Chapter 26: Ch. 25 – Old Friends, New Beginnings

Momo blinked, the fuzzy outline of Trent Magelegs forming in front of her. The boy had his heels dug into the dirt, breathing heavily as he fruitlessly pulled at Cerberus’s leash. The three-headed beast had to be triple the beanstalk boy’s weight, and it showed.

“Stop it, Cerby! What did I tell you about uninvited licking–”

After a few moments, he finally got a hold of the dog’s collar. He corralled it, commanding him to sit and wait in place. Cerberus obliged in exchange for a cow bone, and Trent let out a breath of relief.

“Sorry about that, he’s a stubborn one,” he said, and then his expression turned to concern, “are you… okay? Oh gods, are you allergic to dogs?”

“No. Why woulb you say dat?”

Momo’s hand leapt to her lips, which had inflated two times their original size. Not only that, but they burned like the depths of hell. Her whole face did, now that she thought about it.

“Oh gawd,” Momo sputtered. She jerked up from her hay bed, head still hazy with sleep. She could see in the shimmering reflection of her puddle-mirror that her face had begun to turn tomato red. She heaved herself over to the puddle, frantically splashing water on her cheeks. The water evaporated the moment it touched her face, providing no relief.

She was on fire. Or, rather, she had become as hot as it. It wasn’t the type of fire she could just stop, drop, and roll out of, either. It was insidious and bone-deep.

She wasn’t allergic to dogs - so it had to be something about that specific fiend of a puppy. She snapped her eyes towards it, watching it tear the cow bone to shreds. Its saliva was burning baseball-sized holes in the dirt below it.

"Oh, dis is bad," she mumbled desperately, "what putz out fire magick?"

“Oh! Do you have low fire resistance?” he said, eyes wide like he had just come to some grand realization.

“Clearwly, yes,” she nodded impatiently, cheeks inflating like balloons, “helwp.”

He nodded, and suddenly invaded Momo’s personal space, pressing his hands to both of her cheeks, “[Healing Wave].”

Blue light radiated out of his palms and into her skin, and Momo immediately sighed in relief. It felt like spreading aloe vera on a particularly bad sunburn—stinging, but euphoric. After a few moments, the pain was entirely gone. He released her chipmunk cheeks, and stepped away awkwardly.

“Do you feel better?” he said guiltily.

“Much,” she sighed, testing her face to be sure. It was still mildly puffy, but no longer burning like a nuclear plant, “thank you. Well, I guess you are also partially responsible, but still.”

“I had no idea you were so weak to fire," he frowned, "I know necromancers are pretty weak to most elemental magics, but Cerberus’s kisses are of such low-grade magic, I didn't think they'd do any harm. He could barely hurt a fly.”

Momo looked at the ditch that had formed in the ground below Cerberus's snack.

“Right,” she said, thinking that one lick from the dog could turn an entire army of flies into an insect graveyard, “and what do you mean, necromancers are weak to elemental magics? Aren’t necromancers like, super strong?”

Trent laughed, pushing up his glasses, “are you kidding? Necromancers are one of the weakest magic wielders. They have very little innate resistance to any magic besides their own, and they have basically no offensive spells.”

Momo frowned. That couldn’t be true. Valerica was an absolute beast, not to mention the entirety of Alois came kicking and screaming when they so much as thought about anything with the ‘necro’ prefix.

On the other hand, she had only gained a single offensive spell in her entire time as a [Necromage Initiate], so that did explain some things.

“I’m so lost,” Momo groaned, “if they’re so weak, why is everyone so scared of them?”

“Because of their summoning potential, duh. They don’t need to be powerful or resistant, they just need their minions to be,” he explained, and then frowned, “aren’t you supposed to be the one teaching me these things? I didn’t hike all the way here to be instructing a level thirty-seven necromancer on the basics of the magic system, did I?”

Momo tensed. She really needed to get lessons from an actual teacher, or read a dreaded book, or whatever people did to put original thoughts in their brains. The only knowledge Momo had acquired was via YouTube videos, but that option was sadly out.

“R–right. Um, that was just a pop quiz, actually,” she swallowed, “congratulations, you passed.”

“A pop quiz?” he perked up, practically salivating with excitement, “oh, that is clever. Was that my entry exam? If I had failed, would I have been sent home?”

“Uh, yep. Exactly. I would have told you to turn right around, but luckily, you passed.”

“Of course I did,” he said proudly, “I am a Magelegs, after all.”

Momo held back a laugh. Had he really never been bullied for that last name? Clearly, he did not attend a San Francisco public school.

“Come on then,” she said, beckoning him through the back-entrance, “but keep that dog as far away from me as humanly possible.”

---

 

Momo wasn’t even going to bother with getting Valerica in on this scheme. Considering the amount of worldly knowledge she had imparted on Momo in her first month—which was to say, almost nothing—she probably wouldn’t be able to teach Trent much more than he already knew, except perhaps how to best season bugs.

She wasn’t so sure the eighteen year old boy with the personal chef would find that too enlightening.

