By Sidney Hinds
The heroes kept coming, bearing axes, staves, and all sorts of strange magics; some cast bolts of lightning. Others conjured snakes out of cloth. Klothys dealt with each in turn, under the watchful eyes of the villagers. The monsters came too, as they always did, and some of the more daring villagers would now come running at the sound of commotion to see Klothys drive off the latest lamia or serpent.
Her wounds became fewer as she grew stronger and more wily, every challenge adding scars, but also muscle and experience. The fights went from thrilling, to engaging, to almost routine.
Klothys didn’t mind. For the first time there was more to look forward to than just little heroes.
True to her word, the talker appeared whenever Klothys called, every time with an animal cooked a new way. It took a long time for the food to come, but the company after the wait was always worth it. After several calls, The talker began responding much quicker, and the little humans that carried the meals would even stop and rest a while before running away. After three months, the talker was bringing the food just as Klothys would be thinking to call for it.
“Always hungry two days after a fight, sweet Klothys.” The hero said with a sly little smile. “You should take care about being so predictable.”
“Predictable!” One of the children repeated. More and more of the very little ones came along when the talker allowed it, and snuck along with the healer at a distance even when she didn’t. They were not quite bold enough to come as close as the talker did, but played without a care in Klothys’s shadow.
“It because… it is because you know so much of destiny,” Klothys muttered. “You know things.”
The little talker laughed. “I’m not some prophet, just observant. I don’t think destiny is such a predictable thing, anyways.”
“Destiny a road, though. Everyone knows where a road goes. Road won’t move.”
“Destiny is a road, yes.” The speaker settled herself on the grass, sitting up, then thought better of it and lay down in the field, looking up at Klothys. “But you don’t know where the road goes until you walk it. And a road can have many forks.”
“Mmmm.” Klothys took another bite of her supper as she mulled that over. A whole cow, filled with chickpea paste and garlic. She liked the way the garlic bit her tongue. “Road incomplete sometimes, too.”
“Yes! Take for example…” The talker pointed off in the direction of the children. “Them. You can guess at a destiny sometimes. A smith’s apprentice is likely to become a smith. The herder’s daughter is likely to tend to livestock. But you can’t always tell on sight. Many of these children are orphans, adopted by traveling warriors and left here after… after their destinies did not go to plan. Their futures are entirely their own to make. Gods willing, I suppose.”
“Gods?” Klothys cocked her head. “We choose destiny, I think. Thought. Sometimes hard, but we choose what we pursue.” She frowned. “Maybe not though. World hard. Life is hard.”
“And the gods harder, sometimes.” The talker looked past Klothys. At the sky. “Take all these heroes. Powerful destinies all set in motion by gods.”
“Never met a god,” Klothys muttered. “Can’t be quite as clever as you.”
The talker laughed, and squirmed in a strange way in the grass. “None of what I say is gospel, you know. I’m still trying to figure out what I think ‘destiny’ even means. I just like the thought of… well, the thought of having something in my life I’m meant to do. Something important. It’s a bit self-indulgent, but I’ve decided to make destiny my life’s work. To immortalize it as a concept that all people can embrace. I’d like that to be my destiny, so as long as I’m alive, I’ll strive towards it.”
Klothys nodded. “Good destiny. Good for you. You’re clever. More clever than most little people.” She tapped her head. “Brain big like a cyclops.”
“I don’t know about clever… though I’ve got them all puzzling over the concept of destiny up in the village,” The talker grinned. “People have so many opinions, it’s good to hear them all.”
“Mine too?”
The talker nodded. “One might argue – one much less clever than I am, mind you – that a cyclops could only ever be a brute who terrorizes all the land. But here you are, protector of a peaceful valley, beloved by… well, some portion of the people that live in it, and a decent philosopher, on top of it all.”
Klothys flexed her arms. “I am a brute, too. Strongest brute in the world. Strong mind. Stronger body.”
The children must have liked that, for the started flexing and strutting in imitation. The laughs from the talker and the healer were nicest of all. Klothys was getting rather good at jokes.
***
If a destiny can be chosen, and a destiny must be worked for, then destiny must be something you could make. But how did you go about making a destiny?
***
The weaver attended each challenge without fail, the little healer at her elbow, constantly chattering away, describing as much of the fight as she could. Even when Klothys battled the hero who cast small disks that exploded with the sound of thunder, she could hear the satyr chattering away to the minotaur in her breathless, frantic way.
Klothys was curious what the experience must be like, to be witness to such fights without seeing them, so when the next hero, a centaur with a spear as long as a tree, came galloping into the valley, Klothys covered her eye and ran up the hill to meet him. The hero earned a savage strike at Klothys’s hip, but the adrenaline of the added challenge carried Klothys through the pain. She snatched up the centaur by listening for the beat of his hooves, and hurled him back over the rim of the valley, uncovering her eye in time to see him blot out the smallest patch of the sun.
