With a deep frown on her face, Moira watched the group slowly picking their way down the motorway. She suspected the other Old Ones would find something distasteful about her continued presence on this planet, but the distortion caused by Fortuna's Herald had turned into an itch she could not scratch.

It beggared belief that, in the whole of creation, Moira was unable to ignore one small patch of randomness in a world the rest of them probably did not even know had been integrated, but when it came to Lady Luck, the better demons of Moira's mind rarely won out.

Damn that bitch!

There was just something about that frustrating being that got under her skin. Not that she had anything as prosaic as 'skin', of course, but the sentiment was sound. If Moira were given her druthers, Fortuna and her ilk would be cast down into the void alongside all the other gods and goddesses deemed detrimental to the wider good.

That the others treated the Goddess of Luck with something akin to amused acceptance - akin to a baby wolverine you just knew would grow up to tear out your throat but was just so fucking fluffy right now - particularly ground Moira's gears. Thus, if the Goddess of Luck was lurking around this corner of the universe, the Weaver of Fate wanted to know why.

And, just in the short time she'd been tracking Fortuna's Herald, there had already been enough interference to the Greater Pattern to make her blood boil.

The coolly rational part of Moira's mind - a very small part after all these millennia, but still there - understood that just as her role was to maintain things the way they were 'supposed to be', it was the point of Fortuna to seek to sprinkle a little chaotic magic dust.

"Life," as her father, Chronos, had once explained, "is the intersection of chance and certainty. Too much of the former and existence collapses into randomised acts of horror. But an excess of the latter? Well, where is the joy in rigid stability?"

She privately thought that scolding was a bit rich coming from someone who literally rewound time at the slightest disappointment but had not pressed the issue. Daddy dearest could be a touch irritable if his words of 'wisdom' were not appropriately treated with awe.

So, her personal ambivalence towards Fortuna went some way to explain why a being of her power and influence was closeting herself away on a planet that had not even received its official designation.

Her mood did not improve any as she watched this group of fucking misfits dispose of a Level 10 Shadowweaver that, improbably, had lost its ability to just as they wandered close. Checking the appropriate threads, Moira saw that two of them should already be being digested in the spider's gullet, with a third experiencing such trauma at the incident they would take their own life the following evening.

Nevertheless, as it always did, the Greater Pattern adjusted, and the reinvigorated threads spiralled outwards to knit together new futures.

It was all so . . . untidy.

For a moment, Moira was tempted to snip the growing strands and have done with it. That was entirely within her gift, and no one would say anything about it . . . Well, that wasn't true, was it? She imagined there would be quite a lot of comment about her choosing to get involved in such a matter: Gelos would be poking fun for aeons . . .

No. Fortuna had been right when she'd said the last thing Moira was willing to accept was ridicule. As tempting as it was, she wasn't going to risk 'the time Moo went all 'Final Destination' on a bunch of Level 5s' becoming an anecdote around the family dinner table.

Besides, casting her mind along those threads, it was hardly going to be a long-term disruption, was it? Especially with three Shadowweavers exploding from and charging the surprised party.

But, as she watched what she was going to have to call a 'battle' because her vocabulary did not have a word small enough for what was taking place before her, the determined conclusion constantly failed to arrive.

Strikes from the spider's forelegs kept finding thin air rather than carotid arteries. Spat globules of poison were intercepted on shields instead of splattering on faces. Heals critted when they should have been insufficient to keep the focus of their attention alive.

Watching the Greater Pattern constantly spin, turn and adjust itself to the continued existence of those in the party was causing her pain - literal and metaphorical.

Moira turned to glare at the cause of all the fraying and wriggling threads of fate. Fortuna's fucking Herald. There she was. Stood right at the back of the group, looking like butter wouldn't melt and doing nothing other than emitting an aura of absolute chaos. Moira doubted the woman even knew what she was doing, but that didn't make it any better, did it?

This group should have been wiped, and their futures tied up into lovely little bows of spent existence by now.

But there they still were, fucking around and never seemingly finding out.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Moira's hand brushed her spindle and thread. She could stop this now. They should all have been dead a hundred times over in this confrontation. She would just be putting things back as they were supposed to. No harm. No foul.

But Gelos' divided face - one side showing a wide grin and the other a sly, mischievous smile - swam into her face. "And then, you'll never guess what she did! She cut the threads herself!"

And then, just as her revulsion at all these unearned futures reached its peak and her hand moved to bring it all to an end, Fortuna's Herald darted forward and kited one of the Shadowweavers away from the group.

Well, that should have a reasonably straightforward outcome . . .

Casually snipping away at any outcomes that might lead anyone to notice her presence, Moira drifted forward to watch this unpleasant business's expected conclusion.

She'd always liked a good Shadowweaver Arachnis. As fellow spinners, she felt they always understood their assignment; whether thinning out the ranks of the weak on newly integrated planets or doing her a favour in scoffing down a troublesome Herald.

To be fair, Moira thought, as Fortuna's favourite jigged this way and that, trying to escape the closing monster, what the woman had done was pretty effective. Even now, the Greater Pattern showed that the rest of the group would survive their fight with the remaining two spiders.

