At the Twilight of Gods bides the Weaver of Odds.

Like an exploding cannonball, he was blasted out of his body – feet forward, arms clutching at his sides – through a tunnel of cold, midnight sky. Mario’s human instinct told him screaming was appropriate, and yet some other side of him was in transcendental awe.

A day may come when all hope is lost; when the oceans run red with our blood, and our darkest hour is upon us— and when it comes, that red day of reckoning, we turn, my dears, not to our rulers-in-good-times, but to our leaders-in-bad-times.

Step, step, step, I fall and they lift me, slip-slop, slip-slop, through the watery mud. Each step is a heartbeat on my way to the grave, and the longest walk I will ever take. Plip, plip, I slip and they gather me. How strong are these savages, and how tight is their grip! Plip, plip, plip patters the rain, and I fall, and I call, and I stall for more time.But my time has run out.

And our love goes beyond flesh; it transcends Death's reminder. In the Underworld Library, two books sharing a binder

I... I had a dream,’ said Mario through a pained expression, ‘that my life was not my-my-my own. That I didn’t create my own destiny. That my fate was predetermined. Amanita, you don’t think—’‘Shush,’ she whispered, placing a finger over his lips, ‘they might hear you...

He was no marionette after all, but an autonomous individual in a staged performance; a production carefully arranged and assembled on his discrete behalf.And he, Mario Fantoccio, had been invited on-stage to perform.

gold light burned faintly.From his cosy window seat, Mario was tracing a frost-flower on the windowpane with an unsure finger. Were its perfectly-rendered geometric patterns a product of nature, or were they an artefact of metaphysics? Was the frost-flower to the Masters what a work of Art was to him? Did the Masters of Strings truly control every aspect of reality?The fractal flower slowly melted under Mario’s fingertip.“No work of chance here,” he bitterly thought. “This was by design.

Sometimes we must allow our locked-and-tethered inner demon a short glimpse beyond the bars,” thought Mario, “lest we forget the full extent of our virtue. One’s power does not reside in the length of their demon’s claw, but in the strength of its manacle. The unleashed demon is worthless, lest it’s controlled.

What time is it?’‘Whatever time you want it to be,’ she gave him a cheeky wink. ‘Now be honest, did you ask for free will?’‘How did you—?’Amanita joined Mario beneath the covers. The ethereal Threads tethering her wrists phased through the thick wool blankets like sunlight through a windowpane.‘The bird that acknowledges its cage only ever sings of freedom,’ she said dreamily.