Title: The Beginning Of The End – Part I
Author: Cat
Rating: T (Possible Language and Situations)
Status: In Progress
Summary: Events following A Friend In Need...
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters from the Xena Warrior Princess show or Hercules the Legendary Adventures. I do however own the story line.
Several months of lonely travel, brought her back to the place that represented the beginning of the end. An Ominous feeling filled her being as she closed in on the quiet darkened construction site. The beginnings of a temple had been underway, but with the early winter, it appeared construction had been halted till spring. She had watched over the site for the past week, noting very little movement and that was only during the waking hours. Using the cover of night, and cloud cover, with a quiet stealth made her way across the clearing from the woods to the stone foundation. Once inside the structure, from memory, she made her way through the halls to the central room. There before her, the stone well and gateway to Dahak. The Temple was devoid of life and light. As she stepped closer to the opening, the clouds cleared and moonlight filled the room. She now stood over the opening, a feeling once again coated her soul, this time a feeling of curiosity mixed with dread. Whatever lay at the bottom of this hole would finally answer her questions and hopefully bring about an end to this, one way or another.
Picking up a stone, about the size of her fist, she dropped it over the edge, leaned in and listened, counting silently in her head until she heard a dull thud "sand" she thought at the sound "only couple hundred feet to the bottom" shaking her head "seemed further when she jumped and Ares caught her". Looking around, she quickly found several ropes, tying them together and securing to a base stone, she threw the rope over the edge and quickly followed. As she lowered herself further into the pit, she noticed a red glowing from the walls below. Passing each of them, they appeared to be veins in the stone glowing red. Hesitantly she reached out and touched a smaller line, instantly she was shocked and felt a wave of power pushing through her body. Quickly she kicked off from the wall, breaking the contact. For several moments she hung there, slowly swinging back and forth as she regained her composure. When her head cleared, she once again began her decent, this time avoiding any contact with the strange powerful red lines. She silently wished Ares was with, he would know what in the hell those lines were. Her thoughts were pulled to her last conversation with Hera. It had been just before she had left Roman territory to cross the waters to Britannia. Hera had come to her in a dream, she was faded as her powers were not as strong this far from her own Greek lands. She had brought only good news of Solon, he was doing very well under the care of Hercules and his wife. But she had little news of Ares, and what she had figured out was not good. She had traced Ares essence to the bowels of Tartarus, to the opening of the Abyss to be exact. She felt that Zeus had punished their son by imprisoning him in the Abyss. She had no knowledge of how to get him out without Zeus finding out. She knew Ares was alive, for now, but how long he could survive there with the Titians and other creatures that Zeus had imprisoned there, she did not know. Her heart was heavy with worry, and continued to press Zeus to release Ares from where ever he was being punished. Zeus had promised, the night before, Ares's punishment would end soon, when he felt the boy had learned his lesson. That had been several weeks ago, and she had not heard or sensed anything of Ares.
She had reached the end of the rope, the glow from the red veins, created enough light that she could see the bottom and easily jumped to a soft landing in the sand below. Before her lay a tunnel, leading deeper into the ground. Again, the glow from the veins light the tunnel as good as a torch. After a candle mark, she reached what appeared to be a dead end, a solid wall of stone with no alternative paths.
Xena noted this wall was the only surface that did not have the glowing veins. A small smile crossed her features as she carefully reached out to touch the stone surface. Just as her hand touched it, the stone rippled as if it were water. Pulling her hand back, she took a deep breath, and once again reached out. The stone rippled, but only the surface, behind it was something hard. It was some sort of a doorway, she just had to figure out how to trigger it. She began to run both her hand over the surface, feeling for anything that might trigger the door to open. "Damn" she muttered as she quickly pulled back her left hand and inspected a small cut from the jagged surface underneath. But her attention was quickly pulled back to the wall. Where her hand had been cut, a small window appeared. Looking back to her hand, she quickly realized her blood had triggered the door. Pulling a dagger from her hip, she sliced the palm of her left hand a bit more. With blood flowing a bit more from the wound, she held it up to the wall and smeared it across the wavering surface. Almost instantly, as the blood made contact, a bigger window opened. Looking through the portal, she could see a room lit with a torch. Noting there was no one in the room, she quickly crawled the open portal.
Lacking her usually grace, Xena fell through the portal and landed on a stone floor. Looking back to where she just fell through, a mirror stood in place of a wall. As she looked around the room, she noted there were five other mirrors and a wooden door on the far wall, but the mirrors were broken or cracked and only the one she had just fell through was whole. "Curious" she thought as she pushed herself up.
After quickly bandaging her hand with a strip of material from her shift. She closed the distance on the door. As quietly as she could, she slowly opened the door to find herself at the end of a long stone hallway. "Where in Tartarus am I?" she thought as she began to quietly make her way down the hallway.
Author Note: I would like to thank my readers, you have been wonderful, and to let you know, yes I am still working on this. Life, as you know, can get in the way of writing. I will continue to write and hope to have part II of this chapter out soon, I just wanted to get something out there for you.
Thank you,
Cat