Beyond the Doors of the Dark
Listen to me, Children of the Night.
Beyond the Doors of Darkness, you will find,
A thousand worlds for you to see.
Take my hand and follow me.
Beyond the Doors of the Dark.
Demons in your heart.
Screaming, thrash your head,
Turn around, now you're dead.
Under the darkened haze,
Your eyes dim and glazed.
Are you looking to be free?
A never ending suicide,
Of nightmares you have inside.
Another day's begun,
Under the moon and sun.
Circle has been drawn
Life has been prolonged.
Hell is eternity.
Hell is your destiny.
I tell you to die.
A never ending suicide,
Of nightmares you have inside.
Beyond the Doors of the Dark.
It's time to meet your fate.
Heaven can wait.
All the walls are closing in.
Things crawl on your skin.
He's glaring down at you.
There's nothing you can do.
No place to run and hide.
A never ending suicide,
Of nightmares you have inside.
He wants to take your soul.
Even while your dreaming cold.
Your precious little life,
Under my knife!
Hell is eternity.
Hell is your destiny.
I tell you to die.
A never ending suicide,
Of nightmares you have inside.
Beyond the Doors of the Dark…
Written by Jon Oliva
Performed by Savatage, from the album "The Hall of The Mountain King"
David looked at his wife as she paced near the edge of the pond, her arms wrapped about herself in frustration.
"So?" David asked. "What did you say?"
"I didn't know what to say!" Gabrielle replied in a tight voice. "I just got stuck, and I said the first thing that came to mind!"
"Which was?" David pressed.
"I didn't know," Gabrielle paused at the edge of the water and sighed. "We promised never to lie to our children, and yet, in less than five minutes, I lied to our daughter three times!"
"Well," David shrugged thoughtfully. "If a lie of omission is still a lie, then I've done my share today as well."
Gabrielle looked at David with a pleading expression in her green eyes.
"Honey," David said, reading the message in that haunted gaze. "We both know who she is and was. But that doesn't mean that she knows, or that she's ready to know?"
"But who are we to deny her the person that she was?" Gabrielle asked.
"That's easy," David replied calmly. "We're her parents, regardless of who she was in the past. She is still our daughter and it is our responsibility to protect her until she's old enough to do it for herself."
"But if she remembers who she was?" Gabrielle offered. "Then that means she would already know everything she would need to be on her own? Wouldn't she?"
David smiled. "I know where you're going with this, honey," he shook his head. "But I won't buy it. Even if she had complete recall tomorrow, that doesn't mean that her body is in the right state of development to handle it, or that she won't have trouble processing everything if it wakes up all at once?"
Gabrielle resumed her pacing, her eyes fixed on the ground at her feet.
"Think of it this way," David offered. "Remember the first time you took a ride on Rosie?"
Gabrielle nodded.
"Okay, moving that far, that fast was a shock to you, wasn't it?" David continued.
Again, Gabrielle nodded as she remembered that cold October night when she stumbled onto the middle of the road in his time.
"Yeah," David also nodded. "And then you got a real fast ride with Bullitt, remember?"
Again, Gabrielle nodded. "How can I forget?"
"Well," David continued. "Right now, Xena's riding on Rosie. Knowing what you know, would you put her on Bullitt?"
Gabrielle looked down at her husband and smiled. She seated herself next to him and leaned her head against his shoulder. "I really hate it when you make sense," she confessed.
"Well," David smiled back. "That doesn't mean she won't go ballistic on us by herself, you know?"
"And what happens if she does?" Gabrielle asked. "What do we do?"
"We do what we've always done," David replied easily. "We improvise."
Xena lay in a fitful sleep. Her fingers grasping at the pillow with white knuckled intensity. In spite of her reservations, she had taken her mothers words to heart. Gabrielle had said that she had awakened before finding out everything that had happened. Now, in the world of dreams, she was forcing herself to stay and watch.
The cavern was enormous and cold. Moisture dripped from unseen crevices, lost in the deeper shadows.
Once again, she stood on a rise and saw her mother below, dressed in black robes, more akin to diaphanous wings than actual clothing. Her face was the color of bleached bone, and her nails were long, sharp and black. Standing before her was a demon with deep crimson skin, black hair that was more like fur, and two massive horns curling over his ears, like the horns of a ram. He laughed aloud showing rows of sharp, pointed teeth. His voice boomed through the vast cavern.
