No Mortals Allowed

by Honey Beezleigh

He paled. “What? When was it off?”

  “Presumably when she woke up alone.” Persephone filled in, hair losing it’s frizzy puff to coil neatly around her head. “Make it up to her and leave the management of my kingdom to my husband and I.”

  “What did I miss?”Ariadne looked between them, rubbing Dionysus’s arm when he tensed up. Persephone shook her head and left, taking Hades with her and leaving Dionysus to fill in Ariadne.

  “That demigod Theseus is here. As a guest.” He practically hissed, pupils going thin and sharp in contrasting his black eyeliner.

  Ariadne didn’t like hearing that, but didn’t care too much about it either. “Quit letting him live in your head. Do what I did and forget him.”

  Dionysus blinked. “How did you manage that, after what he did to you?”

  Ariadne leered playfully at him, hand sliding from his shoulder down his back at grab a handful of ass. “I focused on the better things I had going forward.” He gave her a slow smile, skin darkening on the back of his neck.

  She let go of him and stepped back. “But if you want to spend time with him and not me, well.” She crossed her arms and sniffed pointedly.

  Dionysus rolled his eyes, but didn’t stop smiling. “Alright, fine, I get the point.” He reached out and pulled her close, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. “What do you think about mandatory flower crowns at the wedding?”

  “I raise you mandatory flower crowns that we pick out for the guests.” Ariadne agreed, trying not to focus on delightful shudders the butterflies in her stomach gave her at the thought of marrying her best friend. That beautiful, sweet god smiling at her loved her and wanted to live with her. Forever.

  There was the sound of a bull roaring in the distance, so muffled it couldn’t have been heard unless it was listened for. A familiar sound, one Ariadne had thought she would never have to hear again.

  “Do you hear that?” Her voice was hushed, the tingle of fear creeping up her spine. The feeling of being hunted from afar crept up an her, the sensation pacing of feet approaching with hungry intent.

  “I don’t hear anything.” Dionysus admitted after a minute.

  Ariadne waited a moment, but heard the sound again. She swallowed. “We need to talk to Persephone.”

  They found her around the corner, pressing Hades into a wall and hands fisted in the front of his clothes. “Was that what you heard?” Dionysus teased, but sobered at her expression.

  The couple broke apart. “Can you hear that?” Ariadne didn’t wait for the other couple to ask what she wanted.

  Hades frowned, head tilting to the side as the sound echoed again. “It’s...that shouldn’t be possible. The Minotaur escaped his confinement.” He shared a look with his wife before vanishing, presumably to take care of the escaped soul.

  Persephone studied Ariadne with only a thin veneer of humanity covering up her godly form. “I do believe I need to take a trip to talk to the Fates. There is something strange going on. You’ll be accompanying me.”

  Before Dionysus could do more than open his mouth in protest, Persephone had Ariadne by the arm and they were gone.

  ARIADNE blinked, the world warping around her and Persephone until they were at the mouth of a cave. The entrance was carved with beautiful images of weaving and painted with bold colors to bring them to life. There was a curtain of beads over the entrance that seemed to be made of spider silk and millions of tiny drops of mist. It gave the shimmering appearance of a sheet of water, rippling with rainbow refractions.

  Persephone let go of her arm, parted the curtain of water and light and gestured Ariadne to go inside. Ariadne looked behind her. It was a cliff with a sheer drop that made the trees at the bottom little more than green smudges. She lurched forward, nearly loosing her balance looking down the dizzying distance.

  Petrified, she threw herself at the cave entrance instead of the cliff edge. Staggering inside the cave she stopped beside the waiting Persephone. From the inside, it no longer looked like a cave. It looked like the inside of a wealthy woman’s house. It was the home of a woman, three of them in fact. Three scorchingly attractive women that Ariadne had not been prepared for, any more than she had been the drop from the cliff.

  They stood in a row in front of their guests, hands clasped demurely in front of them, faces empty of expression. “Welcome.” The goddesses of Fate chorused together.

