Disclaimers: See Chapter 1

Additional Note (Please Read): This tale is a companion with, Xena & Gabrielle: A Turn of Fate. If you haven't read both stories' chapters preceding this one, you should do so now.

The Conqueror & Ri,

A Twist of Destiny,

By, Ahkiken

Chapter 34: Mimic

Iona stepped into Ri's abode, gazing at the unkempt bed in amazement. 'Wow! It's noon and her bedding remains disorderly. That's a first.'

Closing the door, she walked towards the bed, deciding to make it tidy, while cogitating on what Lieutenant Tessa had evinced to her during their early morning training. Iona became joyful to discover that the storyteller's freedom was restored, and would've cancelled her date with Oris to spend Cronus with her at the Banquet Hall dinner.

Also, she was baffled to learn that Ri's trip to Athens remained aborted. Iona pondered if its postponement stayed in effect because of the strawberry-blonde's doing, or the Chancellor's, which was an added factor for her visitation to Ri, other than just having lunch with her.

'Becoming a bard is Ri's dream, so I hope she didn't delay it?' Iona mused.

Done with her task, she fluffed the pillows, wondering if Ri were even in the chamber.

"Ri?" Iona intoned, strolling to the bathroom to call out again, "Ri, are you in there?"

"Yeah..." A muffled voice responded. "Give me a minute, okay?"

"A minute?" The fifteen-year-old giggled, amusement ringing within her. "If that's a unique way of asking me to wait out here, I'll do it, but be quick."

On the opposite side of the closed-door, Gabrielle hastened to get clothed, satisfied that she'd chosen wisely to wear the tunic, instead of the ravishing, strapless dress, because of the dragon tattoo on her back. The nine Muses' gift to her would've been visible and evoked an explanation to the woman outside the bathing chamber. She contemplated feigning to feel unwell on the possibility that the intruder would depart, but discarded the sham. According to Enya's purport, Iona was a friend of the person Gabrielle had to mimic, and they would have to face each other sooner or later, so it was prudent to meet her now anyway.

Removing the cloth out of the tub to let the water drain, the Amazon hung it on the rack adjacent to the towel she used to dry her wet body. Next, Gabrielle took a steady breath, preparing herself for the ruse that was required and Iona's inevitable shock at her varying attributes to Ri. Opening the door and coming into the main room, she managed to, fortuitously and unobtrusively, scrutinize the long-haired blonde's features from an angle. She was sitting at the vanity desk, preoccupied with using the mirror to comb her messy tresses, donned in boots, a pair of brown trousers, and a dirt-stained, sleeveless, beige tunic that exposed developing muscles.

'Iona's not a woman.' Gabrielle realized, deducing the girl's lacking adult-hood and vocation by her outlook. 'She's young, and appear to be in decent shape. Is she training to become a soldier for the Conqueror?'

Sensing she was being viewed, Iona stopped combing her hair, laying it down to vacate the chair.

"I trust you don't mind me coming in here without being invited. Especially since I'd made up your bed." Iona sounded cheerful, till she stood and gave Gabrielle her wide-eyed attention. "What the fuck!"

Gabrielle crushed the growing panic that was invoking her to react defensively. She reeled her trepidation in, ascertaining that Iona's expletive stemmed from the cropped hair, and not distinguishing her true identity. As the mystified teenager trekked to the Samurai, she remembered Eli's caution, strengthening her resolve.

'I have taken a huge risk coming here against our God's command not to interfere, but you aren't destined to die now, Gabrielle. I fear that will happen if you don't heed my warning. Keep your identity in your twin's world a secret. Learn as much about her without bringing attention to whom you truly are. You and Xena have done acts like this before, no? Pretending to be others in order to accomplish a mission? Well, you'll have to do it there.'

'Please, be right about this, Eli.' Gabrielle silently prayed, noticing that the adolescent was shorter than her by a couple of inches. "Hey, Iona. Thanks for putting the bed in a neat order, and it is alright that you entered my chamber, but-"

"Slow your roll, Ri." She interrupted Gabrielle, standing directly in front of her. "You're always trying to be Mercury on me when you clearly have some explaining to do."