“Hail Klothys the mighty!” The little healer was jumping and pumping her arm in the air. “Slayer of champions! She can knock them down without even looking!” The child next to her took up the cheer, then one of the food bearers. Then another.
Klothys stared at the villagers as they all took up a cheer in her name. When had their tears turned to smiles?
The centaur’s companions, a small troop of armed humans, looked utterly vexed. When the talker went to invite them back to the village, they were too baffled to offer any argument, even when Klothys followed after them, and found to her own surprise that not one of the little folk objected to her company.
“Don’t you mind it?” One of the companions asked after he’d taken some wine and food. He was eyeing Klothys, and the little children scrambling over her legs at play. “More than a dozen heroes have come to this valley and never emerged.”
“Some heroes,” The weaver cackled. “When I was a young bull, you’d never have seen a god’s champion fall as easily as the ones that come wandering here.” She had set up a loom outside the village’s small temple, and a small crowd had gathered around to take supper as they watched her work on the details of the latest battle.
“That one,” the weaver said, pointing in entirely the opposite direction from Klothys, “Was born to crush false heroes. To separate the wheat from the chaff.”
That got a light laugh from the villagers, which was quickly stifled by the grim, sad-little looks on the faces of the companions.
The little healer piped up. “It’s destiny, isn’t that right?” she nudged the talker, who was sat next to her on the temple steps. “Our Klothys is going to make this valley the safest place in all Theros. No monsters or heroes will come muscling in here while she’s around.”
“Safe is good,” one of the shepherds nodded. “A bit dull sometimes. Always nice and lively to see one of your heroes come and have a little scrap with our Klothys. She’d a frightful thing, but better than some of those other things that come creeping near the valley.”
“Heroes are the only hope this world has!” Another of the companions, a tanned human with a braided beard, stood from his spot. “Have any of you seen the world outside? The titans bring disaster wherever they go, and you can hardly walk a mile for monsters. How can you look at this like it’s… like it’s some kind of game? There will never be peace without the strength of our heroes!”
“Hardly.” The priestess had emerged from the little temple, her arms folded in front of her. “No champion who has ever sought hospitality in our village has given a second thought to the people here, except to save them for their own glory. All they want are more worshipers for their personal patron gods, or servants to bear their arms, or for our children to follow them to war.” She turned a harsh gaze on the talker. “You gave a little speech making it all seem quite grand when you first arrived, don’t think I’ve forgotten.”
The talker nodded. “That’s so. I hope I’ve done my part to make up for my words since then.”
“Small steps.” The priestess turned her glare up at Klothys. The little woman was smaller than most of the other humans, but she made Klothys feel smaller still with that look. “The cyclops I’ve grown used to. All this blasphemous talk of destiny, on the other hand…”
“It’s rather interesting, I think,” one of the shepherds ventured. “It’s a… nice…? Yeah, nice way of looking at life.”
“Fate is where you should be putting your faith,” the priestess returned. “Not destiny. Not some foolish concept of humanity defying the divine.”
“Destiny, fate…” The companion with the braided beard collapsed back onto a bench. “What’s the difference, I’d like to know?”
The answer came from a dozen places at once as the entire village burst into debate.
“It’s how you make every day different!” The smith’s apprentice shouted.
“Destiny is what I make of my life,” The little healer said, grinning.
“A life true to desires!” The village drunk hollered, raising a wine-skin. “Lived to the fullest!”
“I think it’s the future we make with our actions,” the little talker said. “And action that frees us from fate.”
“Freedom of the living to choose the story they live,” Klothys ventured, though the little folk were too hot in discussion to notice. Klothys frowned. She’d thought about how to put her thoughts into words for a while, and now no one had heard. The talker gave her a warm smile, at least.
“The fates know all,” the priestess was saying, gesturing wildly. “The threads of our lives are known from birth. Perhaps not to us, but known to… well, to fate.”
“Bah!” The weaver spat in the dirt. “Pretty pathetic threads, if you ask me. I prefer an interesting weave to a predictable one.”
“Yeah, what good’s something you can’t change?” The smith was crossing her arms like the priestess, but nodding up at Klothys, then at the other villagers around her. “Now destiny, that I’ve liked the sound of. Like making a tool at the forge. Good ore makes good metal. Good strikes make good shapes. The future’s something you forge. Something like that?”
“I haven’t got a forge,” the baker replied, frowning. “Does that mean I won’t have a destiny?”
“No, Adrian, not a real forge. I mean, You’ve got your oven, right? And you put all sorts of things into your breads?”
“Of course?”
“Then destiny is like… you get your destiny out of the ingredients you put into your bread.”
