The Fates (Book I) - 2014 Watty Award Winner!

3.5 - Primordial

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

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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.”