"Drink and be one of us!"
He handed a large silver chalice down to her mother.
Then, Xena struck, dropping from her hiding place into the midst of the gathered shadows with a cry of rage. She battled her way through the snapping and frothing women, all seeking to latch onto her and drink her blood.
Somewhere in that blur of movement, she ended up fleeing back to the relative safety of her perch, only to have several of the creatures fly up after her. One of them was her mother.
She saw the pleading in Gabrielle's eyes, and finally relented, feeling her mother reach around her shoulder and neck. Gabrielle jerked her head back.
"Everything must turn out alright," she thought to herself. "Because they're here, with me, now."
Suddenly, she felt the palpable sting as her mothers' fanged teeth punctured the flesh of her throat. From below, the red demon roared with laughter…
Xena cried out in fear and sat up in the bed, tears in her eyes, mixing with the sweat that plastered her hair and clothes to her skin.
Her gaze drifted to the mirror on her dresser and she looked at the face within the reflection. Young, and terrified, the face that stared back at her was not her own.
She beheld an older woman with the same luxurious black hair, same pale blue eyes. But the face that stared back at her was smiling with a mixture of contempt and amusement.
In a fright, Xena bolted from the bed and through the door.
"Mom!" she cried in desperation.
She passed through the door and entered a long, dark tunnel. Shadows seemed to melt into view at the edges of her vision, only to fade as she turned to see them directly. Tufts of smoke or vapor hung like dismembered curtains, brushing against her with icy tendrils.
She turned around, only dimly understanding that she had not actually awakened from this nightmare.
Laughter sounded all around her. A single voice, hauntingly familiar and still, filled with malice.
"Who's there?" she challenged. Her voice sounded thin and weak in this hellish place.
Again the laughter cackled nearby. "Don't you know?"
Xena took several deep breaths and tried to muster her courage.
"I know this isn't real!" she managed to yell. Just saying those words gave her courage and some of her trembling subsided.
"Oh no, my darling," that hauntingly familiar voice replied. "This is as real as it gets."
"Show yourself!" Xena challenged.
A single specter seemed to materialize as a darker shade among the shadows. The outline of a warrior woman, standing just beyond the edge of perception. Its hands were on its hips as if preparing to scold her.
"Who are you?" Xena asked, feeling the fury begin to well up in her, now that she had a target for it.
"Don't you know?" The shadow replied mockingly. The figure stepped forward into the pale blue illumination that served to light this ethereal place.
When Xena saw the face, her mouth dropped open in horror. It was the same woman from the reflection, tall and proud, dressed in leather armor, with a sword at her back and a circular object hanging on a hook at her hip.
The apparition smiled coldly and stared at her with black, bottomless eyes that seemed to glow with evil delight.
Xena took a few nervous steps back away from this thing.
The woman's face took on a hurt expression.
"Don't you recognize me?" she cooed and then the hurt vanished into a malicious grin. "I'm you."
Once again, Xena sat up in a fright, a scream dying on her lips, and that evil cackle ringing in her ears.
Gabrielle's eyes snapped open. She lay as she always did, nestled up against David, with his arm wrapped protectively about her shoulders. She could hear the slow and steady beat of his heart and the soft sound of his breathing as he slept.
She wasn't sure why she had awakened. Everything seemed perfectly normal. Beyond the open window, she could see the stars shimmering in the night sky. The sounds of the night creatures drifted in from outside with their soft blend of music. The air was damp with the promise of rain.
Then she heard the soft popping of burning wood. Frowning, she gently extricated herself from her husband, smiling as he grumbled gently in his sleep. She padded to the hall and looked out the door, only to see the warm orange glow of a rekindled fire in the hearth.
Gabrielle stepped into the living room and found Xena seated in front of the hearth, her weary eyes locked on the dancing flames.
"Hey you?" Gabrielle said softly. The young girl started at the sound of her voice.
"Hi, Mom," Xena said in a tired voice.
"What are you doing up?" Gabrielle asked. "It's late."
Xena gave a little shrug and went back to staring at the fire.
Gabrielle settled on the couch and studied Xena for a moment. "You had another one, didn't you?"
Xena closed her eyes and nodded.
"Wanna talk about it?"
Xena took a deep breath and looked at her mom. There was a haunted fear in her pale blue eyes. She took another deep breath, and then the whole thing came out.
