Chapter 67 – Wonder Pt. 3

August 21, 2010 -  Washington, DC

The Wonder Dome

18:39:29

The Hall of Heroes stretched before them as they took the stairs up into its vaulted arches. Statues also occupied the hall, stretching one end to the other. They were smaller than the idols of the goddesses, and Connor doubted anyone would manifest through them.

But he wasn’t sure they wouldn’t, though.

“Before you stand the heroes of the Amazons, our first queens and founders of our tribes.” Diana said, waving a bronzed hand to encompass the contents of the hall. “Each an exemplar of areté, excellence. Chosen, shaped and blessed by their patron goddess.” She explained as they walked the line of statues.

“Queen Antiope, First of the Tribe of Artemis.” Diana proclaimed before the statue of a tall and lean woman, wearing an antlered crown with a shock of hair rising up and spilling down her back. She wore leather armor, with a short sword and a familiar golden lasso on her belt. Antiope had a harsh and predatory look to her handsome face. “Greatest of the Amazon huntresses, and first among our vanguard.”

“Queen Pythia, First of the Tribe of Aphrodite.” She continued, indicating the next statue, of an heartbreakingly beautiful woman wearing diaphanous silks and a hauberk of scale armor, each scale shaped into a seashell. Her striking face was partially concealed by a helmet that was decorated with six dove wings, and she wielded a pair of long knives with a grace that even cold stone could not diminish. “Fairest of all the Amazons.” Diana said with a small smirk, before whispering to him. “So it is said, anyway.”

“Queen Hellene, First of the Tribe of Athena.” The next statue was of a short and stout woman in tunic and Grecian armor, elaborately engraved across every inch, and wearing a helmet with a horsehair mohawk. Connor thought she was a little person, and she was thickly muscled. The sculptor had captured her keen eyes masterfully; they were like a hawk and he knew this queen missed nothing. She bore a cross hilted war spear, much like her patron. “General of the Amazon armies, wisest of our strategists.”

“Queen Io, First of the Tribe of Hestia.” Diana declared, and Connor was shocked to see the orange flames that sprouted from her head were real and not some artist’s contrivance. He wasn’t sure how the statue produced the flames but he could hear their crackle. She was a giantess among her sisters, towering over the other statues, built like a mountain. Armored in thick iron plates, she had a crown whose points were worked like dancing fire, and the actual fire sprung up in place of her hair. He wasn’t sure if that was a metaphor or if she was a literal fiery redhead. She carried a massive ball and chain, the chain as thick as her wrist and the spiked head the size of her ample torso. “Forgemistress and finest craftswoman of the Amazons.”

“Queen Penthesilea, First of the Tribe of Demeter.” The mistress of the harvest goddess’ tribe wore verdigrised armor, worked with images of snakes and plants, and blooms and blossoms crawled across the metal. She had a corinthian helm with a transverse crest, pushed up over her face to show her mature beauty. Penthesilea wielded a two handed sword with curved blade that hooked forward, not unlike a sickle. “She has always seen to it that Themyscira and the Amazons are provided for, whatever harvest was needed.”

“Queen Menalippe, First of the Tribe of Hecate.” Diana stated, her voice hushed when she spoke. The champion of the goddess of witchcraft looked the part; her face was unseen beneath a masked helm that sprouted twisting, thorny horns at all angles. She wore a full body suit of armor, made of square iron plates with short spikes, chained together and wielded a pair of daggers. “Wisest and most cunning, among all of my sisters.”

Connor knew who would come last. Six goddesses had conspired to create the Amazons, but he only knew of only one queen of theirs before today.

“Queen Hippolyta.” Diana said, gazing up in adoration and love at the last statue in the line. “First of the Tribe of Hera, and overlady of all Amazons. My mother.” He could see the resemblance; the same sun bronzed skin, strong shoulders, and curvaceous hips. The same noble brow and aquiline nose, identical pert lips. He was sure that he was looking at Diana with another twenty years to age her. 

Not that it would happen, because immortality. 

Hippolyta was clad in white robes, with a bronze cuirass and helmet, and silver bracers. She was a regal figure, full of majesty and pride. But she also retained a human empathy and vulnerability; a queen, he daresay, who cared. Her eyes were the same crystal blue as Diana’s, but she had the faintest crow’s feet at the corners, and he felt the enormous experience and age in them. In her hand, she carried a familiar hooked blade he had seen in the Hall of Wonders; the Harpe. 

