The Nether Souls: The Nether Souls, #2

Forward from the author

This book was my very first book ever written, and it was self-published by me.  I came up with the name Nether Souls Publishing because I wanted to help others someday, by helping them self-publish their own books as well for free, only asking that they give me credit by naming Nether Souls Publishing as their publisher.  I did not want to start a company per say, but more of a charity organization that could show independent authors how to self-publish for little to no cost like I did.

With that being said, I will explain to you why this book was not proofread well.  My daughter proofread the book for me, but as explained in the acknowledgments, she was dealing with a toddler as well.  Therefore, some mistakes were not captured, and others were made after she had originally proofread, because I went back and added more storyline.  I proofread myself as well, which is not an easy feat if one is not well versed in punctuation, spelling, and proper grammar.  I considered myself well versed, but after taking a couple of simple grammar and self-proofreading courses, I digress.

Therefore, I made the effort, after gaining more experience and writing a couple of other books, to go back and proofread the book again.  When I began, my jaw dropped in horror at how awful this book was compared to my most recent book, Witchball, which (in my opinion) is by far my best work. 

I felt as if Gatu, Bellesa, Pimedus, and all the other characters in this book deserved far more than this, so I set out to re-vamp Creators of the Galaxy, give it a new name, and give it a new cover as well.  The original book is still being offered for free on many platforms, but it will no longer be sold on Amazon.

Hopefully, this revamping process will gain the Nether Souls a bigger following and do justice to the story of Gatu’s journey of self-discovery, adventure, and love. 

So...without further ado....

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Here is Creators of the Galaxy, retold, revamped, and hopefully better than ever before!

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| Jose

PROLOUGE

I opened my eyes for the first time in my existence, fully aware that I was new, and had never existed before. 

I did not know how I knew this.  I just did.

I had felt safe and warm where I had been placed after my creation, but then I had been thrust into this new place and nothing felt safe anymore. 

My newborn eyes darted to and fro, and I could fuzzily see the doctors fussing over my sister, who had lain quietly behind me in that safe place before we were thrust into this life.

She had been born just a few minutes after me, and I heard her pitiful cries as they hurriedly cleaned me and placed me into a plastic hospital crib so that they could concentrate on her.  I could hear my sister now, still crying, in the incubator beside my plastic hospital crib, and I knew she was dying.  Nothing the doctors did would help.  She was dying, and only I could help her.

I did not know how I knew this, I just did. 

I just knew things.  It was inherent inside my mind, and had been as soon as I had been able to form thoughts inside the womb.  I knew things from instinct, though I did not know how or why.  For instance, in that moment, I knew that if I could touch my sister that I could heal her. 

I tried to form words to speak to the doctors.  I could hear them talking, and I could understand what they were saying.  I tried to talk, but the only thing that came out of my mouth were whimpers, sounds, and cries of frustration as I tried and tried to make my mouth form the words that I so desperately needed to say.  My baby body would not respond to my commands.

Give her to me!  Let me touch her!  I kept trying to say, but the only thing my baby mouth would produce was whimpers and cries.  My cries became so loud that, eventually, a nurse picked me up from my crib and rocked me as she cooed in a soothing manner.  This had not helped.  It had only made me more frustrated, because I could not talk to her and tell her what I wanted to say.

After a few long minutes, the doctors stopped working on my sister and concentrated on me.  My sister was deemed in stable condition by the doctors, and she lay quietly in the incubator and did not cry again.  They had hooked her up to some tubes, and wires snaked from patches they had placed along her body.  I could hear the steady "beep...beep...beep" of the monitors as her heart continued to beat and I knew that she was definitely not in stable condition.

The doctors cleaned me up and swaddled me into a cozy blanket.  It did not console me, however because my sister was slowly fading away.  I knew she had some time, but she was suffering nonetheless.  I did not want her to suffer any longer than necessary.  All I had to do was touch her and she would heal.

