by Ramy Vance
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When the era the humans would later call the Grand Inquisition reaches its greatest heights, Metatron returns to the Fates to see how his influence has affected the future of all.
But the room housing the Fates’ spindles, which created the Tapestry of Destiny, is not as he left it. Instead of the magnanimous weaver marching on and recording time yet to be, instead of every nanometer of fiber documenting a lifetime—every strand the rise and fall of an empire—the grand loom has ceased its endless chatter.
And at the fringes? Instead of the vibrant colors both named and unnamed, the last line ever woven is black. It’s an ebony so deep that to gaze upon it is like staring into the very essence of nothing.
The three sisters slouch by their broken loom, none of them moving or speaking. A room that once held the wonders of the universe now feels like a back room in some war-torn bazaar.
Entering, Metatron feels something he has not felt since being transformed into an archangel.
Fear.
“What has happened here?”
“The loom no longer sees the future,” the sisters chorus in despair.
“How can this be?”
Metatron does not know how the magics of destiny work. He doubts even the gods fully understand what the future is. What Metatron does understand is that the future is unset, can be molded by the hands of those working the present. It can always be changed. It can always be … influenced.
But this darkness means that there is no future. There is nothing.
“Do the gods mean to destroy the universe?” Metatron mutters.
The eldest sister’s shoulders slump even farther forward than before. She points to the corner in the back—the original patch she showed Metatron before. “Here is where the gods left. Here is the patch we showed you. But even with their departure, the loom wove a sea of black where the future could not be seen.”
“Yes,” says the second sister, “but now that you return, whatever it is you have done has ceased the weave.”
The third echoes, “Whatever you have done has put this world on a path to nothing.”
“What I have done?” Metatron’s voice rises like a petulant child denying his actions. “I have forced the humans to believe again. I gave them the Inquisition. The movement will force them back to piety. Back to worship again.”
“No, you have set the world on the path to its end.”
Metatron does not believe it—cannot believe it. In his centuries of being the Watcher, Metatron has never lifted his hand in anger or violence. But in this moment he charges at the three sisters, subduing them under his power.
Then, as if plucking a ripe grape from its vine, he pulls out a single eye from each of the sisters. They scream in protest, but in his frenzy he does not hear them.
Using the infinite magic within him, he turns each of the eyes into lenses so that he may read the carpet’s tapestry as they do.
He starts from the end, the blackness of nothing. He knows that the last weaves of the world do not speak of the end, for with every end there is a new beginning. The last weaves tell an anti-story where nothing will ever begin again.
This finality will occur after the gods depart. But how long after? He cannot tell.
Seeing that the end reveals nothing, he finds his own thread, examining it from the moment he first met the sisters.
He sees himself entering their chamber all those years ago. He relives the moment when they tell him about the gods’ departure. He understands that they are trying to manipulate him into using his power to prevent the gods from leaving, and that they have succeeded.
He follows his actions, after which the carpet’s weaving become erratic. Mottled.
Named and unnamed zigzags of colors play out. But instead of telling the story of all, they do so in chortled mutterings, like one trying to recall a dream. Fleeting and mottled.
But not all of the tapestry is confused. A few threads hold steady, marching forward through time with recognizable coherence. One of those threads intersects with his own.
Interlaced, it anchors his own destiny up to the point when the gods leave … as if without it, his own future would be random and formless.
The two threads continue side by side. And side by side, they penetrate the moment when the gods leave.
Metatron leans in close, studying this thread with feverish vigor. “Who are you?” he mutters. In answer, his mind’s eye presents a name. A human name that will guide his every action from this moment until long after the gods leave.
But at the moment of revelation, all Metatron can ask is, “Who is Katrina Darling?”
Being Tortured to Death With Your Ex isn’t Fun
“This is the part where the hero gets tortured. This is the scene where the villain comes up to the hero—moi—and waves some instrument of pain in her face, threatening this and that before finally stabbing her with the pointy bit. In the movies, the hero would resist and refuse to tell the villain anything (in this case, where the GoneGodDamn Soul Jar is). The villain will get frustrated, decide on another tack, buying the hero enough time for either a chance to escape, or for her friends to come in and save the day.
“Except I’m no hero. I’m just an ex-vampire trying to figure out what it means to be human again.
“I don’t want to feel pain. I don’t want to suffer. I just want to go home, snuggle up under my duvet and watch Legally Blonde. So I should just tell him where the damn Soul Jar is and be done with it.”
I stared up from my precarious dangling position to where the villain and my ex-boyfriend stared at me in genuine bafflement.
“You were thinking out loud,” Aldie finally said.
“Yeah, I do that.”
Enoch, who had only moments earlier been edging toward me in that cliché menacing way, surgeon’s scalpel in hand, stopped. He put down the blade and crossed his arms.
“Ahh,” I said, “you were about to start torturing me.”
“Indeed, but I think I’ll take a moment to see how your thoughts pan out. If you take them to their only logical conclusion, I see a path which allows all this to be bypassed.”
