Famine and war plague the people of Argos as the next millennium approaches. The time is the future. The time is the past. The Cult of Artemis has been reawakened by the prophet Den Mother through the manipulation of the technological network that supports the people's way of life and consciousness. Her most devout follower, the princess Iphiginia, remains at home in Argos with her mother, the queen Clytemnestra while her father Agamemnon, along with all of the men, are stuck at port in Aules - awaiting the winds necessary to sail to Troy, battle, and the approaching millennium.

As Artemis' virgin priestess Pythia wails away incoherently at the Oracle in Delphi, the prophet Den Mother translates her pained cries into prophesies which she uses to control her followers - those who long to escape the war and famine through 'ascension to the next level'. The first of the prophecies dictates that there must be sacrifice in order for this to occur - and the sacrifice must be the virgin princess - Iphiginia. All of this remains known only to the soldiers and the king, Agamemnon, who sends for his daughter Iphiginia telling her that she will be married to the warrior Achilles.

As Clytemnestra and her servants prepare for the marriage and for their journey to Aulis - where the ceremony is to take place, Iphiginia ventures into the underworld to confront her family's history of forced marriages and to enlist the help of Persephonie - a goddess famous for being forced to marry against her will. Disgusted by her family's past and Persephonie's unwillingness to fight fate, Iphiginia leaves the underworld - only to find herself already in Aulis with her mother and soldiers hungry for the sacrifice that will lead them to the next level of consciousness and religious fanaticism. At Aulis, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon argue about the 'wedding' ceremony, but it is not until the Queen encounters Achilles in the privacy of his tent that she realizes that the men mean to sacrifice, not marry, her eldest daughter.

The Den Mother continues to raise the level of fanaticism in the soldiers, and as Achilles falls in love with the brave Iphiginia's own devotion - the princess learns of her father's plan to have her killed. Tormented, she embarks on a journey to Pythia - the one who holds the princess's fate in her hands through her incoherent prophetizing - only to find that Pythia is a crazed and pained captive of the god Apollo whose words the Den Mother has been manipulating for her own political and religious power. Yet, here - breathing the vapors from the Oracle - Iphiginia is given sight into the future and realizes that she really can help her people through her own sacrifice.

She resigns to die - yet is haunted by images of her mother murdering her father, her brother Orestes killing their mother, and the furies from the Underworld haunting her brother. Thrust into the future by these images, she finds herself at Taurus as a priestess to Artemis - many years after the sacrifice, where she again encounters her brother Orestes. Although ecstatic at the small family reunion that she is allowed after so much pain - the encounter forces Iphiginia to realize that she must return to the past - to the sacrifice - and face her fate and her history. Finding herself once again at Aulis surrounded by the hungry mob, she quiets them with her resignation to die for her people. Persephonie returns to the earth bearing both the bridal torch and vegetation back to the starved people, and as the mob watches, Iphiginia turns the bridal torch on herself in the ultimate act of sacrifice - thus moving her people into the next millennium and becoming the first to 'the next level'.