Dear Readers: Right back where we ended with the three Fates, and the vortex coming fast... what happens next?!? (And what in hell's name ever happened on Olympus??)

... Read on for the beginnings of answers to both questions and more :D

___________________

Scene 5: Primordial

2020 B.C.

As soon as the end had begun, it was over.

The vortex was gone. As if it had never arrived. There had been no time to feel, when the dark force had been upon them. But now there was. Time, feeling, everything—all were revived, in the blink of an eye.

Clotho cleared away the mortal memories that had flashed before her mind, focusing instead on the intense turn of events in this immortal realm.

The three Fates, where they had been flung to the ground, now rose up to their elbows. Looked out on Olympus, obscured at the moment by dark clouds of settling dust. What just happened?

Slowly but surely, the sooty fog settled. The sisters came into clear view of one another, each relieved that they were all three safe, for now. But how?

The last of the dust dissipated. The first thing they saw, through the fading haze in the near distance, was a shock of silken platinum.

A head of hair, they realized as the silvery mane shifted, as a woman’s form took shape before their eyes. She was struggling to rise, evidently dealt a hard blow by the dark force that had come and disappeared. Her limbs, clad in robes of dark grey, sought support from the floor of Olympus. She heaved herself upright onto her knees. Only then did she lift her head, brush the pale hair from her brow, and finally cast her steely eyes upon the Fates.

The sisters were speechless, but she spoke as soon as she saw them, her ashen face melting into a grateful smile. “You’re safe…” she breathed, in a syrupy voice thicker than the coat of settled dust below.

It almost sounded like a statement and a question, at the same time, as if part of her did not dare to believe that it was true.

She rose and started toward them. “Atropos, Lachesis… Clotho…”

“Don’t,” Atropos snapped, standing to her own feet. “Don’t come any closer. Not yet. Tell us who you are, and what has happened.”

The silver-haired stranger came to a slow halt. Showed no ounce of alarm at Atropos’s command, or offense at the coldness with which it’d been given. She met the Fate’s green glare and answered steadily. “I am Chaos. Along with you three, I am all that is left on Olympus.”

“Where is our mother?” Lachesis wailed in despair. “What has become of her…?”

“Wait—” Atropos cut in, scowling at the stranger, “—Chaos? Aren't you supposed to be dead?”

Chaos shook her head slowly. “I was just sleeping, for some time. Until your mother woke me.”

Atropos’s scowl hardened. “That’s a load of bull—”

“It’s true,” Clotho interjected, standing up to lay a soft hand on her angered sister’s arm, “that she was just asleep. Mother mentioned as much, when she told us the origin story: that Chaos has been dormant, since the cosmos formed. But never dead.”

“I’d never heard that,” Atropos grumbled, shrugging Clotho’s hand away. “Then again, maybe she told the whole story only to you.”

Clotho bit her lip; the tenor of those words had stung quite sharply. Their mother's bequest of the Book of Fate seemed to have stirred up some sisterly bitterness.

Lachesis blinked. She then also stood up, slowly and loathly, just to be at a level with her sisters, and turned an inquiring eye upon Chaos. “Why did our mother wake you?”

Chaos looked at them; somehow her gaze of swirling grey seemed to land evenly on all three. “I will tell you the whole story—all of you,” she promised. “About what’s happened. But we must take shelter somewhere; it’s not safe out in the open.”

“Safe from what?” Atropos barked.

“From the darkness,” Chaos answered, lowering her eyes, and her voice to a woeful whisper, with her next words. “From my daughter.”

Atropos and Lachesis creased their brows, uncertain whether they had even heard the words correctly.

But as for Clotho, sudden clarity fell across her face. “Nyx,” she gasped in recognition of the reference.

Ananke had told stories in great detail of the godly family tree, and Clotho remembered most of the relations she had learned about. She knew that Chaos was the original primordial deity: the massive void that had preceded all creation. The womb of all worlds, asleep for eons after the formation of the cosmos, ever since the birth and growth of all the other forces of the universe. Ananke was among those other forces, born and risen out of thin air—Chaos’s sister, so to speak, in their shared origin from nothingness.

And though Chaos had countless descendants, there was only one daughter of hers who could fit the description of darkness.

