~Aeris~
I was never a religious type of person, what with the many tragedy that befell my life on a day-to-day basis. Not to mention, my family always had some sort of connection to the afterlife or life outside the plane of mortals.
Dying really put things in perspective, but in a different way. It's different from how they described it on myths and legends; purgatory is just a new plane of existence for souls; hell is still hell except it has layers as Dante described it, with Tartarus at its bottom; I haven't seen heaven yet but most likely the same except much grander. Seeing the All-Father is an entirely distinct experience.
There I was, standing in the presence of the most powerful being in the known universe, the All-Father, bathing in the radiance of his power. I gotta say, I did not expect to see him in clothes like that or in a place like this. I mean, I expected an bearded old man wearing a Greek toga in a place full of white lights surrounded by angels and orchestral music.
"What do you think this is? A scene in a movie?" I forgot. He can read minds. Well, he is quite literally God after all. "Also, yes. This is an unusual place to find me in."
"What are you doing here, All-Father?" I asked him.
"Please, call me daddy." Then he stares into the nothingness for a moment as if he said something awkward," actually, that sounds wrong. Call me Father."
"Well honestly, I am drawn to this place like flies are drawn to excrement. Not a good analogy on my situation," he sounded weird, like that one kid in high school. "Anyway. Do you know what this place is?"
It took me quite awhile to respond. I knew this was the exact same place that I was in my dream. It was the place where I got stabbed. I can somehow still feel Lucia, staring at me with her red and black eyes. Instinctively, I put my hand on where she stabbed me.
"Yes," A sudden chill went up my spine. "This is where the battle took place."
"Yes, but do you know why it even took place?" He walked around 'till he found something interesting. It was a ring that looked a skull.
"No," The stab, though no wound existed, started to sting a bit. I looked at it to make sure but immediately started regretting that. I saw blood stains in the area where I got stabbed growing wider by the second. I flinched.
"Oh, right," He stood up and wore the ring on the index finger of his left hand. He walked towards me, and touched the place where I was stabbed (twice, mind you). His hand lit up, almost blinding me with it. Once he was done, the pain went away. Literally. He pulled out a a black entity from the wound. It was in the shape of a human, completely made of smoke and red sparks of tiny lightning. "That should do. How are you feeling?"
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!" I panicked, shuffling clumsily for several feet 'till I fell down on my butt. "WHY WAS IT IN ME?!"
"Alright, alright! Calm down." He held the black entity by the neck in one hand. It squirmed towards my direction, holding Father's arms on one hand and reaching for me with the other. The hand where All-Father held it lit up like the sun and temporarily lighting the entire field and burned the soul like a poor stick of barbecue left on the grill too long. When I regained my sight, there was no more black entity. Just a piled of ash directly beneath the place where it was strangled and grilled to death.
"Reaper Shades," All-Father clapped his hands and whipped the dusty bits of the shade off of it with his pants. "They're the 'little helpers' of Grimm Reapers."
"What the actual fuck was THAT doing inside me?" He offered his hand to help me stand; I took it. I can see him trying to stop himself from laughing.
"Sorry. It's just that it was inside you. There's an inappropriate joke somewhere in that question." He laughed a bit," he sat down and inspected the dust of the reaper shade. "You were stabbed by two ancient weapons; Lucia's Exiled Excalibur and the Scythe of Grimm. I'm surprised you're not dead yet."
"That doesn't really explain the situation."
"Ancient reaper weapons instruct Reaper Shades to burrow into your soul and drag you down to Tartarus, the lowest depths of hell or as Dante would put it 'the ring of treachery'. That's why you're here," as he said that, I took a wide look at the terrain. You can hear wailing of lost souls walking on the ground covered with glass, roaming through the acidic air in the south. The screams of the tortured came from the east. It was so loud you can make up what the were saying; stop it; please don't; someone help me; general screaming and a lot more. Almost the same thing was coming from the west except it came with clashing sounds of weapons and battle cries. From the north came whispers of suicide, madness, and mischief. "No matter what you did, may you be a sinner or a preacher or just a plain citizen, you will be dragged here, to Tartarus, if an ancient reaper weapon maims, kills, or even scratches you."
"Does this mean I'm already dead?" I paused for a moment and thought about my life. My life as a whole is not really that great, it's just fairly average. I had a small apartment, filled with rats, with a demanding landlord. I had a job that I hated with a boss that makes me feel useless in a daily basis. I had a string of bad luck that make black cats laugh, a tragic love life, and a social life that's almost non-existent. I didn't hate life; it hated me (and no, I don't mean 'Life' life). It generally sucked me dry of any will to live, at least happily. I mean, I didn't want to kill myself or die, it just gave me a pessimistic view of life. But it wasn't all all that bad. There is one thing that I don't want to change about my life; my family.