'Who's Mercury?' Gabrielle relayed another name to the growing list of unknown people.

'I haven't seen her for a single day, yet Ri has the aspect of a matured version of herself.' Iona reached up, touching the damp, golden bangs that was the antecedent for the alteration. "You snipped it... Why... Why did you butcher your hair?"

"I chose to go with a different look." Gabrielle reiterated what she'd avowed to Enya. "I like it this way, too, and I'm unconcerned with whoever think it's a slave visage."

"Well, women in slavery are prone to having their hair similar to yours, and only the gods know what the Conqueror or Chancellor's reaction will be." Iona pronounced, but seeing Gabrielle's discontented expression, she extenuated, "That doesn't matter, 'cause it fits you wonderfully."

The bard's reply got replaced by bewilderment once Iona enclosed her in a fierce hug. Unsure of what was happening, Gabrielle reluctantly reciprocated the affection.

"I thought the Chancellor was going to make your castigation of exile in this chamber last until the Conqueror returned." Iona expounded.

'Why was Ri punished by the Chancellor?' Gabrielle debated, whilst retaining what she had learnt. 'Nor is the Conqueror inside the castle. So where is she?'

"Tessa informed me about your lifted punishment and I rushed here once my session with her was completed, though she didn't tell me how you regained your liberation." Iona disengaged their embrace, looking wary. "Please, don't say you gave that senile asshole an oral and written apology, which the Chancellor of the Realm enforced on you unfairly."

Gabrielle was becoming thoroughly confused. Disregarding Iona's profane language, she had no clue who was the 'senile asshole'; the Chancellor or somebody else? Most of all, she didn't know how Ri got freed from her confinement.

'This is getting difficult already.' Gabrielle groused mentally.

"What did you do to get free?" Iona queried.

Gabrielle began thinking quickly on a response, electing to divert the subject. "I don't want to talk about it. Although, you can apprise me of how many times your trainer knocked you down throughout your training."

"Times?" Iona's eyebrow furrowed, as Gabrielle turned to sit at the table that was located in the center of the room. "What is that, and why, all-of-a-sudden, are you referring to Tessa as my 'trainer'?"

'Get yourself out of this one!' Gabrielle berated herself, formulating her thoughts. 'Enya didn't know what I was inferring when I said minute and hour. Neither does Iona apprehend it. She doesn't know what time means, either. I'll have to descry their meanings for the implications.'

"You haven't been drinking spirits again, huh?" Iona teased, sobering to ask, "Are you okay, Ri?"

"Yeah... I." The Amazon hesitated to generate sympathy for her forthcoming sentence and released an exaggerated sigh. "I didn't consume any intoxicants, but I did have a trying night."

It wasn't a lie, per se. She did have a nerve-racking heart-to-heart with her soul mate that was tantamount to them making amends, before netting out sex. Though they'd taken emotional breaks in between, their sexual intercourse was repeatedly commenced, yielding one orgasm after another. Then, finding out that Zicalus was amorous for her, she had a bitter confrontation with the elite Samurai, causing Gabrielle to feel sapped upon returning into her cabin to sleep beside Xena.

"A trying night." She echoed with much conviction.

"I bet." Iona concurred, taking a seat next to Gabrielle. "Tessa told me that many denizens swamped you for candle-marks with a lot of requisitions and questions after you'd recited the tale of Heracles fulfilling his ninth labor to obtain the queen of the Amazon's girdle, but I would had preferred his battle with the Lernaean hydra or the Nemean lion. Still, if I'd known you were gonna perform at the Hall, I would've attended as well."

'Candle-marks are expressed for hours, and candle-drips have to mean minutes. I'm so stupid, I should've perceived that. Also, Heracles must be the appellation of Hercules; I know the stories of his labors quite personally.' Gabrielle grokked, her knowledge of the world progressed slightly.

Iona stared at her ruminating friend's new-fashioned appeal, praising, "I don't understand why you've shortened your hair, but you are pretty, Ri."

