Chapter 1 – Motivation

Trained for thousands of years in ancient military techniques that mainly involved butchering an enemy at close range with a sword and shield, the Dorian's introduction to 21st century weaponry proved to be more difficult than either Ares or Circe could have ever imagined.

The use of the Dorian Army was one of unfortunate necessity. While Ares had spent a number of months trying to locate a suitable group of, as soon as the Amazon name was mentioned the prospective armies had turned tail and run. Ares had consulted Circe a month after she'd emerged from the Pit, lamenting his inability to locate a suitable armyShe reminded him that a Dorian Army thirty-two hundred years in the past had suffered defeat at the hands of the Amazons. The Dorians would be fueled by the one emotion able to turn a desperate battle into a victory: revenge.

Concentrating his energies, Ares opened a time portal and journeyed thirty-two hundred years into the past. He made a point to arrive two weeks after the Dorians were beaten by the Amazons, as they were still smarting from the defeat. The Dorians celebrated his arrival. Phylptus asked for a council of war and once the doors shut, begged Ares for a chance to avenge their loss. Ares initially refused to entertain the request, lamenting the poor performance of Phylptus' troops in battle. Phylptus grew more desperate by the hour as he begged Ares a chance to avenge the shame he'd felt when Hippolyta wielded a spear over his exposed throat just two weeks before.

Willing to do anything for a chance to put that same spear to the throat of the Amazon Queen, Phylptus produced a knife from his waistband and cut his palm deeply with one quick stroke. As the blood flowed from the wound, Phylptus swore a blood oath: he and his men would fight to the last man in their next battle with the Amazons. Satisfied he'd sufficiently roused the Dorians thirst for vengeance, Ares opened a portal to the future and the Dorian Army marched into the future.

Ares and his private army arrived on an abandoned military base on the eastcoast of Nicaragua. The effort left him exhausted After the Dorians recovered from the disorientation of time travel, an air cargo plane touched down on the airfield and delivered stacks of plasma energy rifles, mortars and even two pieces of plasma-fired artillery that would help the Dorians lay waste to Themyscira. Circe was surprised at the effort Ares had expended getting this army trained on the new equipment. As they watched the soldiers drill with their new weapons, Circe finally asked him about why he was so motivated to invade the Amazonian enclave.

"Covering my tracks, 2,400 years later," he replied proudly.

"What are you talking about?" she demanded.

"Zeus punished Hippolyta for being dumb enough to help Hades open the Outer Gates to Olympus so you, the Dark Lords and Titans could gain entry, right? Lucky for me, they never bothered to investigate how the Inner Gates just happened to be open that day."

"So you missed out on being sent to the Pit like the rest of us for 2,400 years." She interrupted. "But why wait so long to cover your tracks?"

"When Hades tried to escape the Pit two years ago, Zeus realized a lot of the fail-safe measures he'd put into place were at risk." Ares recalled, his face darkening as he realized the extent of his predicament. "He tasked Apollo to review security procedures. Being the thorough pain in the ass that he is, Apollo decided to review past failures in order to shed light on what went wrong in the past. That review concluded someone on Olympus opened the Inner Gates the day the Dark Lords stormed Olympus. If all of the Amazons, especially Hippolyta, end up on a slab, I'll be able to pin the blame on her. I already forged a journal where she confesses to the whole thing. If I don't pin the blame on her now, eventually Apollo will figure out who the Insider was and I'll spend eternity in the Pit. "

"So you're willing to sacrifice the entire race to ensure that you avoid your sentence?" she clapped with glee. "...and here I thought that I was the only one who had it in for those bitches! How can I help?"

"I need a spell on the weapons I'm giving to the Dorian Army." He replied with a wry smile. "As currently configured, they'll hurt the Amazons but they won't kill them. You can change that."

"As long as I can see Hippolyta's dead body and not get blamed for it, I'll give you every lost drop of power at my disposal," Circe replied. "Two thousand years in the Pit of Eternal Torment deserves some payback."

Two weeks later, Ares and Circe rode in on the last ship to disembark Dorian troops onto the dock jutting out into the Themysciran harbor. The journey across the Atlantic Ocean has been brutal as shifts in the weather required Ares to marshall his strength in order to keep them sailing towards their target. As they neared the island, Circe used her magic to create a fog, completely cloaking the flotilla's arrival. The stealthy approach provided the Dorian troops with valuable seconds they utilized to take-out the guards on manning the lookout towers near the sea-wall. As the soldiers poured from the ships down the wharf, advance platoons assumed strategic positions along the harbor. Finally, an alert lookout at last managed to trigger the alarm, but the Dorians had the advantage of surprise and ruthlessly killed the first squads of Amazons who responded to the alarm.

Ares and Circe stood on the pier an hour later, watching the battle unfold from a safe distance. They exchanged arrogant quips as to the stupidity of the Amazonian counter-attacks against the brutal firepower of their army, then spent even more time speculating how Hippolyta's head might look mounted on a stake.