Secrets

by Shannon Pemrick

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve watched you for some time, since you’re a shaman, and your dry humor reminds me of my brother sometimes.”

  “Brother?”

  “Yes, Phyre.”

  I tilted my head. “I’m going to be honest, I don’t understand.”

  She nodded. “I apologize again. I nearly forgot you’re from Dalatrend. Texts that have our histories in them are banned. You wouldn’t know this because Zarda declared they be removed from public sight long before you were born. And many texts, besides those protected within the Eternal Library, have been destroyed over the millennia.”

  “Eternal Library?”

  “You refer it to as just the Library.”

  I nodded. “Okay. This is making a bit of sense. Could you explain it to me, since I’ve never been allowed access to this information?”

  She smiled a little. “Of course. This will come to a shock to you, but we gods were once mortal and had special abilities that led us down the path of immortality. My mother is Lunaria, and while she was mortal, she met my father, Solund, and later on they had Phyre and me.”

  “Lunaria is you mother?” I mused. “I guess that makes sense, for you at least.”

  Arcadia giggled. “Well, if you knew about the abilities of both my parents, you’d understand a little more, but then again, things are a bit different now than when I was mortal. When I was mortal, many millennia ago, Lumaraeon was still difficult to live on. We had spans of years where the earth moved and natural disasters were normal. Then they’d stop and it would be peaceful for a span of years.

  “During this time, mortals were very ordinary. They had no connections to the elements. No connections to animals. At this time very few had ascended to being gods. This is the world I came from—a world that on a rare occasion produced a mortal with a special gift and, if used right, would send him down the path of immortality.”

  “So you and your family were these people?” I guessed.

  “Yes. As family lines mixed, these abilities manifested more often, but it was still considered rare. Both my parents had particular abilities, and their blood was passed to my brother and me.”

  “Lunaria and Solund are considered the moon and sun gods to us. What do their abilities consist of?”

  “An ability that is rare these days.” She half smiled. “They were light benders.”

  “Light benders?” I echoed.

  She nodded. “They were capable of bending light around them, with the help of objects such as weapons. My father could only bend sunlight, while my mother could only bed moonlight. Though, you’re no stranger to this ability, are you?”

  I nodded in thought. There was one person I knew who was capable of harnessing that ability. “Why is it so rare?”

  “Because as time passed, the ability changed into what you call spirit energy.”

  I tilted my head in thought. That was interesting to hear. “Did you have anything to do with that?”

  She chuckled lightly. “No. Light bending changed on its own as bloodlines mixed. My ability wasn’t light bending. I could see the dead. That’s how my unique ability manifested. As a child, I thought it was normal to see the dead, and few believed I was able to do it until I predicted that a particular wealthy man at a party my parents were hosting would die soon. As I grew older, I set out and put the dead at ease, because back then, the spiritual plane didn’t exist, and that path led to my ascendance.”

  “There was no spiritual plane?”

  Arcadia shook her head “There wasn’t one for some time.” She stopped walking and looked around. “It wasn’t until Phyre, Valena, Kendaria, and some of the elemental gods ascended and pacified the land did we create this.”

  I gazed around. We now stood at the edge of a clearing of the dead forest, the perimeter marked with broken down iron gates and lights. The clearing was large, rocky, and still covered with a lot of water. In the middle of the clearing was a tall tree that rested on a rock, surrounded by a pool of lava. The roots of the tree grew into the lava, and the bark of the tree was charred, though it was obvious it was alive, as the branches had violet flowers without leaves growing from them. The lava, as if acting as the tree’s life source, like water would, fed into the tree, causing the ancient symbols carved into the bark to glow with life.

  Talismans hung off the branches of tree and tiny white lights suspended in the air twinkled, piquing my curiosity. I found myself moving closer to the tree, but Arcadia stopped me. “Hold on. Don’t get too close.”

  “Sorry. I guess my curiosity got the better of me,” I admitted.

  “It was the memories.”

  “The what?”

  “The lights. They get everyone.”

  “Those are memories?”

  She nodded. “This tree was placed here as a reminder of what these souls gave up. It reminds them of life and beauty and, while you can’t hear or see them that well since you’re part of the living, the memories show them what they gave up.”

  “Fire and brimstone have nothing on this place,” I murmured.

  Arcadia giggled. “That was Phyre’s philosophy when he suggested making this place.”

  “Yeah, about that. Care to explain that better to me?”

  “It’s quite simple. The spiritual plane didn’t exist until we created it, so spirits wandered on the living plane until we created a place for them pass over to, or to go to Hell.”

  “Okay, why does Hell have a name and the area spirits pass over to does not?”

  “Because I didn’t think it was needed,” she admitted. “Hell wasn’t meant to exist, but it was determined as a necessity because there were some souls that just weren’t worthy enough to know peace. So we created and named Hell in hopes that less would end up here.”

