Chapter Three: Faceless

The village was not Cirra, but it certainly could have doubled for it.

Callisto was seated astride her horse atop a nearby hill overlooked the small, pastoral community laid out on the plain before her. Her hands wrapped tightly around the animal's reins, and her eyes narrowed as she surveyed the scene playing out below. A thick layer of tension hung in the air all about her, and her mount reacted to it, snorting and prancing nervously. Callisto just dug her knees viciously into its sides. The animal tossed its head and snorted again, but quickly fell silent and still once more, save for the occasional whinny. Callisto ignored its pitiful protests as her mind turned over what she was seeing.

From the foot of the hill, a group of vicious looking warriors had begun to advance up the close packed dirt trail that led straight into the village square, and Callisto could practically feel their murderous intent. It was a sensation not unfamiliar to her, and it seemed to radiate of these men in wave after wave. She tried to revel in that feeling now, in that blissful, blood-soaked exhilaration as she had done so many times before, but this time something was different. The sight of the men beneath her about to fall upon the unsuspecting town did not excite her the same way it once would have... the same way it once had... Instead, she felt sick to her stomach, the grim tableau before her serving as a stark reminder of the night she had watched her own home burn at the hands of people just like this.

And just like her.

Strangely though, there was something else crawling beneath the queasiness in her gut; another feeling that fed off the first. It was a sense of dark anticipation so strong that it was almost frightening. These men would burn the village to the ground, conduct acts of wanton pillage and murder, and when they did, Callisto knew that she would derive some perverse sense of pleasure from it.

She frowned suddenly.

Wasn't that the way it should be...

...The way it always had been?

Maybe that had been true once, and even not so long ago come to that, but much had happened in her life since then, and the more she thought about it, the more she realised that while it might bring her some small sense of gratification, the destruction of this village would not give her the satisfaction she wanted, or the peace she so desperately craved. It never had before after all. That sense of hungry anticipation would not go away though. Instead it lurked, coiled and snakelike in the pit of her churning stomach.

In the valley below, the warriors had already begun to go to work. They fell upon the unsuspecting village like jackals closing in for the kill on their weak and wounded prey. Their assault was savage and brutal, and Callisto could just make out the distant figures of villagers running this way and that between the buildings as a wave of panic began to sweep through them. Some were already trying to make for the hills, but the warriors had spread out to set up a perimeter line around the edge of the village that would easily catch any and all who tried to escape. Those that chanced took their chances were given no mercy and were brutally dispatched. In the heart of the village itself, some of its inhabitants were trying in vain to mount a defence. They wielded whatever they could find as weapons; rakes, hoes, pitchforks and the like, but none of them could truly hope to match the seasoned fighters they were faced with.

Somewhere on the far side of the village, a pillar of smoke began to rise into the air, the first signs of the granaries being set alight. Callisto's frown deepened. How had she known it had been a granary being burned? She could not make out the buildings clearly from this distance, but there was a growing sense of familiarity to all of this and it was telling her that it was indeed a granary building that had just burned. If she was right, another building would go up soon too, this one on the opposite side of town. The two fires would spread quickly, she remembered, although she could not remember where the memory came from. Even as she tried, the gleeful hunger stirred inside her as she pictured those same flames in her minds eye, licking hot and hard at the heavens and filling the air with a thick, choking layer of smoke that would only serve to deepen the already delicious chaos. Wisps of that smoke began to climb gently skyward at precisely the spot she had predicted, and she frowned again. It was all as if she had been here before... as if she had done this before... but when? And Why?

Somewhere in the distance, she heard a cruel, mocking laughter, and the sound of it drove her to stir herself and her horse into action. She knew now what it was that she must do. Nothing less than her hate and need for vengeance against Xena demanded it. Silently, she gritted her teeth and drew her sword in one hand, booting her mount to the gallop as she thundered down the hillside and up the trail into the increasingly frantic melee that now had the village in its vice like grip. Her top lip curled upward in a cruel snarl as her horse's hooves pounded against the packed dirt, and she gripped the animal's reins hard between the fingers of her left hand, her sword clutched tightly in her right as it cleaved a thin line through the smoke that drifted all about her. She hurtled between the buildings of the village, there walls little more than muddied brown streaks as she passed between them, only to suddenly rocket out into the square, her hair whipping madly about her as she reined her mount in tightly and took in the battle all about her.

