Fate walked and as she did so she weaved. Color wasn’t something her power was tinged with so as she placed one foot after the other, her steps left behind grey smoke that rose ahead of her and covered her in a nightmare like gloom.

  Her fingers danced before her, tagging life lines and directing them elsewhere, to death, to happiness to sorrow. Fate weaved and as she did so lives were changed, transformed. Some were bettered when others were ripped asunder. To anyone observing it would seem like Fate was living up to her title but with the little finger of her left hand that twitched at intervals of fourteen seconds, she searched.

  Searched for her.

  A woman from the planet Earth, known to many as Sarah, a name shared by many on her planet. Sarah was insignificant as all things were before those who served the Almighty but Sarah, this small ant, this puny wretched piece of life, had accomplished something that shook the very fabric of the universe.

  ‘She became self-aware!’

  Fate recalled the day Sarah became a problem while she walked in her domain, images formed within every molecule of the grey smoke surrounding her and as her fingers worked the images representing the lives of all living things, changed to fit her designs. She remembered what she’d done to Sarah, killed her son and husband. It wasn’t something that would have affected her in any way, whether direct or indirectly. And it had been a quick job, a twitch of the index finger and a straightening of the thumb and both her husband and son died in a car accident. Sarah should have just wept and moved on with a scar that itched once in a while.

  Yet. At their graves, this woman, Sarah, suddenly burst out laughing, her mind shredding upon itself. She laughed and wept and her mind became a jumble of strands of thought that held no basis, she went mad. It was something that sometimes happened when one was too aggrieved but it didn’t mean anything to Fate and that was her first mistake, to think little of the madness of grief.

  For at the graves of her husband and child, Sarah had a thought nobody had ever had in existence. A strand of thought that caught the attention of not Fate alone, but also Destiny, Despair and Desire. The four of them jerked from their domains, weapons in tow, heading to kill she who dared fathom the unfathomable. But when they stepped into the mortal realm, there before the graves. They found nothing. They combed the planet Earth for Sarah but they could not find her.

  That’s when they went to Death. The merchant of sorrow. His place, as usual, stunk of rot. There was a low moan that never seemed to cease and the being itself sat on a throne made of black glass.

  “She is not among the dead.” He said and that seemed to perplex them all.

  Now she resumed her work, her little finger twitching at intervals, ever aware, ever searching. Sarah was somewhere, but where?

  “Behind you.” The voice was loud and clear, feminine and raw with grief. Fate felt the itch spread along her little finger, then heightened to pin pricks of pain. Sarah was here, in her domain.

  Fate dived forward, not looking back. She moved her hands and froze time from behind her. She then separated herself from her body, fragmented and spread herself over every possible time line and chose the time-line that was the furthest from any possible future to copy her being there.

  She collapsed on the floor of her domain in a future where everyone has gone insane and nothing has meaning. The safest place where a mind that can fathom the unfathomable can’t exist. Fate rose and turned around, moving two fingers she touched on the time block she’d frozen as she’d escaped. Sure enough, in that domain nothing moved. She was safe and Sarah was trapped. The guile on that woman! Coming after her! The very daughter of the Almighty!

  She turned to weave a fate befitting the wretched woman, then she paused as she felt a crack. It started just as a thin strand of fate that seized functioning as required. Then the crack grew, expanding to the size of a gorge. The time block collapsed in on itself and Fate hastily motioned for the collapse to encompass all possible realities in the nearest vicinity of the time block. A gaping hole appeared in fixed space-time but Fate didn’t care.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  It took a moment for the collapse of a segment of existence to hit her as a huge gust of wind. Her clothes, Akamian robes, fluttered behind her. And with the wind came a howl, like that of a wolf with the distinct impression of a woman’s anguish. Fate clasped her hands to her ears but it was too late, she’d heard Sarah’s voice and comprehended it, there in the reality of pure insanity, Sarah appeared.

  “It was you.” Sarah said, walking towards Fate. “You’re the one who killed them.” Her steps were fire, her body was fire and the heat scorched Fate’s skin.