  I nodded and stared at the tree. She had used the word soul several times now. It was an interesting word to use, and not one I was unfamiliar with. I heard a lot of old shamans using it. They always said spirits and souls were different, but I had had always equated them as the same thing. But by the way Arcadia spoke, I knew I was wrong to think that. Souls were what resided in our bodies. They were our life essence that mixed with our life element. Spirits were just the form they took to resemble who they were in the life they had. To simple people, they’d just be called ghosts. A stupid word really.

  As I thought about souls, a thought came to me, but it didn’t feel related to my mission here, so I kept quiet. But Arcadia noticed the wheels turning in my head. “You have something on your mind.”

  I hesitated. “It doesn’t have to do with this place so it’s not important.”

  “You’re welcome to ask,” she encouraged. “Depending on the question, I might be able to give you an answer.”

  I nodded without looking at her. “It has to do with what you told me earlier; you and the other gods ascending to immortality and all. If that’s true, then where do Genesis and Zoltan fit into that statement? They’re the gods of life, right? How could they ascend if they made everything?”

  Arcadia chuckled. “They’re the exception. No one knows where they came from. Not even Genesis and Zoltan themselves know. The first thing they remember was waking up on an inhospitable Lumaraeon alone.”

  “So they had to find each other before creating the world?”

  “Sort of. You mortals see Genesis and Zoltan as the gods of life, but that’s only half of the truth. Genesis is the goddess of time and Zoltan the god of matter, so they were able to create small changes to the world without each other, and what they created became bigger, or more effective, if the other had been in that area some time before them. It wasn’t until they found each other that they were able to combine their powers to create the start of the life you know now.”

  “So, it’s possible their ascendance didn’t happen until
they met each other?”

  She nodded. “It’s possible, but because it’s unknown how long they had been on Lumaraeon before finding each other, it’s hard to say if they ascended before or after their meeting.”

  I looked at her slyly. “But in the end, it doesn’t matter, right?”

  To my surprise, she shook her head. “It does matter actually, because it’s knowledge not even the gods have. We question why we came to be. Why we have abilities that others don’t.”

  “Well, I can’t explain why we exist, but I can take a guess why we have the skills we do,” I offered.

  She eyed me. “Go on.”

  “Because Genesis and Zoltan created everything, can’t it be possible their power was passed through their creations? Could it be that passive transfer made it so only a few could physically manifest the power, where others just passed it through their genetic lines?”

  Her eyes widened. “That could be it. I’ll have to tell the others, for us to think this over.”

  “I heard once, that if a god was no longer believed in, they disappear. Is this true?”

  “It’s half true,” she admitted. “We lose our immortality and some of our power, but we don’t disappear. We just become mortal again and either have to attempt to ascend back to our immortality, or we die from the aging process our new mortality gives back to us.”

  I nodded and then looked around when a loud, echoing roar pierced the air. It sounded like—

  “An ancient dragon’s soul,” Arcadia explained. “Made a pact with Nazir for power, much like most of the souls here.”

  “Do all spirits that make pacts come here?” I was quite curious about this.

  She took a deep breath, as if the question I asked was extremely loaded. “All pacts are carefully evaluated and judged accordingly, or, at least, that was how it’s supposed to be. Without Rashta, it’s hard to pass judgment on corrupted souls.”

  “Rashta? As in the goddess of judgment and rebirth?”

  She nodded. “Yes, that’s her.”

  “Why isn’t she helping with the corrupted souls? Isn’t it her job to pass final judgment on certain matters?”

  She nodded and appeared to be piecing out the right answer. “Yes, that is her job, but she’s… missing.”

  “Missing? Don’t you mean she lost her god-status?”

  “No, she’s well believed-in. She’s just missing.”

  “How in Lumaraeon can a god go missing?”

  Arcadia chuckled. “As gods, we watch over the mortal races. They need our attention. Because that is our job, we don’t have the power to monitor each other. At least, not all of us. The few gods who travel across time are capable of it, though they are so busy with their jobs, they cannot help. Rashta herself could, but she was the Judge. She needed that power to keep us from getting too involved with you mortals, and to keep us from corrupting ourselves with power.”

  “Didn’t seem to stop Nazir.”

  She chuckled again. “Nazir has his own interesting story. He became one of us because of his corruption. He was the embodiment of death and corruption. Rashta can’t change that. Her power can’t change what made us gods.”

  “I see.” I thought for a moment. “Does this mean, with Rashta’s disappearance, Zarda wouldn’t be sent here if he was deemed corrupt for whatever reason?”

  Arcadia frowned. “I cannot share the fates of other souls to you, especially for your own gain.”

  “I understand that, but I believe he is corrupt, even if none of you deem it so, so I’d like to understand the process.”

  She nodded slowly. “It’s not impossible for us to make a judgment call. His soul would wait on the Plane of Between for some time while we evaluate him.”

  “Plane of Between?”

  She nodded. “It’s a plane you’re quite familiar with. It’s the plane a soul will meet you on so you don’t have to fully cross over to the spiritual plane. This plane is where you can still see the living world around you.”

  “That’s not the spiritual plane?”

