When We Were Mortals

by E. S. Mercer

  “Ah, screw it!” I cried, standing back up. “Alice survived her rabbit hole, I’m sure I’ll be fine too.”

  But I won’t lie, I was terrified. The farther down I went, the more I became engulfed by the darkness, desperate for oxygen and nearly losing my way. I dragged my fingertips across the frigid and abrasive stone for a sense of security, as I pushed through, hoping I hadn’t just sealed my fate with the next step. Finally, after what felt like an hour journey, which was most likely five or six steps, the fog lifted. I could see clearly now and what was right below me was one the most incredible things I had ever seen.

  There I was, standing above a small underground city. It was the size of about three football fields with vaulted ceilings that were at least ten stories high and six arched Gateways almost five stories tall. Next to each Gateway stood equally tall statues of various angel like creatures holding swords which pointed towards the sky.

  The keystone of each doorway had an illuminated symbol carved into it. The cobblestone streets wound their way throughout the city, with no specific rhyme or reason. It’s inhabitants spilled out onto the streets, indicating that I had arrived sometime in the early morning. Shops began to open and the street markets began to fill, while no one bothered to notice I didn’t belong there.

  I couldn’t help but bask in the beauty of this place. Waterfalls fell from large cracks in the walls of the city, spilling into aqueducts that towered above the buildings made of stone and raw earth. Ivy covered power lines snaked their way through trees that thrived better than most of the trees above ground. Sunlight was not lacking as it found its way through each Gateway, shining as brightly as it could from one end of the city to the other.

  As I wandered around the city, I noticed that the wardrobe of the average inhabitant had a slightly modern feel, but unlike anything I had ever seen before. All the women were adorned in a soft silky dress, with clean and simple lines that allowed for a sultry and yet modest silhouette. The men, however, were dressed in two types of outfits. Some were found in a simple smock type outfit with pale colored pants to match, where others were in a more fitted attire, with a belt around their waste and collar up to their chin. Children were dressed to match their parents, from the time of infancy on.

  The place had an archaic undertone that made it feel out of this world. I wandered around, dodging animals on the street and stepping over puddles forming under the aqueducts, hoping to find someone to talk to. Every time I would approach someone, my words would fall on deaf ears, as their lousy attempt to pretend to not see me grew irritating. Their reaction to my presence was quite opposite to what I was used to and I just couldn’t understand it.

  Finally, I found myself in front of the largest building in the city, hoping just maybe someone inside would finally talk to me. It was a small cathedral like structure, in the center of the ‘city’ with four barbed steeples, ludicrously overstated wooden doors and a courtyard full of lifeless landscaping. It was completely opposite of everything I had seen leading up to it, almost ominous and uninviting. But at this point, it seemed to be my only hope.

  I hadn’t made it but two steps down the cobblestone path when I heard a voice call out from behind me.

  “Welcome to Aljann,” the man said, in a greasy tone. “I have to say I am a little shocked to see you here.”

  “What is this place,” I asked, still facing the gothic architecture before me.”

  “It is where the six realms meet,” he responded. “Where the realms become separated and yet exist all at once.”

  “And why is it underground?” I asked my new tour guide.

  “It wasn’t always underground,” he said, moving into my sight line. “The New Heaven City was built on top of the old one.”

  “This is the original Heaven City?” I asked, glancing over at him.

  I took a step back when I realized who I was talking to. “You don’t have to be afraid of me,” Samiel said, recognizing my unease. “I have always been on your side.”

  “Side of what?” I asked eagerly. “Please tell me this is the part where you explain what the hell has been going on.”

  “I will tell you everything I can,” he exclaimed. “I had hoped by now you would have remembered, but we will work with what we have. We’ve done it before.”

  “You are not the first person to suggest this has happened before,” I alleged. “Just how many times have I been in this position.”

  Samiel chuckled as he wrapped his arm around mine, guiding me towards a bench in the courtyard. “In some cases, you have figured it out rather quickly, and in others you have lived an entire life span not knowing who you are; in terms of time measured by mortals, you have been doing this for a very, very long time.”

  The look on my face made him chuckle once again. “We do not measure time where we come from,” he continued. “but when the Gateway was created, splintering Caelum into six different realms, it fractured time into varying speeds. Another one of your father’s brilliant ideas.”

  I was completely stupefied as I listened.

  “Let’s just say that if we were to measure it in terms of years on our end, it would be only a couple.”

  “What is yours?” I asked.

  “Ours, as in yours and mine,” he answered, tapping my leg. “You and I come from the same place.”

  “And that is?” I inquired. “Caelum,” he replied. “The original and most powerful of all the realms.” He stood up and began to pace in front of me a bit, while he contemplated how to continue. His willingness to offer me information, unlike the first few times I had met him puzzled me. He had scared me the last time I had seen him and he was adamant about me remembering things for myself. Now, he seemed to want to tell me everything without hesitation.

  “Why couldn’t you tell me all this the first time I saw you in the Gypsy camp,” I asked, interrupting his train of thought. “It would have saved me years of confusion, don’t you think?”

  “Because I wanted you to remember for yourself. Telling you won’t help you remember,” he replied.