  “Nnngh.” Ariadne said intelligently, flustered. Persephone shot her a knowing look before addressing the other women.

  “As usual, I’m sure you know more about why I am here than I do.” Persephone said with resignation and no little bemusement.

  The three women smiled as one, and Ariadne felt her brain start to reboot when they showcased far too many teeth. Ariadne had thought Demeter had a problem. Demeter had actually been around humans at some point in her life. The Fates... chose teeth that made Ariadne question if they had ever seen a human. Humans did not have teeth like that. Things that lived on the bottom of the ocean had teeth like that.

  “We do.” The middle one spoke, sounding perfectly normal and not at all with a speech impediment from strange dental choices.

  “You wish to know how one of your realm can break free from your control, which should be absolute with the entrance of Princess Ariadne into your kingdom.”

  Ariadne, hearing it put like that, abruptly also wanted answers. But not about the teeth. She could die or live forever and be happy never knowing that.

  The middle one, apparently the spokeswoman, approached Ariadne. “You were born too soon. You were supposed to be born after the Minotaur.”

  “That didn’t happen.” Ariadne leaned back as the goddess of Fate leaned forward to peer at her.

  “He could not absorb you. You had developed too far once he was conceived.” She told Ariadne, still studying her front like Ariadne was an interesting woven tapestry with intricate details.

  “Is that why he was always been pissed at me? Failure to eat me in the womb?” Ariadne grimaced and shuffled half a step behind Persephone. Let her get eyeballed.

  “Indeed.” The Fate told Ariadne. “But he will not eat you now. Not while your fate’s thread is tied to his. It is what allows him to defy the rulers of this realm, along with your presence.”

  “Say what?” Ariadne and Persephone said at the same time.

  The middle Fate stepped back to stand with her sisters that were still placidly watching. The one on the far right smiled at them both and answered while Ariadne was repressing her flinch.

  “The Minotaur didn’t manage to absorb you, that is true. But he did manage to tie his fate thread to yours. He used it to find you, always. He is using the connection to your living soul to escape the control of Persephone and Hades in their own realm. A fearsome monster.” She seemed impressed, and Ariadne had a good idea the goddess didn’t leave her cave too much to deal with the rest of the world.

  “How do we sever this connection?” Persephone asked immediately, not wavering when all three sets of eyes shot to and focused on her.

  The last Fate stepped forward to stand in front of Ariadne and Persephone. “We sever her thread. With them both dead, you would have complete control again.” She made a snipping motion with two fingers. Ariadne felt her breath freeze in her lungs and had half a second to be grateful that Dionysus had not come with them.

  Chapter 18

  “IS THERE ANY OTHER way?” Persephone asked, cool as a cucumber at the talk of murder.

  The last Fate sighed and put her hands on her hips. “It is the simplest and easiest method.”

  “No, I’m with her. Any other way?” Ariadne added her input and internally cringed when the Fates turned their heads to her and gave her a slow smile as one.

  “Not one we can do.” The middle one spoke again. “But you, Princess Ariadne, mistress of the labyrinth, could do it another way.” The last Fate walked back to her place in the line of creepy sexy goddesses.

  The three spoke as one, voices echo
ing and resonant. “There is much we could teach you and much for you to learn.”

  Ariadne abandoned her dignity and clung to Persephone’s robe. “Please.” She squeaked, not managing to finish her sentence of ‘please don’t let them get me’ before the Fates took her.

  “Thinking about your lover?” The Fate nearest to her clucked her tongue at her slyly. “Don’t let your motivation to leave distract you.”

  Ariadne scowled at the stupid scarf in front of her. They had given her a crocheting hook and a basic lesson on stitches and told her to make a scarf and use the whole ball of yarn if she wanted to leave. It should have been easy. It was easy. The problem was twofold. First, they kept unravelling the damn thing while she slept. Second, no matter how much she crocheted the scarf before sleeping it only used half the yarn even if the amount she made was longer than she was tall.

