The Moirai

by Ali Winters

  She slowed her pace, not used to walking blind. It required a skill she was far from possessing.

  The farther she went, the harder her pulse pounded in her ears.

  One second she was trapped within the thick, murky clouds, the next she was standing under open sky and an endless ocean, dead and unmoving and stretching out toward the stars. The smell of briny decay was thick on the air and settled on her skin like a slimy coating. Large pebble like sand under her boots crunched as she moved toward a tangled forest framing the shore. Trees taller than any building she’d ever known.

  A light flickered deep within the trees, catching her eye and calling her toward it.

  Hacking her way through the tangled brush, Nivian stumbled over thick vines and hidden roots until she came to a clearing with a dilapidated cabin in the middle. Light shone from the single, small window next to the door.

  As Nivian raised her hand to knock, the door creaked open.

  “Hello?” she asked, peeking her head through. She froze upon seeing three figures in the middle of the room, their backs to her. “Hello?” she said again, stepping all the way in.

  “It is about time,” one figure said. Nivian couldn’t make out who among them spoke, it sounded as if the voice belonged to all of them and none of them at the same time.

  “We are so glad you finally made it,” said another with a girlish lilt to her voice, almost laughing with joy.

  “Silence!” the third boomed with a voice that was thick and oily. “Quit your simpering.”

  Nivian blinked and they were facing her. One with golden skin, radiating the soft light of dawn from within, the second, was pale as moonlight and quicksilver. The last had dark skin speckled with thousands of freckles, like stars. It was as if her skin were cut from the fabric of the night sky. This one wore a cloth bandage around her head, covering one eye. Their hair pooled down their backs and spilled over the floor surrounding them.

  They were morning, day, and night, personified. Nivian knew them by the items they held in their bone thin hands and the tasks they unceasingly worked at even with her presence.

  The golden sister, Atropos, held a thread that flowed into the hands of the weaver, Clotho, then the line flowed into the pen of Lachesis who wrote words on a page, each vanishing as soon as she finished.

  Nivian dared a step closer. “You know why I’m here?”

  “We know, little Reapling,” Atropos said cheerily, the youngest of the sisters. “How else do you think you found us? Who else could have guided you here but us?”

  Clotho narrowed her eyes at Atropos, giving her an unspoken command and silencing her. “Ask what you will,” she commanded, her smooth voice slithered along Nivian’s bones, sending a shiver along her skin.

  Nivian clasped her hands in front of her. “Can I bring Kain back?”

  “That remains to be seen,” Lachesis said, her voice rough and dry. “Too soon, his life thread was cut.” Her eyes seemed to spark as they bored into Nivian accusingly.

  The youngest finished her sister’s words, “and life flows but one way.”

  Nivian’s heart stilled. “So, it’s not possible then?” She cursed herself for believing in such an impossible thing.

  “It depends on so many things,” the middle sister said. “Each path one takes holds a consequence that is irreversible.”

  Their answers conflicted, but the more they talked, the more it seemed that what she’d hoped to hear wouldn’t be possible.

  “Is-is,” Nivian choked on the words. She took a few seconds to breathe and calm her nerves before trying again. “Is there anyway we can perform the ceremony without losing anyone else?”

  “There is only one who can take on the power,” Clotho said. “Only one who is meant to hold the burden.”

  “Who?” Nivian asked, practically begging.

  Clotho’s eyes sparked as if fire burned in her honey irises. “Do not insult us with such questions, little Reaper,” she snarled. “You have come here for one reason, and one reason only. Do not seek the easy way out of the problems you created for yourself.”

  Nivian flinched at the sudden hostility but anger came rushing in response, replacing her instinct to cower before the powerful beings. “I would do anything required to save the balance. Just tell me what to do,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Lie one more time and you will be sent away,” Clotho threatened. Her words vibrated down to the very marrow of Nivian’s bones.

