The Price of Immortality

My name is Kal and I was once known as Hercules, the God of Strength among the deities of the ancient Greek Pantheon. Anyone looking at me would see a tall, good-looking man with light bronze skin and pale green eyes in his early twenties. I currently inhabit the body of a former devotee of mine. Jared Floyd, a young man with amazing talents who hails from a truly diverse background.

Jared Floyd's mother, Janice Floyd was half African-American and half Caucasian. His father, Nicolas Ludd, was Irish. Which resulted in the wonderfully gorgeous young man whose features I now wear. A six-foot-three, 240-pound college football player from UCLA. Jared Floyd sacrificed himself to bring me, Hercules, back to life. For which I am eternally grateful.

I haven't been truly in the world for thousands of years. The last thing I remember was being burned to ash by my father, the Immortal whom humans worshiped as Zeus, King of the Greek Gods. And now, thanks to wonderful new technology , I find myself in the twenty first century. My old enemies, the so-called gods, are still around. And they're being hunted by the Destroyers. This doesn't bode well for the humans or the Immortals.

The world is not the place you think it is. For starters, human beings aren't in charge. They never were. Others are. Who are we? We are the race of the Immortals. Beings who were physically indistinguishable from ordinary humans, except for our abilities. Humans call us Immortals because of our extremely long lifespan. The truth is that no one is immortal. Whether you've been around for thirty years or three thousand, you're going to die sooner or later.

The humans were fascinated by us when we first met them. Men and women who live forever, unless we are slain. We've always been around. Since the beginning of human civilization. Throughout history, we've been worshiped as gods and goddesses. We hail from a distant planet called Zetaron and it's long gone now. There was a war a long time ago and our world was destroyed. Twenty thousand Earth years ago. Thousands of survivors came to the planet Earth. And we've been in constant conflict ever since.

The conflict is unending because no side can claim victory when all participants are immortal. Our race may look exactly like humans, but we are not. The main difference is our various abilities, as I mentioned before. Like our regenerative power. It basically renders us next to impossible to kill. We also have other abilities. We can sense each other across great distances.

We are five times stronger and four times faster than the average human being. We also possess Psionic abilities. What exactly is a Psionic? This word describes a set of mental abilities displayed by individuals and entities with extraordinarily developed minds. We can read and manipulate the minds of others. Telepathy. We can also move objects with our minds. Telekinesis.

We descended upon the planet Earth with our spaceships and our technologies. At a time when humans had yet to invent the wheel, we had the ability to travel between worlds at the speed of light. The loss of our homeworld was a terrible blow. However, we managed to survive. Many of us scattered to the four corners of the earth. In ancient Egypt. In ancient Scandinavia. In ancient Greece. We became the deities that primitive human populations worshiped. And we ruled the world.

There were wars between various groups of Immortals. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people died as a result of these conflicts. The wars didn't involve only the gods and goddesses of different lands. They also opposed the human inhabitants of these lands. For eons, war raged across the planet earth. The Olympian gods and goddesses of ancient Greece waved war against the Ennead, the gods of ancient Egypt and the Aesir, the gods of ancient Scandinavia. They were the three greatest powers in the universe.

Until the Destroyers came. The Destroyers are the ancient enemies of we who call ourselves Immortals. A race of sentient super predators who lived on our homeworld a long time ago. Like Neanderthals are to the humans the Destroyers are to us. Ancient, primeval killing machines. They're energy-based parasites who vaguely resemble earth serpents. They survive by infesting the bodies of others.

The Destroyers are a nasty bunch. First, they get inside you, and then they control you. Once inside a living host, they enhance its strength and speed. They also render the host invulnerable to conventional weapons. Guns, knives and even fire doesn't do jack to them. There's not much out there that can hurt them. They get stronger by absorbing the life-force of living beings. It increases their strength and speed, and boosts up the part of their immune system which generates a micro-thin force field around their bodies, thus rendering them invulnerable.

The Destroyers drove our species almost to extinction. Out of a technologically advanced and self-sufficient population of intelligent beings numbering billions a few thousand years ago, mere thousands remain. While on Earth, the prospect of living like gods while ruling a primitive world turned most of us into something we couldn't have expected. I guess it's true what they say. Power corrupts.

I've fought something akin to the Destroyers before. They unleashed a devastating bio-engineered viral agent known as the Transformer many thousands of years ago. The Transformer combined human and animal DNA to create the endless hordes of the monsters. You know the centaurs, mermaids, fairies, trolls, gnomes, giants, titans, winged horses, unicorns along with the vampires and werewolves of mythology and folklore from around the globe? Well, they were real. Created by the Transformer. These creatures were hostile to humanity. I led the fight of humanity against the monsters. I was a friend to man. After all, I was the offspring of an Immortal male and a human female. I possessed superhuman strength and speed, and various other abilities which rivalled those of the immortals. But I was no immortal. The gods used me to fight their enemies. In the end, I rebelled and proclaimed my allegiance to ordinary humanity. For this, I paid with my life.

The Monsters were created to take over the planet and weaken the so-called gods in preparation for the Destroyers invasion of the world. The Destroyers had finally wiped out our brothers and sisters on the homeworld and consumed every natural resource our planet had. So, they turned their sights to the planet Earth. In the twenty first century they came. And immediately began infiltration human society, increasing their numbers and hunting us down like cattle.

And so once more the gods needed me. Humans and gods alike can be affected by the deadly weapons of the Destroyers. Being a half breed, I was immune. The immortals transferred my life-force into the bio-engineered body of Jared Floyd, a Familiar of the gods. What is a Familiar? A human being who is chosen at birth to be one of those whose destiny is to serve an immortal. He volunteered for the procedure. It consumed him, and I was alive once more.

Jared Floyd's body was nothing like the one I'd been born into. I have superhuman strength and speed, but not at the level I once wielded them. I was also rendered invulnerable via gene splicing, combined the DNA of immortal and destroyer with that of a human. A micro-thin force field shields me from conventional as well as unconventional weapons. I cannot be shot, stabbed, burned, electrocuted or crushed. This puts me on an even playing field with the destroyers. My sworn enemies. So once more, Hercules fights reluctantly under the gods banner to save humanity. Only this time I plan on destroying both the gods and the destroyers to free humanity from their yoke. You can count on it.