My family was always there for me, through the happiest moments of my life to my downfalls of my failures.
My sister Dianna was would always visit me and help me clean my apartment. Sometimes we would compete on who would catch/kill the most rats. She would tell me what's going on at home, how mom would scold her for talking to the ghost around the neighborhood which made her look crazy, how her boyfriend treats her like a princess. She tells me all sorts of stories that sometimes I confused one of them for another.
Mom would call me repeatedly, demanding for a story to tell or for me to visit the house. More often then not I would visit. I wasn't able to drop-by in the last few weeks because of work. Knowing my mom, she would visit me through my dreams instead. Literally. She would recreate the house in my dreams and we'd enjoy lavish dishes that she'd conjure.
If it isn't obvious yet, everyone in our family had some sort of psychic power. Mom has the ability to enter the astral plane and other dreams, provided that they have emotional enough connection. Dianna can talk to otherworldly being like ghost, angels, and, in some cases, demons. As far as I know, Dad can establish connections to actual souls, and see premonitions about other people and possible events, but never about our family. Shortly after I turned twenty years old, he died from a heart attack.
Me on the other hand, I knew how to do all of them, except for the prediction skills that my dad had. I can speak to ghost (though I usually would do it when no one was in sight to avoid suspicion), enter the astral plane and dream jump from someone's dream to another, and, at one time, talk to souls of the dead that resided in either heaven or hell. I never tried it again after that. It was terrifying. How my dad did it without losing his sanity, I would never know.
And so, there I was, standing at the side of All-Father, staring into the abyss, literally. I was thinking so deeply, I did not notice him speaking to me. "...So, to answer your question. Yes, you ARE dead."
"Wait, What?" Please tell me I heard that wrong. "Did you say I'm dead?"
"Hi, Dead. I'm Father," ha-ha. Very funny joke at a time like this. "Also, yes. You are indeed dead. But only while you're here. I'll get to that part later. What do you remember from your dream?"
I told him everything I can; from fresh corpses of the dead angels and demons to the arrival of the three mysterious figures. Of course I can't forget Lucia's eyes, pure black with blood red pupils, pale white skin, and blood-stained teeth and how she stabbed the living hell into me, NOT OUT as evidenced by the reaper shades. Also, how she repeatedly called me by the name of Agartha.
He then proceeded to tell me everything he knew (well, not everything. That kind of information cannot be stored in a human brain) on the matter.
It turns out angels weren't the first beings that were created by the All-Father, and I swear I didn't know this, the All-Mother, which was the his darker, more malevolent counterpart.
Lyfia, life came first. The All-Father forged her orb and placed it in the highest mountain on Gaia. As the orb touched the ground, a womanly figure started to form from the very dirt beneath it. Then came humans. Oh, and by humans, I do not mean Adam and Eve; I mean is Adamus, first man. A word coined by the sumerians---You don't want boring stuff like that. To guide humans, he molded light into the shape of man and gave them wings; angels. When the first humans died, the robes of the grim reaper, Grimm, was mended and with that, Grimm himself. But does weren't the only ones they created.
Lucia was a failed experiment to bring upon the perfect being, she was a human being with a fraction of both the All-Father and the All-Mother's abilities. At first, she was seen as the messiah of the All-Father. She performed miracles and countless feats to help the early humans (take note: this is before any known religion was created and/or recorded). She was so praised by humans that she was made a god to the eyes of mortals. As the centuries pass, she grew bored of her role as a god. She realized that she can do more, that she can use her powers as she sees fit!
She had dark side, one that she inherited from the All-mother, manifested and she, without hesitation to the temptation of the darkness, succumbed to its honeyed words. She influenced men with her malice, women with her lust, warlords with her wrath, the poor with her gluttony. She created chaos, distraught, disorder through her preaches and lectures. Her reign slowly turned from prosperous, benevolent rule to a hellish, malevolent dictatorship.
At around that time, All-Father was off to some part of the universe, creating life with the All-Mother.
As soon as they returned, Gaea has turned into a barren wasteland. What used to be lush with life is now a burning hell that reeked of death. The undead are walking, slaying humans one by one. Deformed humans now fly the skies with reddish skin and white orb like eyes; demons. There is only but a few that survived Lucia's onslaught.
Gaea was no longer Gaea; It was now Tartarus, the deepest part of Hell.
