Author's note: And here we go. This will be the last set of Books in the Ages series. Not to worry, there is still MUCH more story to tell. But here is where we begin to enter the third act. So let me offer you some homemade popcorn and some cold drinks. Is the volume up high enough? Everyone comfortable? Very well. Time to dim the lights and raise the curtain. I give you...revelations.
The group in the room was subdued, quiet, in the wake of the vampiress' story. She knew it was a lot for them to take in, but she saw that they weren't writing it off as a fairy tale, which gave her hope.
"So, what, that's it? The guy goes nuts and wanders off? What does this have to do with anything?" Jess asked curiously. By this point, all dessert had been finished and everyone was relaxing. Caralla was about to continue, but a look on Angela's face made her pause. ~Yes,~ she thought, ~you're beginning to see.~ Instead of answering, she sat in her chair and regarded the quiet brunette with a small smile.
"I think..." Angela started, shocking everyone as she really hadn't said much all evening, "...maybe...it has everything to do with things." She looked over at Caralla for confirmation and the woman saw the hesitance in the girl's eyes – hesitance, and the seeds of an understanding that was larger than even she knew.
"You're right, Angela," Caralla said softly. "Keep in mind where the story stands now. In the mortal realm reside quite a few former immortals sent down to relay messages and instructions of peace and goodwill. Two of these messengers – the two leaders, in fact – have not only had their quite divergent paths cross, but it has happened in such a way as to cause a ridiculous amount of tragedy and irreparable damage to both. So now the remaining immortals on the eternal plane have had to watch as one who was formerly beloved of their number is driven to insanity by the revelation of his own deeds. On top of all that, the other leader was completely destroyed, unable to return as was the original plan, and the seed that had taken root, the child of Celestial and Firstborn, was the only mortal that they knew of that was created without a soul at all – the very thing the immortal ones had gone to war over. Confusion and chaos was epidemic. And through it all, the Creator stayed silent, as though the entire situation was unimportant now.
"I think it would be safe to say that once more the heavens, as it were, were divided. All were equally horrified at the tangled and dismal fate of two of their kindred, but that was the end of the agreements. Some were frightened. If their maker would do something so heinous to the chosen leaders of the mortal delegation, what other atrocities could be committed on a whim? Some were reluctant to state an opinion on the situation at all. Yet another group was adamant that, regardless of what happened, it was all according to the plan of the Maker, and that things would unfold as they were supposed to because they could go no other way. The first group would counter with the question of why – why would this be part of any plan? Why would the Creator be so harsh, so tyrannical? What purpose could this chaos serve?
"While debate raged once more in the timeless realms, life among mortals continued on. Those ambassadors remaining amongst the human race continued with their long lives, gently urging their mortal counterparts to feats of kindness and goodwill, working their hardest to combat the inflammatory ideas of greed and hate. And as the centuries passed in the mortal realm, the long-lived delegates began to die. Without fail, their souls returned to their eternal home...and one by one they were horrified to learn what had occurred while they were away. This group of delegates became the most vocal in their outcries. As more and more of them shed their mortal shells and rejoined their immortal brethren, their voices rang out at the injustice and the sheer wrongness that they felt. By this point, most of the immortals had begun watching their former ambassador as he struggled through wilderness and jungle and desert, sanity seeping through the cloud of deranged thoughts with less and less frequency. They were watching as he destroyed himself from the inside out."
"And the Creator didn't do anything? That's just...evil," Bella whispered, most of the room nodding agreement with her sentiment. Once more Caralla found herself watching Angela, seeing the wheels turning in the girls mind as she considered everything she'd heard.
"Not really evil," the girl said quietly, less reluctant to speak than she was before. "After all, maybe there was a reason this had to happen this way. I'm not saying it was right, but that it was...necessary, in a way."
"How?" Rose piped up from her seat beside her husband. Angela looked at Caralla, who urged the girl on with a small gesture. Taking a deep breath, Angela stared at the floor as she tried to put a collection of impressions in a line that would make sense.
"See, these immortals that came to visit...they had a very specific job. The Creator put Div and Rov in charge for a reason – likely because of all of their kind, they were the ones willing to step forward for no purpose other than concern over humanity. Neither of them sought glory or regard, or the destruction of the 'animals,'" she said, her voice gaining certainty with each word. "And they were the two most affected by the change from immortality to mortality. I don't know what purpose the soulless child would have served, but maybe its entire reason was to just exist for that short time. Not to be born, not to do anything, not to experience life, but to simply exist...to die at it's father's hand."
