5. Past Souls Say Farewell
Chapter 5
Past Souls Say Farewell
Ella
T he moment I fell into the water, everything changed… and not in the way I would have expected. I didn’t even feel as if I was in water as I sank down into the darkness, letting the deep, ominous abyss take me. At first, I had done what anyone would have done when thinking themselves in danger of drowning. My arms flayed as I desperately tried to reach the surface. But the second I felt myself being pulled down as if my legs were attached to weights, I had no choice but to watch the last of the light above me get smaller and smaller… A lone shadow figure watching from the edge as if seeing me off on my journey. One she had forced upon me, and soon…
I was to know why.
Darkness took me completely, and I didn’t know what happened after that, whether I had passed out or simply closed my eyes a mere second before opening them again.
Upon doing so, I found myself in an unusual place once more. A place I strangely knew. But even stranger, came a voice I recognized.
“I don’t care what Mother told us, there must be more for us than this sheltered life we are forced to live.”
I narrowed my eyes and even felt my lips move when the same voice spoke again, “Impossible.” Because my own voice and the one I heard were, in fact, one and the same. I quickly looked down at myself to see my body, but not as I was used to seeing it.
I had become a ghost.
It very much reminded me of the time I was forced to endure another vision. A memory that was not my own, but one that impacted me just as much as if I had been forced to relive it in his place. It had been of Jared on that fateful day that had changed his life forever. The one that marked both the end and the beginning… the mortal life of Jared Weller might have died that day, but in his place the HellBeast King was born.
Now as for this, well this was a memory, and it was one that belonged to a long-lost part of me. For I, too, had been reborn. Only, unlike Jared, the process must have stripped me of any memory I might have had over my former life. We were like Yin and Yang, Jared and I, because just as his mortal being had become immortal that day, mine too had switched hundreds of years later. A coin flipped, landing on the mortal side and, now, I needed to know why. Or more like… who had been the one to toss the coin?
Naturally, these turbulent thoughts caused me to gasp, yet as expected, it was a sound that went unheard by the others in the room.
There was a woman with long, straight red hair; a color so deep it looked as if her hair had been dipped in blood. She had her back to me, and the long white gown she wore was a complete contrast to the flowing mane barely contained in the golden thread that tried to tame it. And of course, I could see who it was that she spoke with, because Lerna was standing there, looking as concerned as she had been when I first arrived. She, of course, also hadn’t changed at all. But was I really seeing what I thought I was seeing?
Was that redhead who I thought it was?
Who I recognized it could be?
The room they stood in looked like a bed chamber of sorts, and as with the Temple, it looked like something straight out of a fantasy book. Gleaming white pillars framed the room and stood as a stark contrast against the untamed rock walls. There was a slightly thinner set of columns standing like sentinels in a circle, holding a domed ceiling above them that I could see from here was painted.
Now what was painted there, I couldn’t see, which was what prompted me to step further into the room. I circled around slowly and as their conversation continued, I noticed the white bed that lay under the dome, making me wonder if this was Lerna’s room?
“But do you not care for the dangers foretold to us?” my sister asked and, again, the sound of the redhead’s reply made every muscle in my body tense. I knew the painting reveal was only the excuse I gave myself for being brave enough to get closer. Because the real reason I moved was to see if the impossible was really possible.
“I feel no sense of danger when he calls for me,” she replied in return, making me wonder who she spoke of… or should I say…
Who I spoke of?
Because it was true, all of it! Lerna was my sister, and I had once had a life here before I became mortal. And stranger still, it seemed that my old soul had forged the memory of how I looked upon my new mortal body. We could have been twins!
There were a few differences, though. Like our hair. Where mine was curly, hers was perfectly straight. The color was different too, along with the freckles I had that her flawless skin didn’t possess. The shape of our bodies was also different. Whereas I was curvier, hers was like Lerna’s far more slender frame.
However, the determined look in her light-green eyes was exactly the same. I knew the expression well.
“Yes, and when your beast calls for you, have you ever considered that it may be a trap?”
At this, my ancient counterpart laughed and shook her head, the sound of which being far more feminine than I had ever made when laughing myself. I then watched as she held out her arms wide and said,
“A trap by who? No one even knows of our existence, Lerna, for we are kept here like the stain upon the House of Hades. One to be eternally hidden away and the shameful actions of our father kept secret.”
Lerna turned her face away and scolded, “You should not say such things, Anástasi.”
“Why not? For it is true and you know it as well as I do. Face facts, my dear Lerna, we are nothing more than the product of sin. Dusty relics left from a bygone age when Hades once cared for our mother,” the other me replied bitterly.
“Father always said he created this place for us to live in peace, and far from the dangers his kin would create,” Lerna argued, and already I could see who the naive one was, because the other version of me scoffed at this.
