Chapter 8

Nyx

The Wishing God

A Divergence of Fate

Three Centuries Prior

"So you want to kill the King, who is also your father?" Nyx smiled at him uncrossing her arms. She didn't want to put her hands on the mildew floor despite the Ethereal Shroud protecting her from its actual touch.

"You don't believe me!" The boy shouted, "No one ever believes me. But he is my father!" He sighed and crossed his arms pushing out his bottom lip and then he tucked his head between his knees. "My mother told me." He whispered.

"I believe you. I can see it through your wish." Nyx picked up the chord and let herself take in the past pulling threads for the Tapestry to view the moments that lead to the boys wish. Flashes of the current King passed through her eyes. "I wouldn't granted you wish if I didn't believe you. My sister wouldn't send me your wish if it weren't serious. So let's start with your name. What is it?"

"Titus." The boy cast his eyes towards the floor then looked at his hands being held in Nyx's own. "I was born inside the palace. My father was gifted my mother from a slave caravan from Thaladore which patrolled the Elvish and Vesperon boarders. It was there in the Neutral-Expanse that they kidnapped my mother and brought her here."

"That explains your height." Nyx tousled the boys hair. "You're a halfling. There's nothing wrong with being a halfling." She smiled at him.

"My mother was a kitchen slave... that was what she told me."

"It's true. I have seen it." Nyx lifted herself from where she sat beside the boy. "A halfling birth... Not always survivable and very hard on the mother." Nyx thought of all the wishes she had granted, red thread, blue thread, yellow, and ebony thread... she looked past her internal catalogues. Halfling wishes, birth survival wishes... There she found a woman standing alone, her belly two sizes too large for her human body.... The elves believed in the holiness of life, especially elven lineage, and wouldn't outwardly commit violence against a halfling but they were otherwise excluded from society like this boy had been. "Your mother was Samantha?" Nyx smiled at the boy.

"How did you know?" The boy now stood beside her.

"The Tapestry." Nyx looked up towards her sister and wondered if she was still watching."I remember her, and I even know her final wish for you..." Nyx dug through the past looking into the Ethereal Shroud and watching the years of the past weave in front of her. She pulled forth the Tapestry viewing it from every angle until she stopped at the woman's dying wish.

Nyx didn't follow any particular rules when it came to granting wishes; her purpose was to disrupt the Tapestry and create unpredictability so there could be free will. In contrast, her sister Syriah's role, was to restore balance and order by maintaining the threads of Fate with the Weavers in their predetermined positions.

Nyx hardly granted wishes posthumously, that was often Syriah's choice. A posthumous wish almost always restored order, never flexing the flow of time towards something less linear. Nyx watched the screen of images flowing before her, the woman giving birth, and then finally the blood that would not stop pouring. She slowed the image and reached a hand into the past pulling free a blue chord. She looked down at the white chord and the blue chord side by side. The white chord hissed with energy, making loud popping noises, pulling free from her hand. The blue chord danced lazily, a low hiss rattling out of it when she lifted it. Syriah had not sent the boy to her for nothing. She wished Syriah was there to fill in the gaps so she could know if this is what she was meant to do.

Nyx lowered herself to meet his eye. "Your mother wished for you to be the the King too." She smiled. "I wonder how we can make him acknowledge you as his heir?" Nyx puzzled over it. Granting this wish would require much more than just a simple pulse of her Essence.

The boy stood eerily still and furrowed his brow, "The King would never let a halfling inherit his throne. He'd go to war before her did so. I am a blight upon their, 'pure blood.'"

Nyx tapped her chin and pulled her hair to the side, "I have ways." She smirked.

Halflings were born by the handful every few decades, not an entirely rare occurrence. However due to their size, and the reality that it was most often male elves patrolling the Neutral-Expanse impregnating human women, they didn't often survive gestation. The children who did survive often killed their mothers in the process. Many had no one to take them in, and were like this boy.

