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THE FATES' WARNING.

(A Fates Warning fanfic by Marco van Leeuwen (overlord@caiw.nl), with a
*lot* of help from Jim Matheos and John Arch )

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*Chapter One - The Ivory Gate Of Dreams.

(Final traces of hope are swallowed in the deep)

    I swim alone through the murky waters of my dreams, the dark current
pushing me away from nightly revelations, torn by by the liquid tempest
from the place where I received the truth, the deepest insight into the
very heart of my being. I'm adrift, seemingly without direction, but while
the storm rages the sea around me remains calm.
    I'm helpless as I fall beneath the crush of water's walls. Deep down
below the surface the streams take me, suddenly acting as one to make sure
I cannot escape, to the ruins of a city which once was home to the Gods,
but is now covered in the slimy tentacles of decay. It was as if They had
sensed the prelude to ruin, leaving this testament to their knowledge and
power behind as they sailed for friendlier waters.
    In the distance I see the ivory tower, and a feeling of dread fills my
soul. As the current takes me closer and closer, the tower bows down, in
reverence to the first light of day trickling down through the
seaweed-infested water. As I feared, the tower becomes the ivory gate of
dreams, the gate of lies.
    As I pass through it, I mourn my fate. Am I not allowed to remember? Is
there not a way that I can retain the beautiful memories? Memories of
building empires using nothing but images and words, following the everflow
through the gallery of shadows, or climbing the watchtower to the hall of
the mountain king?
    As the stream pushes me back to the surface, I feel those precious
dreams being torn loose from my mind. My hands try to grasp them, but they,
as do the final grains of hope, flit through my hands. I turn to see them
sinking, one by one, and as the waves claim the final few the thoughtless
hands of water throw me onto the shore. I walk up my desert of despair, my
island of isolation. I look up towards darkening skies, but through the
haze of distant summer storms the suns still manage to leave tired eyes. 
    I lay myself to rest so that my other self can wake up in the hard
world. I know I have to leave the soft world now, but it is imperative that
I remember... remember the warning of the Fates. I remember cities, and I
remember winter and pain. I remember the golden mirrors in the corners of
life. I remember...

(Wishing life were made of lasting visions)

*Chapter Two - No Exit.

(Drifting in and out...)

    The delicate sound of faraway thunder gently pushed him out of his
slumber, and into a shady gray landscape, the landscape of a faceless room
devoid of dawn. The soft murmur of the rain against the window and on the
streets outside, the streets of could-be-anywhere, accompanied the return
of the emotions which had kept him up so late last night.
    He had been lying in the shadows, encapsulated in an almost tangible
shade of gray, replaying his past filled with a thousand regrets. He knew
he couldn't turn back the years, no matter how much he wanted to. All those
years he had watched in silence, motionless, powerless, as a stranger grew
within him. He remembered that the endless longing had always been trying
to break free. He remembered that the passion, the quest for the road that
goes on forever, the path from mortality to eternity, had turned into a
mindless, directionless obsession, and he had let himself be deceived by
the delusion that it was just his profession. He had lost sight of where he
was going.
    In time his lifeline, his clue of Ariadne leading to the distant lights
of salvation, had turned into unseen chains binding him and weighing him
down. The path had narrowed, and the walls had started caving in.
Ultimately, weary and weakened, he had fallen prey to the passionless play
of society. He had started to wander towards obscurity, he had become just
another face in the crowd.
    When finally the walls had given way, and his forgotten cause had been
consumed by the mediocrity of reality, he had found he didn't care: he had
nothing left to say. He had let his soul, watered down by the unstoppable
current of conformity, bleed into a reality incapable of receiving it, and
had turned away, had distanced himself. He had let the precious years of
youth seep away, and had simply allowed it to happen.
    His helpless voice was starting to sink.

(Let nothing bleed into nothing, and did nothing)

*Chapter Three - Perfect Symmetry

(Life in still water no more)

    I once again awaken in the realm of Oneiros. I stand up, His sand
shifting and rearranging under my feet. I have awakened here thousands of
times before, but this time it is different. I look up towards the
darkening skies, a violet haze obscuring the fading light of the two suns,
the lights of my life. First the larger one fades away, then the smaller
one. I realise a new storm is brimming, transcending the boundaries of this
unreality, and for now I will have to face this fear alone.
    I remain frozen, standing still for a thousand thousand years, all the
time looking up, awaiting the arrival of the tempest that will change the
seasons. The inevitable summer is coming. Finally it reaches me, crashing
unto my island in the stream of unconscious alternity, its invisible voice
screaming around me. I am... I... I am the I of the storm.
    The sand at my feet, the sand of the Lord of Dream, thrown up into the
air by unseen hands, spirals around me, its sense-expanding,
now-transcending powers lifting the false vision that protected me from
reality, that keep the shadows from my sight. The walls of lies finally
give way to the rush, and let reality in.
    I look around, expecting the images I know so well, but my new
perspective allows me to see the true nature of my surroundings for the
very first time. The trees, now pillars of stone supporting armless white
maidens, the perfect symmetry of their pattern keeping me trapped all these
years. In the distance, once the fire-spewing mountain, a fearful dragon
scaring me away, now a tower of ivory and a gate to my truth.
    I begin my exodus. I transcend the plain, dissolve the medium of my
bondage. My wings, the divine wings of comical tragedy and tragical comedy,
lift me up from the ground and carry me towards my destiny.
    I spiral up the stairs of the tower, and see them unfolding in front of
my eyes; I am the architect of the spiral, the shaper of my world. I reach
the top, the storm still raging, carrying me up higher and higher still. I
travel far beyond the sun, through the shadow of a black star until I reach
the sky. The blackness around me absorbs the sound of the raging storm, and
then... everything is silent. 
    Clarity of vision, another point of view. Yes. I remember now. I
remember how it started. I remember doing... what they told me.

