Let's check up on the Fates in the Cave...

P.S. Big thanks to @angel193 for sending me the link to this epic song! I thought it'd be a perfect soundtrack for this scene :)

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Scene 11: Undone

2020 B.C.

She stared into the hollow space, the walls of stone, here in her cold immortal home. Somehow she had returned; just how, she wasn't sure. All she remembered was the world fading to black, after her last visit to earth. All she remembered was the worst. Whatever happened afterward was of no matter. Whether she'd simply fainted, or been knocked unconscious in the midst of all the violent crowds surrounding the deceased, the multitudes descending on the former king who had so treacherously slain the newly risen champion... whatever had happened, she now found herself back in the Cave, a Fate again. But not even that mattered, for — whether in her mortal or immortal form, in this realm or on earth — her heart was dead.

Her eldest sister saw this, from across the Cave, and straightaway she sensed just what had happened. Atropos understood the look on Clotho's pale face all too well: the lifeless look she feared would fall across her own face if the worst of fates were to befall Akhel. And she knew that her sister's heart was far better and deeper than hers, which of course meant that whatever love she harbored was much stronger; she could only imagine Clotho's pain, all the worse because the work of these accursed shears was what had brought this pain upon her.

Atropos had no way of recognizing threads of souls she'd never met on earth. Aside from the few mortals whom she deemed deserving of death after meeting them firsthand, she would snip all the rest at random. All the many souls who had to die each day. She was never fond of this, but had resigned to it. For unless she could somehow encounter and acquaint herself with hundreds of thousands of mortals each day, there was no other way.

Once already, an arbitrary snip of hers had brought grief upon one of her sisters. Unintentional though it had been, she would always feel sorry for the pain that she had caused Lachesis. But Lachesis's pain had been nothing like this. Atropos looked upon her youngest sister — the Fate of birth, a shadow of herself now, dead and gone — and she, the fatal shearer, would have given anything right then to have the gift of giving life, the power to undo what she had done.

The Fate of death set down her lethal instrument, wishing in vain that she would never have to take it up again. The shears were too heavy to bear. Yet even they were not as heavy as her heart, as she now crossed the shadowed Cave toward her sister.

"Clotho, I..." she whispered, "...I am so sorry. More so than you could ever know. I never met the man, but whoever he was, I can see that you loved him, and..."

From her station by the Loom, Lachesis overheard her sister's words. Why was she speaking of Rider? What was she so sorry for? The last time Lachesis had seen her dear husband on earth, he had set off to trounce his father. She had been taking a brief nap while awaiting his return. The champion he was, Rider could not possibly have failed in that endeavor, the weaver reassured herself. Surely she was just a paranoid fool to imagine the worst. Yet she could not muster the courage now to look upon his thread — to confirm that he wasn't...

Atropos proceeded. "...and I am so, so sorry."

Clotho sat still, silent for a moment; her mind was so absent, her soul so distant, that she was barely present enough to register her sister's apology. When she replied, it was with empty eyes, and a voice that bespoke worlds of fathomless misery. "You don't have to be. He is dead because of me."

Though Clotho's voice had been quiet and low, Lachesis had heard every word clearly. Her immortal blood ran cold — whether more so with dread to think that Rider was... was dead, or rather with pure hatred, rage toward her sister for having caused this, as Clotho herself had just confessed — Lachesis wasn't sure just yet...

In spite of having heard the words, as though she could undo the truth if only she denied it hard enough, she turned to find his thread.

When she did, her trembling fingers reaching out to touch her husband's thread upon the Loom, she blinked. Had she indeed undone the truth? Perhaps denial wasn't such a foolish habit after all! She knew this thread of grey was Rider's — so unless her eyes deceived her, or unless she had misheard her sister's words...

Atropos turned then to look at Lachesis. Upon seeing the mortal thread beneath her sister's hand, she narrowed her evergreen eyes at the sight, forming a furrow in her brow, no part of her able to understand... This was a thread she had snipped. She was sure of it.

"Lachesis," she addressed her sister as she strode across the Cave toward her, "that — that thread... is it his?"

The weaver nodded. "Yes, it is."

Of its own accord, stirred by whatever hope she might dare to believe lay in these words, Clotho's head slowly turned in the direction of her sisters.

Atropos approached Lachesis. Stared at the grey thread in its place upon the Loom. She knew precisely where she'd sheared it, knew that it had taken on the darker hue of death and settled like stone in its place upon the Loom, as perished threads would always do. Once they were cut, the threads of mortals stayed forever as they had been left, set in the endless tapestry of time as represented by this fateful weft. And the end that was snipped would then fall to the transient heap at Atropos's feet, withered souls gathering in a small pile there till each one in its turn dissolved into thin air.

But as she looked upon this thread, she could see clearly that it was not dead. Rather than the darker shade that it had turned moments before, it was the same silvery grey that it had been before her shears had done their work, the same color that threads of living mortals always were — and, more alarming yet, it was as if the shears had never cut it short. For where it had been snipped, it had apparently grown out again, returning to its former length... and possibly even longer, this time, though Atropos wasn't sure.

What she did know for sure was that, in one inconceivable way or another, this man who had been slain had come to life again. His death had been undone.

"He lives," she breathed, still staring at the thread.

The words brought Clotho to her feet instantly; she hastened across the Cave, unable to believe it no matter how desperately she wanted to. There was no way it could be true. She knew for certain that, with her own horrified, heartbroken eyes, she'd watched him die.

Lachesis, for her part, was unsure why both of her sisters were so terribly bewildered. "Whatever is the matter? Rider lives; why does that come as such a shock to you..."

At her station, Atropos knelt down to the mess of loose ends, all the recently cut threads. Her keen eyes scanned the heap until they spotted his — the man who was supposed to be dead. She retrieved it from the pile. Though feather-light, the withered end felt heavy in her hands, heavy because of everything she couldn't understand.

Both of her sisters turned to face her. Lachesis comprehended then that Rider had indeed been dead. That there was no way to explain the continuing life of his thread.

Not even caring, for the moment, how all this could be explained, Clotho's immortal human heart had come to life again.

And that was when primordial Chaos stepped in. "Oh, my dear Fates," she addressed the three of them, foreboding voice resounding through the Cave, lower and darker than the silence that it had to break. "It seems that one of you has made the worst mistake a Fate could ever make."

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... Thoughts, theories, anything? o_o

Next scene — the finale of Book II!! — we'll hop over to modern-day Greece...

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