“Apollo… by the way, isn’t that rope also a ‘thread’?”
“What sound are you talking about now… Aha! Right!!!!”
Artemis and Apollo simultaneously notched their arrows.
At the ‘Fate’ who was disguised as a fence so obviously.
“……”
I could only watch while nervously swallowing my saliva as the situation unfolded rapidly before me.
The three Moirai sisters had no way to hide the enormous thread of Fate.
So they used it as the fence of this small village, leveraging the psychological blind spot of people who overlook what’s right under their noses.
But Artemis, striving to uphold her authority and divinity, was no joke when it came to observational skills.
She read the anxiety and worry in Lachesis’s eyes and intuitively discovered the ‘different light’ of the oracle’s revelation.
“A, no way!”
“Yes way!”
Lachesis rushing forward to protect the thread of Fate.
Artemis effortlessly subdued her by striking her leg with her bow.
Artemis then securely bound Lachesis’s legs with the nearby vine and signaled Apollo with a glance.
Apollo nodded in understanding and slightly adjusted the direction of his arrow tip.
Pointing it at the heavily knotted section.
“To cut the knot and finish this cleanly, right? Got it.”
As she notched her arrow again, they both shot simultaneously.
The arrows shot by the gods of the sun and moon intertwined and resonated with a brilliant light as they stretched forth.
The moment those arrows imbued with mighty energy touched the knotted rope…
Ting!
Thud!
Two dolls emerged from the ground and deflected the arrows with their staffs.
Though they were the arrows of the 12 main gods, they were powerfully knocked aside, merely having their trajectory slightly altered.
But with the arrows embedding into the ground near the fence, the purpose of protecting the thread of Fate was sufficiently achieved.
The two dolls sighed in relief and redirected the ends of their staffs back at the twin gods.
Artemis, showing sharp animosity in baring her fangs at their offensive stance.
With every step she took towards them, the ground beneath her feet cracked and sank.
“You two are pretty impressive, altering the trajectory of our arrows. First one is Clotho, and the third one is Atropos.”
“……”
“Where have you been fooling around before showing up now? No, it seems you were hiding underground like moles, observing us. Tch!”
The Artemis, scowling furiously, spat at the ground where they had been hiding.
Chiik!!
Her saliva was quickly absorbed by the ground, but in the process, hot steam began rising from beneath the Moirai sisters’ feet.
“It’s going to be difficult for you to hide back underground. The geothermal heat is quite substantial, enough that it’d be better to have your face pressed against a hot rebar.”
Artemis tapping her shoulder nonchalantly with the arrow in her hand.
She displayed an unsettling attitude and a chilling smile, exuding the air of a villain.
“…”
“…”
Looking briefly at the state of their second sister, Lachesis, whose legs were bound, the Moirai sisters remained silent.
While maintaining their distance in step with the advancing steps of Apollo and Artemis, they braced for the coming attack.
Annoyed by their calm demeanor, Artemis kicked a pebble towards Clotho’s face.
Thud!
Clotho effortlessly kicked the flying pebble away.
And as Artemis had anticipated, she merely grinned mischievously and clapped her hands twice or three times.
“To be honest, the three of you have really annoyed me.”
“What’s the matter?”
Clotho, standing in front with her back to the knot of the thread of Fate, spoke on behalf of the Moirai.
“Both humans and gods, every time our father Zeus makes a dissatisfied expression, they all cringe and let him have his way with everything.”
“…”
“What makes you so unbending? What makes you so great?!!”
Artemis grabbed Lachesis by the collar and hurled her towards the Moirai sisters.
But the Moirai sisters’ hesitation was only momentary.
The first and third sisters prioritized protecting the thread of Fate over catching their flying second sister.
As a result, Lachesis, whose legs were bound, fell and tumbled on the ground without any resistance.
“Look at this. You couldn’t even receive your sibling, and just stand there watching. Don’t you have any love to at least untie the rope binding her legs?”
“We are the Moirai, the sisters who weave the cycle of Fate. We prioritize public duties over private emotions.”
“Tsk! Don’t talk? Who dares to answer back to a main god?”
“I answered…”
“AAAAAAHH!! Shut up! I said shut up!!! There’s nothing but dry responses! No fun at all! Was this what your father taught you? No, you have no father, right? That’s why your manners are this bad.”
Artemis raising her voice to silence Clotho delivered a barrage of scathing insults that would make even middle schoolers bow in admiration.
However, Clotho was not silenced by her oppression or curses.
It was confusion that had silenced them.
“Sister?”
Her younger brother approaching and nudging her shoulder, Apollo.
Facing her with an expression somewhere between a smile and a tear, he spoke.
“The father of Moirai sisters is the same Zeus as ours…”
“Hya…!”