  “How does making a scarf teach me anything I need to know?” She jabbed her hook through the weave of yarn, resenting the feeling of being caged once again.

  “Nothing, really.” The Fate told her, unblinking.

  Ariadne shrieked, throwing the whole bundle of thread at the tapestry covered stone wall. “Then what was the point in having me do it!” Respect had went the way of her sanity and scarf- slowly unravelling and down to a single thread.

  Another Fate appeared, catching her nightmare crafting project and unravelling it in front of her, staring her dead in the eye as she did it.. “You know the thread now. The feel of it slipping through your fingers, the pull of it in the weave, how tight it can be drawn.”

  Ariadne regretted skipping out on her childhood weaving lessons if this was her punishment. “Does this mean I can get on with leaving now?”

  The third Fate appeared and grabbed Ariadne’s hands and pulled her forward. Ariadne stumbled and was suddenly standing beside the Fate, looking at her unmoving body standing there, eyes closed and arms slack. She could see the weaving threads connecting her to other people, thick and thin and all brightly colored.

  The gleaming white rope embedded and curled within her chest like a parasite was rather noticeable and alarming. “I won’t ever truly be free of the Minotaur with this tying us together, will I?” She realized, staring in shock.

  “We make the thread, weave the thread and cut the thread.” The Fates told her together. “You can do something different.”

  Ariadne waited. They said nothing. “Do I have to guess, or are you going to tell me?”

  The Fates laughed at her, briefly seizing her sexuality and giving her hormones a good shake when they managed to not show their teeth. “You can pull threads free of the weave. We would have destroyed you for this ability before you were conceived for treading on our territory but-” They do not finish the sentence.

  “Finish your sentence please, I need to avoid being vaporized.” Ariadne demanded, not at all polite but very much desperate. She got the impression the Fates were less goddesses and more elder Primordials shoved into the shells of goddesses.

  The one in the middle tilted her head. “We cannot destroy you, as we cannot destroy each other. We are too similar to unweave from the fabric of the world without risking ourselves as well.”

  Ariadne abruptly decides she would rather be dead and have Dionysus visit her in the Underworld than fall into the eerie synchronization of the Fates.

  The Fate on the left smiled at her. “We decided to give you would have no reason to compete for our role.” Or, Ariadne thought silently, unweaving them from existence.

  The Fate on the right smiled at her. “It wasn’t hard. Truly, all we had to do was have you meet the god of wine and madness. It stopped what would have been endless suffering for him and in time, the rest of the gods. Such as they are now. In turn, you lose interest in manipulating the threads of fate outside the happiness of your immediate chosen family.”

  “Selfish.” The trio agree. Ariadne isn’t sure if they are referencing what is apparently a hoarding power problem on their part or her disinterest in destroying herself in an attempt to control and ‘save’ the world. Ariadne decides not to touch that subject at all.

  “How am I able to manipulate the weave of fate? I’m just a mortal. Demigod if I really stretch the definition.” She skirted around the more problematic parts of what they had told her.

  “For now.” The middle one agreed, looking bored. “But once you marry your lover, you will be made into a goddess.”

  Ariadne tried to stare incredulously at the Fates but her eyes began to water at the strange aura of unreality that was always around them. She rubbed her eyes.

  “But that will be later.” She hoped. “Right now, I’m not a goddess of anything.”

  The Fate on the left tsks. “Time is what you make of it.”

  “Which is to say, we sit outside of it.” The Fate on the right clarified, giving her sister an annoyed look. Perhaps not all of them were fond of being vague. “You are not yet conceived and also already dead to us.”

  The middle Fate finished slyly, “Mortal maiden and married goddess both.”

  Ariadne had no idea what that meant beyond the Fates being creepy as possible. She decided to try and manipulate the connection with her ill fated twin. Who was she to question the eerie judgement of the Fates? Even Zeus, the King of the Gods himself, respected them.

