Micronesia, Guam Island, January 11, 2004, 0:15 AM (Jan.10, GMT 02:15 PM+10:00)

The floating barge lined up slowly along the beach of Pristine lagoon. The D-Jay announced that the party was over, first in English then in Japanese, and thanked the guests for their presence. The landing stage dropped and the participants went back to the dry land. Some of them headed for their hotels, others made for the few bars of Guam.

Joao Del Tauro hesitated a little. He felt he had drunk already too much, and was not sure he should follow his two army mates, Brad and Tom, in their round of the bars. These two guys could drink much. More than him, and it was little to say. Joao declined their invitation, saying that he was going to walk a while on the beach and that he would join them later.

Joao, just like his two friends, was a G.I. of the U.S. army, come to this Garden of Eden for his holidays, which was a part of the American territory. Thanks to his job, he had got a very good discount on his hotel price.

Joao was born in Sao Paulo, in Brazil, second son of a rather poor family. They had emigrated in Miami, in the State of Florida, when he was five years old. His parents had worked hard to send the four children to school, but they had managed to ensure a very correct education to them. Child, then teenager, Joao seemed to be more interested in playing sports rather than studying. Anyway, he managed to graduate from Senior-high, then called his parents for a serious talk, the evening of his seventeenth birthday, and announced them that he would join the American army. His parents didn’t try to stop him. The scholar background of Joao had never been the one of a thinker. And it was enough to see him (2m 10, all in muscles) to understand that action would be more appropriate for him rather than university.

And it’s how Joao had joined the army at seventeen years, and had spent 10 years as career soldier, then officer.

Joao was now alone on the beach, lit by a weak moon flash. A flying fish jumped out of the water and felt down in the black floods in a lapping. Joao would have liked to enter the black but delicious water. But he wouldn’t do it. In spite of the anti-sharks nets put up offshore, the big predators were not so far away from the beaches, their mouth with their sharp teeth like daggers ready to taste anything that would look like a turtle. And he would certainly look like a “big turtle”, to the shark’s point of view…

But after all, soaking his feet wouldn’t kill him. Joao removed his espadrilles, rolled the bottom of his trousers to his calves, and entered the water. It was mild; hardly more refreshing than the atmosphere, but the feeling of caress on his feet and his ankles was pleasant.

“Amalric!” shouted a voice close to him.

Joao turned around, surprised. A woman, entirely dressed in black, was looking at him, anxiety painted on her face. She held tight a gold amphora.

“Amalric! The destiny will finally allow us to be together again... ” she shouted with a plaintive voice, looking once again in his direction.

“Just a girl who drank too much!” grumbled Joao. He turned around without paying more attention to the young woman. He started with surprise, seeing that, in front of him, upright in the water, a man was also observing him. He was quite tall, perhaps taller than him, and strongly built.

Joao blinked eyes with disbelief.

A moonbeam lit the face of the man. His eyes shone of anger and his mouth drew a cruel line.

Joao moved back instinctively as he saw the man walking in his direction. He thought he was definitively in danger when he made out the strange outfit of the tall man: a kind of dark armor. However he didn’t try to escape or even to move.

The man stopped two steps of him, his piercing black eyes looking at him.

“Will you be able to resist me at least one minute?” he asked to Joao.

Joao felt a shiver in his spine just by hearing this voice. It was so full of anger, as he had never heard before.

He squared up instinctively, raising his fists in front of his head. He avoided a first punch, then a second.

The man had punched him quickly…so quickly that Joao had almost not seen him moving.

By reflex, Joao returned a first punch, targeting the chest of the man. But the giant stopped his fist with a hand, and threw an amused glance to him. Joao sent him a second punch, this time in the face. The man moved back under the shock, and then shook his head, like if he wanted to get rid of a dizzy spell. A black blood ran of his nose, which he cleaned by running his tong on his lips, tasting the liquid. He outlined a broad smile, showing what stunned Joao on the spot. Canines, sharpened like that of a carnivore. Two planted in the lower jaw, and two others in the upper jaw.