  “Kain?” Nivian shook her head, “I thought…” she’d thought they had said it was impossible, but that wasn’t exactly what they’d said. Life flows but one way. “How do I get Kain back?”

  “Seek out He whose domain you will trespass.”

  Nivian bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from asking a question that would no doubt anger the Moirai.

  Whose domain… the Moirai had said.

  Nivian strained to remember the name she had skipped in one of the books, not thinking it noteworthy and too narrow sighted to think of anything but the fates and where to find them.

  The name finally unfurled itself from the tangle of facts and stories. It was in the clues she’d gathered. The Underworld. Hades.

  “I will go to Hades’s domain.” Nivian spoke more to herself than to Clotho.

  “The eye,” the youngest crooned in childlike joy. “The eye!”

  “The eye will grant you passage, but beware, your Hunter will soon be gone.”

  “What?” Nivian scrunched her brow. She’d asked Caspian about the eye and he’d reacted strangely, looking over his shoulder as if he were afraid they’d be overheard… or did he know what eye the book had spoken of? She blinked. He had looked at his desk. The Tome of Fate. The amber stone cut down the middle with an oblong slice of onyx, how it seemed to wink at her as the light glinted off the faceted surface. The eye.

  “Chipping… Chipping… Chipping away,” Atropos sing-songed. “Tick tock. Tick tock.”

  Nivian’s breath left her and she collapsed to her hands and knees. She could save Kain! Tears streaked down her cheeks as the relief washed over her.

  “The trials of the Underworld are not to be taken lightly. No creature is immune, not even one such as yourself. You will be no more than a mortal to these flames, they will burn and consume every last bit of you.”

  Nivian picked herself up and dusted her hands off then looked Clotho in the eye. “The fires of Hades can do their worst.”

  “Tied,” Atropos murmured.

  “What?” It seemed that was all she could say. Their rhymes and round about way of speaking made Nivian’s head spin.

  “Your fates are tied. What becomes of one becomes of the other unless the bond is severed,” Atropos said, her voice growing quieter with each word.

  “I don’t understand,” Nivian shook her head. Her mind grew fuzzy and she had a hard time grabbing on to the meaning of what they said.

  “Beware, young Reapling, even death has a price to pay,” Clotho said darkly.

  But before Nivian could respond, a light, bright and blinding, flashed, swallowing up her consciousness.

  FIFTEEN

  KAIN

  KAIN COUGHED UP the last of the water as he clung to the river’s edge, mud and gravel squishing between his fingers, pressing up under his nails.

  He panted and stayed lying on his belly for a long time, waiting for the icy rage to subside to a dull roar. It was odd, this feeling of such intense hate, yet a niggling thought at the back of his mind had him suspecting that it wasn’t entirely real. It didn’t feel like the person he knew he was in life.

  But what was real anyway? In this place it seemed as if nothing and everything was real. An impossible mix.

  Kain rolled over and blinked into the cloudy sky above him as the gray swallowed up everything. The patter of soft, steady rain started, each fat, little drop splattering on the rocky shore creating a song he strained to hear. The clouds took on eerie and unnatural shapes, shapes of faces t
hat made them look as if they were crying.

  He sat up and gripped his head. He was… he was…? Kain looked at the rivers on either side of him. He shook his head attempting to rattle away the fluff coating his brain, but his thoughts remained fuzzy.

  Panic. He’d panicked. But why?

  He’d been drowning… Because of her.

  Kain jumped to his feet. His face contorted into a painful sneer. He wanted to yell—no—he needed to yell at someone or something. He spun in a circle, but there was no one around. Only the rivers on either side of him and the thin strip of land beneath his feet.

  The rivers.

  He had to keep going. The sooner this was all over, the better. And once he was done with this personal hell Hades had seen fit to curse him with, he would confront the Reaper.

  Her name thrummed in his thoughts with every step he took. Nivian. Nivian. Nivian. Nivian. Nivian.