The warriors, clad in dark, mismatched armour and wielding cruel looking weapons of all shapes and sizes, were going about their deadly business with ease, and all around them the villagers had already begun to fall in droves. Now she was in among the fighting, Callisto felt her pulse quicken in her chest, her eyes widening in surprise, and discomfort as she got her first real look at the inhabitants of the village.

They were, to a man, faceless.

Where there should have been eyes, mouths and noses, they instead possessed only blank masks of flesh; dull and impassive and each one utterly indistinguishable from the next. The more she stared at them, the more they seemed to blend together, and almost too quickly they had become little more to her than a teeming mass; one with no identity save than to serve as chattel to be mown down with impunity. Something about that thought caused an uneasy stirring at the back of her mind, but it was quickly silenced by the mad, cackling laughter that was growing in intensity with each passing moment and that she could not shut out no matter how hard she tried.

As the men – her men she now recalled, although she could not quite work out exactly how she knew that – continued their bloody work, Callisto heeled her horse to the gallop once more. A small group of the strange faceless creatures had detached from the mob and were attempting to escape the village square. The smoke seemed to part like the curtains on a stage for her as she rode the fleeing faceless down. Her blade caught the first of them, a larger figure dressed in ragged brown labourers clothes, with a keen cross cut that sent the faceless staggering a couple of steps, before it collapsed to the ground in a heap. All the while, it did not so much as scream or cry out, but Callisto barely even took the time to notice. Her mind was focused now, her purpose clear. So far, the path to Xena had been paved with corpses. What were a few more bodies in the grand scheme of it all?

Her horse carried her past the group and she yanked hard on the reins, pulling the animal up short and spinning it on the spot so that she could make another pass. The fleeing faceless had already turned and were trying to make an escape in the opposite direction. With a banshee wail, Callisto dug in her heels and rode at them again. There were only two remaining now. One taller, and one shorter, their hands clasped tightly together as they ran. As the ceaseless drumming of her horse's hooves began to bear down on them, they seemed to panic. In a single instant they had released their grip on each other and were beginning to separate, the smaller of the two attempting to bolt left while the larger was attempting to escape to the right. It was a critical mistake. The gap between them now was just wide enough for she and her mount to pass directly between them, and pass between them she did. As she flashed through the gap, she laid about herself to either side with her sword, laying low both of the fleeing faceless with almost sickening ease.

Reining her horse in again, she lifted her sword, her tight slipped snarl, changing to a gleeful grin as shining arterial crimson glistened back at her. Whatever they were, whatever they had been, these faceless creatures bled just fine. The laughter in her head went from gleeful cackling, to a dark and disdain filled chuckle, and she did her best to shut it out as she vaulted easily from the back of her horse, her boots meeting the ground with a heavy crunch.

Ignoring the chaos around her, she began to stride purposefully toward the shorter of the two bodies she had just slain, the morbid anticipation she had been feeling unfurling inside her to become a sense of perverse satisfaction.

And then she froze.

The figure lying on the ground was no longer faceless. Instead, the glassy eyes of a small boy stared back at her. They were a clear crystal blue that she could almost imagine had once shone with life and the innocence of childhood. Now though they, were cold, empty and unseeing.

Around her the faceless continued to be murdered by the dozen, and Callisto felt as if ice were running through her veins, so chill was the sudden realisation. She remembered now! She had done all of this before! This boy had died on the end of her sword when she had attacked the village the first time, and now she was doing it again, reliving it exactly as she had done back then. She looked at the buildings surrounding her as she saw the fires that had been set earlier begin to take hold. Soon they would blaze so completely out of control that nothing would be able to stop them, and when they did, this whole town would be reduced to little more than a memory.

That was all this was, she realised. Just a memory.

Her memory.

Nearby another of the faceless seemed to change before her eyes as it came under attack from a burly looking figure wearing little more than leather pants, a harness and boiled leather pot helm with nose and eye guards that masked their features. The faceless became an old woman, kneeling in the dirt and raising her shaking hands in fear as if she would be able to ward off her attacker's sword strike.

"STOP!" Callisto yelled.

