DISCLAIMER: Xena Warrior Princess and its characters are the properties of Renaissance Pictures, Studios USA and MCA/Universal. This text is a strictly non-commercial piece of fan fiction inspired by and celebrating this wonderful show.
This is general fan fiction intended to read as an episode, not really as a piece of literature.
SPOILER ALERT: The plot takes place between the episodes 6.115 (Heart of Darkness) and 6.116 (Who's Gurkhan). It follows immediately upon the events in the fan fiction piece Absolution, Part I and concludes the story begun there.
SEX & VIOLENCE: Quite a lot of violence.
ABSOLUTION, PART II
by Christopher Härnryd
Augustus Caesar lay on his back and stared at the sword stuck into the wall above his head. He looked intently at the large, golden pommel, the equally golden cross guards set with huge emeralds.
Someone put a hand across his eyes and closed them.
Later, another hand, wearing a boxer’s leather strips, grasped the sword and tried to pull it out, without succeeding. Even bracing against the wall with the other hand made no difference.
“Leave it to the slaves, Tiberius,” a voice whispered, irritated.
“It’s Xena’s sword,” a fuller voice snapped back.
“Quite the philosopher, aren’t you?” the whisperer answered mockingly. “A more relevant issue would be to find Xena herself.”
And to himself, in such a low whisper that it was barely more than a thought:
“Where did you go?”
Xena tumbled head over heels through dark emptiness. A wind blew on her, or maybe it was just the speed at which she travelled. Sparse stars eyed her coolly, if stars they were. With little to look at and nothing to help her navigate, she still peered here and there, trying to discern something of interest in the void.
Time passed. Not long, but it felt like hours.
Then something changed. Her rotation slowed and she came to a halt, resting upon something. Where only emptiness had been seconds before, matter was congealing. The space filled slowly with dark brown colours. A floor formed under her feet. The stars died as emerging walls eclipsed them.
She was standing absolutely still in a large corridor or hallway. For a moment, she just took in her surroundings with senses starved for input. Then she looked quickly over her shoulder. The well-lit corridor continued straight into a blurry point in the far distance. She looked to the sides. The walls appeared to be made of stone, or perhaps Roman concrete. Several Xena-heights up were niches where small fires danced. She let her gaze trail upwards to the ceiling. It seemed far away.
She allowed herself the luxury of letting her gaze linger for a moment.
“It’s funny, Gabrielle. We’ve been through so much together. And even when I’m alone, I feel you. In here.”
She put her fist over her heart, not like a salute, but softly. Then she turned her attention back to the corridor and started to walk.
Not far ahead, the corridor appeared to diverge into two, one going straight to the left, the other straight to the right. As she neared the “T”, she began to run, not sprinter-like, but with skipping steps. Very shortly before entering the actual crossing, she jumped.
She rotated into the three-way nexus, above a sudden whirl of sweeping blades and stabbing spears that erupted in table-height. She landed at the wall that marked the end of the initial corridor, and whirled to face the dozen or so black and faceless shapes that had failed with their ambush. Swords and pole arms of many kinds were in their hands, and they brandished them expertly as they advanced upon her. But they were still somewhat in each other’s way and Xena gave them no time to get orderly about it.
Lunging forward, she grabbed the sword-arm of the nearest attacker. She made a half turn and backed into it, still holding its right arm stretched by the wrist. The human form tried to get at her throat with its free left hand, but she caught it and held it firm. Then she backed recklessly into the armed crowd, with her captive as a shield and battering ram. While not seriously injuring anyone, this disorganised them further. She slammed the back of her head into what would have been the face of her mantle passenger and snatched the sword from its limp fingers.
Then she screamed her challenge and began hacking furiously this way and that, slicing limbs, cleaving spear-shafts, ever changing the borders of her personal space with steel and momentum. A well-aimed spear nearly got to her head, but even as she gyrated out of its way, she grabbed the shaft with her left hand and pulled it violently further along its intended path, out of the hands of its wielder and deep into an axe-bearer on her right side.
Thus she continued, changing weapons several times by burying the first into an attacker. New ones were constantly coming her way…until all twelve were dead at her feet, not fully a minute later.
She looked right and saw the large corridor continue far away, with regular openings on both sides. She looked left and saw the same, but with one difference. Here, the floor was littered with black corpses, some lying next to each other, some many yards apart, but not thinning out anywhere nearby.
Even as she looked, a score more dark ones entered the left branch of the corridor. They came alone or in pairs from the nearest openings, none closer than twenty yards to her, none further away than eighty.
Without hesitation, she pulled out her Chakram and hurled it to the side with great force in an angle towards the wall. It bounced shrieking in a lethal zigzag path and passed enemy after enemy at neck height.
After it had done its killing, it rebounded against a corner and retraced its way. Xena caught it with a circular arm-movement, but she kept it in her hand as she strode down the left corridor. Sluggish, black fluid dripped from the metal circlet.
The shape crawled in the ceiling, in a most odd manner, facing down and seemingly holding on fly-like with elbows, back and heels. It held an axe with a curved handle in its black hand, and hurled it downwards. But the axe flew only a couple of feet before it stopped, still rotating, and fell back upwards to clatter alongside the reluctantly retreating featureless humanoid.
Naima moved her right hand slowly, but with exquisite smoothness, the palm facing upwards. Meanwhile, she was holding up her left hand, also with the palm away from her. Behind her was Ilmarinen with the severed lifelines of Xena and Gabrielle in his hands. Behind him in turn were the Fates, tending the Loom unconcerned.
“Won’t you do anything to help?” Ilmarinen asked the Fates over his shoulder. “These demons are invading you temple!”
“They are here…” the Girl began, ceaselessly pulling threads from the spherical weave.
“…only for you…” the Woman continued, accepting threads and passing them onto the Crone, who cut them short or gave them back to be reinserted among the others.
“…and what you hold,” she concluded.
Neither of the three looked up from their work at the four black shapes that crouched in the entrance, held at bay by some force, or the one that was moving up in the ceiling.
But a couple of moments later, they DID look up. Shafts of rainbow light descended, not exactly from the ceiling but from a point high in the air of the temple chamber. They hung for some moments like a striped curtain or a monstrous comb of iridescent glass.
Then something formed at their lower end, a table’s height above the floor. A luminous cocoon, or sleeping shape. No, not sleeping.
Gabrielle hung suspended in the air, brightly shining in many colours. Her mouth was open, but no scream could be heard. Next, the light disappeared and she fell to the floor.
Naima’s eyes did not leave the dark enemies at the entrance, but she began to move her hands and arms more rapidly. With astounding grace, she turned her wrists and fingers, indeed her whole body, so that she kept her palms outwards. One could almost imagine a slightly curved glass wall traced by the movements of hands.
The climber in the ceiling dropped to the floor, but was immediately swept backwards to the entrance and beyond. Its allies there had already been thrown out of sight.
