Chapter 2

It was the year 2699, the far future from the point where this story had originally started.

It was a time of war.

But it was a war that was quite different from any others that had taken place in the past. This one wasn´t limited to a single country or a couple of them or to a continent or even to a single planet. Here the fighting spread over entire systems.

It was a war that was spanning the stars.

So yes, at first, it was a good time, at least for Ares.

The by now ancient God of War had been quite excited about the prospect, at least in the beginning. But not anymore, not when he finally realized the full scope of what was happening.

During the last six centuries, the human race and their world had changed more than ever before in their history. Humans or mortals, as Ares sometimes still called them, had settled on around two dozen planets outside of Earth itself.

All in all, there were 23 populated worlds in many different star systems now, not included their home-world, whose size ranged from small settlements of only a few hundred colonists, to large inhabitated planets with hundreds of millions of citizens.

The first colony had been on Mars of course. It was quite funny actually, he was able to visit and walk around on a planet that was named after him.

They also made contact with several other species that existed out there in space. Sometimes it was a contact of the positive sort and sometimes it was not.

The mortals had truly come a long way, even Ares had to admit that. It was a bad thing however that this came seemingly hand in hand with the decline of the gods, at least from his point of view.

He remembered how everything happened.

xxx

After being finally freed from the crypt where Xena had locked him, he awoke in the age of the late 20th century. It was a strange new world for him that he didn´t really understand.

He quickly realized that his powers had dismished even more at this point. But it was enough for him to survive. In the end he was reduced to not much more than a normal man at this point.

But he still had his immortality and he had at least some of them left. His energy was so low however that he could only use it from time to time on a higher level. For the most part he was he was only able to do some, as they would call it in these days, `circus-tricks´.

Yet he was not completely helpless and he had just enough of his powers to survive all those drastic changes, decently.

Luckily, he was able to come to an `agreement´ with the group of mortals who had freed him. Those people were working for a company, as they called it, that proved to be quite interested in his stories and took great efforts to find his `final´ resting place. By what he had been told, they were a new form of organization under the mortals, based mostly on financial interests.

They explained to him the ways this new era worked and taught him how to cope with it. In exchange he helped them and especially the man that were working for with some `small tasks´, by using his now dismished powers. In other words he agreed to helped them bring down their competition and improve their own position.

Their demands however seemed to get more and more ridiculous with every time they asked something of him. At first, they wanted him to take the shape of an officer from a rival company to discredit him, then they wanted to steal some important inventions, to do some spy work for them and finally they asked him to murder an important employee of their greatest competitor.

Slowly, they started to treat him like a mere pawn, him a god. He was slowly getting the impression that these mortals had no real idea who they were dealing with.

Still it was a deal to their mutual benefit, at least for as long as Ares still needed them. Of course as soon as he had learned enough, he got rid of them all and was on his own once again.

He remembered how good it felt to have the head the company, the C.E.O, levitating over the edge of his own building and how the man had been begging for his life, just before he had let him fall. It had been a satisfying feeling, he admitted.

Ares had made sure that everyone who knew about him was either dead, loyal alone to him or intimidated enough to keep his mouth shut for good.

He was back. From that point on, he did everything that he could to regain some of his influence over the world.

What he didn´t know however, was what had happened during the centuries when he had been imprisoned, at least until some years later.

True, the rough shape of things he could take out of history books. But there was no personal information there.

There was much to find about all kind of historical events, inventions, the progress of mankind and warfare and many other things. But there was nothing about the gods and certainly nothing about the things that truly interested him.

It was at this time when he met someone, he had truly though he would never see again, his brother Hercules. The half-god had actually survived for thousands of years and was still walking this world.

Who he had also met again, a short time later, was Aphrodite. She had been around the entire time. But just like him, she had become incredibly weak, merely existing in the background and hiding herself.

His sister had been more than happy to see him again. As it seemed Xena and Gabrielle had never truly told her what had happened to him, only that they had no choice but to `deal´ with him. Of course they wouldn´t have given away his location to Aphrodite, if they had wanted him locked away for good.

From both her and Hercules, he was able to get a quite good accord about what had happened in his absence.

By what they had told him, Xena, Gabrielle and also Eve had went on living for a long time after he was gone, for a very long one. But in the end, even their long existence here had come to an end.

Hercules told him that his friend Iolaus had returned to Heaven shortly after they last met, this time for good. Despite their separation though, they are still able to talk to each other now and then.

They were all gone, everyone they had known, except Aphrodite, Hercules and himself.