  I stood up to face him. I could feel myself getting unnecessarily emotional as I did. “So then why are you telling me now?” “Nothing else is working,” he replied anxiously. “Time is running out and I thought maybe if I told you a few things, maybe it would help you head in the right direction.”

  I could see his hands tremble as he wrung them tightly, staying silent while I stood staring at him. I couldn’t get over how young he looked. So young in fact I wasn’t sure I could take him seriously.

  He sat back down on the bench, pulling me down with him.

  “First, your name is not Anessa, it is Evangeline,” he continued. “I am Samiel, Father to the Cimmerians and Brother to the King. I was meant to rule this world as his equal but things didn’t exactly work out that way.”

  “Not that you are bitter about that,” I teased, noticing the acidity in his tone.

  “I rightfully am!” he exclaimed, throwing an adolescent tantrum, “Your father was not meant to be ultimate ruler! I am the other and equal half!” “Wait,” I interrupted. “My father is the King?” “Yes,” he answered, realizing he had omitted that part. “The immortals called him King, the mortals know him as God.”

  “And you said my father had done something to me,” I asked. “Am I being punished for some reason?”

  “We all are for one reason or another,” Samiel announced. “But let me tell you who we are before I explain why we are here.”

  I let him continue. He went back to the very beginning, with an origin story only he claims only he and his brother know the true version of. He said that in the beginning there was only the entity known as the Una Vis. It was made up of pure energy - both light and dark; a big ball of something in the vast nothingness. It found itself alone and desperate to know life outside of itself. So, it created the universe. Over a millennium, it created what we now know as planets and stars, but it still felt incomplete.

 
So, it created two complex yet, simple beings. Companions that would share the power of its creator and allow it to experience life as they did. They would become conduits, feeding the Una Vis the knowledge it desired of a glorious thing called life. In return, he would give one the power of the light, to create and design life as he so wished. He would build the vessels, so to speak, while the other, who had been given the power of the dark, the Guardian of all creation, would breathe life these vessels. Both were tethered to their creator and to their creations, and therefore could never be destroyed.

  “The son of the Light, known as the Lumenarian, is your father, Hyperion,” he said. I am the son of the Darkness, also known as The Cimmerian.”

  He continued. He told me that somewhere along the way, Hyperion needed more than just his companionship. He wanted a world full of people that worshiped him, making him feel important and needed. So, he created simpler versions of himself, less powerful and dependent on him and his leadership, however, still to tethered to the light. He assumed his brother would require the same, so he gave him ‘people’ of his own to lead, the Cimmerians – tethered to the dark.

  “Tethered?” I asked. “You would call them wings,” he replied. “But they are literally visible lines of energy flowing in and out of each of us. It is allows us to live indefinitely.”

  He paused, waiting to see if I had any more questions and then continued when I had none. He said that Hyperion found that after all he had created, he still found the same lack of satisfaction the Una Vis had felt. He said he had a craving for something he called ‘intimacy.’ It was something he felt the Una Vis had desperately been seeking but could not articulate. So, Hyperion created a more exquisite creature, full of beauty and grace and with quite different attributes than the ‘sons.’ They would use these attributes to fulfill a ‘man’s' need for intimacy and finally complete him the way Hyperion felt they needed to be completed.

  Up until that point, Samiel and Hyperion ruled equally without problems. However, shortly after the creation of ‘woman,’ something happened, creating a rift between he and his brother, and causing Hyperion to tip the balance of power in his favor.

  “Somehow, he kept me from using any of my powers,” Samiel said dejectedly. “I still had them, of course, life would cease to exist without them, but I could not use any of them to stop him.”

  “So, what does this have to do with me?” I asked. “And if people were created in your image then why are they no longer immortal?” “Somewhere along the way, some of his creations became individuals,” he said. “They began to question everything, including the idea of one ‘man’ ruling us all. They demanded a higher status among us, with one man suggesting that they too were gods. This angered your father. In his rage, he drew a sword, slicing the wings right off him. He fully expected that without his ‘tether’ he would cease to exist. One after the other, Hyperion severed their tethers, assuming they would vanish. But instead of dying instantly, they slowly began to change, by aging at a much faster rate, feeling pain much easier than we would and giving into the weight of human emotions.”

  This angered Hyperion even more. He saw them as weak and disgusting. He cast them out of the city of Matris, the Capitol of Caelum, threatening to punish anyone who helped them.

  “But I felt bad for them,” Samiel said, “their fragility made them ever more beautiful to me. And so, I gave them a place to call their own, imagining they would live out the rest of lives in peace. To be honest I didn’t imagine mortality was anything more than a slow painful death.”

  He paused. “And when your father found out what I had done, he punished me too,” he said, putting his head down. “He punished me, my wife and children and anyone with the Cimmerian bloodline, casting us out of Caelum and forcing us to live in a different realm.”

  “What did you mean you assumed mortality was nothing more than a slow painful death?” I asked, forgetting I had asked where I fit in to all this. “I didn’t know that mortality was temporary,” he responded. “When a ‘mortal’ died, they would return Caelum, tether intact and picking up right where they left off.”

