Alterverse

by Keith B Darrell

  “There will be retribution,” Alaric said stridently.

  Professor Eligos looked out at the window again. “Children, for your next essay, I want you to compare and contrast the Keres, the Furies, and the Netherspawn. You may begin writing now. I shall return momentarily.” He took his silver lance from the corner behind the desk and, using it as if it were an oversized walking stick, stepped out of the classroom.

  Asabi’s thoughts drifted back to a recent meeting with the archangel Gabriel. The emere had met Gabriel before, but that was when each had existed in a previous incarnation in a different reality. The angel, former ruler of the first heaven Shamayim, had been earthbound in the guise of the human private investigator Gabe Horn, and Asabi had been – Asabi glanced down at her body – different.

  “My Lord.” Asabi bowed. “I was sent here by Metatron.”

  Gabriel nodded. “I know. Few besides an emere such as yourself have the ability to transcend the dimensional realms, let alone locate an obscure plane of existence as this.”

  The black youth perused their surroundings. They were not on Earth, but neither were they in Heaven. “What is this place, my Lord?”

  Gabriel glanced at the verdure of the agrestic wooded glen and the orange-reddish sky. “The humans would call this a pocket dimension.” He saw the puzzled expression on the emere’s face. “Think of the universe as a suit God wears. Inside the jacket is a small pocket that no one sees but that can be used to hold – or hide – anything.”

  “A tiny universe tucked away within the greater universe,” Asabi marveled.

  “Precisely. Eventually the humans will come to understand the concepts of Sidrat physics that allow what appears to be a finite space to be much bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.”

  “And you chose this realm over that of your own heavenly Shamayim?”

  Gabriel chuckled. “Chose is perhaps not the right word; that implies free will. I’ve learned we are each set upon a path, and even if it’s a path we’ve chosen, all paths ultimately lead somewhere. Perhaps we may choose our own paths but only to a destination that has been predetermined. In any event, this is where I was needed because of my unique experiences as both an archangel and as one who has lived among humanity.”

  “Forgive me, but you sound different, my Lord. When last we met, you were more—”

  “Rebellious?” Gabriel arched an eyebrow. “Less of an adherent to the status quo? That was in a previous incarnation. I’ve changed, and with a new incarnation comes a new perspective.”

  “I’ve changed as well, my Lord,” Asabi said uncomfortably, gazing down again at her own female form. “As you are aware, emeres switch gender uncontrollably whenever we become nervous.”

  “Do I make you nervous?”

  “No, my Lord. Something occurred when I was last on Earth.” The ebon youth paused. “I died.”

  The angel sighed. “It… happens.”

  “I expected to go to my eternal reward, but instead my spirit was summoned by Metatron. The Aspect told me I was needed for an important mission. So my body was resurrected but assigned to my female gender. It is… Awkward.”

  “You wear it well. Those of us who are reincarnated are also usually changed by the transmigration, sometimes externally and other times from within.”

  “Do you know what my mission is or why I’m here?”

  Gabriel gestured to the open space around them. “You’re needed because few possess your ability to transcend any and all dimensions. You’re here because, at least for the time being, it is the only safe place in existence.”

  Asabi appeared bemused.

  “You’re safely tucked away in a jacket pocket of a suit that no longer exists. The universe we know has been replaced.”

  “Replaced?” Asabi let the angel’s enigmatic words sink in. “How, and with what?” the shocked emere asked.

  “Have you heard of the Grigori?”

  Asabi gasped. “Only in legends, my Lord. They were angels expelled from Heaven near the dawn of time.”

  Gabriel nodded. “God created the Grigori to watch over the new humans with whom he had populated the Earth. They had an affinity for humans that those of us living in our heavenly ivory towers lacked. I never understood humanity until I walked among humans; yet for the Grigori, it was more than a mere understanding of humans but rather a comprehension of what it was like to be human. And that was their downfall. They watched and guided their human charges but they became too close to them. The Grigori succumbed to human vices such as debauchery and lust. They gave in to their concupiscence and had sex with the humans, spawning a race of half-human, half-angelic giants.”

