[I finally saw 'Wonder Woman' - which is a great movie. If you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend you do so. However, there was something about the ending that bothered me.]

ARES ADRIFT

My eyes flickered open. However, there was little to see - just a gray mist through which something like stars could be dimly made out.

It reminded me of the night sky on the evening when Troy fell.

That was a war I lost.

And yet I still exist.

Diana didn't destroy me. Instead, she set me adrift. She sent me to the void where gods restlessly slumber, waiting for a time when we will once again find existence and purpose.

I will only be lost for a little while. Then I will reform. That is the nature of things.

I hope Diana will be there when I next appear on Earth. She is, after all, a tremendously capable foe. And what is the point of war if you don't have an opponent worth fighting?

What is the point of me if I don't have such a foe?

And who is Diana if she doesn't have me?

Actually, I can't wait to see my brave and beautiful half-sister once again. We are, after all, made for each other.

In the meantime, I sleep. I dream. And in my dreams I catch glimpses of the future.

I know what is coming.

The plan to gas London and extend the war was important, but it wasn't the end of my schemes. It is a poor strategist who only plans one step ahead. I had another plan that ran much deeper.

Oh, Diana, did you never wonder why I assumed the role of an English diplomat, rather than that of a German soldier? You see, there were events that I put into place. A frustrating armistice. An unjust peace. A Germany seething with anger, humiliation, and resentment. A clash between the most extreme of beliefs and the declining confidence of the European empires. And a hesitancy by those same Western powers - scorched so terribly in the trenches that they dug for themselves - to intervene against clearly inimical forces.

Regimes will arise whose evil will dwarf the misdeeds of the human governments of 1914. And then there will be another war. And that war will routinely see cities deliberately burned to the ground, as entire populaces are helplessly marched to a bureaucratically organized doom.

Lassitude claims me again, but I'm smiling as I close my eyes.

Dearest sister, I will return.