Ripples passed along the spun webs of Fate’s throne, and the shudders plucked a song to echo the mad proclamation. The sound sank into the formless, shadowy walls. Silence filled the throne room to accompany Fate’s leering grin and Zoe’s cold heart.

This was the Gambler all over again. A figure ruthlessly toying with her, just because it could, and she had no power… she didn’t know if she could survive again.

But she would try.

“What is your entertainment?” she forced herself to ask.

Fate leaned on the arm of his chair, his head cradled in his hand, a chrome goblet swirling with some liquid she couldn’t understand. The scent of oceans lost drifted into the chamber.

“I hoped you knew,” he said as he drank from goblet. “Because I don’t anymore.”

His vagueness unsettled her. A being such as this shouldn’t be so nonchalant, but after her experience with Rue, and the Gambler, she no longer felt shocked so much as she waited for the other shoe to drop.

“You ascended, didn’t you?” Zoe said. “You were once something like the Witch.”

“She wishes,” Fate said with a snort.

“What are you then?”

“You’re not far off. You are a child of many systems, just as many systems are my child.”

Fate reached behind the throne into the shadowy strands. He wrapped two fingers around gossamer obsidian and —

Zoe looked back at her life and saw how it all led to this moment. Every choice, every chance encounter, every step led to this moment. She would do what she always did when faced with overwhelming odds. [Empress in Time] wrapped flames around her hand as she leaped toward the throne.

Fate tugged the thread in a different direction and —

Zoe stood before the throne, her techniques deactivated, she needed to placate this monstrous being. If she did what he wanted, she could survive, and only by surviving could she save her friends and her world.

“What can I do to —”

Fate released the thread and the world shifted back.

Zoe felt it in her Skein as they thrummed, in her accolades as they rattled like beads, in her memories as they jostled together and loosened.

She knelt, head spinning, before the crown as Fate swirled oceanic time in his chrome goblet. He took a long, slow drink, that began measured and became insistent before the end.

“You see how boring it is when I make you do something? When I change what happens to suit myself?”

Zoe trembled as two pasts devoured each other and defecated her history. Was anything different?

“One day,” Fate said as he refilled his goblet with a waggling finger. “if you become strong enough to step outside of time, you’ll know if I put things back how they were. Until then, I want to see something.”

He extended his hand and the shadowy realm swallowing the throne room melted away. Zoe stumbled back as the sky opened up around her. Silver clouds swirled amongst a skinned and bloody sky. The endless ocean extended below like a mirror of metallic gore. She fell to her knees and gazed upon Earth. The taste of salt filled her nostrils, the iron funk of blood upon her tongue, cool wind blew her tears away. The floor beneath her hid nothing from view. Ripples marred, and the throne room flashed towards it until it sat amongst the waves.

The waves seemed tiny at the aerial distance, but down on the ocean’s surface, they reared up like crimson skyscrapers only to collapse into explosions of pink foam. One such wave rushed toward the throne room and Zoe yelled as the water cascaded toward her. It struck an invisible wall surrounding the throne room and the water coursed around. When it cleared, Zoe spotted the origin of the waves.

Rue and the Witch twisted, their claws sunk into each other’s flesh. The Witch looped like a writhing beanstalk, and Rue hacked as he climbed her height. Eyes burst beneath his blades. Mubilashi poured from dilated pupils. Masses of them swirled around Rue and flensed silver from his flesh like clockwork saws.

He sliced them out of existence with a wave of his hand, but a colossal arm split down the length of the Wicth and reached up into the sky. It beckoned with two fingers.

Silver clouds split in a rush of light.

Rue screamed as the laser blasted him down into the water. Steam exploded from the impact. Clouds blasted up and drifted around the sphere blocking all from view. Zoe stepped closer to the throne room walls.

“You wanted me to see him die?” she asked.

Fate leaned forward.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“And how does that make you feel?”

“I… I don’t know. He’s not dead, is he?”

Fate leaned back in his chair.

“Not yet.”

Steam curled around the sphere.

“Where are my friends?” Zoe asked.

“They’re safe. Rue’s next trick is the one I came for.”

The steam faded and Zoe gasped. A moon of blue crystal floated above the Witch’s head. Veins of white light glowed from the cracks and canyons writhed across its surface. Tiny white pellets rained from the floating moon and splashed into the ocean.

“Polyps,” Fate said. “You weren’t on the planet the last time they were launched. An expression of domination, to plant the seeds of your system upon a world claimed by another. Systems as weeds made sense to me when I first built this throne, but you see now what such a nature wrought.”

Rue burst up from deep within the water. His skin glowed like molten metal as he soared up into the sky. He reached into his chest and pulled out a chain. The black links twisted in his hand as he whipped it toward the blue crystalline moon. The length extended across the distance.

Something coiled around from the back of the crystalline moon and sprung toward the chain. Zoe’s mind froze with horror as she gazed at the monster wrestling with the chain. At first, her brain thought it was a giant centipede. One large enough to wrestle mountains. Except it was green, and furry, with long apelike limbs wrestling the chain and bringing it down toward the water. Blue light lanced from the moon. Rue dodged but kept his grip on the chain. Water vaporized and he charged forward in the covering steam. Explosions wrapped around the throne room, and Zoe pressed against the invisible edge. The steam cleared, and she gasped.