  “The Nephilim!” Asabi exclaimed.

  “You know your legends well. The Nephilim were an embarrassment to God. Physically, they were misshapen giants lacking the grace and beauty of the humans he had created to populate the planet. They had arisen from a union never meant to take place and many inherited the worst of humanity’s traits. The Nephilim were hunted to near extinction by the Heavenly Host, and God sent forth the Great Flood to wash them from the face of the earth. They ended up here.” Gabriel spread his arms, gesturing to their surroundings. As the legends recount, the Grigori are bound “in the valleys of the Earth until Judgment Day.”

  Asabi gasped. “The valleys of ancient lore are actually a pocket dimension? But why didn’t God simply destroy the remaining Nephilim?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “Perhaps he felt guilty for having persecuted them for their mere existence, which was no fault of their own. Or maybe the Creator knew he would one day need this pocket universe.” Gabriel reached out his hand. “Come. There’s someone I want you to meet.” The archangel led the emere through the woods and into a rustic clearing in which a settlement had been built adjacent to the seashore. Gabriel waved one of the Grigori over to them.

  “Caspian, this is the emere Asabi,” Gabriel told the approaching angel. “He wishes to learn of the great darkness that has befallen all of us.”

  Caspian lowered his head in shame until it hung parallel to the shoulder blades of his feathery white wings. “It is partially my fault.”

  “Not at all,” Gabriel said. “Fault cannot be ascribed to predestination. But for Asabi’s sake, start at the beginning.”

  Caspian nodded, as a tropaean breeze ruffled his wing feathers. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth,” Caspian began. “The Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. But there were other gods that chose the darkness over the light; that thrived on Chaos and detested Order. These Dark Gods ruled their chaotic realm of the multiverse for eons until the fateful day when they chose to expand their dominion into the realm of Order. Whispered legends hint at their fate. The dark deities were banished to another plane of reality, locked in eternal slumber, never to awaken —”

  “Another pocket universe,” Gabriel explained to Asabi. “The Dark Dimension. It was the one dimension even you might not have been able to enter freely because of the barriers placed around it.”

  Caspian nodded. “The Dark Gods and all their primordial evil were locked away in a box. It had no key but could only be opened by the namesake – she for whom the prison was named.”

  “Pandora’s Box,” Gabriel said, “was merely another pocket dimension.”

  Asabi gaped, flabbergasted. “Incredible that a single box could contain all the primordial evil.”

  “Physical size is a mere abstract,” Gabriel said. “It’s much bigger on the inside.”

  “The box had to be hidden from any who might, intentionally or unintentionally, open it and let loose evil upon the world. The original Pandora did so once and it took eons to reclaim most of the evil that escaped. So it was decided to hide Pandora’s Box here in thi
s pocket dimension that no one even knew existed.”

  “Hiding a pocket dimension within yet another pocket dimension?” Asabi asked.

  Caspian nodded. “The Grigori were charged with safeguarding Pandora’s Box. We successfully kept it hidden from the outside world for many millennia believing we had found the perfect hiding place: a pocket dimension no one knew about. But we had overlooked one small detail: our dimension’s inhabitants knew of its existence.”

  “The Nephilim learned of the box,” Gabriel said.

  “Our children felt as though they had been imprisoned in this dimension and they realized that the barriers trapping them within this pocket universe would fall were the box to be opened simultaneously with the prophesied onset of the Age of Magic.”

  “All of the dimensional barriers constructed to restrict egress and ingress would dissipate leading to chaos, the natural order of the Dark Gods,” Gabriel said.

  “The Nephilim did not care about the consequences,” Caspian said. “Like rebellious children, they sought only their independence. Realizing the Age of Magic was approaching, I took the box and journeyed to Earth in search of Gabriel so he could procure a new hiding place for it. But I was pursued by the Nephilim and forced to leave it in the possession of an Earth girl Gabriel had befriended – a vampire I later learned was named Pandora Pennyworth.”

