Chapter 7

Young Hercules Era

Eve had been praying, for a while now, in high concentration. Given her natural connection to the Light since birth, her praying could in a way more described like a mental call out to the place her soul came from and the beings ultimately responsible for her creation.

But on the other side, was a prayer ever really anything else?

So you could say Eve´s had just a greater chance of success.

But not this time.

"Nothing," she said.

"And you are really not able to do anything?" Xena turned to Callisto and asked her sharply.

"As I told you, I might have travelled through time before," she replied, "but that was just with Hope literally pushing me along and showing me the way. I am not completely sure how to do it on my own... and even then I had no real idea where I would end up. We would likely just move from one `wrong´ time to another."

"I see," Xena stated. "I just wanted to make sure."

"You could nearly think you don´t trust me," Callisto responded with a smile.

"Of course I do not. Not in the slightest. I would be an idiot if I did. You are not only an enemy, but also a mentally insane one. That you are technically the same person who had reincarnated into my daughter does not change that."

"Believe me," Callisto replied, "if I had the power to bring you back to the future, where you have the power to kill me, I would have done it by now. It is what I want after all," she assured her.

"I certainly don´t want to stay and here any more about `our´ happy family-life anyway."

"I can imagine," Xena replied.

"By the way, it will probably not be necessarry anyway," Callisto mentioned casually, but with a sharky smile. "I have sensed the presence of someone familiar a few minutes ago," she stated. "Hope - she is here and she is close by."

"A few minutes?" Xena said.

"And you have not mentioned this earlier?" Eve questioned.

"Well - I wanted to," Callisto responded with a shrug. "But it was kind of amusing to see you sitting there and try to reach this Heaven or yours. So I have waited a bit longer to tell you."

"Of course," Eve replied drily, not even surprised by Callisto´s behavior.

"Hope - she must have followed us here to bring up back," Xena stated.

"Yes - and maybe Gabrielle came too," Eve said.

"Yes," Xena replied a bit strained.

Gabrielle would have indeed followed them here without a second thought, risking her own life. If there were only the slightest chance to get them back.

Or even if there were no chance at all, Gabrielle would have still taken the risk.

Just like Xena herself would do it for her.

But at the same time Xena hoped that Gabrielle had not done that.

Or rather she hoped that Hope had not have let her mother come here with her here.

Purely rationally Gabrielle´s presence here would not even make a difference.

Hope was the one who had the power that could help them all get back to their own time. And since she could do that, there was no reason why Gabrielle should risk her own safety too.

But Xena knew better. She knew that her old friend, partner and soulmate would jump through the unstable time-portal without any hesitation. Risk all and everything. Just for the slightest chance to be together again.

It should make no real difference in the end. Xena sighed.

If they met up she, they all would be able to return home.

"Hope - you can sense where she is?" Xena asked Callisto.

"More or less. She is somewhere in that direction." Callisto pointed somewhere at the horizon.

"Then let us go," Xena said.

xxxx

Hope. It was kind of funny, Xena thought, how much she had started to trust someone she had once considered her worst enemy.

But Hope had proved herself countless times since she had changed sides. Including by helping to free Solan and countless others from the decaying Elyian Fields. Something that ironically Xena herself had been responsible for when she had killed Hades. It was at that moment when they had truly made their peace with each other.

At that time Hope had become part of their group. And the things they went through together made them all even closer when they had been before, in more than one sense.

xxxx

But they were wrong.

Hope was indeed there. But it was not the one they expected.

They had however no way to know that yet.

And that there problems had only just been beginning.

xxxxxxx

Hercules and Veila (Hope) had been travelling together for a bit over a day.

And they had started to `open up´ to each other.

At some point they had started exchanging stories about their lives.

That meant in this case Hercules was freely telling events from his life, while Hope was telling im the things she had decided to tell him beforehand.

Quite ironically however, that did not mean that she was lying - not really. Everything what Hope told him had actually happened. She was just not mentioning certain details and background, while highlighting others.

All what she was telling him was the truth... from a certain point of view.

What she hadn´t expected, was the actual sense of connection she was starting to feel for the other halfgod.

"So your mother was a mortal and your father was a god from another land?" Hercules repeated, "Ahriman, you said?"

"Yes, a Persian God - one of the two Kings of the two rivalling Persian Pantheons. He is powerful, but also feared and hated by many. So many people feared me as well... and what I could do."

Two groups of gods who rivalled each other in control of a land instead of two. This entire concept was new and foreign to Hercules.

xxxx

Technically all that was true. Only that the Persian Religion founded by the Immortal Zarathustra - a man who was influenced by, but turned against, her father - was actually following the Light and recognized her father as it´s enemy.

