Oblivion Heart (Darkling Mage 4)

Something needle-sharp pricked my neck. I cried out, my scream echoed by the clamor of terror in my head and my heart. The eyes blinked.

Three voices spoke.

“Enter.”

Chapter 21

The air rushed into my lungs all at once, sweet life returning with my every gasp. I was on my knees, my eyes shut, my forehead glazed in sweat. I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m not exactly the claustrophobic type, but imagine being trapped between two walls, unmoving, barely breathing. It felt like a coffin, the stone against my nose and my back like the inside of a sarcophagus.

Or the surface of a sacrificial altar.

I lifted my head, gasping again, bright light penetrating the thin skin of my eyelids. “Enter,” the voices had said. Three of them, not quite copies of each other the way that Hecate’s voices resonated. These were slightly different. Female, pleasant, but each subtly different in quality. And behind the voices I could make out the sound of things whirring, clacking, the percussion of machinery. My curiosity got the best of me, and I opened my eyes.

Not quite what I was expecting. Then again, I’d learned that there was no point in setting any expectations for what an entity’s domicile would look like. Arachne’s was the lair of a spider queen. The sun goddess Amaterasu lived in a translucent crystal, and Mammon opted for a veritable palace.

I was in a workshop of sorts, brightly lit, but mundane. Sewing machines stitched independently in endless rows, half-sewn clothing run through them by countless pairs of unseen hands. Tape measures writhed like flying snakes, sharp pairs of shears working their piranha jaws to cut patterns from huge bolts of cloth. The pearly, knobbed ends of pins glimmered in the workshop’s fluorescent light, hovering like mosquitos. I watched as they sank their needle points into the unfinished garments stuck onto so many shuddering mannequins.

Standing in the midst of it all, arms folded and watching over the stylish spectacle like a trio of overseers, were the Sisters. Each looked like the other, except for the smallest differences: this one rolled up her sleeves, and that one had her hair in a messy bun with pencils stuck through it. This one liked cat’s eye glasses, and that one preferred wireframes. All three wore what looked like utility belts, their beige pockets bulging with tape measures, pincushions, chalk, and needles, and thread.

Again, not at all what I expected.

“Dustin Graves?” they said.

I blinked. They could see past my glamour, too. I tapped the gem on the ring Carver gave me. Did this thing even work? “You can see me? The real me?”

“Don’t insult us,” the middle Sister said, rolling her eyes. “Your bauble can only do so much. Besides, blond isn’t a good look for you.” She held her hand out. “Well? Did you bring an offering?”

“Oh,” I said, remembering myself. “Right.” I approached slowly, holding out the paper bag that was filled with the reagents Scrimshaw and I had so painstakingly collected.

The Sister on the left stepped forward, retrieved the bag from my outstretched hand, then walked back to her siblings in an odd, zigzagging pattern. Even as I stared I couldn’t tell which of them she was. The bag had changed hands, and subtle or no, their little differences were no longer enough to help me tell them apart.

It was infuriating, like a human game of cups and balls. As I watched the paper bag, as slender fingers reached in to collect reagents, I slowly understood that their individual identities weren’t important. These odd entities worked as a unit, and that was all that mattered.

“Wonderful,” one Sister said. “It’s all in order. Spun gold, a lock of hair, and loveliest of all, a scrap of tatted lace.” She passed the lace around, the three of them cooing as they stroked its impossibly ornate patterns.

And not just any lace. That was the toughest, priciest find of the night. We were lucky that the Black Market merchant selling it accepted credit cards. I was hoping Carver would cover my bill if it meant that this communion ultimately helped me stop an oncoming apocalypse.

The lace itself needed to be made by an artist so talented, so committed to the craft that the creation of its inhumanly intricate detail ultimately left them blind. Hey. Nobody said the entities were very nice. Or sane, for that matter.

“So.” I coughed softly, drawing attention to myself, casting my eye around the workroom. “Interesting setup you’ve got here.”

“Oh, you know how it is,” said a Sister. “Immortality can be so boring, you know? Truly. Honestly.” She waved a hand across the workroom. “And so, this. Fast fashion. Why not build an empire? Try our hand at something that isn’t quite as serious or ominous as assessing fate.”

Another Sister cleared her throat. “Though of course, we are very good at it.”

“Oh,” a third Sister said. “Very good indeed.”

I furrowed my brow. “Is that what you are, then? The Fates?”

“The Fates, the Moirae of the Greeks?” A Sister cupped her elbow, then rested her chin in her hand. “Perhaps. Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. Spinning, measuring, and cutting the threads of life.”

“Yes. Or perhaps we are those revered by the Vikings.” Another Sister emulated the same pose, nodding, her glasses flashing in the light. “Perhaps we are the Norns, the spinners of threads. Urd. Verdandi. Skuld.”

The third Sister chimed in. “And in the end both man and god must bow to the looms, to the stories they weave, to the ends of their tales as the spinning wheels run out. Or perhaps we are no one. What matters, Dustin Graves, is what you want.”

I blinked, and the Sisters were no longer there. I staggered back, blinking again, to find myself surrounded.

“What is it you want?” a Sister asked, extending a measuring tape across my body. “A better fit, clearly.” She tutted. “Terrible inseam.”