Balance (Book 9 )

The underworld is a vast dark place. It is as big as the earth and completely dark. There are no hills, bodies of water, or vegetation there. The only light that emanates is from the scones on buildings or barrels placed throughout the land with fire. As Gods, there is no need for light. We can see better than a vampire.

Jackals roamed the underworld watching over the spirits in the Valley of Souls and seeking out any demonic activity. On occasion, demons escape from their realm to hunt for souls. The souls are a source of strength for them. Anubis protects the gods by keeping the souls safe and destroying any demon that attacks.

Despite lore, the underworld is not split into levels with accompanying demons of rank. There are multiple realms of gods. Our realm included the Earth. We are known as the gods of Egypt, Greece, and the highlands. The western lands were discovered late in human history. We slowly faded from their lives and became myths. In truth, Ra created the earth and all of its living creatures.

There are demonic realms. The demons live in another realm and will occasionally sneak into the underworld to feast off the souls in Bardo. There has been a war between the demons and the gods since time began. Anubis and his army are there to defend his kingdom and those under his care. Once a demon or soul dies in the underworld, it becomes completely destroyed. It no longer exists.

This is also true for a god. To kill god, one must kill the soul. Lucky for the gods, Anubis is a fierce protector and a warrior to fear. He stands undefeated and finds joy in the battles that challenge him.

Souls appear as corporal ghosts. They emanate a light blue glow and are translucent. They contain a detailed document of their past lives for Anubis to review and use for his judgment. He can see each physical appearance it ever took and each thought or action it made during its life. They walk unseeing living in their world, waiting to be reborn.

As a god, I do not hunger or need sleep. I have a new body, but my thoughts and personality are the same. My role is to visit the funerals of the dead and lead the soul to Anubis. He waits at the scales and judges the soul’s lives. If the soul is worthy, the soul is put into Bardo status. Anubis puts the souls into a sleep status and gives them their desires as a reward. Each soul is different, so each dream is different. They roam the Valley of Souls, seeing their own version of heaven waiting for reincarnation. Their death is what they make of it.

Osiris would visit on occasion and patrol the underworld and visit the sleeping souls. He is quiet and reserved, rarely speaking to any of us. He likes to watch the soul’s dreams and speak to them.

Anubis spent his free time teaching me the way of the gods. Each God has his or her domain they must maintain, similar to Anubis’s duties. Anubis protects the judges and protects the souls.

His Father, Set is an evil god who created chaos and uses the darkness and people’s fear to make them do unspeakable evil.

Anubis’s mother, Nephtys is only slightly less evil. She played with the people of Scotland when magic was common. She gave the gift of dark magic and created dreams and nightmares. Her followers would bring their most prized magical artifacts for her to guard and protect until Set decided to use those artifacts for his gain.

Anubis’s brother is Horus. He is the God of war and prophecy. He will give the gift of knowledge of weapons of war. He is not an evil god. He uses his abilities to keep the living population respectable.

Anubis’s uncle Osirus and Aunt Isis follows their Father Geb’s example and cares for the earth. The three gods keep the earth fertile and will the vegetation to grow for the living.

Geb’s wife and mother to Osirus, Set, Isis and Nephtys is the sky goddess, Nut. She cloaks the sun turning the day to night and gives the living rest.

Geb and Nut’s parents are Tefnut and Sue. They are responsible for giving the earth water and breathable air.

The Human stories of Atum were accurate. He created the living and fathered Shue and Tefnut. He is the sun that brings life to the earth. He is also the ruler of our God realm. His word is law and cannot be broken.

Anubis taught me the laws I must abide by. They were similar to the law of the vampire, only I was the newcomer. Anubis was my master unless another god requested something from me. If I was summoned, Anubis would have to grant it or deny the request. I belonged to him. No one could control me without his permission. I was the only one who viewed myself as a possession.

He explained the gods of our realm had different images that were shown or given to them by humans. Atum was the Egyptian God Ra, the Greek god Zeus, and the Norse god Borr. The same was true with all of the gods in our realm. There are more Gods in our realm that are not part of the council. Every aspect of the world of the living is controlled by a god- Love, hate, life, death, sun, moon, water, dirt, beauty, and everything in between. I would never see these gods. They were minor Gods who had a small role to play. They stayed unseen in the veil between our realm and the realm of the living.

There is only one layer to the vale that separates the god’s realm from the human realm. It is very thin and translucent, but it hides all of its secrets. The only one who can stay in the vale is Atum or the gods who lived there. The gods who lived there are not allowed on the god’s realm or the human realm because they could use their influence from the vale. There is no reason for their visits. They can see everything in both realms from the vale. They have no influence over other gods. I never had to concern myself with them.

Anubis tried to teach me about the souls and how he came to the decision of his judgment. He would explain to me that the souls who were reincarnated always had some hint of the past lives within. He could see the most current feature, but he could also see what they were before. He never had to remember what his previous judgment was. The soul was like an open book that documented everything and presented it to him when they came to see him. I only saw the blue translucent ghost with the face of their most recent life. He walked me to a few of the souls I knew in the western world and told me of their past lives. I was unable to see what he saw. It was not my place to judge the souls, and so I did not have the ability to do so.

