Xena's decision

15. Xena's decision

"Ares" Saion called out. He was standing there with little Kalian in a steady grip, a knife against our son's exposed troth. And not just any knife, but a knife of Adamantine. The god-killing material. "Ares, watch this, and then you'll know just how it feels to lose a kin."

But Ares was faster than the light. The next moment Saion traded his bragging speech for a horrendous yell as he clasped his left eye, from where another knife was protruding, another Adamantine knife. And the chocked Anatolian let go of Kalian who came running up to me with a whimper.
"Mommie, mommie," he was crying and I knelt to take him in his arms, caressing him hard, burying my face in his dark whirls of hair, to not show my state of chock. Behind me Xena was almost wailing out Zeus' name. But Ares went over to Saion and grabbed him by the arms with fists of steel, forcing the intruder to drop his knife and then to fall down on his knees in Ares' unrelenting grip. The God of War planted a knee right in the ribs of Saion, made something go 'snap' and had him lose his breath and start couching and belching.

"You're a sorry asshole if you think you could get away with something like that. Coming here and threatening my son, I should tear your head off and shit down your windpipe for that. Lucky for you I only removed your eye and a single-minded self like you don't really need two of them to look at the world anyway." Saion was retching but he was far from done with yet. He somehow managed to get his left arm free from Ares and used it to remove the knife in his eye and instead aim it at his adversary's tight.
"Ares!" I called out, but my beloved had not failed to notice Saion's try. He grabbed the Anatolian around his wrist and forced him to let go of the knife and then he kicked it way out of reach.

After that he pulled the Anatolian's head backwards and leaned over him with a sneer upon his face:
"You're such a sorry excuse for any kind of god, avenger or whatever you feel like calling yourself. But I pity your father or you'd be dead by now. So off with you and do never show your ugly face around here anymore. And - by the way, that eye won't generate. My control over Adamantine made sure of that."

Then Ares turned Saion around, lifted him up in the air and threw him - somewhere - helping along with a forceful kick in the butt. That was the last I saw of Saion, because Ares sent him trough the dimensions back to Rhembosia and the diminished pantheon of his father. It all had taken less than a minute. And I, who was still cuddling the crying Kalian, knew that there was something I had to do as well.

With my son in my arms I walked over to the fallen Dark Warrior and let go of Kalian with one arm, freeing a hand which I used to slide the arrow out of its wound, pushing aside tissue telekinetically as I did so, to not damaging it even more.. Then I turned Sthenephon over and looked at his pale face. Ares came over and leaned over us.
"He's not...?"
"He's still alive, dear. Let me handle this."
"Mommie, please save him." Kalian was pleading with a little voice. And I felt Xena behind me too.
"He has lost a lot of blood" she said. "Nari, can you...?"
"I can do this." I reached out with my hand over the wound; this was after all a piece of cake compared to Ikaton.

Carefully I knitted his tissues together again, and measured his blood loss. I would have to replace that too. In response to my treatment Stenephon's lids fluttered open, and then he was looking at me with curious chestnut eyes.
"Goddess Narinda... Didn't I die? I saw Hermes' Highway down under. Charon was there with his ferry..."
"No, you're alive and kicking, old pal!" Ares smiled. "Didi is performing her miracles again."

Sthenephon began to sit but I laid a hand upon his broad chest.
"No, wait!"
"What?"
"He's okay now, isn't he?"
"I feel fine, Narinda, I actually feel I can..."
"I said wait!" I added steel to my voice, using my entire medic's authority. During my healing I had seen what was wrong with this soldier. The blood. He had leukemia. His cells had gone renegade upon him and he would have been dead in less than a year if I didn't take care of him.

Breathing in and concentrating I started to Heal. I had only cured leukemia once before, upon a young woman back in the first year after coming here to Darangorlad. I had worked with her for nearly half a day and it had almost taken all my strength away. I had been exhausted after that battle, and now I feared the same for this event. But something seemed to have happened back there in Rhembosia when I healed Ikaton. I had grown stronger, and become more able to concentrate and direct my energies down the right paths and into the right parts of both the physical and spiritual body, using the Earth energies surrounding me as leverage. Now it took me less than an hour to rid this man of his decease.