(What was once a prison, is now a release.)

*Chapter Four - Parallels

(The shifting sands slowly rearrange)

    He drifted out again. He returned from a restless sleep to a hopeless
world, the shadiness of his mood only matched by the grayness of the
darkening morning skies outside the unfamiliar window. The thunder was
getting closer.
    He missed her. They had been apart for too long, separated by an ocean
and the things he had left unsaid, things he couldn't explain. He looked
over to the empty spot beside him. She was out of sight, but not out of
mind. 
    He turned his head, and stared into the darkness in front of him again.
Did he really know her? Did she really know him? Did he even care?
Sometimes he'd lose sight of where he was going, why he was doing the
things he was doing, and he didn't know how to share those thoughts. But
still she would understand, and manage comfort him. "Where you are, I am",
she would say.
    He drifted in. He looked over to the empty spot beside him again, to
see the sheets folding and the shadows crawling, and then her heart beating
beside him. She was breathing softly. 
    The shadows of the branches of the tree outside the window solidified
and crawled up her face, into her nose. The other end of the tubes reached
out to the large suitcase beside the bed, which had begun making a soft
sound. Beep... beep... beep... second after second after second. A machine
shooting sparks through a mind that had been lightless for as long as he
could remember, the man dressed in white now beside him explained.
    In the dark outside the window, the mists converged, forming two
entities fighting their eternal battle to maintain the balance of life and
death. Spinning around eachother in his head, fighting for the right to
claim her life and the lives of the eggshell minds in similar rooms all
around him.
    He knew that she could hear him. There was so much he had to tell her,
explain to her. Without her he was a helpless child without a name, without
a past or a sense of direction. Why wouldn't she just wake up? Who was she
to take his life away from him? How could she forget him?
    In the hallway outside the room a blind man stumbled by. He was clawing
the walls, walls engraved with pain, his brittle hands searching for
support. He stopped and turned his eyes of deepest black towards him. His
voice old and weak, but his words the light of dream.
    "Close your eyes for a while, and forget the fear. Embrace the light in
the distance." The blind man collapsed onto the hallway floor, and all men
in white rushed out to help him. 
    He turned back to his love, and called out her name. A single tear
rolled from her face into his hand. The eleventh hour had called. "I'll
remember you", he whispered. "Will you remember me?" Then the sparks
stopped.
    The salt water seeped into his hand, flowing to his heart. The flow
grew and became a large stream, engulfing him and taking him away, pushing
him back into reality. 
    He sat up in bed, alone again. 

(It seems it was all a dream.)

*Chapter Five - The Spectre Within

(I want to know what's deep within.)

