Alrighty chapter 4 is up!. It is kinda long, and Mon talks..a lot. But Rapahel has to know what he is dealing with since it is the world of gods...
Please read and reveiw! =)
Chapter 4
They were on a floating rock, but appearing in front of them was a grey and misty tunnel. Beyond the tunnel and yet still part of the tunnel was a desert-like landscape, peppered with rock and skeletal trees that dotted the landscape like some forlorn wasteland. She pulled him through the tunnel. His mind was furiously thinking.
Someone had to pay, he thought as he put one foot in front of the other. The Council of Gods who had voted against her, and most importantly God. "Where was He!" He asked. "Where were You when You asked her to give up everything!" He shouted into the shadowy darkness.
Mon looked at him. "Raphael keep your voice down. We don't need to be announcing our presence any more than you already are." She said to him angrily. "You don't get it do you?" She said to him. "Usually I am packing heavy duty supplies on this route, but not today. So like I said, unless you want to be eaten you had better be quiet. This journey will take us at least a day, and we have already gotten off to a late start. At the rate we are going we're going to have to find shelter and stop for the night." She grumbled.
They trudged through the wasteland of The Ways, or whatever they were called, and Raphael thought furiously. There had to be a way, some way to finish what he came here to do. He looked at the girl pulling him along. He was half expecting her to be blowing bubblegum and texting someone, but instead she was silent and wary. Her earlier fascination with him seemed to have burnt itself out.
"So what's your deal anyway?" He asked her.
"My deal?" She asked as if she didn't understand the question.
"Yeah, you know, what's your story? Where are your parents anyway?" He said looking at her.
She looked at him like he had suddenly sprouted another head. "I'm a Reaper." She said as if that explained everything.
He looked at her. Maybe it was an immortal thing or something, but talking to her seemed annoyingly like talking to...Her.
She rolled her eyes at him. "I Reap souls. I am a Reaper, T-Class. That means I am a transfer Reaper as opposed to an L-Class Reaper, or life Reaper. They pick up the souls of the newly deceased. I transfer souls of the dead from Limbo Level 1 to wherever their final resting place will be. You are going to Underworld 2 which is the T'lae-ran Underworld. Unfortunately for us Reapers some of the goddesses' creatures are from Earth and thus require an inter-world transfer."
He looked at her in confusion. "Okay think of it this way, Earth and T'lae-ran are partially overlapped within the non-physical universe. So basically even though they don't actually share the same physical space, they share the same dimensional space, thus overlapping each other. Because the two worlds are bound by gods and too many portals to count they share space in the Underworld, but Underworld 2 or the T'lae-ran Underworld is still physically on T'lae-ran, thus inter-world transfer. Make sense?"She asked him. "She sighed, fine just think of it as you were living in New York, and now you get to live in London. Same world different Country. Same Underworld different planet."
Raphael shook his head. Worse than talking to Donny. He thought to himself, then felt a twinge for his brother. "Don't worry you will get it eventually, and don't worry, when you enter the Underworld you won't feel like you do right now."
"Yeah and how do you know how I feel?" He asked her.
"Trust me, after more than a thousand years of taking souls to their resting places you figure these things out. Right now you feel all angry and whatever, you will get over it, find some people you know, maybe, if they haven't been reincarnated, that sort of thing." She said with a shrug.
"You have no idea how I feel." He growled.
She looked at him. "Nope not really. I am trying to learn, can you explain it to me?" She asked him curiously.
He looked at her trying to figure out whether she was making fun of him. She seemed perfectly serious. "I feel like I am burning up with rage and loss and hate, and I have nowhere and no one to turn all of these emotions on."
"Hmmm interesting. Myself I have only figured out love. Hate is the opposite of love, perhaps one day I may be able to figure out hate." She said herself.
She was silent for a while as she pulled him along. Every so often she would veer and they would hit another grey misty tunnel that he didn't even notice was there. Every time we hit one of these tunnels she would slow down, listening intently. She was always wary, always searching until finally the sky began darkening. There didn't seem to be any moon or stars where they were, so when darkness began to fall it was true and absolute.