Only then did she turn and kneel by Gabrielle. Gabrielle in turn was recovering somewhat from whatever pain she had experienced.
“I, I didn’t reach her,” she mumbled. “I heard you being attacked, and I couldn’t decide whether to go on or return…”
“Gabrielle!” half-screamed Ilmarinen.
“I’m all right, I think,” she cautioned him ruefully.
“No, you’re not!” he insisted.
Gabrielle smiled, but her smile evaporated as she looked down on her hand pressed against the floor for support. With eyes slowly widening in disbelief and fear she sat up and lifted up her hands in front of her face.
They were transparent, as was, indeed, the rest of her.
Xena stopped. A lot of black, faceless corpses were lying around in a circle. But something gleamed white among the dark flesh and russet floor. In the centre were two other beings, presumably dead, but different from the others. One was armoured in steel or silver from head to toe. The other, in contrast, wore only furs and leather, and even that only on her feet, abdomen and bosom. Xena stepped into the circle and crouched down beside them. The wounds and unblinking stares spoke of death. The person in heavy armour was male, unfamiliar. The other…
“Samsara,” Xena murmured. “When we finally meet each other as allies, you’re dead.”
A distant sound caused Xena to look up, her eyes wide and alert. The sound repeated. It was the clashing of metal weapons. She jumped to her feet and started running, yanking Samsara’s flint-tipped spear with her left hand from an inert chest as she passed by.
She ran towards one of the large side passages. As she rounded the corner, she glimpsed movement ahead, at the end of this new corridor. Again, an indication of colour showed among a mass of dead and three living black ones. Something was lying on the floor, but moving, clad in white, gold and red. The black ones were attacking it with swords and a spear, and being repelled, barely.
Xena hurled the Chakram in such a manner that it split in two halves, and as each half screeched towards a side target, Xena charged the middle one with her spear lowered. The Chakram halves reached their targets first, delivering fatal head strikes, but very shortly thereafter, the spear of Samsara pierced a turning faceless one through, and Xena lifted the wriggling enemy up in the air, over her head, and hurled the spear with its burden to the side with a snarl. The bounce of its landing had hardly began when she caught the returning halves, and reconnected them in front of her with a sharp click. She looked down at whom, or what, she had rescued.
It was a man, dressed partly for battle with long leather gloves and heavy boots, folded down at the rim. But the rest of his clothes were of fine fabric, bright yellow and with white lace at the neck and hands. The red she had seen was his blood. Somehow, he still had his wide hat on, with a proud, red plume. He also held his slender sword pointed straight at her, and it seemed that his sword-arm and his face were the only things alive on him.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” Xena said and put her Chakram on her belt-hook.
The man peered at her with more disbelief than suspicion. The tip of his sword wavered and dropped suddenly.
“Is this Athena, come to calm
a fallen mortal with words like balm?” he ventured. His voice was rough, but his enunciation excellent.Xena knelt by him:
“Athena’s dead. Name’s Xena. Here, lie still and let me check those wounds.”
“No need for that,” he commented, but made no move to stop her. “An old bear knows when his death is near.”
“You don’t happen to have a decent bottle of claret on your person?” he asked, wheezing with sudden hope.
“What you see is what you get,” she answered and her rapid examination slowed to halt as she realised that his wounds were indeed beyond her skill.
“Mon Dieu! A death in sobriety!” he coughed. “Would that Bacchus sweet would descend on rosy clouds and quench this thirst…”
“I think I know a different Bacchus than you,” Xena interjected with a raised eyebrow, but she continued:
“I take it you’re a bard?”
A spasm of pain delayed his reply, and when it came, his lips were flecked with blood:
“Yup. A battlin’ bard, you might say. Who fought his last this very eve.”
Xena gave him an odd look, but he continued:
“But never mind. Will you stay by me? Though dark, you light my final moments.”
Putting a hand on his shoulder, Xena sat down beside him and asked:
“What’s your name?”
“What!?” he sputtered. “My name unknown? This beak unnoticed!”
His nose was indeed large, hooked and bent slightly to one side.
“I truly am far from France. Cyrano de Bergerac, at your service, oh, ebon-armoured Bradamante!”
The way he said it made it absolutely clear that if he had had the strength, he would have made a sweeping bow.
“How are we faring?” he asked abruptly.
“Do you know why we’re here?” Xena countered.
“To fail miserably defending mankind, it seems,” he answered. “But, as some friends of mine used to repeat: one for all and all for one. There’s hope as long as one remains.”
“I passed by some others, dead.”
“Yes, Lancelot and that woman whose spear you used, I never learned her name.”
“Samsara,” Xena told him. “Were there any others?”
“Oh, yes,” Cyrano nodded, but the movement sent him choking. Xena steadied him and he could soon continue: “An African fellow, much like Samsara, and a most polite gentleman from the Far East. Carried only wooden swords, but seemed to manage. There was another Easterner as well, and one from the New World. We split up, and would rejoin here, but it was a while ago…”
“Cyrano, listen to me, do you now what we’re supposed to do here? I only know that I must fight.”
“Yes. Yes,” Cyrano mumbled. “There seems to be no end to those…things. Ah, this must be the famed cold of death if feel. I was beginning to think the classics lied.”
Xena leaned forward, one hand on his shoulder and gripped his hand as well:
“Tell me what I must do.”
“Go to the centre of…this. Find the high bridge and solve the riddle.”
His jaw began to slacken.
“What is the riddle? Cyrano? The riddle!”
“Create…something…out of nothing.”
He was already lying on the floor, but still a change came over him and he slowly collapsed into death. At the last instance, he moved his head a little and looked at something beyond her shoulder.
“Roxanne, you shouldn’t have come here…”
He was dead when this last outlet of breath ended, and Xena lowered him to the floor. After a few moments, she closed his eyes.
A silent instant later, she looked away from the corpse and began taking in the end of the corridor.
It was not another T-crossing, as it first seemed. Rather, the corridor opened into a huge room, liberally cluttered with broad, square pillars. One such pillar was near the entrance to this corridor and blocked the sight of most of the room.
She perceived a slight change in the far corner of her eye, which caused her to turn and whip her Chakram from the belt-hook. But she did not throw it and stared instead with bulging eyes.
Gabrielle came walking slowly through the wall. She seemed dismembered at first, since her clothes matched the dark red wall well and only her ruddy pale skin and sun-golden hair did register. But she emerged, whole, and yet not whole, because here, too, her body was transparent.
“Wait,” Gabrielle told Naima in the temple. “If I am at two places at the same time, why don’t I sense anything from that other place?”
“Because you are at two places at the same time,” Naima answered, still kneeling. “Nothing connects those places. Your body is half here, half there.”
“Okay. Now I still don’t understand.”