The fear of Joao increased when the noticed the change operated on the face of the man. He had become monstrous: his features had grown hollow, as if the bones of cranium had pushed ahead.

Overwhelmed by fear, Joao moved back.

“Congratulation, you fought one minute… But now, let’s start the wild things!” laughed the man in black.

He walked closer, and found himself less than a meter from Joao.

Mate, it is the time to run away, and… Don’t look back! Joao told himself.

However his body refused to move, and he staid there, breathing heavily, staring at the man, who raised his right fist. Joao carried his two arms in front of him, to protect himself from the punch that he knew, would be terrifyingly strong and painful.

He actually felt that his arms were to shatter into a thousands pieces. Then the punch reached his chest, and sent Joao toppling back, whereas an atrocious pain spread in his whole body

He ran up against the sand violently...

“It’s finished…” said Ishara.

Glaucus observed her whereas she came to the victim.

She had suddenly recovered all her wits about her... and the majesty she had the first time when he saw her, many centuries ago, in a black street of Lugdunum (2). The night　she appeared in front of him, and chose him as servant.  This night when the Babylonian princess granted this obscure Roman soldier immortality and a terrifying force.

And the grace to become her most faithful and devoted servant...

Glaucus leaned on the body and looked at the contracted face of the man. He felt a little less despise for this one than for the previous guys, who he had cut down without any effort. This man had stricken back, made him move back... Glaucus had foreseen the possibility of a combat with a suitable adversary. How long since the last time he had felt this violent excitation?

Aldebaran raised the head, his face distorted with pain. His eyes were blurred, but he made out a shore, the clearness of the moon reflecting in the dark water. He heard a soft backwash also.

He let his head leaning on the sand, exhausted.

He had returned among the livings, in a body of flesh and blood.　By which miracle, he didn’t know at all.

How long he would survive from his wounds, he didn’t know neither.

Thailand, Ayutayah, January 10, 2004, 11:00 PM (Jan.10, GMT 4:00 PM+7:00)

Calden Murray adjusted the height of the stand, and installed his expensive digital camera at the top of it. In front of him, the ruins of a temple with a pyramidal roof were gleaming under the neon lighting, in a mix of white, saffron and ochre. Calden made his best to adjust light and contrast, in order to immortalize the best as possible the sublimate lighting of these ruins, when a girl came and asked him if he wanted her to take a picture of him in front of the temple. Calden smiled to her, and indicated that he was not interested. Without taking offense of his refusal, the girl approached a couple of tourists and proposed them the same service...

Calden concentrated again on the adjustments, and then, all was ready. He stopped his breathing at the time he pushed the button. A light click and the picture was on the box.

Calden raised and readjusted his cap on his hair. His tension was still high: now, he had to check if the picture was okay. He put the camera in slideshow mode. Even in maximum zoom, the picture was clear.

New sigh, of satisfaction this time.

Calden stayed there to contemplate this splendid temple, his hand cherishing the digital camera. Suddenly his thoughts brought him back to the Buddha’s head, hidden in the roots of a tree, that he had seen this afternoon. He would have liked to take it in, but a group of Japanese tourists had completely hidden the scene...

But he had a good chance that night to take the picture... Calden caught the stand and the camera, and walked in the direction of the ruins where the head was, firmly decided to make one of his best shot.

Calden was a lawyer, specialized in business contracts. Born in Wimbledon, in the suburbs of London, Calden had often lived in Asia and in the Middle East, with his family - two sisters and a brother. His father, diplomat, had found himself sent several times in Turkey, in India, in Japan, in Thailand, in China and in Taiwan. When he was a child, Calden had been caught by the passion for photography, and had always enjoyed taking pictures of the landscapes of Asia, a continent which he liked particularly, perhaps more than the foggy England.

However, he had enjoyed living in London, where he had come at 18 to join one of the best London Universities. He had started to work at 23, and had almost never lifted his head from business contracts during the past four years. Well, Ok, except to look at his office colleague, who had become his girlfriend…But he had to put behind him travels, what was for him a real loss of liberty.

Then he had cracked up. He had given his notice to the Law Office, and had decided to take a sabbatical leave.