  Kain stormed into the river Cocytus, the ever-growing anger fueling his need to continue.

  Sloshing water swirled around him, thick and inky dark. The silt under his feet sucked at the bottoms of his boots and slowed his progress. The river’s current varied in strength, occasionally bumping and pushing him, making it more than a challenge to stay upright.

  By the time he made it halfway in, his momentum had slowed to a snail’s pace. Inch by inch, he pushed forward, sloshing through the waves he created.

  Something bumped against his right leg, then the left. Kain froze. It was more than the current crashing against him. His heart squeezed and he looked down.

  Faces floated beneath the surface, hands snagging on his pants. Their boney fingers reached out, calling for his attention, their mouths open in silent, mournful lament. The river sang of sorrow with those souls trapped within begging, pleading for the smallest ray of hope.

  Kain bent and reached down toward the hand stretching toward him. He could pull them free so they might continue their journey. If time was infinite here, then he could spare a short while for them.

  His hand hovered over the water when he paused, remembering the words Karon spoke. “There is no going back, so do not linger more than necessary, or all will be lost.”

  Kain jerked his hand away. Instantly, the air filled with wailing, growing louder and louder with despair, so sharp it cleaved the sky.

  The souls swam with increasing speed, their mouths widened to expose rows of jagged teeth. The cries were so mournful, he could hear the heartbreak in them. He wanted to help end their pain, to help them continue their journey, but attempting it would mean the end of his own.

  He stepped around the souls, careful to avoid them as he moved deeper. Rain fell heavier still, each globule reminding him of the souls he was leaving behind.

  He deserved no better than to suffer the same fate.

  Warm drops fell into his eyes and rolled down his face, leaving behind salty trails in their wake.

  He continued to slosh through the choppy water, deeper and deeper, as it crawled its way up his body. Kain cursed the Phlegethon, his body was now almost impossible to use because of it as he struggled through the syrupy Cocytus river. Each step hard won as the fingers of the damned tried to drag him back, beseeching him.

  Kain let out a shuddering sigh. A heavy weight settled on his heart, thick like molten lead slowly filling the valves and chambers.

  He’d had a good life, but there was so much he would miss out on. He wasn’t that old for a human, and certainly not for the long lived standards of the Hunters.

  Kain’s throat tightened with regret. He’d never love someone who truly loved him back, who wasn’t hellbent on killing him, never have a family, never see his parents again or get to know the new friends he’d found in the other Hunters.

  The rain fell harder, drenching him with drops like hot tears.

  Lifting his hand, he reached for his face but his arm was jerked violently downward. Skeletal hands held his wrist in a vice-like grip, forcing him to stop where he stood.

  Below the surface, a beautiful face looked up at him, tears shining in her eyes.

  She was so sad.

  Her misery flowed off her and crashed into him.

  His eyes prickled.

  Kain lurched forward as another hand snaked up his side and took hold of his other arm. The wretchedness of the second soul’s grief was too much. Tears poured from his eyes, mixing with the rain and accompanying a cracking in his chest, like the sound of the earth splitting open.

  The world tilted from under his feet with the sheer strength of the heartbreak. His body tilted, and he leaned closer to the souls holding onto him, offering to hold him, to grieve with him over his lost life.

  Water splashed as he fell toward the beautiful faces, the salty taste of the river filling his mouth. More hands of shades joined the first two, pulling on his arms, his legs, his shirt… down into the impossibly deep void.

  It should have been impossible to sink so far down when, moments ago, he’d been walking in waist deep water. Kain couldn’t wrap his mind around the logistics of it. He wanted to see reason, but even that seemed to have been taken away.

  Under the surface, the beautiful faces had changed, twisting into hideous corpses, howling and crying and sobbing. The sound of their lament reached his ears even under the water, muffled into something infinitely more sorrowful.

  His frantic heartbeat slowed to a steady rhythm.