The Titanslayer.

Diana was silent a moment, head bowed before her mother’s statue, her pride evident. When she spoke again, she had regained the ritual recitation she had used before when telling the epic of the Amazon’s creation.

“When the goddesses made their petition before Zeus and the Olympians, Hera knew they would be rebuffed.” She said, taking a grim tone as her mouth became a thin line. “So she prepared. She is the lady of a thousand thousand eyes, and she sees all time as a single moment; past, present and future.”

Connor shuddered at the implication, then realized he also now saw the world a little like that. He remembered the stack of comics, the endless pages as they spilled open, giving him access to everything he had ever read about the world of superheroes. What had been, what might have been, what was and what may yet come to pass. He wondered if that knowledge was what had drawn interest of the queen of the gods here tonight.

“She had conceived of the idea of the Amazons, and given that thought to the others. But after Zeus’ rebuff, they entreated her to enact the plan anyway, in defiance of his wishes. But she refused, much to their consternation, and they descended to Tartarus without her to create our sisterhood. She remained on Mt. Olympus, observing as events unfolded.”

Diana led him over to the far wall, decorated with a colorful mural that depicted the tale from one end of the room to the other. The painting was in the ancient style he knew from Greek vases, but much more colorful and bright with its newness, rather than aged and muted colors of broken pottery excavated from the dirt.

It showed a war.

The war began with small skirmishes and raids, but it didn’t end that way.

“The Six Tribes began their mission, just the thirty of them. Always by night, vanishing in the daylight. For they were under Artemis’ protection, and she concealed their travels and battles by night from the sight of all other gods.” The mural showed stealthy Amazon warriors slinking through ebony panels, appearing from behind trees and buildings, to strike down men who victimized women. Abusers, slavers, soldiers and bandits; they met an end rendered lovingly in crimson. Guilt by association began to gnaw at him. It was easy to see how Amazons were thought of as man-haters, but it didn’t seem so crazy when you knew who they had been fighting against, and had their crimes rendered in grisly detail.

“So their nightly war continued, for years uncounted. Where women were harmed, men learned to fear the night and the Amazons, though they had no name for their fear, then. Until the day that Antiope and her band found a woman, a midwife, bound and captured by a band of slavers. How she came to that sorry state is not a tale I will relate here, but her travails had hardened her, and she faced doom without fear. Until the moment Antiope’s arrows delivered her from that fate.” Diana continued, bringing them to a painted glen, with a motley gang of bandits surrounding a kneeling woman, bedraggled and exhausted. In the shadowed background gleamed eyes and bared blades, and he saw the suggestions of womanly forms in the brushstrokes. In the next scene there were reddened bodies on the ground, and a band of Amazons above them, with the kneeling woman staring up in awe.

“Hippolyta saw the her future in her deliverers, the change she had wished for in the world. She begged them to take her with them, but Antiope refused. Amazons were not made of mortal stock, not anymore. No human woman could keep up with them. So they sent her on her way, but Hippolyta would not be refused. She trailed them, season after season, growing stronger and honing herself on the challenge of tracking Amazon huntresses, surviving the harsh elements and defending herself from the beasts of four legs or two.” The woman, Hippolyta, rode a horse that had once been her captors’, armed and armored from their gear, but the Amazons she pursued were always flitting ahead of her.

“Eventually, she met a wild woman of the woods who was impressed by her mettle. This was the goddess Artemis, who recognized the mark her huntress had left on Hippolyta, and so gave her a gift. A mark of her own, painted in her blood, that Hippolyta might be a great enough huntress for her quarry.” In the mural, Hippolyta stalked the woods and was in turn stalked by a figure that wasn’t there, the lithe goddess of the hunt. She painted Hippolyta’s face in a fearsome mask of warpaint from her own blood, and Hippolyta returned to her hunt. 

“That very night, Hippolyta came upon another band of raiders with many women captive. Their village was ashes, and they had been made slaves. Hippolyta saw no sign of her quarry, so endeavored to save these innocents herself. She had only begun the task when Antiope surprised her again, and the Queen’s band fell upon the slavers and made short work of them.” Once more, Antiope and her Amazons were only the barest hints in the shadowed background as Hippolyta struggled to free the captives, but when she was discovered, they seemed to leap off the wall and into action. 

