The Gifts of Fate

Chapter 12

The cold air sucked all the heat away from her body. Shilpy's skin felt like ice, chilling the muscles, flesh, and blood beneath. The world seems so far away like she'd woken up inside a dead body.

In every vision, until now, the green mist had surrounded her. This time the fog floated overhead. It appeared thinner, almost transparent allowing her to see through it. What she saw was terrifying.

The sky was gone, replaced with a stone ceiling. Stalactites hung from the roof. Each descended like giant limestone teeth stretching down to meet the surrounding buildings towering overhead.

Shilpy's heart raced and each breath escaped in short, sharp rasps creating wisps of steam. She blinked, trying to focus on the road and ignore the compulsion that the stone ceiling may come crashing down at any moment.

She first saw the giant stone roof during the Ritual of Seers. In a way, it didn't matter. The sight of countless stalactites stretching for miles and miles from one horizon to the next left her weak at the knees. Against such a thing she was less than an ant. Insignificant regardless of what she said did or achieved in life.

The fog lit the street with an eerie green glow. The mist flashed intermittently with lights, like lightning within a thundercloud. It took a few seconds to make sense of the surroundings, but then she realized she stood on George Street in the center of Sydney. Despite the familiarity of the setting, the strange light made everything appear alien.

Shilpy's eyes flicked from the road to the random flashes of light within the mist. In amongst the light show, a single bright speck moved with purpose in and around the electrical storm. The approaching light pulsed, like a heartbeat. It was watching her. Then it turned and moved down George Street. Shilpy took a hesitant step after it. It darted further forward beckoning for her to follow it. So she did.

The light led her down the hill past empty buildings, shop fronts, parked cars, and the occasional vehicle in the middle of the road. The world around her was silent. Each footstep echoed off the windows of the surrounding skyscrapers. The only other sound was the distant cracking of rock on rock from the sky ceiling hanging above.

Not for the first time, she wondered if this was some kind of dream or delusion. The hard concrete beneath her feet felt real enough, but there had been so many visions in the last few days, who knew what was real anymore.

Perhaps the incident at the apartment with Dusk hadn't happened. For a moment, she almost hoped that she had hallucinated it all, but something inside her knew the truth. That felt more real than this. That was as real as it gets.

This was different. All the visions had been leading her here. Even the one she experienced in the Ritual of Seers with Angela. But it was still a vision. That familiar surge buzzed beneath her skin.

It was hard to tell how long she followed the light. Shilpy walked until her feet hurt. Then she walked some more. The city changed around her, but in some ways, it felt like she hadn't moved at all.

Eventually, she spotted the three figures standing in the middle of the road ahead. The three feminine shapes stood in the center of an intersection, surrounded by unmoving cars.

The Moirai toiled away on their tapestry, one spun the thread, the second wove it up into the mist above, and the third severed the string. Each movement was fluid and graceful, more like a perfectly synchronized dance than a machine.

Without stopping what they were doing, the Moirai all watched Shilpy approach. She paused a short distance from the three. "You have come at last," they spoke together in a chorus of synchronized voices.