And it’s how, at 27, he found himself taking pictures of the temples of Ayutayah…

Calden found the place where the head of the Buddha was, without any difficulty.

The head was imprisoned in the roots of a tree, which Calden ignored the name. The roots covered the top of the cranium and a part of the right cheek. A purple flower brightened this gray portrait. A flower brought there by a tourist, touched by the calm expression of this stone face, slowly absorbed by the vegetable universe. Or maybe by an inhabitant of Ayutayah, come to pay homage to a decapitated divinity, whose head had probably been abandoned there by a robber leaving in a hurry the places of his larceny.

Calden raised the head, and looked around him. Actually, all the statues of Buddha were decapitated. 

He installed the stand in front of the wooden fence, which protected the head. He would have preferred to take the picture the closest as possible, but he couldn’t… He wanted to take it in slow motion, and needed a stable support.

New photographic adjustments... New sighs…

Calden heard a cracking behind him, and turned around, feeling vaguely a presence. But he didn’t see anybody. Thinking that it was just his imagination, he came back to his adjustments and his observation on the Buddha’s head.

The digital screen of the digital camera crackled, then became black. Calden rose, surprised and a little dissatisfied. What was happening to his precious device? He looked at the screen and pushed the button to switch it on. New crackling, but the screen re-ignited. Looking at it, Calden felt almost his hair to be drawn up on the head: the face of a young black-haired woman, who was smiling at him, had replaced the head of the Buddha.

He didn’t dare raise the eyes out of the screen, too afraid to check if this horrible scene was reality. However he finally looked at the smiling face, which was emerging from the ground among the roots of the tree. He screamed of fear and moved back. He ran up against something that he took for a wall, and soon pushed a cry of pain.

The punch was strong and rejected Calden behind, against the tree. He felt down at the foot of the trunk, his light-blue eyes contemplating the peaceful expression of Buddha.

Ishara appeared, whirling around the tree trunks, tightening her amphora against her chest. She was like a child playing in a garden.

She came to the body and laughed;

“Closer to you, my love, I will be…”

She knelt close to him and raised his head delicately. She stared at the large blue eyes and stroked the face with emotion, then played with the long blond hair.

“My love, I have never seen your face inhabited with such serenity…”

Glaucus, hidden in the shadow of a half-destroyed wall, observed silently his mistress achieving the Babylonian ritual, driving out the soul of the young British and replacing it by the soul of the Virgo Gold Saint.

He closed the eyes. This mission was disgusting him more and more. The exhilaration of the fight against Joao, a few hours before, had left, replaced by anger... Persephone was using an odious blackmail on Ishara to achieve this ritual of resurrection! And he, Glaucus, didn’t have any other choice than to follow his unfortunate mistress...  And damned it ! It was hard for him to achieve this mission. He couldn’t forget that it was the Gold Saints of Athena who had taken a part to the defeat of the army of Marius, after the Goddess had decided to support the Black Militia of Ermengardis, five hundred years ago. Seeing their death would have been a pleasure for him, but participating to their rebirth, that was a true nightmare!

Glaucus raised the eyes, and saw that Ishara had finished the ritual, and had started to dance again in the moonlight. He walked in the direction of the tree, tightening his fists. The faces of the Gold Saints, who joined the battle of Telemny, were dancing in front of his eyes.

Anger went up in him again. Unbearable.

The mission. You must think to the mission.

But anger was still growing in him. Dangerous... Barbarian.

You should have killed them, one by one!

Glaucus shook the head, trying to drive out this voice. He looked at the white face of the young man.

A furious desire of murder went up in him.

The mission... Think to the mission!

When Shaka came back to consciousness, his glance stopped first on the face of a Buddha. The calm expression made him forget a time the pain.

A time only.

Until he realized that he had a mortal coil again. A broken body, torn by pain and suffering.

Egypt, Valley of Luxor, January 10, 2004, 9:00 PM (Jan.10, GMT 6:00 PM +3:00)

“Aigis!”

Salmakis Gregoriades threw a glance in the tomb, in search of his brother.