"Over there." She said to him as she pulled him over to an outcropping of rock. It was strange because even though it felt like they were traveling, nothing changed. The scenery he had been trudging through for the past few hours looked the same as when they had first started out.
"So why are we stopping?" He asked her.
She glared at him like something was his fault. "Because unlike you I actually get tired. We have been walking for hours. And besides that, it is extremely dangerous to travel The Ways at night." She huddled up under a small shelf of rock. "You should get down here, you are lit up like a giant neon sign saying 'please eat me.'" She grumbled.
Raphael sat down to the side of her so that he could still see her. She had pulled her knees into her chest and had her arms around her knees. She looked weary and watchful and scared. Raphael felt guilt slide through him.
"So what was She like?" She asked him suddenly.
"Goddess?" He asked her.
"You called her goddess?" She asked.
"Yeah, we all did. I mean I know she was a goddess, but calling her Andora just didn't seem to fit, neither did Katherine."
"No it wouldn't" Mon said matter o' factly
"What do you mean?" He asked surprised.
"Well, Andora was Dielucere's angel." She said as if this again explained everything.
"How about you explain it to me like, I don't know, like I have no idea what you are talking about!" He shouted at her.
"Definitely one of the angry ones." She grumbled. She rolled her eyes. "Well, waaaayyyy back when, Diemortia and Dielucere both had angels. During their fighting Diemortia destroyed and consumed the souls of all of Dielucere's angels, all except one, her name was Andora. Dielucere turned the soul of her dead angel mortal and sent her to Earth to protect her from Diemortia. And here is where things get creepy weird. The former angel turned human soul, was none other than Charity Hamilton. That's right Katherine Brook's friend and the one who shot and killed her." She said to him, as if sharing the biggest and juiciest piece of junior high gossip. "Creepy huh? So Charity, former angel killed by Diemortia, shoots and kills the host of Diemortia. How's that for revenge. Course she also technically shot her goddess as well, but she didn't know that since it was Diemortia that had mostly manifested." She said with a shrug. Raphael tried to digest what she had said.
"Names are of course very important. A god is actually stronger without a name. A name binds a gods power. Of course there are some gods out there with names and secret True names." She paused in thought. "Names are funny that way." She said musingly. "I mean we can have no way of knowing why She chose that name. Could have been something like...I don't know both goddesses were thinking 'Andora you bitch you just shot me,' or something, and blam name gets stuck in your goddess' head. Since Katherine had already died, and because of the way her soul was, I think it went into reset mode, that's why she wasn't Katherine either. Good job on picking that up. Most mortals aren't that intuitive." She said as if she was clearly impressed with him.
Raphael closed his eyes in frustrated annoyance. If he could get a headache, hell, if he could feel anything physical at the moment, he would have a migraine, a roaring migraine.
"Alright to recap, Charity was a former angel to the good goddess, Charity somehow felt her arch nemesis inside Katherine and shot her trying to kill the dark goddess within."
"Well if you want to be really simplify it, I suppose so." She said with a shrug.
"Okay, I was with you right up 'till the point where you start talking about the 'way' her soul was, and it 'going into reset mode'. What the hell is reset mode! And how do you know all this stuff anyway?"
"I know it cause I am a Reaper, we deal in death, it's what we are, and because Her death was such a mess Death himself had to personally oversee it. The paperwork alone took months! The other stuff about Diemortia and Dielucere, and the war on T'Lae-ran, common knowledge. Anyway try to keep up cause here is where it gets really confusing and convoluted."
"Gee I can't wait." He said sarcastically.
"Good" She said with a smile, his sarcasm going completely over her head. "Okay so you know Katherine's story right. Ridden by the goddesses souls since like time immemorial. And the gods killing her like, a lot." She paused and he nodded so far so good. "Okay so then her soul starts like completely disappearing." Raphael looked at her in confusion. She huffed out a breath of irritation. "Mortal dies, Reaper cuts the cord of life that attaches said soul to body. Reaper takes the soul to Charon who ferries the soul across the river Styx to the Underworld, and then the soul is taken to wherever their resting place is. With me so far?" Raphael nodded. So far so good.
