Wings of Fate: The Lost Ones

“Okay, now swing to the right with your right sword. Good, good, now swing your left sword above your head and then swing your right sword back to the left. Perfect, hold still. Now if I am your attacker and I come at you like this,” Athena instructed, moving into Raven’s arm space. “You can do one of two things: you can bring your left arm down and take off your attacker’s arm.” She pointed at her shoulder to indicate the severance spot.

“Most people are right-handed so the odds are that your attacker’s weapon will be in that hand -- or you can swing your right arm out to your right, which is the direction you will have most of your built up speed and strength, allowing you to cut off your attacker’s head.”

“Gross.” Raven said, making a face.

Athena smiled grimly at her. “It may come to that. You have to be able to do it, Raven. It will come down to you or them, and I can guarantee you that the Queen Mother’s soldier is not going to get squeamish and hesitate, alright?”

“Okay.” Raven said, nodding. She already knew what it would be like when there was battle. The men back on the boat taking her to King Nash fought in earnest -- their blood splattered on the deck of the boat and followed them when they made their way to the shoreline. Dozens of men died. There would be no leniency in this war and well she knew it. It was a war, about which the Moirai provided her with such little information. The training was necessary.

“Good, now let’s try this with me holding a weapon.” Athena suggested, turning towards her sizeable armory of metal lying on the ground. “Let’s go with this one,” she said, reaching for the long-bladed sword. Raven turned to face her and situated her sai blades in the positions Athena recommended.

When Athena turned back to her, the woman’s white dress hung lazily around her body, following her movements as though the outfit had been made of magical material. Raven’s attention returned to the woman’s weapon. Long hands gripped the base of her sword as Athena swung the weapon around in wide arcs.

Raven winced at the whooshing noises that filled the garden and cleared her throat. “So, um, Athena, you are going to go easy on me this first time, right? Seeing as how I’ve had about a second’s worth of practice with these blades?”

Athena’s musical voice bounced around the garden as she laughed. “Of course.”

“Perfect,” Raven answered on a relieved breath. “Bring it!”

Athena smiled, stalking towards her. “Okay, now I want you to pay attention to several things here: first, take note of where I am looking. If I am attacking you, chances are I am looking straight at you. If I am looking behind you or over your head it is because I am aiming at something behind you or over your head…you are now in my blind spot, which is a perfect opportunity for you to cut me down. If I am staring straight at you, I am coming for you. If I am attacking you, I already know which way I am going to come at you because I have already taken stock of whether or not I can best you so your first threat is going to be that you do not know which way I am going to come at you. Right?”

“Right.” Raven answered, unmoving, not at all certain she understood what Athena was telling her. I won’t even be able to remember all of this, she thought in annoyance.

“Okay, so to handle this first threat you have to be able to predict what I will do even though you do not know me and have never seen me fight, okay?”

Raven sighed. “I am not as okay with that. How am I supposed to predict what you will do when I do not know you at all?” she asked, lowering her weapons to the ground.

“If I were a Sorenge Soldier, what would you expect me to do?”

Eyes narrowing, Raven envisioned the sneaky, immoral men who abducted her -- particularly the man with grinning, blackened teeth. “You would sneak up on me, attack me even were I without weapons, you would be ruthless and be pleased with whatever harm you managed to inflict.”

“Okay, so even though you have never seen me before, you know what sort of man I must be, right? And therefore, you know that I will kill you if you hesitate. In fact, you also know that I will do my best to kill you regardless of how you defend yourself. So what must you do?”

“Kill you first.”

Athena nodded, still swinging her sword slowly between them -- the blade appearing weightless even though Raven had first-hand knowledge how cumbersome the weapon was.

“That is the truth of the situation.” She said. “But knowing you must kill me first is the easy part, Raven. You have to be able to predict my movement before it is made and you have about two seconds to figure it out and all the while you have to tune out what is going on around you.”

“Even better.” Raven grumbled.

“Which hand is holding the sword?” Athena asked. “Raise your blades.”

Raven immediately threw her arms up in the air as instructed. “Your right hand.”

“So, which direction will the swing come from?”

“My left?” Raven asked.

“Most likely it will be from your left, yes. Sometimes you will have someone who will bring the sword up and around and come from your right. But, we will worry about that another time. Judging by the size of my weapon, how close do I need to be to cut you down?”

“About four feet, I think.” Raven said, staring at the length of the blade.

“Be certain.”