“Antiope was impressed with Hippolyta’s mettle, but still refused her entreaty to be made an Amazon. ‘A mortal woman cannot become an Amazon any more than a bear could wish itself a bird.’ But Hippolyta persisted, and with the logic and passion of her words, swayed Antiope. ‘You say you are our protectors, but you may free us from one disaster, only to let us find another calamity? Where can a woman be free in Man’s World? Why save us to leave us to the same fate again? Better to simply cut our throats and be done with it.’ To this, Antiope had no answer, and so she gathered up those she had rescued, and they departed to find a new home, for a new tribe of Amazons.” The mural showed the exodus, growing as more women were rescued and chose to join their protectors. In a ruin, they found safe harbor, and the other Amazons gathered to welcome their new sisters.

“The Seventh Tribe elected Hippolyta as their Queen, and their elder sisters took to teaching them every art and craft they knew to make them strong and free. Antiope taught them to hunt, Io taught them smithing and armed them, Penthesilea showed them how to sow and reap crops, Menalippe taught them wise words and soothsaying, Pythia taught them charms, and Hellene taught them law and strategy.” Each queen was depicted instructing her charges, in turn. 

“At their inception, Hippolyta declared the Seventh Tribe devoted to all the goddesses. Eventually, they were strong enough to join their sisters on their nightly raids.” The thirty of the first born Amazons quickly grew into a crowd of hundreds as the mural stretched wide to show them in all their diversity. Their numbers grew until they were an army, but they always moved and lived by night, with no scenes in the daylight, until the last one of the section.

“But there came another raid, another band of women cruelly abused by men and taken to be sold in the market. Among the raiders was the son of their chief, and when the Tarpeia of the Seventh Tribe, dearest friend to Queen Hippolyta, freed their captives, the boy attacked her. Phillipus led them, and stayed Tarpeia’s hand against the youth. ‘He is just a boy. He should not die for the sins of his father.’ Phillipus commanded, but the rescued captives told of the boy’s cruelty to them. It sat ill with Tarpeia, that this poisoned seed would grow to strangle more flowers. So she slipped away in the morning, to finish what she had begun by night.” Diana continued, sadness entering her tone. The mural showed the youthful figure fleeing the Amazons from the dark into the golden light of day, and one equally youthful huntress pursued. Into a town, and from there to a gold ornamented temple of adorned with solar rays and swans.

“There, Tarpeia found her quarry, even as he gnashed his teeth and tore his garments in grief and rage at his loss. He cried out to Apollo to avenge his father and his own hurts. And there, she slew him, in the brightest light of day, in the very house of his patron.” Diana said with grim finality, while the mural showed only the white and gold temple, Tarpeia wreathed in shadow, and the red painted boy at her feet. 

“And so the gods on Mt. Olympus learned of the Amazons, and war followed.” She continued in a voice akin to a funeral bell, and the next scene spilled into a broad tableau. Phalanxes of hoplites marched besides war machines and monsters out of myth against the Amazons. Arrayed above them were the gods who heeded Zeus’ call to arms to destroy them; Zeus, Apollo, Dionysus, Hephaestus and Ares. The gods called down their wrath and the blood flowed, forming first streams, then mighty rivers, then raging seas.

“The war raged on, the hot anger of Apollo at the desecration of his temple and the sun kissed boy he favored burning across Gaea’s face. The Amazons had prepared long for this day, for their goddesses knew that one day they would be secret no more, and the shadows of night would no longer conceal their presence. By Hippolyta’s work, they had grown from a mighty thirty to an army of thousands. They were not so easily crushed. When the goddesses saw the gods join the field of battle, they heard their champions cry out for aid.” The war raged on, becoming apocalyptic in scope. The gods called down thunderbolts, beams of burning sunlight, inspired armies to ecstatic madness, unleashed horrific engines of war, and fought with insane zeal. 

“So the goddesses joined the fray, too.” Diana said simply, and so they did. “Aphrodite beguiled sailors to run their ships aground, while cities and tent encampments burned as Hestia walked amongst them. Whole armies starved as the crops they sought to forage and pillage rotted away on the vine as Demeter withdrew her gifts. Herds of aurochs and packs of wolves burst from wild places to assault them, and their hunters never returned from the forest as Artemis took her due. Men went mad with fear and terror, plagued by sickness and insanity as Hecate worked her curses, unseen beneath the ground. Above, wise Athena directed the armies of the Amazons, inspiring them to feats of brilliance even as she guided their armies like game pieces.”

