Chapter 8

They had by now secured their new prisoners and their new `guest´ and started to move again. Their goal - to find a way to escape from there- was still not in reach.

Ares had begun to read inside the book to see if he could find some useful information of some kind. Only a few minutes later a small part of him nearly wished that he had never touched it. Some of the content was enough to unsettle even him.

"Have you found anything?" Xena1 asked him.

"Quite a lot actually.." he replied, "but not exactly what we need yet. There are warnings about cursed spirits that can be conjured with the formulas written in here, a demonic form of the resurrection of the dead, a few references about a group of ancient beings called the `Old Ones´. There are also mentions about gateways into other worlds, but nothing concrete enough to help us right now."

"I see, just keep looking," she said to him.

"You don´t have to tell me that," he gave back to her. "Discord, do you have any idea on how to get out of this freaking mist?" he addressed the other Olympian.

"No, even with the level of power that I have still access to right now I am nearly as blind here as you are," she responded.

xxx

Meanwhile, while their entire group was still trying to find a way out, the others were `taking care´ of their new arrivals.

"So this here is `me´," Callisto mentioned as she was looking at the now captured Eve. "This other self of me must have really been horrible to be reborn as Xena´s daughter. I can not imagine what she must have done to deserve this fate."

"You better shut up," Eve replied angrily. "As you should know, I have found out that being Xena´s daughter has actually some advantages, many actually," she stated. "To be honest, in the beginning, when I first found out about her, I was just as disgusted as you are. She has so many really annoying habits…

But she is one of the greatest fighters I have ever met and it is always good to have someone like that on your side. Especially since our Xena and I are on the same side now and it played out pretty well for both of us."

"And what kind of side is that?" they were interrupted by another voice, it was Xena´s. The second Xena who was with them got involved into the conversation.

"Why? our own of course," she said.

"Oh really? So I guess that means your Xena is not exactly the selfless and benevolent type?" Xena3 questioned.

"No, she is truly not. She had once thought she was, but a few meetings with me were able to open her eyes," Eve answered. "This noble heroic stuff, that is simply not her." She started to laugh viciously.

"You can not imagine how many people she had watched me slaughter, while only making half-hearted attempts to stop me. All because `Xena´ could never kill her own daughter, no matter what she does. We both know that, right? But to both our luck she came to her senses in the end and now we are working together."

Eve´s hands were shackled on her back now. Beside her, the red-head with super-natural powers, who was introduced to them as `Delilah´, was being closely watched by Discord. She had used part of her own remaining power to block their prisoner whenever she was trying to use hers. It was not easy, but so far it had worked. This woman had some measurable raw power, even if not nearly as much as Hope or a full strengthened Olympian had, Discord admitted, but she was clearly inexperienced.

Ironically, they were in a very similar position as the Gabrielle they had captured and held prisoner a short time before.

Xena3 smiled right back at her. Then she drew her sword and pointed it at Eve´s throat.

"You are right, you know…" she stated, "….I was never really good at being good. I was always much better at being a bitch. And as it looks that trait was passed on to that other Xena´s daughter. But you are not my daughter, so you better start getting into details and tell us all we should know about your world."

xxx

The same Gabrielle, along with Perdicas and the other woman they had captured, was just being asked some questions by the others.

In Gabrielle´s case, this didn't take much time as it turned out. Part of her history was actually very similar to their owns. With the exception that for her it was being a much earlier point in time.

"So for you, you say, the fights against Dahak´s cult and your journey to India were only a few months back?" their own Gabrielle asked her.

"Yes," she answered, "it was around six weeks ago that we returned from India. Why?"

"For us it was many years ago," their Gabrielle responded.

"What? but how..." she questioned.

"It seems that we don´t necessarily have the same time in our different worlds," Xena1 pointed out.

"That could be quite possible," Ares admitted. "This place here seems to connect many different worlds and dimensions. Nobody said that the time is a fixed point in this."

The other three however were a quite different matter. Their world was quite different from their own and in a very unsettling way or at least it had been that way for the last few years of their reality. They didn´t know exactly how different it had became, but as it seemed they had already heard were more than enough to make them wary.

"What do you think you are doing?" Xena suddenly asked. The question was directed to her other self, who was still holding her sword at Eve.

"Doing everything to get information out of her," she answered simply.

"Not with methods like this."

"Do you say that because it is `wrong´, or just because this is another version of your precious Eve?" she asked her. "Forget it, she is not your daughter and even if she were, you have heard what she has done, from her own mouth….That and how your other self had failed to do anything about it."

"I know," Xena1 said. She indeed knew, she remembered the harm her Eve had caused before she changed. But sadly that never happened for this version. All that while she had been helpless to stop her, because she just couldn´t do `it´. "But do you really think you can get anything reliable out of her like this?" she questioned.