"Good." She gave a slight nod then tapped her lips with a finger in thought. "The Underworld doesn't work that way now though. All because of "cutbacks" and "cost effectiveness". She said bitterly. "Now Charon drives his ferry over the river Styx which has been relocated to Hell, and all souls are all processed in the same place. Paperwork is filed and the soul is processed etc, etc.
"See before it used to be that when a soul was processed it remained a nice little blue glowing ball, you gave said ball to the Gatekeeper and if a soul was to be reincarnated it was stripped of its memories, 'reset' if you will and the soul was taken to be delivered to its next body. Now not so much because of the Rhenna. At least in this form you can run if we are attacked. Anyway stripping a soul of its memories is of course not perfect. You know people who sometimes hear voices in their heads, or seem to have more than one personality? Well sometimes it's not chemical, sometimes it's because a memory reset didn't completely erase all of the memories, or the soul needs to have a memory dump." She said with a shrug as Raphael got lost again.
"Anyway so your goddess' soul started pulling the vanishing act. Reaper delivers it to Charon, Charon ferries it and poof by the time it reaches the other side, gone. So in order for the soul to inhabit a new body it has to be reset. Her soul probably started resetting itself not too long after she died, which means she would have had a few moments of remembering who she was after she died, then nothing, complete blank. How her soul actually reset itself and started acting on its own, no idea. Should be completely impossible, but it could have something to do with the two goddesses riding her soul." She shrugged.
Raphael looked at her blankly. "Let's rewind for a sec. What is the difference between a memory dump and a reset?"
Mon looked at him. "How can I explain this in a way you can possibly understand." She tapped a finger to her lips in thought. "Early 21st century right?"
"Yeah." He said in confusion.
"Okay think of a soul like it was a computer, with programs and files and stuff. With me so far?" She asked. He nodded. "Okay so all of a soul's memories are like program files. When the soul dies and is going to be reincarnated they need to wipe the hard drive or soul, clean. So they dump all of the program files into the recycle bin and the soul is reincarnated. So even thought the program files are 'gone' they are in actuality still there until you 'empty the recycle bin' or perform a memory dump. And before you ask why not do a memory dump every time, it is because memory dumps are hard on a soul. It strips the soul of all experiences which is not healthy. So the Processors have to find the balance between memory dumps and memory resets. Usually now the Processors do partial memory dumps, less harsh on the soul." She shrugged.
"Anyway since She wasn't processed in the proper way I would almost bet money that she never had a memory dump, which means that her Memory Room would have been, giant. Practically every memory sitting in there since she existed. She should have gone insane. All those lives crowding together, whispering and talking." She shook her head. "And since she never had even one life that didn't end tragically, well her soul must have been an absolute mess." She said grimly. "Souls, if you keep reincarnating them without rest, even when they have memory resets and dumps, well they just burn out. A human soul can only take so much before it just...breaks."
Mon's words echoed the conversation Gabriel had had with Goddess before they had fallen to Hell. I have never broken. Her voice drifted through his mind from memory.
"I was there." Raphael said softly.
"Where?" Mon asked curiously. "Wait you actually saw her Memory Room?" She said with awe.
Raphael nodded. "And her soul. Her Memory Room was huge and very...organized. Her soul was a mess, you're right about that."
"That's amazing." She breathed. "The sheer and absolute strength of will it would have taken to keep millions of lives separate, and keep two amazingly powerful goddesses in check. She was really something wasn't she?" She asked.
"Yeah She was." He said softly.
"It's really too bad her Life Glass began pouring again." She said suddenly. "I would have really liked to have met Her. I mean I had only been aware for about two hundred years, but our paths never crossed, never really thought about Her until She was gone actually."
"What Life Glass?" He asked attention pulled back from remembering Her.
"You know her Life Glass, the Glass that measures the seconds of her life. I mean when Katherine Brooks died, I told you it was a mess."
Raphael waited patiently.
"I'm sorry I shouldn't have said anything like that, it's like inside information." She said looking around furtively She lowered her voice "Okay but you have to like totally swear on...on the memory of your goddess that you won't tell anyone."
"I swear." Raphael said surprised.