“Armies of mortal soldiers, some Greek and others from further afield, were drawn into the conflict. Fleets of ships crashed together, battlefields were planted with bloody crops and cities burned. Everywhere the Amazons marched, women joined them, replenishing their numbers. The petty and grand wars of mortals became mere fronts in the war between the gods and goddesses."

Connor was frozen with horror at the murals and the tale. He saw the armies marching, not on ground but layers of corpses, rotting as the layers went deeper and eventually their bones falling into the underworld. His stomach twisted at the sight. Above it all, on blackened wings and painted red with gore, circled the god of war who grinned with delight at the hell on Terra that was unleashed. In his mind, Connor knew from history that this was the ugly truth of wars of the past, and all too often, of the present. But in his heart, he screamed at the horror and the waste.

It didn’t have to be like this…

Worst of all, he saw the parallels. Demigods and monsters fighting on both sides, slaughtering their way through normal human warriors. He knew that power, the same that resided in him, now. How easy it was to break things and people. To see it unleashed without restraint against human beings horrified him.

“But then did Hera, queen of the gods, finally rouse herself to intervene.” Diana said, and the grim tone in her voice lessened with a balm of hope. “The gods, she knew, were allied at Zeus’ command. Each had their own personal reasons for joining; Apollo to avenge the desecration and slaughter of his favorite. Dionysus to see the grand tragedy play out on a stage as large as the whole world. Hephaestus to see his war machines put to the test and to spoil Aphrodite’s joy.” She said, anger in her voice rising as she named each of the offending gods, until it came to a cold climax at the last. “Ares, lord of war, solely to see the world drowned in blood.”

“They each had their own motives, and were not truly committed to the cause. Zeus was enraged at the defiance the goddesses had shown to him, as king of the gods. So Hera went to work among the other gods, since she still sat safe and ‘loyal’ on Mt. Olympus.” The mural’s scene shifted to the golden mountain top of the gods, and there the peacock feather clad queen mother of the gods employed her foresight and words. “She first spoke with Dionysus, and swayed him from his course by showing the women thespians the Amazons had saved, who could do more honor to him alive than dead. With his honeyed words, she turned Apollo from the path of vengeance against the Amazons. Tarpeia would shoulder the blame alone, for the crime against the sun god was hers, and she would willingly render herself to his punishment. Hephaestus was the easiest of all to sway; the lord of the forge ever thought in terms of profit and loss, and Hera simply offered him a better price. Though the terms of that bargain are unknown to us.” 

“So Queen Hera stripped Zeus of his allies, and the favor of the goddesses turned the tide in favor of the Amazons and women. But Ares remained, for he and his carrion birds had grown fat on the slaughter. Abandonment only enraged Zeus further, and made him dig in his heels. The Amazons might have their victory, but it would be over a devastated world. Zeus cared not, and Ares was eager for it.” The art began to show the Amazons advancing as one by one the gods slipped away, satisfied now before the war was done. Zeus hurled more thunderbolts, and Ares descended to fight directly.

“Then the mother of the gods called Hippolyta to her side for a counsel of war, and revealed to her all that she had seen, past, present and future. It was her hand that had guided Amazons to Hippolyta, and Hippolyta to Artemis, and then to the Amazons. For she knew Hippolyta was the hand that would tip the scales. She gifted to Hippolyta the Magic Sphere, so that the Amazon queen too would know what must be done.” The mural’s scene returned to Olympus, to see a tiny Hippolyta communing with Hera. The halls of the mountain were empty as the gods were all away at war or other interests, and with the guidance of the Magic Sphere, Hippolyta unlocked a great door. “There, in the Vault of the Gods, lay the greatest treasures, weapons and dangers the Olympians had ever found. And there, in pride of place, sat the Harpe, the Titanslayer. The sword that threw down an old order and raised a new one in its place. In Hippolyta’s hand, it would do so again.”

The next scene showed Hippolyta surmounting a pedestal and seizing the sickle sword, as Hera looked on from the entranceway, never straying a foot inside the vault itself. That felt important to Connor. He saw some kind of letter, not the spirit of things in Hera’s actions. Some riding along the line of what was permitted and what wasn’t. Then it showed Hippolyta descending back to Terra, and facing Ares.

“The god of war engaged Queen Hippolyta, who had been forged in a hundred battles and had the fury of righteousness upon her side. But even more important, she held a blade that could kill a god. Their battle was legendary, and lasted many days and nights, but eventually Hippolyta pressed Ares close, and the god of war did something he had never done before.” Diana explained, pride and satisfaction filling her voice. 