Gabrielle listened patiently, watching Xena's face as she spoke.
When her daughter finally finished recounting her dream, Gabrielle was silent for a long time.
"Mom?" Xena asked. "Is it true? Is what that other person in my dream said, true?"
"Maybe," Gabrielle replied. "In some ways?"
"But mom," Xena continued. "I've never hurt anyone in my life! I don't ever want to! Not like that! I don't want to scare people like that!"
"Xena," Gabrielle explained. "The Xena I knew, was never like that. She started out that way, yes, but in the end, she more than made up for anything that she did in the past."
Xena frowned.
"That doesn't mean she never fought again," Gabrielle continued. "Quite the opposite. We ended up fighting all the time, sometimes with each other."
Gabrielle smiled as she remembered.
"But this image was so, so, dark?" Xena asked. "She seemed evil. It was like she wanted all those bad things to happen again?"
Gabrielle smiled softly. She was about to reply when they both heard a subtle creak in the floor boards.
"Hi there," David said softly, standing near the hallway.
"I didn't think that I woke you?" Gabrielle offered. David merely shrugged.
"When you have someone sleeping in your arms for fifteen years, you tend to notice when they're gone," David shrugged. "I can leave you two alone, if you like?"
"No," Xena said quickly. "It's okay."
"You sure?" David offered. If Xena wanted time with just his mother, he wasn't about to stand in the way of that. Sometimes there were things that only women could discuss with other women.
Xena nodded and Gabrielle smiled. Her daughter was such a tom boy in so many ways. As David had so often bragged in the past, she was "his girl".
David seated himself next to Gabrielle and smiled. "Okay? What's up?"
Xena quickly summarized her latest nightmare and then looked at the two of them. Her eyes turned to Gabrielle. "Is it true?" she asked again.
When her mother hesitated, David merely gestured for her to speak her peace.
"Yes, I suppose," she finally admitted.
"But how?" Xena asked, her eyes wide. "I've never done anything like that? I don't even like thinking about it?"
"Baby," David said slowly. "You have to understand something. Every person alive is born with the capacity to do great things, or terrible things. We all have gifts that are given to us when we're born. It's what we choose to do with them that matters, not if we have them. You understand?"
"So, you're saying I did do all those things?" Xena asked.
"I'm saying that there is the potential for you to do some of those things," David explained patiently. "That's where we come in. Your mother and I can show you what we think the right thing is. We can teach you to respect the world around you and all the people in it. But you make the final decision on how you use those gifts given to you, or not?"
"I need to tell you something," Gabrielle said suddenly. David saw the guilt on her face and immediately knew what she was going to say.
"The other day," Gabrielle said after a deep breath. "You asked me about Solan."
Xena looked at her mother expectantly.
"I lied to you," Gabrielle confessed.
"I know," Xena nodded.
That statement caught them both by surprise. Xena only smiled her version of David's knowing smile.
"Neither one of you can relax when you're talking to me about something you don't want to," Xena said. She looked at her mother. "You can't look me in the eye and dad fidgets with things," She looked at David. "Like the rocks down by the pond?"
David sighed. "Guilty as charged."
In point of fact, Xena hadn't really known it. But something in her mind had made her suspect for a long time. Now, hearing the confirmation that the two most important people in her life had been deceiving her for who knew how long, awakened the fire inside her, and her gaze grew cold.
"So," she said in an eerily familiar tone, laced with ice. "Who was Solan?"
Gabrielle opened her mouth to speak, but David held up a hand, forestalling her.
"If we go here," he said seriously. "You won't like everything you hear. I want you to understand this. There's no going back, once this is out."
There was something so earnest in her father's tone and posture that Xena felt a lump of dread forming in her belly.
"I need to know, Dad," she said finally. "I feel like I'm going crazy! None of these dreams make sense, but they do at the same time?"
David nodded and looked at Gabrielle. "You want to go first, or should I?"
Gabrielle nodded and looked at her daughter.
"Xena," she said carefully. "I - ," she stopped when the words wouldn't form. She knew what she had to say, she just couldn't make her mind work.
"Before your mom got pregnant with you," David said, trying to jump start the conversation. "We were in Egypt. We went there for our honeymoon, but things took a turn, as they tended to do with us back then, and we wound up in the middle of a bunch of stuff. The details aren't a big deal, but in the end, we ended up learning something that was very important."