“Yep! I’m here!” answered the voice of Aigis.

But he was still invisible.

Salmakis approached the trench, dug in the middle of the funerary tumulus, and saw his brother, a magnifying glass in the hand, observing conscientiously hieroglyphs.

The trench was one meter wide, and 2.50 m of depth. It was possible to go down it using a wooden ladder, leant against its wall.

“Aigis! I go upstairs! I ‘am going to check the weather of tomorrow and give some news to the rest of the team. Do you want me to bring back something?”

“Yeah, a kebab and a coffee, please!”

“A kebab in the desert, that won’t be easy to find!”

“A sandwich then! What ever you gonna find in our stock!”

Salmakis smiled. His brother had placed his order without turning around, completely absorbed by his work. Really, between the two of them, he was the most bitten by archaeology!

“Okay! I come back in half an hour!” announced Salmakis.

Aigis scraped the sand that had infiltrated the relief of the wall. He ran his eyes over the hieroglyphs, trying to decipher their meaning. He was sure that this was the tomb of King Montouhotep, the fourth king of 10th Dynasty, who had ruled Egypt from the creation of Thebes, almost five thousand years ago.

Salmakis claimed that it was the tomb of a king of the 8^th or 9^th dynasty. Bullshit! He would show to his brother that it was him who was right!

A great complicity linked these two archaeologists and brothers. Since their childhood, in Crete, they had spent long time in the ruins of the temples, in search of the remains of History on the destroyed columns.

Sons of a professor of university, they had no problem to persuade their parents that there way was archaeology, and both of them joined the Archeology department of the university of Columbia, in the United States. Salmakis graduated first, at 25 years, and was very happy to see his brother joining him in his research in Egypt, three years later.

They had been excavated the ground of the ruins of Thebes for five years, and had taken part in the exhumation of several tombs of the Pharaohs of the 9^th and 10^th Dynasty. The two brothers were particularly proud of it, since the kings of those dynasties are not well known in the history of old Egypt.

Regarding the character, the two brothers resembled each other, which added to the confusion created by their physical appearance. Although Salmakis was 3 years older than Aigis, the two brothers could have been seen as twin brothers.

Aigis was still scraping the wall when he heard a sharp snap coming from the room. He didn’t pay attention to it, thinking that Salmakis had come back. It seemed to him that he had been quite fast, however.

Crack! Aigis heard the same noise a second time. As if somebody had broken a piece of wood.

“Salmakis! Is it you? What are you doing?”

Crack! Again, the same noise.

“Hey, who is there?” shouted Aigis. He gave up his observation and turned around.

He felt a shiver in his back. The wooden ladder had disappeared. Somebody had removed it.

“Salmakis! Bring back the ladder! That’s not fun at all!” grumbled Aigis, thinking that it was a joke of his brother.

As an answer, Aigis heard a throaty laugh above him. He raised the head and started with surprise. Surrounding him, an incredibly tall man, wearing a kind of black armor, was looking at him with anger. On his side, was a young woman, probably from the Middle-East. Her skin was curiously pale. She was also dressed in black, her long jet-black hair falling down gracefully on her shoulders and along her body.

“Who are you? What do you want!” shouted Aigis, feeling vaguely he was in danger.

The giant smirked evilly.

“We want... Your body, nothing else!” he laughed.

Then he jumped in the trench, right in front of Aigis, who moved back against the wall. The eyes bulging with fear, his heart beating as if it was to break his chest, he looked at the man in black, waiting what would happen to him, feeling that it would be hard to face any attack.

The giant seized his shoulder and pin him against the wall. Aigis tried to move, but he was completely under the control of the man in armor. And couldn’t understand how this guy could paralyze him with only one hand.

Then the giant raised his fist.

Aigis understood that this punch was going to be terrible. Terror took him and he tried to push back the hand that was immobilizing him. Without success.

“Salmakis!” shouted Aigis.

The violence of the punch stopped his S.O.S.

Salmakis was going down the steps of the tomb when he heard his brother howling his name.

A howl like a call for help. And also like a farewell.