“He fled.”

Black winged, blood smeared Ares took flight from the devastated battlefield, leaving Hippolyta its master as she raised the Harpe high. The twisted wrath and loathing on the god of war’s face was well rendered, and Connor surmised that this is where the enmity of Ares and the Amazons came from. He suspected it wasn’t the last time they clashed in Terra’s history.

“The armies of the gods were routed, and their cause was lost until Zeus himself took the field. He endeavored to destroy Hippoylta himself, and smash the Amazons once and for all. But as he threw his thunderbolt at her, it broke apart in mid air and troubled her not at all.” The scene was rendered, a stunned Zeus agog at the dissipating lightning and the unharmed Amazon queen. Behind him, Hera descended from Mt. Olympus with a familiar weapon in her hand.

“Hera had hired Hephaustus to create a false thunderbolt, and switched it with Zeus’ own weapon. Only now did Zeus realize that his ‘loyal’ wife had been upon the other side the entire time. Before he could do naught about it, he found the Harpe at his divine throat and Hera with the thunderbolt at his back. Hippolyta demanded his surrender, and the ending of the war, upon the Amazon’s terms. The king of the gods raged and gnashed his teeth, but he was a tyrant and tyrants never fight to the death. He yielded, and the war was won.”

The mural showed the triumphant Hippolyta and Hera, over a kneeling Zeus. The Amazons put up their arms in triumph, and the armies of men and gods fell to their own knees in surrender. Cities were liberated, armies disarmed and made peaceful. Monsters were slain or driven into wild places. Armies of Amazons did not disband, though. They marched on, to different cities and facing different armies. Sometimes gods and monsters faced them, but their goddesses and allies aided them there, too. At their head rode Hippolyta, Harpe in hand.

“Hera spent much time in counsel with Hippolyta, and with the other goddesses. Terra would be forever changed, hammered into a new shape by the crucible of war. A terrible war had raged for decades across the Mediterranean, and with Amazon aid it was ended. Everywhere the Amazon armies attacked, women were liberated and a new order was imposed. They marched across Europe, Africa, and Asia. It was the work of centuries, but they succeeded in their campaigns. Everywhere they marched, they spread Women’s World and Gaea’s way.” Diana said, her tone becoming triumphal.

Connor saw the brightly colored murals and began to think they were propagandistic. Everywhere the Amazons marched, women were liberated. But many still died, and he knew wars were always bloody, whether or not they were just. He glanced at Diana, and saw the pride she took in her history and felt that perhaps the cause was just enough to balance the costs. Or at least, he hoped that it was.

Its literally ancient history, now. But this… this is how it began…

Diana continued her tale, explaining how the Amazons had eventually sailed across the seven seas and touched every continent, leaving colonies of their tribes behind. Eventually they won, and the war ended. Hera and the goddesses blessed the Amazons with a paradiscial island home, which they named Theymscira, and they retreated from the world. Hippolyta had been empress, conqueror and liberator. Now she laid aside a jeweled crown for a simple diadem and led her sisters to their new home. 

“Thus were the terms that Hippolyta and Hera had agreed on. Hippolyta had no desire to be a conqueror, of men or anyone else. She had no desire to rule over a world that sought to challenge her rule. She had begun the battle to see women liberated everywhere, to see that they had a place to be free. Many had been the battles and long had been the war. There was a great flourishing of culture as the Amazons altered and founded new cultures to propagate Women’s World. Antiope had once told Hippolyta that the Amazons were not shepherds, and Hippolyta had responded that women were not sheep. Now they could stand on their own two feet, and she wished to leave them to it. If she had kept her dominion, she would have diminished her ideal. So she gave it up.”

The pride was even more glowing now in Diana’s voice as they took in the mural scene of Hippolyta taking off the ostentatious crown, and departing on ships to Themyscira with the Amazons. Women would now hold Women’s World, while the Amazons enjoyed the peace of the paradise that their goddesses had promised them, now that their labors were ended. The goddesses ascended back to Mt. Olympus, with Hera taking the throne with the thunderbolt across her lap, and the other six attended her, as once the other gods attended Zeus when the goddesses had made their plea.

“The Gynomachy was over.”

With that note of finality, Diana ended the epic tale.

Connor swallowed a knot in his throat.

I thought that Terra had just always been this way. Another Elseworld where things were just different. I didn’t realize… the Amazons made it this way.

Doubts crept in, and he wrestled with them in his thoughts.