  She shook her head. “No. The Plane of Between is also experienced by just hearing the voice of a soul.”

  I nodded. “Okay, I get it. So what happens to a newly departed spirit once they reach that plane?”

  “They wait for us to judge how corrupt they were in their life. If they made a Pact of Power with Nazir, then they don’t need our full judgment. While mortals have free will to choose a path that we cannot change by force, it is against Cosmic Law to allow such a soul to continue on to a place of rest. If they are a pure soul, a soul that made a Pact of Selflessness, or were seen as corrupt by mortals but had no corrupt means behind their actions, they are allowed to pass on. This is the only way we can do it without Rashta.

  “But without her, corrupt souls, with corrupt intentions and means behind their actions, are hard to judge, and sometimes her determinations for other souls were better than ours. Sometimes we make mistakes, but only she can fix them because she has the knowledge.”

  “So you could wrongly judge someone and only she’d be able to fix it when she reappears?”

  “Yes. That’s why this topic is a little difficult to speak about. We don’t have the kind of powers Rashta does, so we can’t judge as well as she can, and we don’t like to know that we’ve sentenced someone incorrectly.”

  She looked in another direction with a furrowed brow and I looked at her. “Something the matter?”

  “Not sure,” she admitted. “Sometimes souls try to escape here, particularly when they notice I bring a new shaman in, or a shaman comes in looking for a particular soul.”

  “You can go check,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “Since it’s your first time here in Hell, I’ll be leaving you here. It’s for your safety.”

  I nodded. “I’m confident I’ll be able to handle it. You told me the rules to follow.”

  She half smiled. “Good, you’ll need to remember that. Maiyun will stay with you, but she will need to feed off your fearlessness. As fearless as she was in life, Hell is not a place she is fond of, and at times she can give into her fears.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask about her,” I admitted as Maiyun sat next to me.

  Arcadia chuckled. “I already know what you’re going to ask, since everyone does. I had her while I was mortal, and when she died, I preserved her soul so she could help me.”

  “Didn’t want to work alone, right?” I guessed as I pat Maiyun on the head.

  “She helped me deal with my ability,” Arcadia admitted. “As much as I told people I was okay with it, I lied so they wouldn’t try to help with something they struggled to understand. Maiyun helped me in their place, and I couldn’t just accept being alone once she died. I know, it sounds selfish…”

  I smiled kindly. “Maybe it is, but I don’t see Maiyun complaining. She seems pretty happy to be by your side still.”

  Arcadia smiled. “Thank you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She turned to leave but stopped. “Oh, and the reason you need to make sure you don’t show fear here, Eira, is because if you do, the rules here allow the corrupted souls to touch you, and if they do, they will corrupt your pure soul. If you are corrupted, I can’t allow you to leave.”

  I nodded. “I understand.” I watched her leave, and then looked down at Maiyun, who looked a little unhappy to see Arcadia leave without her. I patted her on the head with a smile. “It’s okay. She’ll be back soon. I know I’m not as good company as her, but I won’t bite at least.”

  Maiyun licked my hand as if to accept my friendly offer, and I pet her on the head some more. I looked around when I thought I heard something moving around in the woods. Miayun began to whimper, and I hushed her softly as I continued to look around. Movement of a large shape caught my eye, so I kn
ew we definitely weren’t alone.

  Maiyun nudged me, and I looked at her to find her holding her lantern and looking up at me. I reached down and took the lantern from her. Lifting it over my head, I called out to show them I wasn’t afraid. “Show yourself, soul. You can’t scare me.”

  “Have you come here to mock us, Ancient Soul?” A deep voice hissed. “Have you come to point out what we’ve done wrong, so that we suffer more?”

  I turned around when I sensed a large presence behind me. I was taken aback by the large black dragon towering over me, his hateful but pained eyes burning into me.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know, Ancient Soul?” he sneered. I was rather surprised that I could understand him, but the rules around speech on this plane were far different than that of the living one.

  I looked at him funny. “Why are you calling me that?”

  “Don’t mock me, Ancient Soul,” he hissed. “You’ve been blessed with many lives, while we have to relive the pain of what we lost.”

  “You mean, what you gave up,” I corrected.

  He roared in anger, scaring Maiyun, but I reassured her while I coughed. “Your breath smells like death. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do that again.”

  “Stop mocking me, Ancient Soul!” he ordered.

  “Stop calling me ‘Ancient Soul,’” I shot back.

  “I do not know the name you call yourself in this life,” he growled.

  “My name is Eira.” I said. “Who are you?”

  “Anir. Does it ring a bell?”

  “No, should it?”

  “Yes. You’re the reason I’m here!” he accused. “You’re the reason they judged me incorrectly upon my death.”

  I looked at him funny. “I think your memory has done a little melting while you’ve been here.”

  “It was your fault! I gave up everything, and the in life you lived then, you couldn’t have cared less,” he seethed. “I made a pact so you’d see you were wrong to walk away from me, but all you did was hate me.”