Artemis, maintaining her serious demeanor until now, let out a cute sound and shuffled.
Apollo, who found this amusing, smirked.
“Family drip, your style of spitting while lying down is truly… goddess…!!”
“Shut up!! Seriously! Why does our dad have so many kids?! It’s confusing!!”
“A legend for over a thousand years that a sister couldn’t remember…”
And with a kick Apollo received from his sister, he fell forward, face first into the muddy ground.
Artemis, looking down at him, stuck out her tongue with a “tsk” sound and tightened the bowstring, aiming it at the Moirai sisters again.
“Hey, you know my temper, right? I won’t kill you, so just move out of the way.”
“The sin of Apollo, who indirectly grasped the prophecy through his sister, the grave sin of Artemis who tramples the seed of fate to protect her divine rights. Who shall save these foolish siblings?”
“Aah, shut up! You’re the ones committing sins.”
“What do you mean?”
Artemis gestured with her chin towards the knot behind them.
“The world is quite peaceful right now. It’s a period of stability built after many dangers! But your sin of trying to create a demon that would overturn that peace is far from light!”
“Artemis. Artemis. …You misunderstand the meaning of the prophecy.”
“Tsk, how irritating. Tell me, how else could you misunderstand the meaning of ‘another light illuminating the world’?”
“I don’t know the meaning of the inscriptions on this stone either. However! The world is not at peace, it is not calm. The evil growing endlessly beneath the ground will eventually swallow the world, everyone.”
“…Evil?”
“Thinking there’s no enemy after the Gigantomachia war?”
“Hah! What nonsense… Hey! The Gigantes remnants are still locked away in the North Mountain of the Gods! Ares is keeping watch there! We even have our big sister!”
“True. The Gigantes remnants remain locked away in the small space at the edge of the northern land. But we have seen fate. The survival of a rat trapped in a corner!”
“And?”
“A great hero who will save us in the imminent crisis will appear. You are trying to prevent the birth of this new hero! How do you plan to atone for this sin?”
“A new hero? Haha! Laughable! Worthless! The era of heroes is over. We gods can handle it, why are you extracting threads to create a great hero?”
“The current gods cannot stop it. Even Lord Zeus…”
“If so, what do you expect to gain by leading with this hero?”
“Just waiting for the master of this massive and thick thread of fate. When our master appears, He will surely save the world. Gods, humans, evil – all of it…”
Clotho, her voice choking with emotion, believed in the impending fate without a shred of doubt.
While untying the second sister’s legs,
The three sisters linked arms in front of the knot, ready and resolute for their last stand with the acceptance of death.
The wall formed by the three Moirai sisters.
Their figures strangely resembled the three oracle stones bound together by magnetism.
That was when it happened.
Rumbling! Thunder!
Suddenly, clouds of lightning began to drift in the clear sky,
but their movement seemed not to be forced by the wind but rather to have a will of their own, moving freely here and there.
Apollo, sensing the urgency, had arrived with his Sun Chariot.
“Son of beach!! That’s daddy’s lightning cloud!!”
“What? Why is it coming here?”
“It seems to be looking for the Sun Chariot. If we’re found here, we’re at the end!”
“What should we do?”
Then Apollo leaned close to his sister’s ear to whisper something.
I tried to eavesdrop, curious about the content, but unfortunately, I only caught one word.
That was,
Solar Eclipse.
Hastening to elevate their auras, Apollo and Artemis.
As they did, the whole world seemed to spin in a vortex,
and above our heads, the moon shifted while the sun disappeared behind it.
The encroaching darkness closed in like curtains blocking the sunlight, as if the end of the world was approaching.
“Sister. I’ll meet daddy and buy some time.”
“Alright. I’ll finish this during that time.”
The Moirai noticed their plan to create a dark curtain of a solar eclipse to avoid Zeus’s sight and take action unnoticed.
“No!”
“Must stop it!”
The second Lachesis and the third Atropos rushed forward to block them.
However, they collapsed helplessly like flags in a strong wind at the mere flick of Artemis’s hand.
Chiik!!
“Ah!”
“Kya!”
The ground, scorching from Artemis’s saliva, began burning their bodies as they screamed and fainted.
Artemis, not intending to kill, raised her hand and retracted the saliva she had spat.
“See that? I’m serious. So, move aside, Clotho.”
Gazing helplessly at her unconscious sisters, the first Clotho shook her head as a sign of refusal.
“No choice.”
Whoosh!
“Kraaat!”
Torn by a cutting wind, the tears she shed while closing her eyes had turned crimson but she did not fall.
With her eyes tightly shut, she spread her arms, ready to resist until the end.
And raising her head, she began to chant her last words akin to a curse toward the heavens.
