“Hear it from you.”
“Hear it from you.” The trio once more nodded in agreement. Nyx sighed, looking between the sisters before landing on Atropos.
“Erebus has agreed to join Zeus and his brothers in this war on Kronos. I want nothing to do with this. Now… Now he’s gone behind my back and joined them. Is there…” Nyx paused, cursing herself for how weak she thought she sounded. “Is there any hope for us?”
She searched the Fates’ faces for pity and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw none. They looked at her with concern, maybe with even a little solidarity, but there was no pity to be found in their soft gazes.
“The night and the darkness will always have to be together.”
“Always have to be together.”
“Always have to be together.”
Nyx fought back a grimace as she heard the words repeated thrice. It was hard enough reckoning with the betrayal in her chest, hearing‘together’just once sent another twang of something uncomfortable down her spine.
“How?” Nyx’s voice grew a little more desperate as she scanned the sister’s faces. The longer that you asked the sisters questions, the vaguer that the answers became. Their eyes had begun to glow white, and they lost some of the expressiveness of their faces as they succumbed to their trances. The sisters who Nyx had greeted as friends were gone, and the Fates, who were abysmally detached from everything and everyone, had taken their place. The smoke from the incense scattered around the room began to inexplicably pick up, filling the room with rosemary.
The sister’s eyes were now completely white, glowing with an intensity that made Nyx and all her darkness want to back away. Their expressions were gone. The Fates’ bodies began to levitate a few inches off the floor, moving through the air until they had filed in a straight line in front of Nyx. They opened their mouths, one voice ringing out through the hall although their lips didn’t move.
“Listen now,God of darkness, Goddess of night.
Be careful to dissuade yourselves from Zeus’s plight—
If what we caution is what comes to pass,
The night Nyx fights will be her last.”
Nyx’s handflew up to her face as she felt a cold chill go down her spine and a wet, creeping panic settled into her bones. It made her want to shake out of her mortal form and desperately hope that those feelings of increasing anxiety would stay trapped in its anatomical prison. Her thoughts began to pick up in intensity and her mind raced, wondering what it could possibly mean that the Fates were issuing her the same warning as Hecate.
What was she supposed to do? Erebus knew that she couldn’t fight. If she entered this war, if she sided withZeus’s plight, then somehow… it would kill her.
She knew that prophecies had a way of being cryptic, especially one that was repeated by the Fates, but as she raced through any potential double meanings, Nyx found none. The Fates were quiet, still hovering in their trance state, and Nyx felt herself breathing quickly. She had never come face-to-face with fear in such a tangible way. Combined with the loss of Erebus in her mind, Nyx was convinced for the first time in her long existence that she might already be dying.
“What does that mean?” Nyx shrieked again, tossing herself down at the feet of the Fates. She bowed to the sisters, weeping on the floor as her tears soaked the mosaics underneath her. Her face was pressed up against the cool stone while she screamed, her voice nearly going out at the desperation. Nyx sucked in one sharp breath, gasping for air, only to let out another strangled cry—one that was so loud, so full of power and heartbreak, that all the windows in the great hall shattered. Glass went flying all around the room as nightfall swept in, dark waves of clouds pouring in the room like water.
The Fates didn’t move as they answered her question.
“Listen now,God of darkness, Goddess of night.
Be careful to dissuade yourselves from Zeus’s plight—
If what we caution is what comes to pass,
The night Nyx fights will be her last.”
Nyx bellowed,her body exploding into a million pieces as she erupted from within. Her mortal form was gone and only the primordial goddess remained. She rose to the rafters, filling the entire great hall, as she stared down at the floating figures of the Fates.
“Have I not already died?” Nyx screamed, her voice deep as it echoed over the entire Underworld. “Is this not already my final night? Is this not the pain that any mortal feels upon death, ten times over?”
The Fates said nothing, but the glow started to diminish from their eyes as they sank back down to the floor. Nyx paused and took in a shaky breath, looking around the room as the sisters pulled themselves from their unified trance into their individual bodies. The great hall had been destroyed, remnants of Nyx’s dark power all over the room and glass covering every square inch of the floor. Even the tapestries had been shredded at the sound of her shrieks. A deep, profound embarrassment overcame Nyx like she was coming off a high.
Nyx eyed the open, broken windows and decided that she didn’t want to be present when the sisters regained their consciousness. She dissipated and slipped out of the room like smoke, disappearing entirely in the skies of the Underworld. She made it back to Tartarus and began winding down, down, down…so deep into the center of the Earth that no one would ever be able to find her.
17
Nyx didn’t know how much time passed in the depths as she let herself bleed out of her edges until she was one with the blackness. It couldn’t have been more than a day; her duties would pull her from her solitude to usher in nightfall. She knew that there was no heartbreak that could transcend her responsibilities.
That’s the problem… isn’t it? What if the source of your heartbreak is the one who sends your darkness out into the world?