As I was finished Ares held out a cup with crystal clear water to me. He had learned what I needed after a deed like this, my kind beloved. I gulped it down and when I felt too weak to replace the water Ares did that for me too. He had squatted down to my left while Xena was to my right holding on to Kalian. And Sthenephon, who had understood to keep quiet up till now couldn't help asking:
"Did that arrow really pierce me so bad?"
"No, it was a rather clean shot, passed just on top of your lung, and severed some arteries which only took me minutes to heal. No, this was something entirely different. An infirmity which might have forced you across the Styx long before it really should've been due, my friend. And not a way for a soldier to go either. You should almost consider yourself lucky for that arrow, or I might not have noted that you were unwell.   

¨*¨*¨

"We call it The Cancer where I come from," Xena said and broke herself a bit more bread. "Means crayfish. Don't ask me why, it's just a scary name for a scary decease."
"And it was killing Sthen?" Ares asked.
"As sure as one of your blades" I replied. "Not as fast but cruel and harsh, the terminal part is often horrifying for those affected. Falling on a battlefield with a spear in your guts would seem like a bliss compared to that way to go."
"And the call me cruel for bringing people at war" Ares huffed. Xena laughed in her usual husky way:
"Don't give us that sorrowful look, God of War! One death does not excuse the other. Well in most cases not."

Kalian had been checking on Sthenephon who was resting in the able hands of Meliklea. Now our son came running back and stopped in front of his father, and looked upon him with the five year olds inscrutable and curious brown eyes while he grabbed the last of the cookies on the brass plate.
"Dad?" he asked, "Why did you let that man go? The man with the knife? Why didn't you kill him?"
"There was no need to. He was never able to harm you. "
"Ares, he had Adamantine" I looked at my beloved while lifting Kalian up in my lap. "I admit you were quick out there but..."
"Yes, I know well it was Adamantine. But it takes more than just a metal to kill a god. You must know the right way to manipulate the matter so it affects the soul bindings and make them become cut off from the body. Saion did not know how to do that. Which he would have found out had he tried to use the knife against our little Hero. "

"You should have killed him anyway!" Kalian stated and wolfed up the cookie in one single bite.
"Why?" Ares lifted a brow, almost smiling and Xena just looked surprised.
"You'd look soft otherwise." Kalian stated with food in his mouth. "And a war god shan't be soft."
"Kalian" Ares said. "There are times when hardness works best and other times when it's better to be a bit soft. Look here!"

Ares reached out and plucked an orange and an egg out of the food basket. Then he turned and dropped them both to the floor. And while the egg smashed against the tiles, yolk and white pouring out around the crushed shell, the orange rolled away until it came to rest against the yonder wall, gleaming colourfully in the sunlight.
"Now what?" I asked, Kalian giggled and Xena rolled her eyes.
"See that egg was hard," Ares said. "While the orange was soft. And see for yourself which fared best."
"The Orange" Kalian giggled. "But... The egg was soft inside. What if you're hard all the way trough?"
"Then you'll eventually become fragile" Ares replied. "You just ate the last cookie little Hero; otherwise I'd show how easily a fragile thing breaks. While hardness breaks softness bends - and lasts longer. I'll have to confess it took quite some time for me to grasp this concept too. I wanted to be hard all the way trough as a young man. And thus I broke several times. "

"What was the need to be soft with the Anatolians then?" Xena asked.
"It's a bit complicated" Ares went on "But the message I sent by just removing Saion's eye instead of his soul was 'I'm not afraid of you enough to feel the need to kill you'. To his dad I told that I had no inclination to go on with further killings of his pantheon. After all Saion hadn't really done anything against me save for that vain threat against Kalian."

"So he couldn't have killed me?" Kalian asked his father. "Could he hurt me at all?"
"With the Adamantine he could have injured you, made you pain and bleed a bit. But there's no way I'd let him do even that, dearest child."'
"Steel can't hurt gods at all?" Xena asked and Ares shook his head. "Not at all. It doesn't even pierce. It just slides off the spiritual shielding."

"You're a lucky bunch" Xena sighed.
"Yes, sometimes we are" the God of War replied. "But dying the way Ikaton would have died hadn't Narinda been there would've been much more painful than a hundred of deaths by that leukwhatsitsname, the crayfish decease. Not to mention that he would never reincarnate the way all mortals do eventually. His soul would be lost forever."
"Why?" Kalian asked.
"The Neverunder areas are waste like - like comparing the whole world to your pocket."
"Ghee - wow - cool!" Kalian again of course.  