“Ah!! Holy and pure Artemis!! Now corrupted so black, no different from the remnants of Gigas!!!”
“Shut up and move aside.”
“Aah!!”
The arrow, unfeeling, pierced Clotho’s shoulder joint.
Collapsing, she revealed the knot of the thread of destiny she had been protecting.
Artemis fully knew how to dispose of the thread of destiny.
The first knot of the thread that marked birth,
the middle knot representing the rest of life,
and the last knot symbolizing death,
all three must be severed.
She fired the first arrow.
As soon as the arrowhead touched it, the first knot of the twisted thread shattered like a spider’s web.
She prepared the second arrow as the sun hiding behind the moon was completely obscured, plunging the entire world into darkness.
“Good. Let’s finish this quickly.”
Swoosh!
Ting~
Startled, Artemis dropped the arm holding her bow.
Unlike the first knot that had easily torn, the middle knot repelled the goddess’s arrow like a steel shield.
“What? What is this? Then the last knot first!”
Swoosh!
Ting~
In vain.
The thread of destiny that twice deflected the goddess’s arrow.
“No choice.”
She drew a dagger from her bosom, determined to cut it in person.
At that moment!
Rumbling! Rumbling! Roaring!!!
The oracle stones lying on the ground started trembling and levitated in the air.
Then, vivid lights of various colors flickered across each of their characters,
and shot pillars of light toward the darkened solar eclipse.
Thus indicating that these columns formed a ‘door’ of sorts, the threads of fate gathered themselves and formed a snake-like spiral, climbing the light columns and entering the solar eclipse.
“What? What’s going on?”
“…So, this is it?! Hahaha, A—Hahahahaha!!”
Thereupon, Clotho, seemingly having realized something, chuckled madly with her mouth wide open.
“What is there to laugh about?!”
“Naive and dull Artemis. You still don’t understand what the oracle stones meant.”
“What? Do you?”
“Yes. You merely pieced together three characters to interpret it as the third sun and moon, hence coming this far. But in truth, it was the oracle stones guiding you here!! Thus… how could I not laugh? A—Hahahahaha!!!”
!!!
At Clotho’s words, even I, watching on, grasped the truth.
Yes.
三, 日, 月
Third sun and moon?
Isn’t it too simple for an oracle’s prophecy?
First, you must remember the magnetic properties of the stones.
The N-pole: 三, 月 stones.
The S-pole: 日 stone.
Thus, no matter how you combine, you get: 三, 日, 月.
You were mistaken.
But the real meaning is this:
日 refers to the sun, Apollo.
月 refers to the moon, Artemis.
三 refers to… the three Moirai sisters.
That is, because the deities corresponding to these three characters were gathered all in one place like magnets,
It is reasonable to interpret it as the creation of this pillar of light leading toward the solar eclipse.
“Shit! Stop laughing! Who’s going to believe that?”
Artemis notched another arrow and aimed it at the thread of fate ascending via the pillar of light.
She fired dozens of arrows, but all failed to pierce the target and fell to the ground like powerless withered leaves.
“The first knot was severed, wasn’t it? Why is this happening?”
“Still don’t get it, Artemis?”
Clotho, staggering up with her eyelids swollen with blood clots,
accurately pointed to the thread of fate ascending via the pillar of light, even with her eyes closed.
“With the first knot cut, a human’s fate that never came to be is now created.”
“So what? Better he never comes to be, thank you. Thanks for letting me know. Hehehehahaha!”
“Foolish Artemis.”
“What? You?”
“The thread of fate, though never born, includes life and death. So, there’s only one solution, isn’t there?”
“…What is it?”
“Bring an existence from another world who already holds the destiny of a great hero!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!!!! Would you bring someone from another dimension? Such a thing is impossible!!!!!!”
At her absurd ramblings, which even Zeus couldn’t possibly fulfill, Artemis threw her bow in rage and grabbed Clotho by the collar.
But Clotho, despite her constricted neck and the pain, only smirked.
“It’s not the case? You’re lying out of revenge, right?”
“Ah! Ah! It’s already starting to appear! The future of the severed thread of fate!”
“Shut up! You fraud!!”
“I declare, Artemis. Soon, a great hero destined to surpass even Heracles will appear by your side, and through that person’s existence, you will suffer eternally!”
“Wha, what are you—”
“Off with the farewell, move aside!”
Slap!
Clotho harshly slapped Artemis’ cheek before bowing to the thread of fate heading toward a far journey.
The thread of fate, without looking back, entered the doorway of the solar eclipse,
simultaneously as the sun reemerged and began illuminating the world with light.
And…
The severed first knot of the thread transformed into a misty haze and seeped into my arms a good distance away.
The body I possessed in this dream of the past began to shine golden in the chest area.