"The fact of the matter is, when we got back, your mom was pregnant with you," David said. Xena could see the nervousness in his eyes and heard it in his voice. "There were a couple of other little things that happened before you were born, but the bottom line is, we didn't choose to have you as a child." He looked at his daughter intently and smiled. "You chose us, to be your parents."
Xena shook her head. "This doesn't answer my question, Dad." She said impatiently.
"He was your son," Gabrielle said in a mute voice. "Solan was your son."
Xena's eyes widened in a mixture of shock and disbelief. "What?"
"A long time ago," Gabrielle said. "Solan was your son."
"That's so crazy!" Xena blurted out. Her rant ceased when she saw the look in her mother's eyes. "What happened to him?"
"He died," Gabrielle replied after a long moment.
The pain in Gabrielle's face was so real that it seemed to fill the room, dimming the light from the fire, and casting everything into a deeper shadow.
Xena felt her fingers wrap around the arm of the chair. "How did he die?" she asked.
"That part isn't important," David offered. "It was over forty years ago, honey?"
"How!" Xena hissed, barely containing the explosion, for fear of waking her brother.
"He was murdered," Gabrielle confessed. "Your older sister killed him."
Xena's eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
Gabrielle winced as if the memory reopened an old and fatal wound. Though David and she had told Xena about all of their adventures, they had never mentioned Britannia, or Dahok, or Hope. Now, that whole chapter was about to be exposed.
Xena listened with growing horror as the tale unfolded. The whole time, Gabrielle had a pained expression on her face, especially when she recounted the forced joining between her and this ancient God.
While she had never used the term, David saw the violation as nothing short of a rape. A rape that had begot the most heartless creatures he had ever heard about. The fact that this particular creature was dead was of little consolation at the moment; since the revelation of her deeds was awakening a fire in their daughter that he was certain would not burn itself out in a simple discussion. At any moment, David was certain that the violence he had beheld earlier would return and focus on his wife. A knock down, drag out brawl with his own flesh and blood was not something he was looking forward to, but he was anticipating it.
Xena, to her credit, waited until the entire story had been told. Her eyes narrowed with wrath and she felt her nails digging into the arms of the chair.
"How could you not tell me?" she hissed. "Everything you told me about your friend," she spat the word. "Was more than just a story? It was my past! How could you keep all that from me?"
"What were we supposed to do?" David asked evenly. "Tell you all of this when you were four or five years old and completely screw with your mind?"
"You should have told me!" Xena said vehemently. "You had no right to keep this from me! No right!"
Now it was David's turn to dial up the volume. "We had every right, young lady!" he countered. "Whoever you were in the past, we are your parents here and now! We always planned on telling all of this to you, when we thought you were ready to handle it!"
"And when would that have been, huh?" Xena asked. "Or were you hoping I wouldn't have these flashes of memory? Wouldn't know these things, ever!"
"With everything the two of you went through in your life together?" David replied. "If you never remembered, that would have been fine with us too! The bottom line is this: Gabrielle loved you as her best friend and loves you more as her child, and I love you too. We would do anything to protect you! Now, I'm not saying we did everything right! We screwed up more than our fair share of times, but children don't come with an instruction manual!"
Gabrielle suddenly stood and ran into the bedroom, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Xena watched her go, unsympathetic.
She turned and looked at her father, his dark eyes looking back at her evenly. In spite of his equally ferocious gaze, she could see the pain behind his eyes as well. There was something else there as well. Something that she had never seen in her father. Fear.
She looked at him in disgust and bolted out the door into the night.
"Xena!" David called after her. She ran full speed and vanished into the shadows beyond the barn before David had made it half way across the yard.
David came to a stop behind the barn and hopelessly tried to pierce the night, looking for any sign of his daughter, but Xena had vanished into the shadows and was gone.
"That does it," David said bitterly as he turned back towards the house to get his lantern. "Starting tomorrow, I'm getting my ragged ass back in shape."
When he came back into the house, he saw Gabrielle standing at the doorway to the living room. Her hands were clenched over her heart and tearstains covered her cheeks.
"She bolted," David sighed as he pulled the old chemical lantern from the wooden storage crate that doubled as a small table. He shook the lantern a few times and pressed the switch. Brilliant light glowed from within the thing and he nodded in satisfaction. Then he stepped past her and changed into some more rugged clothing.
"Where would she have gone?" Gabrielle asked anxiously.