The burly figure arrested his attack just in time, turning to regard her with a questioning look in his eyes. She wasted no time in starting toward him, gripping her sword tightly at her side as she did so. So far all was unfolding as it had the first time, and there was a part of her that wanted it to do just that again now. There was something else though now, something different that she knew she had not felt before. It was a curious and nagging sense of unease that this was not how she should let things happen this time, and that if she did not act now to change them, something even more terrible would be waiting for her.

"Let her live!" she snapped at the man.

The big man cocked his head at her curiously.

"Why?" he said,

Callisto frowned, unable to think of an answer immediately. This was not what was supposed to happen, nor was it what had happened last time. Something had changed, but she knew it was not the big man. He had been here the first time, but her recollection was still hazy and unclear. His voice was little more then a heavy bass rumble that stirred memories inside her, and without thinking - almost instinctively even - she reached up and yanked the helmet from the man's head. A thick mass of curled black hair tumbled out from under it, framing a face with wide features, a mouth with almost non existent lips, and small, greedy eyes.

"Theodorus!?" She said, unable to quite believe what she was seeing. "But how... how is this..." Her gaze narrowed as her surprise turned to anger at the sight of the big warrior. Back in the early days of her battles against Xena, this man had been her chief lieutenant. He had been a lunk of a man really, not terribly bright and only moderately skilled in the art of war, but he made up for it with a kind of dull charisma that had helped her keep the more savage members of her army in line.

He should have been long gone by now, out of her life and consigned only to her past. Somehow though, here he was, standing before as if she had never even... She set her jaw and stepped forward, tossing her sword to one side and yanking the dagger she had always used to carry at her hip free, jabbing the point of it up under the exposed skin beneath his chin. "Now this is most upsetting," she said, her voice low and threatening. "I killed you. I know I did. I slit your throat and I enjoyed it when I did. Yet somehow, here you are again..." She jabbed a finger against the muscles of his bare chest. "Care to tell me how that's possible?"

"Kill me you did," Theodorus nodded, his face an impassive mask. "You did a good job of it too. All quick and messy. I should be a rotting bloated corpse somewhere by now, but then again, when did you ever let a little thing like death stop you before?"

Callisto's mouth curled up in a tight sneer.

"I'm the one asking the questions here! You're not the only thing that's supposed to be dead and gone," she gestured to the village at her back. "This whole place is! I burned it to the ground as a message to Xena and you helped me do it! We absolutely cannot be here, but here we are anyway, going through the motions like its the first time all over again." She tightened her grip on the dagger. "So, I'm going to ask again..." she continued, her voice dropping dangerously. "And this time, I'm going to be decidedly less polite. What are you and where am I? What is this place and why am I here?"

Theodorus looked back at her, his eyes shining with disdain. Something was wrong with this. Theodorus had been terrified of her. All of her men had. He would never have had the spine to stare her down as he was doing now.

"I don't have to answer your questions," he said.

"Oh?" Callisto sneered dangerously, cocking her head slightly as she pressed the dagger tip still harder under her former lieutenant's chin until a thin rivulet of blood ran down the blade of her sword. He may not be afraid of her now, but she was certain she could change all that. "I think that maybe you do."

Theodorus smiled darkly at her and reached out, grasping her hands tightly in his, his grip firmer than cast iron. "You killed me once already," he said. "What do I have to fear from you now?" Callisto winced as his fingers bit into her flesh, and she tried to pull back, but Theodorus' strength was too great, and he held her fast.

"What are you..." she began, but before she could finish he cut her off, leaning in close, twisting the dagger in her hands so that its edge was placed in a horizontal line across his throat.

"You're not in charge around here anymore, Callisto," he said darkly. "I don't have to take orders from you. Only from her." Suddenly, and completely without warning, he yanked her hands sideways, forcing her to drag the dagger in a vicious cross cut that opened his throat as easily as if she were slicing through grass.

Callisto felt the sticky warmth of his blood flowing over her hands, and stepped back, releasing her grip on the dagger as if it were made of red hot steel. Theodorus simply stood staring back at her, as if the gaping open wound in his throat were nothing more than an inconvenience. Callisto watched the ghastly figure spin on the spot, whipping his sword up over his head as the old woman began to cower at his feet once more.

