Diomedes Dossier: The Blood of Aphrodite - Paperback

by Ernesto Andreta (Translator), Maria M. Maggiano (Author)

Myths and fairy tales from the ancestral Mount Gargano in Apulia, entwined with true historical and archaeological facts, set up the visionary fiction background for Gabriel and Cora. The twenty years old Cora moves from her hometown in Gargano to Seattle, Washington, where she is welcomed to be part in the Gargano Community by the family of Corinthia Thuri, who has two twins, the blond haired Gabriel and black haired Vinz. Both of them fall in love with her, but Cora prefers Gabriel. To make their love come true, the two lovers take a journey from the peninsula of Olympia up to Mount Gargano, from the Paleolithic Paglicci Cave to the Neolithic Great Cave of Manaccora down to the arcane middle age factory known as K lena Abbey. As a matter of fact Cora descends from Una (the water nymph maid of Calypso, the daughter of the Sun). In Gabriel's blood however still runs the ichor, the blood of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Vinz is a member of the gang called "The Predominants" and objects to his brother's marriage with Cora, thus forcing the two lovers to chase each other across transoceanic flights between Seattle and the mysterious Gargano, rich of gorges, dolinas, rifts and stalagmitic caves. The vast plains of Mediterranean vegetation dwelt by Tarantola Rubra and beaten by pieces of tambourine music, are spotted with dolmens, asphodels and a variety of species of orchids. The young shaman Sybilla of Morlacchia's ancestral origins, member of the same Community as Ian's, an astral traveler whom the genetic engineer Aksel succeeded in tying together with Cora as a Duploid pair (a new race of agents of the ideological global war capable of paralyzing the enemy's mind in suspended ecstasy) is pursuing the obsidian cube, a powerful magnet fit for cutting the etheric cords binding two living beings together. The obsidian cube is kept under custody on the top of Mount Drion by the local shepherds, an ancient birth that reached that mountainous place from Thera after the burst of the olden isle of Santorini, 3500 years before. Madam Prisma is the Guardian of the Talisman, a multifaceted witch. Sybilla tries and succeeds in stealing it from her, but unluckily gives it just in the hands of a member of the gang, Dario from Castelpagano, a fellow of that "grey zone" where the most hideous things usually take place. Fallen in love with Corinthia, he was there when the two twins stepbrothers were conceived but supported Vinz alone. An unlikely event happens, the explosion inside a gully ravine, so that Dario would mend his ways and support now Cora and Gabriel. The mended Dario, after grabbing the obsidian magnet, resolves to give it back to Cora and Gabriel who, in the interim, had been summoned back to Mount Gargano by their guide Alex because he was able to interpret a prophecy about them found in a register stolen from K lena. Dario himself sees them down to a nymphaeum in the crypts of the Byzantine cenoby on Mount Elio, where "The Predominants" are awaiting them. Dario is guarding while the two newlyweds can dip in the waters of the holy spring. In the bridal room the union of their two auras into one takes its form. Only can the Kingdom of the Dead keep them apart from the hidden room of Acceptus, inside the ancient Church in K lena, whose altar the nine holy guardian monks of the upward route to the Fifth Dimension are buried under. Gabriel and Cora take that pathway and are rejuvenated. Gargano is actually the Mountain of the Sun, the ancient civilized colony of the aristocratic clan led by the Greek hero Diomedes.