Deva Anon

Chapter One – Nera

Relationship dynamics are nuanced.

They can trap and destroy us, or nurture our best selves.

If we are to believe in reincarnation or parallel universes, we’ve loved countless people through space and time.

Some say our soulmate is never out of reach. That we find each other anywhere – in any gender, race, planet, epoch, or circumstance. 

There’s also the concept of multiple soulmates encountered within a lifetime.

The most peculiar thing I’ve learned about love is that it summons ideas genetically planted in us before conception – challenging beliefs about ourselves and the world at large.

With a reputation likened to a devil, the mirror of love speaks so honestly and plainly that it uncovers truths beyond the illusions we create.

Truths more ancient than thought.

It’s Friday night.

I stare at my reflection, dressed in nothing but ceremonial robes.

Tonight I am initiated as a member of The Circle.

Our duty is to protect life and innocence through the patient education of humanity.

We do so with sorcery – defined as the developed ability to expand the limits of normal perception through rational thought, in order to redefine our reality.

I believe in that mission.

It is through a fellow member that I’ve gotten everything I’ve wanted; rescuing me from a life of pain and chaos.

The mercy of real hope and innumerable options for a fulfilling life is what makes accepting the call to sorcery the most humane and love-full action one can take.

Since birth, we’ve been toxically conditioned to uphold the thought of hell on Earth as normal. People focus on death as relief vs life with its extraordinary potential.

Our dedicated efforts manage to renew the minds of a few, while the masses carry on in daily torture.

The true matrix is the falsehood that we have no power over our fate and many choose to believe it. Even when confronted by insurmountable proof to the contrary.

I close my eyes and take seven deep breaths.

The next stage of my discipleship draws near.

Sorcerers undergo many initiations into advanced degrees of magic.

Within that hierarchy, The Circle is notoriously difficult to affiliate with.

It’s exclusive to sorcerers of proven character, self-control, wisdom and rectitude, in addition to magical prowess.

Standing at the stage of another achievement, however, hasn’t filled me with the sense of pride and purpose I expected.

Instead, a ghost sensation rises from my pelvis and up to my brain.

It says I don’t belong here.

From the moment Andre found and trained me through the levels of sorcery, it was known I was missing part of my memory.

The feeling of not being from this planet was not imposter syndrome, but a fact.

After being examined, my energy sphere revealed a portion of my soul was from somewhere unknown to the sorcerers from this and neighboring universes.

For ages I’d used that as an excuse against joining.

To me, I was a liability.

Especially considering that the fundamental rule is to know thyself.

Andre and our fellow sorcerers convinced me I could not allow that to limit my potential. That I had to choose life over mental imprisonment.

I understood, from their transparency, that I possessed a certain mark which pointed me out to them.

Not considering myself extraordinary meant resisting the idea that anything of significance existed within me to warrant I enroll into their level of authority.

Still, they swore to assist me through any challenge, and went as far as thoughtfully reminding me they were more advanced in the craft – meaning if I got out of control, they would handle it. 

“Higher power can only be accessed with a certain mindset and disposition. No one can transcend their perimeters of influence over mind and matter without first becoming a being that controls itself, and cares about other life forms,” they’d tell me, “if you’re truly unworthy, you won’t graduate beyond your proven capabilities.”

I finally decided to move forward.

On occasion, a reminder of my lost memories surfaced.

Like tonight.

I want to run.

“Don’t go there,” says a familiar voice.

“Andre,” I reply.

“You look great,” he adds.

We smile at each other – he with a confident smirk and I, annoyingly bashful.

For being a powerful woman in both the world of sorcery and the philanthro-capitalistic realm, he was the only one who could shove all my accolades aside and make me feel like a girl gushing over a crush.

The notion was humorous.

We’ve been long-time lovers and partners in everything.

I should be used to him by now but his allure is endless.

“They’re starting. Come out here with your thick self and that cute smile,” he teases.

Grateful for the love and levity, I step out and head for the cathedral that loomed against the cottage we’d been in.

It was common to obscure our practices under the skirts of religions with violent reputations.

To announce your identity as pro-human under an independent group or label was a public act of war on all institutions that upheld exploitation and terror – an evil that wasn’t born on Tiamat but spread here, like it did in other universes.

Unless you planned to match or surpass the crimes of that vein of death-consciousness, it was best to make progress as invisibly as possible.

Dead ends, false saviors, distorted knowledge – it all became part of a complex effort to save souls, filter out degenerate temperaments, and keep ourselves safe.