“Not literally,” the smith added, as the baker scratched his chin.
“All get a destiny,” Klothys rumbled. “Destiny is something we get to chase after.”
“What’s my destiny then?” The baker asked. “To bake bread?”
“Your fate is whatever the gods have decided-” The priestess began.
“I mean, I like baking bread.” The baker kept talking, heedless of the priestess. “My pa told me my great-grandfather could bake bread so sweet and wholesome that a fellow could run to the end of the world and back on a single bite. I’d like to do that. You all like that I bake bread, right?”
“It’s your best feature, Adrian.” The village drunk punched the baker’s arm good-naturedly. Others murmured less backhanded compliments.
“Well I’ve decided on the destiny of a chef!” The butcher declared. “I’ll say there’s not a better cook in all the valley than I. How many here have satisfied a cyclops’s’ appetite?” The villagers all laughed at that, though a few slapped the butcher on the back. The little healer said something too low for Klothys to hear that caused the talker to blush.
“And Della can be the greatest priestess of the sun in all the land!” One of the shepherds called. The priestess made a vague gesture of dismissal, but blushed despite herself.
“I want to be big, like Klothys!” One of the girls shouted. She jumped up on the lip of the well for emphasis.
“Then chase that destiny!” Klothys roared, clenching her fist.
The villagers fell silent.
A shiver of fear crossed Klothys’s shoulders for a split second, but then the smith threw up her arms and echoed the cheer, and all the village with her.
***
All the living want to pursue a destiny. But sometimes destinies conflicted. How then could it be made that everyone had a chance at a destiny?
***
Klothys repeated the trick of covering her eye with the next hero. And the next. The villagers enjoyed it, and it brought back some excitement to the battles. She even dared try the stunt when a bronze-fanged chimera landed in the vineyards on the far end of the valley. One hand was not quite enough, however, and she got a nasty clawing along her arm. She broke the beasts neck with both hands, and staggered back to the village, wounded, a little humbled, and fully red in the face.
The weaver cackled when Klothys regaled the little ones with the fight. “That stunt of yours makes for a good tale, but if you get killed your tales just a farce.”
She was supervising Klothys’s first attempt to stitch up her own wounds with twine and a needle specially forges by the smith for a cyclops’ hand. “Fine to do what you’re good at with your eyes closed, but in a scrap you need all the hands you’ve got. Why I remember when I was younger-”
“Kruphix blesses his devout with extra arms sometimes,” The talker mused from her seat next to the weaver. “I can’t say I regret my time as an acolyte of Athreos, or having struck out on my own intellectual path, but I wonder sometimes if it was a missed opportunity.”
“You’re lovely with the arms you’ve got, my willow!” The healer called down. The little satyr was perched on Klothys’s knee, also supervising the stitching, and applying salve when needed.
“Thank you, my dear,” The talker called back. The weaver just snorted.
Klothys kept her face as still as possible. Those were new names they were calling each other.
“In any case,” the weaver growled, “I’ve got something for you if you still want to show off against those god-stroked blowhards.” She stood up from the blanket, pulling it up by a corner. “Blindfold, specially woven by the greatest weaver in all Theros for your foolish face.”
“Didn’t I see you weaving those just last week?” The healer called down.
“You did,” the weaver replied. She tapped the talker with her hoof. Up you go, fancy-girl. I want to hear how it looks on the big oaf.”
The talker scrambled up to her feet, and the weaver dumped the whole of the cloth bundle into her arms. She spent a long minute looking Klothys up and down. The cloth looked heavy, but not nearly heavy enough for her to be as flustered as she appeared.
Klothys set the needle down and placed the back of her good hand flat against the earth for the talker to climb into. Her feet tickled Klothys’s palm, and then her shoulder once she’d been lifted up.
“Well,” The talker muttered as she steadied herself in Klothys’s clavicle, “Thank you for having me up here today.”
Klothys laughed at that, and held her head still as the talker unfurled the cloth.
“I was wondering, if it is agreeable to you…” The talker threw a fold of the fabric over Klothys’s ear. “…I would like to dissuade our next visitor from fighting you, if possible. It seems to me that, while they live, they deserve at least the chance to go find easier prey than you.”
Klothys pondered that a moment, and nodded. “Up to them. I not… I won’t fight those that don’t want to fight.”
“Thank you.”
“How’s the view up there, love?” The satyr was cupping hands around her mouth, watching the talker work at the blindfold.
“Quite spectacular, my dear. I’ll have to visit more often.”
“You… you like her?” Klothys tried to make her whisper to the talker sound… casual? Unaffected? Like she didn’t actually care quite a lot about this development, but needed something to chat about while she wrapped the other side of the blindfold across her face. The fabric folded up, and Klothys could still see out of it, partially.