“You’re still holding out hope?”
Enoch’s eyes widened slightly, betraying that he did.
“After all this, you still think there is a chance for us.”
“The Fates showed that you and I will be together in the end.”
“Yeah, and they’re never wrong?”
There was a slight creaking from the pipes that held Aldie. “Fates?”
“Apparently our torturer saw the two of us standing with the gods before the end of the world.”
“Cool,” Aldie said with genuine appreciation. “I get that.”
“How the hell do you get that?” I growled, twisting just enough so that I could look into his stupid—perfect—dark elf face. “I just told you that this guy spoke to the Fates and that the last thing their damn visions showed him was him and me, together, in front of gods … after the world ends. And all you can say is, ‘Cool … I get that,’ like some damn stoned-out hippie tripping on laced weed.”
“We all have a journey we must take, a destiny to fulfill.”
“Are you shitting me now?” I yelled. “We’re in a dank dungeon, suspended from the ceiling like curing meat, about to be tortured by a maniacal ex-archangel who, once he gets what he wants from us, is probably going to kill us. Well, you … I’m apparently supposed to be with him in the end. That said”—I gave Enoch my best disgusted look—“I think I’d prefer to die.”
Aldie chuckled. “That’s the Kat I know. Always using humor to hide her true feelings.”
“Here’s a true feeling for you: I want to kill you.”
“No you don’t. What you want is for me to stop speaking the truth.”
“Oh my god! We’re in serious shit and you’re going all self-helpie on me. Tell me Mr. Guru, how exactly is that going to self-help us now?”
“Self-help isn�
��t about the destination. It’s about appreciating the journey. And right now, I appreciate that this man believes in what the Fates told him and is pursuing that goal with great enthusiasm.”
“Ahhh! Please, please let me go so I can kill him. I swear I’ll tie myself right back up.”
Enoch chuckled before walking right over to Aldie and stabbing him in the gut.
So much for keeping up the banter.
↔
“What are you doing?” I yelled.
Enoch didn’t say anything. He just stabbed Aldie again and again.
“Stop it!” I screamed, tears streaming down my face. “Stop it. You’re killing him.”
Enoch turned, lifting up his green, blood-stained hands. “What? I thought you wanted him dead?”
“No … please stop.” I looked at Aldie; he was bleeding out. He’d be gone in a few minutes if he didn’t get help. “He’s dying.”
“And?”
“Save him. Please.”
“Why should I?” Enoch wiped his hands on Aldie’s shoulders—the only part of his clothes not covered in fae blood. “What will you do for me if I do?”
“What do you want?”
“You know.”
“How can you expect us to be together after all the evil shit you’ve done?”
“Don’t be coy with me,” Enoch rasped. He took a deep breath to collect himself. “I have been thinking about us, and I have realized that, in my loneliness, I believed we would wind up together at the end of it all. But the Fates never showed our union. Just that we would be shoulder-to-shoulder when we next see the gods. I may have read more into that vision than was there.” He pushed Aldie’s body and it swung back and forth, drops of blood trickling on the floor. “Give me the Soul Jar, Katrina … for his life.”
“I can’t.”
“I promise you this: no one else need be hurt. The jar.”
Aldie’s almond skin was pale. He was dying. And as much as I hated him for everything he did to me, I couldn’t let him die. I just couldn’t.
“I gave it to Deirdre.”
“Don’t play me the fool. I saw what you handed to the changeling. It was but a trinket. The Soul Jar is much bigger. Certainly, larger than—”
“Gabriel … he gave it to me in that form. He asked me to take it to Michael.”
“Gabriel is dead.”
“No … I mean, yes. He’s dead now, but he went to Yomi to retrieve it. He died to—”
“Of course,” Enoch said, lost in thought. “The angel knew my soul had been trapped in that damn thing. He knew of the dead gods, but there is more at play here. Why not leave the jar in the museum?”
“I don’t know. He just said I was to take it to Michael.”
“Those damn archangels are trying to find their way to the gods. They must be.”
“Enoch … Aldie. Help him!”
The force of my voice woke Enoch from his musing. “What? Oh yes …” The ex-archangel walked over to Aldie, pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and placed it over his wound. Instantly the bleeding stopped, and the wound healed.
Aldie hung silent for an impossibly long moment before he coughed. “That was … something else.”
“The Veil of Veronica, used to wipe the blood and sweat from Jesus. It offered him comfort during his greatest struggle. Now it offers healing to all of us.” Enoch said, pulling out a cell phone from his pocket. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a necklace to retrieve.”
“Let him go,” I said.
“Most certainly not. I need him hanging right there so that I can stab him again should your words prove false.”
With that, Enoch stepped out of the dimly lit room to call whatever manner of horror served as his minion.
And what did Aldie have to say for his near-death experience?
“Well, this is interesting.”
Memories, Swinging Death and Growling Kats
It’s amazing how three simple words and a bit of torture can take you right back to where you were with someone you haven’t seen in centuries. I remembered back to the decade before we separated, what had happened to him and how he reacted then.