Ahriman, also called Angra Manyu - like the name Dahak - these were just another names for the primordial Force of Darkness who was her father. Just like his rival Ahura Mazda was actually the God of Light.

The rest of the `gods´ of these two so called Pantheons were actually Demons, Angels and other creatures serving either the two Primary Forces.

Over the time however the Mortals had begann to reinterprete this beings more and more into something ressembling regular gods, like they existed in the other Realms and Ahura Mazda and Ahriman merely into their Kings, instead of the Primary Forces of the universe.

xxxx

Hercules and Veila/Hope continued their conversation.

"And people have tried to kill you since you were a baby," he stated, repeating what she had told him.

"Yes," she said flatly.

"It was similar with me," he told her. "When I was still a baby, Hera had send two snakes into my craddle to kill me. But I - I somehow used my strength and strangled the two skakes to death instead. It is an unsettling story, isn´t it? A simply baby doing something like this," he said.

Or, a baby strangling a man to death with the chain of a trinket hanging on his neck, Hope thought with a hollow feeling in her gut. What if it had been a human instead who Hera had send to strangle the baby?

"I can of course not even remember any of it," Hercules said, "but my mother told me about it years later. Hera was truly after me since I was born." He sighed. "And before that. It was not even the first time that something like that happened.

My mother also said that someone had tried to kill her when she was pregnant," he mentioned with barely restraint bitterness.

"She never found out if that attack had also been Hera´s doing or someone else," he admitted.

Hope knew about this perfectly well. After all she had been the one who had send Callisto after Alcmene in the past, on Dahak´s order.

"All that just because I am Zeus son. Either because of Hera´s jealousy or simply because of what I might do when I grew up," Hercules said with bitterness.

xxxx

This Hercules was not the faithful and convinced hero of the future yet. Actually he was at a weak point in his life. It was just a few weeks ago that he had a confrontation with the Herald of her Father named Caine - without really knowing who he was.

Caine had caused a war between two small kingdoms and Hercules had failed to stop him. Quite the opposite. Hercules had failed to even suspect him the entire time and was in the end lying helpless to Caine´s feet in the middle of the warzone he had caused, being alive only because Caine decided not to kill him and downrigt telling him that he only spared him because saw potential in him.

To all that came this young Hercules already existing issues of being a halfgod and the waryness people had about him because of it, of his father Zeus practically abandoning him his entire life and talking with him for the first time just a few months ago.

And the insane expectation people had on him, while at the same time secretly fearing him.

This Hercules was young, inexperienced, angry and doubting himself. It was a good time for the Darkness to get close to him, a very good one.

xxxx

"I - I accidentlly killed someone when I was a baby," Hope told him. "My mother was travelling with another woman - a warrior. Not an Amazon, but another woman who had taken up the sword. They were... friends - very close.

She had promised to protect us both. But then...

One of the men who were helping us suddenly secretly left without telling anyone. She suspected that he was going to betray us, either to the people who were trying to kill me or to the worshippers of my father. She was probaly right. And she followed him.

She had not even bothered to wake my mother, who was sleeping right next to me. If only she did..." she let the words hanging in the air.

"Then the only man who was left behind showed me a trinket that he was wearing around his neck. I found it interesting and reached out to it with my mind."

A stone rose up in the air close to them to demonstrate what she meant.

"But the chain was still around his neck. I- I did not know, I did not realize. I was one day old," she exclaimed visibly shaken up. It was not merely an act, but also Hope letting her real anger flow in.

"It was not your fault," Hercules said sighing. "No halfgod has any real control over their power or idea how to use them properly from birth."

"But she seemed to have seen that differently. As soon as she returned she draw her sword against me. My mother woke up in just this moment. She run away with me. But the warrior hunted us and she was finally forced to abandon me somewhere in the wilderness.

I did not see my mother again until I was a young girl."

Which was only a couple months later instead of years. But she did not found it necessary to mention that. The more abnormal she seemed to him, the more likely it was for questions to rise in his mind.

"And I remember everything," she could not help herself to add. "Something about me allows me to recall everything since my birth, even if I not really understood what was going on."

Somehow, she admitted to herself, it felt good to actually be able to talk to someone about this. Hercules did not judge her, he did not fear her. He understood, at least most of it.

"I am sorry," Hercules said.

Hope fought down the small spark of guilt that was coming up inside her. She was the Daughter of the Darkness... and he was the Mortal who would stood in her Father´s way like not other in this age.

She would either draw him to their side... or she would kill him.

"But my mother," Hope continued, "she just decided to stay with the woman who tried to kill me. She just convinced me that she had thrown me off a cliff after my powers went berserk and went on as if nothing happened. You can not imagine how angry I had been at her during that time."