"I said STOP!" Callisto yelled in desperation, but it made no difference. Theodorus' sword fell like a hammer, and as the old woman crumpled in the dirt. Callisto felt her stomach lurch as the world seemed to tilt maddeningly all about her. She cast her eyes across the chaos that surrounded them and felt her head spin. She had done this. All of it. It was her who had brought this army together, her who had unleashed it, and her that had reveled in the blood it had spilled, and all for what? Some deluded quest for vengeance that had ultimately left her broken and hollow? If she had not done any of those things, then none of this would be happening now. Suddenly Theodorus seemed to represent all of that to her; a living manifestation of all that she had ever done wrong. She could feel her frustration and anger building now, and the pounding laughter in her head seemed to be approaching a crescendo.

Without thinking, she stooped low, sweeping the bloodied dagger up out of the dirt and spinning the blade up into a ready position. Then, with a terrific scream of white hot fury, she flung herself at the big warrior

Theodorus did not so much as flinch as she barreled into him, the dagger flashing briefly between them as she plunged it deep into his gut. The force of their impact span them bother around before dropping them sprawling in the dirt. Callisto recovered quickly. Even as Theodorus rolled onto his back, readying himself to stand once more, she scrambled upright to seat herself astride him, thighs straddling his chest while her knees pinned his arms in the dirt. Theodorus' mouth split in a dark smile that revealed broken and bloodied teeth. The sight of his victorious grin only served to infuriate her even more. She yanked the dagger free from his stomach, and then struck again, higher this time as she angled it straight for his heart. The blade cut cleanly, Callisto ramming it home with such force that is disappeared right up to the hilt. With a furious scream she pulled it free once more, then struck again, and again, and again, and over and over until her arms ached from the effort and Theodorus' chest was little more than a bloodied mess.

Finally, her fury completely spent, she collapsed back off him, her chest heaving with exhaustion, the blood soaked dagger tumbling from between limp fingers to land beside her in the dirt.

Suddenly she realised something was amiss. The screams of the villagers, the dry crackle of the flames, and the hollering of the warriors had all fallen silent. Now the only sound was that of her own panted breaths coming in rhythm with the rise and fall of her chest. Even that haunting mad cackle inside her head seemed to have stopped. She looked up from Theodorus' bloodied corpse to see that the massacre of the village had stopped too. Instead, the villagers, all of them still little more than faceless shells, had gathered in a circle around her, those smooth blank masks of flesh regarding her with an almost glacial coolness.

From behind her, there came the sound of slow, mocking applause.

"Oh yes," came a familiar voice that she immediately recognised as her own. "That was most well done my sweet."

Callisto scrabbled back to her feet, her blood slick hands leaving sticky prints in the dirt as she turned to get a look at the newcomer.

It was her own mirror image that grinned back at her.

The other her was seated on a low lying wall nearby. Her hands were pressed to the wall's surface on either side of her, and her legs were crossed girlishly at the ankles. She was clad in the same black leather battledress as Callisto herself wore, and her hair, always long and wild, was held back from her temples by a twin set of braids made from the same black leather as the rest of her armour. She leaned forward toward Callisto, her mouth split in that predatory smile Callisto had long since mastered. It was one she had that showed way too many teeth.

On the one hand, Callisto knew she should be surprised by this; stunned even, but on the other, there was something familiar to it all at the same time. She felt like she had done this before, dozens if not hundreds of times, but try as she might, she could not recall any of them.

She could not think of anything to say either. Instead she stood, stock still and mute. Even without eyes, the steady gazes of the faceless all about her seemed to drill right down to her core, robbing of her of her wits even as the other her's grin widened. It was almost as if she could sense Callisto's growing unease.

"Felt good, didn't it?" the other her continued, hopping down off the wall in a sprightly fashion, and sauntering confidently up to Callisto. "To unleash me again. To let me back in the same way that you used to. You've been doing it less and less of late, and I was starting to get bored."

As she approached, she nodded toward the bloodied corpse of Theodorus where it lay, savaged and broken in the mud. "Poor Theodorus though," she cooed softly as she reached Callisto's side, her hand reaching out to brush tenderly against Callisto's cheek as she passed her. Callisto flinched away from the other woman's touch as if someone were trailing a live adder across her face. The other her just ignored her.