  “A namesake!” Asabi exclaimed, dumbfounded. “You gave Pandora’s Box to Pandora?”

  Caspian nodded shamefully. “I didn’t realize who she was. Had I known she possessed the power to open the box…”

  “As I said,” Gabriel interjected, “none of this is your fault. It was inevitable that the box would be opened.”

  Asabi’s lips formed a rictus. “Oh my God! She opened it?”

  “Only for a split-second to defeat a villain confronting Pandora and her friends,” Gabriel said. “But it was more than enough time to release the Dark Gods and cause the barriers to fall. I returned from Heaven in my present incarnation as an emissary to the banished Grigori, who had been charged with keeping the Nephilim in check. But the Grigori have failed to prevent the Pandoracum – Pandora’s Box – from being opened and releasing the primordial evil of the Dark Gods.

  “Pandora’s opening of the box coincided with the Age of Magic and allowed the Dark Gods to reform in our dimension. The Age of Magic has arrived and with it the barriers separating the dimensions of the multiverse have dissipated, creating a single integrated universe. But as the dimensional barriers dissolve around us, the rules of time and space are being rewritten.”

  “The Dark Gods have taken advantage of the resulting chaos and re-created the new universe in their image,” Caspian said. “Heaven and Hell have effectively been wiped from existence. Most of the barriers separating the realms are becoming porous. Only this pocket dimension remains and eventually it too will merge into everything else.”

  “The universe we knew is gone,” Gabriel said. “There’s no one left to help us. The Dark Gods have won. That’s why your mission is so important, Asabi. You must leave this pocket dimension and enter the Alterverse the Dark Gods have created and seek out the one boy who may yet defeat them. If you can guide him to the path, then he will arrive at his destination.”

  Asabi’s eyes widened. “My mission is to save reality?”

  “Indirectly,” Gabriel replied. “You merely need to point young Alaric in the right direction; once he has embarked inexorably on the proper path it will lead to the inevitable destination that results in the defeat of the Dark Gods. You may not witness their defeat, for that may take decades, but you’ll be able to return home to our reconstructed universe with the knowledge that you were instrumental in the ultimate defeat of the Dark Gods.”

  “I understand, my Lord. Tell me what I must do.”

  Asabi looked up from her interrupted reverie, the moonlight glinting off the silver lance before her.

  “My apologies for disturbing your ruminations. It’s so seldom I see youth in such deep contemplation that, as an educator, I’m loath to separate you from your thoughts. However, I sensed your uncertainty and felt it best to approach you before you blundered onto the wrong person.” Eligos saw Asabi’s bemused countenance. “Many amble through life uncertain which path to take or in whom to confide, but I suspect none have done so quite literally bearing the weight of the world, as do you, Asabi.”

  The ebon youth’s eyes widened. “You know my name? But that’s not possible. No one here knows I exist, nor would they recognize me as I am now if they did.”

  “It is my gift, and alternately my curse, to know all secrets and see the future. I am Eligos, a great duke of Hell.”

  “Hell? I heard you say in the classroom this was Las Vegas.”

  “So it is, and well deserving of its sobriquet Sin City. Hell, like its counterpart Heaven, has been shuttered in the new reality created by the Dark Gods.”

  Asabi gaped. “You know that reality has been reshaped?”

  “As I told you, there are no secrets that can be hidden from me.”

  “Does anyone else realize they’re living in an alternate existence?”

  Eligos shook his head. “Other than the Dark Gods themselves, only those who fled before the re-creation was completed. The Devil, God, and most of the angels have taken refuge in various pocket universes that have yet to be subsumed. But the realignment of reality is like a burgeoning cloud that will eventually encompass everything.”

  “That’s what I was told by Gabriel. He said the dimensional barriers have fallen and all the realms have merged onto one plane of existence.”