“You could say that.” The talker didn’t bother to lower her voice, or suppress her smile. “I’m more than a bit fond of her.”
“We’re both awful fond of you too, Klothys.” Then the little healer did something strange. She bent down over Klothys’s hand, and planted a kiss on her finger. Klothys felt her whole face grow warm.
“Doubly so when you blush, sweet Klothys.” Klothys felt the peck of the talker’s lips on her cheek. “Such a lovely shade of red.”
Klothys pulled the blindfold the rest of the way down. The flush flowed from warm to hot, and Klothys felt her whole body might turn red.
***
Faced with a crowd of cheering villagers, a valley seemingly untouched by a monster’s ravages, and a cyclops bearing an ornamented blindfold, quite a few heroes did take the option to leave the valley in peace. One even decided to stay, plying her bow-work to hunting game, or helping Klothys drive off the occasional monster.
A good deal many heroes did not stand down. These ones made it clear they were set on adding to their renown, or carrying out the directives of their patron, or simply ignoring the possibility that there might be a cyclops that the people didn’t want dead. So they fought Klothys, and they fell.
Klothys took care to look the heroes in the face when they arrived, and to look on them again as they were laid to rest. They were kindred by destiny; warriors set against each other by the path their natures led them down, and she owed them at least acknowledgment as their paths ended. Some of the villagers took on the habit, requesting blindfolds from the weaver, and lifting them only right before and after the fights. How unnerving it must be to do combat in front of such an audience, Klothys could only guess.
For her own part, the weaver was immensely satisfied.
“They’ll tell stories for centuries now,” she remarked after the latest hero’s companions trudged out of the valley. “The cyclops who slew blindfolded. ‘and where did that great brute get her blindfold,’ they’ll ask!”
The healer raised an eyebrow at that. “They won’t know your name, though.”
“No but they’ll remember the garment,” The weaver cackled. “I am my works, and my works are me. I weave destiny with my own two hands, and leave them for history to ponder.”
After so many victories, it should have been less of a surprise when the challengers began trying to fell Klothys outside of combat. The villagers caught a hero sowing the wheat fields with salt to starve Klothys, and ejected him themselves. Another tried to take the guise of the weaver, but Klothys smelled human blood on his horns, and struck him down before he could take her by surprise. One cunning human even made it all the way to Klothys’s mealtime in the guise of a friend, but mistakenly assumed Klothys would drink from the barrel of poisoned wine she had brought. Klothys tossed both her and the barrel across the valley. The village drunk had already gotten into the wine, unfortunately, and was violently ill for days after. Mercifully, his great tolerance for drink kept him alive.
“Reckless destinies,” The talker muttered after this last one. “Roads that tear up the paths of others. It’s a dangerous thing to let one with power run wild on the notion that their path in life should take priority over another’s.”
Klothys could only nod. Between the lives of the little ones that came to kill her, and the lives of the little ones who made the valley home, there was no choice.
***
Destiny is a collective effort. Nothing happens in isolation. If in doing her duty to the villagers, she protected their futures, that was destiny enough for Klothys.
***
Two weeks after the poison-hero fell, the storm struck.
It was Uro. No storm not stirred by a titan could have raged so savagely, battering the woods with raindrops like arrows, tearing limbs from trees and flinging them up into the sky. The furthest end of the valley was almost an hour’s walk to the shore, but the sea-titan’s calamities reached far.
For all that, the village was in as high spirits as any could hope for. They crowded every structure in the village, sharing rooms and warm spaces while the storm raged. The tents had been collapsed at the first sign of high winds, and the many extra hands meant that several stables and the temple had been reinforced as shelters against harsh weather. Klothys lent a hand erecting a barricade to divert water around the village in case the storm lasted long enough to cause a flood.
And it did. A week passed without a lessening of the rain or wind. Thunder broke the deafening drum and howl with irregular frequency, and lightning was the only source of light through most of the day. Whatever mischief the titan was up to out at sea, it promised to be a prolonged affair.
Klothys carried necessary supplies back and forth to the village, and escorted the villagers on occasional inspections of the buildings and the fields. Mostly she tried to rest under the torrent.
It was a danger for the little folk. But a storm generated by a divine conflict miles away? Keeping heroes and monsters alike from wandering close? It was almost relaxing, in it’s own way.
Still, Klothys kept a watch for danger. The fight might move closer to the valley, so she kept her eye trained on the mountains. One of the villagers might get lost in the storm, so she kept her ears sharp for cries or calls.
In the end, it was the scent of smoke on the wind that alerted her to danger.
The screams followed after.
It smelled almost wrong, that any fire should burn in such a storm. Klothys thundered through the valley as soon as she caught the scent, leaving pits in the earth where she ran. She could barely hear anything for the wind and the thunder, but the screams were there; faint, but undeniable.