"So I take it you could get lost down there," Xena pondered.
"Yes" Ares replied. "I know of gods who went that way. And others who went after them to bring them back. No one ever saw any of those poor souls again. They're lost there forever, endlessly walking through the scariest and most desolate landscapes."
"But how can you know what it's like? If no one have returned to tell?" Xena again.
"Actually there's one who did. My father went down there by the end of the Titan wars. To save some gods who's powers could change the course of that war, give the Gods an upper hand. He's the only one who ever made it back, so grand are his powers. But he more or less refuses to talk about it. It must've scared even him. He also told us Olympians once that even if you should find some lost god or goddess out there somewhere, they are most likely to have gone mad in that place where no normal laws applies. Where even time doesn't run the way we know it."

"Yes, I experienced just a little fragment trough that hole when I saved Ikaton" I told. "It was absolutely terrifying. And at the same time almost - beckoning. Nauseous. I felt strangely attracted to it, yet today I know I will never want to see it again."
"I know the feeling," said Ares. "It's the adrenaline rush upon facing real danger. Immortals seldom gets the chance to experience it, but those who have will never forget it. "

"Have you, dad?" Kalian wanted to know.
"It has happened."
"When!"

Then Ares started to tell a story about when he had gone up against a beast called Brenephon in his youth. That monstrous being had almost killed him but his sister Athena had come to his rescue and then Zeus had healed him - as well as giving him quite a lesson about knowing your enemy and not biting off more than you could chew.

¨*¨*¨

"Xena" I asked later, when Ares had taken Kalian with him to practice with knifes. "Ares wondered... he said he could ask Apollo or Asklepios to find you a job in Greece, should you feel inclined to follow us."
"You think - after all this...?"
"Yes" I nodded. "When I'll be gone... I heard that both Dorek and Evora died. You'd be so lonely out here. So I thought..."
"That's very kind of you," my friend said. "But I must - turn the offer down. I am needed here. If I would leave too, Darangorlad will be totally out of medical personnel. And I don't want that to happen."

¨*¨*¨

"I sort of guessed she'd say that" I told Ares while toying with a lock of his hair. I was lying on top of him in the bed in the dark of the early night; we were spent by lovemaking and just resting in the presence of each other. Ares had his hands on my buttocks, squeezing them lightly and it felt so fine that I had hard to concentrate. "She's very aware of duty and tries to follow her calling no matter what. I hope she can find life here as rewarding as it ought to be. After all she's 60 now and she has perhaps 20 more years. Those should be good to her I think."
"And you, Didi? You won't follow duty anywhere?"
"I'd rather follow you, dear."
"I love the sound of that!" he said and kissed me upon the tip of my nose.

"Ares?" I said after a little while of silence, "that knife stunt? What did you do to prevent his eye from healing?"
"I cut off the vitality strains. It's a bit like how you work but the other way around. A skilled healer like yourself can probably fix him, but I doubt there are healers that good among the Anatolian gods. After all they failed to see even what was wrong with Ikaton."
"Yeah I saw the strains snap, I didn't think it was possible."
"Good training with Adamantine can make it happen. My sister Athena discovered the trick by pure luck by the way."

"How?"
"She once visited a place called The Mimer Well. It's a volcanic hot well located by the far end of the Black Sea, not far from Ashramong. Its water is a very powerful tool for extreme farsight and Athena was going to look for some events way back in time. There's something with the acrid in the water that gives it certain strong magic abilities, especially when you mix it with divine ichor. Someone better than me at these things can probably explain how it works. So Athena carried a knife of Adamantine with her for drawing ichor from herself. Instead - well she had just got there when this god Odin arrives, looking for wisdom he said. And then he tried to rape my sister. But Athena was having nothing of it and planted her knife firmly in his right eye, twisting it in like six dimensions! Naturally the bloke fled head over heels and the last thing I heard he's still one eyed. "

"Oh, that's scary! Now I'm going to have nightmares!"
"Didi, my dear healer, don't worry, I happen to know the perfect cure against nightmares." Then Ares started to nibble my ear and neck, and moved me so I came to lie right on top of him. At that moment I felt that he was becoming hard once again. He sure had a stamina that even other gods would envy!

Suffice to say I didn't have nightmares that night.