by Vance, Ramy
“You don’t want any of those things, you say?” Baldr asked. “Then what is it that you do want?”
“My soul back,” I said, turning my head in an effort to sense where the voice was coming from. No good; in a place where light had never existed, where I floated through space, the three gods’ voices boomed around me like a thunderstorm.
“Ahh, that is the one thing we cannot grant you,” the three voices said in unison.
“Why?” I asked. “If you’re so grateful, then certainly I can have my soul back, can’t I? I mean, by your own admission, you owe me.”
“We do. But perhaps a more accurate statement is that we are in your debt for giving us your soul,” said Izanami.
“Your soul and one other’s,” echoed Quetzalcoatl’s flock of voices.
“Alright,” I said, “I need you guys to spell this out for me.”
“Death has different rules for different creatures,” Izanami said. “When one of our creations dies, it becomes a spirit that may or may not continue to be.”
I didn’t miss that Izanami had referred to me—and the rest of humanity—as an “it.” This didn’t bode well for our continued negotiations.
“When a god dies, it presents merely a temporary limitation,” boomed Baldr. “But when a human dies? Well, that is something special indeed.”
As he spoke, I could feel my body rotating as if I was slowly spinning … not around, but upside down. I looked back at the door—my only point of reference in this otherwise empty space—and saw that I had, indeed, flipped upside down. Not that “upside down” was a thing in a place with no floors, walls, or ceilings.
My slow rotation should have been disorientating, but it wasn’t. Since my feet weren’t attached to anything, it didn’t actually feel like I was moving at all in this void.
Except that this place wasn’t a void. Not exactly. If it was, I wouldn’t be moving at all. Well, not without something propelling me, like a current or a breeze. Something, anything to push me along and actually cause me to rotate. This hall (room? cave? I’m going to go with cave … that feels like the right word for big, dark and scary) was being affected by something that was causing me to move.
“Before the gods left,” Izanami said, “death for those with souls was, in truth, the gift of everlasting life. Their souls would travel far, entering whatever heaven or hell their faith and gods dictated.”
“But that was then,” Quetzalcoatl said. “Now that those fickle, uncaring creators have abandoned their constructions for worlds unknown, death for humans is the final moment of everything.”
“What a waste,” Baldr said.
“A waste, for it is souls that power the gods’ domains.”
“It is the human soul that grants us our magic.”
“Gives us strength.”
“And it is your soul—”
“—and one other’s—”
“—and one other’s which have given us enough strength to rise once again,” Quetzalcoatl hissed.
↔
The cave fell silent.
“Let me get this straight. My soul is … what? Your guys’ battery?”
“If you mean ‘well of power,’ then yes.”
“And you guys tried to kill me. Why?”
“To uncomplicate matters,” Baldr said in a way-too-jovial tone, given that he was talking about my death. “After all, the body must die for the soul to be free.”
“But your bodies don’t die and your souls are free.”
“An exception,” Izanami said.
“An anomaly,” agreed Quetzalcoatl.
“A vampire,” I said. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of us.”
The three dead gods didn’t say anything and I was beginning to think that they actually hadn’t heard of vampires before. Like we were some sort of supernatural being that came into existence after these guys died.
If these guys died long enough ago, that was certainly possible.
Which made me wonder when vampires first came into existence. But that wasn’t something I could think about now.
“You want to reward me for donating my soul? And that reward will take the form of an empire that I can rule over? That sounds like a lot of work. I’m more of a spa girl, myself.”
“Then slaves?” Quetzalcoatl said.
“Or pleasures of the flesh?” Izanami offered.
“Or simple, forever-lasting joy?” Baldr boomed.
Another thing about powerful beings: they tended to believe you wanted to serve them simply because they were powerful. That somehow just being in their presence was reward enough. In other words, they didn’t offer you power, glory or riches unless you had something they wanted.
Or they were afraid of you.
“Humph,” I grunted, trying to think of a way to get more out of them. “So do I get to see you three guys, or do we keep chatting in absolute darkness like some twisted game of Seven Minutes in Heaven?”
This doesn’t make sense, I thought (making sure it was in my head). As best as I can tell, the nio and shisa guardians were sent by these guys—and not to offer me an invitation. They were trying to kill me. But here I am, standing in some perverse version of Plato’s Cave (sans the roaring fire), being thanked by the very same gods who wanted me dead.
“Wanted you dead,” Izanami said with an inflection that implied that was no longer the case. “Now, we want you whole,” she continued, confirming my suspicions.
“Hold on,” I said, “I know I thought that in my head. How did you—?”
“We have your soul.”
“And the soul knows all,” Baldr boomed.
Great, I thought, it was bad enough that I often think out loud. But now even my inside-thoughts are being aired for everyone to hear.
“Not everyone,” Quetzalcoatl said.
“Just us.”
Creepy.
“OK.” I sighed. “I would still like to see you. You know—get to know your names. Basic etiquette for the master-minion relationship.”
“So you agree to serve us?”
“What choice do I have? Regardless, I would like to see you.”