"He was never the sharpest tool in the kit was he?" she continued, "But he did his job nevertheless. He worked hard, kept the others in line, and he was loyal as a love sick house dog..."

She crossed past Callisto to squat beside the corpse, lifting the bloodied dagger that Callisto had dropped earlier between her slim fingers to regard it with a careful, measured gaze. For a moment all was stillness and silence, then the other her gave a small shrug and leaned over to wipe the dagger clean on dead man's leather pants.

"...and then you killed him," she said simply as she straightened and began to cross back to Callisto. "You slit his throat and left him to die in the dirt." she cocked her head slightly at Callisto in a questioning manner. "Did you ever even ask yourself why you did that?"

The devilish grin had disappeared from the other her's face now. Instead her brow was knitted in what seemed to be genuine thoughtfulness. She reached out and took Callisto by the hand, the blood that had been staining Callisto's fingers now straining the other hers' hand as well as she pressed the dagger back into Callisto's grip.

"It was because of the others," Callisto said defensively. "I was in Xena, and they didn't want to follow me. They thought I wouldn't hurt them."

She glanced past her doppelgänger toward Theodorus' body and shrugged in a similar manner to the way the other her had done just moments before.

"Theodorus convinced them otherwise," she said, but it sounded half-hearted even to her.

The doppelgänger took a step back from her, those insane brown eyes narrow and appraising as she lifted her hands to clasp them together just above her chest. She tapped thoughtfully at her lips with her bloodied fingers, and slowly the cruel grin began to return.

"Is that so," she said, her voice quizzical, but at the same time rich with dark sarcasm. "I'm sure Theodorus would be delighted to hear your reasoning. That is, if he weren't already six feet under and unable to hear anything at all."

She turned and swept her arms wide in a broad gesture that encompassed the crowd of faceless villagers before them.

"Perhaps you could explain it to all of them instead," she said gleefully, "They seem to be quite literally dying to hear more of your excuses."

Callisto gritted her teeth.

"They were never excuses!" she snarled angrily. "I had reasons for everything I did."

The other her rounded on her suddenly, her face no longer lit with a sadistic grin, but instead filled with outright fury.

"Oh I know the reasons you tell yourself!" she snapped savagely. "And such good reasons they were too; that it was all on someone else's head, that their conscience would have to bear the weight of your crimes instead of yours! Almost convincing enough to make you believe them..."

Suddenly, the world lurched sickeningly, and the faceless were gone, and in their place there was now a single scene of pure, wanton carnage. The village lay in ruins with corpses strewn about the place as all around them fires burned fiercely against a late afternoon sky.

Callisto shifted uncomfortably as the other her took a dangerous step forward, the doppelgänger's eyes burning ferociously.

"...But then there's all of this isn't there," she continued, the dark smile returning once more. "Hard to deny it wasn't you who killed these people now isn't it? Hard to deny that all the innocent blood shed here is on your hands, and no one else's."

Suddenly she span away, turning her back on Callisto with a frustrated snarl.

"But you still do," She said, throwing up her hands in frustration. "And it sickens me to think that you can be so deluded."

"I didn't..."Callisto began staring about herself at the bodies that seemed to be growing more hideously bloody with every moment she looked upon them. There were just so many of them... so very very many. "...I mean it wasn't..." she looked at the other her desperately, her eyes wide and haunted. "I didn't have..."

"...any other choice?" the other her said mockingly, then she laughed and it was the same laugh that had haunted Callisto's thoughts so much recently. "The choice was always yours," the other her hissed. "Yours, and yours alone."

Callisto felt as if she were about to vomit, and the burning taste of bile began to rise in the back of her throat. She collapsed to all fours in the dirt, her heart pounding, and the blood roaring inside her head. Suddenly, the world shifted again, tilting alarmingly all about them, and for a brief instant Callisto felt as if she were falling end over end in a mad tumble down into the depths of some black and bottomless pit. Her hands and feet never left the ground however. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she did her best to fight off the sudden wave of nausea that was sweeping over, chewing her bottom lip so hard, she thought she may very well bite clean through it. Then, as quickly as it had come, the falling sensation was gone, and she opened her eyes once more. The shadows of tree branches played across a sea of long grass all around her and she lifted her head to take in these new surroundings. The scene of carnage was gone, and instead, she was now beneath the bows of a large old tree that overlooked a small farmhouse nestled at the outer edges of a small village.

