Breaking borders
It was nightfall in the town located in a forgotten area of Greece. The sun was setting on the horizon and it was quickly getting dark.
The streets were empty. Not a single human being could be seen outside, just like it had been the most time during the last years.
The name of the town was Innhiata.
In opposite to every other area in the country, this city was not following the Olympian Gods or even the newly risen cult of Eli, it had not for many years. Neither did it follow any of the other known religions, be it the other Pantheons or the One God. The town did not longer follow any faith known to mankind. But it was not only the fact that it´s people didn´t believe. The place itself had somehow grown out of their reach. It had changed in some mysterious and very disturbing way.
For reasons that nobody, be it mortal or immortal, really understood it was not longer part of the same realm. It was not longer inside of the sphere of influence of the Greek Gods or that of any other creature on Earth for that matter.
The town had not been part of it for a very long time. But not only that. In some way, it was not even longer really part of this world. The place now existed at the borderline of their reality, at the edge of another unknown dimension. It was a realm beyond human understanding, that also held dangers, even for the gods.
Nobody was sure how all this exactly came to be. Not even the Olympians had a real explanation for this developments.
But they were fully aware of one other fact. Instead of them, the people of this town were now worshipping another force. It was a entity, a being, far older and more ancient than the Olympians or any other gods of their generation. This being had not been seen or heard of on Earth for eons, but many gods and even some mortals over the course of history knew of it´s existence.
The people of this town didn´t follow any faith currently known to mankind, but they were still following a faith, one that was both ancient and very dangerous. A cult that was claiming to act in the name and on the behalf of this older deity had taken control of this piece of ground a long time ago.
Under the influence of the cult, it´s citizens slowly began to change, in more than one way, in body and soul. They became reclusive, strange acting and locked themselves into their houses. There whatever was going on with them continued in secret. The few times most of them were seen outside was for their religious ceremonies, where they performed bizarre rituals.
Sometimes the Olympians saw a few glympses of what was happening, of black magic, human sacrifices, ritual mutilations and other things, all performed by figures wearing red colored robes and hiding their faces behind grotesk looking masks.
The little bits they could see were enough to even make the Olympians nervous.
But this was not everything, by far not.
Because now something else had also been brought to this place, a mysterious and legendary artifact, a book.
Nobody knew exactly where it came from or who had written it, only that it was one of the greatest sources of dark power in the world. Wherever the book had appeared in history, whenever someone unprepared had dared to read in it, it was always followed by mysterious events, mysterious and for the most part terrible.
One other thing was being said about it however, that the author hadn´t been human, that it was written by someone or rather something else. But even that were only rumors.
Other sources however were even more bizarre. Some said that it had never been written at all, that the book had just suddenly appeared on this world, that it fell out of a hole in time and space. Of course that was only another story, again one of many. Nobody knew for sure.
For a long time the book was said to be located in the land of Egypt. There it became the source of a number of myths and legends. Even the Pharaos feared and respected it´s power. But then, over 20 years ago, it vanished.
Now, a short time ago, it had appeared again, here in this cursed place. Fallen from the sky as some of the locals claimed. It was the newest part of it´s story.
The name the book was known under was Necronomicon ex Mortis or as it was sometimes translated, the Book of the Dead. It described rituals to summon demons, ways to `resurrect´ the dead and to grant godlike power.
It was sometimes said to be made of human skin instead of pergament and with writings of blood. But few had ever seen it in person and even fewer had lived to tell the tale. So barely anybody actually knew something for sure.
The Necronomicon was also said to be something else, a key to open gateways to other dimensions and to different planes of existence, a very dangerous one.
Now it was in this certain town, just like the cult in those hands it was now. These people were aiming to use it´s powers and combine it with their own, to further their unknown goals. Now it had fallen into the hands of a group of people who were already living at the borderline of their world and who seemed to have every intention to use it for their own purposes.
This two factors together were enough to give the Olympian Gods reason to worry. This meant of course the ones under them who were still alive.
xxxxxxx
It was now several months ago that the event known as the Twilight had come over them. The Twilight of the Gods was an old doom-prophecy that had now finally become true. But it was in a very surprising way. It´s key had been a child. By now however the child had long grown up.
