Chapter 1
It had been a little over two weeks since they’d returned from Bimini. Xena had recovered from her injuries and been sparring with the dragon warriors for nearly a full week now. Given the warrior’s chronic wanderlust, Gabrielle would have expected them to be back on the roads by now, but that had not been the case. Instead, Xena’d reminded her that they had unfinished business with the oriental dragons.
Truth told, Gabrielle had completely forgotten there were two parts to the prophecy that’d brought them to the Southern Forest clan in the first place. They had fulfilled the first part by killing the tyrant. That left the second part, returning the oriental dragons to their glory days.
From what Ci Nu had told them, the oriental dragons had lost more than half of their numbers after the great clan wars and the fight against the tyrant. Since then, their population had been in a steady decline, due to their low birth rates and the sacrifice of their female dragons to the tyrant every year. Left unchecked, there was every chance that the oriental dragons could die out altogether.
Granted, the dragons were an immortal race, or as close as it was possible to be immortal and still succumb to death. The normal lifespan of a dragon was at least a few thousand years; but they would not survive another war, much less return to their glory days without help.
In many ways, the dragons reminded Xena of the Amazons. Once, the Amazons had been a mighty nation too. But the passage of time and attrition due to infighting and wars had left their numbers greatly reduced. After their last encounter, both Xena and Gabrielle were painfully aware that the Amazons were in a precarious situation. As an Amazon Queen, Gabrielle had a duty and a responsibility to ensure their survival; and Xena had promised Ephiny that she would never let the Amazons just die away. It was a promise the warrior fully intended to keep.
Xena doubted it was a coincidence the prophecy had named Gabrielle as the deliverer of the oriental dragons; the same Gabrielle who was a queen of the Amazons. She strongly believed the Amazons were the answer to fulfilling the second part of the prophecy. By bringing the Amazons and the dragons together, it was her hope that the two peoples would be able to develop a symbiotic relationship, that would allow them to not only survive, but to thrive.
It would have been easy enough to pitch the idea directly to the Southern Forest clan chief. But there were too many variables at play, and the dragons might not be willing to open their territory to the Amazons. It would be a different scenario altogether if the dragons were the ones to make the proposal. In that case, the outcome would be all but assured; once Gabrielle convinced the Amazons it would be in their best interest to relocate to Chin. To that end, the soulmates had concocted a plan.
Just the day before, they’d been formally adopted into the Southern Forest clan. As part of the ceremony, their names and contribution to the clan had been added to the ancestral records, forever memorialising them in oriental dragon lore. The clan chief had also presented each of them with a pure white jade token. The token depicted a dragon crouched on three legs, its right foreleg held up next to its mouth, encircling a transparent crystal ball within its claws. The token identified them as members of the clan and allowed them free access to and from the clan territory.
At the huge celebration that had followed, they’d put their plan into action. Using the memorialising of their adventures with the clan as a prelude, Xena had casually mentioned their adventures with the Amazons. The word spread quickly, and with the clan already familiar with Gabrielle’s bardic talents, they quickly started chanting, “Story! Story!” And so the bard had told them about the Amazons and how she’d unwittingly become an Amazon Princess in her first encounter with the warrior women. The purpose of the story was to introduce the clan to the Amazons, and also to set the stage for her next story, both of which were an integral part of their plan.
