An excitable archaeologist meets a reclusive immortal Titan. The two have to work together to save the world from certain doom. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, it would be if the most primordial evils weren't standing in their way...
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In the darkest of shadow behind the brightest of thrones, the three sisters sat, spinning threads and shaking their heads. The air around them glittered as the spun threads wove in with the fabric of life, each heading to its predetermined place in the Great Tapestry. The Sisters chattered between themselves, voices raspy but eyes bright. It was a night like any other. The sisters sat, they thought, they spun, and they laughed.
Until something happened.
Something so out of the ordinary that their cackling ground to a halt.
A tug on a thread.
A snap, a break, a fray.
The thread fell, it pooled at Atropos' feet and she stopped. She put her shears on the throne beside her and bent over, groaning as her crooked back ached.
"What is this?" she crowed, holding it up for her sisters to see. The thin tendril, which had been glowing softly only a moment before, now throbbed with the irregular dying heartbeat of the soul it contained.
"It was supposed to be longer," Lachesis hummed, disgruntled, putting down her measuring rod and coming in close. She ran a steady finger over the length of the thread with a look of confusion in her eyes. The Threads of Life did not simply cut themselves, they did not unwind themselves. "Clotho, you must have spun it wrong."
"Me? Why do you always blame me?" Clotho whined, getting to her feet with a groan, her swollen belly protruding before her as she walked over. She reached out, snatching the thread from Atropos. She hissed when her fingers touched it and then cast it aside, sending it fluttering into the darkness and down the side of Mount Olympus.
"Sister!" the other Moirai cried. Both leapt after the cast away thread, hands outstretched, but they were too late. It glittered as it floated down, fluttering and swirling until it was swallowed by the clouds.
"There is something wrong." Clotho's eyes narrowed as she squinted into the darkness around them. She turned then, walking to the edge of their realm and poking her finger in the air over the edge of their platform.
Like a ripple in a pond, the Tapestry of Life that curtained their haven shimmered gold,
billions of threads glowing and twinkling just like stars in the inky night sky.
For a moment, all looked right.
But then, a pulse.
Threads are not supposed to pulse.
The Sisters gasped, all racing to that spot where that odd thread glowed, the light begun to encroach into the threads around it. Another thread fell, leaving a snagging stripe in the intricate tapestry. And another. The Three Sisters watched on in dismay as the very fabric they had been weaving for eternity began to fray.
The mortal threads were tainted, tarnished, fraying, and dying.
"Prometheus!" the three sisters called, as they watched the pulsing lights multiply, eating their tapestries like moths devouring a fine gown. "Prometheus!" their voices roared now, sending shock-waves of power vibrating through the world.
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Prometheus went to them.
No being, mortal, or titan would dare resist the summon of the Sisters. Not even Prometheus. He delayed it for as long as he could, out of a mixture of necessity and indolence, but he resigned to his duty when he decided that what they had to say couldn't be worse than the musings of his immortal mind.
The Moirai watched Prometheus, eyes raking at him as he strode into the centre of their eternal-night darkened platform. They held the frayed edges of the tapestry in their wrinkled hands, leaning precariously over the edge of their home. They looked exhausted; tired of keeping the unravelling relic together. Frigid wind whistled through the holes in the tapestry, gaping chasms of failure they could not fix nor fathom.
Seeing the state of the Tapestry of Life, Prometheus' dark brows threaded together. He walked over, his strides long and sure despite the unsettling sight before him. When he reached out to touch the fabric the Sisters hissed. He gave them a stern look. The moment his fingertips made contact an arc of agony raged through his entire being; hate, war, disease, deception, greed... So many evils twisting and tugging at the fate of his mortal creations.
"What is happening?"
"It is the Evils. The ones that foolish Pandora set free," Clotho crooned, her pointed nails gently stroking the edge she was holding, the edge that continued to pulse and fade.
"They have been running riot for more millennia than I can count. It cannot be them if this has only just begun." Prometheus shook his head, refusing to believe their conclusion.
Atropos stepped closer; her wrinkled face tilted up towards him. "What else would it be, Prometheus? What else would be cremating the threads of the humans, yet leaving those of the immortals untouched?"
"Only just begun?" Lachesis laughed, leaning back against one of the three gilded thrones on the central dais, "Prometheus. Do you know how long we have been calling you? How long we have awaited your assistance?" Towards the end, Lachesis' tone turned sharp; cutting through him for his delay.
"There are others you could have called upon," Prometheus argued, a wave of his hand dismissing their attempt to lay the blame on his shoulders.
"You created the mortals; you gave them fire. Who else would we ask? The Gods that toy with them? Those same Gods who would strike them down as soon as save them? No... it can only be you." Atropos' voice had the kindling spark of an order.
A threat.
"The Evils. You need to get them back. While you hid amongst your creations and wasted your time in the throes of a lotus-induced exile, we suffered. We struggled, we tried to keep the threads of the world together, but our power is failing. You, Prometheus, need to save them," Clotho told him as he watched them struggle. As he made no attempt to help them hold the fraying threads together.
"How?"
"Find them, contain them," Lachesis crooned, finally sitting up a little straighter.
"Contain them? Humanity is riddled with the Evils. It has been bred into the very building blocks of their existence. If I have to contain the Evils, I will have to contain every single human." His tone was not derisive, merely matter-of-fact.
A tutting filled the space, bouncing around through the whistling winds. The three Fates shook their heads.
"Find the source of the Evils, Prometheus. Everything else is a symptom. Put them back in the vessel from whence they came, and you can save your precious mortals," Clotho promised. "Contain them now, before it is too late, before the tapestry unravels for good." Her' words held the weight of the world within them.
Prometheus nodded, the only acknowledgement that he would accept their quest. He turned to leave, his entire being swirling with rage because he had been dragged back into this eternal struggle once more. He just wanted peace. Release. Oblivion.
"There is one more thing," Clotho called after his retreating back.
"A small matter really," Lachesis added.
Prometheus stopped at the edge of their domain, his hands balling into fists at his sides.
"As a Titan you will not be able to locate the Evils yourself... No, they respond only to humans. You will need to seek her out"-Atropos poked one of the glowing threads in the tapestry-"the descendant of Pandora. If she can find the Evils, then you can contain them back in the pithos." Atropos' words were foreboding. She was the cutter of the threads; her decisions inevitable, her words irrefutable.
It was a certainty, then; if the Evils were not contained, the world as Prometheus knew it would collapse. The mortals he had worked so hard to nourish would perish. As much as he wished he no longer had to deal with the onerous burden of existence, he did not with the same for his humans. They had to survive.