Eve was the Bringer of Twilight, a child not fathered by a human, but created by an Angel, destinied to herald the end of the gods, at least the ones of the Olympian Pantheon. For that reason they had wanted her dead since even before of her birth.
But she was also the daughter of Xena, the infamous woman who was also known as the Warrior Princess. She had made sure that she would live to adulthood. Or as some others said, she had challenged the gods and in the process brought great havoc and destruction on Earth. Both was true in some way. But this was also to a great part a question of perspectives and of priorities. Xena´s priority while her daughter was being attacked, was it certainly not to hold peace for everyone else.
But beside all that, Eve had also been something else, a roman commander, warlord and mass murderer under the name Livia. So the most people would not really have shed a tear if she had been killed. At this time the only ones protecting her were Xena and her partner Gabrielle.
But they had another ally, the Angels, those servants of the Force of Light who were responsible for Eve´s creation in the first place. In the end the prophecy became true, even if in another way that anyone would have expected. It was not Eve who had destroyed them, it was Xena, in defense of her daughter.
Some of them however were still alive, still around, and they were worried about the latest developments. The cult was trying to unlock the power of the Necronomicon. As the remaining Olympians knew, this could mean a threat to everyone.
But they were also aware that, since the town was outside of their own realm, they would be powerless there. So they would hardly be able to interfere on their own. And that came in addition to their weakened state after the Twilight.
They had lost the most important members of their Pantheon and beside that also many of their mortal followers. In short words, they were weak as never before in their entire history.
For that reason they had to ask for help. Ironically, looking for candidates capable of this task and with their own dismished power and influence over the world, they decided to go to the same person who was responsible for their downfall in the first place. It was another thing that the most of them were more than wary about.
But they all knew this book in the hands of the cult was a disaster waiting to happen and from all mortal inside their reach, Xena was by far the best suited for to deal with this situation, even if they didn´t like the thought.
xxx
It was not the first time Xena had nearly caused their destruction, in fact it was not the first time Xena actually caused the death of one of them.
Of course this was not how things should have been going by his own memories. But that was exactly the point.
This was not his world.
It was about two months ago now that he had arrived here. In this time he had made himself a place under the other gods of his family who were still alive in this reality. It were far more than in his own after the Twilight happened there, he admitted.
But here his own other self was not under the survivors. That was probably one of the reasons it was this dimension where he was send to.
He was Ares, the God of War, but not the one who had originally existed here. To put it simply, he was a traveler through time and space, but not exactly by his own choice.
What he had also done during this last months, was trying to find out what exactly had happened in this version of their history. He gathered this information by questioning the other gods, the Fates or by simply reading about it in the scriptures some of the other immortals had written to document the events of the last decades.
xxx
By what he had found out, this world diverged from his own at the point where Xena was threatening Hope with the Hinds Blood Dagger inside what had once been his own temple before he had abdicated it to Dahak´s followers.
In this world Gabrielle had not interfered in time and and the events began to change from what he knew. This time around, Xena actually managed to stab Hope.
Not that it achieved anything. As it turned out the hinds blood had no effect on a Child of Darkness. Still, given her nature, Hope´s body was technically for a short time temporally dead and that was the worst thing that could have happened.
The pact that Ares himself had formed with the Fates was fullfilled and Xena died as well as a result. But it came even worse.
None of them knew it at that time, but what Dahak truly needed to manifest himself into this world was the soul and body of a warrior. In consequence Xena herself became his vessel on Earth.
By what he saw she however, in opposite to Iolaus who for a time virtually merged into one person with Dahak, was only particular possessed. Maybe the process wasn´t as deep as it had been with Iolaus in his reality or maybe Dahak just thought Xena was already usefull enough as she was.
His other self vowed to follow this new being, just like Hope and temporally even Gabrielle and Joxer, who didn´t realize what was happening until it was nearly too late.
This was the beginning of a devastating war that shook the entire world.
First `Xena´ actually attacked the greek underworld to bring her son Solan back to life. In the process she killed Hades and caused great devastation over this realm. Many souls, thousands of them, just vanished from Tartarus during the fight. As Ares concluded they were send over to Hell to further Dahak´s agenda. But at that time nobody knew this.