Gabrielle looked at Naima who rose and turned towards the entrance. Was there a shadow passing it by? It did not enter right now, at any rate.
Gabrielle shook her head and turned towards Ilmarinen:
“I need a reality check. Ilmarinen, tell me how you found us.”
He looked a little like a lost charioteer as he held the severed life-threads of Gabrielle and Xena in firm hands.
“Well,” he said, staring at her etherealness. “I had taken up my work as a smith to make a living while I pondered Xena’s whereabouts. Then suddenly there she was, galloping through my village and jumping over the ferry towards Rome. I borrowed a horse and got my sword, and though you had disappeared by the time I was on horseback, I figured you’d go to the Imperial Palace.”
He seemed as grateful as Gabrielle for a chance to relate to something easier to grasp than the otherworldly peril at hand. He cleared his throat and continued:
“It was easy enough to sneak in to the outer hall where everyone was waiting for an audience with Augustus Caesar. I came there just in time to see you storm out. But I was close enough to hear you whisper something about the Temple of the Fates.”
With this, he glanced meaningfully at Naima, but she remained turned towards the entrance, her serene half-smile in place as always. Gabrielle waited, but he did not seem to want to add anything more. She rose, and went to stand by the Loom.
“I hope Xena’s doing all right,” she sighed. As an afterthought, she added: “And Gabrielle.”
Xena hugged Gabrielle and echoed that sigh, but she choked the sigh abruptly when her arms went straight through her soulmate.
“I…can’t explain this,” Gabrielle stuttered. “I don’t know what happened.”
With forced calm she continued immediately:
“But I remember that Naima sent me to warn you. This is all a test, a riddle.“
Xena nodded.
“And your allies are all dead, but one. And you can’t trust the remaining one.”
“Oh,” Xena inclined her head. “Why not?”
“Naima said: not every ultimate warrior of the past or the future has been a noble hero.”
“Tell me about it,” Xena almost snorted, but she added in a gentler tone: “I’m happy that you’re here.”
“I shouldn’t have come,” Gabrielle beamed.
“Well. But it seems that the only thing you can touch is the floor. And if I can’t touch you, then maybe they can’t either.”
Xena made a gesture towards the many black corpses.
“So, they’re here too,” Gabrielle nodded to herself.
“This is where they are,” Xena clarified. “They come from here, or hereabout. I figure there are more to come before this is over.”
As if on cue a number of new ones began emerging from behind pillars in the large room.
“They’re called ‘hollow shades’,” Gabrielle commented hastily.
“No,” answered Xena and separated her Chakram into two curved blades. “They’re called ‘dead meat’.”
With that, she sprinted towards the nearest few and made the last steps in twin somersaults, her undulating battle cry on her lips.
She slashed horizontally at the chest of one, while at the same time making a vertical cut upwards that caught another in the face. A round kick sent the third one gliding on its back a few yards.
Crunching its throat with her heel, she hurried on to the next pillar where five more were readying maces. They moved to fan out, but she charged them and slashing, tumbling, shearing through weapons and felling the shades with savage sweeps.
Then she continued, leaping from group to group among the squat pillars, dealing death until the survivors had come too close for her to avoid them.
Gabrielle, who had retreated to the surreal safety of the wall, still peered out and saw this with frustrated worry.
But Xena did a seemingly mad thing, and with her back to a squat pillar, she turned and with a scream ran both Chakram-halves half into the red stone of that pillar. As a number of weapons closed in on her, she shouted again and jumped up to land with one foot on each Chakram-half.
She yanked a straight-bladed war-scythe from its owner and began flashing it to and fro among the heads and shoulders of her enemies. The hollow shades fell quickly, completely unable to bring their weapons in contact with Xena before her captured scythe swept them away.
When there were only three left, Xena kicked one in the head, so that it snapped backwards with a sickening crack, and ran the second through with the scythe. She prepared to leap onto the remaining one, an axe-holder, when someone else emerged from behind a pillar and shot it with a crossbow bolt.
Panting, Xena jumped down and retrieved her martial pitons, and stared hard at the person holding the crossbow, who approached leisurely.
Black and gold full-length coat, golden helmet, scimitar in belt, crossbow in hand, smiling lips. The face was unfamiliar, but in Xena’s mind, another face superimposed itself with the force of memories that burned unquenchably.
And try as she would, Xena could not entirely put the disbelief out of her voice when she said one word:
“Alti.”
The figure nodded in greeting, or rather tilted her head:
“Actually, it’s Kinjin now. But Alti too, of course. I’m always Alti to you. And at last you come to join my banner.”
Her deep voice was as congenial as ever, as tense and full of barely restrained scorn, malice and ambition.
“Nothing of the kind,” Xena replied. “I’m here to fight the darkness.”
“Of course you are,” Alti purred as she came within reaching distance of Xena and gracefully folded her arms across her chest. “You’re always fighting something. And this time, you’ll need my help.
“I don’t need your help,” Xena answered, her anger barely hidden by a layer of cold. “Not now. Not ever.”
“Oh, grumpy and vindictive, are we? It seems you needed SOMEONE’S help...”
Half emerged from inside the wall, Gabrielle flushed and angrily went to stand by Xena. Alti glanced with almost palpable contempt at the Bard’s approach before returning her attention to the Warrior Princess.
“I know who you serve,” Xena responded. “You showed me what you did to curse my child.”
“Did I? Do you?” Alti mused. “And all I remember is me conjuring the Son of Darkness to pollute your unborn son’s soul. Oh, I see. All this time you’ve thought me a worshipper of Him.”
“Where else did your powers come from?” Xena remarked.
“Really, Xena,” Alti answered, the first syllable almost a growl. “I’m so disappointed in your low regard for me. Are you saying that you worship sheep just because you eat mutton? You as much as do that, anyway. Constantly risking your life to save some idiot peasant from some calamity. Running around in circles trying to find someone you can blame and kill.”
“But I’ve had dealings with the Son, and the Father,” she said, tilting her head first left, then right, as she abruptly continued her earlier reply
“The Father,” Gabrielle whispered, but Alti heard and locked her eyes with her own.
“The Void,” Alti answered and spread her hands. Then she turned her Gaze towards Xena and continued: “The Hindu gods were philosophical about it. They knew that you can’t defend yourself against the Void by finding lost kittens and saving villages. So, they DID send me as a champion. And they did send you. Not Hercules. Because they knew well what you were capable of. Destroyer of nations, gods, families…
“Now, who’s being grumpy?” Xena commented calmly. “I would’ve thought you’d like the destruction of the world. Whatever happened to becoming ‘the face of death itself’?”
Alti’s smile disappeared. When she answered, it was like a chant with some syllables unexpectedly stressed:
“Make no mistake, Xena. I will not rest until I rule a devastated world under a fading sun and can lounge laughing upon the piled carcasses of all who followed or opposed me.”