She felt empty lying in that heated incubator, silent and breathing steadily, and I could feel her strong heart struggle to keep beating despite the emptiness inside of her.  I do not know why that thought had come to me, nor what it meant, but I could feel the emptiness of that tiny body like a heavy weight inside of my own miniscule heart.  The longer the emptiness continued, the weaker her body would become until she eventually would become no more.  A tiny whimper escaped my lips as I thought this, and I begged silently for someone to pick her up and lay her beside me so that I could cure that emptiness.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, they gently picked up my sister.  They had hung the bags of liquids that were attached to the tubes coming out of her body to a rod was attached to her incubator, and now they detached the rod and the monitor from the incubator so that it would move with her as the nurse carried her across the room.  The nurse that was holding me followed along and we were both transported to the other side of the room where a curtain hung from the ceiling, hiding whatever had been on this side of the room.

The nurses that were holding me and my sister spoke softly to someone behind the curtain, and the curtain was pulled away to reveal what lay behind.  A man positioned the curtain against the wall, and then looked to the now open space where the nurses stood holding me and my sister with the tubes and monitor.  His eyes were solemn as they landed on my sister, but he smiled weakly and stroked a finger down her check gently.

Hello, my angel, he cooed softly.  You will make it, I know you will.

He turned his eyes to me, and his smile widened and his eyes sparkled as he said his next words.  Your brother and I will protect and love you for the rest of your life.

‘Damn right I will,’ I thought fiercely, and tried to say it as well, forgetting that my newborn mouth and tongue would not form the words.  A gurgling, happy sound came from my throat instead and this made the man, who must be our father, chuckle softly. 

The nurses turned us away from the sight of the man, and toward a woman lying in a hospital bed that had been hidden behind the curtain.  She looked worn and tired, but her eyes lit up with happiness as we were brought to her.  The nurse holding my sister stepped forward first and gently placed her into the woman’s arms.  The doctor, who had been standing behind the nurses the entire time,  took a step forward to explain all the wires and tubes coming from my sister’s tiny body, and the numbers on the monitor and what they meant.  The woman’s eyes turned sad for a second, until the nurse holding me stepped forward and gently placed me in her other arm.

Meet your mother, the doctor told me as the nurse laid me in the crook of the woman’s other arm opposite my sister.

I looked up into her sad eyes, and tried to motion towards my sister.  Let me touch her and I will fix her, I tried to say to her, but it just came out in a soft coo.  This made the woman smile, and tears welled up in her eyes.  She lifted me towards her face and placed a gentle kiss on my forehead.

As she lifted me, and this put me in close proximity to the quiet baby in the crook of my mother’s other arm.  I tried to reach out and touch her, but my arm would not cooperate.  It waved up and down swiftly, and I could not get the muscles to respond.  Mother lifted my sister up even closer as she placed a soft kiss on her forehead as well, and when she did my arm brushed against my sister’s arm in a split second.

Just that second was all I needed.  I thought, ‘heal and live, sister’!

The second I thought those words, a tremendous pain shot through my entire tiny body.  It felt like I was being torn apart from the inside.  I cried loudly, and my mother made shushing sounds at me and cuddled me closer to her cheek.  The pain subsided after a brief moment, and my sister started crying as well. 

A man came and gently lifted each one of us off mother in turn, and placed us back into the nurses’ arms.  The nurses took us back to the other side of the room, placing me back into the plastic crib and my sister back into the incubator.  My sister stopped crying after a moment, and her head turned in my direction.  I could see in her eyes that she would live now.  The body of my sister was full and alive, and everything would be fine.

I did not know how I knew this.  I just did.

My sister cooed a happy little sound as she peered at me from her incubator, and I knew her thoughts just as if they were my very own.

‘Thank you for saving me.  I am a part of you now’, she thought at me.  And I actually heard her! 

This was my last thought as blackness started to swirl around my fuzzy newborn vision and through my drowsy brain as I drifted off to baby sleep. 

