PART 7
Xena, Hercules and Iolaus charged through the woods at full gallop following the trail left by the horse Gabrielle had stolen. The path took them across the high cliffs beyond Amphipolis and along the ancient roads to Abydos, one of several forgotten ghost towns reported in these days to be haunted. As they descended into the crumbling ruins partially enveloped by the sea, they were on another mission to not just save Gabrielle from the spirit possessing her but to save Autolycus from his blind faith in her.
"Hercules!" Iolaus saw the stolen horse first tied down near an abandoned well. Xena stopped and unmounted Argo as she noticed the fresh line dropped down into the well.
"They've gone down into the city alright." She looked to Hercules. "I'll get Gabrielle, you two warn Autolycus." She grabbed a branch from the ground and wrapped a rag across the end to make a torch. Lighting it, she let loose with a battle cry as she jumped feet first into the well and plunged deep into the ground.
"Is she giving the orders?" Iolaus looked to Hercules.
"You going to refuse them?" Hercules smirked, created his own torch and dropped down into the well himself. Practically swallowed up by the earth, they dropped down into the darkness. The top of the well showed them where they were, Xena's torch growing fainter beneath them showing them where they were going. Sliding down underground further than they thought they'd ever been, they wondered if they were going to run into Hades or come through the ceiling of his palace in Tartarus. As the top of the light from the well vanished within the first ten minutes, they dropped for another fifty and an indiscernible time later landed in the long forgotten floor of hallways that had not seen the light of day nor the sounds of life for centuries.
"Antequeria." Xena spoke as she studied the disturbed dirt on the floor. Their torch was throwing off weird illumination on the intact walls holding up the mile or so of ground above their heads. The shimmering lights showed only so much of the once great hall for ten or so feet before it petered out.
"Hercules," Iolaus looked around. "Any surprises we need to know about?"
"I'll tell you when we find them."
"This way!" Xena detected where Gabrielle had taken Autolycus and seemed to randomly shoot off in the pitch-blackness. It was worse than a cloudy night without stars in the middle of the desert. The air was stagnant and stale with the fresh smell of nonexistence. Corridors and broken beams and low tunnels appeared seconds too late, but apparently they were on the right track as they found sprung traps along the way. Their voices and footsteps echoing back to them through the sunken and partially preserved underground metropolis, a true realm of the dead.
"What was that?" Autolycus heard the shuffling echoes from faraway catching up with him from far behind him. Being lifted out of a pit lined with sharp spears, he looked back into the nothingness they had left behind and wondered what ghosts they had wakened.
"The foundation settling." Gabrielle claimed.
"After five thousand years???"
"Would you like to know it might be ghosts?" Gabrielle beamed excited at the thought.
"Good point." Autolycus gave her the torch. "Why don't you spring some traps for a change?"
"Don't need to." Gabrielle squinted back the way she had come as if she knew what was coming. She looked at their path of footsteps and grinned to the self-called King of Thieves. "Down here."
They emerged into a large chamber almost as huge as the one they had entered into from the well. Surrounded by tombs both shattered and intact, the floor was askew with random bones and a skull or two. In the center a strange sort of ceremonial table rested under a free hanging decoration dedicated to the dead. It had been pieced out of the skeletal remains of once living human people. Nearly everything around them was created out of human bones and remains. Dried severed limbs and decapitated heads on dismembered torsos grouped and stuck together now served the purpose of a dark altar. Surrounding it were the open and partially disturbed bodies of long dead men and women from over a thousand years before resting in vaults chipped out of rock. Gabrielle plunged the torch dead center in the center of a design on the dark altar then looked toward a solitary tomb where the armored skeleton in it was holding a talisman clutched to its chest.
"That's it, that's it." She announced.
"Not so fast," Autolycus decided to get smart. "Something about this has not exactly seemed kosher. You seemed to have known too much. Is this really a way to help Xena, Hercules and Iolaus?"
"Want to know where the treasure vault is?"
"Well," Autolycus turned round to the tomb. "It ain't like any one's going to miss it." He peered back to where she was pointing, created another torch from one left behind in the rooms of the ancient buried catacombs and was off to leave her to her business. He turned back the way she had pointed and noticed a room they had passed coming into this buried temple to the dead. In the light of the torch, he saw colors glistening back from what looked like gems and rubies imbedded in a giant snake statue entwined around a staff. Its eyes were the largest diamonds he'd ever seen. Around the jewel-incrusted serpent were offerings of gold and bronze in various clay urns, possibly offerings to this forgotten idol. Whipping out his leather sack, he began taking handfuls as if he were browsing in a market. After a few minutes, he was gazing at those large diamond eyes of the statue. One would be a fortune, but both would make him set for life. He pulled his dagger off his belt to pry one of them loose and into his pocket.