Unveiling truth was arduous but worthy labor.

The learning curve was endless.

So were its dangers.

Two large wooden doors part in the middle as Andre and I walk up to the entrance.

”Brother. Sister. Welcome,” says the head priest.

He’s inorganic: an energy entity given a human-presenting form, summoned to serve The Circle.

Making our way down the aisle, we reach and stand before an empty pulpit.

Gathering physically under one roof was rare for several reasons.

Our interactions were mostly telepathic or through arcane technology, and in designated buildings like this one.

Andre steps to the left and I to the right.

A voice speaks in layered frequencies from the speakers hovering around the vacant building.

“We are candles within the whole – spreading our flame to ignite the human soul. She who was without light became conscious through the efforts of two: Master and Student. Andre and Nera.  Bound by fate and then by choice. To master means to graduate to a new level after perfecting the previous. It demands remembrance that we are forever students of what’s next, and a commitment to the eternal evolution of mind, body and soul. A student is humble upon the face of knowledge, understanding wisdom is the proper use of information, abiding by the direction of Masters, and persevering in daily metamorphosis. We stand witness, telepathically, to our sister Nera’s vow as she adjoins her light to the all-encompassing Circle. Her name encrypted in divinity. Our word is one: spoken and consummate.”

Andre walks towards me and kisses my lips.

”Love seals the deal,” he says, “never forget that.”

We step forward towards the altar.

He draws a lit candle from under his robe and points it like a sword in my direction. 

I bow before the flame until its warmth touches my forehead – astral fire that does not burn flesh but stimulates the pineal gland.

A jolt shocks my nervous system.

Involuntarily dropping my robes to the ground, my skin is fully exposed – honey in glow.

Andre comes to me, enveloping me within his cloak – nude beneath.

The heat from his body is muted by the intensity of mine.

Initiation doubles as a purification ritual.

Gently guiding me to the floor, we sit on my fallen fabrics while he embraces me through asphyxiating heaves and stabbing aches.

His flame has entered me and I must let it take its course.

It’s just us again.

My thoughts race through time like a rewinding film.

It stops at darkness.

The missing memories.

Then, as if taking a life of their own, I hear them speak.

Beware and prepare.

Twin and thief tangle our soul.

We have to decide who we are.

Sunlight filters through the North Star depicted in the stained glass.

It’s daybreak by the time I return to myself.

Andre looks at me, helping me sit upright.

“How many days?” I ask.

“Seven, though it felt like a blink,” he replies.

“Did you see?” I ask with an undertone of sadness and desperation.

“I did. Was with you the whole time,” he affirms.

I sigh and lay back against the floor.

Being unclothed didn’t matter.

Sorcery was inherently other-worldly. Decorum felt excessive when faced with infinity.

A weighted silence surrounds us.

“Please take me home,” I finally ask.

Andre had trained me out of disassociating, but in that moment I needed the distance.

He felt me and allowed it, diving into his own meditative mood.

The answers I’d been waiting for were at the door of my awareness.

Except they arrived in a merciless riddle.

We both knew what that meant.

I’d be rigorously tested by energy to understand what my subconscious had veiled.

As much as I tried, conceptualizing what the future held was mind numbing.

“Whatever it is, we will deal with it together. All you have to do is be honest and talk to me,” he says – reading my mind.

With that, he wraps me in his robes again and teleports me home.

Once there I don’t have to ask – he takes off on his own.

Making my way to the kitchen, I have a grape and some mango juice; uninspired to eat but needing sustenance.

I feel a distinct type of fear.

Nearly imperceptible and hard to define.

It’s like part of me was forcibly bound together.

Contradictory.

Deformed.

The trouble with energy is that it’s a trickster by default when transformed into the physical realm.

How do we know the person we’re talking to is actually a human? Does it behave like one? What is a human being?

Those are the types of questions that sort through truth & lies. They’re not abstract like they seem. Everything can be deciphered with focus of thought and an honest heart.

Only a trained mind can think beyond what the eye and therefore brain has pre-defined.

Something told me that whatever was in that darkness was evil unlike anything I’d encountered.

My challenge was to locate it in its physical disguise and determine its outcome.

We typically made evil extinct.

That was the obvious course of action.

Nonetheless, upon looking with the magic at my command all I saw in that primordial darkness was myself at the epicenter of an ancient malevolence prowling on the other side.

What could I do against such a sinister deceiver weaving death into the multiverse with cunning lies.

While it prevailed in hiding its true form, tonight I caught a glimpse of it for the first time.