“At least four feet away from me you would be able to do some serious damage.” Raven corrected herself, straightening her shoulders in emphasis.

“Good, now because the most damaging part of my weapon is at least four feet away from my body, where is my weakness?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” Raven answered, tensing as Athena drew up within that four foot space and lifted her weapon against her. The woman slowly brought the weapon down until it hovered right above Raven’s left shoulder and then raised an eyebrow at her.

“Where is my weakness?”

Raven stared the woman in the eyes and then scanned her flawless body in search of a weakness she boldly claimed to have.

“Come on Raven, what is a weakness?”

Licking her lips in stress, Raven looked her in the eye again. “A weakness -- some way someone can attack you?”

“Yes and how can you attack me? Where?”

Raven looked again, taking stock of where her own weapons were and realized that Athena’s arm was above where her right hand held the sai sword and that she could cut her straight across her torso. “Your chest and stomach?” Raven asked.

“Exactly. See how I left myself wide open? A long bladed sword does not provide much in the way of protection, so I just have to be faster than my attacker.”

“If it’s not that much of a protection, why do you use it?”

“I am faster than my attacker.” Athena answered dryly.

Raven frowned at the unintentional reminder she was hanging out with a legendary goddess in the garden of the fates of birth, life and death. She forgot for a moment where she was.

“Okay, now let’s try this again.” Athena continued. “I am going to come up on you and I want you to go ahead and aim for me at the appropriate moment, before I get near enough to cut you, okay? But, do not cut me either.” She said with a smile.

Athena backed up and crouched lower to the ground. The muscles in her arms and legs glistening with sweat, standing out against the long grass behind her. The sudden gleam in her eyes made Raven want to back all the way out of the garden but she stood her ground as Athena came at her, bearing down with her slight weight and attacking with the sword.

The impact of the first swipe of Athena’s sword jarred the teeth in Raven’s head. A shaking reverberation arced through her arms and shoulders as she held her swords up against the blade. Athena pulled the sword away, turned her arm the opposite direction, and came at Raven from the left before swinging around again from the right.

Clanking and ringing metal echoed around the garden and bounced off the surrounding trees each time their swords met in the air.

Raven concentrated on the sharp blade swinging towards her but the sunlight glinting across the length of the metal was making her head spin. Raven did her best to move fast enough to block the jarring blows but could do little else in the way of attacking Athena in return. The goddess came at her again and again and again until she felt Raven responded promptly to the imaginary threat she posed.

Raven was glad for the practice but was terrified she would freeze up if someone were to actually charge her. Freeze up or run, she thought. “What if I get into a sword fight with someone? Are you going to show me how to fight like that?” Raven asked her.

“Yes, I am. I just wanted to show you some defensive moves first. You are not really in the right shape for offensive moves.”

“Meaning?” she asked, glaring at Athena.

The woman sighed and rolled her shoulders. “Well, what did you do on Earth?”

“Do for what?”

“Do, Raven, what did you do? Like walking, eating, etc…what did your typical day consist of?” Athena stuck the tip of her sword into the ground and leaned her red head in to hear Raven’s response, though the expression on her face said she already knew the answer.

“Well, I did a lot of things.” Raven answered, lowering her swords to the ground. “My typical day consisted of twelve-hour work days. After I got home I would walk down the street to the market place where I bought groceries or go to a book store, or maybe grab a cup of coffee with T-” cutting herself short on his name, Raven swallowed thoughts of him away and met Athena’s eyes again. “After which I would go back home and make dinner, work on the paperwork, and then bed. That’s just when I wasn’t traveling.” Raven frowned at the gloating expression on Athena’s face.

“Exercise? Sword fight training? Lifts? Riding? Swimming? Anything of the sort of activity in which you might hurt all over from exerting yourself?”

Raven remained mute in obstinate refusal to answer when she knew the answer would not be shedding light in her favor.

“I thought not. So, when I say you are not in shape for offensive moves that is what I mean. You have no real body strength because you never exercise those muscles. We have to get you into shape before any offensive move I could show you would be of any use. Right now, we will just focus on trying to keep the blades from taking off your head.”

“Nice.” Logan’s deep voice rolled into the garden from where he stood unnoticed for who-knew-how-long. “But I guess there’s no pretty way to say that.”

Raven frowned when he held out a flat metal tray carrying three clear glasses of water towards them. “What’s that?” she asked.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “This would be water, Raven. You know what water is right? Clear liquid stuff -- quenches your thirst and-”

Raven glared heatedly at him as she snatched a glass from the tray, holding it in her hand without drinking.