  Eligos nodded. “Heaven and Hell have been mostly emptied by the Dark Gods. For the first time that I know of, the flames of the Infernal Furnace that powers Hell have been extinguished and the realm is now a cold and desolate place where only the most desperate of demons choose to remain, in hiding, fearful of what the Dark Gods might have in store for them.”

  “Yet a demons such as yourself has found employment as a teacher? This is indeed a strange reality. Why do you teach your classes at night?”

  “It’s always night in this caliginous universe. The Dark Gods are lords of Chaos and they thrive in darkness. The Dark Goddess Nyx is not only the mother of the other Dark Gods but also of the Keres and the Moirae, the three sisters who weave mankind’s fate. Have you never wondered why the vampires of your reality chose the zodiac – a symbol of fate – to represent their ascension to power, in both their global organization Nosferatu, Inc. and its ancient predecessor, the Council of Twelve? The Eternal known as Destiny to some, and Prophecy or Horus to others, created the first vampires and gave them their zodiac medallions.”

  “But why?” Asabi asked.

  “Vampires are creatures of the night, and as I’ve said, the Dark Gods thrive on darkness. They also thrive on believers. As with all gods, the Dark Gods’ power increases or decreases exponentially depending on the number of humans worshipping them. The Dark Gods had always planned for the vampires to assume the role of high priests making sure the humans worshipped them. Now, those humans that refuse to do so become fodder for the vampires or the other nocturnal creatures employed by the Dark Gods, the lycanthropes.”

  Asabi nodded. “In my reality, there are certain gypsy tribes in which the men have a preternatural genetic predisposition to become mindless werewolves and the women are able to change into wolves at will while retaining their human intellect.”

  “Here, the werewolves also retain some of their human intelligence so they might better serve the Dark Gods. But there was no Great Eclipse as occurred in your reality that would allow vampires to function in daylight, so instead the Dark Gods fashioned this realm of eternal darkness.” Eligos chuckled. “Yet, despite that, the vampires still cannot enter the Dreamscape because, while they may sleep in their coffins, vampires cannot dream.”

  “Then, the Dreamscape still exists as a separate realm? I thought all the dimensions had merged.”

 
“Before the Dark Gods made their first of many bids for hegemony, shortly after the creation of your reality, Nyx’s son Hypnos and his offspring the Oneiroi – whom the humans called Sleep and Dreams – ruled the Dreamscape, and when the Dark Gods were banished to the Dark Dimension Hypnos and the Oneiroi chose to stay behind, deciding it was better to rule in slumber than serve in darkness.”

  “This is a lot to take in. I don’t know which is more amazing: how much the multiverse has changed or that you’re able to maintain an awareness that no one else can.”

  “It’s changed more than you suspect. When the Dark Gods re-created reality, some things — and people — simply never came into existence in this reality. For example, I can see in my mind a rather large gray creature with big floppy ears and a wrinkled, extremely elongated nose it used in a prehensile manner.”

  “An elephant?” Asabi asked. “They’re quite common in my native Africa.”

  “Sadly, I shall never see one outside of my visions, as they do not exist in this reality. You may also discover many people you knew from your reality never existed at all. Likewise, some who died in the previous reality may still be alive here while others once alive no longer are.”

  “Will you help me with my mission, Eligos?”

  Eligos shook his head. “I’ve no desire to risk my destruction by opposing the Dark Gods. I’m selfish… Like all demons. I value my life and although I’ll probably still exists in a restored reality I’m in no hurry to bring it about. But there are those who would be willing to help you defeat the Dark Gods. You can begin with several of my students: Kaya, Síofra, Ursula, and Quinn.”

  “I was told to find Alaric.”

  “Yes, that makes sense. He has a thirst for vengeance that cannot be satiated but only appeased.”

  “But how does one defeat omnipotent gods?” Asabi asked.

  “By taking away the source of their power: their worshippers. Destroy the humans’ belief in the Dark Gods and they’ll become impotent. Reveal they are not as they seem and the faithful will turn away from them. It shall be up to you to recruit them to your cause and together complete your quest to restore your reality.”