Her smile returned:
“But this particular annihilation is not what I’m planning. What, and miss all the fun we’ll have in the future. You as the Mother of Peace, and who knows what else? They whisked me away just when I started to feel the pull of your pet Darshan. Now, that’s a fight she’s had coming for some time.”
“I’ve got news for you,” Xena said. “You’ll loose.”
“Oh, you think so?” Alti hissed. “Ever heard of something called…a feint?”
In an office in the Imperial Palace in Rome, two men sat on either side of a large sack of blue fabric. Their clothes were identical, white tunics with brown stripes, but one was a young man with short, curly, dark hair, and the other was much older, with even shorter and completely white hair. They had a table in front of them, with several low silver trays, each one half-filled with scrolls and folded papers. Perhaps because of this, the room was very well lit, with lots of torches in scones, and well fed braziers.
They were occupied with picking up more scrolls and papers from the large sack, opening them and briefly scanning their content before deploying them in one of the trays. Occasionally, the younger one would ask his senior colleague for help:
"A donation in ivory?"
"Captain Sejanus," the senior answered without looking up. The scroll was dutifully put in the correct tray.
"Prayer for His Majesty's health? That's for the head Hestian, isn't it?"
"Donation included?" the senior asked.
"No…nothing about a donation here."
"Central heating, then."
The tray with the most scrolls got an addition.
More questions, bored answers: "Captain Sejanus. Captain Sejanus. Central heating. Head Hestian. Central heating. Central heating..."
"Why are we doing this?"
"Eh? What was that? Ah. The stupidity of youth…very simple. Continuity. The Emperor might be dead, but everything else must continue. And when either lord Tiberius or senator Claudius assumes the throne, he will surely want both an update and a smooth-running court. So, we continue as usual. Augustus Caesar couldn't even at his most active answer all the mail he got on a daily basis."
They continued: "Central heating. Head Hestian…"
"Here's one from some religious leader…"
"From where?"
"Hard to see, Ambiguous? Amphibious?”
Annoyed, the senior snatched the scroll from the junior one’s hands.
“Give me that…Amphipolis. Let’s see…no donation. Central heat…”
The older man’s voice trailed of and he lifted the scroll closer to his eyes and began to read with increasing interest. A frown appeared and deepened rapidly, only to be replaced by raised eyebrows. When he had finished reading, he stared at the empty air immediately above the rim of the unrolled scroll.
“Central heating?” came a nervous suggestion from the junior scribe.
“Yes…” whispered the senior. Then he blinked and changed his mind. “No!”
With great determination, he crumpled the scroll in his hand and turned to a brazier on a stand at his side. He put the ball of parchment among the crackling embers and did not take his eyes from it until it had disintegrated into darkened flakes.
In the light of dimmer fires, Naima walked towards the entrance of the temple. Her bare feet made no sound on the smooth stones. But she stopped a few yards from the opening and looked sharply at the trees on the other side of the moonlit glade.
Within seconds, the shadows there began to move. They became humanoid shapes. Armed humanoid shapes. She raised her arms in an abjuring gesture, palms up front.
For a few moments, everything was calm, tense, apprehensive. Then the shapes took one single step forward. All of them. Dozens, scores, they all entered the glade with this one step. Naima bent her arms ever so slightly, and then thrust them forward again, forcefully.
Again, the stillness. Then the hollow shades moved one more step.
From their position back by the Loom, Gabrielle and Ilmarinen could only see the back of Naima and very little beyond, but they heard the soft thud of the first step. And the second. Gabrielle pulled out her sais, and found them as transparent as the rest of her. On an impulse, she turned to Ilmarinen:
“Hold still.”
And softly she touched his shoulder with the rounded side of one sai. It passed through like so much dream-stuff.
“That’s…bad,” she stated and glanced at the entrance and Naima.
Another thud resounded, slightly louder. A drop of sweat appeared on Naima’s temple, the only visible sign of effort. The hollow shades were out in the open now and took one more step. And one more.
From above they were a black crescent looming closer and closer to the entrance.
Cloaking her frustration with a thin veil of earnest reasoning, Gabrielle turned to the Fates:
“How can you be absolutely sure these shades will leave you or the Loom alone?”
“We know the Loom,” the Girl answered.
“We are the Fates,” the Woman continued.
“We are certainty,” the Crone concluded.
They looked up briefly as they answered in turn and then returned their attention to the Loom.
The footsteps outside were becoming louder, and it seemed that less time passed between each one. Gabrielle gave up on the Fates and ran towards Naima, ignoring Ilmarinen’s “Wait!”
Only a couple of yards of uncrossed glade remained before the entrance, and those shades with spears lowered them in preparation for an attack. Those with slashing weapons and clubs raised them.
“Naima!” Gabrielle near-shouted. “Can’t I help you? Can’t we do like in India and join forces and blast them with fire? We didn’t have to touch then!”
“No,” Naima responded. Remarkably, her voice was as calm as ever, even as the next step of the shades suddenly brought a jagged spearhead within inches from her chest. “Your life-force is divided. You have nothing to focus with.”
And she began retreating, backing gracefully as in a choreographed dance, still with her arms stretched out in front of her. The shades followed, keeping an even pace now that she herself moved. The spearhead wavered a little with the movement, but was never more than a foot away from her.
Wide-eyed and unable to hide her anxiety, Gabrielle rushed back to Ilmarinen and the Loom, and began looking around wildly.
“Don’t you keep anything here?” she asked the Fates without expecting or receiving an answer. “Sometimes it seems there are Hind’s Blood Daggers, Daggers of Helios, this and that of Hephaistus and who knows what lying around, but when you really need something spiritual…”
She eyed the scissors of the Crone, hungrily, but then the Fates all raised their heads, and Gabrielle had to avert her eyes from the collective stare of the guardians of destiny.
Her gaze fell on Ilmarinen’s back, and the ivory hilt that protruded from his scabbard. With her peripheral vision, she sensed that Naima’s retreat had reached the large, main room of the temple. The entrance was full of crowded darkness.
“Please….someone,” she breathed and lunged for it. Ilmarinen gasped as her hands closed around the hilt, but whether in hope of her succeeding or in outrage that she would take his sword, Gabrielle dared not speculate.
But when the sword came loose and let itself be pulled out and held by her incorporeal hands, it was Gabrielle’s turn to draw a hasty breath. The pale inlays on the dark blade showed the figure of a sleeping girl, that much she had seen during the confrontation outside. But this time, the image seemed fuller, more detailed.
Naima was now slowing down her retreat. She was on equal distance from the entrance and the Loom, and the shades were now entering the room and spreading to surround her. But the narrower hallway to the entrance remained dark with enemies. The spear was now only inches away, and its point moved upwards, to stay pointed at her throat. She bent backwards slowly, and began moving her hands and arms to encompass the widening field of enemies, just as she had done before. Another spear closed in towards her left side, a poleaxe towards her right.