Even Gabrielle´s immortal daughter had left this plane of existence by now. Supposedly, at least according to Aphrodite, she was in the same place as Iolaus- a quite ironic fact given her heritage... Of course he didn´t know that for sure and since when was his sister a reliable source of information anyway? It was also possible that she had just given up her body once again and now existed as a formless being somewhere, at least it was possible, he speculated.

For long, Aphrodite had believed that she was the last of their kind, until she had been reunited with her brother. Yet she was still very weak.

Of course, he sarcastically thought, both their powers had been waning for thousands of years. Back then, he had contemplated to start a world-war to renew his. What was Aphrodite supposed to do, urge the mortals to hold mass-orgies?

Their powers were only a pale shadow of what they once had been, but at least they seemed to be relatively stable now, without decreasing even more.

That might have meant that their existence was saved, at least for the moment, even if they would clearly never again become the force they had once been.

Ares watched the centuries passing by and the mortals grew more and more powerful.

xxx

Now they were controlling many worlds and were in contact with a line of other species.

Sometimes these contacts didn't turn out so well- for instance the one with the race that had the habit to hunt for humans and other alien species for sport. Even with them however, they were now on relatively peaceful means, as far as that was possible with them.

There had also been other problems however. One of their colony-words, named New Agaia or something, quite ironically in fact, had fallen to a political coup of a extremist party some years ago and was now being ruled by a dictatorship. Needless to say that the relationship with the other human planets was not exactly good.

But for Ares, this was actually a good chance. From the background, he urged both sides to go to war with each other. Despite his hopes however it stayed a relatively minor conflict.

The luck was not truly on his side, until a few years before, at least he thought so.

There had been another contact back then with another alien species, but this one turned out much different than any before. The Econa, as they called themselves, were a race of self-proclaimed superior beings, who thought themselves better than anyone else. Humans would not be the first species they had attacked and tried to enslave. War was nearly unavoidable from the point on they had met.

Ares for his part, was in glee.

The Econa attacked immediately, but were thrown back relatively quickly. As it turned out, the humans had formed an alliance with some of the other alien-species they knew, efficiently convincing them that the Econa were a threat- that was obviously not hard- given their past history. It was a smart move, Ares admitted.

Next, they began securing their borders to protect themselves from future-invasions. Yes, the mortals had learned well, he thought.

It lasted a few more years till Ares finally got the war that he had been craving for so long. He achieved this through one single action; he caused the leadership of New Agaia to forge a pact with the Econa. Despite their nearly chronicle hubris, the wannabe conquerors accepted this offer all too eager as they fully realized the opportunity.

Earth and its allies were now being attacked from two directions at once and the war finally truly broke out.

It was fantastic, a conflict of a size that even he would have never imagined. Entire worlds were going to war against each other, entire races were fighting, humans against Econa, humans against humans, Econa against everyone else. Cities were quickly wiped out, entire fleets of space-ships destroyed, on both sides, armies on dozens of planets were decimating each other….The fighting was spreading over the known cosmos; a true paradise, at least for him.

Now, after four years of conflict, the Earth-faction had once again gotten the upper hand and their enemies seemed to be loosing. Not that it mattered; the only thing that held any importance for him was the war itself.

At this time however, something else happened, something that he would never had taken into account, an old, very old, enemy had returned, Dahak.

It all started on a seemingly harmless day, as harmless as it was possible in this time, in the city known as New York on Earth, right in front of the headquarters of the central government, formerly known as the UN.

It was one single man, but he wasn´t a man like any other, not anymore. He was no longer a normal human being. His eyes were colored in a pale, empty white and on his face there was an demonic grin.

As he was standing on the plaza, he was shouting warnings about his master who was about to come and without warning he draw a gun and started to fire at random people, seemingly without reason or visible motive. He killed five bystanders until he was finally shot himself by security personel.

This single incident shocked many people, but given that they were right in the middle of an interstellar war, it didn´t shook them up too much. They had other problems to worry about.

Still, it wasn´t over, by far not. During the following months, more and more of these beings appeared. Whenever they were seen, terror and chaos followed them. At first there were only individual attacks. But soon, as their number grew, they started to become organized. They were leading assaults on both sides of the war, terrorist attacks on both civilian and military targets and recruiting new members for themselves and now, finally, they were threatening to overrun entire colony-worlds. Everyone who joined their ranks became like them.

The government on Earth had no explanation. At first they thought it was some sort of weapon from the enemy. But it became soon clear that the other side was being targeted just like them.