The dream faded into the blackness of the night, and I awoke to my current, adult body safe in my bed.  I have had this dream on and off during this entire second life.  The dream comes from my first life, which are the first memories I have of existence.

I am eighty-one years old in this second life.  I have been alone for this life.  I did what I needed to do to survive, but not much else from that.  I gave up on having a family, or associating with the family I was born to.  After my first life, I saw no need to burden myself if I was only going to go back to the Nether when I died as I had done after my first life.

When I had been placed into the womb in this life, I had remembered everything from my first life.  I remembered being placed into that first body and coming into existence with my sister dying.  I remembered my life with my family and sister, who had lived and grown up with me.  I remembered the pain I felt when we lost our mother at a very young age to cancer.  I remembered how close my sister and I were, and how we never lost that connection to talk to each other with our thoughts.

I remembered the horrible death of my sister when she had drowned in a lake on a camping trip with her friends at the young age of 16.  I remembered hearing her call for me in my head, asking for help and being so terrified, and the horrible helplessness I felt for not being able to get to her to help her in time.  By the time I had gotten there, it had been too late.

I remembered the tremendous feelings of grief and pain of loss, and of being so depressed that I wanted to die.  I remembered the girl from college, and how she made the pain feel better.  I remembered falling in love, getting married, and having two children, a girl and a boy.  I remembered going to work at the hospital where I worked as a doctor.  I had wanted to save lives to make up for not being able to save my sister.

I remembered the day that I never went home.  All that pain and suffering I had had to go through to get to the happy life I had, and it had all been taken away in one fatal moment on the highway.  I had only been 35 years old at that time.

It was especially hard when I had to go through that painful death of the car crash.  The pain was excruciating.  I was considered dead on arrival, but my brain was still functioning, and I could still feel everything. 

My brain was beginning to function on a different frequency, and was preparing my life force to be taken to my waiting soul body in the other plane of existence called the Nether. 

The reunification process, which is the process of leaving the human body and entering the soul body, is complex and supposedly painless.  There is supposed to be this light tunnel or portal of some kind, and it is supposed to be comforting and lessen the pain of dying.  When the portal opened for me and I entered it, I still felt intense pain.  I was in pain until I opened my eyes in my soul body in the Nether.

I am a new soul.  I have been told by the other souls that I met while I was in the Nether that living lives on the planet Earth is a way to keep the balance in the universe, but I would not remember anything beyond my most recent life.  They told me that I would not remember anything about the Nether when I was living on Earth in a human body, and that I would not remember any of my past lives.  I would come back to the Nether with only the memory of the life that I had just lived and my entire knowledge of everything I had learned so far about the Nether.  This helped keep pain and trauma away from souls, so that they could live in peace in the Nether.

This had made me feel a little better.  I could live another life if I chose, and not remember anything from that first short and painful life.  Overall, I had some happy moments and times, but the death of my sister had still haunted me.  

I had never found my sister in the Nether, which made my pain and trauma even harder to bear.  I wanted to know her again, know that she was safe in the Nether, and apologize to her for not being able to save her, but I had not gotten the chance.  No one in the Nether had known who she was, and no one had been able to find her.  I would be glad when I forgot. 

They were wrong. 

I had remembered everything when I had entered this life.  I remembered losing my sister, the pain of death, and everything I had learned while I was in the Nether.  There was a lot to learn about the Nether and it would be quite a while before I learned everything, but I was supposed to have left these memories behind.  I was not supposed to have remembered my time in the Nether until I had passed from this second life, and I was not supposed to have remembered my first life at all.  I had spent quite a lot of time in the Nether learning how to deal with the trauma from my first life, and had been comforted with the knowledge that I would forget it all after living another life.

They had all been wrong. 