It was a village she knew all too well.

Beyond it, the ground swept up into a series of low lying hills, and at the opposite horizon a row of figures on horse back had emerged. She could make out little more than their outline, silhouetted as they were against a night sky with a low hanging moon, but it did not take long for her to get a clearer view of them as the torches they carried blazed into life. Flickering orange light danced madly across them, and their weapons glinted menacingly in the darkness. A strong wind pulled thin streamers of her hair this way and that, carrying the voice of her mocking alter ego to her as well.

"Look familiar?" the voice of the other her taunted and Callisto rounded on the woman angrily, her fists clenched tightly at her sides.

"Why!?" she shouted after the other her. "Why do you keep dragging me back here? Why can't you just let me leave all this behind?"

The other her was leaning against the trunk of the tree, arms folded tightly beneath her breasts and a dark scowl etched into her brow.

"I don't keep bringing us here," she said, straightening as she did so and walking past Callisto toward the farmhouse at the foot of the hill. "You do."

Callisto started down the slope of the hill after her, her boots swishing quietly in the long grass.

"Why would I do that?" she snapped. "It makes no sense! This is where it all started to go wrong! Where all the pain began!" She stalked furiously past her doppelgänger, cutting the other woman's path short and pointing an accusing finger at her. "Well I don't want it anymore, do you hear me? Any of it! I don't want it in me, and if I could cut it out of me, I would."

The other her cocked her head slightly, a mischievous grin playing at the corners of her mouth while her hand stroked gently at the dagger belted to her hip.

"Be careful what you wish for," she said softly, before stepping neatly around Callisto and starting down toward the farmhouse once more.

"And it makes perfect sense," she called back over her shoulder and gesturing expansively toward the village before them as she did so. "You keep coming back here because you're afraid to face the truth. This place, this grand delusion you keep coming back to..." she shrugged. "...all lies. This is your shelter in the storm, the place you run to when everything becomes too much. It may be the source of our pain, but its also the only place you feel safe."

"Safe!?" Callisto snapped viciously. "What could this place ever keep me safe from?"

"Me," the other her said as they reached the farmhouse door together. Reaching out, her doppelgänger pushed the door open with a theatrical sweep of her arm. Beyond them, the inside of the farmhouse that had once been Callisto's childhood home loomed like a dark cavern full of unknown menace.

Callisto took a tentative step toward it, a strange feeling of dread creeping in her stomach. Very little in this world could make her feel afraid, but the doorway and what lay beyond it were doing exactly that now.

"What's in there?" she asked.

The other her glanced at Callisto out of the corner of her eye, her gaze full of delighted anticipation.

"Our salvation," she said excitedly. "These lies you tell yourself have trapped us both long enough. It's time you accepted the truth. All it will take is a few small steps..." she gave another small shrug. "...and a not inconsiderable amount of pain."

Callisto glanced up over the roof of the farmhouse toward the opposite line of hills. Even now, Xena's army was descending on Cirra. It would not be long before everything was aflame, and the hot rush of agony she had felt as she watched her family die would soon fill her soul once more. Could this other her really be telling the truth? Was the answer to all her suffering, the key to the peace she had wanted for so long, really just beyond this door?

"I'm scared..." she whispered quietly, stepping back away from looming portal before her.

She could feel the other her stepping up behind her, so close now that they were almost touching. She leaned in close over Callisto's shoulder, whispering softly, almost affectionately, in her ear.

"I know," she said, then without warning, she shoved Callisto roughly forward and over the threshold into the darkness beyond.

Her doppelgänger cackled madly as Callisto let out a strangled, inarticulate cry of equal parts fear and rage at the sudden betrayal. Then, before she could even turn to escape, the other her had slammed the door shut behind her with all the booming finality of a cap stone being dropped across a tomb.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: A much shorter chapter this time, but that's mainly because the first two chapters had a lot of setting up to do, and a lot of characters to re-introduce. This one is much more focused and for any of you wondering just what it is that's going on inside Callisto's head, now you have the answer. Hope you all enjoy and hopefully I'll be back soon with another update.