11. Rampage
Rampage
Skaros & Phix
The dirt beneath the infirmary was freezing.
I drifted in the dark. The pain of the gorgon’s gaze still burned through my severed threads. I’d been ripped apart, unwoven by a power that should not have existed.
But I wasn’t worried about myself. Eryx might have temporarily destroyed me, but I’d piece myself back together, like I always did.
The reality was far worse. Ianthe was gone.
It didn’t take me long to gather enough energy to investigate Iaso’s infirmary again. By then, there was nothing in the room. Ianthe’s scent lingered in the air, but the sound of her heartbeat and the taste of her desire were missing.
If I’d been in my true manticore form, I might have slipped into mindless bloodlust. How dare they? How dare they touch what didn’t belong to them? They claimed to want to help, but they’d only ever hurt Ianthe.
Vibrating with rage, I delved deeper into the island’s foundation. Everything in Asphodelia was a version of me, just death energy shaped in a different form. It spoke to me in a way the blind healer could never understand.
They wouldn’t be able to hide. Not now, not ever.
I’ll find you, Ianthe. I won’t let them keep us apart.
Patiently, I tracked the faint, lingering scent of her energy. The trail led downward. It passed beyond the upper corridors and plunged beneath the healing wards. I moved faster, reaching for her, needing her more than ever before.
I crashed against an invisible wall. I couldn’t experience pain, but the sheer force of the recoil threatened to unweave me all over again.
An abyss was carved into the bedrock, and my mate lay hidden below. I searched my scattered memories for anything about the place, any information I could use.
A memory struck me, vicious and clear. It was of my mother and a much younger version of me.
We’d crossed through a dark veil and walked into what looked like an exact replica of her den.
“This is Thanatos’s Temple,” she’d said.
“It is a place of sanctuary for those in need. I don’t wish for you to ever end up here, Skaros, but if we must, we’ll make the choice. ”
I’d genuinely considered becoming a recluse in the temple before Medea had come along. The wards around it were impenetrable. A manticore with a taste for human flesh could never escape to harm the death-touched brides of the city.
What had once been a possible solution had become an impossible horror. The blind healer had locked my mate in the one cage I couldn’t pierce.
The rage that coursed through me tasted like madness and futility. I threw myself against the wards again, and they flared, repelling me even harder.
Thanatos’s power would never let me pass. This was a safe space for the crippled, for the lost. No intruder had ever breached it.
But perhaps that was because no one had ever tried. And I’d been born to destroy. I wasn’t afraid to tear the temple apart to get my mate back.
In the end, it was an easy choice to make. If I couldn’t slip through a crack in the masonry, I would break the island open.
The death energy hummed around me, as if in approval. Without hesitation, I stopped trying to pierce the ward. I drove my roots downward, beyond the temple itself. I bypassed the clusters of death crystals entirely, even though they were usually my favored feeding source.
Down below, the waters of the Acheron lurked. And when my roots sank into the dark depths, a thousand screeching voices rushed into my mind.
“Child of Thanatos, you ask for much.”
“You are unwoven.”
“You should be here, among us.”
The lake tried to drag me down, to consume my consciousness. It knew, perhaps, that my mere existence defied everything Asphodelia stood for. But I stubbornly held on and continued to feed.
I’d been a fool once, when Ianthe and I had met in dreams. I’d held back because I’d stupidly thought that my form mattered. She had shown me it didn’t.
I was still her mate, no matter what shape I had. Unwoven or not. Nothing, not even the sentient lake, could sever that bond.
“So be it,” the lake replied, and this time it sounded calmer. Less hostile.
Power exploded over me, so intense it blinded my senses. For a few moments, I thought it would overwhelm me, just like the gorgon’s gaze had. But after meeting Ianthe, after tasting her pleasure, after feeling her heart, I possessed more strength than I ever had in my life.
As the lake’s power surged through me, I allowed my consciousness to drift over the city. Every avenue became my target, every building shaking under the weight of my anger and grief.
The monsters of the city sensed the wrongness. Their death energy grew agitated, panicking in a way it hadn’t even after Medea’s accidental power surge. “What’s happening?” they cried. “Thanatos’s gift! It’s leaving us.”
I shut out their fear and desperation, focusing solely on Thanatos’s Temple. The shell of the powerful refuge still lay beyond my reach, but not for long.
I coiled around the wards, squeezing with every ounce of stolen energy I possessed. Wait for me, Ianthe. I’m coming.
Skaros was angry.
In my heart, I’d known this for months. No, for decades, maybe more. I’d gathered the energy of his weave myself. He’d been angry from the moment he opened his eyes.
The Moirae had warned me back then. “His weave holds a snag, Phix,” they’d said. But I’d refused to give up on him. In my selfishness, I’d damned him to an existence of solitude.
When Medea unwove him, a part of me had hoped he’d find peace. But for all my wisdom, I could still be so blind.