"But, why?" Edward asked, seeming very disturbed by the thought. Caralla knew he would be, being the most vociferous of the Cullens on the subject of souls. Angela spoke up again, but it wasn't a reply. Instead she addressed the ancient immortal directly.
"Caralla, what happened to Div?"
"Do you want the long version or the short version?" she chuckled. Angela thought a moment before responding.
"Just sum it up. I have a...hunch..." The quiet girl said, causing the raven-haired vampire to smile inwardly as she answered.
"His periods of sanity waxed and waned, but with every lucid period he became more bitter and hateful of the circumstances of his life. Being partially immortal still – hence the longevity – he could be killed, but he wouldn't die of natural causes for a very long time. He began searching for ways to end his continued existence. Failing over and over again, he began to have fewer and fewer sane moments. Eventually he was almost completely swallowed by his deteriorating mental state. During one of his few last periods of mental stability, he cursed...well, everything really. The heavens, the earth, mortals, immortals; you name it, he expended the last of his immortal soul, the final remnant of the Creator's gift, to pledge an unending war against all living things that possessed immortal souls such as he had once had. Until such time as his torment could be avenged, the world would be doomed to destruction and chaos, and ultimately Armageddon. The only possibility of saving anything would be if the powers of good and evil could be combined into a child with a pure soul, a child as he felt his had deserved to be and was cheated of. He believed in his anger and pain that such a union could not be possible, and as such died knowing he'd left every souled creature at the mercy of his last act of destruction." Angela nodded, but the rest of the room traded confused looks.
"So...good and evil have to blend somehow or everyone will die?" This came from Alice where she sat comfortably in Jasper's lap. Caralla would have answered but Angela's soft words beat her to the punch.
"Sort of. I'm guessing he was in agony over not only killing his partner and their child, but devastated about finding out the child had no soul to begin with...that out of all of the wars, all of the fighting, all of the things he and the others had endured to protect the immortal souls of the Creator's mortal pets, to find that his own baby was not deemed worthy of that gift – it had to be the biggest slap in the face. 'Thank you for all your trouble and all that you've done to further the human race. As your reward your offspring will not be granted either immortality or a soul. Have a nice day.' That had to hurt more than anything else, I'd say." She ended her sentence on a slightly higher note, turning the statement into a pseudo-question as she looked over at Caralla.
"You've come very close to being correct, my dear. Knowing that it was his own pride and vanity that led him to this path would have been a bitter enough pill to swallow, but the lack of soul for his own child was adding insult to injury. So he determined that everyone else should feel his pain, in one way or another. What better way then to curse the entirety of the Creator's creatures with agony and destruction unless they could somehow fulfill a task that was thought to be impossible?" Caralla sighed, closing her eyes. "Of course, after his death, the Celestial realm was in a panic. Who would have thought that one of their own – one formerly of their number – could have such vindictiveness, to lay such a burden on the very planes he'd once sought to unify in peace? As all eyes and voices turned towards the Creator, something they never expected occurred. The Creator turned and left their presence, abdicating the Celestial realm for one higher still, from whence to stay and observe all of creation – mortal and eternal realms both. That single act caused an irreparable split amongst the immortal ones. Some felt that there was a purpose in their beloved Maker's defection and swore to uphold the ideals and teaching that the Creator had bestowed on them. The other group felt that if even the Creator was backing out of this debacle, that there was nothing further to be done and the concepts of good and peace were given up as lost causes. The souls that had once been encased in mortal bodies that had gained entrance to the immortal realm were caught between; not having the knowledge of the Celestials or the understanding of the aeons that had gone before meant that they could not have perfect faith that all was going as it should. But neither could they completely fall in with those who believed everything was for naught. After all, they had made it to the immortal realm, did they not? Even if it wasn't quite what they had imagined – what ever was? - they still made it. Their lives had been pledged to the light, and they had achieved their eternal goal. They refused to choose sides, instead becoming the peacekeepers of a neutral realm that branched off separately."
"Heaven, hell, and purgatory," Carlisle murmured, the first thing he'd really spoken since Caralla's storytelling had begun. "So that was the origins of the belief of three immortal realms." She nodded.