Ares was one of the few individuals who understood what was happening. He had seen these effects before, thousands of years ago. It was Dahak, and those people were under his influence.

They called them the `Army of the Possessed´. Somehow it was fitting.

Ares admitted to himself that he had lost control of the conflict that he had initiated, if he could actually brag about having been in control in the first place.

Dahak, the One God of Darkness, was one of the ancient original forces in the universe, the powers that even the gods feared, the ones ultimately responsible for their descent and destruction.

He was once again meeting with Hercules to find out if he knew something. As it turned out, he was indeed aware of what was happening. Actually, he had much to tell.

As it seemed, his brother had actually run into Dahak and his followers a few times while he was out. According to Hercules, Dahak was getting active on Earth roughly every thousand years, starting long ago with Zarathustra or even earlier. Back then, it was his wars against the gods and his other plans that threatened the world.

By what Hercules told him, he had also made some half-hearted attempts during the 10th century. It was mostly about a cult that was recruiting and corrupting people. Their attempts however were easily twarted.

At the end of the 20th century then, he had a few fights with a group calling itself the `Knights of the Dark One´, who were worshipping Dahak and furthering something that they called the `Great Plan´. While he had been able to stop their activities, he was never able to find out what exactly that meant.

That was 700 years ago. Now he was back. Strange however was one thing, by his own schedule, he was 300 years early.

Whatever the reason, it probably meant that this time he would be more serious.

xxxxxxx

Ancient Greece

Xena and the others reached the town they had been looking for.

And they had found out, the warlord they had heard of- Meneus was his name- had been terrorizing the people of this region for some time now.

Only a short time after they arrived and began to settle in, they had already seen the first of it.

They had barely entered the inn when they heard the first of the soldiers approaching. At least that meant they wouldn't have to waste time searching.

Xena turned her back to the inn-keeper, who was still busy starring at Gabrielle and Hope and walked outside.

She was greeted by a group of armed warriors. Their obvious leader was a large man, nearly in the size of Hercules, he had brown hair and was wearing a short beard and a mustache.

He was holding a speech in front of a crowd of people. It was the usual thing, he was threatening them and demanding money and supplies for his troops. If he wouldn't get it, he would set their town on fire, sell their daughters into slavery, yes, the usual thing.

She saw that Gabrielle, Hope and Eve had come out behind her. They were backing her up.

"Are you Meneus?" she asked him.

"Who wants to know that?" he responded.

"The name's Xena," she stated.

"The legendary Xena, really?" the man asked grinning, it was obvious by his tone fall that he wasn´t quite convinced of her identity. "And what do you want from me?"

"That is easy, leave these people alone," she said, "and tell your men to withdraw from this town, now."

"Oh I see," he chuckled, "the great Xena, if you even are that, just throws her name around and then entire armies flee from her. Do you know something? I think you are not nearly as though as you act. You may have once been a powerful warlord, but now you are only living on from your old reputation. But that won´t work with me.

Kill her," he ordered three of his men.

"Do you really think so?" Xena asked him with a grin on her face.

She heard how Gabrielle and Hope were preparing themselves behind her. Would it even be necessary? she asked herself. Compared to opponents like Dahak, Assur or even Callisto this guy was clearly a joke, she thought smiling.

The soldiers attacked nearly at the same time. Xena however was faster, far better trained and more talented. Within only a few seconds she disarmed one and wounded the two others, who were now lying on the ground.

The warlord became now visible angry and attacked her himself. But she outmaneuvered her new opponent quite easily as well. A few moments later, he too was lying before her and had her sword at his throat.

Behind them, the rest of the soldiers were starting to move to assist their leader. But before they could even draw the swords out, they were ripped out of their hand and floating in the air before them.

"Maybe you should think about this again," Hope said to them. "You don´t truly want to fight us, do you?" she asked them.

She stepped forward while holding a glowing ball of fire in both her hands, leaving no question about who was responsible for what had just happened.

At this point the soldiers began to panic.

"What is that? A Goddess?" one of them asked.

"A demon?" a second one yelled.

"Maybe you want to find out?" she stated with a grin.

"Lets get out of here," one of the men screamed. "Run for your life ! " another one shouted from the top of his lungs.

They were all only getting away now as fast as possible. The Warrior Princess was fearsome enough, but with her obviously super-natural companion on top it would have been madness to stay one moment longer.

Their leader however was still lying in front of Xena.

"Like I told you," she said, "you better leave this place."

He just nodded with his head, defeated, before she allowed him to stand up and he followed after his men.