"Come to poppa!!" He grinned knowing he was going to be its new owner, but someone grabbed him from behind. Still a bit spooked in this buried haunted city, he let out a small shriek and looked back into Hercules' face. "You? Here?"
"Where's Gabrielle?" Xena's face came into the light of his torch. Crossing his arms disgustedly at him, Iolaus stood behind her also ready to keep him poor and honest.
"Back there." He gestured and Xena took off at great haste. Looking through the eternal darkness, she noticed light glowing from a room in these shorn caves and rushed toward it. Coming upon the chamber, she noticed the numerous bodies and then the body-strewn floor leading to a freshly violated tomb. Someone had ripped apart one of the desiccated corpses. The fresh broken parts were littered with Gabrielle's clothes lying entwined in the dusty remains. She looked around cautiously with her fingers tensing on the handle of her sword unwarily expecting the worst and saw who she thought was her friend wearing the armor torn and stolen from the corpse that once worn it and lifting a vial to her lips. She grabbed her chakram quickly and threw it hard and shattered the vial from reaching Gabrielle's lips. The former bard looked up at her with very little surprise and then grinned almost expecting her.
"Xena…" Gabrielle beamed to her. "I heard you coming after me. Don't you think I'd be prepared for your arrival?"
"I want Gabrielle back." Her eyes defiant, her teeth gritted together, Xena held her sword at length on her friend. "I don't know who you are, but I want you out of her body and I want her back to me."
"You don't get it, do you?" The former blonde sidekick chuckled at her. "I am Gabrielle. Her thoughts, her feelings, her… body, and all these wonderful powers coursing through me. They feel great. No longer being your little lackey…"
"It wasn't like that, and she knew it!!!" Xena reached with her free hand to the woman she considered her sister. "Gabrielle loved me! She's not doing this!!!"
"Xena…" The blonde bard's voice changed back to a recognizable tone. Her head started shaking a bit and trying to reach out mentally from her body. She seemed to be fighting a much stronger presence. "Don't let her… Don't let her… open the sarcophagus…"
"Sarcophagus?" Xena noticed the altar and was struck upside the head for being distracted. Gabrielle had grabbed her by her head and flipped and twisted her upside down, but Xena managed to use the position to kick her former friend off her. The petite blonde crashed into one of the niches holding dusty and dried bones and heard the sound of a chakram being unsheathed. It ricocheted off part of the tomb and started flying straight at her as her hand pulled it out of the air. She now wielded it. It was hers now.
"Way too easy…" She looked back to Xena and gestured with her free arm. Jumped up into the air, Xena found herself frozen where she was. How could she fight someone, a person she still loved and cared about, who could bend and control reality around her better than most of the gods, and still hope to defeat her? Stuck levitating in the air, trapped in mid-pose, her eyes turned back to Gabrielle beaming from behind a cold and devious face.
"This can't be happening!!" Xena fought to free herself from this dark magic. "I destroyed your potion!"
"Oh, that was just water for your benefit." Gabrielle smiled to her dementedly holding the chakram as her own weapon in her right hand. Holding up her left hand, she revealed in the palm of her hand a strange bright blue jelly that glowed in the dark. "And this is the stuff Titans are born of." She threw the chakram at Xena and swallowed the luminescent ambrosia in two simultaneous strokes occurring at once. Struck out of the air by her own weapon, Xena jumped for Gabrielle and missed her own returning weapon, but the possessed bard knocked her from out of the air as if she were annoying gnat. Laughing at Xena, she reached down to the warrior princess as Xena nursed her jaw. Xena now feared the worse. Her best friend was buried under the personality of this strange person and was now going to become even more powerful than she was already was? Did anyone know what was in that ancient concoction she had swallowed? Xena's eyes stared defiantly into her friend's face and peered into a bright light in Gabrielle's green eyes that started getting brighter and more brilliant to her. Out the corner of her vision, Hercules rushed to the room and froze in the doorway upon seeing Gabrielle holding Xena up off the floor. He had spent too much time leading Iolaus and Autolycus to safety. Realizing she was not alone, Gabrielle flung Xena like a rag doll to the far side of the room.