He dropped the food he held in his arms, and ran in the direction of the cries. It took him less than one minute to arrive at the funerary room. He dashed in the room and stopped, surprised by the scene: his brother was laying on the ground, his face as white as snow. Close to his body, there was a woman, with long black hair, holding an amphora, and a kind of giant in armor.

“What are you doing to him? Stop it immediately!” shouted Salmakis, leaping on the woman.

But the giant was quicker than him, and before Salmakis tried to dodge it, he sent him a punch in the stomach.

Salmakis broke down on his knees, holding his painful abdomen. Then he felt he was lifted off the ground, and crashed brutally against the wall of the tomb. He felt down to ground, half struck. He heard his brother howling in pain not far from him, and forced himself to reopen the eyes. He raised his head to see what was happening to Aigis, and felt a cold hand brushing his face.

 “Concerns and fear! I see fear on your face, my beloved!” murmured the young woman.

Salmakis felt his whole body shivering with fear. The smile of the young woman was so strange, and her hand was as cold as death. She started to cherish his hairs, then his face, and his cheeks. She leaned a little more on him, and kissed his trembling lips.

Salmakis would have liked to resist, but he was paralyzed. He felt a cold tong exploring his mouth, and sharp teeth scratching his lips. He closed the eyes and started to pray so that this nightmare finishes as fast as possible.

After Ishara accomplished the ritual on the second brother, Glaucus collected his body, and dropped him on the side of the first victim. The youngest brother had rocked on the stomach, and was trying to find a normal breathing.

“Mistress, we can go now. The mission is over!” said Glaucus, giving a profound bow to Ishara.

She was seated at the bottom of a wall of the tomb, stroking the gold amphora.

“I haven’t found him, my love, Amalric…”she whispered sadly.

Glaucus came to her and gave her another bow.

“Perhaps, there is a place where we can find him, Mistress. Do you want to follow me?” he asked her.

Ishara raised her head: her face lit up with a broad smile.

“Really? Do you know where he is? Lead me to him!” she said, getting on her feet in a jump.

Glaucus smiled.

“Follow me, my mistress!”

He vanished in the air, followed by Ishara.

Canon crawled to reach his brother, whose head was nodding from left to right, as he was regaining consciousness. Canon knew very well that in this unknown body, was the soul of Saga, his twin brother. He could feel it clearly.

In a painful effort, Canon raised his chest to examine the state of his wounds: the mouth of Saga was bleeding, but anyway, he was breathing.

The front arm levers of Canon yielded, and his head felt down on the shoulder of his brother. Fear started to invade him: if their bodies were too weak to enable them to leave this place by their own, who would help them?

Canon stretched his arm against the chest of Saga, and embraced him.

Why had they come back to life? He ignored it. How long were they going to survive? Not a long time, certainly.

Canon prayed so that this precious moment, this reunion with a brother who had been his enemy for a too long time, don’t fade away too quickly.

Greece, Terrestrial Sanctuary, January 10, 2004, 11:00 AM (Jan.10, GMT 8:00 AM + 3:00)

Temple of Elision

“Goddess Persephone, allow me to insist on this question”, said Apollo firmly.

Apollo had left the temple of Elision a few hours ago, and then had again asked an audience to Persephone. He was worried by the resurrection of the two "Great Ancients", and wanted to check if Persephone was not underestimating the gravity of the situation.

“God Apollo, my nephew, what is the reason of your so fast return to this place?”

“The two "Great Ancient" are dangerous. You should get rid off them as soon as possible!”

“Apollo, let me repeat you: Ishara is completely under my control, and we do not risk anything.”

The voice of Persephone betrayed some annoyance.

“Can you tell me how you keep the two monsters under your control?” insisted Apollo.

Persephone rose from her throne, and drew aside the curtain, showing up to the sight of Apollo. The God couldn’t help admiring the beauty of his aunt, and who had been reincarnated about the same year as him. She would be the same age as him, around 32 years-old.

Persephone tossed her long brown hair back and carefully walked down the steps from her throne. She stopped in front of Apollo, and looked at him, her face empty of any emotion.