Moira shrugged. She could accept that little bit of revisionism. The essential sacrifice was just about to happen, and without their little 'good luck' charm bending reality around her, none of them had much future left anyway.

There were two of Level 10s camping a little further up the M6 that were going to enjoy a bit of XP farming tomorrow morning.

Then, almost driving its pincers through Fortuna's Herald, the Shadowweaver careened into a petrol tanker.

"No," Moira exclaimed, seeing a potential future blossom into existence. And, without being able to stop herself, she snipped away at the outcome that had the spider destroyed.

"You couldn't help yourself, could you?"

Moira turned to face Fortuna, a deep blush covering the Weaver of Fate's face. "How long have you been here?"

"Long enough to see your knickers getting into a twist. And I mean that literally. Isn't there a pair of trousers you could put on, Moo? I'm not sure slut chic is that becoming for an Old One."

Self-consciously, Moira shifted her form from that of a runway model to a more appropriately dressed middle-aged woman. "I thought you were leaving this integration alone," she spluttered with as much self-righteousness as she could manage.

"Stones thrown. Glass everywhere," Fortuna replied, keeping half an eye on Lorelei as she prepared to throw her coin at the stunned Shadowweaver. The girl had pluck, she had to admit.

And that wasn't always the case with her Heralds. Those who chose that Class tended to find the sort of altruistic self-sacrifice the girl had just undertaken to be anathema to their own interests.

Fortuna kind of felt it was the sort of behaviour a well-adjusted deity might reward. Perhaps today was the day to try and act her age. But first . . .

"Look, Moo, I'm going to level with you. I'm pissed. I get that we have this whole 'hate/hate' thing going on. That's fine. I zig, you zag. It's our thing. But that? That was a little bit naughty. You straight out fucked with my Herald's roll. But do you know what's worse?"

"What?" There was a sullen tone to Moira's voice.

"You let me catch you do it!" Lorelei had thrown her coin, and Fortuna subtly slowed down time as she yelled. This would be tough to pull off, and she needed all the advantage she could get. With luck - heh! - Moria would be too focused on her to notice. "We can't all pick our antagonists, but at the very least, we can hope they are competent! You don't fuck around like that in full view! I expected better Moo."

"She . . . she . . . she cheated!"

"She's my fucking Herald!" Fortuna roared. "It's not cheating when it's literally what she does! The unlikely happens around her - good and bad - and you just fucked around with that. And I caught you doing it!"

They glared at each other momentarily. Fortuna was doing everything she could not to glance at the slowly spinning coin drawing closer to the Shadowweaver.

"What do you want?" Moira's voice was so quiet that Fortuna barely heard it.

"What was that?"

"I asked what you wanted as recompense."

Fortuna shrugged. "Like for like. I get to make your Herald accidentally step on a rake and shatter their skull. Or something like that. I'll probably make it funnier than that, but I'm too angry for whimsy right now."

Moira was shaking her head. "There's no equivalence. Thertraxis is Level 843. Your girl has only been in the System two days."

"And yet here you are, making a fucking nuisance of yourself. She seems important enough for you to take time out of your busy sewing schedule to schlepp on down here and mess with her rolls! Oh, hang on. I have a good one. Thertraxis will accidentally garrotte himself with a cardigan he's knitted to honour your name. Irony, that'll be. Gelos will find it hilarious."

At the mention of her brother, Moira's blush deepened. Fortuna took the chance to glance towards Lorelei and saw the coin bounce off the spider's carapace and, lazily, ping - end over end - towards the petrol tanker. Fuck, this was going to be tighter than a Vestal Virgin's chastity garter.

"How about a boon?"

"A what now?"

"A boon. I'll grant you one, no questions asked, boon. You can use it whenever you want."

Fortuna stroked her chin. Every fibre of her being was screaming at her to get on with it, but you couldn't rush these things. When you were holding no cards and bluffing for the whole pot, you didn't keep checking your watch. "Sounds interesting. Go on?"

The coin hit the tanker's shell and cracked it, creating a spark. Slowly, fire billowed out towards the spider and Lorelei.

Moira clicked her fingers, and a card shimmered into being. With a wave, she directed it to fly towards Fortuna. "Here you go. One-time use. A complete 'Get out of Fate Free' card. That's got to be worth the life of Level 6 Herald, surely?"

Fortuna touched the card, adding it to her inventory. "Deal. But if I see you fucking around in my business again, I'll be making it my life's mission to ensure everyone hears about this. You get me?"

Moira was already stepping through a summoned portal. "I promise. Hand on spindle."

"Fuck you very much." Fortuna gave the vanishing Weaver of Fate the bird and then spun around to see the roiling inferno engulf Lorelei.

It was largely seen as spectacularly bad form for Old Ones to be too hands-on with their favourites. Certainly, anyone catching Fortuna reaching into Lorelei's crisping mind and triggering even as she died would have had plenty to say about it.

But, by a stroke of luck—heh!—no one happened to be looking that way at that particular moment . . .