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

4.8 - The Champion

Dear Readers: Back in the city by the seaside cliffs, sundown approaches, threatening the arrival of a vengeful pirate hungry for a sacrifice... can Cloe save her sister from the dreaded Cetus?  o_o

Let's find out :)

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Scene 8: The Champion

2020 B.C.

Having bade her heart goodbye, and with no time to think or feel a thing about it, Cloe urgently scoured the city for a certain vital item. The only hope to save her sister from her plight: a sleeping potion. She knew that inducing sleep would be the surest and most feasible way to extricate Lachesis from her chains. She inferred that the poor Fate could not find sleep, as panicked as she surely was upon the rocks.

For the Fates had never thought to wonder what would happen, if they should die while in their human forms. Would their immortal souls simply return home, to the Cave as if nothing had happened? Or would they suffer mortal death—such that their souls would be sent to some other destination? Set adrift in another afterlife, among deceased men? Never to reach home again? These speculations assaulted Cloe’s mind, for the first time, as she frantically searched for a sedative.

And she was sure that the same worries wracked Lachesis, at this moment. How could they not? In some way, for some reason, the fearful Fate had braved another visit down to earth. And she now found herself chained to a cliff for sacrifice. Sleep could have come so easily, in a situation any less horrific. But certainly not on that precipice. Cloe had to help her sister fall asleep, to find her way back to the Cave and pull her thread off of the Loom, far from her doom.

She finally found the perfect potion, vended by a merchant who seemed trustworthy enough. But Cloe had no coin to her name and nothing else to offer up in trade, for this small vial of salvation…

“Its weight in gold,” a voice proposed from past her shoulder, proffering the vendor a handful of said amount. “Sold?”

Before Cloe could so much as blink, the vital solution was hers.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered to Chrysaor.

“Saying goodbye, with a gift for the road,” he explained, pressing a few more stolen golden coins into her palm. “You’ll need it, to make your own way in this world, without selling your body or soul.”

She thanked him, accepting only because she knew that she would need the currency, to carry out her plan to save her sister’s life.

“Glad I managed to find you in these crowded streets,” Chrysaor expressed. “Curious what you just acquired, but I won’t ask—could tell you needed it quite badly, so I hope that my small kindness helps.”

She shook her head. “It isn’t small; I can’t thank you enough.”

“Take it as advance repayment for not spilling our secret, eh?” he suggested with a smile. “Rider has decided we’re departing at dusk, leaving this place untouched. But you could still betray us, while we’re camped beside the hill close by… I hope you haven’t yet.”

She returned the smile, with sincerity. “I haven’t. And I won’t.”

“Well, good luck to you,” he bade, with a bow of his head. “I’d kiss you farewell, but Rider would kill me. Doesn’t even know I’m here.”

Cloe laughed and leant in for a friendly embrace. In his wake, she briefly clung to the spark of happiness that his presence had provided, on this dire day—just as he’d said that she had changed, he clearly had as well. At least a little bit, and certainly not for the worse.