“I once may have believed that too, but Mother died of a broken heart as she waited for what must have felt like an eternity. Left looking out to that infernal ocean between our world and his, and all for what? Waiting for sign of his ship of damnation that never came. I will not wither away like that, Lerna. I will not…”
“Anástasi, please, for you know not what you say,” my sister tried, but even I knew it was in vain. I could recognize the face of determination all too well, being as it was my very own.
“Oh, I know, dear sister, just like I know that I would rather experience even a shred of the underworld than die dreaming of what could have been. What could have been of my life had I only been brave enough to take the first step.”
Lerna started shaking her head before tearing her face away and saying bitterly,
“You only feel this way because of that wretched Beast calling for you!”
“Don’t call him that!” my past-self argued defensively.
“Well, that is what he is, for he takes you away from me, so what should he be called then? For you were content before he started whispering in your dreams,” Lerna countered, making her sister release a deep-rooted sigh and tell her sadly,
“You don’t understand.”
“No, then make me understand, Anástasi. Explain it to me!”
“When he speaks to me, I feel… I feel alive for the very first time. Like I am taking a breath and know the reason why. Like my ability to take footsteps is only so as I may reach him. My voice so as I may call out to him in the darkness when my eyes do not see. My hands to touch, so that I may feel my way toward him…”
Lerna turned away, the mixture of disgust and disappointment easy to see.
“That is not why you live!” my sister snapped, slashing her hand down in the air as her anger finally got the better of her.
“Maybe not, but it is damn well now the reason that I feel!” my other self replied in return, with my own anger burning just as brightly.
Lerna flinched back as if the words were as powerful as a strike from her sister’s hand. But this wasn’t the only reaction that was easy to see, because guilt most definitely played a part. It was now written all over the face of my past.
The words had most certainly cut deep, and I knew her actions would even more so, because I could already see a small leather bag full of what I assumed was her stuff. A bag sitting on the bed and at the ready for her to take it and leave. And leave she would… I could tell just by listening to her that we were one and the same. The same tenacious will and stubborn resolve. The same curious nature pushing daily against the walls of what I knew now was a gilded cage built by her father.
By our father.
But I had to confess that even thinking it felt wrong. Because unlike this other version of me, I had a dad. I knew what it was to have a father and experience a life with him actively in it. I had been blessed with a childhood and all the wonderful memories that came with it. Which forced me to question how then was something like this even possible? Was this what was known as reincarnation?
Had my soul simply passed from a supernatural being to a mortal one in the next life? And if so, what exactly had happened to me for me to lose that old life? Had I… Had I truly died?
How I hadn’t questioned any of these things the second I heard Lerna call me sister, I didn’t know. But then again, I guess there was still a hundred other questions I still had to ask myself. Which also meant that doing so would be pointless, unless I started asking the right people these questions. Which was when it hit me…
That’s why I was here now.
Lerna.
She had sent me back to revisit the past so I may make some sense of it all. I guess reliving what I expected was to be a tale of woe was easier than her telling me. Although despite not feeling the same sisterly love that these two clearly felt for one another, it still didn’t make watching this scene any easier. Which was why I found myself walking toward the one she called Anástasi. I couldn’t help but place a comforting hand on her shoulder. It was a comfort I knew she couldn’t possibly feel, but I couldn’t help but give it all the same.
So, there we stood, standing side by side and taking on the guilt together as Lerna finally looked back at us. The ghost of me she couldn’t see, but the tears in her eyes I most certainly could, and a single one fell as she asked in a heartbreaking tone,
“And what of me? Do you not feel for me, Sister?”
At this, the ghost of my hand fell straight through my other self, who let out a shuddered breath as she ran into Lerna’s arms. I was then left to watch the ever more touching scene as two sisters embraced each other’s pain.
“I feel for you, just as half of my heart will never rejoin the other so long as we are apart.”
“And what of the other half, Sister?”
My older self-looked back toward the arched doorway and said with longing, “The owner of my other half is who calls to me, even now.”
Lerna released what I knew was a defeated sigh before she stepped back, now holding my image at arm’s length with her hands gripping her shoulders.
“Then you must go and discover if there is a way for you to get it back to a place where it can finally become whole again.”
Anástasi dropped her head at this as her own tears fell to the stark-white marble floor. “I shall try.”
“Then I, in turn, will be here waiting,” Lerna replied, and I watched what felt like one last sacred moment between them.
Their foreheads came together just as the scene began to change. And this time it was one beyond the serene beauty of the temple in which they lived.
It was a far cry from the safety of the inside of what I now knew was known as the White Mountain.
A place touched by the Gods of Olympus and blessed by the tears of its Goddesses. A place kept as pure as the white sands that surrounded it or its crystal waters that lapped at its gates. A thin veil between the two worlds, and only a few precarious steps between the sanctuary he built and that of a far different realm…
Leaving only one to remain safe at its center because I had followed the path of my past.
I had followed Anástasi to a place that must have frightened her to her very core because, for the first time, she was now faced with the true Hell her father had tried to shelter them from.
The entrance into…
The Underworld.