"Maybe not, but she is not the only one here from this reality," Gabrielle1 interrupted them. "Perdicas," she asked him, addressing him once again, "can you tell us some more about your world? For one, which year do you come from?"

For a short moment he stared at her in barely suppressed anger as she asked this question. Then he caught himself and prepared to answer.

The man was visibly nervous around all of them. This really wasn´t much of a surprise. By the few things Eve had been saying so far, at least both she and Xena were evil in her reality and going by his own words, Callisto had there killed him once as well. So it was no wonder that he was not exactly feeling well around them.

The question what remained was, what did he have against Gabrielle?

xxxxxxx

In another place- not a very far away distance to them- their former captive Lyraeus was now wandering around in the mist. Just like the others he wasn´t able to find his way anymore.

His reaction to this however was ultimately quite a bit different. While he was not really willing to admit it to himself, fear was overcoming him more and more.

Like the others, he was aware that the area around him was constantly changing while he moved. But that wasn´t a bad thing, he kept telling himself. Change was good, change was divine. It was the expression of Chaos in the mortal realm. Like the time he had to kill his father because he was standing in the way of progress. Change had always been a good thing for him.

But this was a sort of change he couldn´t direct or control, a small part of him thought. The further he walked the more he became afraid for his life. There was no telling what kind of gates in what dimensions the Necronomicon had opened or what kind of creatures might have passed through.

He was a priest of Chaos, there was no real reason for him to be afraid. His deity would not allow one of its most loyal servants to perish, that was what he kept telling himself.

There was one small detail in all this however that he somehow oversaw. That all the things he had done in the name of his god, where in fact in some way all for himself. He had always claimed to know exactly what was in its best interest. And ultimately it was always him and his own ambitions who had profited in the end.

That Chaos might also have completely own ideas, that had never even crossed his mind. Despite that, he was panicking more and more.

Then suddenly he heard something. It was a deep growling, coming from an inhuman source.

Then he saw it...shaping itself out of the fog before him, a large tentacled monstrous being. Giant cold and hollow eyes were looking at him out of a grotesque oversized head on top of an equally bizarre shaped body.

He barely had the time to scream before the tentacles leashed out for him and dragged him shouting and struggling into the large open maw of the creature, full of razor sharp teeth. It was the last sound of his life.

xxxxxxx

"It was around two years ago that `they´ took over the land," Perdicas said to them, "a short time after the fall of most of the Olympian Gods during the so called Twilight."

By what both he and Eve had told them, the time of their world was somewhere between three and four years ahead of their own, so in the future from their point of view, confirming their theory that the time period might be a variable between their worlds.

From both their accords they now had quite a good picture about it and it was not a pretty one.

What they had told them so far horrified them. In this reality, they were tyrants, Xena, Eve, Ares, Hope, even Gabrielle.

"The Warlord Livia, also known as Eve, Xena of Amphipolis called the Warrior Princess, Eve´s mother, and her partner Gabrielle," he said full of disdain, "and Hope also known as the Child of Darkness. As you know, she is also the daughter of said Gabrielle.

They allied themselves with the God of War, who had survived the Twilight, a few years after Xena had destroyed the other gods. Together they are a force that nobody could stand against. Many tried that and died as a result.

They conquered one of the city states of Greece after the other. They drove the Romans out of the country. During one confrontation they killed Hercules. Then they started to attack neighboring regions and subjugated them as well, until all of it was finally one large Empire that rivaled even Rome in power. With both Ares and Hope at their side, they managed to do all that in only a few months. Countless thousands died during that time."

They all had been listening to his story. What horrified them- Xena and Gabrielle- the most was how close that reality seemed despite everything, to their own. Until only a few years back, the lives of their counterparts seemed so similar to theirs. The Twilight, Eli, Eve, even their 25 year sleep, the other Xena and Gabrielle had gone through all this as well, only slightly different from them and still they became what they became.

How much would be necessary for themselves to end up the same way?

"Ares became `God´-Emperor of the new empire and Xena, Eve, Gabrielle and Hope became his four Warrior-Queens. They all share their power equally and they are ruling with an iron-fist. Everybody who even thinks about resisting them faces torture and death and their territory is still growing with every month.

It is not even completely clear who had originally started this Alliance, there are rumors going on, but..."

"Oh, you don´t have to overstress your mind Perdicas, it was me," Eve stated. "I was the one who brought mother, Ares and Hope together, not that they resisted the idea much after they realized just what they could reach.

You should have seen the citizens of Athens that I had hung up on crosses in front of their own city after they dared to stand against us. Well, most of them were already dead, but of course the people who saw them had no way to know this, right?" she started to laugh.

"Now Callisto, you see, that is the advantage of being Xena´s daughter. I had been able to kill whoever I wanted, because my mother was too much of a coward to stop me- at least in the beginning, because then I helped her remember who she once was. She became again the feared and hated warlord she had been and now I actually have to hold her back from time to time or nobody would be left to kill for me. Now, are you impressed or not?" she grinned

"Whatever," Callisto just responded.