Lyfia the life bringer and Grimm the reaper took arms and tried to stop Lucia, and fought valiantly. Lyfia summoned angels to her aid, attacked with the All-Father's Army. Grimm mustered the undead, summoned all manner of unspeakable creatures of the darkness. The battle against Lucia and her demons lasted for centuries but ended with the demise of both Lyfia and Grimm. This tipped the balance of existence. Life sprouted uncontrollably causing a great number of human birth, most with deformity. Since there was no one to reap souls, killing someone causes temporary death. Even the undead started coming back to life, tormenting humans on what was formally Gaea.
"If this used to be the first layer of Earth, then where did the evil souls go?"
"They didn't go anywhere. All souls got lost on Tartarus. With no one to guide them, they were forced to roam the world of the living; both good and evil." He caught one of the wandering souls in the sulfur rich air. "Lucia was in total control of Tartarus. Souls couldn't come out of it, angels couldn't get in. This didn't bode well. My abilities as a god was very limited. She held a part of both my power and the All-Mother's. She can counter our efforts."
"So how did you do it?" I mean, if two gods couldn't do it, then who or what could?
"It was a soul named Agartha."
It was amazing. He told me about how Agartha contacted him when he couldn't get through the barriers raised by Lucia. Agartha was just a sleeping soul, an astral projection of her mortal body, that was in a state of life and death at the time. She became the eyes of the All-Father in times of dire need. With her, the angels could get through. With her, the good people and souls were freed. With her, it was possible to regain control once again.
"She eventually died and passed the next life. By that time, we already had an established connection with Tartarus. Angels were savings souls by the thousands, and all of it was possible because of her help." we walked towards the edge of the battle field, up a small hill. From here you had a good view of what Tartarus looked like. It looked like a desolated earth.
Right in front of us was a field filled with bones and scrap metal, the aftermath of the ancient war. Surrounding the field around us was a burned down forest
"The dream you had was the battle against Lucia."
"If I remember correctly, it was two men in armor and a girl in greek chiton. That doesn't look like Lyfia, Grimm, and Agartha."
"Because it's not." The battle seems to replay from the time I was stabbed by Lucia. The three ominous figures from my dream landed in front of us. There were two men in heavy plated armor, one in onyx and one in gold, and in the middle was a woman in white chiton holding a golden scythe with an anhk on top. "Those are the first Vessel; Lucio, Grimm Reaper's vessel; Vangeal, Lyfia Bringer's vessel."
Then he stared at Agartha, her blonde hair blowing with the sulfur rich air. He puts his head down and holders her left shoulder. In that same moment, she smiled as if she can actually feel the touch of the All-Father.
"This is Agartha," he smiled with a hint of pain. "She is the bridge of life and death, the savior of humans who suffered from Tartarus, the representative of the All-Father."
"The balance. "
She was beautiful. Hair blonde hair blew with the wind revealing her perfectly smooth white skin. She turned her head towards my direction as if she could see us in this illusion. As she revealed her face, I could slowly see the features of her face.
It was calming, her face. It was like staring at the living embodiment of peace. She was so beautiful, it couldn't be true. Every aspect of her face complimented each other. She scanned with her eyes of different colors. Her left eye is just like a normal person's eye but the iris was darker than black, like it did not reflect light. Her right eye was prismatic, reflecting all light of the visible spectrum. Her smile melted me as she looked at me, so radiant of love, it made me want to kiss her amazingly shaped lips. She seem to float on the ground, looking like a goddess with that white chiton and scythe-staff, (scytaff? look, I didn't know what to call it).
"The forces of life and death cannot stay themselves while they watch the world, nay, the universe fall into shambles," he walked passed the three figures. Everything moved with us, as if we were stand-ins lost in a movie set. "So they called upon the factions, finding those whose ties to them are strong."
"There was Lucio Strongarm, former demon general turned commander of the fallen angels," he walked to Lucio, who stood still in a firm, commanding manner. His face was fierce and kind of scary. His little grin showed his pointed, shark-like teeth. "Grimm grew a liking to him, strong and dedicated to bloodshed with the intention of protecting the damned. Though his background is rather.... Gruesome."
"Vangeal Lightheart was an archangel," he then looked at the wide winged angel whose wings spanned several meters. His golden armor glimmered in the light of his wings and so did the crystal tip of his spear. "He was the kindest of all angels, but also stern when he needed to. As the highest ranking archangel at the time, he was a suitable choice for Lyfia. As expected, he was chosen."
"Together they were known as the scales of existence," he turned to me and talked as the three floating figures loomed behind him. "They are the first vessels, reincarnations of Grimm and Lyfia. Reborn as the vessel of Balance was Agartha. They gathered together before to stop Lucia. They shall do so again."
"They?" I asked, though I think I already have an idea for what he's trying to say.
"Life and Death, the vessel of Lyfia and Grimm," he put his index finger on my chest. "And you, the vessel of Agartha."