“Then see us,” Izanami said, as if that explained everything.
I was just about to ask where the light switch was when I felt a pulsing, almost warm glow in my chest right where my heart was. And, to paraphrase the Big Guy, “Then there was light and it was … odd.”
The Dark Side of Your Soul
The room lit up. What lay around me was less Plato’s Cave and more Alice in Wonderland. Standing (or floating; I wasn’t really sure because I couldn’t see their feet) before me were three figures who towered above me tenfold. Because I was floating at eye level less than twenty meters away, it was hard to capture all of their details. It felt kind of like looking at the tip of an iceberg: you just know there’s a whole lot more below the surface.
Three figures—three dead gods—stood before me. At the center was Izanami-no-Minoto, the first and most obvious of the three. The gray, decaying flesh of her cheeks was peppered with giant holes big enough for minivans to drive through. Through those holes I could see the crimson-red lining of her gums, tongue and inner throat. Her left eye was being eaten by maggots the size of mountain lions and only patches of long black hair remained on her head.
She looked like an extra on The Walking Dead, but despite her zombie-like appearance, I could see the beauty she’d possessed before she died all those centuries ago. As she stared at me, she gripped the pendant on her necklace like a child trying to keep a toy from a playmate.
To her left stood Quetzalcoatl, his face more like a thunderbird you’d find at the top of a Native American totem pole than anything alive. Purple and gray lines framed his features, highlighting his eyes and nose. Where his ears should have been, two wings jutted straight out like the broken cowl on a Batman costume. If that wasn’t weird enough, the ancient Aztec god didn’t have a mouth. He had a beak—or rather beaks, as in plural. H
e had beaks. Hundreds of them. They were all normal-sized and belonging to all kinds of birds, from a long pelican’s beak to a tiny sparrow’s beak.
And finally there was Baldr, who was by far the easiest to look at because he just looked like a fat Norseman with a large, red beard and smile that betrayed uneven, off-white teeth. He looked quite … human. Well, if you discounted the fact that he was bigger than most skyscrapers and had an arrow sticking out of his chest. I guess that’s what it takes to kill a god … a magical arrow the size of the CN Tower.
“So,” I said, feeling very much like small Alice, “that wasn’t weird at all.”
Only Baldr seemed to get my attempt at levity, because he gave me a chuckle before booming, “Oh, my dear, weird is what we dead gods do.”
“I’m getting that vibe,” I said, taking a moment to look around. Other than the three gods, there didn’t seem to be anything else in the room except a faint glow far, far below me.
What wasn’t in sight was a jar holding my soul in it. But given how vast this place was and how little of it I could see, that jar could have been anywhere.
There was something else missing that I had expected to be here: my fear. Despite standing in front of three towering gods, I wasn’t afraid. If anything, I was bored and mildly frustrated that they were here. I’d been accused of being a brazen fool, too stupid to know what was good for me, but a complete lack of fear in such overwhelming circumstances was strange, even for me.
I should have been cowering in fear. Or awe. But I simply wasn’t.
Was this a side effect of not having my soul? I had been feeling empty—depressed, even. But my emotions hadn’t been so muted that I wasn’t able to care about things … it was just getting harder and harder to do so.
But caring about your friends and being terrified that you could be swatted down like a fly were two different things. And right now, neither really bothered me.
“So,” I said, fighting the urge to yawn, “now what?”
“Now we send you back,” chorused Quetzalcoatl. Having a thousand beaks was one thing, but seeing them move in sync as they all spoke the same words was something else entirely. Worst choir ever.
“Send me back and …” I let the last word hang with the hope that they’d fill in the blanks.
Baldr took the bait. “And you wait for us as we gather our strength and emerge.” As he said “emerge,” he lifted a hand the size of five cruise ships docked on a medium-sized island.
The force of such a large mass in the void sent ripples that actually propelled me backward, tumbling head over heels. Although it was disorienting to move with such force against my will, I wasn’t nauseated or dizzy. It was as if my inner ear was working overtime to make this feel … normal.
Normal or not, I didn’t like moving against my will and I stuck out my arms to stop. That didn’t do anything and now I was just tumbling with arms outstretched. Annoyed more than anything else, I thought about how much I’d just like to stop.
And I did. As soon as the word “Stop” fully formed in my mind, my body ceased moving, and I found myself hovering with my face pointed decidedly downward. And what’s more, I had that same warm feeling in my chest.
“Oh,” I said, “that’s how this works.” And focusing my gaze on the light beneath them, I shot down like an osprey hunting for fish.
↔
Back when I was a relatively young vampire—only eighty years old or so—I briefly dated a dark elf. There isn’t a lot about my time with him that I care to remember. We were in a romance of evil bliss, two virtually indestructible creatures doing as they wished in both the mortal plane and the UnSeelie Court, and we did a lot I wish we hadn’t.
And so, when I was floating in an empty void with three dead gods trying to hire me as their numero uno henchman (well, henchwoman), it felt somehow appropriate that I thought about him. More specifically, about what he’d taught me about magic.