The village was burning. Fire crowned every roof and every scrap of tent that the storm hadn’t ripped down. Villagers fled down the hills, across the fields, into the woods. Others were swarming about the buildings. All were screaming, pointing to the dark-shrouded figures in their midst. Figures that lashed out.
Figures that killed.
One fired a bow into the fleeing crowd. One skewered the butcher as he tried to help others from the burning buildings. One swung a hammer through the village well, and the small stone structure erupted into flames.
Klothys felt her heart skip a beat. She knew that hammer. She knew this… hero.
And that one; the one whose lash of darkness was almost invisible in the storm, but which cut down the little villagers all the same.
This one too, the one who turned the rain into waves, knocking over the buildings which weren’t already aflame.
Klothys snatched up the whip-wielding one first. His golden mask laughed up at her, even as she dashed his body upon the hillside. Then she ripped the stable out of the ground, and placed herself in front of the arrow-firing hero while the villagers still inside the foundation fled down the hill.
Klothys plucked up the grey hero and ripped the bow from his hands. His skin felt cold and pickled. He tried to stab her fingers with an arrow, and she ripped his arm clear from its socket. As she did, she noticed something written on his arm. Just a trick of the low light, Klothys thought. She crushed the murderer and threw him aside.
Rather than touch the hammer-hero and his flames, Klothys scooped up a pile of debris and smothered him beneath it. The wood and stone grew hot, but did not burn the way his armor had. The wave-casting hero she slapped clear out of the village, though not before he washed away the last wall of the cattle stables. She tore away the spear of the centaur-hero and pinned him to the earth with it.
They were all masked, and all of them had the same three names carved into their forearms.
The name of the valley. Of the village. Of Klothys.
Klothys’s confusion was giving way to anger. The destiny of those little heroes had ended. They’d had their chances. How dare they come back here. How dare they cut short the gentle, soft destinies of her little ones.
She pulled the roof off every building she could reach, ignoring the burns to her hands and arms. She smashed every grey-skinned hero in sight, heedless of how their bronze and gold cut into her. Dead villagers mixed with the corpse-heroes among the buildings, but many more of the living fled into the relative safety of the storm. Some even stayed, finding weapons to help Klothys dispatch the attackers.
Klothys was so enraged, so focused on crushing every last one of the corpse-heroes, that when she heard the grumbling of the mountainside, it was too late.
She glanced up to see a wave bearing down on the village. A sliding mass of earth and grass and trees, soaked with storm-waters and blown free by the winds. The wave-casting hero stood above it on the mountaintop, chest caved in from Klothys’s earlier blow, his golden mask illuminated by a long bolt of lightning, pouring water into the thundering tide. It was all Klothys could do to throw her body toward the mass, hoping against hope that the little folk had fled far enough that the landslide would not-
The earth struck, and all went dark.
Klothys came to moments later. It must have been mere moments, for her eye and mouth opened to mud. Thrashing, choking, she pushed herself through the heavy darkness. Up and down were mixed, and Klothys gagged on a mouthful of earth. When one of her arms found air, she pushed herself in that direction with all her might.
The rain was still falling, but the wind was gentler now. The ground all around Klothys was overturned mud wound with shredded grass and trees.
A third of the village was buried. The barricade had diverted a portion of the flow, then collapsed under the weight. Of the little ones who had been helping Klothys, only a few who’d been too far wide of the landslide were visible, shouting and digging helplessly at the dirt. Klothys plunged her own hands into the muck, sifting desperately for anyone, anything she could salvage. She’d created a small swath with her body where the mud had not flowed as thickly, and a few shapes still struggled feebly within.
There were faint sounds booming from beyond the valley now, just audible under the storm. Almost like voices. Almost like… laughter?
Klothys cast it from her mind, and dug. The first few figures were wounded or broken, but lived. The villagers well enough to move on their own dragged them out of the muck as Klothys unearthed them.
The ones further down were still, and the villagers only stared with grim, tired eyes when Klothys pulled these ones from the dirt. The living they lined up and treated as best they could in the shelter of the last standing stable. The dead they lay out further away.
Slowly, others returned. The winemaker and her sons. The farmer with his wife and hired hands. The herders and the orphans, with the little healer leading them. Klothys would have snatched her up and embraced her if she hadn’t been needed to care for the wounded. All the while the far-off sound got louder. The villagers heard it too, and exchanged uneasy glances as they unearthed the buried tracts of the village.
More hands arrived to dig. With every villager returned from the woods or the fields, there were cries and subdued, broken laughs of relief. With every body uncovered, just cries. The butcher… the priestess… When Klothys lifted the weaver’s still form from beneath a fallen shed, she sat back and wept.