"Right now?" David replied as he went into his daughter's room and grabbed some spare clothing for her as well. He shoved that into his bag and then took his sword down from the wall. "She's just running. Once she burns that out of her system, I think she'll stay close to the village?"
"But you don't know for sure?" Gabrielle replied.
David paused at the door and took a deep breath. "No, I don't."
He looked at his wife and saw the terror in her eyes.
"Don't worry," he said. "I'll find her. I promise."
He closed the shutters on the back of the lantern, better to focus all the light forward and headed out across the field.
Her trail there needed little skill to follow. The tall grass was trampled in a long furrow, pointing in a straight line towards the nearby woods.
Once it got there, however, the trail became more difficult to track. David held the lantern close to the ground, his eyes scanning the earth as he moved. Here and there he saw the impression of a bare foot, or a broken branch.
"Xena!" he called at the top of his lungs. He walked for what seemed hours, constantly calling her name, with no success.
Then, somewhere in the distance, he heard a terrified shriek. Every parent knows the sound of their own child. At that sound, David threw away any pretense at caution and ran full speed toward the sound. He moved with a fluidity and speed that he hadn't experienced in years. Branches reached out of the darkness to impede him, but he ducked beneath or leapt over them until his foot snagged on an upturned root and he went flying forward into a narrow gully. He rolled over several times before striking the rocky bottom. There was an audible snap and pain shot through his right leg. He cried out in shock.
When he turned himself over, the pain shot through his body again, like hot fire and he groaned, looking down at his leg. The limb was bent at an odd angle, just beneath the knee. Broken.
"Ah, shit," he moaned. "Slick Dave. Real, real slick!"
He looked up at the narrow sides and groaned again. Even without the break, it would have been a hard climb out. With one leg busted, there was no way.
"And the 'Klutz of the Month' award goes to the moronic fatherlying crippled in a fraggin gully!" He cursed.
>>
The branches snapped and grabbed at her clothing and her flesh as she ran, but she didn't feel them. Her vision was blurred from the tears in her eyes as she ran. Visions flashed behind her eyes. She felt a sudden pain in her wrist as she saw a man in old roman armor bring a mallet down onto the nail poised above her flesh. She cried out in pain. The snow bit into her skin as she lay there. She stumbled against a large tree and bounced tot eh ground as another, larger mallet crashed into her legs, just below the knees. Memory and reality seemed to blend in all around her.
Her legs gave out and she dropped face first into the mud, thinking that her legs were broken for real. Her eyes glanced up at the trees looming above her. She felt sure that they were moving in upon her, reaching down with huge, gnarled claws, hoping to rend her flesh.
Again, her mind conjured an image of a massive walking creature, much like a tree, its maw opened to consume her, the clawed, fingers scraping the earth as it approached.
Xena screamed a full throated scream of terror and scrambled to her feet, spraying mud as she ran for her life. Behind her, she heard a voice crying her name, far in the distance. In the furthest corner of her mind, she recognized it as her father's voice, but that part of her psyche was so buried beneath the terror, that she couldn't even recognize it.
She scrambled up a hill, into the deepening gloom and crested a small, jagged hill, looking down over a small, shallow valley. Without waiting, she continued down into the shadows of that place and vanished into the night. The horrors of her past life followed relentlessly, accompanied by the cackling laugh of a ghost that Xena knew she never wanted to be again.
Something large and dark opened up off to one side and she veered into it, not caring what beast may be lurking within. The rough stones cut at the soles of her feet. Suddenly, something snagged her ankle and she pitched forward into the darkness, struck her head on something hard and unyielding, saw white pain flash in her vision, and knew no more.
The soft wet sands of the beach shot beneath the chariot as it careened down the shore. Before her, she saw another chariot, the driver a thin, blonde haired woman, dressed in black leather. This one looking back at her with wild, insane delight as if she were goading Xena into pursuing her.
Xena's chariot caught up, and then the other one – Callisto. That had been her name– turned and the whip coiled out at her like a striking serpent.
It cracked above her head before returning, only to lash out at her again.
Xena pulled hard on the reigns and the two chariots collided, spilling both occupants out and sending them rolling down a sandy embankment.
Callisto skidded to a stop with a maniacal chuckle and turned back to face her. There was murder in her eyes.
Xena got into a crouch, ready to leap after her when she saw Callisto's feet sink into the sand.
