The ground below her continuously shifting towards a light brown was interesting. In Europe, everything was either covered in grass or dirt of a quite dark colour. Over here in the middle east, where rainfall was less abundant and mountains made much of the land difficult to cultivate, the ground had a different colour and lay bare more often, the vegetation was limited to dry wheats, bushes and the occasional tree. Around rivers, Momo often saw strips of fresh green, but those were certainly the exception.

Where there were people, other rules applied. Farmers had figured out how to adjust nature in a way that their risks were minimized. Although heavy rainfalls or extended dry periods could still ruin a harvest, the rectangle shaped fields were watered artificially, the ground ploughed, enriched with fertilizer and ultimately planted with crops bred to survive the conditions of the climate while yielding the maximum of edible parts.

Momo was quite impressed by what mundane humans carved out of the world in the absence of magic. Farming must have been one of the first inventions ever made, since it enabled the shift from a roaming to a settled lifestyle. The entirety of known history hinged on a few people having the idea to not just gather but also grow plants.

‘I wonder what I will look back on in a few years and realize how obvious a decision was in hindsight,’ she thought and lowered her flight until she was about a dozen metres above ground. There were several people overlooking the fields, some farmers walking in between the bushes to check on their plant’s health. None noticed her as she flew around; her spell was still active.

Having arrived in the rough area of the map she wanted to, all she could do now was go through the repetitive task of trying to enter a barrier, move and repeat until she succeeded. Like an archaeologist who knew that somewhere, at a metre’s depth, there were ruins of an ancient city around here but had no idea where exactly. Well, actually, she got the much easier job, but the location problem was still roughly equivalent.

Now she REALLY regretted having thrown away her phone. There were enough map-drawing tools that she could have used to easier mark where she had already attempted to enter than scribbling educated guesses in her notebook. Also, a phone didn’t begin to flip pages when a dusty breeze rolled over.

Covering a hundred metres of ground, she raised her arm again and suddenly found herself entering a barrier. “Yessss!” she enthusiastically hissed and lowered that hand with a fist pump. Marking the area with a big E on her copy of the map, she slowly descended. Turning to a blank page, she began noting down what she saw.

The city was built around a central ziggurat, stacked squares of light brown stone, surprisingly intact and painted with cobalt blue and gold. Each gently sloped wall ended framing an area that once must have been a traversable garden but was now a thick network of green that Momo’s gaze couldn’t pierce.

The front side of that palace sported a balcony only accessible through the inside and three massive staircases that allowed ascent up to the highest level. Although it had a structure that was easy to defend on principle, the way that stairway was set up reduced that advantage tremendously, the only obstacle for a charging attacker becoming height and distance. It was a showcase version of a fortress, not a proper one.

Below the massive walls lay a once orderly system of houses, gardens and roads, all turned into turmoil by the vegetation having been left on its own for thousands of years. There was a sudden cut off point, from where buildings were placed in seemingly random intervals around the heart of the barrier. Momo guessed that the original buildings must have ended there and more had been added with the passage of time, giving housing to the families of whoever had worked here once upon a time.

She spent a good amount of time flying over the city and making more detailed notes about the shape of rooftops or certain insignias she found multiple times. As payback for having her helped find this place, Momo had promised Prometheus to return with the information of where to find this. Although the Great Sultanate claimed all of the middle east as part of its ruling space, truth of the matter was that this part of the earth was so sparsely populated by Abyssals that it fell into the category of unsettled ground.

Momo was aware of two reasons as to why, in the thousands of years that had passed, nobody had attempted to properly claim Mesopotamia, the former being tightly linked to the latter. First were all the barriers still around from the glory days, filled with numerous dangers. Second, Mesopotamia lay in an odd position, closely between two leylines that merged east of Cyprus. Natural barriers spawned often here, making settling difficult but also so lucrative that each great power was keeping a warning eye on each other attempting to properly go there.

That this wasn’t the most stable region on earth may also have something to do with it.

Done writing down what she felt was productive, Momo softly landed on the balcony of the ziggurat and looked inside. Although the lack of wind had kept the ruins largely whole, all of the magic that once had lit up the ziggurat had long since dissipated. Sending a firefly ahead of herself, only seeing the stone walls from ancient times, she stepped inside.