The little healer spared a moment to comfort Klothys. To tell her that it would be alright. That most of the village had survived, and more were making their way back in time. Klothys could only nod and return to her digging.
Still the voices and laughter grew louder, more booming. There was a faint light at the horizon. Klothys grew worried again, and with her the rest of the survivors. She walked away down the valley to investigate the sounds, and found nothing but more bodies. Not just villagers, but cattle that had fallen or been stricken with panic. She brought the weaver’s body along with her, and scooped a grave for her beneath the trees, just outside the village.
Sobs wracked her body. Klothys bellowed. She wailed. She tore up great clods of turf and hurled them into the sky. Still the little villagers lay dead. Their hands still. Unmoving. Unweaving.
“Klothys?”
The little talker was stumbling up the hill. Blood ran down from her shoulder, and she moved with a limp against the gale, but she moved. Her good arm reached out and Klothys held still. A rough move and she might break the talker further, so she reached out a single finger to brush the little woman’s arm, and confirm that she was real.
Around them, the wind and the rain were tapering off. When the world had gone quiet enough, the little talker spoke.
“We die. We die when the time is right and when it is not. It’s… it’s simply the way…” The little mortal fell quiet, and hung her head. She collapsed against Klothys’s knee, her breathing heavy.
“It’s not… I’m sorry, I…” Klothys could feel the warm dampness of the talker’s face against her knee. “I thought this was somewhere where… why can’t we just live? Why does the world have to be this way? Why-”
Klothys gathered up the little talker and carried her back to the village. The little folk had all stopped their work to stare up at the mountaintop, where the sounds were growing ever louder.
Almost deafening.
There was a split in the clouds, and a crack that shook Klothys’s bones. Sunlight poured down over the hills, filling the valley with a dusty, yellow light.
Then two shadows. Man-shaped holes in the sky, full of stars. The sun shined through the thin crown of one, while black mists flowed between the broad horns of the other. Both gazed down at the devastation on the hillside.
“H-heliod.” The talker’s whisper carried through the sudden silence. “And Erebos. Gods be merciful.”
“More undead. My realm is littered with them, Erebos. Your control over your carrion is shoddy.” Heliod’s voice boomed and echoed through the valley. “No wonder I had to do most of the work.”
“I cannot guard my domain, lead the dead, and battle the titans all at once, sun-god.” Erebos did not boom, but his voice filled Klothys’s ear like wax. “Some returned will escape to do Kruphix knows whatever mischief consumes them. It’s just the consequence of my split attention. Just as you have left swaths of the world unlit these past days.”
“Excuses,” Heliod sneered.
“The storm-titan is fled for the time being, If you want to challenge Uro on your own next time, you’re more than welcome to try.”
The sun-god snorted, and turned a glare on Klothys and the villagers. “Well? Your lives are saved. Are we not owed adoration?”
A few of the little mortals fell to their knees straight away. Most kept standing, until Heliod stamped his spear against the mountaintop, and the light beyond his head flared.
Then it was only Klothys and a handful of the others on their feet.
“Please.” The talker’s whisper was urgent. She was knelt in Klothys’s palm, but facing the cyclops, with her back to death and the sun. “We won’t bring back the dead by our stubbornness. The gods will see the ones they will to live alive, and the ones they will to die for death.”
Klothys stared ahead into the light. “…dead.”
“Dead. I’m sorry, Klothys.”
Klothys looked down at the little talker. She was warm in her palm. “Dead like those heroes.”
“Klothys?”
“They… are dead. Destiny… over. They not belong here with us living. No right to take our destiny. Your destiny. My destiny.” Klothys knelt and set the talker down, gently. “I am not dead.”
Klothys rose again to her feet. Dirt trickled from between her fingers, and her heels pressed divots into the hillside.
“I am not dead.”
“N-no.” The talker trembled, but found her own feet. “No, you… you live.”
“You live.” Klothys stepped forward. Put herself between the talker and the gods. “You live a long life. You will get a long life. You will get your fair chance to live long and happy. To make little people happy with your words and hope. I will see to that.” She walked further ahead. Past the healer. Past the smith. Past the baker. Past the children and the shepherds and the old ones. One by one they stood, and she stood between them and the gods who frowned down on all of them. “I will protect you all. Your destinies matter. Matter more than their pride.” She thrust her chin out at the sun and the darkness.
Heliod lifted the spear from his shoulders. “One last monster, it seems.” The light lessened as he pointed his weapon down into the valley at Klothys. “And a whole community of ingrates. Perhaps it is not so bad to let the dead run wild among such mortals.”
“So it seems.” Erebos gestured, and a figure appeared at his feet. The bident-bearing hero crept up the mountaintop, looking between Erebos and Klothys. “Destroy the cyclops, and your escape shall be forgiven.”
Klothys snarled up at the mountaintops. “Dead will not trod on the path of the living.”