As Gabrielle ran forward, holding the sword in two hands before her, she saw the figure of the sleeping girl change. It was now minutely detailed and suddenly, her hands, lying crossed over her chest, moved to the sides in a gesture of greeting and invitation. The eyes opened and looked into Gabrielle’s.
“Naimaaa!” Gabrielle shouted and then halted, convulsed and almost fell as raw life-energy arched blue from the tip of the blade to five separate points on Naima’s body, from forehead to lower abdomen. From her backwards-bent position, Naima straightened up with graceful balance and the shades tumbled back several yards.
“Anokin,” whispered Ilmarinen. ”What is this?”
“See that door?” Alti indicated with nod. A black door could indeed be seen through the maze of pillars. Alti continued: “Now. You go ahead, fight a fight, survive even.”
She took a step to the side and added:
“But eventually, you’ll come begging for my help, or send your pup to do it. And I’ll be happy to provide it to you, or her, for a price. You’ve heard the riddle, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Xena said. “Create something out of nothing.”
“Indeed,” Alti nodded. “It’s all part of the deal between the gods and the Void. Send humanity’s best champions to fight and have a go at the riddle. But I’m afraid there’s a catch.”
She waited and Gabrielle swallowed. Xena merely looked at the warlord-shamaness. After an interval Xena smiled very briefly and without humour:
“Yes, Alti, what’s the catch?”
“The answer isn’t love.”
“Alti,” said Xena slowly and with a trace of contempt. “What do you know about love?”
“What do you know about hate?” Alti instantly retorted vehemently.
The black door opened. Xena was faintly surprised by the ease with which it swung inwards at her merest touch. She peered inside, as did Gabrielle at her side.
If there was a corridor before her, its walls were of a deeper black than anything solid she had ever seen. If it was a bridge, then the abysses to the sides must be infinite.
“She’s right,” Xena said, after a short silence.
“About what?” Gabrielle asked and glanced over her shoulder. Alti could not be seen, but there were too many pillars in the large room to assume that she had left.
“If I fail at that bridge, I must ask her help,” Xena continued matter-of-factly. “And I must pay whatever price she sets. You understand that?”
Gabrielle nodded slowly and reluctantly asked the question she did not want answered:
“Do you know what she’ll ask?”
“Yes,” Xena replied. “What she figures will hurt me the most.”
“But can you be so sure that she’ll help even then?”
“No. I can’t. But if that’s our only chance, we’ll have to risk it.“
Gabrielle nodded again. Then she somehow managed a smile:
“You’ll think of something. You always do.”
Xena hesitated. Then:
“Yes, I always think of something. And that’s you.”
And there was a smile in her voice, even if it did not reach her features. She reached out with her hand, only to have it clutch thin air. Gabrielle half raised her hands, but lowered them again. Then Xena walked through the doorway and Gabrielle followed.
Something changed. High in the air, a bridge became visible, lit by a few fires in niches in its sides. Only the central part of the bridge could be seen, and only darkness at its ends. The light from up there, faint as it seemed, still revealed the nature of the path.
It was indeed a path, not a bridge. It was flanked by hollow shades, who stood so close to each other that everything beyond the first few rows seemed a coherent block of darkness. As far as Xena could discern, those blocks on either side stretched hundreds of yards, maybe miles or even further, but the light dimmed to total darkness at that distance.
The door immediately behind them slammed shut and the sharp bang echoed a long time. Then a voice, a whisper that tore like claws on naked nerves:
“Why are you here?”
“You challenged us, so here we are!” Xena said, every decibel ringing with confidence.
She put her fingers together and cracked her knuckles.
“We’ve done this before, you know,” she added.
“But I am no mere god, dying one.”
“That’s what Dahak thought, too. And I’ll leave the dying to your henchmen, if you don’t mind.”
But Gabrielle, standing close to Xena, could well see how Xena’s bravado was a show, meant to conceal her doubts. Maybe from her, she realised with a start.
“Dahak. Dahak made a mistake. You have no concept of how powerful a being such as he is. But he used half a dozen dying ones as his vessels.”
“While you concentrate on one at a time,” Xena nodded.
“No, not at all. On the contrary: WE ARE LEGION!!”
The whiplash rumble of the shout did not go away, but instead transformed into the hissing rattle of an immense army beginning to move.
Xena had the Chakram in her hand and flung it with a twist. Only one half of the disc left her hand, while the other half remained in her clenched fist. She assumed a stance of weaponless combat with her arms forming an X before her.
The Chakram half met the first wave as they closed in on Xena, and it shot in a semi-circle from one hollow shade to another so rapidly that its screech became and undulating rattle. Very quickly, the first row fell, and the Chakram rebounded on the wall behind Xena and began its journey in reverse, attacking the next row, which pushed on with heedless discipline.
A few more times, the cycle repeated, until the attackers came within striking range of Xena. Then she exploded into action, screaming and slashing wildly with one hand, even as she caught the flying half of the Chakram with another, immediately joining in. The closed door at her back made little difference; she could as well have been completely surrounded, by the number of attacks she had to fend off each second.
She deflected, dodged and kicked weapons out of the way, cut throats, skewered bellies and kicked heads, as the mêlée continued. Hollow shades with every kind of weapon pressing on, missing and being killed.
The jingling of frenetic fencing arose now and then as a particularly tricky combination of foes tried to draw blood, but she was always victorious within seconds and severed limbs and lives - if such they could be called.
A spear shot at her chest, but grabbed it from its wielder, kicked the shade over and planted the spear, tip down, firmly in the body of that one. She threw her right Chakram-half away. Then, she jumped up and landed side-perched on the shaft, like a scouting monkey, threw her remaining Chakram-half, and grabbed the shaft firmly with both hands. She started to propel herself round and round, half running, half kicking, using the near-circle of enemies as the inner surface of a wheel of death. All the while, the Chakram-halves skimmed the sea of shades like seagulls snatching fish upon fish, though the sea was black, the seagulls whirling razor tears and the fish crammed shoulder to shoulder.
Gabrielle, stunned by the surreal situation found herself run through, literally, by hollow shade after hollow shade, who treated here like so much air.
“I can do nothing at all!” she exclaimed to herself - though hundreds of shades must have heard her. “Stay and watch, give Xena advice that I don’t’ have, or go and chat with Alti.”
Above the steady thumps of boots kicking whatever passed for vitals among the shades, and of bodies collapsing, and the clatter of dropped weapons, Xena’s thrilling battle cry rose high:
“Alalalalalalalalalalalaaaaaaaeeh!”
