Moros chuckled, and reached out with shadow limbs to grab a stream darker still, of almost pure black, with traces of white on its edges. He pulled it close, and close, until was only a few feet from them, and Darian could reach it if he wanted to.
But he didn't want to. He froze as the stream, from so close, displayed more than faces, but also places.
"It would appear I do not have the exact elegance of my sisters. For sure I thought it was to be the Amazon queen and I, here and now, but instead it is you. And you, Bellerophontes, are not Otrera. This conversation will be different than I imagined." More laughter. Moros reached out and, like tearing open a deer's belly, split the river of black down its length.
Color poured from the stream, out and over the oblivion around them, washed away the other rivers until they were dots in the distance. Where the river had been black, streams of each color crashed into the nothingness Darian stood on, fell back on, and filled the area around them. Soon, for a good forty feet in all directions, the area was a scene out of the real world.
Grass. The sun high. Gentle breeze. Two teenagers playing with wooden swords.
Moros walked over to Darian, and stood beside him as he turned to face the two fighting children. "I am sure you recognize these two."
"... me and my brother, a long time ago." The Fate was going to show him this? Now?
"You did not know it then, but I believe you have begun to suspect the commonality between Fate's Children now, now that you have met Perseus." The mask looked down to him, face blank, eyes and mouth glowing white. But Darian looked back to the two boys and said nothing. "Then I will show you. Here, at its greatest moment in your life, when your power first emerged."
"Come on Bellerophon! You have to be willing to get in with your shoulder and close the distance. You don't have a spear, you can't just stay at a safe distance and hide behind your shield."
The older boy demonstrated, stepped in with his shoulder first between the younger boy's swing, and swung out. The wood hit the young boy in the ribs, and he fell back holding his chest.
Darian got up, and stood on the grass of his memory, eyes wide as he looked around, and then at the two boys. He too clutched his chest, and looked down at his hand, then to the two teenagers as they resumed practicing.
"How? Why?"
"Shh," Moros said, and he motioned with his mask toward the two.
The young Bellerophon tried again. And again. And again. But his brother wasn't letting him test the technique he'd just taught him. Lukas was laughing, and Bellerophon was too — at first.
"Lukas, I can't try it if you don't let me!"
"Well if I just let you, you wouldn't learn how to set up! Come on, faster!"
And again, the two boys dueled. And again, Lukas refused to let Darian — Bellerophon — practice the technique. When it was too much, Bellerophon screamed, and the young man struck out with the sword and hit Lukas in the temple.
He knew what happened next. It was burned into his mind, every hit, every punch, everything except the face of his brother. He'd forgotten that, as he always did with the people he killed. But this memory playing out before him showed him his brother once more, the face of him clear as day.
And every detail was perfect as Bellerophon jumped his older brother, and started beating his face in.
The vision spared nothing. The sound of crunching nose, breaking cheek bones and eye sockets, the screams and gargles, the shattering of the jaw and dislodging teeth. Moros brought the image closer, until the ruin of his brother's face was all they could see, lit by the glow of young Bellerophon's eyes.
"Stop," Darian said. He turned away and started to walk off, but walking got him nowhere. The ground slid underneath him with each step, until he gave up. Shoulders slumped, head down, he looked at the grass at his feet as he listened to the sounds of a fist cracking bone.
"A marvelous display of violence from one so young. And look, Bellerophontes. Your eyes glow white for the first time. The power of your blessing in your veins, bestowed upon you at birth. To give such a power so easily, I envy Clotho." Moros drifted around until he was in front of Darian, and chuckled. "Do you not wish to watch?"
Darian stared at the dirt beneath him. He didn't need to watch, didn't need to relive that. He'd relived it only a day ago, with Patrius.
"Why do you show me this?"
"Ah, because you need to understand, for the process to work, Bellerophontes. Come." And again the block robes reached out with several limbs, and the black fingers of mist grabbed at distant streams of color to pull them closer. The beautiful scenery, the disgusting display of gore, it all faded away, and was replaced with a home.
Lukas was there, younger looking. Darian's parents were there too, backed into a corner of their little home as a couple of thieves rummaged through what little they had.
"A Fate's Child is a strange thing indeed, Bellerophontes. You must have realized something about yourself, when you saved your family?"
Bellerophon, just a kid, stepped in from the front door, quiet, comfortable. With his motions as smooth as liquid, he walked up toward the closer thief, and stabbed him in the back, deep. He didn't just stab either, but twisted the blade a little, and dug in to the side to make sure the knife cut through meat. And he did it all in a single second, as casually as breathing.
The thief fell over, screaming, gushing crimson. The other turned around, and this one the little boy jumped. No hesitation, no delay, the boy sank his knife into the man's chest, and started stabbing. And stabbing, until he was soaked in blood, and the thief was dead twice over.
Darian looked over his shoulder to see his younger self drown in red. No glow to his eyes, just a calmness, comfortableness, with the butchery. His family looked on, and stared with wide eyes, shivering bodies huddled together in the corner. Lukas stepped out for him, but his father pulled him back.
His parents were afraid of him.
"I... didn't know why they were scared of the thieves. They were just thieves, stupid, easy to kill, if you're aggressive, quick."
"And there lies the problem for you, Bellerophontes." The scene froze, and Moros floated between the butchering boy and the petrified family. "And it was the binding element of all the Fate's Children, until Otrera."
The scene grew around them, expanded, until the little home was gigantic, the people within colossal, and their faces wide against his vision. Darian couldn't look away, not this time, from the sight of his younger self sitting atop the second thief. Moros oriented the mess of it all so the display of the young boy, covered in blood, was the centerpiece of the scene.
Young Bellerophontes was smiling. Just a little, just a tiny thing, and not because of the slaughter. The young boy didn't care about the slaughter, he cared about having succeeded in his task. Simple as that.
"I know I... I know, ok, you sick fuck? I know I can't feel for the people I kill. The Fates—"
"Did nothing." Laughing louder, Moros drifted around the display, and stared at the young Bellerophon. "Your power had not yet awakened here. Dormant. My sisters are a marvel indeed, and far more talented in reading the rivers than I. They knew this would become you."
"... they knew?"
"Oh yes, Bellerophontes. You, Perseus, the others that have come before you, and the others in distant lands. You are all like this." Moros grew the scene yet again, and again, until all that could be seen from any direction was the young Bellerophontes's eyes. Cold, hungry eyes, with a hint of a satisfied smirk.
"I am not that child anymore!" Darian swung out his arm. For a brief moment, he poured his rage and sadness into the simple motion, and as he did, his eyes glowed white. The stream tore apart, bled its colors into the oblivion around them, and faded away. He watched as his own face, the face of his brother, his terrified family, it all bled into the unending obsidian outside the rivers, until the rivers returned to their original shape.
He blinked, and looked down at his hand. The glow vanished just as quickly, and whatever his hand had done, he could not see.
Moros hissed, a loud, raspy, grating sound that poured over Darian and forced him to wince. The entity drifted back toward him, looking down at him from his great height with his emotionless mask, and started circling him, like a waiting predator. "Indeed, you are not that child."