"Maybe I can better than you think," he admitted. "I am really sorry."

Veila´s last words reminded him how Zeus had practically ignored his existence his entire life.

"I guess there are always the ones who fear us. We have that in common," Veila/Hope suggested. "People, even people who are close to us, who should be there for us... and then betray us."

"Maybe," Hercules answered.

And so they continued on their way. `Veila´ offering her help as thanks for `protecting´ her and the two following Caine´s trail.

Until they would finally have their confrontation, without Hercules ever finding out who Hope and her Father truly were until decades later. And even more decades later they would meet again, became allies and...

Or that was how it were supposed to happen, like it was in the future Hope and Hercules memories... if Xena, Eve and Callisto had not appeared in the past and were about to interrupt the flow of events.

xxx

A short time later

"How much further is it?" Eve questioned.

"Not much," Callisto replied. "She is very close, at best a few kilometers away. And it seems she is not alone."

Had she really brought Gabrielle along? Xena and Eve thought. They knew Gabrielle could be quite convincing if she wanted.

"That means Hope should sense your presense too," Xena stated.

"Yes - she should for a while now," Callisto admitted.

"That means she will probably come out way," Eve said.

xxx

Hope indeed did. But this Hope´s reaction was quite different from what they expected.

`Callisto?´ she thought. `Impossible.´

xxxxxxx

War of the Gods Era - centuries earlier

The group of Assryrian Gods had returned to the core region of their Realm, close to the capital city Ninive... and they had brought Hope and Gabrielle with them.

They appeared however not in the mortal town Ninive, but at a large temple complex a few kilometers outside. Shielded by godly powers that made it Mortals impossible to lay food on it, unless it was allowed to them.

It was the residence of the Assyrian Gods.

The `temple´ however surpassed in opulence most palaces Gabrielle had ever seen. And that meant something given her by now two centuries of life, that she had spend travelling over the world.

After they had passed the large golden laminated entrance gate, they were led through a long, wide, richly ornamented corridor, that finally ended in the large hall of a giant throne room.

Sitting on a large throne at the end of the hall was the God Assur - the King of the Assyrian Pantheon. And `aspiring ruler´ of the entire world.

It was the same man Gabrielle and Hope remembered. But yet not.

xxxx

The Assur they had met in the future was a broken madman - broken by the defeat in the war he was currently waging in this time... and later by the remains of his Pantheon being wiped out during Dahak´s war in Sumeria centuries later.

But he had only `compensated´ for this with even greater megalomania and hunger for power. Just ruling the world had not longer been enough. Instead he had tried to become all powerful and to destroy it all and rebuild it in his image.

This Assur here had not faced any of these defeats yet. This time´s version was not yet at this level of destructivness and insanity.

But that did not necessarily less dangerous for them.

He was at this point in time a being who rivalled Zeus in both raw power and status. And here in this time he had entire armies of both Mortals and Gods standing behind him.

xxxx

A large number of people were assembled inside the huge hall. A few of them were gods - most of them minor deities, as Hope stated to her quietly - but also a couple higher ranked gods.

But there wer also mortals who were as it looked acting as either servants or guards.

xxxx

Gabrielle thought that this was obviously a sign of pure vanity. Why should gods even need mortals as servants? Even less as guards? They were immortal and could use their powers to get everything they wanted in the blink of an eye.

They were probably keeping these people around like pets of trophies, just to say: `we have Mortals serving us, aren´t we powerful?´

On the second thought, Gabrielle noticed, most of the servants were quite good looking... and at least half of them were women. Even some of the guards were female. Just like half of the gods were.

Maybe they were also here for `another purpose´. At least some of the gods keeping them around for sex at least made more sense than having dozens of servants in their home they didn´t actually need.

xxxx

Beside Assur´s own throne, there was a smaller one that was empty... until the goddess Ninlin stepped forward and sat down on it.

That meant she was obviously the Queen of the Assyrian Pantheon - Assur´s Queen.

"You are standing before Assur - King of the Sumerian Gods and highest of all gods - rightful ruler of the world," another minor god - who seemed to be acting as a herald - announced.

Any real hope they had that this version of Assur might be much easier to deal with than his future self went down at the sheer arrogance of the declaration.

"So you are the two found wandering at the border of our territory, I have been told of," Assur said. "A powerful halfgod and her mortal mother. By what I have heard your presence even distracted our ally Nergal from joining the last battle. How do you intend to make up for this to me?" he asked with a smug smile.

Note: The part between Young Hercules and Hope are an idea I originally had for a storyline set in the Young Hercules era. That I however made part of this story.