Clotho

Clotho was the youngest of the three Sisters of Fate, the spinner of the threads of life who decided who would be born and when. Set apart from her sisters Lahkesis and Atropos by her gravity and her sense of order, she guarded the Loom Chamber of the Palace of the Fates until Kratos came to seize the threads and remake his own fate.

The spinner of life#

Clotho was the youngest of the three Sisters of Fate and the spinner of the threads, often called the threads of life. As Goddess of the Past she began each life and chose who would be born and when, and through her threads all living things came into the world. Born of Nyx and Erebus, she and her sisters were among the first creatures to arise after Chaos created the Island of Creation, and when the Titans departed to forge the rest of the world the sisters became its rulers, reigning over Greece itself.

When Cronos learned from his mother Gaia that he would one day be overthrown by his own children, he sought the favor of the Fates and gifted Clotho and her sisters the Steeds of Time. Clotho took the steeds but refused to change his fate, unwilling to bow to what she deemed a lesser creature. She and her sisters allowed the gods to win the war against the Titans, and for this they were honored as goddesses and made allies of Zeus, though Clotho came to decide the fates of mortals, gods, and Titans on her own terms, suffering no one to meddle with her power.

Aid in the Domain of Death#

Clotho found Kratos amusing in some measure, and on his quest to save his brother she deemed him victorious in the Domain of Death, lending her aid alongside Atropos and Lahkesis so that the Spartan prevailed against Thanatos. Thanatos vowed afterward to undo that encounter and keep Kratos from ever meeting his brother. Later, after Zeus had betrayed and slain Kratos and came to the sisters in his paranoia, Clotho told him that Kratos was indeed the son destined to overthrow him, yet that Zeus would be the victor in the end.

The Loom Chamber#

When Kratos came to the Palace of the Fates to change his fate, Clotho sensed his approach and warned her sisters. After he had trapped Lahkesis and Atropos within a mirror, the Spartan descended to the Loom Chamber where Clotho resided. She warned him to turn back, telling him that all life was born through the threads she spun and that to tamper with them was to destroy everything. Unlike her sisters, she offered Kratos the chance to relent.

Kratos defied her, and Clotho summoned cyclopes, minotaurs, sirens, and gorgons to bar his way. When these failed she took the fight into her own hands, lashing out with her many arms across every level of her apparatus, but Kratos subdued each limb in turn. At the last she faced him at the top of the chamber, and after she dealt the Spartan heavy harm he disabled her arms and met her end by impaling her skull on a great swinging, blade-like pendulum drawn from her own machinery. So Clotho became the only Sister of Fate to be physically killed, while Lahkesis and Atropos remained alive but trapped in the past. Even after her death her consciousness lingered, and as Kratos used the threads to travel back in time her disembodied voice taunted him that he would never find his own thread.

Nature and bearing#

Clotho took her role as the creator of life with utter seriousness, unlike her sisters, who toyed with the destinies of mortals. She believed fate absolute and her own judgments beyond question, and held mortals, even demigods, powerless against her will. Yet she alone among the three showed a measure of care for the consequences of changing the course of events, and alone offered Kratos the mercy of turning back before the end. In form she was the largest of the sisters and the youngest, resembling a vast silkworm with scaled, heavy skin, two sets of arms, and long white hair beneath a crown set with blue silver.