"Thank you." Gabrielle flushed at the unexpected compliment for a moment, shaking it off and rejoining, "I'm hoping the Hall was regaled by the fable."

"Tessa extolled that you were fantastic; like always. I wish I'd heard..." Iona's confession faltered, noting that her supposed acquaintance's sparkling jewelry was replaced. "Ri, you took it off."

"Took 'what' off?" Gabrielle inquired, dumbfounded.

"Don't play dumb, Ri." Iona chided, indicating Gabrielle's throat. "You've exchanged the necklace that the Conqueror conferred to you with a choker. You'd promised our Lord that you wouldn't ever take it off, so why did you doff it?"

Gabrielle subconsciously grasped the heart-shaped ornament that adorned her neck, ratiocinating on a suitable excuse. "I... I opted to wear something else."

"Hmm, I don't get it..." Iona couldn't let the topic drop. "You were adamant about leaving it on. What made you change your stance?"

"I simply wanted to."

Iona became a bit incensed from Gabrielle's laconic declaration. "Come on, Ri! You are restricting your answers or evading my queries altogether and it's beginning to irritate me... Will you at least tell me why you aren't going to Athens? Did the Chancellor put it off, or was it your choice?"

Gabrielle started to feel overwhelmed by the onslaught of inquisitions, wrongfully believing herself under interrogation. She had already endured the seamstress' line of inquiries, and wasn't feeling up to indulging Iona's, too. Needing an anchor, the cropped blonde delved into the recesses of her memories, seeking Xena and a sense of comfort.

Nonetheless, she recalled that dwelling on the Warrior Princess caused her to become truculent, because of the terrible pining to be reunited with her. So the stricken Samurai retreated from bringing her lover to the forefront of her cognition.

Gabrielle's quiescence drove Iona to profess, "By the gods, Ri, say something, dammit."

"All right, enough of that, Iona." Gabrielle felt inclined to cease the juvenile from speaking to her in such a fashion. "I won't abide to anymore disrespectful assertions to me. If you're prone to tarry our conversation onward in this locution, you can exit my chamber."

Iona's honey-colored irises widened. She was surprised by the admonishment, causing her to be abashed. Never had the charming, felicitous Ri bestowed a menacing temperament to her, not even when she was upset; selecting to flee, than become inimical. Remembering the hurtful statement she'd asserted to the storyteller in the kitchen with Minya, Iona accepted Ri's unforeseen comeuppance to her, while cognizant of the former Handmaiden's dislike of the vulgarity that she was inadvertently learning from the Lieutenant of the Fifth Army, as well.

'She's changing you into a warrior, don't let her change your personality, too.'

Descrying Iona's stunned appearance, Gabrielle presumed that perhaps she'd pushed too far with her tirade. "I'm sorry... I shouldn't have-"

"No, Ri." Iona interjected. "I am the one at fault. You've been through so much lately. I got carried away, quizzing you constantly and demanding that you answer them. Forgive me."

"It's fine. I have suffered at the hands of our Chancellor, so give me tim..." Gabrielle corrected her wording. "Give me some candle-marks... or days and I'll disclose everything you want to know, Iona. Besides, I'm not going anywhere."

"Okay." She conceded, surmising that she was understanding her best friend's emotions better. "You have to still be mad at the Chancellor to refrain from calling him your uncle. Then again, you do keep an air of decorum at all Cronus."

Gabrielle's intellect hungrily devoured the information that Iona divulged, storing it in her cerebral cortex. She acknowledged that all the necessitated intel, anent to Ri and anybody else, could be gained from the teenager.

"Speaking of Cronus, we're wasting it." Iona arose from the table. "I have lesser than a candle-mark before my class start. You haven't eaten anything this morning, have you?"

"Nope." Gabrielle uttered, her stomach rumbling at the incentive of eating a meal. "I haven't had breakfast. I'm guessing that I'd missed the servant, because I slept in late, though I did wake when the seamstress brought my new clothes."