Returning from its lethal odyssey, the first Chakram-half now raced back to Xena, who was still going round and round and round, felling or stunning foe after foe. But instead of halting, or releasing a hand to catch it, she flung her legs straight up, and balanced for a few moments upside down, holding the uppermost part of the spear-shaft tight. When the weapon came towards her, she kicked lightly with one boot, so that the toe passed through the inner hole of the tear-shape, and lodged it quite firmly onto her foot, like a side-turned skate. Still holding onto the spear, she bent her body and kicked the new, ever approaching shades with this new implement. Now each kick was a killing blow, no more stunning or merely unbalancing.
As the second half came flying, she caught it on her other foot. With an incoherent scream of gleeful battle-fury, she resumed the treadmill tactic.
After a while, the bodies piling up around her made it hard to continue, as the enemies had to struggle to get within striking range. Then Xena vaulted high and away, leaving the spear to collapse in splinters after the rough treatment.
She landed, feet first, on the tightly packed mass of enemies. Snatching a straight-bladed scythe from an attacker, and knocking him out with the butt-end, she then went on to skipping and running on the heads of the enemies. She had fought somewhat like this once before, standing on the heads of villagers to avoid touching the ground while she fought Draco, who had positioned himself in a like manner. But this time, the soles of her boots were bladed and it was no quarterstaff she used to tap the heads of the crowd, but the sharp steel of a scythe. Broad ditches of death opened behind her as she progressed, trampling and scythe-slashing. But the mass of hollow shades seemed endless, and the openings filled swiftly.
Gabrielle shook her head slowly, and then closed her eyes. The shades were taller than she was, and it was difficult to see beyond them.
A new sound made her look back to the door. It was opening, and the shades moved aside as if eager to accommodate the newcomer. As soon as the doors halted in an open position, they surged forward, however, eager to kill anyone in sight.
It was Alti. But she merely glanced at the milling masses and began to move forward, unconcerned. She was flying, leaning forward and with arms outstretched.
“Xena!” Alti called out, radiating mockery from the first syllable. “I see you’re enjoying yourself.”
She circled slowly around the moving Xena, who was treading heads and shoulders and brushing weapons and the limbs that held them aside with firm sweeps of the scythe.
“Because,” she continued. “It seems that the enemy is numerous. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were literally no end to them.”
Now she stopped her circling, and hovered just out of striking distance from Xena’s scythe:
“You’ve noticed the bridge? Fine. It’s up there the riddle must be solved. And it seems that it’s a little too high even for your famous leaps. You see, Xena? I can take you up there, easily. All you have to do…”
“Not interested,” Xena hissed as she continued her rampage.
Alti laughed but cut it off with a snarl:
“Have you forgotten the stakes, Xena? It’s the world and all the future of humankind! Oh, no, eventually you will accept my terms. But will it be now, or when you’ve fought the shades for…let’s say a month?”
She floated closer and continued in a lower voice:
“You haven’t even heard my terms…”
Xena snatched a halberd from the forest of waving weapons and stopped. As the shade under her feet collapsed, she began whirling her two large weapons, killing every shade near her and spinning a cocoon of cutting death around her. She fixed Alti’s gaze, her own eyes hooded with contempt. Through clenched teeth she spat:
“I don’t need to hear your terms! You can’t do anything to save the world; you’re a parasite that drains the life from anything you touch!”
Alti met her eyes in silence; her smile could have been amusement or a shield. Then, so suddenly that the shades did not move for an instance, Xena stopped whirling her weapons:
“Besides,” she continued in a normal voice with even a hint of mischievousness. “You’ve given me an idea.”
The shades rushed her then, but she pirouetted with the scythes, and they flew in every direction. As she kicked away first one, then another of her Chakram-halves, Alti narrowly dodged them, and retreated, frowning, until she was out of sight.
Xena jumped high, not nearly high enough to reach the bridge, but carrying her swiftly over a lot of shades until she landed nearly beneath the bridge. Though no longer blade-footed, the force of her impact felled the one she landed upon.
Gabrielle watched her jump and Alti’s departure, and ran towards Xena. She arrived to see her skewer four shades with one scythe, and force them down.
“Xena! I heard her; we don’t have a month!”
A Chakram-half howled past the startled Gabrielle, very close, and was caught by Xena, who pierced three more shades with her remaining scythe, and steered their collapse to immediately next to the first four. She lashed out with her recaptured weapon towards the ever-charging enemies.
“Don’t worry, I couldn’t last a month,” Xena half panted, half laughed. “Who do you take me for?”
“Well, you do use the term ‘impossible’ a little differently from anyone I know,” Gabrielle responded, moving to stand where she could see Xena, even if it meant having the Chakram slashing her immaterial bosom.
“Stand back, Gabrielle!” Xena said. “I know it can’t hurt you, but I’ve enough to think about without having to convince myself of that every time I run you through.”
“Oh! Sorry,” Gabrielle stepped back. It was all like a dream to her. The remaining part of the Chakram came back now and Xena caught it and put it to use quickly. “You have a plan, then?”
“Yes, I have now. It’s a bit extreme, but I can’t think of anything else.”
Cut, slash, kick, whirl, slash-slash.
“Fancy telling me about it?” Gabrielle asked, happily retreating into a familiar resignation from the ominous circumstances.
“You’ll see soon enough,” came the expected answer, and Gabrielle did that.
What she saw was nothing. At first. Xena remained more or less in place, viciously attacking anyone who came close. Since every shade tried to get to her, she was constantly busy. Corpses began to pile at her feet. After a while, Gabrielle noticed that Xena sometimes interrupted an attack to kick a falling enemy so it fell in a certain manner.
Soon enough, Xena was standing on several layers of dead shades. She had curved swords now in each hand, the Chakram hanging reassembled at her side. Hollow shades thrust at her with long pole-arms, and she deflected or disarmed. Those who came close she cut down.
A thought came to Gabrielle, but she dismissed it as morbid and bizarre. She watched her soulmate fight, but the plan escaped her.
But now, as a veritable mound of corpses was piling up under Xena’s feet, and the attackers had to climb a little just to be able to attack, and die, the thought returned. Gabrielle gasped and put her hand to her mouth.
“No! Xena, there has to be another way…” she whispered.
But if it was, she could not think of it. She could only stand and watch, as slaughter became construction work. Endless waves of shades attacked, climbed, was cut down in a variety of ways, died and remained on top of the earlier casualties. The mound of bodies grew, became a hillock, a hill…
Xena was now standing at a height more than half the distance to the bridge. And still the shades continued.
Up until now, every hollow shade had ignored Gabrielle completely. When one suddenly did not, she could only stare at it, as it stopped very close to her, folded its arms and seemed to stare back with its smooth face. Then eyes opened in the featureless blackness.
In an instant, it was Alti who stood there.
“And how’s Xena’s little light doing?” she asked. “Burning away the darkness?”
She moved her hand as if erasing a blackboard.
Gabrielle recovered and said with calm determination:
“Whatever you want, there’s no way you can hurt me now.”