"Son of Zeus!" Another woman's voice came from Gabrielle's throat as Xena coughed and pulled herself up. "You are no match for me now!!"
"Well," Hercules remarked. "I'd like to think otherwise." He watched as she threw a blow of invisible force that knocked him to his feet. Something else started happening as the tunnels started groaning. Something was happening as particles of light came from the long-dead bodies and everywhere else that had once seen the light of the sky. It was almost as if whatever were meant to be stars descended into the caves and streamed in mystical currents straight into the possessed bard. Scowling, Gabrielle growled and hissed as a gem in her armor began glowing from absorbing all the energies of the buried dead around it. Her eyes were completely lit up now as Xena returned fighting. She bolted up and jumped at her feet first. A mere gesture from her former friend and she hurled by the poltergeist energy into Hercules. Shrieking in pain, Gabrielle felt as if her body were exploding as she gestured once more against even more lights entering and filling her possessed body. She began screaming as if she was in pain. The artificial ambrosia had been meant for a mere mortal to become a god, but she was already enhanced by dark energies through her possession of this body. All this extra energy being poured into her could be more than she could take!
"Too much!! It's too much!!!" Her alien voice screamed as she realized she had taken too much of the ancient potion. It was too much power entering her body as the rushing winds infesting the city rushed through her hair. She held her hands up and looked at them pulsating and trembling as she fought to catch her breath. Hercules reached to withstand her and realized too late she was just a bit taller than he was now. She gestured again to his presence as a huge wind blew him and then Xena rushing at him out of the room to crash and bounce off the winding tunnels to the surface. Gabrielle's voice screamed in rage as somehow the wind poured from her body.
"What's happening??" Hercules collided off a statue in the dark corridor as Xena was blown down next to him and clutched at another rock formation. Their torches permanently snuffed out as they were buffeted around in the darkness getting struck by the poltergeist blows of flying debris. It was almost as if there was some hurricane trapped deep within the earth and trying to burst free to the surface. They grabbed two pillars in the dark as Autolycus and then Iolaus blew beyond them in confused surprise.
"She did it!!" Xena screamed over the buffeting and howling winds drowning out Gabrielle's screams of tortured pain in this subterranean tsunami. "She turned herself into a god!!! And I couldn't stop her!!!!" Hercules cursed out loud as his pillar broke loose. Xena reached to hold against the sheer darkness whipping around her then felt her body sailing away too in the inky black tornado. The heads of forgotten statues turned to where she was and appeared scared with fright. Even the dead of this buried city had become afraid. An ancient power they had feared had been unleashed. The laws of reality were altered as the underground whirlwind spun Xena backwards and forwards. Tossed around like a child's toy into walls and flying debris, she wasn't sure which was up or down anymore just before she noticed the light beneath her she was being hurled at top speed.
Outside under the sun, Hercules looked up to sky once more as Xena was fired out the top of the well and into the sky like a pellet from a slingshot. It looked like the earth had spit them up as they shot out of the well and thrown into the sky. The horses neighed and ran in fear as the ground quaked and rose a bit. Ancient ruins that were still standing after all these years shattered and sunken structures sat upright before collapsing completely. Autolycus scrambled as Xena landed on top of him.
"What's going on?" He was petrified and a bit annoyed at losing those riches. "What's happening?"
"That!!" Iolaus could finally see straight as he saw a huge hand reached up out of the ground and clawed at the sky. It was more than seven feet wide and attached to a ten-foot arm as it continued rising up high above them almost fifty feet on the body it was attached too. Finally reaching daylight from where she had almost buried herself alive, Gabrielle revealed her new godly self now completely ensconced and in control with her new godhood. Her armor was a little different now after being pulled and stretched across her new godlike frame. The new size and stature she had been endowed with was an unexpected side bonus as she beamed with glee and stared upon this bright new world to conquer. Her once green eyes were now solid white while the possessed bard became a god with the full desire to storm Olympus.
"Behold on me you foolish mortals!!" Her voice vibrated with the force of a hurricane's ego, her titanic foot stepped up out of the ground threatening to crush Iolaus and her unearthly glowing eyes looked down upon them no taller than her ankles. "For the Titans are reborn!!!!"