Iona ignored Gabrielle's mentioning of a castle's attendant catering to her, and focused more on the dressmaker bringing new clothing, puzzled that Gabrielle was decked in plain garments, which was very rare for Ri to do.

"Um, Enya had come by?" Iona prompted, getting a nod from Gabrielle. "You usually enjoy displaying your dresses and chitons. So why are you clad in a tunic?"

"Tired of being fancy." Gabrielle lied, rising as well. "What do you have planned for breakfast?"

Iona laughed, clarifying, "Ri, it's midday. Breakfast has come and gone. Alas, I did make plans for us to have lunch together, but not here. Do you want to accompany me?"

'It probably wasn't a good choice to squander all morning in here, instead of roaming the castle for reconnaissance purposes.' Gabrielle complained, shredding her anxiety to actually leave Ri's chamber, however, she remained a tad reticent while agreeing, "Yeah. But first, I need to use the chamber pot."

Watching the petite woman search for an item that hadn't been used since the Conqueror established herself as the ruler of the Corinthian Castle, Iona became certain her self-proclaimed sister must've dallied in alcohol last night. Nevertheless, she kept that notion to herself.

"Ri... Stop being a silly goose. You're aware there aren't any waste pots in Corinth like the ones we had to use in Laconia when we were younger."

'I'm in Corinth.' Gabrielle seized the revelation. "Oh, yea... I'll just utilize the uh... Uh."

"No more staying up during Selene's dominance of the sky if it's gonna make you like this, Ri, 'cause I haven't ever seen you act vacuous." Iona rebuked, then quipped, "Go into your bathroom and use the latrine, duh."

"Latrine?" Gabrielle verbalized aloud, coercing Iona's mien to deadpan. "Right, the latrine, and your point is wholly accepted, Iona. I won't stay up telling stories again; it makes me kinda slow-witted."

Failing to be enlightened by the Amazon's crack at humor, Iona noticed her bare feet. "Hurry and handle your business and I'll get your sandals. Gods forbid that you forget where to find them."

Heading to the bathing chamber, and unseen by Iona, Gabrielle rolled her eyes in annoyance at the joke, expelling a mock chuckle to match Iona's. As the light-brown-eyed teenager trudged to the closet, it recurred to the Samurai that she'd hidden the yin-yang chakram inside of it also. Altering her path, she nearly bowled the younger girl over, impeding her from clutching the handle.

"What in Tartarus!" Iona was taken aback by Gabrielle's outré actions of throwing herself against the compartment, barring it. "Ri, what has gotten into you today? You're behaving strangely."

"You can't go in there, Iona."

"Why not?" She protested.

"Because..." Gabrielle knew that she was making Iona become dubious of her, and had to think of a justified reason for hindering her from opening the closet. "'Cause, the clothes are so beautiful that I need to broadcast each of 'em one-by-one to you. But you got a class coming up, and I don't want you seeing them until we have free candle-marks. That way we won't have to speed through the appraisal."

"Really, Ri?" Iona was, somewhat, skeptical.

"Yes." Gabrielle assented, setting into her bardic mode. "Every attire Enya created is dazzling. I'm excited to show you what she crafted for me, but I'm starving, and wanna enjoy our lunch."

"Oh." The elucidation pacified Iona's equivocal disposition, and she grinned. "You could've told me, rather than scaring me by jumping in front of the closet like your life depended on keeping it shut."

"I became alarmed... Didn't want you browsing my wardrobe just yet." Gabrielle sluggishly moved her frame off of it, addressing Iona stoutly, "Promise you won't peek whilst I'm gone."

"You don't trust me?" Iona imitated an impish pout, but it had no effect on Gabrielle, whose stern look started to intimidate her. "O... okay. I swear by the patron goddess, Minerva, I will not take a glimpse at your new apparel."

Not fully convinced by Iona's oath to an unknown deity, Gabrielle considered abandoning utilizing the latrine, and exiting the chamber with Iona instead. Howbeit, her bladder begged to differ, and she acquiesced to it.