Everything was quiet, absolutely quiet, which made Momo a bit nervous. In the tense atmosphere, she tried to distract herself by looking at the walls. Archaic use of an already archaic alphabet was plastered all over the walls. Names of monarchs and their deeds, sterilizations of a bearded man grinding his axe on silver mountains. A massive blonde woman holding a spear whose shaft was attached, or perhaps came from, the tail of a black dragon whose half-decayed body wound around her. Together they made up the outline of an eye and the slit.

“Metracana,” Momo mumbled the word that was engraved underneath, after stopping at that particular image, recognizing the blonde berserker in it. Taking a step back and dispersing her fireflies, the artificial support looked at the entire mural. Unwittingly, she must have stumbled into some sort of history room.

That dragon appeared over and over again. Winding around some, devouring other figures. For a moment, Momo thought there may have been two different ones. One dragon that was pristine, beautiful even, glittering with the waves of the ocean, the other was a hideous beast, covered with scars and eyes, flesh getting carved out of it by brave warriors, used to create items of great power. If the rare image of the dragon’s front hadn’t been shown, showing the halves belonging together to a disgusting mouth that opened into four parts, then the fact that the pristine dragon was always looking right and the hideous one left would have tipped Momo off.

‘Chaos undying, mother Tiamat,’ she managed to decipher the words, following the windings of the image. Tiamat got progressively more hideous, even the pristine half of her face was eventually attached to a rotting body that continuously leaked water like blood from an open wound. Only a few of the five wings seemed to escape that fate, others reduced to skeletal remains. Every version of her was connected somehow, tails, heads and wings melding at points to create a vast network; the image had clearly been expanded over time. The higher Momo’s gaze wandered, the newer the paint must have been.

There was a point where the artist had given into madness or been replaced with someone clearly not right in the head, nevertheless talented, however. The words ‘End it – End it – End it – End it’ formed a calligraphic masterwork, the repeated words flowing into the shape of Gaia. Her hands were closed around a tower, some sort of ball at the centre. No, not a ball, there was more to that, Momo just needed to lighten that area up more and look more closely. There were clearly details there, layers of black and grey crossing over in a writhing mess. Momo just needed to study it a bit and maybe she would be able to…

The entire mural suddenly exploded into rubble as ancient history was lost forever through two figures bursting through it. “Oh my everything, who?!” she shouted accusatorily as she jumped backwards, wings spreading. The chamber was more than large enough for some manoeuvring.

Momo’s eyes adjusted in response to the blinding light that was constantly emitting from one of two beings now in the chamber with her. It was a woman with long, pale blonde hair that flew in straight strands as she jumped around. Her movements were quick, despite her wearing an elaborate grey armour, sticking closely to her curves and even winding around her breasts, framed with bands of golden sigils. She wielded a regular sized sword of a silvery white in one hand and a shield of dark bronze in the other. That was so regular that, in a world where there were people swinging swords bigger than themselves with one arm, Momo was a bit weirded out.

Not nearly as weirded out as by the woman’s enemy. It probably had been a wolf once upon a time. A large canine, shoulders as high as Momo’s and several times longer. Along tail and back sprouted a myriad of tentacles, boneless hands gripping the air with smooth movements. The creature had no ears or eyes on its head, only a large maw with jagged teeth, a tongue lolling out. In the liquid black fur that covered its body, more maws and eyes opened randomly, blinked, changed into the other, only to disappear again. With its breaths and from the many wounds already covering it, it exuded spores that quickly dissipated in the air.

Momo didn’t need to guess who she was better off helping.

Still, she couldn’t help herself and had to complain, “Seriously, you just destroyed an ancient piece of history! Worse, before I could take a look at it!”

“Who even are you?!” she got shouted back at, the other woman jumping back when a bunch of tentacles came down on her like a bundle of whips. They crashed into the floor. Momo wasn’t sure how she hadn’t heard this fight going on before. “Watch out!”

The Lorylim infested monster turned its attention away from the knight the second it spotted Momo. It got on its hind legs as it inhaled deeply, chest expanding to the point of absurdity, then it unleashed a breath attack filled with the spores it was already oozing.

Momo concentrated and extended her left hand. A dice of white mana appeared in front of her palm, quickly unfolding into a cross shaped shield. Waves went through the surface of the barrier as the support spent more and more mana to keep it up. It was a resource she had a lot of, so she didn’t mind this kind of contest of power at all. The attack ceased long before she even felt her mana pool threatened.

