~~Otrera~~
Well, shit.
"Darian, wait!" she said. Damn man was going to wreck the world if she wasn't careful.
"Why should I?"
"You don't know what'll happen if you kill them. You could start what Charon was talking about, or who knows what."
Darian snarled, and a rasp that sounded less like him, more like the first time she'd heard the mask came through. The tall, robed entities stood before their brother's vessel, and they cowered with a multitude of shadowy limbs raised, flailing like children's arms. Children didn't have half a dozen arms though, and as the Fates trembled, Otrera half-thought they looked kind of like an octopus.
Above them, there were the glowing things that circled the vortex of souls. Still a ways off, but the tendrils of color that wrapped upon sections of the pillar of light were plenty visible, humongous, and pulsing. It was like she could see their heartbeat, except it was their whole body, and each pulse pulled a color from the pillar, whatever color the creature was, brighter, into the main body. Like they were feeding on it.
And as Darian held the Fates in the palm of his hand, other floating orbs started to appear. The city that lay ahead, the enormous temples, the pillars of black stone with windows and doors carved into them, the dome roofs, the colossal hooks that dangled chains as big as roads, each with buildings hanging from them, all of them started to show more of the glowing orbs. Each of the spheres had a collection of tendrils that dangled from them, but the spheres floated, pulsed and radiated a color unique to them. So many colors, each unique, rainbows upon rainbows.
"D-Darian, I... um—"
"They should die! We don't need them, we don't need these creatures manipulating fate, manipulating destiny. We don't need these vile, abhorrent, disgusting abominations controlling us!"
"Darian, uh—"
"We should kill them. Be rid of them. Toying with our lives, our deaths? We should—"
"Darian!"
"What!?"
"Look up!"
Darian raised his masked face, and slowly lowered his outstretched hand.
The host of floating orbs were drifting in their direction. While a few of them were easily a hundred feet tall, from tendril to orb, many others were only a quarter that size. The massive spheres hovered closer, down toward them and the soul rivers along the cavern floor, while the smaller ones stayed behind them. They came closer as well, but always with their larger brethren in front of them. The cavern became alive. More, and more of the floating orbs appeared in their temples and homes, and they floated around, closer together like a flock of slow-moving birds. The flocks drifted, colored the stone with their glow, and joined in hovering nearer and nearer the two Fate's Children. There were thousands of them.
"Bellerophontes," a sister said, "you cannot destroy us. Without our hand, there would be no civilization. We are the spinners, we have woven the tapestry of your history, your tales, your greatest heroes and greatest villains. We are—"
Darian put out his hand, and squeezed his fist. The three sisters all fell flat — not fell, more like squashed into the ground. They shrieked and waved their arms of black mist, but they stayed down, flattened to only a foot tall, with their masks pointed up and shaking.
But Otrera barely noticed, and when she glanced Darian's way, he was still looking up at the oncoming cloud of colors too.
One of the greater orbs came down closer to them, and as its tendrils drifted near the cavern floor, many of the souls in the running rivers reacted. The colossal creature was navy, and souls of a similar color drifted toward it, while other colors avoided it, depending upon their difference. But the descending orb grew smaller, its tendrils shrank into itself, and its glow started to fade. The souls ceased responding to it, as once it was upon the cavern floor, human feet stepped from its glow.
Otrera gasped and took a step back. From the navy, pulsing light of the creature, a man emerged, tall, muscular, with a long beard of black, and penetrating, brown eyes. He looked fit, healthy, perhaps in his thirties, with a beautiful, almost glowing robe of white chiton.
"Moros... again you have come. Again you will destroy what we have built." He swept his arm to the side, stance aggressive. It was comically exaggerated, Otrera thought, but it seemed to be a running theme with the gods. "Be warned, Moirai. Know that I am not my father, and you will not best us so easily this time."
Darian tilted his head to the side, and looked at the oncoming man. "... which one are you?"
The tall man blinked, and looked between him and Otrera. "You are... not Moros?"
"No, I am not Moros." Darian stepped toward the newcomer, and the unnamed fellow stood his ground, but Otrera could see the grimace in his face. "I'm just the idiot who's taken his body."
The man looked him up and down, and folded his arms across his chest. "... Bellerophontes?"
Darian nodded, and snarled again. "And you?"
"... I am Hades."
Otrera slowly lowered her bow, and gawked. She could see his gold mask flicker in and out of existence. The golden mask of a god, similar but different to the Moirai.
Gawking turned into a surprised squeak when Hades fell to his knees, unfolded his arms, and raised his straining hands up to his chest and head. He was in pain, and the veins in his forehead started to bulge as he trembled. For what was apparently an illusion, the illusion behaved quite accurately to human agony, as Darian pointed his palm at Hades's chest, and started squeezing the air.