"I have heard many wishes over my lifetime," Nyx said, "I have never had a penchant to care for who won wars." She mused, "To be honest with you I tended to leave this to my brother Belacrus although granting some wishes here or there would've have changed the outcome when the triplets disagreed. You know I'm more inclined towards gossip and revenge. I think thats why Wrath was hurt do much by me before..." Nyx meticulously flitted past images in time till she landed on the moment she granted that last White Wish 1600 years before. She looked at Wrath in the image letting it play before her.

"What are you doing?" The boy asked her as she stared into the nothingness only she could see. She has played this moment back thousands of times since her imprisonment.

"Do you want to see?" She asked the boy. He gulped and nodded.

"Then take my hand." She held her hand out to him.

"You're cold." He gasped as he stepped forward.

"I won't be once you enter the Shroud." She smiled pulling him forward.

The Ethereal Shroud was a place between the Veil and the Gods domain accessible only to Nyx, Syriah, and the Weavers. While Nyx only needed to look at it for a brief glance into history, Syriah and her Weavers watched it vigilantly for cosmic disruptions.

"How?" The boy gasped as he witnessed something no one besides Syriah, the Weavers, and Nyx herself could see.

So he was the cosmic disruption then? It was as Nyx had wondered. How could a hafting access the space between the Veil so easily?

"What's different about you?" She asked the young boy.

"I already told you." He said looking into the flow of time, "I'm a halfling."

Nyx paused the Tapestry at the boys mother and pulled the image into view, "Have you ever seen her?" She smiled.

"Seen who?" He asked as he looked at his mothers face.

"That's her, Samantha." The boy looked at her face, completely mesmerized by the picture before him.

She let him look for a while and then she pulled the boys gaze away by lifting his chin and forcing he look at her. "Don't get lost in time, it will make you crazy." He blinked slowly and tried to turn away to look at his mothers face.

"No, please, just once more." He cried.

"I'll show you later. But now we must come up with a plan to make you heir. Syriah, my sister, you know her?" She frowned asking the boy.

"The Weaver of Fate?" The boy asked her.

"So then you know my sister." Nyx looked up towards the sky. She searched the sky for a flicker of her sisters hands weaving. Was she watching them now? Perhaps a simple glint of a new thread dropped to the ground below. How could her sister be so confident in the threads of fate. Nyx grew uneasy, what was to come? She didn't like not having Syriah beside her to know what the point of all of it was. She needed her sister now more than ever. What if she made the wrong decisions to come and unquote destiny with each new decision? Or worse— what if her sister Syriah was wrong? Nyx felt butterflies in her stomach. Without her sister, so much was unknown.

The boy looked down at his hands and then up at Nyx. "Can I see my mother again?" He asked. Nyx wondered if she had crossed a line showing the boy the Shroud. It could bring on madness, in much the same way it could change the sands of time. The boy looked up pleadingly at Nyx.

"Perhaps when you cross the river, for now we must focus on the White Wish. Spit it out, what got you here, before I lose interest." Nyx was lying to the boy. She hadn't seen a White Wish since her own thread. She was bound by Tapestry to say yes to this wish. The boy gasped as he looked around within the Shroud.

Around him threads billowed out around their feet. Some made slow hissing sounds and others were more violently shaking. "Do you see the threads then?" Like a spiderweb they hung around on the Ethereal plane, and she was the spider.

Blue threads were the most common, simple wishes, and they scattered from tether to tether. Each living person had at least one, and those who didn't bore no hopes, no desires, and were soon to die. Sometimes there were the death wishes glowing ebony black. They were always curious but they left her feeling empty inside. She took her chances granting them here or there. Then there was the boy.

A white thread expanded from his chest to her feet where all the threads gathered into tidy thin braids. His White Wish stretched between them soaked in the golden light of her divine energy. Without her the threads could not exist and the flow of time would stop.

He lifted the chord that connected them on his chest and twisted it between his thumb and forefinger before releasing it.

"Agh!" The boy yelled out in pain as the wish shocked him.

He should not be able to lift the wish. She wondered at what strange powers this boy had. He wasn't demigod, she could see that, and nor was he particularly magical. Yet, he could stay within the Veil, and touch a Gods Essence.

"What a strange creature." You are. Nyx squished his cheeks in her hand as she kissed his forehead. "You will have my blessing now. Consider yourself exceptionally lucky."