"Thus was the immortal realm divided. All three groups were frantically trying to determine a way around the former Div's last act of vengeance. Those in what we'll call Heaven tried to remain optimistic, stating that true evil would never survive in the human realm. There simply wasn't enough fuel for it to flourish, what with the peacekeepers that had been sent down and returned. As such, they wanted to believe that Div's attack would simply fade to nothing. How could good and evil combine if evil ceased to exist? The ones who populated what would typically be called Hell took a different approach. Div, regardless of how he died and lived as a mortal, had been an immortal first. They didn't believe the Firstborn would have left such a large loophole for his curse to fail. The only way to end everything would be to mix evil and good to create a pure soul and imprint it into an unborn child. It led to a lot of experimenting and the creation of an untold number of creatures that were neither human or immortal but somewhere in between.
"At this time, the humans had begun to deliberately shape their own destinies. There was enough of good and of evil in the world that the lines between the two began to blur."
"How can that happen? Something's either good or not, right?" Jake asked, slightly puzzled. Caralla thought for a moment before answering.
"If you had a pet that was injured beyond hope of recovery, would you let it suffer or have it put down to spare it further agony?"
"I'm have it put to sleep. Why would I let it suffer needlessly? That's just cruel." He seemed horrified at the idea of causing an animal pain, and Caralla smiled.
"And if it was not your pet, but a human being, that was in such a situation? What then?" Jake opened his mouth, but nothing came out as he was struck by her words. She continued. "Why is it that something considered a mercy for a beloved animal is simultaneously considered heartless and abhorrent for a beloved human?" His jaws snapped shut with an audible click, and she regarded him fondly. "Jake, understand, evil and good as concepts are based on personal belief. When a group of people share a similar personal belief, then it becomes a majority rule. In some cases such beliefs become laws. In some, they become the basis for religious strictures.
"Think back to the most famous example of goodness that humanity has today – the Christian character of Jesus Christ. Speculation on parentage aside, the important thing about him was that he preached of love and peace. He had a like-minded group of followers, and together they spread concepts of tolerance and forgiveness. The religious and social aspects are unimportant right now. The important thing is that a man – a single, solitary man – made such an impact on his peers and contemporaries that his words are still being spoken of thousands of years later. Not everyone believes, but enough do that his words became gospel, gospel that millions of people give service to every minute of every day.
"Now think of the flip side of that coin. Take, for example..." Caralla paused, considering everything she had seen in her lifetime. "Okay, we'll keep this familiar. Consider Adolf Hitler. Known to a good portion of the world as one of the most evil men in existence. The genocide of the Jews is legend, and will likely be for many many more generations. And yet, if you had asked him, he was not evil. He truly considered what he was doing to be the right thing, the good thing."
"But he was a psychopath!" Jess said heatedly. Caralla smiled, though a bit sadly.
"He was a decorated war veteran, having earned the Iron Cross in World War I. He was an artist, a soldier, and before his brother's – and later his father's – deaths, he was an excellent student. He wanted to remain a soldier because he believed in what he fought for. It wasn't until after he got into the political field that he began to see that his ideas, his words, could have power. He saw the Jews as being Germany's great enemy, and determined that in order for his own people and the land he loved to flourish and expand, the threat had to be exterminated. Hitler was a man with dreams. Never once did he do anything for the sake of being evil, or because he enjoyed death and destruction and violence. He fought to make a suitable world for his people. Does that make his actions right? No. But think on this...if he had succeeded, he would be hailed as a hero and a founder of peace. History is written by the victors, after all." The room went silent and Caralla let the silence grow for a few moments before continuing.
"Do you see, now? Do you see how the lines can blur depending on who is looking at them? Now apply that to the problem the world faces now – a problem most are completely unaware of. How do you combine the forces of good and the forces of evil long enough to create a pure, untainted soul, especially when good and evil are subjective? And yet, time is growing short. Those we would tend to call evil have been experimenting for years, seeking ways to achieve this goal and coming no closer than they have ever been. From their attempts have come some of the creatures that share the world with humanity. Shapeshifters, vampires, angels, demons, faeries, ghosts...the groups that most term supernatural and whose existence many scoff at have been born from the Hellbound's repeated attempts to save the human race. Some of these creations are truly evil – others are simply seen as such. And yet none came into being except through the desire to save this rock full of mortal beings with immortal souls." She stood up and picked up her bowl, wandering to the kitchen and letting her audience digest the cornucopia of ideas and concepts she had so thoughtfully laid before them.