“How thoughtful.” Athena drawled, moving towards him and accepting a glass.

Logan balanced the tray on one hand and watched Raven out of the corner of his eye as he slowly drank the entire contents of the third glass.

“We have a problem.” Lachesis announced, moving into the garden. Logan glanced over his shoulder as she moved towards them.

“What happened?” Athena asked, returning her glass to Logan.

Lachesis met her eyes when she came to a stop. “A local villager just arrived. He is in the kitchen begging for help as his village is in the path of a team of marauding soldiers. His townspeople sent him to us for assistance as they do not have enough strength to defend themselves against the soldiers. Atropos asks that we leave now.”

Athena turned to look at the quickly-setting sun and then stared hard at Raven.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Raven asked.

“You should stay here.” Athena suggested.

“Atropos says she must go with us.” Lachesis countermanded. “She has to learn sooner rather than later and this sort of thing is going to happen again and again. We cannot keep her here protected when she needs to be out there doing what she is supposed to be doing.”

“And what is that exactly?” Raven asked, tilting her head to the side.

“Later.” Lachesis said, waving her question away.

Raven sighed.

“I’m going, too.” Logan announced, straightening to his full height behind Lachesis.

The Moirai sister glanced over her shoulder at him. “That was never in question, Logan.” He made a harrumphing sound and turned back towards the house, striding quickly with long legs that put him through the back door, disappearing into the dimness of the living-room.

“Lachesis, it will be dark soon.” Athena pointed out.

“Rescue missions know no hour Athena, you know that.”

“Not my point.” Athena ground out, angling her head towards Raven who stood watching the exchange with mild interest.

“Atropos says to take her with you so take her with you, you shall.” Lachesis said, the bite of her words being smoothed by a sigh of resignation as though she, too, fell into the trap of conformity many a-time.

Raven turned to follow when Athena spun on her heel. “Bring your swords.” Athena said, before bending to wrap her blades back in their cloths. Having bundled up the weapons, she draped them over her shoulders and stepped around Lachesis to follow Logan.

Lachesis watched Raven, the two of them holding each others’ gazes until Raven broke the silence.

“In every book I’ve ever read, in every movie I’ve ever seen, never has there been a war, a battle or even a small fight in which there were no casualties, Lachesis.” The fate watched her but kept her thoughts to herself. “I don’t now about the prophecy I am here to fulfill. I don’t have the same faith in the ending of this war that the three of you seem to have.

I can only do what you ask me to do, what you teach me. But I’ll admit, for the moment, that I’m terrified this will not happen the way you think it will. I don’t know who they will be, but there will most definitely be casualties.” Raven glanced down at her sai swords, lifting them into the air before placing them into the sword shafts sewn onto the outer sides of both of her boots.

“Raven.” Lachesis murmured and waited until Raven glanced up, meeting her eyes once again. “I cannot tell you who will live and who will die. Yes, there will be casualties, how can there not be? Your place in this war is predetermined but that is not a guarantee that you will survive it.

But you could not ask for a better team to show you how to be victorious here. You have my strength and that of my sisters, of Logan, of all the rest of my loyal kin, and the most important ally we could have. He will not be standing at the sidelines or behind you offering encouragement. He will be running far ahead of you, his long legs eating up the ground in a cloud of dust, in a fiery rain of hail and thunder.

His voice will stir fear in the hearts of our enemies as he roars his anger to the heavens. No one else exists whom I trust more, or would want to run into battle with. Only with his might can we win. That we will win. And that day will come.

Raven pretended not to read into Lachesis’ comment but it was the closest the Moirai sisters had come to revealing the truth. For whom else could the fate mean but Zeus?

She was surprised to find the villager an old man. He was filmy but out here that was true for just about everyone. The fact that the Moirai sisters somehow managed to stay clean in their pristine white dresses was something she found infuriating. The old man hunched against the kitchen counter where his tattered, dirt-ridden shirt brushed up against spotless stainless steel.

When she and Lachesis stepped into the tiled room the old man murmured to Logan but was distracted by their entrance long enough to glance up. His eyes were solid black, a condition that was in such stark contrast to the paleness of his skin that he immediately gave her the creeps. As Raven paused in the doorway, Lachesis moved past her into the room.

“Let’s go Raven,” the Moirai sister instructed. “We need to saddle up an extra horse for the gentleman -- sir,” Lachesis said, turning her attention to him, “what is your name?”