Alti lowered her head and peered up at Gabrielle beneath the rim of her golden helmet. Then she said:
“There’s no need. In fact, all I want to do, is ask you why you can stand on the floor.”
“What?” Gabrielle asked, taken aback.
“Well,” answered Alti and continued in a relaxed, deducting voice, “You walk through the hollow shades. I bet you can walk through walls, too. But why don’t you sink? How come the floor feels firm against your feet?”
Gabrielle looked at her, frowning. Alti leaned forward, and Gabrielle straightened up involuntarily.
“There’s no reason,” Alti stated with glittering eyes. “No reason at all. You’ve just taken it for granted. While you doubted that your incorporeal body could touch shades, or touch your beloved Xena, or even the walls in front of you, it never occurred to you to doubt the ground on which you walk. Until now…”
She fell silent, but began to smile triumphantly. Gabrielle radiated confusion. Then she began to sink.
Her feet disappeared as if covered in mud, then her ankles, calves, knees. As she continued down, she tried to brace herself with arms and hands, but she could as well have tried to brace against water. Her face furrowed in disbelief, then began to flicker in a fear/anger exchange. She did not scream as she disappeared, and Xena, far away on top of her mound, did not hear.
Alti crouched down and pressed her palm against the stone where Gabrielle had vanished. She tilted her head and remarked:
“I sense you’ve some fond memories to keep you company.”
As for Gabrielle, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, an unstoppable remembrance rushed into focus, of undead hands clawing her down in airless slime in haunted Amphipolis. Chuckling, Alti reverted to the form of a hollow shade and set her course towards the mound.
Xena had just added a shade to the mound by a kick-thrust routine and half turned to dispatch a newcomer. But the new shade deflected her blade skilfully, leapt/flew to the side, and grabbed Xena’s arm.
And Xena was back in a room long ago, two warrior-thugs lying defeated on the floor, but she herself feeling only utter exhaustion and the poison from Callisto’s dart that rose like a vitriolic tide in her veins.
Recognizing this flashback for what it was, still Xena dropped to her knees, and lost one of her two scimitars to the depth surrounding the summit. Alti let go of her and hovered in front, fully recognizable again:
“Still too proud to beg my help, Xena? Even if it means loosing Gabrielle?”
Managing to stand, Xena’s eyes darted to the sides.
“You really shouldn’t let her out of sight like that,” Alti scolded gleefully. “Who knows what’ll happen?”
A climbing shade hewed at Xena with a halberd, but got it cut in half and the shade fell silently back with an open chest.
“What have you done to her?” Xena asked, fighting phantom exhaustion as well as real one.
“I opened her eyes, and curiosity killed the cat…well, there’s one less pussy to worry about.”
Xena shot up into the air, tumbling, and lashed out at Alti with her scimitar while in mid-air. Alti parried and flew higher, only to resume her earlier altitude when Xena landed again on the top of the mound. But Alti held her distance for the moment. Both women had bared their teeth, in smiles or snarls.
But Xena tore her gaze from the Black Shamaness and looked out over the sea of shades, her eyes wide and searching. She spotted a tiny opening in the vast crowd, slowly closing by the Brownian motion of the collected enemies. With a cry, she flung herself off the mountain of corpses.
She landed sprawling on the hollow shades, narrowly escaping a multitude of sharp points. With a motion much like swimming, she felled a few shades and got to her feet. Grabbing her scimitar two-handed, she started ploughing her way through the rest.
Alti laughed throatily, as she landed on the top of the mound and started kicking the piled bodies away. Xena ignored this and continued to hack her way towards the opening that was now gone. But she arrived and by a furious whirlwind attack bought herself a precious moment.
“Gabrielle!” she shouted. “You can hear me; I know you can!”
Then she had to fend off attackers, but she continued to try to communicate while she kicked and cut:
“Alti tricked you! It’s true you can sink through the floor, but you don’t have to!”
Clang, thud, jump, slash-kick-slash.
“If you don’t have a body, you have no weight; and you can fly, Gabrielle!”
The scimitar broke on a heavy mace, but she got hold of the bulbous weapon, killed its wielder, and began dealing bludgeoning death to all around her.
“It is all in the mind! You can fly! Come up to me!”
And, emerging as if from a deep dive with closed eyes and opening mouth, Gabrielle arose. She opened her eyes and drew heavy, immaterial breaths. Xena nodded, smiling, panting, and then hurled the mace from her. As it caught a couple of shades, Xena leapt up. She ran quickly, jumping from head to head, but only for transportation, caring little whether the shades remained standing or not.
The mound was still standing, but Alti was rapidly clearing layer after layer of bodies, and its height diminished steadily. Xena picked up speed and reached the foot of it, and began a furious ascent up its side. Alti hissed at her and hurled a dead shade down towards her, but Xena put up her hands and bounced it out and away from her. Then Alti took off and flew to the side in a wide arc, pulling her scimitar high. Xena redoubled her efforts and reached the top. Without hesitation, she screamed incoherently and jumped straight up, towards the high bridge.
It was a leap such as only Xena could ever do, but even as the underside of the bridge rushed towards her, she realised it was too far. Flashing up her Chakram- halves, she managed to jam them into the stony material of the belly of the bridge.
Then she was hanging there, holding onto the twin weapons, which, amazingly, held firm for the moment.
But now Alti swooped up. Xena pulled up her legs and kicked hard at the scimitar as Alti slashed at her. The boots connected and the scimitar went tumbling down towards the distant floor. A surprised shade met its demise there. But Alti pirouetted, infuriated, and struck out with her hand. In response, Xena locked eyes with her, and the hand halted, a fist’s length from Xena’s thigh. For a moment, Alti looked surprised. Then she snarled:
“A spiritual duel! You must be joking!”
And she straightened up and hung in the air like a dark spectre, her eyes boring into Xena’s. Xena clenched her teeth and bared them, and slowly worked one Chakram-half loose. With agonizing slowness, she reinserted it a little closer to the edge of the bridge. Alti took a hissing breath and drifted closer. Xena repeated her action with the other Chakram-half, and came still closer to the edge of the bridge. But by now her face was a contorted mask, breathing a thing of the past, and pain and exhaustion rapidly filling her world completely.
Then Alti reached out and grabbed her shoulder. Xena could do nothing. And the memory that exploded in her brain was a dark one. It was of Indrajit, the demon king, raising his blade, and she herself lying on the floor, stunned, weaponless. Then the blade fell and cut off her arm. Dead, nerveless, the arm fell to her side in the now under the bridge. She hung from just one hand now, shivering and screaming in outmost agony.
“No!” came Gabrielle’s answering shout, as she went up like a shooting star, blurring past Alti and entering Xena’s body.