This fight was clearly on the tail end already, with the other lady in the room charging with her shield raised, ramming it in the upright creature’s soft belly and then slashing it open with her sword. A cacophonic laughter could be heard as the one maw belonging to the creature that had been taken hold of whimpered in pain. In a quick counterattack, it managed to snap its jaw around the knight. Teeth broke with the sound of snapping twigs upon the grey armour.

Momo was afraid that she would now have to fight a corrupted… whoever she was. All it would take, likely at least, was for that wolf creature to repeat that breath attack point blank. Instead, it only retaliated physically, throwing its head around a few times and then tossing her across the room. Shards of its teeth followed in the wake of the knight’s impact destroying yet another wall.

Now attacking the artificial support again, the Lorylim was extending its tentacles in an attempt to grab her. “No thank you,” Momo decided, flying away, the black limbs continuously chasing her regardless. “The only tentacles I ever want close to me are Undine’s.”

Weaving and dodging, passing over the blonde knight who was shaking her head and searching for her weapons, Momo flew a circle around the room. Her mind was quick at work. Folded Mana, the last skill her creator had gotten her, was incredibly potent but its complicated nature forced a lot of attention to be dedicated to it weave. Between her hands appeared more and more lines, creating surfaces between them that cut through each other. It looked a little bit like crumpled paper, black and white, more on more fireflies settling within, a bunch of spells that were folded together into one temporary object of mana, waiting to have their code finalized and be unleashed on the enemy.

Momo kept watching, estimating the enemy’s size, where her attack had to land for maximum effect, every little bit of the spell had to fit before it left her hand. Once it did, it would act out exactly like it had been programmed, no further adjustments possible.

The tendrils had her almost cornered, only a small gap was still open. Making her wings disappear, Momo barely squeezed through, lost her momentum in a catching roll and then tossed the Folded Mana. It rolled over the floor, ‘3… 2… 1…’ Momo counted down as it stopped underneath the wolfish nightmare.

Before it could turn around, the spell bundle activated. Barriers in the shapes of pillars appeared around the wolf, immobilizing it. A different kind of barrier then followed, black in colour and defined not by the amount of punishment it could sustain but by the strength of its edges. Incredibly thin, these triangular energy razors ripped upwards, slicing deep into the base of the creature’s legs and its neck. Both kinds of barriers dissipated a moment after they came, leaving the last part of the spell to run its course.

Glowing more intensely than ever, a swarm of twenty fireflies, in all their colours, red, green, blue and white, made their way towards the newly opened wounds. They settled there for a moment, their light growing even brighter, then they all burst in explosions that saw every limb blown off the Lorylim. The head was still on the neck, barely, flying upwards to the cracking of its neck. The female knight saw to it that it didn’t stay attached and got any chance to regenerate, if it could, separating the bone and sending the hysterically crying and laughing wolf’s maw flying.

Momo got back on her feet. “Two kinds of mana,” the knight spoke in an admiring tone as she backed off. “Most people don’t even manage to get past the default blue arcane energy. Then again, you seem, like me, to not be born like a regular person.”

To underline those words, the knight absorbed her armour under her skin and replaced them with some boring traveller’s clothes. Comfortable jogging pants and a loosely fitting shirt. Artificial Spirits shifted their appearance like that.

“Yeah… Oh no!” Momo looked at the rocks, big and small, scattered all over the floor. “Glueing all of this together will take… EWWWW!” she quickly jumped back when some of the oozing black blood of the Lorylim streamed laughingly towards her, wrapping around one of the stones and partially munching away at it before dissolving into the spores.

“Mhm… what was here again… oh, yes, that atrocious family portrait,” the woman spoke up and confirmed Momo’s suspicion with that.

“Okay, so you’re a Metracana, then?”

“You know of us?” the knight looked pleased by this, still emitting a continuous glow. “Indeed, I am Leryala, Second of Light… you are just full of surprises. I didn’t think I would run into anybody here. Much less somebody who knows what a Metracana is.”

“Right back at you,” Momo continued to back away from the creature’s corpse, accepting, begrudgingly, that the image was forever lost. “I go hunting for some ancient ruins and I find one of the people who just knew where it was smashing it in.”