"Okay ridiculously long story short, when Katherine Brooks died, Her Life Glass began stealing time, about ten months worth. Then Charity tries to kill Katherine, but she lives and Her Life Glass freezes in time."
Raphael felt himself pale. She had been with them a little over two months and she fought in Hell for almost eight, and if he was to add all the days up he would probably come up with ten months. "But that's..."
"Yeah I know, so okay here is where it like totally gets all weird and confusing with the whole time travel, Circle of Fate and Destiny thing." She said shaking her head. She looked at him as if this would clarify things which it didn't.
"Still clear as mud." He grumbled.
Her brow furrowed in confusion. "But mud is...oh I get it." She said with a smile. "Anyway, Katherine was killed in the car accident. Trevor and Charity didn't die in their accidents just to let you know. Their injuries would not have killed them. They lived out their full lives on T'Lae-ran, and your goddess fixed things so that their bodies were found on Earth to give closure for the families." She shrugged. "Anyway Michael really did kill her, but the goddesses ripped her out of her world and threw her into another Destiny if you will, but it was her Fate to die in that crash that day."
Something clicked then. "She knew she was going to die." He said.
"Yup, there was a body in Katherine's grave so she knew she was going to die someday, but she wouldn't have known how or when."
"I can't die until they stop fighting.' That' s what she said to us." He said in shock.
"Death knew. He knew he would collect her soul one day. So when she popped back into the same time and place were Katherine Brooks existed their souls synced, even though she wasn't really Katherine, the souls recognized each other and the Life Glass recognized the goddess' soul because she was totally cut off from all of her powers making her basically mortal." She took a breath and continued.
"So while the one Katherine was destined to be ripped from the world it meant that the other Katherine had to fulfill the role as the one who was killed. A soul for a soul, a body for a body. Her body didn't just disintegrate, it was put in the place of the other Katherine's body. The goddesses put right what they had interfered with." She shook her head."When Charity killed Katherine, Katherine had literally been living on stolen time. That is why when she emerged as your goddess she didn't know who Katherine was because her soul had already been stripped of its identity. And when she finally realized who she had been and what she was, well, to her Katherine would have just been yet another past life. A very close one, and one she may still have identified with, but she would have been...almost nameless really. " Mon said finally finishing.
"So it was really all my fault. If I hadn't have been there, she wouldn't have been distracted and she would have killed the Syna and she would have survived." He whispered.
But Mon was already shaking her head. "Might as well blame Gabriel, or the Apocalypse or any number of factors. She had to die that day. It was how she completed her Circle of Fate."
"So the Binding never would have killed her?" He asked.
Mon looked at him tapping her lips in thought. "Things worked out the way they were supposed to. But your goddess wouldn't have known how much sand was left in her Life Glass, don't get me wrong she felt it at the end, but she would probably have believed that the Binding is what closed her Circle of Fate. She knew she died, she wouldn't have thought that the when would be important." She paused for a moment. "So what was she like?" She asked again.
He was silent for a bit. As he remembered the conversation in her Memory Room, she had told them that her soul was ringing with Katherine's and a 'Circle of Fate has begun to wrap itself around to the beginning'. She knew, she had figured it out. He closed his eyes. He opened them and answered her question.
"She was funny and smart and patient and the best fighter I have ever seen. She was also incredibly annoying at times." He said smiling. But his smile disappeared when he remembered that she was really gone, no not gone, Destroyed.
"How could you love someone you found annoying?" Mon asked. "
"Humpf. Well for one thing you can't choose who you love." Raphael began, and she couldn't help but love all of them. That thought still ripped his heart to shreds.
"Well that seems stupid. What if you love someone you don't like?" She asked him.
Raphael sighed. "Listen kid, believe me when I say you wouldn't love them if you hated them. I only found her annoying because she was usually right, and I never liked being wrong." He said to her.
"Well she was a goddess, they tend to be right a lot."
"Yeah well, she got me. She understood me in ways my brothers never did. I think she knew me better than I knew myself." He whispered.
"That does sound annoying." She said finally.
"No that part was...she loved me, the good the bad and the ugly. To find someone like that," He shook his head. "She never wanted to change who I was. Even my temper, she accepted it as being part of who I was." He fell silent as grief washed through him. He didn't want to talk about Her anymore."So what are these Rhenna things?" He asked her.