I sat in the Agora of Echoes, in front of the rostrum where I held the most power. Today, the rows were silent, no bidders leaning forward and throwing death crystals at the feet of the death-touched brides. The fires from the bronze braziers flickered, and my fur stood on end.
I wouldn’t apologize to Skaros. I was no fool, and I knew such words meant nothing. But I needed to reach out to him. Perhaps it wasn’t too late—for him, for us, for everyone in the city.
As I left the Agora and launched myself into the air, the scent of agitated death energy washed over me. From above, the city looked strange, like a twisted picture of what it should have been.
Once, asphodels had peppered every avenue of our home, and death crystals had lit our streets with a kindness only death could ever offer.
But before my very eyes, the death crystals were being extinguished. One by one, they were losing their light, and Asphodelia was plunging into darkness.
Flowers bloomed aggressively over the streets, over the buildings, even over the barges and the canals. But these asphodels didn’t glow, nor did they seem friendly. They were born of Skaros’s anger, fueled by his outrage and loneliness.
Mere hours before, Eryx had dragged Ianthe into the depths of Thanatos’s temple. The moment I heard about it, I knew it was a mistake. My son had been woven a predator, but he would never take what wasn’t offered. Not even as a shade.
But for once no one had asked me for my wisdom. And now, my son was ripping Asphodelia apart for his mate. I couldn’t even blame him for it.
He wouldn’t listen to me. He might have, once, but those days were long over. The only voice he’d hear was that of the woman whose touch he was being denied. And for all that I was the Auctioneer, I could not reach a bride who was in a healer’s care—no matter how misguided that healer was.
But this was Asphodelia, and it was not me whom Eryx needed to obey. It was not my eyes that truly saw everything.
By the time I reached the Weavers’ Hall, the three Moirae were already waiting for me. They sat together in front of the Great Loom, studying it in pensive silence.
I padded up to Clotho and bowed, my claws raking against the basalt. “Revered Moirae, I come with a request.”
“On behalf of your Weaveline,” Clotho replied without looking at me. As always, the Spinner looked untouched by anything happening around her. I envied that about her. About them all.
“We know, Phix,” Lachesis added. “Skaros has been making his fury known. Very loudly.”
The shadows of the Weavers’ Hall seemed to lengthen with every word they spoke. I’d never feared my creators’ powers. Harming the Woven was beneath the Moirae. And yet… For my son, I was afraid.
As if guessing my thoughts, Atropos let out a sharp bark of laughter. “That manticore of yours… He was hungrier than we knew. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was trying to drain the Acheron dry.”
It wasn’t possible. I knew it wasn’t. But the mere mention of it—especially by the Crone—made my wings twitch with an anxiety I’d never felt before.
“Phix,” Atropos continued, her voice suddenly far more somber. “We knew when your son was unwoven that he was not truly prepared to let go. We didn’t touch his energy because we sensed that someday, somehow, a death-touched bride might be able to reach him in a way we could not.”
“We had no way of knowing when that day would be,” Lachesis mused. “Our knowledge of your son’s destiny was severed the day he was unwoven. But even we are not arrogant enough to believe that every outcome is dictated by what we weave.”
The three Moirae finally turned toward me and spoke in a single voice. “You are Skaros’s mother. You knew him best, and you are our first Woven. Tell us, Phix. What do you think we should do?”
It wasn’t unusual for the Moirae to ask for my advice. Sometimes, it was a test. Other times, it was a reminder that on Alia Terra, they weren’t all-powerful deities like they’d once been.
And there were the rare cases when they genuinely wanted to know. I couldn’t tell which it was this time, but it didn’t matter. There was only one reply, something that had been on my mind since hearing what happened to Ianthe in the infirmary.
“Revered Moirae, you and I both know there was nothing wrong with my son’s weave. He was born that way specifically to consume the mortal Ianthe’s flesh.”
The Moirae didn’t deny it. Whether they’d intended it or not, they’d obviously seen the truth much sooner than I had. “And yet, their threads are still entangled,” Clotho replied. “They cannot reach for each other. That bodes ill.”
No, it did not. And there was no way to fix it, not really. No way… Except by having faith.
“I realize you can’t weave my son back the way he was,” I said. “I’d never ask for such a thing. All I wish for is a chance. Allow me to reach for him, one last time.”
Behind the Moirae, the Great Loom started to vibrate. Was it also responding to my son’s rampage, or did it know something I didn’t?
“And what do you think you can change, Phix?” Clotho asked. “What would you do if we were to give you a chance?”
I thought about the way the flowers had constantly hounded my steps since Skaros’s fall. I thought about his silent loneliness, the burden he’d carried every single day of his life.
Perhaps my plan was cruel. Perhaps by doing this, I would only be sealing my son’s fate.
But when all the wisdom of Asphodelia failed, I had to trust a stronger power. I had to trust my son’s heart.
“Revered Moirae, the mortal Ianthe does not belong in Asphodelia. For my son’s sake, we must send her away.”