“Well, the alternative was to let that thing roam around,” Leryala pouted, “I think I did the right thing attacking it…”

“Maybe you did, just do it without smashing ancient history next time.”

“Again, atrocious family picture,” the Second of Light pointed out. “I am ACTUALLY rather glad nobody will ever have to look at that again. Even more glad that Metra won’t have to; she was always about to smash it when she saw it.”

“That does sound like Metra…” Momo agreed and suddenly had the blonde right up to her face.

“You have seen her?!” she asked in the tone of a big admirer getting fantastic news.

Delayed in her answer by the beauty of this Metracana, Momo gulped and was suddenly reminded that her Libido score was a full 25 and that she hadn’t even touched herself in a while. Her face flustered as her hands were forcibly grabbed.

“Please, tell me everything!” Leryala requested, her shining emerald eyes white open. “I’ll be forever thankful if you do!”

‘Thankful is a good start,’ the artificial support thought and smiled weakly.

_________________________________________________________________

“…and that’s all I can tell you,” Momo finished up. Since starting the little tale, they had begun moving into the depths of the ziggurat. “Sorry.”

“No, no, that’s good,” Leryala waved her hands, much friendlier now that she had heard that the white-haired woman was associated with her senior. “If she is in North America, we might be running into each other. I’ll soon be returning to Master Enki anyway.”

“Ah… well, if you don’t mind me asking, what are you here for?” It would spell some troubles if they wanted the same thing. “Because, to be frank, I wanted to take a staff I read was stored here.”

“Oh, you mean Tiolyst?” the Second of Light gestured dismissively again. “Not what I want, so you can take it for all I care, if it’s still there.” She winked suggestively. “You don’t have to feel like stealing it either, I officially allow you to take it as payment. For your help and for being nice on the eyes in this brown, boring landscape.”

“Aren’t you from around here?” Momo asked with a chuckle; this flirting felt very much like it came from both sides now. Good, made it very likely to succeed. “You should feel awful talking about your homeland like that.”

“For once, the grass is greener on the other side,” Leryala said, the two of them stopping in front of a heavily ornate gate. “Between the two of us, I am fine with taking a bit from each side, if you know what I mean.”

“I think I do,” Momo stated, staring at the Metracana’s shapely ass as she put her hand against the locked gate. A flash went through the runes, one of the few functioning mechanisms in this ziggurat, then it swung inwards.

Illuminated by the constant glow that came from Leryala and Momo’s fireflies shimmered copious amounts of gold. Coins, vases, tablets, swords, spears, all of it made from the decorative metal. Completely useless, but pretty. After asking, Momo also put some of these things into her inventory. She would need money eventually and these things would sell to collectors for quite a sum. Of course, she would also give some to museums and the like, should she find any in the Abyss that were interested.

What she had come for rested on a pedestal of sandstone, held up by forked rods of steel. “This is the Tiolyst?” she asked; the thing didn’t look impressive at all. It was a black staff, light as a feather, with silver white lines spiralling around the length of the thing. There was nothing on the lower end and a simple grey hook at the head. It fit to her monochrome flare, but it was also somewhat underwhelming, given the lengths she went to. Touching it, however, she felt her hairs standing on end as the power of this ancient weapon bristled through her like electricity. Simple design or not, it clearly was a mighty artefact. “Okay, spare me the answer, already got it, this is it,” Momo hastily added. “What did you come here for?”

“This,” Leryala presented a clump of grey metal. “Raw Astrotium. Worthless to everyone in the world but the two people than can shape it. I just recently remembered it was here. The boss was not amused with my forgetfulness, but that’s okay.”

They both had what they wanted and they had known each other for barely ten minutes at that point, but neither of them felt like they wanted to just leave so quickly. “…Would your boss mind if you take a bit longer to get back?” Momo carefully asked. “I mean, some star god isn’t pressed for time, right?”

“He would, but he isn’t really, no… I guess I could have some fun for one day…”

Momo grinned, then cleared her throat and asked something more personal. “Did you ever have sex with another girl on a pile of gold?”

“Once or twice,” Leryala casually began the process of becoming naked.

Momo followed suit, “Pretty sure you didn’t with one that can grow a dick. Just going to put that out there.”