The warehouse gleamed with the early beams of sun, streaming through a partially shattered window high up above their heads. Lachesis was intensely flitting her head between all the doors, meanwhile Martha had taken to securing her tiara. Wouldn’t want it falling off in the fight and letting her cause more damage than necessary. She had been thoroughly lectured by Atropos on it before she left, that it was truly never to be taken off, especially when emotions were boiling.

“Do you think they’ll be here soon?” Martha asked, “it’s kind of a long shot expecting someone to just show up on a rumor.”

“The unsavory types at the parties Clotho seldom goes to love gossip, and the best part about ambrosia is that it makes people honest, so you know the information is at least as good as your source,” Lachesis responded, not taking her gaze off the entrances.

Martha nodded and turned back to herself. She twiddled with her fingers, the impeccable nail polish she’d wished onto them glimmering iridescently in the morning sun. She cocked her head at the door, as if anticipating the subject to waltz right on in. “Don’t be crazy,” she chided herself, “they’ll be right under your nose before you see them.”

Just as she thought that, she turned to see a bow and arrow poised to fire from behind a crate in the warehouse. She dodged instinctively as the arrow hurtled spot-on towards her previous position and screamed at Lachesis. The bow disappeared behind it, and Lachesis snapped her head in that direction, squinting. She then whispered a spell that Martha hadn’t heard before, and the crates turned…invisible.

Behind the crate, a masked bandit was crouching, seemingly unaware of the change in crate opacity.

“A one sided mirror, basically,” she heard Lachesis say telepathically, “follow my lead.”

The two each silently crept towards the assailant, Martha willing in the process that no sound be made. The assailant seemed to somehow notice them regardless, and scampered out on top, and tried to get a shot in at Lachesis, missing her merely by nature of her being quite a bit shorter than she appeared to be.

“Whoever you are,” Martha spoke up, “we know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Let’s sort this out, rather than fighting about it.”

The assailant said nothing again, merely opting to run at an incredible speed, trying to flank them. Lachesis turned her head and then threw crates at the wall in such a way that it might block them. They merely took the opportunity to jump on top of the crates, then launch themselves with a pair of daggers at Martha, who was gawking.

Just as they were about to impact, the assassin suddenly froze mid-air. Lachesis stared at Martha in shock, then back at the assassin. “You…can use those powers on deities?”

“Yeah, just, wasn’t that the plan?” Martha asked.

Lachesis stuttered out, “No! You can’t use magic directly on another god’s body, like, it should be impossible, didn’t you remember that part of the plan?”

“Ohh…..” Martha said, blankly. So she had just randomly forgotten that part of the briefing when they were deciding things.

The assassin, meanwhile, was stuck in time mid-air, a mere meter away from where Martha had been standing. As if to test the magic, Lachesis went up and almost prodded the assailant, before looking up to their mask.

“When I physically interact with them, the magic is going to stop,” Lachesis explained, “so I suggest you get ready to fight again.”

Martha nodded. There was no guarantee her magic would work directly again, especially not after it had been broken once and the assassin was aware of it.

Lachesis ripped off the mask, and the assailant still propelled forwards, confusedly crashing into the wall behind them. After a bit of waiting, they realized the assailant was down for the count.

Martha walked over, noticing their body being twisted in multiple unnatural ways, probably due to the crash. She cocked her head and walked over, and she realized: this wasn’t their person, or at least not them themselves. This was clearly a man, and from his smell, a human one, at that.

She communicated this to Lachesis, who immediately grabbed him by his jacket and held him up to the sky, a dazed and terrified look on his face.

“Who are you?” Lachesis bellowed, “and who sent you?”

“I am the Ibis, flitting from place to place, who knows where I’m from,” he croaked out, heaving out breath in between with a crackling sound from his lungs.

“You’re going to die from pneumothorax in a few hours if we don’t do something,” Lachesis said, “that much is clear, so I suggest you tell us why you’re here if you want to get better.”

“I’m afraid,” he coughed, fiddling with something, “I won’t get even that long.”

Lachesis looked down to notice the device he was holding–a magical bomb. She only had time to scream “flee” in her mind to Martha before disappearing the moment before the explosion herself.

Both women were relieved to find the other very much still alive once they arrived back at Atropos’ house, hugs being shared all around. Tim and Atropos had been playing a game of bridge, and it wasn’t clear who was winning because neither quite knew how to play. Clotho, meanwhile, had been doing stretches in the living room.

Now, all five were joined at the dining room table, Atropos having had to conjure up another, much shorter, chair for Tim. Tim themself seemed to take this as a thing of pride that they were now tall enough to see eye-to-eye with everyone, though Martha swore she saw their eyes flitting towards her and away a bit often.

“So,” Lachesis spoke, “that was a bomb. And the person detonating it was not our gal.”

“Yeah I gathered that,” Martha said, “that was really close, the person planning this must have known something about our abilities.”

“I agree,” Lachesis said, “it’s clear they had mastery over dodging objects thrown by telekinesis, and they appear to have sent a human knowing they could be beaten by normal means if worst came to worst, and then the bomb could be detonated. Furthermore, them noticing us suggests to me they were given magical detection abilities advanced beyond normal humans.”

“We kind of knew this going in,” Clotho said, “but the big leagues are clearly after us. Whoever Echo’s gossip got back to, they have money, power, and connections.”

“Indeed,” Atropos spoke solemnly, “someone informed me that they found the trial judge dead this afternoon.”

“The..the one who acquitted us?” Tim asked, eyebrows raising as they stammered.

“Yes, he served for two thousand years,” Atropos replied, “and conveniently, today’s the day he died. Funny though, they won’t say how.”

“We...may be getting in over our heads,” Lachesis said, staring daggers into the table, “we cannot trust our powers alone anymore.”

“Who can we call for backup, if we’re literally the goddesses of fate itself?” Martha asked curiously.

“I don’t know,” Lachesis replied.

“Y…you don’t know?” Atropos said.

“That’s right, damn it, I said I don’t know for once. We’ve got potential enemies in every corner of the magical world, our only sure ally is the lone survivor of the genocide of the largest soothsayer colony in the universe,” she said sharply, “and we don’t even know who wants to kill us.”

“We’ll figure it out, Martha,” Atropos said with an uncharacteristic aura of calmness, turning to Martha with intense eyes that displayed only restrained terror, “you and Tim should get some rest.”

Martha thought to protest, before she noticed Tim’s nervous toe-tapping. She nodded, and led them by the hand to her room’s door, which by this point had become much more elaborate and ornate (she did have to practice the details of her work, after all).

Tim jumped eagerly into her bed, and then grinned back at her sheepishly, obviously trying to distract her from the situation. She forced a smile and sighed, sitting down at the edge of the bed and looking at her hands. She felt Tim’s hand rest on her shoulder, and suddenly embraced them into a hug. Tim nuzzled into the embrace and they sat like that for a few minutes before she pulled out a copy of Ulysses from thin air and began to read it.

“A good choice,” Tim said.

“Thanks,” she said, “my father always read it to me when I was a child.”

“You’ve got one nerdy father, that’s for sure,” Tim said.

“You honestly don’t know the half of it,” she responded, rolling her eyes for effect. Tim giggled and they read together until Martha finally decided to fall asleep, Tim joining her soon after.