    I fall, a thread of silver wrapped around my wrist pulling me down.
Falling down, faster and faster,  with time reversing, taking me back to
the Three. I see the ground approaching, and as it gets closer, my speed
decreases, until I finally hang still in the air, the ground no further
away as I am tall. I step down from the invisible structure supporting me,
and as soon as my feet touch the ground, the thread starts pulling me up
the green hill. 
    I walk a night and a day, and then another week or two, up a mountain
and down a valley, across a desert and through the labyrinth of the goblin
king. I walk through the darkest of winters, the bleakest of cities and the
deepest of pains. I meet the blue-eyed king of the desert, who's named
after a mouse, a mechanical man, who says he's more than meets the eye, and
the ghost of the goddess of water and fire, who accompanies me for a while.
    At the end of the seventeenth day I reach a small, dilapidated house on
the edge of the cliffs of insanity. The thread leads into the house through
the open front door. I'm pulled to the threshold, and gaze into the
darkness inside. 
    "We're so glad you could make it". The voice of an old woman. "We've
been waiting for you. Come in, dear."
    I strain my eyes to see what lies inside, but it isn't until a fire is
lit in the fireplace that I can see who was talking. "Close the door behind
you. You're letting all the heat out." Another, much younger and harsher
voice, from the shadows in one of the corners of the small room.
    "Come here." The old woman who spoke earlier, dressed in black rags,
walks towards me, in her trembling hand a large knife. "Don't be afraid,
sonny. I won't hurt you." She looks straight into my eyes. "Yet."
    She cuts the silver thread, and the younger voice, in a long black
dress, steps into the light, in her hand the other end of the thread. She
starts winding it around a wooden spool. She turns to a previously unseen
third woman, younger than the oldest but older than the youngest, sitting
in a large chair on the other side of the room. "This was a nice one,
sister. Very strong."
    The sitting one, knitting-needles in hand, speaks for the first time.
"You think so, really? Of course it needed to be strong, it was so
important that it didn't break, because so much depended on the arrival
of..." 
    "That's enough, sister!", the youngest one snaps. She turns to me. "Do
you know who we are, boy?"
    My newfound clarity allows me to see their true nature. I face the
youngest. "You're Lachesis." The oldest one shrieks. I point at the middle
one. "You're Clotho". The oldest one shrieks again, louder this time. "And
you," I say as I turn towards the third of the Three, "you're Atropos.
You're the Moerae." 
    All three shriek in unison. "Don't say that!", Atropos says. 
    "We really don't like those names very much", says Clotho. "We like...
The Nice Ladies." 
    "The Kindly Ones", says Atropos.
    "The Sisters Three, if you really must", says Lachesis.
    A little while and three moments of silence later, Lachesis starts to
speak again. "We will forgive you your insolence, because you and what
you're about to do is very important to us. You knew our names (which are
not really our names, make sure you remember that), so you must know what
you're here for."
    "I do, and I am ready."
    "Oh no, little man. I doubt that you are as ready as you think you
are." Atropos looks at me, visibly annoyed at my confidence. "You must make
a choice, but you never learned to think. Therefore, a warning: you have
come this far, and you can't go back to a different time. The doors have
closed behind you. Go back or stand still, and you will be consumed."
    Clotho rises from her chair, and opens a door next to her chair which
wasn't there a moment before. "Leave the past behind."
    "Face the fear." Lachesis gestures at the darkness beyond the
threshold.
    "Remember our warning," Atropos says.
    I step through the opening, and turn around once more, but I see
there's noone there. I find myself at the mouth of a cave, a nightly
wasteland surrounding it. I'm afraid.
    The endless descent into the cold blackness, the inability to count the
days where there's no light, no sun or moon to illuminate a spirit losing
hope. Inward bound, into the mouth of madness. The demons of past and
present shriek past me and circle around in my head, enhancing my fears and
stealing my deepest thoughts. They try to scare me away, but I cannot stop,
I must continue.
    I reach the center of the Earth, and find a monument of time long past,
and gods long forgotten. An icy voice of faraway thunder, echoing through
high halls and narrow passageways, telling me to turn back. "No mortal
dares to enter here!", it cries, but the voice cannot harm me. The black
stone walls separate, and I enter the room with the four corners of life.
    The portal behind me closes, leaving me trapped in an empty room. In
the center a small pillar rises, the liquid rock reaching higher and
higher, forming a fountain. Water starts flowing, and fire starts burning.
Above the fire the ceiling separates, revealing a cold, starless night sky.
The four corners of life approach me, smoothening, now reflecting, pure
gold glistening around the mirrors.
    I turn towards the first mirror, and I see myself as I was in my youth.
Innocent, inexperienced, untainted. Warm memories of a better time.
    The second mirror. A warrior in battered armour, lifting his sword
against all that threatens him, lashing out in anger at everyone
approaching him. I admire his strength, the pride and the drive to back up
his convictions. 
    An old man stares back at me from the third mirror. Weary and weakened,
a decaying gray shadow of a man, but eyes betraying pride, the wisdom of
long years and an unburdened soul. Still, the old man frightens me.
    I turn towards the fourth mirror, and its reflectionless blackness
starts sucking me in, a powerful current of air forcing me to give in to
the despair that has haunted me for so many years. The water in the
fountain rises, engulfing me and trying to push me through the fourth
mirror. The floor of the room smoothening, giving me nothing to hold on to,
the fire in the center of the room extinguishing, so that I cannot see; all
elements conspiring against me.
    "Leave the past behind," it echoes in my head. "Face the fear."
    I face my fear. I embrace the lights in the distance. I exit the room
through the mirror of the old man moments before the room collapses, and
once again I fall through the vastness filled with stars upon stars. 

(I have passed the threshold deep within me)

*Chapter Six - A Pleasant Shade Of Gray.

(Sometimes I lose sight of where I'm going
Fanned by a flame I can't remember
But distant lights still burn bright
And the road goes on forever.)

    I fall. I fall for an eternity and a day, passing my past and my
present and innumerable futures along the way. I fall out of the dreams of
yesterday and into the rest of my life. 
    I sit up in this stranger's bed once more. The cold morning light
entering the room through the window is pregnant with a silent madness, a
certain shade of sadness. The grayness between dark and light surrounds me
once more.
    "The warning...," I mutter, "the warning of the Fates..." 
    I remember now. The shade of gray comes closer, embracing me, I
embracing it. 
    The sound of the voice of my love, the laughter, the pain. 
    The letters in my head, the monument, the rain. 
    These memories, these shades, and more remain.
    My love, I will remember.
    My past, I will defeat.
    My dawn, I will embrace you.
    My monument, I will complete.

(Close your eyes a while as morning shadows play
Listen to the rain wash the long night away
Face to face we'll awake to see another day
And with hope in our hearts embrace this shade of gray
This pleasant shade of gray...)

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