  “But mortals give birth to children,” I said, a little confused.

  “Yes, but it’s a long story and not the point,” was his response. “Samiel, Michael is awake,” a towering yet striking female interrupted. She had come from nowhere and now stood in front of us in her tight leather pants, with matching halter arm bands and a sword.

  “Thank you, Lilith,” he acknowledged, moving in for a gentle kiss as he sent on her on her way. “We will be there momentarily.”

  “Come,” he said, reaching out his hand. “I want you to meet the reason you are here in this realm.” I hesitated, finally remembering what I had asked him and demanding that I get an answer, but he insisted that all would be revealed once I went with him. But as we made our way through the city, I noticed a very different tone from earlier.

  “Why are these people hiding in their homes?” I asked, noticing a small child peering out a small window in the shack next to me. “Just a little bit ago, the streets were bustling and people seemed happy and carefree.

  “News of your arrival must have spread,” he replied. “There is a little bit of horror attached to being around you.”

  I could feel it getting harder to swallow as an image of an evil version of me arose. “Horror? Are these people scared of me?” “Oh, gods no!” he exclaimed. “It is just that you being here means your father will be close behind and well, he is not exactly loved by those who know him.”

  “But you are?” I asked, following him into a small building in the back of the city. “You remember Michael don’t you?” Samiel asked, ignoring my question and pointing to the man lying in bed. “If not for the reasons you must remember, at least from when you met at the club?”

  I nodded in agreement as I found myself staring at the obviously injured man. I could not get over how much older he looked than his own father and how much he looked like Adam. The same mid-length chocolate locks that cascaded down his neck, complemented the thick five o’clock shadow and ocean blue eyes. The ample lips that curved ever so slightly into a smile on one side and dimples that added a strong punctuation to an already dramatic face. Or the same perfect teeth that flashed with the same subtle movement of his lips when he spoke.

  Yet there was an obvious age difference between the two. Adam looked a bit younger and yet more aged.

  “You said you had children, as in plural?” I asked Samiel. “Does Michael have a brother?”

  “He has a few,” Samiel answered proudly. “Raphael, Ramiel and Gabriel.”

  He looked down at his feet as he filled with a discernible sadness. “And the one that resembles her mother the most, my daughter Uriel.”

  “But you don’t have a son named Adam?” I inquired.

  “I told you who my children are,” he answered smugly. “I know of no man named Adam.”

  When Michael realized who his father was talking to, he shot up out of bed.

  “Evangeline!” he blurted, pulling me into a strong embrace. “Gods have I have missed you.” I thought of fighting him off, I barely knew the man and his reaction made me feel slightly unnerved but after a minute I couldn’t help but melt into his arms. The same passion, affection and familiarity I had when I touched Adam, gushed through me the longer I stayed in his arms. It was as if I had known him in the same ‘biblical’ sense and missed every moment I couldn’t remember of it.

  “Michael,” I whispered, reciprocating the sentiment. I looked up to see a tear stream down his face.

  “I thought I had lost you for good this time,” he said, caressing my cheek with tips of his fingers. “It nearly killed me.”

  “It wasn’t losing her that almost killed you,” Samiel interrupted. “It was trying to find her.”

  “What are you talking about,” Michael asked. “When you went look for her, Hyperion took your wings,” his father announced. “As further punishment, he
allowed you to keep the memory of who you were. You started to go mad, so we brought you here to give you time to heal.”

  Lilith gave Samiel a little glare of disgust as if she knew what he was saying was a lie. He glared back out of the side of his eye as to not alarm Michael, but I saw it clearly. I tried to say something to him about it, but I couldn’t catch my breath. I was beyond seduced by the arms of the incredibly attractive man who made me feel comfortable and safe, yet excited and adventurous all at the same time. It was an instant attraction that felt a bit like love and hit me rather hard.

  I closed my eyes to absorb it all, when I saw a flash of Adam’s face and I quickly let go.

  “What happened?” Michael asked, reaching out for me. “Are you ok?” “Um…” I started, as I tried to focus. I felt as if I had been drugged or put under some weird spell. “This is all just kind of sudden,” I replied. “I don’t even know you.”

  “But you do,” Michael announced. “I promise, whatever you are feeling is absolutely the way it should be.”

  “But I have felt this way with someone else,” I replied. “With someone who looks much like you.” Michael looked at his father, who shook his head in silence. “Maybe it is because he looked like me,” Michael assured me. “You missed me and didn’t know it.”

  “Why would I miss you?” I asked. “Who are you?”

  “I am the man in your dreams,” he responded.

  “I bet you say that to all the girls?” I quipped, pulling away.

  He looked at me a little stunned. He obviously didn’t get the reference to a cheesy pick up line.

  “Only to my wife,” he said, brushing it off. “But I assure you, the man you saw in your dreams, the one you talked to, that was me.” he declared.

  My face slowly contorted with confusion, “your what?”

  “That is right, Eva,” Samiel offered. “You are Michael’s wife.”

  “My name is Anessa,” I barked, accidently. “Did you not search for a name once?” Samiel asked. “Wouldn’t you want to finally call yourself by that name?”