Callisto saw this as well and her feral gaze turned into something more desperate as she sank further into the sand. Xena watched as her foe slid inevitably deeper and deeper, screaming and bellowing with desperate rage until, with a final choking cry, she vanished.
Xena's eyes popped open and she sat up on her elbows with a cry of fright.
"If you are going to be here," a soft wizened voice said from ahead of her. "Then please be quiet. I'm busy."
Looking deeper into the cave, she saw a single figure, hunched over a small, rickety writing desk. His long pale hair was grimy and unkempt, hiding his features from view. He sat on a rickety old stool and wore the tattered remains of what might have, at one time, been a fine tunic, or robe. His thin legs and feet were covered with the dirt of countless years, as were his thin, bony fingers.
Xena cautiously got to her feet, ignoring the pain of the small cuts on the soles. Her pale eyes watched this figure for any hint of treachery.
The figure merely stayed in place, his fingers holding an ancient quill in his hand. The nub moved effortlessly over the surface of a withered piece of parchment.
"Excuse me?' Xena asked. "Who are you?"
The figure didn't respond. It simply sighed and continued writing.
"Excuse me?" Xena persisted. "Sir?" She stepped a bit closer, into the light, and noticed for the first time that her night shirt was tattered in many places, barely covering her body any more. She was covered in grime and mud, much like the figure before her. She held the tattered garment against her body, covering herself.
"Sir?" she repeated.
The man dipped the old quill into an empty ink well and resumed writing. Another determined sigh escaped his lips as he did so.
Xena frowned at the odd behavior. It was as if the man didn't realize that he wasn't leaving any message on the parchment.
"Sir?" she asked again nervously.
The man took a deep breath and set the quill down, his dark eyes looking up at her with annoyance.
"We both know that you don't exist," he said. "So go away. Pester someone else."
Xena saw the long white whiskers that framed his mouth and fell down, almost to the surface of the small desk, like wisps of cloud. She could see the line of an old scar on his cheek, mingled in with the wrinkles on his face. His dark eyes were filled with a calm, yet insane light.
He stared at her for a moment and then picked up his quill and resumed his impotent writing.
"What do you mean, I don't exist?" Xena pressed, stepping closer to the old man. "I am real!"
Again, the man set the quill down and fixed her with a dubious stare. His gaze changed slightly as if he suddenly recognized her for the first time. Then another sigh escaped him and he smiled again with wry amusement.
"So you say," the old man replied with a soft chuckle. "You say you exist. I say you are an apparition of my own insanity." When he spoke, his voice was thin and disjointed, as if he were just remembering how to use it. "A personification of my madness."
"You're mad?" Xena asked, edging back a few steps.
The old man smiled and nodded. "Completely, my dear, which is why I know that you do not exist."
"But I'm right here!" Xena replied. "How can you doubt that?"
"Everything can be doubted, my dear," the old man said, resigning himself to the conversation. "Especially an apparition, such as yourself. I know for a fact that you do not exist. You have not existed for nearly twenty years, Xena. Hence, you are no more than a figment of my deluded mind." His face broke into a toothless grin and he chuckled softly.
"How do you know my name?" Xena asked in shock.
"I know everything about you, my dear," the old man replied. "Just as you know everything about me?"
Xena caught her breath as she stared at the man before her. Something deep inside her told her that she did indeed know this person, though she couldn't figure out from where.
"I've never seen you before in my life," Xena protested. "And you don't know anything about me! How can you, if you say I don't exist?"
At those words, the old man looked at her with renewed interest. His eyes narrowed as he studied her and then a knowing smile crossed his lips and he turned back to his quill and parchment.
"Don't ignore me!" Xena said in sudden frustration. "I'm right here!"
"So you say!" the old man replied, not looking up at her. "And I say you have not yet arrived."
"What?" Xena was completely confused. "I'm right here!"
"Oh, very well," The old man set his quill down again and turned to look at her. "Since I seem to be more deluded than usual today. What do you want?"
"Who are you?" Xena asked again.
The man struggled to his feet, straightened up and looked at her knowingly. "You know?"
Xena stared at him for a long time, looking into his dark eyes. Suddenly a memory, unbidden, seemed to creep from somewhere deep in her mind and with it came a name.
Her eyes went wide in wonder. "Draco?"
The old man's toothless smile reappeared and he nodded once, chuckling. "See? Now you are one step closer. But you still haven't arrived. Not yet."