She looked at him like she didn't want to drop the subject, but answered his question."The Rhenna are white...creatures, no white isn't right, more like...light creatures I guess. They look like they are lit from within. They come in various shapes and sizes. They are strong and fast and practically impossible to kill. They have been devouring souls and snatching Reapers for...well pretty much since your goddess' execution, give or take a few decades. They just appeared. No one knows where they came from, or where they go when they aren't stalking The Ways for souls and Reapers."
"So why hasn't anyone just killed them?" Raphael asked.
She sighed. "It's complicated." She said to him.
"I got nowhere I gotta be." Raphael said to her.
She shrugged. "You remember what I said before about the various Underworlds being linked?"
"Yeah." He said to her. He remembered he just didn't get it.
"Well the Underworld resides in the Realm of Death." She began.
"I remember, three Realms: gods, mortals and death." He said to her. "She could..." He stopped himself. He didn't want to talk about Her.
"Yeah your goddess was able to travel all three, which is very rare. You see most gods are forbidden from the Underworld. It has to do with gods of the living interfering with the gods of the dead. Most gods can walk on the mortal plain if they really want, but they have to either create a body or have one created for them, and really why would they want to?" She said with a shrug. "Anyway so this is a Realm of the Dead problem. So the other gods have pretty much said 'it sucks to be you, deal with it.'"
"Jerks." Raphael said.
"Tell me about it. Well anyway Heaven and Hell haven't been much help because most of their souls don't have a problem. Heaven has enough Angels to guard any souls Ascending from Limbo Level 1, and Hell has the shortest Reaper run because you are right there. It is more when you have to travel The Ways, which are basically the roads that link all of the Greater Underworld together. So the lesser Underworlds like Underworld 2 of T'Lae-ran, Valhalla, Hades' Underworld, not to mention all of the alien places of rest that have popped up all over the place, well you get the picture. Anyway it is all of those portions of the Underworld that are the ones whose souls are really being consumed." She grumbled. "I am just a Reaper, we're not fighters. I deliver souls, that's it, that is my job. At least I'll get danger pay, if I manage to get through this run alive." She mumbled.
"So what do you usually bring with you on these inter-world transfers? Grenades, high powered guns?" Raphael asked wondering what a Reaper would need money for.
She was looking at him like he was an idiot again. "We don't want to destroy The Ways." She shook her head. "Well a blanket for one." She said miserably. "A piece of chalk and the most important thing, bells."
"Bells?" He asked in surprise. "Okay blanket, I get, chalk equals protective circle-check, but bells, what are you going to do with those, annoy these things to death? Sing Christmas carols?" He asked.
She looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Are you sure that it was Her who was annoying and not you?" She asked.
"Haha, very funny." He said to her then stopped as a thought struck him. "Hey I thought all of you Reapers were like that one that grabbed me when I died, what did you call them, Shadow Reapers?" He remembered the memory of Goddess talking with Death.
"I don't really remember being a Shadow Reaper." She said to him. "But I remember picking this form and everything since then. Somehow we Reapers became...more." She said with a shrug.
"Hey wait, you have a body right?" He said to her.
She looked at him. "Yes." She said slowly.
"So how did you get it? And why are you tired?"
She shrugged. "One day I just became...aware, I guess, and I searched out a form that I enjoyed, I mean really , I am adorable. But our forms were created from our original shadow forms, we just got more solid. We are creatures of Death's Realm we are physical here. But it isn't like I have to eat, or sleep, but I can feel tired. It takes a lot of energy to navigate The Ways. You have to find the doors, open them, and make sure you close them behind you." She said with a shrug.
"So if I got myself a body I would be able to stay out of Underworld 2 right?"
"Raphael..." She began. Then stopped. She put a finger to her lips and listened.
Raphael closed his eyes and listened. He her a faint scritching sound. Mon's eyes widened in fear. "Get down!" She whispered pulling him more under the rock. "The blanket wasn't for me Raphael. It was for you and your bloody beacon of a glow!" She whispered angrily.