Throughout my pregnancy, Anubis was my constant companion. He was excited for his heir and wanted to experience everything. We are connected mentally. He could feel the changes my body makes to allow new life to grow within. As his heir grew, he could hear its tiny heartbeat and feel every stretch it would make in my womb. He also felt every ache my body felt as his heir grew. Anubis became more excited every day and struggled to patiently wait for his child’s arrival.

He made sure I was with him like a prized possession and gave me tasks to occupy my mind. Every day I went to work with him or studied at his feet. I would study Anubis’s features reading his emotions. A jackal’s face was like that of a fox or wolf. It was hard to see joy or sadness. Anger was an emotion easily seen. His eyes glowed a deep green and narrowed. His lips would curl, showing fangs. It frightened me to see him angry. On occasion, I would show disrespect to him. He held his anger in check, not wanting to harm his heir. There would come a time when my pride would need to be broken.

I began to see different emotions as I watched him with the souls. Love and pride were strong emotions that emanated from him. His eyes sparkled and glowed brightly. His whole body seemed to relax when he lovingly caressed a soul worthy of Bardo. His eyes narrowed and lost some of their glow when he was saddened that a soul was too tainted to be reincarnated.

Anubis never gave any indication that he was aware of my study of him. This was an illusion to allow me personal space. Even as a vampire, he has always listened to my thoughts. I wondered if he ever felt threatened by my scrutiny then quickly pushed the idea from my mind. Why would a god such as he be threatened by a god like me?

I became restless with my studies and wanted to visit the living. The darkness seemed to consume me and close in all around me. I wished to breathe in the scent of the earth and feel the sun on my skin. Life always gave me joy. Anubis denied my request. We were of the underworld, and we would stay to watch the dead. The living was no longer our concern.

Once our son was born, I became distant. I missed the living. I missed my clan. I would visit their souls on occasion and talk to them, begging them for forgiveness. I felt Anubis’s sorrow that his bride slipped away. He would fight for me and keep me concentrating on him. He wanted me fully. He granted me a sabbatical to the living. I had to leave our son with him if I wish to leave. His work was never done. It was no longer Osiris’ job. My sabbatical to the living was never more than a day. My heart belonged to Anubis. I could not stand being physically away from him for long.

A portion of the underworld is used to store souls waiting to be judged. A very large building made of some type of brick rests near a portal that new souls would come through. It has large bay windows to view into. Once the soul is released from its living body, its mind becomes open to the way of the gods and will wait patiently for me to collect them. I was unable to visit each funeral. The living is so numerous that death happens many times a day. I began to only visit new souls who died for the very first time. Then, I stopped visiting the funerals all together and simply selected one from the storage area to take to Anubis to judge. Occasionally a new soul would come and become confused. It roamed around the underworld until one of us found it and guided it to the next stage of death.

I am allowed to view the world of the living in mediation, similar to projecting my mind out as a vampire matriarch. I am able to project my mind out beyond the underworld. I would watch the clans from below and check on the wolves. I remembered my time in Egypt and the creatures I came in contacted with as I explored the continent beyond Egypt. I sought out these creatures of old until they too died. I took all souls. It was not only human souls that Anubis had to judge. I watched as the creatures of old and the old ways begin to die. I mourned each time they came. Knowing they could be reincarnated did little to comfort me.

As the decades pass, the land I built my mansion on became a recreation for humans, and the tree Gabriel and I created stood protected from the world for all time. Humans tried to pull the tree from its roots or cut it down. Anubis made it possible that the tree would stay and be immune to anything wishing it harm. The humans made the area a central park and built the city around it.

Atum granted the humans the knowledge of self-preservation. They were able to use medicine to prolong their lives and heal the sick. Humans lived for a century or more, on average, before it was time to return to the earth. As a result, they procreated faster and consumed the land like a plague. They were able to keep the dead bodies preserved, denying the earth food to begin the next cycle of life.

The jackals used to feed off the dying to prevent disease. As the humans were able to fight diseases, the jackal’s sole job became to protecting the souls. The rapid growth of humans caused the ancient creatures to die. There was no more room for them to live separately from the humans. The earth could not sustain life in this manner.

Only the immortal vampire was able to defeat time and adjust to the plague of humans. Queens and clans were no more. Rogues, hives, and covens were the new vampire. Greed, lust, and a lust for blood was how they lived. It disgusted me... at first …

A millennium passes as I watched the world and worked with Anubis. Anubis was the teacher in our family. Even as a male vampire, he was always teaching or training his subjects. Just as he taught me how to be a God, he taught our son the same lessons. He also taught Kebachet the earth’s history. He taught how each God came to be and their roles in the earth’s growth.

Anubis told stories of his vampire days and how he fell in love with a powerful vampire the ancient Egyptians thought was a goddess. He told Kebachet how the goddess died at Atum’s hand. When asked about our marriage, Anubis and I both told him Atum created a female for Anubis to love and marry. Kebachet was the fruit of our marriage as Anubis grew to love his Goddess. This was not a lie. We had agreed that part of my life no longer existed and should remain dead with the body I no longer possessed.