  She studied the thread embedded in her chest. She touched the white rope, feeling its smooth untextured surface. She gave an experimental tug and felt it slide smoothly both in her hands and eerily, in her chest. “If I remove this, there is going to be a huge hole. That does not seem like a good thing to have.”

  “Holes tend to be filled.” A Fate agreed, appearing abruptly behind her. With a long elegant finger she pointed to the next largest thread, red and tangled in a knot around her heart like a protective barrier against the overwhelming presence of the white thread. “That would take it’s place. Your lover would be pleased. You would never be separated, not for long.” The Fate said directly into her ear.

  “Given the knot I already have, isn’t that already the case?” Ariadne interrupted the creepy manipulative talk with common sense.

  A different Fate cackled. “Too like us indeed. Yes, you both have tied yourselves together quite well already.”

  Well. It was a good thing he wanted to marry her, Ariadne supposed. Being immortal would solve a lot of potential problems if they were this tightly woven together. Still. It made her wonder if this was what they really meant when speaking of ‘tying the knot’.

  “How can I have this ability at all?” She asked, bracing herself and gently pulling the white thread free, shuddering at the phantom sensation of her flesh caving in around the hole. “I barely have a fourth of Titan blood and none of it related to anything like this. I would be less surprised if I was made a goddess of stars or something.”

  “Gods don’t have to be human to be powerful.” A Fate told her idly, watching over her shoulder as she slowly pulled the thread out.

  Ariadne swallowed hard, chills racing down her spice. “The Bull my mother slept with was a god?” She wasn’t sure if that made the union any less icky or not. She was thinking not.

  “The earth gives rise to many kinds of gods, as she always has.” The Fate gave an answer that wasn’t really an answer with a smirk, then following it up with, “With the power in the blood, the shape of it was decided by circumstance. Nurture, if you like.”

  Circumstances like desperately wanting to change her fate as soon as she was old enough to understand what it was, what it entailed. That being a good daughter to her parents meant being complicit in the murder of other people, of innocents.

  Her lips thinned and Ariadne resumed working on her project, not sure when she stopped. She finally finished detangling the thread connecting her to her twin the Minotaur and pulled it free. A phantom ache bloomed in the empty hollow in her chest, throbbing in time with her heart.

  She stared at the limp, now much more threadlike string in her hand. �
�What do I do with it?”

  Chapter 19

  “PUT IT IN THE WEAVING basket.” They tell her together from where they have been standing behind her in a creepy row again. Ariadne wanted to burn it into ash and ember, but she put the thread into the basket thrust at her. She wanted to leave eventually, after all. She reviewed her body and sighed at the sight of the thread over her heart, full of knots like clots.

  “If I unknot this, will it make the thread stronger or weaken the connection?” Ariadne decided not to turn around and see if they were still watching her. They had begun to smile when she put the Minotaur’s thread in the basket. She didn’t want to know why or have to see it.

  “Will it make a difference to you?” One of them asked, drifting forward to study her face, once again ignoring personal space like it didn’t exist.

  “Yes. I love Dionysus and I worked hard to hold onto him. If it means weakening the connection, then the knots are just going to have to hurt.” She told the Fate, angry at first and then sad by the end of the second sentence. Whatever the Fates were, she wasn’t sure they knew what love felt like and that probably explained more about the state of the world than it didn’t, come to think of it.

  “Then it would grow stronger.” The Fate told her. “Your desires will make it so.”

  Ariadne paused, fingernails tugging at the outside of a gnarly knot as a new terror took root. “If we had a fight and I was really upset at him, it wouldn’t weaken or come out would it?”

  “No. Your ability to do this is because you are in our place of power only. Outside here, you will only be able to sense these things and workings will cost you greatly in time and energy.” The Fate told her. “Stop delaying and tie yourself to your lover so we may have our home free of guests for a while.”

  Ariadne snorted. “If you didn’t stop time when you had one, it wouldn’t seem so long.” She pulled the knot gently, untangling it slowly, thread widening as it came free.