Nyx looked up to Syriah and whispered, "What role does he play sister?" She could feel no answer, except the familiar sadness of Syriah's pain her throat. "Who will be the players in this God war?" She touched her throat. How could her father prevent them from meeting, at a time like this one? What punishment merited risking the Tapestry?

Nyx closed her eyes and prayed to her father for the first time in one hundred years. "Reunite us, if not for us, then for the world." She begged. Granting a White Wish with no feedback from her sister, no understanding except their trust, felt terrifying to Nyx. Some part of her wished to hold back from it but she knew she could't much like she knew she couldn't dent Wrath 1,600 years before.

No answer came from her father or Syriah. This was only the beginning for Nyx, she new there would be other players. "I see," She said pulling the boy from the Shroud, "so we'll be playing blind."

She touched her throat, Syriah's pain lingered. After letting go of the Boyd hand she grabbed hold of the shuddering chord and threaded it in her fingers. A shiver ran down her spine as she guided her Essence into it. A strange taste entered her mouth unlike anything she had experienced. The Tapestry opened up before her within her minds eye. In a flash she saw Syriah adjusting the Tapestry and building the picture. She shuddered understanding the feeling in her throat. Terror. Syriah looked into the Ethereal Shroud and for a brief moment it was as if they made eye contact.

"It cannot be avoided. But it will give us a chance." Chaos's red eyed loomed in the Tapestry, fixed on a distant city.

"Havenview?" Nyx questioned.

"Nyx, Nyx!" She heard the boy in the distance. Nyx stood frozen in place. Chaos was free. But what did it mean?

Syriah spoke softly, "The daughters of both light and night shall rise,

Their powers bloom in rested womb,

Their eyes of forest and of fire,

A captive's path he shall delay,

The hound shall hide, the key to life,

A king will come for saviors yet unknown.

A healer's touch shall soothe the storm,

Trust him whose battle-hardened soul can lead.

Death befalls the man once sworn to protect,

The woman's fate is already sealed,

But trust the sacrifice she yields.

Only you are positioned to save her Nyx." Syriah plucked another thread from the Tapestry. It appeared beside Nyx from above. She took hold of it, looking up to the sky and watching the soft glinting of her sisters weaving.

Syriah shared her vision with Nyx, there hands intertwining as Nyx closed her hand around the chord. It was the first time in 1,600 years she had looked upon her sister. Their vision melded to be one, their hearts suddenly aligned once more. "I have to go." She told Nyx.

"No, don't." Nyx pleaded.

"Father only spared a little time for me to share the vision. Take the thread and you will understand it." Syriah said.

Nyx placed the thread in her hand and twisted it in pulling it towards herself. "Please..." Nyx grabbed at her sister.

"I am here now, and you are there. But I trust you will find the girl before she does." Nyx grabbed at her sisters hand but within the Shroud she could not touch her long enough to pull her back. "I love you." She whispered to her sister who smiled back at her. "I miss you."

"I love you too." Syriah said sweetly as she began to dissolve back into the Shroud.

"I'm sorry." Nyx whispered through tears as she touched her throat.

Syriah disappeared, reaching out a hand to wave goodbye. Nyx stood in place grasping back at her sister and where she had been in the Shroud. She had glimpsed the prophecy through Syriah's eyes and she understood what she was to do and how the boy would play his part. She felt emotions well up within her she had been forcing down for centuries. She longed to be beside her sister again, to sing in the wind with her, and dance in the rain.

"Father?" She asked the sky. "If I set it right, will you free me?" She questioned.

The air was crackling with thunder, and rain began to pour on the city without notice.

"They will sing about it." She heard him speak from within the Shroud. "And you will be free."

The boy looked up at Nyx, "What's going to happen now?" He asked her through awestruck blue eyes. His wish had been granted and the weight of it had yet to settle onto his small shoulders. He would have many years to come before he bore the burden of his desire.

"We must watch the Tapestry unfold," Nyx smiled, "but for now, we wait." She studied the boys naive face. The boy could not even begin to understand the burden of what was to come. A pang of sadness tugged at her; he was too young to be thrust into a war between gods.