A weak shout went up among the villagers. Erebos nodded. Heliod grit his dazzling teeth.
Klothys started up the mountain at a sprint.
The hero did not have time to saturate the earth a second time, and so instead summoned a small wave, riding it down the slope. Light burst from Heliod’s spear, and again the blinding light of the sun shone down, filling Klothys’s vision.
She kept sprinting. The cheers were growing behind her. The little healer started up a chant. Some were stamping their feet.
Blinded though she was, Klothys felt the cool spray of the wave a moment before impact. She stooped on instinct, and felt her swinging fist connect with the hero; felt his body tear apart under the strength of the blow. Felt the wave crash and break on her charge.
The chant of her name was growing louder. Every voice sharp and distinct. Shouldn’t they be growing fainter with distance?
Klothys kept running. She would not stop. Not while she drew breath. Not while her little mortals were shouting, cheering on her every footfall. Not while she had a destiny still to embrace. She charged right at the gods, right into the sun-god’s rays-
-her little healer. The old. The children. The village, her talker, they were all cheering-
-and Klothys’s heart exploded.
That’s how it felt. Something in the pit of her chest burst like a thunder-clap, and her chest swelled. Her flesh felt red hot. Like fire. Like liquid.
She was expanding. Her feet ground into the earth, her hands ripped through the trees. The hills and woods rushed into her. She saw herself, despite the blinding, searing sunlight. The Klothys she was destined to be. The destinies that had crossed her own, shaping her path. The healer’s horns ground out from her skull. The sky fell and draped itself upon Klothys in the shape of the talker’s garments. The weaver’s proud horns sprouted from her shoulders, though they felt bare without the threads…
Klothys reached up to her face. Her fingers dug into the flesh, and in a single move she pulled her eye from its socket.
The muscle that anchored the eye to her skull softened, stretched, and arced into the sky like a comet’s tail. The fibers splintered and spread, lashing around Klothys. Surrounding her. Every thread the little mortals had woven with their lives… the threads of so many more. It didn’t hurt; the action felt completely right and natural, like rubbing the sleep from her eye after a long slumber.
She ran. She crushed the eye in her palm, and more threads burst from between her fingers, trailing after her, draping over her horns and hair. They filled the air, and Klothys felt the world through them. Perceived its shape as she filled it with her new sight.
She was right below the gods now, though all the height they had on her now was entirely because of the few scant meters of mountain she had yet to ascend. They gaped, weapons only half-raised to defend themselves.
She leapt.
Heliod lashed out with his spear, swift as a shaft of light, and Erebos with his whip, quick as the shadow cast by that light.
Neither came close. The threads showed the paths of the weapons before the gods had even thought to cast their weapons, and Klothys spun in the air between the blows. Her hands closed around Erebos’ horns and the trailing locks of Heliod’s hair. She pulled them from the high hilltop, and with screams decidedly un-divine in nature, the two gods toppled backwards.
The three of them tumbled down the far side of the valley.
They found their feet again quickly. Erebos flicked his whip out, but Klothys was already upon them. She whirled, and the threads encircled her in wide loops, catching Erebos’ hand and Heliod’s spear. The thread pulled their weapons off-strike, and Klothys delivered a spinning backhand across the sun-god’s jaw. He folded with the blow, and stumbled backward.
Klothys had a second to grin before something caught her around the throat, and she gagged. Erebos had taken a length of his whip and wrapped it around her neck. His clammy arms pressed roughly into her shoulders.
His voice in her ear was similarly cold. “No long godhood in your future, brute.”
He was so focused on his task that he ignored the storm of threads that filled the air. Klothys didn’t even need to touch the strings to move them. To will them to wrap the death god’s own throat. His arms and chest and legs. All at once they pulled taut, and Erebos fell to the earth, pulling Klothys down with him. She dropped her full weight on his chest, and rolled backward off of Erebos, ripping the whip from her neck.
She rose to her feet, just in time to see Heliod leaping over the prone Erebos, beams of light shooting from his face, his spear rushing toward Klothys’s face.
The light was blinding, in theory. Now that Klothys no longer saw with her eyes, but perceived through the threads, it was almost trivial to dash aside past Heliod’s thrust, and smash him in the chest with her fist.
Still, the sun-god was quick. Klothys felt the arc of his spear’s next swing through the threads a split second before the blade cut at her belly. She voided the space, and leapt over Erebos’ attempt to bind her legs with his whip.
The gods regarded each other warily. The weariness of the sun and death god thrummed through the air, but so did their experience. Klothys was new to fighting gods, but the other two were clearly no strangers to these sorts of battles. Even without knowing the talker’s stories of god dueling god, Klothys would have perceived as much in the way they held themselves. And like the heroes, they had their weapon.