Things slowed there in Indrajit’s chamber in far Lanka, and in the hall of the Void. The second blade descended, and the second arm was severed. Fingers slipped from the Chakram-half’s grip. Xena on the floor in Lanka murmured a name:
“Gabrielle…”
The red gloom of the demon king’s sanctum paled to mild sunlight. And with her strength reborn, Xena stretched out her hand and grasped the Chakram-half, halting her fall. Alti withdrew in surprise a few yards. Their eyes were no longer locked in psychic grappling. Xena yanked the other half loose and rocked her body towards the lower edge of the bridge, where she jammed it in place again. She now tore the first half loose and swept short arcs of deflective metal against Alti’s attempts to approach anew. When Alti backed off once again, Xena rocked back under the bridge, and kicked off with her legs, to swing out from under the bridge, and up. She let go of the half that was presently lodged firmly in place, and tumbled up a few critical yards. She caught the upper edge of the bridge with her free hand, and clawed herself over the side.
As she struggled to her feet on the even, grey stone of the bridge, she shouted:
“All right!” she shouted. “Are you listening? Are you watching?”
Then Alti came up over the side, her hands curled into claws raised high, eyes wide, mouth open, her whole appearance projecting nightmarish threats. But she stopped as if she had slammed into a solid wall. A presence was leaning over the bridge suddenly, a deepening of the darkness, a slow throbbing of white noise like a waterfall turned on and off. Xena staggered but recovered. Then came the whispering voice:
“What can you create out of nothing, dying one?”
Xena bared her teeth in what was not a smile, and stretched out her hand in front of her, fist clenched. Then she slowly opened her fingers and growled:
“I can do this.”
And she turned her hand so that the palm faced upwards:
“And this. I can act. Whenever I or anyone else acts, something is created that wasn’t there before.”
She let her arm fall to her side and stared into the darkness. For a moment, everything was frozen. Then, to her side, Alti disappeared in the distance, a shrinking, screaming dot. And then the bridge itself began to fade, and there was nothing beneath it, no mountain of flesh, no stone-like floor.
And now everything was gone.
Gabrielle jolted and threw her head back. Multicoloured light streamed from her open mouth, from her eyes that stared blindly, and then from the heart of her being. She nearly dropped the sword, but managed to hold on to it. The light went out, for the moment, and she lowered her head and relaxed somewhat. When she looked up at the shades held at bay by Naima, the narrow arcs of light, which connected the sword with Naima’s body overloaded. Brilliantly white with emerald auras, they became thick as constrictors. The surge threw back the shades and held them pressed flat against the walls of the temple, or, in the case of those near the opening, simply blew them out of the building.
Even Naima caught her breath, but smiling. Gabrielle was whole again. Then, the Fates looked up as one:
“It/is/done.”
The hollow shades were no longer there. Something began to glow inside Ilmarinen’s clenched hands, shining through in piercing yellow and the dim red of illuminated flesh.
“Open your hands,” the Girl said.
“Let go,” the Woman continued.
The Crone was silent. Ilmarinen did so, and the life-threads of Xena and Gabrielle were whole once more, and the pull of life swept them into the spherical mass that was the Loom.
Xena laid a hand on Gabrielle’s shoulder, and they both looked at Naima, who turned towards them and lowered her arms. Then Ilmarinen came to stand next to them, glancing at all three of them. Gabrielle returned the sword to him. He accepted it gravely, but froze and stared at the changed figure on the blade. After a long moment, he began blinking at sudden tears, and lowered the sword. He bowed to Gabrielle, who bowed back. Then he looked at Xena. She parted her lips, as if to speak, but no sound came. Ilmarinen continued to look at her, but then gave an almost imperceptible nod and turned away and strode out of the temple.
“Why did we have to meet on this godsforsaken spot?” Tiberius asked angrily.
He, Claudius, and Xena, now wearing her sword again, were standing on top of a large boulder on a rocky shore. The smokes of Rome blended with the overcast sky in the distance further along the coast. Below them, waves crashed and sprayed foam high in the air.
“This is between the three of us,” Xena answered. “Neither your thugs among the bushes, nor yours, Claudius, in that cave, will be able to hear a word we say, and that goes for everyone else too.”
“You have decided, then?” Claudius ventured, his enunciation compensating for the lack of voice in his whispers.
“Not yet,” Xena said. “It’s all the same to me if Rome gets a brutal general or a shrewd assassin as emperor. Rome isn’t the world and never will be.”
Scowling silence greeted her words. She licked her lips and continued, her voice thick with scorn and something like fatigue:
“I once thought that a decent person on the throne could change Rome to a force for good. I was wrong. So, I’m done with king making.”
After a brief pause, she continued:
“But there’s one thing I’m interested in. Something I owe someone. What will you do about the Elians?”
Tiberius snorted:
“Those freaks? Nothing. They’re laughable and pathetic. I won’t do a thing either to help or harm them.”
Claudius was frowning, then smiling:
“I, on the other hand, will be most interested in them. I’ll keep a close watch on them to make sure no one molests them, and certify that they don’t do anything unlawful or disruptive.”
Xena took the slightly crumpled scroll from her belt.
“Here,“ she said. “I’ll hold you to your words.”
And Tiberius accepted the scroll, a surprised look on his face. Before he had the chance to say or do anything else, Xena suddenly vaulted backwards off the boulder and disappeared from sight, leaving Tiberius and Claudius to glare at each other.
Xena was walking slowly away from the beach, quite a distance from where she had chosen the new emperor. It was the beginning of a forest, but the trees were still far apart. Her wet hair clung like the shadows of branches to her head and neck.
She halted, and glanced up. Uneven tears of bright blue began to appear in the grey blanket of sky above. A handful of birds soared like black stars of daytime.
“Octavius,” she whispered, using Augustus’ original name. “I don’t know whether you’re in Tartarus or in the Elysian Fields. But I know that you can hear my thoughts.”
“I came to you, raging, after I learned what you did to my daughter. But my rage was blind. In my blindness, I couldn’t accept what Eve told me: that you had been forgiven, and that things should’ve ended with that.”
“Punishment? I know the punishment guilt can inflict on you. Nothing else comes close.”
“And now, you’ve taken part of my own guilt from me; the guilt I felt when I thought that it was my taint of darkness that had warped Eve into the Livia who caught Ares’ attention.”
She spotted Gabrielle on a horse coming out from among some trees further inland. The Bard led another horse along by the reins. She caught sight of Xena, smiled and waved.
Xena remained still for a couple of moments, and added in a low voice:
“I once saw a man condemned to Tartarus for a lifetime of indifferent evil, despite a final act of self-sacrificing goodness. I hope the same rules governs your fate; that the whole of your life decides, not just a single act.”
Xena swung herself up in the saddle.
“Potidaea?” Gabrielle asked, just to be sure.
“Potidaea,” Xena nodded, and added smilingly, “By land.”
“Good!” Gabrielle exclaimed, the word coming out quickly yet gaily.
They turned their horses around and disappeared into the forest.