A/N: Sorry that the chapters have been so short for a few chapters, but that will be remedied from now on.
The God of Fate was dead. He had been defeated. There was not a shred of doubt about that.
However, there was something that he had left behind. A sword. A sword that he had never used, but was always filled with power. If only he had thought to keep it on the day his Fates betrayed him, but then again, what's there in brooding over what could not have been?
The sword is not suited for battle. It is ornamental, but its true power lies in the fact that it can overturn Fate itself. It is a sword made entirely out of sapphire and malachite, forged from the very vestiges of Chaos itself, the same vestiges from which the Fates themselves were later born.
If the First Prophecy ever came true, the new God of Fate would need that sword. Using it, perhaps even the Fates could be threatened. Unfortunately for the sisters, the sword was useless in the hands of anyone save their master, and even their powers seemed to be able to do nothing against the blade.
Needless to say, the Fates had been unable to destroy this sword. Not to say that they hadn't tried. They had used every power in their hands to try and break the blade. They had once taken Zeus' master bolt and rained lightning bolt upon lightning bolt upon the blade, without it receiving more than a scratch. They had thrown it from the peaks of the heavens to the depths of Tartarus a thousand times over without avail. They had once tried to get Hercules and Achilles to break it, but even those two had failed. They had even tried to bribe Haephastus into breaking it in his forges, but that attempt ended up fruitless as well. They had tried to shatter it by getting Typhon to step on it, and asked the Telekhines and Cyclopses for any method to destroy that accursed sword.
All had failed. So they decided instead that they must hide it. If the First Prophecy ever came true, the sword must never fall into the wrong hands. So they hid it.
The gods know that choosing to bear the Mark of Achilles means surrendering oneself to the Fates. Little do they know more beyond that, because it means surrendering oneself to the Fates in many ways.
There are many who chose to bear the Mark of Achilles. It was they that the Fates chose to guard their most prized and feared treasure.
Many people consider Tartarus to be the lowest place in the world. It was in the absolute bottom of Tartarus, a place so dark and deep that even Kronos' screams would echo far off above. It was an unknown to even the eldest Olympians and Titans, and hidden well with sorcery even the gods could not hope to overcome easily.
In short, it was the perfect hiding place. Much to their dismay, the heroes who had died bearing the Mark of Achilles were gathered around this pit to stop any intruder who might come to steal the sword.
They were kept constantly awake by the screams of those being tortured above, amplified by the Fates' magic so that they would spend every single second constantly alert.
And, of course, as things are with the Fates, they eventually forgot all about the sword for quite a length of time. So much that when Luke had died, they hadn't even bothered to cast his spirit into the pit for him to guard for all of eternity, and instead decided to throw him in the Elysium like what some gods wanted. They had been sure the sword was safer than anything else in the universe, so they didn't think another guard would be necessary.
Now, however, Lachesis was concerned about the sword. As she descended downwards toward the pit where the sword was being safeguarded, she was silently cursing the Circuit. It was due to it that this entire mess had started. If it wasn't for it and her paranoia, she could have been sleeping peacefully with her sisters. But instead, here she was, in a place that would make Hades seem like paradise.
The guards were surprised when she approached them. They were stationed so that they could only see what was above them, for an assault from below was impossible. This was the very depth of all of Creation itself, and there was nothing below the floor of the pit. The only thing was the sword, which rested upon the base of the pit, a floor made up of black nothingness, the very edge of Reality itself.
As Lachesis descended into the pit, all eight of the guards turned their eyes to her. The captain of the guard was a son of Zeus, one who had died a very tragic death a long time ago. Lachesis even remembered how sweet the fruit had been when he had passed over to the next life. However, she did not remember his name. She never remembered names. After all, none of these creatures were more than crops to her, plants from which she could harvest the fruit that she and her sisters so vehemently desired. That was all they were to her, nothing more.
She stood level with the captain, and in his eyes she could sense his hatred. She knew very well that this man, as well as the seven others, would not hesitate in killing her and throwing her remains into this very pit had they the power.
But that was the point. They did not have the power. And that was why she took no notice of the captain's hatred, nor had she ever. After all, all of them had taken a bath in the River Styx, and had chosen willingly to bear the Mark of Achilles. That meant that they were in the hands of the Fates, and consequently, that the Fates could order them to do anything, even in their afterlives.
She contacted Aeolus for a second before talking. She asked if the Winds had found what she had been looking for. The answer was negative, and she herself had felt nothing strange from the threads and had not felt the Circuit react. That could only mean that she had indeed been wrong.
Yet, that small bit of paranoia in her would just not rest. It would just not lie down and sit quietly. It had to express itself.
"Have there been any new occurrences here?" she asked the captain.
"Nothing to report," the captain said. Of course there was nothing to report. There was probably no one who even knew what the sword really was or where it was, let alone someone who would want to take it.
Lachesis was about to turn around and leave, without so much as giving the guards a single glance, without even speaking a word about how they were being mistreated, when she felt it.
Someone had entered the pit. There it was, the sensation again, someone had left the pit.
She slowly turned her gaze downwards, though, deep down, she already knew what had happened.
She turned her gaze to look at the sapphire-and-malachite sword that would be resting upon a floor made up of ethereal smoke, guarded carefully by eight of the finest warriors in all of history.
Only now none of those statements were true. The sword was gone. Someone had stolen it. And it was all her fault.
You see, her caution had been her undoing. The guards were bound by magic to take their duty carefully, but by dropping into the pit, she had distracted them. The guards were then paying attention to her, not to any potential intruders that may drop in, and so they noticed nothing. And her wards that were placed across the place did not react like they should have, because she had removed them in order to enter.
Her sisters would not take kindly to this kind of news. She knew that, but also knew that there was no point fretting about it now. There was only one logical explanation: Someone besides the Fates had found out about the First Prophecy, and that someone had conspired to steal the sword.
There were a number of questions left unanswered, however. Did the thief know of the First Prophecy, and had he or she found the person who it pertained to? She immediately discounted that possibility. After all, she herself had found no such mortal.
However, the Circuit had reacted. Could it merely be a coincidence that this theft and the Circuit reacting occurred on the same day? Some would say that there was no such thing as a coincidence, and none knew better than her, after all, she was one of those who changed events based on whim just so they could be more satisfying. But was it really just chance? She weighed the possibilities in her head, and could not find a satisfactory answer.
But the more pressing question was whether or not she should inform her sisters. She immediately rejected the idea, and decided that she would save that as a last minute resort. Until it was possible, she would try to investigate on her own. Her sisters had a tendency to… overreact to certain things.
Especially Atropos. Her relationship with Clothos was steady, for lack of a better word. But Atropos, she was simply terrifying. Lachesis felt shivers run down her spine as she thought of her elder sister. She was the most merciless of all three of them, and had actually been the original one who had decided to mutiny against their master long ago.
Atropos would certainly punish her if she found out. Lachesis knew that she had to act quickly, but what should she do? The thief could be anywhere by this point, especially if he or she was receiving divine assistance. After all, the thief had snuck past her and the eight guards using some sort of magic. It was not a stretch to imagine that, if the crime had been planned, an escape route had been planned as well.
And there was also the fact that the thief clearly had known that Lachesis had been about to enter the pit. How could he have known that?
She decided that she would resolve her problems one by one, and turned her attention to the more important matter at hand. She immediately contacted Aeolus and told him that she had a new assignment for him.