“Uh, Caleb ma’am, that’s my name.” he bowed awkwardly while stumbling over the sentence, doing nothing to alleviate Raven’s discomfort with his presence.

“Follow me Caleb and we will find you a horse to ride back to your village.”

When their conversation continued into the front yard, Logan approached and whispered. “What’s wrong?”

Raven tore her eyes away from the open doorway, stopped trying to hear what was still being said in the conversation, and turned her attention to Logan. “What?”

“I can tell something is bothering you, what is it?”

She frowned. It would be nice to know if someone else felt the same way she did about Caleb but she hesitated to trust Logan. Still, saying something would make her feel better. “Where’s Nicolaus?” she asked instead.

“He’s upstairs in the shower. What’s bothering you?” he persisted, enunciating the last three words in emphasis.

She sighed in frustration. “That man gives me the willies.”

“Come on, we can walk to the stables together.” As they headed through the door he returned to the subject. “What about him bothers you?”

“His eyes.” She said without hesitating. It was the truth. Several things about the man made her uneasy but it was his eyes setting it off.

“What’s wrong with his eyes?”

“I don’t know,” she said considering, “I think it’s probably because they’re black…that’s just strange isn’t it?”

Logan frowned. “His eyes aren’t black Raven they’re blue, light blue.”

“No they’re not,” she whispered in a sharp voice as they neared the stables, “they may have looked black in the kitchen because of the lighting but there is no way I confused light blue eyes for black eyes and I am telling you that man’s eyes are solid black. He reminded me of the Queen Mother.”

Logan’s face swung toward her in surprise but then reared back as the swinging stables door swung towards them and ended their conversation. Lachesis and Caleb stepped out into the yard -- between them they carried reins to five horses.

Within minutes Evol’s raft bobbed against the flow of water as he carried them across the river. Raven was curious as to how the village man managed to convince the cloaked man to transport him across the river. The scarred man didn’t speak to people, not even the gods and goddesses, and he wasn’t that friendly -- seeing as how he attempted to drown her and all -- she didn’t understand why he would have agreed to transport a questionable man onto the Moirai’s land. Considering what would motivate Evol, Raven watched him.

He did not appear to want anything from anyone but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be bought. Surely the man had bills to pay just like anyone else but, then again, she didn’t know. She considered Evol might have bills to pay and it could not pay well to run a river raft back and forth for the Moirai so maybe he had to accept coin from the local village people when they came to pay a call to the Moirai.

Which, basically led her to her next question -- how many such requests did the Moirai sisters get? Are they the protectors of the innocent on DeSolar? And why live on an isolated island if the one form of transportation allowed anyone in?

Raven glanced over the back of her horse to stare at the top of Caleb’s head. He was respectful to everyone but there existed a muted scream of warning in her head, some trigger of alarm. She had ignored the feeling before and received no small amount of trouble because of it.

She was not about to let Caleb out of her sight.

Decision made, she returned her gaze to Evol. The pink and white scars mottling every inch of his skin were expected now so she almost didn’t notice them and, for some reason, her discomfort in being around him no longer existed. He was just a man with a lot of scars.

Evol turned his head and met her gaze head on. She had not forgotten how beautiful his eyes were and told him so. He frowned.

“What? You don’t like people commenting on your eyes?” she asked with a tilt of her head. “They are this brilliant blue color. Back home we have skies some days that look like someone took a dark, blue sheet of material and then a large mirror and shone the sunlight onto the material -- making it almost luminescent. It’s unforgettable.” She glanced up at the open sky above them, which reflected back a muted murky green mirror image of the river beneath them.

“I remember.” Evol murmured.

Raven’s body jerked in response and his eyes flickered over her before returning to the river. When Lachesis told her Evol never spoke to anyone Raven wondered why he would speak to her. She still wondered. Because he never deigned to converse with anyone else it made her feel special that he would choose to do so with her.

A quick glance at Athena and Lachesis showed them to be involved in a muted conversation but she lowered her voice anyway. “Do you?” she asked, hoping to garner some small part of the Moirai’s secret.

“In the beginning,” he whispered, speaking slow, “the sky was split in half --not the same as it is now. Today earth has one side that is day and one side that is night. In the beginning, the sky was filled with a sun and a moon, half of the sky was lit by the sun and the other half was cast in shadow.”

“I’ve never heard about that,” Raven said, frowning in distraction as she tried to picture it. “Why would the sky have been like that?”