The green furred centipede thrashed in the water with a chain biting deep into its flesh. The other end of the chain wrapped around the Witch and contorted her shape as she sprayed Mubilashi against the links and Rue.

Rue gripped the chain with one hand and pulled it tight as he parried the Mubilashi with a barrier of swordcraft.

But as Zoe watched, the chain snaked up his arm, grinding into his metallic flesh, and crushing him.

“What will happen now that the Blackstar feeds on the others?” Fate said as the chain links pulsed and grew. “Who do you think will survive?”

The centipede slipped free of its skin and the chains and flung itself toward Rue.

Fate sighed.

“Another status quo established. This pattern has repeated for a century. I’m bored.”

Zoe stared.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“You already know what he’s going to do,” came a voice behind her.

Zoe turned, her fist striking out, and punched Not-Cassy in the chest. The woman smiled, her face glowing but normal, and her skin intact… until Zoe’s knuckles punched through the skin like paper. Instead of exploding, Not-Cassy slipped off Zoe’s Mirrorred fist and walked around her. Worms wriggled in the gaping hole in her chest as she walked toward the throne.

Thrones.

An empty chair sat beside Fate’s, and Not-Cassy climbed up to sit inside it like a queen beside a king.

The battle raged beyond the invisible walls, but Zoe felt her eyes pulled toward the thrones on subtle threads.

“She’s in charge?” Zoe asked after a minute of staring.

“Nobody’s in charge,” Not-Cassy said. “That’s the whole point.

Fate leaned back on his throne.

“Choice requires freedom and games require restriction,” he said. “Both are essential for true entertainment. Interfering is to be avoided, beyond setting up the initial conditions, but I‘ll indulge myself just this once.”

He snapped his fingers and the battle beyond the throne room ended. The last wave sloshed down and the deep silence of a long-dead ocean settled into place. Fate swirled his renewed goblet. A bloodied ocean sloshed inside, and sniffed deeply of the pink vapors.

“A truly exquisite nose,” he said before he took a sip, swished it, and swallowed. “Lovely mouth-feel for something so young but tight as a drum, this won’t mature for around an eon.”

He dumped the contents onto the ground.

“Not every world is delicious.”

“Don’t delay this any longer,” Not-Cassy said as she shifted in her seat. The worms in her chest spun silk to repair the gaping wound. “You’re teasing me.”

Fate snapped his fingers.

The Witch appeared beside her. No longer the towering eyes, but a pallid, bone-white woman with eyes of blood and clothes of Mubilashi. A hat spun itself into existence upon her head as she looked around, but when she spied Fate she threw herself onto the ground.

[I humbly prostrate myself before your all-powerful presence, oh fates]

Fate’s fingers snapped, and Rue appeared in the air. The silvery warrior spun and lashed toward Fate in an instant. The air swept itself apart, but Fate slipped his head to the side. An aura burned from behind his head and Zoe felt herself smeared across the ground with its pressure. Rue slammed down beside her, and even the Witch lay flat on the ground.

Fate snapped his fingers and a chain rattled to the ground. It twitched like an earthworm under a brick, but Fate maintained his presence.

“Since you have all become players in this great game, you shall battle it out. “The strongest among you shall win the ultimate prize: my death. If you manage to kill me, my dying breath shall bless rather than curse. I will grant a wish, even one that goes against the paradox in your godly heart.”

[Do you speak truly, oh fates?]

“We do,” Fate and Not-Cassy said in tandem.

“But this isn’t fair,” Zoe shouted with the last of her breath. “We aren’t of equal strength.”

Fate leaned over in his throne to whisper to Not-Cassy.

“That is true,” he said. “You interfered with her too early.”

“I’m not the one who brought her here.”

“She brought herself here.”

“And who kept her here,” Not-Cassy said as she chewed her fingernail.

“Well, she’s here now.”

“And she’s not powerful enough.”

“Then a little game before the finale.”

Zoe’s shuddered at those words. She wasn’t the only one. Fear roiled off the Witch-like heat above a long summer road. Pinpricks of reality bled as Rue’s presence sharpened over and over again.

“Perhaps a series of games?” Not-Cassy suggested as she ripped her fingernail free. “We should prolong this as much as we can, remember how long it took to set up.”

Worms wriggled and dripped from the torn fingertip as she chewed the nail.

“I didn’t think you cared enough to prolong it,” Fate said.

“I don’t. I’m not even really here.”

Fate smiled at Zoe, but his expression remained as inscrutable as a crescent moon.

“Does it make you wonder?” he asked her.

“It doesn’t matter,” Zoe said as she trembled — because she did wonder, and she hated that she didn’t know, didn’t understand, and couldn’t act. If she was tied up over a fire why did she have to know about it? “You’ll do whatever you want anyway.”

“No, you’ll do what you want,” Fate responded. “Because I won’t pull your strings, I’ll just see how you react to the scenario.”

“What scenario?”

Fate’s smile widened. He snapped his fingers and reality shifted.