She led Trent instead to the Necromages’ living chambers. The chambers were separated into three hallways, with twelve doors each, almost like a college dormitory. On the front of each door was a name placard, and occasionally a small decoration. With the Winter Holidays fast approaching, many of the Necromages adorned their usual hanging skulls with acorns through the eye sockets.

Momo stopped at the door with the wooden sign attached to it, the letters 'D.W.' embossed on the birch plank. She knocked three times.

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“Ah, visitors!”

Devola whisked open the door, a small gust blowing back Momo as the Necrodancer materialized in the entranceway. Her hair was unusually disheveled, and thick under eye bags colored her face.

“Devola, are you alright?” Momo asked, slightly concerned. She had never seen the woman look anything less than ready to perform in front of a live audience.

“Of course I am,” she said, her hoarse voice betraying her, “come in, come in! Don’t be strangers.”

Trent and Momo obliged, slinking into the room. Momo’s eyebrows rose. The place was in utter chaos. Books were strewn about the floor, crumpled paper balls littered her writing desk. It was the office of a mad scientist, not a dance instructor.

Momo stood there and blinked in awe. Devola would have made a great episode of Hoarders.

“Ah, I’d say have a seat, but…” Devola said, voice faltering. She gestured to the two stools in her room, which were both layered in spellbooks, “my room is a bit occupied at the moment.”

“A little bit?” Trent guffawed, “this is beyond insane. Do you not have cleaners?”

“Cleaners? What do you think this place is?” Devola huffed back.

Momo swallowed. As much as she’d love to hear Devola give the entitled boy a piece of her mind, she had an image to maintain. Momo had a vested interest in keeping Trent's money safely stored in her pocket.

“This place is where you’re going to receive your first lessons from an expert Necrodancer,” Momo interjected softly, hoping that fueling Devola’s ego would distract her, “Devola, this is Trent Magelegs. He’s going to be your first student.”

This did, indeed, distract her. Devola’s eyes widened, and she clapped her hands together in excitement.

“Magelegs? Could you be Olivia’s boy?” Devola's tired eyes shined in a way Momo had never seen them shine – with a brilliant, inspired light, “oh, what an honor it is to finally meet you.”

“You knew my mother?” Trent said, softening at the mention of her.

“Well of course! Olivia and I… we go far back. She and I both studied in Drachenheim in our Intermediate years. We were the founding members of the city’s one and only Guild for Dance & Thievery.”

She frowned, thinking back, “we were also the only members.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Momo deadpanned.

“Still, it was an exhilarating experience. I’ve never been much of a rogue, but together with Olivia, we performed a heist on the Dragon of Drachenheim’s very own treasure vault,” she glowed with nostalgia, “of course, we were caught, and promptly jailed, but a good thief never leaves without a souvenir.”

Devola lifted her wrist, which was covered in an abundance of bracelets. She peeled one off, dangling it in front of Trent. He took it into his hands, intensely inspecting it.

“These are wraith teeth,” he said in awe. The bracelet was indeed constructed of sharp, angular canines, and connected with fine, black string. If Momo had been back on Earth, she would have mistaken it for a bracelet you’d get at Spirit Halloween.

But going by the reverent way Trent looked at it, it had to be impressive.

“Good eye,” Devola winked, “Olivia was actually the one to steal it, the beautiful thief she was, but she told me it suited me more. I refused it, of course, as its value could easily pay for her remaining university tuition. But she insisted.”

Devola paused, her smile faltering.

“She was the reason I chose that name—Wraith,” she smiled sadly, “I always despised my family name, and eventually I got so used to Olivia’s nickname for me, I started going by it.”

“Wait, you’re Devola Wraith?” Trent exclaimed, “my mother talked about you incessantly, like you were some god of Alois, walking amongst peasants. It was terribly annoying.”

Devola’s grin nearly broke her face, “did she? That’s... that’s nice to hear.”

“You bet,” he sighed, but then looked up at her with vulnerable eyes, “even so, she really admired you, and there’s nothing I trust more in this world than my mother's opinion of people. She liked very few, and trusted even fewer.”

He straightened his back, puffing his chest out.

“I would very much like to be your student, Devola Wraith, if you’d have me.”

Devola nearly broke the boy in the embrace that followed. He yelped in pain, but Devola was too overjoyed to hear it, hugging him until Momo could hear one of his bones begin to splinter.

“I’d love nothing more!” she exclaimed, pressing her hand to the back of his head and ruffling his hair. Despite the cracks forming in his glasses, Momo could see a hint of a smile paint his lips.

Momo couldn’t help but grin at the pair of them, a bittersweet mix of joy and jealousy stirring in her chest. She was beginning to slowly understand the sorrow of missing a mother, just as she was slowly learning the joy of being believed in by someone. It was a terribly uncomfortable concoction of emotions, and she desperately missed the numbness of her life-long depressive episode.

God - did she hear herself? A month ago, her best attempt at a poetic sentence was finding a creative new way to phrase her McDonalds order. Intellect points were truly hell on Earth - or Nether on Alois. Valerica should have warned her that they awakened emotional intelligence, too. Momo had spent a solid twenty-two years avoiding the concept entirely, and now here she was, empathizing.

She wanted to throw up.

---

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