  Razor like claws tore at him, ripping into his flesh as they pulled him toward the vicious undertow of the river. More joined in, turning frenzied. With each scratch, each slice and cut, the more sorrowful his heart became. Blood clouded the water and he waited for the pain to mask the suffocating sadness invading him.

  But it never came.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Where the wraiths held fast, a gray tinge stained his skin, leaching the color from his world. His arms thinned and elongated as his flesh started to wrinkle from their touch. Every second they had him, he could feel his will fade under the weight of sadness and desolation.

  He would become one of them.

  Thump… Thump… Thump…

  But he couldn’t let them after he’d come so far, the end of the rivers was within his reach. Though so little of him remained anymore. The memory of who he was, how he’d felt, and what he’d wanted was still there, even if he felt nothing but the crumbling of his own soul.

  Kain lurched back, jerking his limbs free and pushing off the ghouls at his feet, projecting him toward the surface. He swam through the murk, pushing against the eddies shoving him back toward the lost souls and their never ending suffering.

  Thump… thump…

  The shades chased him, gaining fast. Breaking away from them had only given him a small advantage.

  Dim light glistened, showing him the way as more and more joined the hunt.

  Thump…

  Thump…

  He was inches from the surface but was jerked down by a freakishly strong hand. The thing crawled up the front of his body, slithering in a far too intimate way, until they were nose to nose. It opened its mouth, the cheeks splitting to show the razor sharp teeth inside as it screamed.

  Kain floated, frozen by the ear splitting sound as it lowered its mouth and pressed its cracked lips to his.

  The lost soul gripped a hand against the back of his neck, pulling Kain closer, sucking what felt like the air from his lungs.

  But… it was different. It was taking something else… everything else. Numbing his heart to everything except the horrific melancholy that threatened to trap him.

  Thump…

  His heart beat once more against its bone cage. Kain waited for another to follow, but there was nothing.

  He struggled, but the sprit tangled its fingers in his hair. Still, he pushed them up, up, up. With every kick of his legs, the thing grew leaden, struggling to pull him back down. Its hold on him slipped until he managed to wiggle free.

  Kain’s head broke the surface, and he gasped in a
choking sob and crawled the last few feet out of the river. He could have been a thousand pounds for all the strength it took to get his entire body away from the water and onto the backed, cracked, and dusty shore.

  He clung to the ground of the riverbank and dragged himself as far as he could before he collapsed and sobbed.

  SIXTEEN

  CASPIAN

  THE PURPLE MORNING sky of dawn fought with the lingering gray of night. The sun lazily worked its way up toward the horizon. Caspian crossed the empty tarmac and into the entrance of Hunter Corp.

  The door from the front office to the hanger had been left open, and an eerie silence filled the building, void of the usual bustle he’d come to expect. The clock on the wall read five forty-two am. He was almost an hour early.

  Anxiety was playing tricks on him. He wanted to take his time, they had enough to proceed with care, but the looming deadline hovered over him like a beast waiting for him to let his guard down for just one second.

  Thousands of years and not once had this type of pressure rested on his shoulders. He was the only one who could perform the ceremonies. Caspian cursed Silas. Never before had the man been so careless with his plans.

  Caspian headed for Holter’s office on the far side of the hangar and stopped.

  Azira sat in a chair tilted back against the wall, sleeping. No one else seemed to be around. Did all Hunters sleep here? he wondered.

  He reached a hand out to wake her. She looked peaceful, even in such an uncomfortable position. The memory of her hand on another man’s arm flashed across his mind and he dropped his arm back to his side, unsure how she’d react to his touch waking her.

  The strange draw he had toward her unsettled him, almost as much as the sting of jealousy he’d felt upon his last visit.

  A door slammed, echoing through the hangar. Caspian stepped back as Azira lurched forward, practically falling out of her chair. She rubbed her hands over her face before meeting his eyes, catching him watching her. It had only been a few seconds, but that fact did nothing to dissipate the awkward silence growing between them.