The other Olympians, now fully realizing what was happening, made the same decision like in his world and fled. That was probably the only reason they had survived this crisis.
A short time later Greece was suffering under the roman forces that had invaded the country, because Ceasar and Pompey had chosen to fight their civil-war on it´s ground.
Under Dahak´s influence Xena rallied more and more followers around her and with Ares by her side, she had also control about the various armies and warlords of the country. Very quickly she had gathered a large force and was fighting off the romans, with the most brutal methods.
And parallel to that, someone else appeared on the plan. The country of Sumeria offered them it´s assistance and an alliance. It was no great surprise, as Ares had already known and as the others had found out later, the Sumerian King Gilgamesh was a disciple of Dahak.
Shortly afterwards open war broke out between the Roman Empire and the armies of Sumeria and Greece, under the command of Xena and Gilgamesh. All of this played out just as Dahak had planned.
Countless people were killed in a line of bloody battles, but the conflict continued without any clear outcome. Both sides seemed evenly matched, so the mutual destruction on both sides raged on without a winner.
It was then when Gabrielle had finally realized what was going on and what exactly happened to Xena. She left to find Hercules and Iolaus and warn them about Dahak. At this point however the number of his followers had already grown into the thousands.
Like in his own world his brother ultimately confronted this enemy with a group of allies.
In the end his counterpart, the Ares of this dimension, turned against Dahak and was killed in the process. He however managed so to give Hercules an opening and drive his presence out of Xena´s soul. They had won.
The war came to a standstill shortly afterwards and both the Romans and the Sumerians retreated to their own territories.
Neither Dahak or the local version of Hope had been seen or heard of since then.
All that was over 26 years ago. The rest of the events happened astonishingly very remarkable to the one in his own world. Xena returned to life a short time later by the grace of the Light and the Archangel Michael and was pregnant.
Like in his world Xena and Gabrielle were put into suspension for 25 years, even if their Ares was not around to put them into the ice coffins this time.
It was nearly as if someone had planned and engineered this events, he thought sarcastically. Of course someone did, Michael. He must have made sure that Xena landed in the same predicment anyway to get her out of the way while his little pawn Eve grew up and that she would stay young and strong enough to take on the Olympians later.
This would be typical for him, the `holy´ puppet-master.
And as it looked Eve was completely able to be Livia, even without his influence. This was actually a surprise to him. Then the Twilight happened and now he was here.
He had realized that he was actually somewhat earlier in the timeline than the world where he was send from. The Twilight was here only a few months ago instead of a few years.
The other gods had of course long realized by now that he was not exactly the Ares they had known. But they had accepted him for two reasons, even from another dimension he was still kin and beside that with their decimated numbers they were simply in no position to turn away someone of his status.
Now he was here, in some small village, looking for the same woman he had known for so long. But he knew at the same time that he had never met this version of Xena before. But he had finally found both her and Gabrielle.
Like nearly always she was able to sense his presence before he actually appeared, just like the Xena he knew. But the look of surprise and shock on her face was still clearly visible for him as he now stood directly before her. And she was someone who normally tried to never show shock and surprise.
"Hello Xena," he greeted her.
"Ares," she said. "So how exactly have you managed to return to life?" she asked him after a few moments to fully take in the situation.
xxxxxxx
Somewhere else
At another time and space, another female warrior was on her way to a certain meeting place.
This one shared many parallels, but also many differences with Xena. They had a long history with each other after all. Her name was Callisto.
Authors notes:
This is the same version of Ares who had appeared in the story `Days of Tomorow´ and was send to a parallen world in the end.
The Necronomicon had actually appeared in Hercules season 6 in Egypt. At the end of the episode Hercules has thrown it into an Earth´s orbit. For that reason it is stated that it `fell from the sky´.
The entire story draws in parts from the Chulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft. The name of the town for example is a take on his Innsmouth.
(Innhiata = Inn + hiatus (lat. mouth/open maw)
Disclaimer: Story and characters don´t belong to me.