You see, a vampire doesn’t have magic. Sure, there were plenty of powers granted by magic, but those were part of the package, not something we could manifest out of nothing.
This always puzzled him and he spent many an evening training me in hopes that vampires did, in fact, have latent magical abilities. “Magic is the intersection of desire, will and faith,” he used to say. “The desire to create an effect that isn’t, the will to see it through and the faith that you are capable of doing it.”
Despite all the desire, will and faith in the world, I never did manifest that magic. And he ultimately left me because I wasn’t magical enough for him.
Well, if only he could see me now.
Staring at the light below, I formulated the desire to get closer as I focused my will on having it. And as for faith … well, three hundred years of battles and near-death experiences tend to be a confidence-builder.
I dove toward the light and as I did, I saw Baldr and Izanami’s hands reach down to grab me. But they were huge and slow, and given their size it was like they were trying to swat a mosquito flying at near supersonic speed.
I easily dodged their clumsy hands and then I did something completely natural that had the most unnatural of effects. I muttered, “I wish these guys would just leave me alone.” And just like that, they disappeared. I mean, one minute you’re facing off against three titans so large they can be seen from space and the next second—poof … gone. Top that, David Copperfield!
Completely unfettered, I approached the light below. I didn’t know what to expect when I got there; I was hoping it was my soul trapped in a jar and that all I had to do was pop open the lid and drink it back down into me like a Red Bull.
But Hope is a fickle bitch who rarely shows up dressed the way you want her to.
As I drew closer, I didn’t see a jar or a ball of energy that could be my soul.
I saw an angel nailed to a cross, floating in the void. What’s more, I recognized the creature from vids General Shouf had played for me back in the base on Okinawa.
“Shit,” I said, stopping my flight next to the floating crucifix covered in the same symbols I’d seen on the shell the futakuchi-onna had left behind on the plane over. Whatever this cross was made of, it was covered with the symbols of renewed life that Deirdre had told me about. “Gabriel?”
The archangel turned a weary head in my direction before his lips turned slightly upward. “You made it, Ms. Darling. I guess some prayers are still answered in this GoneGod World.”
We All Have Our Angels to Burden
“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head, “but you know my name?”
“I know the names of all, as I do their deeds, Ms. Darling,” the archangel said.
Oh great, I thought, his “thing” had to be that.
Every angel had a “thing”—a special ability or purpose for which they were created. For some, it was power and authority, qualities they had in spades. Others had mercy or healing, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a creature capable of more empathy than an angel. I’d even heard of one whose “thing” was to know every written word, including those written on one’s soul. Combine that with a supernatural memory, and that angel literally knew everything ever transcribed.
Up until the gods left, that was. After the GrandExodus, all the angels had lost their thing. But given that the gods had left four years ago, it meant that they weren’t completely up to date, but weren’t too far behind, either. Operating on Windows 7, so to speak.
And Gabriel’s thing was knowing all my deeds. Not my thoughts, mind you, or any of my inner conflicts or internal debates. Just the final action I took on every little thing I’d done during my three hundred years of life. Given that the archangel Gabriel was generally regarded as a force for good, I was surprised he seemed happy to see me.
Like I’ve said before: during my time as a vampire, I did a lot of things I’m not proud of. And by “not proud of,” I mean “spending the rest of my mortal life trying to make up for.”
Not sure what to say, I f
loated there dumbly, waiting for the angel to say something—anything. But Gabriel just looked at me with a pained expression. From the way his arms hunched down and his body dragged, it seemed that gravity was pulling him down, causing him immense pain. That was something I could remedy, and I angled his cross so that he was lying down.
He shook his head and between gasped breaths, said, “Thank you, but I’m afraid there is no position in which my body does not drag down against these nine-inch nails. That is the design of the cross: to inflict pain, no matter what.”
Well, that sucked. But given that I’d just vanquished three dead gods, I was starting to think I had unlimited power in this place. “Hold still,” I said as I focused on the nails, willing them to pull out. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get them to move.
“The gods’ powers may be limited here, but they are not insubstantial. Only they can free me and I fear that is something they will never do. Not as long as I refuse to serve them,” he said. “And as clever as your vanquishing may be, they shall return, Ms. Darling.”
I looked around, but couldn’t see anything coming, and I felt like I was deep in the ocean, below the line of light, waiting for a shark to swim into view. “I figured it was too easy. But they don’t want to kill me, so what do I really have to worry about?”
“They only stay their hands because they do not know what will happen if a living body dies in a heavenly plane of existence.” Gabriel strained his face in obvious pain as he spoke. Given that I had seen—as in, actually saw with my own eyes—Gabriel die during a firefight with a human army, the fact that he was here before me, tangible and in pain … well, that was all sorts of weird. I knew a lot about mythology and creatures of legend, a lot about the heavens and hells, and my eidetic memory allowed me to recall things in an instant (kind of like having Google’s search engine for a brain—go nerdy me!), but even still, I had no idea how any of this was possible. Angels couldn’t die … could they?