I was tormented with memories and all of the trauma from my first life throughout this second life.  The nightmares, like the one I had just had, were the worst.  The knowledge that I could be far away from this entire situation, still trying to heal my trauma, if I had only stayed in the Nether was a burden that was hard to carry. 

This is why I have lived this life alone, a recluse with no children and no family left alive.  I did not want to live through all that pain again, nor did I want to have familial ties to souls that I may never find or know again. 

I need to have a serious talk with Khanya, the light leader, about this when I return to Zendawiss, the light city of planet Earth.

There are two eternal cities for the planet Earth in the Nether.  The dark city of planet Earth, Nochetawah, is ruled by Pimedus.  Khanya and Pimedus teach their souls about the universal harmony and balance, and how everything must follow that balance; hence, light and dark cities.  There are many different planets, and each one has their own two eternal light and dark cities that co-exist with their planets on a different plane, and each of those cities has its own leader.   

The Nether souls keep the harmony and balance within the Planetal plane, so balance must be kept within the Nether most importantly.  Therefore, Light and dark does not necessarily mean good and evil.  There are good and bad light souls, just as there are good and bad dark souls.  Balance means dark co-existing with the light, just as good must co-exist with evil.  Opposites must co-exist with each other, and this is especially true in the Nether. 

I sigh as these thoughts pass through my befuddled old human brain.  It is getting harder and harder with old age to remember everything I had learned about the Nether and my first life.  I know, somewhere deep inside my gut, that this is temporary.  When I die and go back to the Nether, I will remember everything with certain clarity, and this is not a good thing.

I will be hit with the trauma again, and the pain will be more unbearable than it is now in my current befuddled state of humanity and old age.  I miss home even so, and I miss Khanya and the other souls I grew to know in my time in the Nether.

Khanya will know what to do.  I will tell her of my situation, and she will help me deal with the trauma of remembering everything.  Even though I dread it, I know that it is a burden I will have to carry if I want to learn the reasoning behind my ability to remember. 

Nevertheless, I will have to wait...

Wait to die and pass from this human life...

Wait to awake in Zendawiss and ask Khanya for help.

I just hope it is soon.  I want to go home.

| Jose

CHAPTER 1

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I finally made it.  That same night, after I had awoken from the nightmare and went back to sleep, I had a heart attack.  I realized that if you died while asleep the process was a lot less painful.  The light tunnel portal made my pain fade as fast as it had begun as I drifted out of my human body and into the Nether.

Why had it worked this time when it did not work before?  Just another question I had to ask when I got back to Zendawiss.

I awoke in my soul body in one of the receiving rooms of Zendawiss, with Khanya standing over me.  Welcome back Gatu, she said with a welcoming smile.

Khanya, I’m so glad to be home.  I missed home.

Liar, she replied playfully still smiling.  How can you miss something you do not even remember?

Here was my chance to tell her of my situation. 

My voice stayed calm as I said, Yes, you said I would forget.  I didn’t forget.  I remembered the Nether and everything from my first life.  I still remember everything from the moment I was placed into that first body until this moment.  I remember it all.  I took a cleansing breath as I finished.  I was afraid of her response.  Were there others like me and, if so, why had I not been warned? 

The smile left her face suddenly at my reply.  Her face stayed neutral, and I could not tell what she was thinking as she answered, Gatu, I do not have any answers for you.  My heart sank as she continued, this is definitely a very unique situation.  I have never heard of such a thing.  Are you sure you remember everything? 

I’m very sure and I’ll prove it.  I went on to tell Khanya about my first life, skimming over it but adding in details here and there.  I made sure to accentuate the pain of losing my sister and still missing her to this day.

After I was finished speaking, Khanya turned to another soul in the room who had been standing by my bed.  The soul simply nodded with a serious expression on her face.  This soul was my watcher and every soul that went to the Planetal plane had one. 

A watcher is a soul that watches over another soul while they are living on the Planetal plane.  These souls can enter the Planetal plane in their soul bodies, an ability called dimensional travel.  The watcher will report to the leader if there are any problems or if an imbalance is suspected during their charges’ lives.  Sometimes, a watcher will watch two or more souls, but usually no more than four.

