Hercules returns to
Mount Olympus with his companions Recorder 417 and Skyppi the Skrull to find
the place in ruins. In the great hall, they find Zeus, a sadistic leer on his
face and an axe in his hands and now he challenges Herc as the last of the
gods. When Skyppi tries to intervene, Zeus turns a fallen marble column into a
giant horse-headed warrior and sets it on the Skrull and Recorder to pursue and
kill them. Zeus then takes away Herc’s immortality and encases it in a pearl,
dropping it into a burning brazier where it will be destroyed in an hour; Herc
has that much time to defeat Zeus and recover it. But Hercules refuses to take
arms against his father so Zeus hurls a flaming axe at him….
Elsewhere, Recorder and
Skyppi are running from the stone warrior. The Skrull comes up with a scheme;
he turns into a duplicate of the monster and confronts it; Recorder is able to
tip the startled thing into a huge well….
Hercules refuses to
fight his father though he will defend himself; this leads to Herc’s being
injured several times but he brings down the palace to slow Zeus down. His pals
find him and Skyppi goes to distract Zeus by impersonating Hercules. Zeus is
not fooled and he kills the Skrull, choking him with one hand. At the sight of
his companion dying, Herc loses his temper and beats Zeus bloody…but he balks
at finishing him off with the axe. Zeus tells Herc he has passed the test: the
time of the gods is over, only one demigod may survive to begin a new race; it
was for this that Zeus sent Herc out into the world, to learn humility and
compassion. Zeus prepares to go to the gods’ afterlife, where he has already
sent the others but first he brings back the brazier; Herc debates whether to
die and be with the others of his kind or to accept his new destiny. Finally, he
touches the pearl and is restored to health and life….
Epilogue: Herc discovers
that Skyppi isn’t dead so they board the chariot and prepare to search out
Hercules’ new destiny….