Erebos was pulling the threads off his body. Heliod was circling around to flank Klothys. The ground around them was already torn and cratered from the blows they’d exchanged. If there had been little folk about…
Klothys pulled the threads back, stitching them into her scalp, draping herself with their many folds. From her loincloth she retrieved the needle, designed by the weaver, hammered by the smith.
The gods were on either side of her.
She snapped the needle in two as they struck. Threads wrapped around either piece, and in an instant Klothys held a spear in one hand, a flail in the other. The air and the earth told her what to do next. There were threads there too. Invisible, and pulsing through all of Theros. Lines that showed the movement and nature of all magic, the movements of all things divine…
…She caught Heliod’s spear in the crook of her flail. With her own spear she pinned Erebos’ whip to the ground. Momentum and destiny carried the disarmed gods toward Klothys, and she dealt each of them a blow to the head with her new weapons.
They fell back, yet again, this time empty-handed. When they rose, they made no new moves to attack.
“My spear, godling.” Heliod extended a hand, anger writ on his face. “My spear, or I will bring the whole pantheon down on your wretched valley.”
“We are not yours to command, sun-god.” Erebos rose up to his full height, and pointed to Klothys. “But I must also request my weapon, lest my watch on the gates of the underworld slip again, and release more vengeful heroes upon you.”
“You will leave,” Klothys growled. “Valley… this valley is not for you to interfere with. Your heroes will not come here any more. Your monsters will stay away. The people here will live their lives free from your… meddling. Accept or I will make it my destiny to slay gods.”
Silence passed between them. Then Erebos did something to startle both Klothys and Heliod.
He laughed.
To Klothys the sound was simply upsetting. Heliod reacted as if the death-god had told a filthy joke. He backed away a step, and lowered his hand.
Erebos smiled, though he clearly had less practice with the gesture than even Klothys. “You presume a lot about our control of the world, blind-god. While the titans roam free… no, even were they banished, so much in the world happens beyond our control.”
Heliod raised an eyebrow. “Erebos-”
“Good.” Klothys dissolved her flail and spear into thread, and took up the other gods’ weapons. “Destiny meant to be open for the living. Destiny is meant for the living. If titans are a danger, I will choke them until they are a danger no longer.” She threw the weapons back. The spear to Erebos. The whip to Heliod. Then she observed in silence as they shuffled awkwardly over to each other to exchange weapons.
“You… you are just little things yourselves,” Klothys said at last. She drew the blindfold from her loincloth, and secured it around her face. “Little things become gods. Congratulations on your destinies. Keep them away from my people.”
“She sees the leylines,” Erebos remarked.
“She just became a god herself, fool,” Heliod snapped back. “Even a simple brute would understand our nature after ascending.” He pursed his lips. “But yes, perhaps she sees as well.” He considered the spear in his hand. “It’s not a trivial thing, godhood. I look forward to seeing it break you. If the titans don’t do the job first.”
He turned away from the other two. “For now, welcome.”
Heliod faded into a glow of sunlight. Erebos seemed to flow away, like a melting candle. Klothys watched the lines of magic until she was certain they were both well away, and then staggered, gasping under the sudden weight of divinity.
The faith of the valley folk spooled within her, filling her with strength and sight beyond sight, even from the other side of the mountain. And not just them. Even as she stood, breathing ragged, she felt the leylines of Theros pulling past and through her; a thousand threads on a loom that spanned to the horizon and back. More lives with every second, from the oldest giant to the smallest newly-hatched aracnir. Their wants. The paths before them. The many, many paths.
A lot to get used to, but first things first. Klothys drew another shuddering breath, and started back to the valley. She could still hear the shouts of the villagers.
They were safe. Safe for now.
A chill of doubt ran down her back. She had failed them today. Protected them, yes, but failed to keep them all safe. She was… a god now? But even a god could fail. What if she went to stop the titans and failed? What if-
-Klothys crested the hill, and she perceived. Felt every villager below, cheering at the sound of her. Full of hope. Hope for her. For themselves. For futures no longer in immediate peril. Each stood or sat up as they were able with an arm raised, a hand covering their eyes. Shouting. Chanting. Trusting.
Klothys cried out and ran down the hill. Shouting back to them. Babbling. Telling them they were safe. That she would see to their safety. Hands dropped from their faces the cheers redoubled. The healer called out from among the wounded.
“That’s our Klothys! Our champion!”
The others called up to her as well. Laughs. Sobs. Cheers. Curses against the other gods that would have been unthinkable a week prior.
The talker spoke last, once the last of the shouts had died down, once Klothys stood in their midst, on legs that were now filled with stars, tears of thread and Nyx streaming down her face. She spoke and Klothys laughed with joy to hear her speak.
“Hail Klothys the tender, who protects the destinies of the living.”