Khanya's silvery voice drew me out of my thoughts as she replied, I was wondering why you pushed everyone away in this life.  Now I understand.  This is quite unusual.  I need to discuss this with the other leaders and I will get back to you.  Maybe there is another soul out there like you, and maybe there is not.  Either way, I think it would be best if you stayed here in Zendawiss until this situation is resolved.  No more living lives for you for now.

She paused for a moment before turning to my watcher and said, It looks like Gatu will not need you for a while.

My watcher smiled at me, a smile of good-bye, and I smiled back at her sadly. 

Don’t be so sad, Gatu.  I’ll see you around, my watcher said sweetly in her musical tones as she left the room.

Khanya watched her until she was completely out of the door before she spoke.  I will go make my first call.  You wait here for a bit and I will be back soon.

Are you gonna tell Pimedus, I asked softly?  I knew this would be a sore subject, and I had only asked so that I would know what to say and what not to say if Pimedus visited.

Khanya’s voice was vehement as she replied, Why would I not tell him?  Even though I do not want to, it would be better if he knew.  He did create you, after all.  I will return later with more news. She walked out without a backwards glance, and I had a twinge of guilt thinking that she may be angry with me.

I had learned a lot during my time in Zendawiss between my first and second lives.  One of the more surprising things that I had learned was that I was not supposed to be in Zendawiss.  I was supposed to have been in Nochetawah with Pimedus.  Pimedus had created me, yet I had ended up in Zendawiss when I left earth and entered the Nether.

Pimedus created dark souls that were blessed with dark powers.  The leaders blessed the souls with powers to maintain the balance on both planes.  The more powerful the power, the more energy it creates in the Planetal plane, thus if a big balance of dark energy was needed, a soul with a great dark power was sent. 

I was created with the power to manipulate darkness, which was a very powerful dark power.  Pimedus himself had the same power.   I had learned to do a lot in the Nether, with occasional training from Pimedus.  I could hide in shadow and no soul could see me.  I could create a ball of darkness that could blind a soul so completely, but I could still see inside the darkness.  I could even manipulate and control small pieces of shadow and darkness to some extent. 

In the Nether, our powers were part of our everyday lives.  We learn how to use them and we use them when we can, but on the Planetal plane the power is only supposed to manifest the energy needed for balancing.  A soul in human form should not be able to use their power. 

Planetal bodies do not operate on the same frequency as a soul body in the Nether.  Furthermore, since humans do not remember the Nether while in human form, they do not know that they have any power at all, much less how to use it.

Nevertheless, I had used powers unintentionally while in my human body only a few hours after I had been born, and it was not a power that I should have had.  I had gained healing powers somehow, which was more of a light power than a dark one.  I had healed my sister, which caused my soul to attract so much light energy that the original dark energy had been overtaken, so when I had died I ended up in Zendawiss with Khanya.  I had retained a fractional amount of dark energy and still had my dark power that Pimedus had given me, to the relief of Pimedus. 

Pimedus had placed me directly into the waiting fetus, so there had been no time to grow and develop a new power in the Nether.  It should have been impossible, and what made it even more improbable was the fact that I had used a light power even though I was supposed to have been a dark soul.  No one knows how this happened, but Khanya and Pimedus had a few theories. 

There are souls called balancers that can put things back into balance in the Planetal plane and balance the energies inside another soul.  These souls possess both light and dark energy, and can live in either city of their choosing.  They do not necessarily have to inhabit a Planetal body to restore the balance.  It is a skill that is inherent in a soul that is supposed to become a balancer. 