“Nyx,” Clotho repeated. “The goddess of the night. She was the dark vortex that came for us.”

Things started falling into place, then, in the other Fates’ minds, too. They recalled the genealogy they’d learned about, once long ago. It made sense that the vortex, a vacuum of darkness seeking to suck the light of day, was a form taken by the deity of night.

Chaos nodded solemnly. “I saved you from her wrath just now, and would a thousand times again—and yet her power grows…”

“Let’s go back to the Cave,” Lachesis suggested, shivering visibly.

“Not till I hear the whole story,” Atropos insisted.

“We’ll take her with us,” Lachesis proposed, “to tell us there.”

Atropos glared at her, appalled. “She isn’t welcome there.”

“Oh, come, Atropos…” Lachesis entreated, “…she saved us once already—and besides, she’s family…”

“No more so than her vortex spawn,” Atropos snorted.

Lachesis threw an anxious glance at Clotho, silently pleading for support. Each moment spent here in this barren expanse, beneath a gaping grey sky, struck severe fear in Lachesis’s heart.

Clotho granted this support. But on the basis of reason, rather than fear. “It isn’t up to us, to welcome her or not,” she stated. “If Chaos wants to enter the Cave, she’s more than powerful enough to move the stone herself. May as well let her in now.”

Lachesis heaved a grateful sigh. Atropos glowered at the ground.

And Clotho stared into the face of Chaos, saw a smile hiding in those stormy eyes. An appreciative smile—appreciative of the oblique invitation? Or the open acknowledgment of power? Clotho wasn’t sure.

The mouth of the Cave wasn’t far. It would’ve been, had the force of the vortex flung them any more violently, Lachesis grimly mused. Before Chaos had come to stop it. She could not begin to understand Atropos’s lack of gratitude for that.

And Atropos could not begin to understand why Lachesis was shivering so much, while they went toward the Cave. Shivering all the time lately, it seemed. It wasn’t even cold. And even if it were, gods never suffered from the cold. What was Lachesis, fucking human?

The three Fates reached the doorway of their home, Chaos in tow.

“Start telling,” Atropos ordered their guest as they slid the stone back into place in the entrance, beginning their descent into the Cave.

And Chaos did. “I’ll start with what I do not know,” she decided. “So much happened while I was asleep; though my daughter’s designs and desires are clear, I know none of the reasons behind them.”

“Clear?” Lachesis echoed, herself lacking any such clarity. “What does she want?”

“She wants what all gods want: to rule.”

“Don’t claim to know the heart of every god,” Atropos scoffed.

“But I do,” Chaos maintained, “for all were born from mine.”

No Fate contested that; none could.

Chaos continued. “The immortal soul thrives on the thirst for power and control—over mortals, other gods, ourselves. The danger lies in the desire for that power to be absolute. To be unchallenged. The desire to reign supreme.”

Lachesis shivered yet again. “And that is what Nyx wants?”

“She wants to rule the cosmos as the only god,” Chaos confirmed. “To be the sole immortal being in existence.”

“As her mother once was,” Clotho remarked on impulse.

Chaos paused, for an instant, at those words. Perhaps pained by the parallel. If so, she swiftly buried it and pressed on. “Nyx seeks to extinguish all sources of light, enveloping the universe in night.”

“Why? Oh, that’s right—you have no clue, because you were too busy sleeping,” Atropos sniggered.

They’d arrived at the foot of the path, at the heart of the Cave. The sisters took their usual stations by the Loom. They all glanced at the Book of Fate upon the floor, to see whether it was still being written; it was. Chaos sat upon a stone ledge equidistant from all three.

“Your mother awoke me today,” she retold. “Most gods had taken me for dead, but she knew that I was asleep, and where to find me. How to wake me. But there was no time, for her to tell me why my daughter had become this way. Ananke only told me what had happened, as I now tell you. And what she wanted me to do.”

“Just tell us what you know,” Atropos demanded.

And so Chaos told.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.... So what do you think of primordial Chaos?? The immortal incarnation of someone we've already met on earth - recognize who? If not, please feel free to share any questions or theories in comments!

Next scene, back in the modern day, will follow Cloe flying off to Greece... remember that Prof and Miss Primor are spending the summer there, too ;)

And if you liked this one, please don't forget to vote! :)