The Twisting of Fate

Come Sister, let me show you what i have made for you...

Yes my Sister, I am new here, but I have decided I'd give you a gift, a thank you for letting me in, for letting me play with you. I know, I know, you aren't aware of my arrival, I'm new to this world, although I'm very sure you felt me come. Yes i know what you are, my Sister, i know what you do and what your purpose is; I want to show you my purpose...

Come fly with me, over and through this magical place you hold so dear, come let us see and smell and taste the life all around us, lets go visit the centaurs, those strange and sly creatures, You say one had a hand in defeating Heracles? Strange, I would have thought your gods would have put more stock in their heroes. Oh well, I guess that could be your fault after all, you never let them really have a say in any of the matters they were involved in did you?

Forgive my arrogance and prying, I mean you no harm, I just want you to see me and my present, let you know who I am and understand me, so that you don't see me as the boogeyman in your closet. You look confused, ah, a phrase you don't understand, I'm sorry, a different time this is for me. But come now, time is fleeting, let us hurry now, down the rabbit hole and into hades...

I wonder, maybe you should see this part afterwards...

You look surprised. you didn't think I could do that? One minute we're in hell, or your hell you created, and the next we're above a broken city. You thought you and brethren were the only ones with that power, that you held all the strands and threads and controlled all? Go back and look closely at your Sister's weaves, you will see my thread is not there...

Ah yes, this city. Do you not recognise it? Don't you know that shattered stone below; put the pieces together and you will find she that you made guardian of war. Assemble that building there, there lies a school of once live scholars. What is that shape over there you ask, shuffling hungrily amongst the ruins. I say open your eyes Sister, see the others that join it in their need. Look closer, do you not know such a thing?

Yes Sister, this is my gift. Athens in flames. Even she could not stop me. Just a taste my Sister, just a small smidgeon. Their bodies are mine, and child like I will play with them, they keep me safe, give me hope and reality. This is my gift Sister of the Fates; I give you death, empty and without purpose, as it should be. I give you the scissors that shall cut your threads and remove your purpose from this world.

Don't be angered Sister, this is a gift, this is what you and your Sisters have been begging for all the millenia that you ruled this world...

Apotheosis

The living can always tell how the day is going to be by watching the sunrise. There's a certain light that it gives off, a specific telling of the shade that gives more vision than a soothsayers orb or an oracles opiates. It takes no learned man to tell it, its the feeling one gets when observing it.

This morning the signs were obvious but for the man viewing it it was more a sense of joy than fear. Others would have run screaming, their mind reeling at the sight of the horror and knowledge of their similar fate; but not him, for he found such things useful.

He watched as the first rays gently slid across the horizon, seeming eager to feel this new land till it touched the outskirts of the horror. It had seemed to be struggling against the smoke which seemed to blot it out, but even that thick charnel gas couldn't stop the persistent childlike light from its goal. It playfully illuminated the forms on the ground, the trees, the blood splattered across them. It seemed to jump and frolick across the broken bones, the routing muscle wrapped around steel tightly, showing even in death the defiance of those not willing to lose their own. It flowed through the gaping holes in chests and skulls, through flesh ripe and as yet unpicked, touching mouths open in screams or horror, a rictus of pain etching the features that could once have been handsome, but now were torn and bloodied. Small hands clutching the skinned remains of larger ones lay disconnected from their bodies, the rips ragged and violent.

The man, although barely a man he was, more like an adolescent, watched as his minions picked their way across the broken field, some cavorting amongst the dead, some with a slow lurching walk, all bearing their own versions of horror. Flesh hung ragged from them, their bodies dead a long time ago. More terrifying were those who bore no wound or scar, seemed to walk as fluidly as the sick light of the sun and drenched in the blood of their victims. Some of his minions eagerly tore at the dead, shoving skin, bone, muscle and organ into their slavering mouths. This all he watched, and was pleased.

He moved down from this higher ground into the field of the dead, his feet snapping bone and squelching in the muck. They had sent even their women and children against him in their last stand for survival, had seen the dead faces of their allies each take their turn in slaughtering them. They had been the last, had lost all their kindred and now would join his army.

The first sign of resurrection was evident in the corpses of the children. Skin started to reform, muscles reknitting and becoming hard. They stood up slowly, shaking their heads and looking innocently up at him. Only their teeth betrayed their death, yellowing and broken. Soon the other bodies began to rise, some as broken as when they lay stagnant, some made perfect and pure in death. Tongues lolled out of hungry mouths, some torn, some replaced with rolling worms and fanged apendages. On some the skin sloughed off, showing bare muscle and sinew. Copses exploded as their skeletons forced themselves out of their soft shells. All joined the walking dead of his army.

Ethliss smiled and walked on, his army following behind him. This land was dead and still he had not found what he was looking for. Time to move onto the next. With a swift motion of his hand he tore open a rift in reality and stepped through. Behind him thousands of dead moved through the hole eager to embrace others into their state of immaculate death.

The sun had risen by the time he was done, shining on a land devoid of life, smoking and barren, the only trace of his passing being a single hand, small and perfect in its childlike way, wrapped around the hilt of a dagger