I am Queen of the Underworld. True mate to the God of Death.
No one binds the Weaver of shadow, death, and life.
“She broke the cuffs!” Clotho shrieked.
“Keen observation. I applauded you,” I replied.
My teeth sank into the heel of my palm. Pain and blood bloomed.
My fingers flexed at lightning speed as I began to weave.
Crimson and golden threads erupted from my bleeding fingers. Three circles formed in the air around me, defensive barriers pulsing with defiant power.
“Stop her!” the sisters shrieked, their harmony shattered.
Atropos lunged from her seat, shears aimed at the harp holding the last thread of my mortal life. She would sever it now—before I could intervene.
Clotho hurled razor-sharp threads at me. They struck my first defensive circle in a spray of inky sparks. A few cut through, grazing my arms and cheeks with searing lines. The Fates were incredibly powerful.
Lachesis wove something more insidious—a net of dark threads meant to ensnare my mind, to paralyze my will, to force compliance.
My second circle of threads crashed into Clotho’s assault, tangling with hers in a crackling struggle for control. Sparks showered the cavern.
My third circle shot toward Atropos. It struck her mid-leap, slamming her against the cave wall just as her shears neared my life thread. Stone cracked behind her. She screamed, thrashing against the bonds of my weave.
The wind of my own power wrenched the harp of my threads toward me. I caught it, my blood smearing across its glowing strings.
Lachesis’s mind-net reached for my mind. I wove a counter—crimson and obsidian threads that absorbed her magic and twisted it back upon itself. She hissed as her own spell recoiled.
I wove without pause, my hands rotating against each other, as I drew out every thread tied to my existence from the harp—all ninety-nine knots, all one hundred strands.
Weaving songs rose from deep within me, words of ancient knowing waiting to be remembered.
“Blood of queen and blood of bride,”I sang, a new thread pulling free,“what was hidden now resides.”
Clotho’s threads sliced into my shoulders and arms. Blood welled. I did not stop but turned the blood to crimson threads.
“Ninety-nine deaths she did survive,”the second line came, another thread yielding,“the hundredth life shall stay alive.”
“Stop her from speaking prophecy!” Atropos screamed, still pinned to the wall. “Silence the song!”
Lachesis wove frantically, hurling every complex pattern and binding spell she possessed—attacks that burned, cut, and sought to strangle.
“What Fates have woven, I untwine,”I continued, my voice gaining strength as the third thread pulled free,“this destiny is only mine.”
The threads of my past lives loosened, their knots unraveling. With each line, I felt the curse’s grip weaken.
“No sister’s shears shall cut my cord,”the fourth verse blazed as Atropos finally broke free and lunged. My threads caught her mid-air, coiling around her throat.“By shadow, light, and death restored.”
“She has become too powerful!” Clotho wailed, her attacks growing desperate.
“Impossible!” Lachesis snarled in fear.
“The curse that bound me eon long,”I sang the fifth line, feeling the weight in my blood begin to crumble, the fog ofa hundred lifetimes lifting,“now breaks beneath this weaver’s song.”
“That is what we crafted the curse to prevent!” Clotho shouted. “We should never have brought her here!”
“She deceived us!”