“It was Helios’ and Nyx’s fault. They were fighting bitterly over whom should get dominion over which hours of the day and night so they both stayed up all day and all night -- trying to see who would tire first.”

The names were unfamiliar to her but she recognized the theme of a legend when she heard one and Raven smiled. “I bet that was interesting.”

Evol remained quiet until Raven decided he was not going to respond but then he did. “It was hard to sleep.”

“Evol,” she whispered, sidling up as close as she dared, “can I tell you something and you keep it a secret?”

“Hmmmm.” He responded noncommittally.

She glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was close enough to hear, then leaned in closer and lowered her voice more. “I don’t trust this guy. Something is wrong.”

“What exactly makes you feel that way?” he asked -- his voice equally low.

“Logan asked me the same question,” she responded in frustration. She told Evol the same thing she told Logan. “I’m not sure, but I remarked on his solid black eyes to Logan and Logan said the man’s eyes are light blue. Did you see his eyes?”

“Yes. Blue.”

“Hmmmm.” She said, chewing her bottom lip.

“This feeling you have -- have you had it before? Frequently?” he asked.

“I don’t know, a few times in the past few weeks but that is all.”

“It may be stronger because you are now surrounded by your…” he glanced up at the sky briefly and then away. “…by new powers on this planet.” He moved away from her then and changed the position of the pole he used to push them across the river. She glanced up at land only a few feet away.

Maybe it doesn’t matter if Evol transports people across the river, she thought, the river wasn’t deep and it wasn’t too far across to swim. It didn’t seem safe in her opinion. People like the Moirai should have big cement walls to guard them. She had to remember to ask about that later -- once the secrets were revealed.

When the raft bumped against the embankment, she stepped onto land and pulled Rohan along after her. Lachesis stepped off after her, then the rest of the party. Ever since she voiced her concern to Logan he stayed close to the village man. When everyone was on land, Evol climbed off the raft and wrapped the hitching rope to the post that stood on this side of the river. Last time they came through was right after meeting the Woodland Nymph Faeries but the mountain pass leading to the Faeries appeared to be in the opposite direction of the man’s village because Lachesis turned her horse’s nose down the left side of the river.

Towards Athena’s waiting soldiers, Raven thought with a frown.

Raven glanced at Evol. He was still wrapping the rope around the hitching post but his eyes were on Caleb. As she watched him, his glance slipped to her and their eyes met. He jerked his chin at her in indication she should join him.

“People in your family have a sense about these things Raven.” He said when she drew close. His lips moved slowly, evidence of the pain the scars caused him. “Though other people may not understand your misgivings about someone or something, you should not shrug away your feelings. You will find that they are most often correct.”

“Okay, thank you.” She said on a sigh, glancing over her shoulder and looking anywhere but at Caleb. “Wait -- what do you mean ‘people in my family’? What do you know about my family?” Raven recalled the witch woman in the Queen Mother’s castle, who referred to Raven’s family line as well.

“Just stay away from him.” He said in a low voice. “You are mortal, Raven, you have to think like a mortal.”

“Honestly, Evol, I’ve been thinking like a mortal my whole life.”

He frowned. “Just do not take unnecessary risks. That is all I am trying to say. Now go, they are waiting.” He turned away and bent about the task of securing the craft closer to the embankment. She frowned at his cloaked back, wondering if she should press the question about her family.

He would just hedge, she thought on sigh, no sense in bothering with the attempt to find out more than they will tell me. And she was now certain he was one of them.

The further along they travelled, the more obvious it became the village man had little experience riding. The ride from Nicaru Village to Treis-Soarta was trying for her as she had had no previous experience riding and, while her body had yet to become accustomed to straddling the beast, she felt better about steering Rohan where they needed to go.

Obviously, Caleb was experiencing the same trouble.

For most of their journey, the group was forced to ride single-file between the rolling hills and the river with water the shade of rust.

They passed Athena’s soldiers without stopping and earned a few dozen curious glances before disappearing around the hill. When the hill eventually fell away, it opened to an expansive stretch of flat land of short-bladed grass extending far in the distance until the horizon butted up again, far ahead and to the right, with another section of the woodlands.

The forest almost swallows this planet whole, she thought. History books explained that Earth used to be covered with trees -- but it is one thing to know it and another to see what it could be like. Raven marveled at it as Caleb took them across the field, clumsily steering his horse in the direction of the village. Raven scowled at the beggar clothing stretching across his back as he almost fell out of his saddle for the umpteenth time.