Over the last nine hundred years, Our son, Kebachet, grew to love Anubis and helped him at the scales. He became a warrior true to Anubis’s character. He could destroy the soul that was unworthy of reincarnation. Anubis taught Kebachet all he knew of the human body and mind. Kebachet learned the technique of training and breaking the spirit into submission and, ultimately, death. On occasion, a soul could be broken and have a pure heart just as it started to die. Kebachet could see the pure heart and grant it enough life to be judged by Anubis. The souls would then be placed into Bardo and wait for reincarnation. Those souls were generally reborn as a simple creature or human. If it was human, the child would be born with a mental handicap. I was proud of our family as father and son worked closely together. It left little time for Anubis to be intimate with me.

The humans consumed most of the land. Greed, anger, lust, gluttony, and violence were prominent. Souls were coming to the underworld at a fast rate. More souls were destroyed by Kebachet than were allowed into Bardo. Vampires, too, were becoming too numerous. The hybrids grew fat off the vampires.

My anxiety grew, and the feeling of being trapped intensified. I felt as if the world groaned and cried in anguish as it was slowly being consumed. I was helpless to do anything about it.

I went to Horace to get away from the destruction of the underworld. I asked him for a war to cleanse the earth. He would not grant it. It no longer amused him to see the humans fight over petty things.

I spent time with him, asking him to share his war stories with me hoping to make him remember his joy. He is a quiet God and seemed to hesitate speaking to me. His soft brown eyes bore into my soul as Anubis’s does. It angered me to feel his gaze in this manner. Anubis’s parents had dark eyes that told of their evil desires. Atum’s eyes are intelligent and gave no indication he studied me as he spoke to me.

Only two other beings have ever been able to cause me to feel exposed. Memories of my time in Egypt flooded my mind and reminded me of a young vampire who led us to a massacre. I vowed to kill him with my bare hands if he ever returned to me. I did not believe in the gods or reincarnation at the time. They were a myth, nothing more. As Anubis’s wife, I am privy to how the gods work.

Reincarnation is very real. If I ever find that soul, I will avenge my clan and fulfill my vow. The desire to lash out at Horace and release my anger grew. I resisted the temptation. He is a god much older than me and Anubis’s brother. It is not my place to demand anything from him.

As I stood before Horace in his throne room, His eyes studied me for several uncomfortable moments. He came to a decision then began telling me of his favorite time. The Viking era. They were ruthless and bloodthirsty. They conquered land after land. They were masters of the sea and preferred hand to hand combat using axes and swords. They were taught at a very young age how to wield weapons and how to kill their enemies. The rise into adulthood came with a test of intellect, strength, and will. Horace granted the Vikings inhuman strength to watch them slaughter villages and fed on the scent of blood. He reminisced of the time When the Vikings stormed an English kingdom around the time Gabriel and I served the House of Scota and battle of the Enopi raged.

The room vibrated with his power as he spoke. I did not notice the scent he gave off or the familiar hum of his power. The rage I felt inside clouded my mind. I allowed my mind to send me to his battles. I remember well the scent of fresh blood and how my fangs felt as they sank into tender flesh. The blood was velvety soft and sweet to the taste. I allowed the fantasy to drown the screams in my mind and ignored the warnings that this god is not who I believe him to be. Had I paid attention, I would have discovered a friend from a harrowing past.

Horace had many battles going at the same time. The Egyptians invaded Scotland, the Vikings invaded southern England, and the intelligent bears, called the Enopi, with their wolf allies, called the Nundi, fought the vampires. Set was causing trouble with the vampires and tried to create a civil war. It was a glorious time for battle.

The wars after that were longer, and more blood was spilled, but Horace’s love for the Vikings outmatched his desire for more. I could see a twinkle in his eye as he described in detail the cunning tactics the living used and how the blood seemed to flow and made the ground look as though it had veins.

I began to crave the taste and feel of blood. I needed to hear the cries of battle or the screams of death. It was a craving I mastered only for a short time.

I would, on occasion, watch Anubis and Kebachet work from a distance. The screams of the soul bothered me at first, and then I began desiring it, trying to drown the screams of the world. Horace’s stories stopped drowning the screams of the world, and my desire for blood grew.

As I listened to the stories and watched the world destroy itself, and watched Kebachet destroy undeserving souls, the cravings for the violence grew uncontrollable. I need the taste of blood. I needed to feel my blade run through flesh and bone. I hungered for the screams of death.

I left my husband and took my sabbaticals to the living where I began visiting cities to have my fill of blood. I went in the image of Lara and was careful not to kill any humans at first. I did not want Anubis aware of what I was doing. He would see too many souls and try to stop me. The feel of my fangs piercing their skin and the feel of their sweet blood flowing into my mouth only seemed to grow my desire for more. The need for carnage and blood grew stronger and consumed me.

Anubis could see the insanity grow and forbid me from visiting Horace any more. It was too late. Life was a disease that needed to be eradicated. No one understood. They were all consumed in politics and duty to see the world was dying. I would see to it that the earth would be cleansed as I take my fill on blood. No one will be able to stand against a goddess.