  Fate smiled and moved her hand in a sideways swipe, rendering a segment of space to tear right before her, splitting Sarah into two. The deranged woman’s fire diminished and her flesh parted but before the last tissue was slit, Sarah destroyed her physical impression and became the tear itself.

  ‘She’s corrupted my power!’ Fate was… Afraid? She couldn’t be, she abandoned her strength and stripped herself into the barest impression of a soul, a spirit. And she traveled to a time of barbarism to a warlord within a battlefield, there with a twist of her fingers, Fate possessed the Warlord and at the same time erased her spiritual imprint.

  Fate walked the battle field, sword in hand. She parried and thrust at specific intervals judging by the miniscule motions dictated by time. She would survive this war in the warlord’s body, she would rise and build an empire. Then she’d spend centuries being worshiped as a God due to the fact that she doesn’t age. Then she’d build again, assemble her power once more and flourish, become stronger! Better! By then Sarah would be no more.

  She’d chosen a strand of reality where war was the key aspect of existence. Hence toughening up would be something that comes as a guarantee. She dodged an arrow, spun on her heels and threw a blade strapped to her hip, the blade pierced the archer between the eyes. She picked up a shield and charged a line, pushing in, forcing it to break.

  Before her, in the enemy’s line was a man, he didn’t grunt under the push of her shield as the others were doing. He just stood there, shield before him. And on his forehead was a birthmark that was eerie similar to the tear Fate had created to rip Sarah in half. The tear whose power had been usurped by Sarah.

  “You took them from me!” Sarah screamed through the man. “Why? Why!”

  Suddenly the whole battlefield came to a standstill, foes and kin stopped moving, all of them stood staring at Fate. They could see her through her flesh suit. And all of them had the same birthmark on their foreheads, the same tear.

  Fate started backtracking as all men started moving towards her, weapons held before them. Murder in their eyes. “Sisters,” Fate called out to Destiny, Desire and Despair. “Sisters.” She realized her voice couldn’t split through dimensions, she’d abandoned her power for this gamble and now it was impossible to reach out to her kin. “Sarah is it? The thought you had, at their graves. The thought that enabled you to disappear.” She had to buy herself time, she needed a way out. “What was it?”

  “I felt yearning.” A warrior said from beside her.

  “To deal the same hand that had been dealt me.” A man on a horse said, trodding by. They were enclosing, cutting away paths of escape.

  “I followed the yearning, and I saw an answer to grief.” A swordsman an arm’s length away said.

  “Serenity?” Fate whispered. How else could one awaken to such power, a human at that, without achieving some sense of serenity that was beyond the Almighty?

  “No.” A man with a sword came to stand before her. “Vengeance.” He thrust at her midriff. Fate let the blade sink through her gut, she gripped a knife strapped to her side and drew a scar upon her forehead in the exact shape and dimension as the birthmarks she saw all around her. It was another gamble but it worked. As the warlord died her presence spread out across the battlefield, then what she feared occurred, a new plane of existence was birthed from the collective conscience of those on the battlefield.

  And it was there where she met Sarah, the woman wielded an axe formed of the collective essence of grief. Fate tried to split space but found the plane of existence unyielding to the commands of her hands. “Fu—” Sarah charged and brought down the axe, Fate who was unfamiliar with conjuring techniques tried to summon a shield but got a chicken instead. The axe came down and split the chicken before cleaving her wrists. The pain was immense. Sarah raised the axe again and when it came down it tore Fate’s arms from her body. Sarah went for Fate’s head but she backtracked and the axe embedded itself in her chest, breaking her right collar into two. Fate fell to the ground.

  Sarah walked over and gripped the hilt of the axe attached to Fate’s chest, with a foot on Fate’s gut she pulled the axe free. All Fate could do was lie there, life essence pooling around her. Dripping from her mouth, tasting like iron and nectar. She would emerge in Death’s domain, sent there by a human. A human! Sarah smiled and brought the axe down on Fate’s head, cleaving it into two, teeth and bone parting like a tide before an immovable rock.

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