  “Does it matter where they went? I would think you’d be happy not to get your hands dirty. Before we arrived, I estimated that we would have to destroy upwards of thousands…”

  She was telling the truth there. Well, she was always telling the truth. But she had learned, as of recently, about a little thing called Omission. And her sister, Redirecting…

  Kyros scoffed, and gently tossed away her face, receding back into himself.

  “Of course I am happy. I am overjoyed. This—this nuisance has taken care of itself on the exact day that I am set to receive Morgana’s powers, in the exact location that I am set to do so. But that is the problem, isn’t it. Why? This can’t be a coincidence. Someone is meddling, she is meddling—”

  His eyes glew red, like a festering sun on the verge of explosion.

  “It would be impossible for Momo to meddle, your highness. She is trapped on Earth, per your instructions.” Ytra licked her lips. “And the paltry sum of demons we sent there seems to have distracted her for the time being. I have not felt her make any attempts to re-enter the Nether so far.”

  Kyros grumbled, but the color in his eyes mellowed. He kicked up a flurry of leaves with his feet, like a petulant child.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s right… Trapped… Distracted…”

  He turned to her with a sudden crack of his neck.

  “But you’re sure we only sent a small amount of them? Could they—could Earth be where they all wandered off to? All the demons in the Nether, parading around that one sad little planet?”

  Ytra bit down on a smile—how strange, this feeling that made her want to move her facial muscles upwards, as if experiencing joy, she thought—then cleared her throat, and shrugged.

  “The goddess of balance cares not where things are, only that they are still, well, out of balance.”

  She whistled.

  “All of that is to say, I have no idea. I haven’t checked.”

  Kyros’s feet paused, the crinkling of leaves halting. His eyes bore into the side of her face with a deadly rage. Except, instead of assaulting her, he seemed to skip past screaming or slapping, and went straight to the aghast exhaustion that came afterwards. His shoulders slumped.

  “Ytra. Check.”

  ***

  “I have something for you. A parting gift.”

  Somewhere else in the Nether, a very different exchange was underway.

  Morgana and Valerica sat by a fire. The coals were hot on Valerica’s heels, warm through her socks. Around them were the wooden walls of a cabin, creaky and mossy.

  Where Valerica was dressed for a sleepover in a comfortable sweater and wool leggings, Morgana was dressed for a funeral; her funeral. She wore black, a stunning dress that wrapped around her skeletal curves. They both nursed a cup of tea—Blood Moon Bliss—their favorite.

  “I do not accept your gift,” Valerica said bitterly in response, not looking away from the fire. “Because, as I thought I made clear, I do not accept your parting.”

  Morgana chuckled hollowly, and set her mug down.

  “Denial isn’t a good look on you, darling.”

  “Surrender is a worse one on you.”

  “Must we rehash this?”

  “Yes, we must. As it seems delaying you is the only spell I have worth anything anymore.”

  Morgana scoffed, leaning down to pick up the gift from the floor—it was in a picnic basket, wrapped up in a soft blanket. She put it on the table between them, as she knew Valerica would twist around wildly like a feral cat if she tried to place it in her lap.

  “I’m sorry I’ve made you feel this way,” Morgana sighed. “But it has been a necessary evil of the process. But, I must tell you, this is not my surrender, dear. This is my—how would the dear humans we love put it—my highly nuclear conclusion to an unwinnable war.”

  At Morgana’s words, Valerica startled, turning her head to look at the other goddess through hooded eyelashes. The flames flickered on her face, painting across her hollow cheekbones.

  This was far different from the script that Morgana had been feeding her for months. She had not mentioned the war before; she had not mentioned any sort of retribution—

  A slow, strange smile flashed across Morgana’s lips.

  It was one unlike anything Valerica had seen on her before.

  “Did you really think I was going to let him win this?”

  Before Valerica could get another word in, Morgana flashed her undead hand toward the basket.

  “We can’t speak any further. Open the basket, and you’ll understand.”

  ***

  After a sweet departure from Half Moon Bay, in which Rebecca thanked Momo a thousand times in thirty minutes, hugging Momo so hard she thought her spine might split, they got back on the road. Several hours later, they were once again in Momo Headquarters, the clones all gathered around the table.

  Stacked on top of its oak surface was around sixty spellbooks. That wasn’t even counting the massive amount of the ones still in the car. These were only the highest level ones; selected powers and abilities that would take all of the clones straight to the top of the food chain.

  And, of course, most importantly—[Purify].

  Ten copies of it. Six extra in case Mallmart spilled Cheerios on four of them.

  “Alright, guys.” Momo grinned widely, innocently, unbeknownst to the fact that the entire universe had just quickened pace towards a very deadly conclusion. “Ready your engines, because we're about take back Earth.”

  Mallmart groaned.

  “You are so cheesy.”

  Momo Book 3, Queen Momo, is now out on Amazon! You can pick it up on Paperback or on Kindle, and even if you don't buy it, you can always leave a rating or a review to help boost the story! Thanks so much!