Forcing a faux smile, she gently gripped Iona's hand, guiding her to be seated at the table once more. "Stay here."

"All right." Iona dolefully consented.

"Remember, Iona." The warrior-bard stressed before departing the area, "I'm trusting you."

Iona sheepishly nodded, observing Gabrielle walking into the bathroom and shutting the door. She couldn't help feeling that the affirmation seemed close to a vague threat.

Dissolving the absurd conception, Iona's brain still pricked her with perturbation. 'Ri... What's happened to you?'

{C&R}

The Commander's face and armor was wiped clean of the dust that clung onto him after being roused from his compelled slumber on Dia's port. Now, he surveyed the Roman army as they loaded the ships with their weapons, tents, and provisions, readying to immediately embark from the island like the Lord of the Grecian Realm decreed. Brutus' cogitation of being choked into submission by an impossibly strong leg, perpetuated extreme hate for the dark and silver-haired bitch of Greece who slaughtered two battalions with her minuscule army. He'd never felt so humiliated in his life.

'The Gods must be protecting her.' Brutus griped. 'It matters not. Every dog has their day before they are put down, and the Conqueror is no exception.'

Unfortunately, Brutus wasn't joyous with the ratiocination of forecasting the Conqueror's demise, and began to gaze at the sky, inquisitive if the breezy weather would persist during their journey on Neptune's sea. Absorbed in his rumination, he was startled when Cassius trotted next to him.

"I sent several Centuries to trade our perishable food with merchants at the market. They'll bring back water and...' Cassius halted to note Brutus' astounded countenance. "Are you alright, or has the Conqueror made you frightful?"

Brutus brushed aside the inquiry. "Once the men return, we'll distribute the victuals evenly among the legions that will be coming with me, and the ones that'll be travelling with you."

"What?" Cassius became perplexed. "We are splitting up?"

"Yes." Brutus replied.

"Why? The arrangement is to head for Africa together... Is separating an intelligent strategy?"

"It is." Brutus opined. "Like Caesar's mantra: Divide and Conquer."

Disconcerted with Brutus' logic of proclaiming the assassinated tyrant's invocation, Cassius argued, "The Conqueror must have rattled your senses, Brutus. It's imperative that we keep the army intact."

"Our survival deems that we should sunder." He countered. "Do you have credence that the Conqueror will honor her word to aid us against Marcus Antonius and Octavian?"

Cassius' disclaim was given without irresolution, "You know I don't have faith in her. Your decision to converse with the Conqueror by yourself was moronic to me as well. You're lucky she just knocked you unconscious and took your horse, choosing to spare your life."

"That isn't relevant anymore. What's done is done." He predicated sternly, not wanting to reminisce about what had befallen him. "I mistrust her, too. So if she wants us to part from Crete, we will. Nonetheless, if Africa is where the Conqueror commands us to go, I say we offer a preemption of our own in case she's plotting to be treacherous."

The newest scheme didn't inspire Cassius. He hadn't forgotten Brutus' ill-fated design to ambush the Conqueror and her troops. Committing two legions to get decimated, compared to only killing a handful of her warriors in the process, wasn't worth it.

"I'm weary of subterfuge, Brutus." He admitted. "I'd rather linger here and join the celebration of Jupiter with the Cretans, than playing another deceptive game with the Lord of the Realm."

Placing his hands on Cassius' shoulders, Brutus garnered eye contact. "I made a crucial error for initiating contention with the Conqueror. You didn't agree to that course of proceeding and I pressed ahead anyway. That was foolhardy and regrettable, so I'm deferring to your advisement now. If you think it's best to traverse to Africa with the entire army, that's what we'll do. But please, I beseech you to hear my proposition."

Cassius' determination to dismiss Brutus' entreaty had vanished, because unlike when he'd forced his imposition to provoke a skirmish with the Conqueror and her forces, this Cronus he sought his approval.

Although Cassius was crestfallen to participate in a second deception to the Conqueror, he relented to his brother-in-law. "What do you suggest, Brutus?"

To Be Continued...