We were engaged, about to be married. Of course, fae engagements tended to last centuries, and wedding preparations alone took upward of years. Had we stayed together, our wedding would have been in June … fifty-seven years from now.
Not that I cared back then. I was in love, and whether we married didn’t really matter to me. So we prepared, hiring cake makers and a wedding dressmaker, caterers and the premier florist in all of the UnSeelie Court. But with the fae, hiring someone like that meant arranging the wedding around their schedule. Which meant waiting a long, long time. Like I said: fifty-seven years from today.
What’s more, because the flower arrangement was more important than the dress, not only did it mean waiting for the florist’s schedule to free up, it also meant waiting for the florist to grow the damn flowers … And because Aldie’s parents were revered, the florist insisted on developing a new strain of orchid just for the occasion. We broke up before the flower was grown, but its petals were to be blood red to represent the human (and vampire) in me, with veins of deep, forest green for Aldie’s fae heritage.
But the fae were still trying to accept that the last son to be born into the fae courts was marrying an outsider—and a half-breed to boot—so waiting centuries also meant enduring the underhanded comments, snide remarks and passive aggression against us.
Everyone seemed to hate me, and hate our union even more (maybe that’s why I empathize with Others so well; I know what it’s like to be rejected just because you’re different) … everyone but Aldie’s parents.
They were the kindest fae you’d ever meet, and even though they were dark fae skilled in espionage and sabotage, they never treated me with anything but kindness.
And they were celebrated of sorts, both of them highly respected academics who were directly credited for ending the war with the Seelie Court.
They loved me. Every time they looked at me, their huge elven eyes would soften. There was no pity there; they knew full well what the other fae were like toward me, and they knew I was tough enough to handle it, too.
No, they loved me for reasons I never quite understood, immediately accepting me into their family.
Then they were killed. Poisoned with venom extracted from the Thistle of Salt, a highly deadly substance aptly named because nothing can grow once salted, and for fae, to not grow was to die.
Ultimately it was uncovered that a faction among the UnSeelie Court, resentful over how Aldie’s parents’ had ended the war, had come after them. Of course, that wasn’t until I was blamed, Aldie was blamed and the entire Seelie Court was blamed. But that is, perhaps, a story for another time.
The reason why all those horrible memories flooded back to me was because Aldie said those same words with the same detached tone when we discovered his parents’ bodies. “This is interesting.”
“You’re not fooling anybody,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“This is interesting,” I repeated.
“Oh,” he said, and I knew that he, too, remembered that moment. “Well, it is. My parents always taught me to soak in every experience and learn what I can from it. I’ve learned a lot in these last moments.”
“And what exactly have you learned?” I meant it rhetorically. I wasn’t really waiting for an answer; instead, I was trying to find a way out of here. The binds that Enoch used on us were solid, and the pipes were firmly fixed to the ceiling. There was just enough space above the piping for someone my size to crawl along, if I could swing high enough. I tried, but quickly learned that there was no way I would be able to gather enough momentum to loop all the way around.
At a loss as to what to try next, I twisted to look at Aldie. I recognized the outline of Light-Bringer in his pants’ pocket—that old gift from his parents so many centuries ago. Of course he still kept it … even if it was just
a lighter. It was from them. But besides holding it up to the sprinklers and hoping Enoch would melt, the lighter wouldn’t do us any good right now.
Aldie wore a pensive look on him, and I realized he was still considering my question—as rhetorical as it was. “All of it,” he eventually said.
“All of what?” I said, rolling my eyes.
“This,” he said with a voice full of vigor and optimism as he held my gaze with elven eyes that burned with intensity. “All of this. Think about what an amazing opportunity we have to learn about ourselves. How many people are truly tested in such a manner? How many are given such a golden opportunity to learn about themselves in this way?”
“And what have you learned about yourself, exactly?” This time I wasn’t being rhetorical—I really wanted to know, because I didn’t imagine he’d come up with anything good.
I groaned, pulling myself up. Maybe if I could swing my feet up, I’d be able to get up there. It was no use. Human bodies simply weren’t designed to contort that way.
“I’ve learned that I don’t like being tortured.”
“You needed to be stabbed to learn that?” If my hands were free, I’d be pinching the bridge of my nose in frustration. Instead I settled for major eye-rollings—as in, plural. Not that he noticed any of it. As callous as this was, I prayed that Aldie was experiencing some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, because I couldn’t come up with another explanation for his behavior right now.
Aldie rocked his hips lightly from side to side, causing his body to casually sway back and forth. If I didn’t know him better, I’d assume he was trying to escape. But I did know him better. He wasn’t trying to escape—he was enjoying the hanging sensation. He was also humming. I hated it when he hummed back when we were together. I hated it even more now that we weren’t.
“What are you doing now?” I asked in that same rhetorical tone which, if he were a normal creature, he would have understood. But Aldie, being Aldie, answered everything.
“Processing,” he mused. “I’ve learned that I don’t like being stabbed.”