“You will know in a few minutes how I control Ishara…” she said with a mysterious voice.

Apollo looked at her with incredulity, but indeed, he felt soon a change in the atmosphere. The wind seemed to rise between the black stones of the temple, then an air column formed at the center of the throne room. It was rotating faster and faster at any second, until two human shapes appear at its base. A gigantic and powerful silhouette, and another, smaller and thinner.

Suddenly, the column disintegrated, letting distinctly appear the identity of the two visitors.

Apollo moved back, half-surprised, half-irritated: Ishara and Glaucus were standing in front of him, looking at him with their thousand-year-old eyes.

“They are able to teleport themselves?” Apollo whispered to Persephone.

“It’s a power that I granted them, only for this mission”, the Goddess answered, without leaving her glance out of the two vampires.

“You should have never done that! Do you realize the danger…?” grumbled Apollo.

But the Goddess ignored his admonitions.

“Welcome to you, Ishara and Glaucus!”declared Persephone, walking toward them.

Ishara moved forward and hold the amphora to Persephone.

“We achieved the mission. They had all come back to life, all the thirteen. But I haven’t found Amalric! Where is Amalric?”

Glaucus didn’t move. But he was looking at the scene intensely; ready to leap on the two divinities at the least sign of hostility.

“Dear Ishara, I always hold my promises…”answered Persephone, taking the amphora that Ishara was holding to her.

Then she turned around towards her guards, and by a gesture, ordered them to leave the place. The guards rushed out of the Throne room, after a profound bow to their Goddess.

Apollo was staring at the two vampires with non dissimulated mistrust, and even, aversion. He thought that he could order to the ground to open under their feet and burry them, or to the sun, his star, to burn them to dust. But he knew it was useless. The Great Ancients, as they were called, were almost invulnerable. Only the blackest of the magic could kill them. But this black magic had been lost for centuries, after the victory of Ermengardis and the Sanctuary on the army of Marius, on the island of Telemny.

The four guards came back to the room, carrying a heavy object, standing on an iron shield, covered with a sheet. A statue? thought Apollo.

Ishara came up to the object, joining her hands in a kind of prey, an incredible hope dancing on her face and in her eyes.

Persephone ordered to take off the sheet. The white sheet felt down to ground, unveiling the statue of a young man, dressed like a German barbarian of the low middle Ages.

Ishara knelt in front of the statue.

“Amalric, I found you finally…”

And she burst in tears.

Apollo came to Persephone, and asked her discreetly:

“Who is he…?”

“Amalric, the ninth lieutenant of Marius. The one who had been transformed into a stone statue by Adalbert, the wizard and lieutenant of Ermengard, the founder and first war chief of the Order... The object of worship of Ishara... And her weak point, by which I keep her into my control.”

They looked at Ishara, who was kissing the feet of the statue, still crying. She turned around towards Persephone and Apollo.

“I can stay here with him, can’t I…?” she asked with anxiety.

“Yes, you can remain here as long as you want, dear Ishara, answered Persephone suavely.

Apollo gave a disapprobative pout.

“Persephone! But why do you propose her staying here? Ishara is completely insane...! ”

Glaucus was still keeping still, like the statue of Amalric, looking at the scene which was taking place in front of him. Ishara and Almaric. Apollo. Persephone.

And he swore to himself that he wouldn’t let it last. Human and Gods were going soon to remind how terrible “they were”.

Them. The vampires of the army of Marius.

Terrestrial Sanctuary, January 14, 2004, 9:55 AM (Jan.14, GMT 6:55 AM + 3:00)

Athena sat down in the chair of the Great Chancellor, who had just lived his office to let her discuss with one of the Great Master of Ermengardis.

She had hesitated during two days on what she should do. Teleport herself to the Headquarter of Ermengardis, and have a face to face conversation with James and Eleny. Should she go at her saints’ bedside and comfort them from their pain?

She would have liked to do so. But the reason told her that these actions would have more bad impacts on the situation than bringing a solution. And thus, she decided to stay at the Terrestrial Sanctuary, the only place on hearth she had the right to be, without having to ask the permission of Apollo or any other god. The conversation with the Great Masters would be face to face, but through the large screen of a conference TV.

