@windsweptinred Another AU Drabble! This time for the old Children of the Endless AU. I know you’ve a soft spot for Destiny so I hope you enjoy this Drabble featuring him!
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“Please I beg you!”
The woman who until now had stood so proud, so strong, throughout the tense encounter, now at last fell at Destiny's feet; hard gray eyes softened by the sheen of tears, red hair tumbling out before her like a war banner, fallen to the dirt in defeat.
"My lord, I know the truth of what you are, the truth of your kin, the sires of cursed and accursed Helen and Paris. Lord Apollo's doom upon me has granted this clarity. But your knowledge is greater than the cunning of the Achaens, your power more potent than that of the gods on Olympus. Surely, most surely you can grant this one boon, that at least one man might heed my warnings?"
Destiny's unseeing eyes stared out over the battlements whereon the pair stood, the light of the dawn was choked and gray, struggling through the smoke that rose up from the battlefield surrounding the walls on all sides.
"Mercy is not the province of Destiny, Cassandra"
His voice, to the protastrated woman, sounded as cold and hard as the stones she knelt on, body trembling with both creeping despair and curdling rage.
"It was written in the Book of Destiny that all these things should be so, and they cannot be unwritten"
Cassandra reared up at this, rage overcoming caution as she raised her eyes once more to gaze on this being she had summoned, this being she knew in her more rational mind deserved naught but deference and respect, at least a greater doom then the one she already carried befall her.
For here was one greater than Lord Apollo, then Lord Zeus himself, one who could truly smite her not only from life but all existence if crossed.
She found, alas, she did not care.
"It is written that great Troy, envy of the living world, be razed until not a stone of it is left to us to weep over, for the beauty that was lost and shall never be again?!"
She climbed to her feet as she spoke, words ringing out in the cold dawn, her red hair flying up in the cold wind, torch like in the heat of her passion.
"That my people shall be scattered and set upon like sheep abandoned and left to the ravenings of wolves??"
To Cassandra's distress, the flames of her anger began to flicker under the rising wave of her grief, and the tears that had until now shimmered behind her eyes now at last began to fall, and she thrust forward with the last vestiges of her anger, fists raised to shake a curse at the sky, as gray and implacable as the being before her.
"That my brothers, brave and true and flawed and foolish should all to a man fall and be forgotten?!"
Her grief at last smothered her flame, and despair gripped her as she dropped her head to her hand, knees sinking once more to the ground as she choked out:
"And that I should have the power to foresee it all, and yet be powerless to prevent it?"
Destiny stood over the princess’ shaking form, as silent tears fell from her hidden eyes, looking upon her in a silence that seemed infinite even to himself.
When at last he spoke, there was smallest shift of softness in his tone, so minute that it would have taken another Endless to note it, and so profound a change within their oldest brother would have shaken any one of them.
"What is written cannot be unwritten Cassandra" He repeated, "You, Paris, Helen. All are children of the Endless. In each of you there is an echo of your sire, one that will always ring true, though you struggle against it. Helen draws the Desire of all who look upon her, whether she wills it or not. Paris leads himself and all who surround him to Destruction, whether he seeks it or not.”
And here Destiny stepped forward, only a single step, the first he had taken since Cassandra had summoned him, but it was to any else who could have witnessed it as if an immovable mountain had stooped down to touch the cheek of a crying child.
"And you, Cassandra, last daughter of Troy, daughter of Destiny, you must bear witness to the end of all and all those you most love…"
The dawn finally broke over the city, casting the shadows of Destiny and his doomed daughter across the ramparts like a pair of shrouds.
"Whether we wish it or not"
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