"Don´t let her get to you," Sarah said to her. "You are not like her, not anymore."

"Oh yes, your little partner, just like mother and Gabrielle earlier, always remind you of your so called `better nature´, even if you don´t have one in the first place. How pathetic. This has to be some annoying streak of that family. At least we managed to drive it out of our Gabrielle quite effectively. She doesn´t even really care much about that little incident anymore."

"What are you talking about?" Callisto asked her.

"Not much, it only concerns your companion here," Eve said, she was now looking straight at Sarah. "Oh yes, I remember you. We have actually met before many times. I remember how I cut your throat. Yes, I have killed you, just like so many others. It is kind of funny isn´t it? I am the reincarnation of your best friend here and I murdered you."

Sarah was looking at her in horror,

while Callisto was only glaring at her angrily.

There was someone else who remembered and that was Ares. The world where he, Discord, Xena and Gabrielle came from was not his original one. He remembered how the same thing had happened in his original reality as well. Just how close was this world to his own?

"You know… all this time I was curious. What do you think your mother had said as she heard about it? You were dead and not even your aunt Gabrielle was willing to avenge you," Eve mocked Sarah, "all because I had Xena standing behind me."

"That is enough," someone else called out. It was Xena3. She had her sword drawn and swung it in Eve´s direction, clearly intending to kill her. But Xena1 blocked her blow.

"What are you doing?" she asked her.

"No, the question is, what are you doing?" Xena3 responded. "This `monster´ here is actually bragging in front of us with her atrocities and you are defending her, just because she looks like your daughter?"

"She is my daughter," Xena1 replied, "although a twisted version of her."

"And that is reason enough to let her get away with everything, to let her actually mock her victims? You are just like...like myself before everything went down to hell. What if she were the daughter of anyone else? You would have already killed her at this point. What if she were...Gabrielle´s?" she said quietly.

"Hope, I think you know this name as well as me? I certainly won´t forget it."

Xena1 froze as she listened to her words.

"What?"

"You've heard me," Xena3 answered sharply, but then she suddenly went silent. "It is all my fault..." she began to whisper. Her eyes were becoming glassy. "...all my fault."

"What has happened in your world?" Xena1 asked her.

Before she even had the chance to answer, they were interrupted by another faint laughter. It was the young woman they had found in the mist.

"Isn´t this great. Your worlds are so similar and yet the smallest alterations spawned so different results. This changes are so interesting. You are all the same on one side and yet at the same time completely different. It is so wonderful," she exclaimed.

"I have to say, the demented one has a point here, you have to admit," Eve stated, grinning wolfishly.

"I'd watch out what I say if I were you, little girl," the woman said to her. All of her cheerful and confused exterior suddenly fell off from her and her voice was now as sharp as a knife. "You have no idea who you are talking to."

A few moments later however she fell back into the behavior they already knew from her.

"And you'd better not speak like this to my new friends here," she told her, while she drew both Sarah and one of the Gabrielle´s into a hug.

Ares, Callisto and even the two Xenas could barely hold themselves from breaking out into laughter.

Discord on the other hand was only starring at the woman in shock. For a split second she could feel it, inside of the girl they had found out here, a source of unbelievable, untamed and completely frightening power. That short moment as her mask slipped.

Unlike Ares, she had part of her abilities left and was not blind on this level now. She had to inform him as quickly as possible. She had a good idea now who this woman was, who they had invited right into their mid.

"I have one last question," Gabrielle said to Perdicas. "You mentioned that Callisto has killed you, so how are you brought back to life?"

"As I told you, with Ares and Hope in their ranks barely anything is out of their reach, not even the underworld. I was brought back especially for the `personal entertainment´ of Queen Gabrielle."

He let the meaning of his words sank in to the others. "Since then, I have actually been killed twice, once by Eve just to spite her and always been brought back for her," he said bitterly.

The two Gabrielles who were standing right in front of them looked as if they were going to be sick.

"Of course that didn´t keep her from sharing the bed with others, for example Ares, just like the other Queens."

"That is more than enough. We truly do not need to hear anymore," Xena1 told him.

"Well, it looks as if my counterpart at least is lucky in some areas," Ares whispered to her.

"Don´t even try to push it Ares," she responded.

"Good, I have a last question too," he said louder. "What about her?" he pointed to Delilah. "Where do her powers come from?"

"This is a good question," she spoke up for the first time since she was here. "Is it really so hard to figure out, father?"

"What?" Ares and Xena1 said nearly at the same time.

"She is a Destroyer," Perdicas told them, "bred by Ares and Hope, to terrorize the land and wipe out their enemies- the third as I have been told and the only one so far in human shape."