JP ROTH'S ANCIENT DREAMS

Pencils: Mike Krome and Dawn McTeigue

Colors: Sabine Rich and Mike Krome

Designer: Stefan Merour

for

managing editor: Rich Young

editor: Kevin Ketner

Design: Rodolfo Muraguchi

FROM A UTHOR

The legends of Mythology have always called to me. They are the true stories which have structured all the cultural legends of our world. Buried deep in their histories are tales of passion so intense, love so blind and agonizing, strength and valor which can only be called divine.

I invite you to come with me to a world of magic, where dimensions weave together like thread on a loom, and two souls can find each other through endless barriers of distance, space and time.

Welcome to Ancient Dreams. The gods are waiting for you to read their story.

WE dwell in the hidden past as well as the rolling present. We can only remember what we have lived and we never know when we will die. We are mortal and we are a soul. We are scattered ashes and disintegrating bones—we are shadows—our lives nothing more than a tiny murmur in time. For us death is a fearful thing, we know it is coming. We know we cannot stop it and we know too that whatever we loved we must leave behind—sometimes much too prematurely. And then it is over. Our lives—our souls—all that we were—gone. Snuffed out by something we could not control.

But what if there was a way to do it again? To come back and make it right. It is said that the last enemy to be conquered is death, but I believe we conquer life when we die. And if a soul could be reborn—what then? Would it be strong enough to live a second time? Would we—weak, fallible mortals be able to endure the struggle, the fear and finally the submission as we give ourselves over to the bite of what must be?

In a time before the doors of fate rusted on their hinges, when the world was young and changeable , the decadent city of Troy was burning .

Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, was fully on the side of the Greeks. Ares had promised to side with her, but in the last moment he turned and gave the strength of his sword to the Trojans.

The son of blood had betrayed her because of her sister Cytherea, his whore. Enraged, Athena pulled the helmet of death down over her sapphire eyes and walked into the center of the battle throng. There were Trojans and Greeks fighting, screaming, and dying all around her. Ares knew she was coming for him. He could feel the midday sun reflected from her golden armor, baking against his cheek. She wanted his blood, and he wanted to see her eyes bulge when she died. He lifted his spear and let the steel-tipped killer fly. The spear sang a mournful note as it cut through the air. It was a perfect throw. It should have eaten through her cold heart.

Athena knew his mind better than he ever would. Her hands went up mere moments before certain death. She waved them through the air and the spear of Ares exploded into a million dancing shards. His brief moment of shock was all she needed to gain the upper hand. Athena bent her will upon a boulder twenty yards off; it tore loose and lifted into the air. She flung her hands up to the sky as she arched her back, and the giant rock slammed into Ares with the sound of a million shattering bones.

Ares had underestimated her, and now he lay broken with god blood rushing from a ripped body and soaking into his Trojan sands. In that

moment Ares knew he had lost the battle to a deadly goddess with sapphire eyes, and if Cytherea didn’t come for him, he also stood to lose his immortal life.

Athena took Troy from Ares that day, killing its king. She let her kings plunder its wealth. She destroyed everything, sparing only King Menelaus and Queen Helen of Sparta, who had started it all. She had a plan for them.

Athena smiled. From her vantage point on the battle sands, she could see the ocher flames of the burning city, and watch as Ares pumped the last of his blood into the settling soot. Her smile froze on her lips. Cytherea materialized in a swirl of flashing blue lights, her hand a vice grip across Athena’s throat. Cytherea screamed out her rage. The wail was long and shattering. Athena felt something deep in her ears blow apart, and blood poured from their shells down her straining neck.

Cytherea wasted no more time with her sister, but flew to her dying god and spirited them away to Olympus. ‘You will not beat me.’ Athena snarled. She knew a child would one day be born to Hades god of death. He would have the power of the Fates behind him, and the Fates had whispered to her that it was he would erase Ares from this dimension so thoroughly that even time would forget his name.

So Athena went to formulate her plan, after all it was just a game.

Troy had finally crumbled under Odysseus’s wit and Athena’s rage, and Menelaus had brought his Helen back to Sparta. But the city streets were quiet. No dancing and shouts of welcome greeted their return, for the queen was cold and grey as death, and Menelaus was apathetic with madness. He knew in his heart that the only reason he lived was because he had neither the gods’ wrath nor their favor. They had forgotten him. Now he was king of the known world, ruler of the fatherless in cities razed to the ground.

For three years after the war Menelaus knew true terror. On the sands of Troy he had traded his honor for vengeance, and now he had nothing but horror visiting him in the dark. From the moment he found Helen kneeling over the body of Prince Paris, his heart had

should have been, he drew his sword to kill

changed. As she wept for a love that never should have been, he drew his sword to kill her. In the last second she turned to him. Her beauty took his breath and the sword from his hand. Lifting her in his arms he had taken her back to their home. Now night after night he listened to her scream out her dead lover’s name, and he wished for death.

When he could bear the agony of his mind no longer he went to the black cliffs of Themis and sought out the Fates—wicked, decrepit, old crones who sat high on their mountain of iron with their hideous eye bouncing between them while they gleefully cut the silver threads of human life. Even the gods feared the prophecies of the Fates. Even Zeus was forced to bow knee to their power...

Below him he could hear the waves crashing against the rocks of Themis.

The air was thick and putrid, like a field three days after battle when the guts of the fallen rotted in the sun and excrement baked bloody on the ground.

He ignored it; he had smelled and heard worse in Troy.

He could still hear them.

Finally he reached the summit.

Like the haunting screams of women and girls being ripped apart by men who had gone too long without.

And was able to stand.

We hear your approach, King of the Fallen. We have what you seek.

Menelaus had known what to expect. But still he recoiled in horror.

The rancid scent of their breath burned in his lungs, battlefield gore and feces.

He wanted to weep like a child.

and death.

I won’t be frightened away, you slime. Death holds no fear for me. I wonder that I am even alive.

You are not alive.

You are living a cursed half life. You and your deadly, golden queen.

We have something for you.