The balance was not thrown off in the slightest when I became filled with light.  No one in the Nether had even known that I had light energy until I mysteriously came to Zendawiss with Khanya when I had entered the Nether from the Planetal plane.  The balance in the Nether stayed stable as well, which led Khanya and Pimedus to believe that I may be a balancer.  To test this theory, however, I would have to go through training and be sent to Earth when the time came to balance out the energies.  Pimedus was reluctant to test the theory right away.

Khanya and Pimedus usually work together to take care of the Earth.  Khanya tries her best to maintain the delicate balance in the world by using balancers a lot, but Pimedus believes that nature should learn to take care of itself and the balancers should only be used to avoid catastrophes on a grand scale.  Now it seemed that the test would have to wait in any case.  Now there was a new mystery about me for Khanya and Pimedus to solve. 

How did I remember everything?

I do not know how much time passed as I sat contemplating everything that had happened and everything I had learned so far.  There were still so many questions that needed answered, and I had no idea who had answers, or if there even were any.  If Khanya could not help me and had no answers, who in the Nether would?

So far, my existence had been one big unanswered question after another.  There was still so much to learn as well, because there were many different types of souls with many different powers and abilities.  The biggest question of all was where do I fit in?

Khanya entering my room interrupted my thinking.  Her smile had returned during her absence, but it was more of an encouraging one than a happy one.  I studied her features as she moved toward my bed. 

She was tall with a thin frame, but she had an ample bust, which was accentuated by the v-shaped neckline of her sweater.  Her unblemished skin was a pale yellow-gold color that shimmered and glowed like the sun on a summer day.  The copper colored sequins of her sweater made her skin color stand out even more as they shimmered when she moved. 

Her large, tri-colored eyes had a kindness about them that made one immediately like and trust her.  They shined colors of brown, green, and light brown as she smiled encouragingly at me.  Her sculpted, heart-shaped face housed a set of full, voluptuous lips. 

Her long, flowing, red hair with its black highlights was wavy and shiny and looked like garnets and onyxes were spun into her silky locks.  Wisps of curls framed her face making the jade green color stand out among the brown colors in her eyes.  She brushed the wisps behind one delicate, slightly pointed ear as she continued across the room towards me. 

Her long, thin legs showed beneath the hem of her copper colored skirt as she walked across the floor like a graceful dancer.  Her voluptuous hips swung side to side as she walked, and I secretly envisioned how mesmerizing the swing of her full bottom would look like from behind to some unwary soul.

Not me, of course.  She was more like a mother to me.  Besides, my thoughts were set on someone else.  

Khanya was definitely a beauty, though to some unwilling soul, it could prove dangerous.  It would be too easy to fall in love with her, and just as easy to spend eternity heartbroken and yearning.  She reserved her love for her planet Earth, the human creatures, and her souls.  Some believed she was secretly in love with Pimedus as well, but I do not believe she would ever admit it or act on it.

Her smile slipped away, and her brows furrowed together in concern.  Gatu, are you listening to me?

I startled at her words, not realizing that she had been speaking.  I’m sorry, Khanya.  I was distracted by your outstanding beauty. 

She giggled musically and shook her head at me as she replied sarcastically, I see your sparkling sense of humor has returned. 

She paused to smile at me before she repeated her earlier statement.  I said that we have a new visitor coming.  Drysu from Nahastu has never visited Zendawiss, but he is very interested in meeting you.  I am going to hold a welcome banquet for him, and I would like you to sit by my side.

Nahastu?  Isn’t that the city of darkness for Jupiter, I asked?

Indeed it is, she answered with a confused smile.  Someone has been taking lessons.  She sat down at the foot of my bed, and looked at me expectantly with her eyebrows raised.  I had not taken lessons.   Only the most powerful souls were required to take these lessons.  Other souls could take them upon request.

I fit into neither category, but I had read a few books here and there.  I did not know as of yet if I would be required to take the lessons or not, because Khanya seemed dead set on solving the mystery that is me before committing me to anything. 

I had been sent to my second life experimentally to see if I would return to Nochetawah when I returned to the Nether,