The clock against the wall indicated 10:00 AM, the time that had been set for the video meeting. Athena seized the remote control and switched on the TV. The screen crackled, and then the face of a man with short and blond hairs appeared. The paleness of his skin was accentuated by the dark colors of his clothing.

Saori placed the remote control on the top of the desk, and raised her face towards the screen.

“Hello James.”

“Hello Saori.”

There was nobody around them, and they could give up the courtesy formulas and names.

“How do they feel? Are they alright?”hastened to ask Saori.

“I didn’t think that you would mind…” answered James coldly

“I have never given such an order…!”

“Your name was written in the message, however… ”

“I repeat it; I have never given such an order… What’s written in this message is pure lie, imagined by Apollo. Only him could imagine a so machiavelic plan.”

Saori looked at James right in the eyes. The Great Master seemed to reflect intensely...

“Please, James, tell me how my saints feel…” begged Saori.

James borne her glance so coldly that she thought she had failed again.

“Ok, fine. I believe you... We couldn’t avoid the rituals of resurrection to take place. Our emissaries arrived two or three hours after the aggressions, guided by the information delivered in the message. For this work, Apollo used two of the Great Ancients.”

He insisted on the words “Great Ancients".

“… named Glaucus and Ishara. They attacked one by one their victims, selected in advance for their nearly perfect physical resemblance with your saints. The ritual is very violent, and most of them are seriously wounded.”

“Seriously wounded? In which hospital are they? When could I see them? ” asked Saori of a voice betraying her concern.

“I’m sorry, Saori, but for their own security, I won’t tell you where they are. And regarding you request to see them…”

The voice of James trailed, as if it hesitated to continue his sentence.

“I ‘m afraid it’s impossible… They are under great shock, and it will take months, and maybe years for them to recover completely. Moreover, I don’t want the situation to get worst. Your visit would certainly cause the anger of Apollo, and we don’t need that.”

Saori lowered the head.

“I understand.”

“I have decided I won’t answer the message of Apollo, neither make any claim. If Zeus himself had approved the "return" of your knights, like Apollo mentioned in the message, it’s not clever to complain to him. On the other hand, we still haven’t solved the problem of the Great Ancients…”

“Do you know where they are?”

“No, and I don’t have any clue on how I could get the information… But I suspect they had taken refuge in the Sanctuary, sheltered by the God who had brought them back…”

“I see. I promise you that I will do everything that is possible to find out if they are hidden here, James.”

“Thank you Saori. Any help is welcome.”

The silence settled.

“Well, fine. If you don’t have anything other to discuss, I would like to put an end to this meeting.”

“I don’t have anything other to say.”

“Goodbye, Saori.”

“Goodbye, James.”

Snow flakes were now falling on the black screen, but Saori was too much absorbed by her thoughts to notice it or mind the crackling.

How could she be so weak, subjected to the law of Olympia, exposed to the Machiavellianism of Apollo! She had believed that coming to Olympia and signing this treaty of peace had been the best solution. She had accepted to dismantle her Sanctuary, and to send her Saints to Ermengardis, or back to their freedom.

She had believed that, thanks to all those sacrifices, peace would be finally guaranteed for mankind. She had believed it during eleven years, at least...

Until Apollo sent her and Ermengardis this message, saying that her faithful Gold Saints, died seventeen years ago during the Battle against Hades, punished by the Gods to have been opposed to them, were brought back to the life in horrible pains and suffering...

The treaty, her presence in Olympia, all had appeared so useless to her.

She had been wrong, naïve and too easy to manipulate But it was not too late for her to restore the fragile balance that had been just broken.

Notes:

2. Lugdunum: Celtic and Roman name of the town of Lyon.

3. Ayuthaya: founded in 1350, the kingdom of Ayuthaya dominated Thailand during five centuries. Located in the North, 150 km from Bangkok, at the confluence of three rivers, the kingdom was doing business with all Asia, France, Spain, Portugal and Spain. It was destroyed at the 18th century by the army of Burma.

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