What Lies Beyond

Since the dawn of time, supernatural creatures have lived among us. There are vampires, werewolves, doppelgängers, witches, and even hybrids. Me? I am an immortal goddess: Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld, tasked to maintain the balance between the living and the dead… This is my story.

1846 - Mystic Falls, Virginia

A wave of power rushed through me. It was finally happening! My magic urged me to run toward the source of that power, but my good sense kept me in place.

The neighbors would have a fit to see an old woman like me running anywhere, and I wouldn't be the only one targeted if the Council suspected magic flowed in my bloodline.

I hated pretending to be age but loved my sons enough to carry on the ruse. A little magic here and there to add gray hairs and wrinkles, and not one of the members of the Founders Council knew I was Immortal.

The rush of power pulsed through me again.

It had to be coming from the Salvatore plantation. Lily had gone into labor 12 hours ago. The news had been all over town.

Mystic Falls was a supernatural hotspot, one of a few I monitored, waiting for a doppelgänger to appear. Finally, after living here for nearly 30 years, one had been born at last!

It was perfect timing. I was getting too old to stay much longer. My husband had passed in 1843 of cholera. I had planned to move on to a new magical hotspot. My sons - full grown men now - were old enough to live without me.

I had moved from hotspot to hotspot for the past 2000 years, knowing no one I knew would be alive to remember my face, having long since passed away from age or disease by the time I returned.

This would be my home for a little while longer.

It was simple after that. I waited for my chance. It arrived, sometime after his mother passed away, when no one was watching. He fell and scraped a knee, and his kind neighbor was there to help.

I cleaned the wound and sent him on his way, discreetly saving the cloth stained with doppelgänger blood.

That night, after my son went to sleep. I opened an old trunk - one that would open only to my touch. Inside was my grimoire and other tools of the craft. Tucked inside was a world map, difficult to come by but necessary because I had no idea where in the whole world Silas was buried.

I frowned at the map, spreading out my tools as I remembered my mission. 2000 years ago a witch named Qetsiyah created an immortality spell for herself and her fiancee - Silas. Little did she know, he had fallen in love with her handmaiden - Amara. On the day of their wedding, he stole the elixir, intending to live forever with his true love.

A whole host of headaches were unleashed because of their actions. Some of which I’ve been trying to clean up for the last 2000 years. When Qetsiyah discovered Silas’ betrayal, she was furious and heartbroken. As her pain tore through her, her magic was unleashed into the world, creating a psychic dimension.

She quickly learned what that dimension could do. Life was dangerous, and there were a whole host of ways someone could die: disease, accidents, murder, and - rarely - old age. It so happened that within hours of creating the pocket dimension, another witch in her coven passed and was trapped inside it.

After a few days, it became apparent that only supernatural souls were caught inside it. The souls of witches from nearby began to appear in her new dimension, but none without magic.

That’s when the seeds of her revenge were born. Qetsiyah had a prison that she alone controlled. All she needed was a way to anchor it and a cure for his immortality. The cure would allow Silas to die and the anchor would expand its reach across the world so that Silas would be trapped within.

Fortunately, as the elixir’s maker, a cure was within her abilities. Qetsiyah isolated herself and began to work on the cure. Meanwhile, her coven was facing backlash from a neighboring coven for creating an immortality spell. The myths said that Zeus could bestow immortality upon mortals by letting them partake in Ambrosia and Nectar. Qetsiyah’s spell was a cruder version of the god’s immortality - it required Silas and Amara to drink blood. The witches claimed it was unnatural. They were worried the spell would anger the gods and bring their wrath upon them.

They weren’t wrong to be concerned. As Queen of the Underworld, I cared that she was interfering with the deaths of so many and that their magic was being held in her purgatory.

Once the cure was created, Qetsiyah went to find Silas and Amara. She watched and waited for Silas to leave Amara’s tent. Once he stepped away, she took her chance. Using her magic against the powerless human girl, forcing Amara to take the cure before ripping her heart from her chest. Then, she waited for Silas to return.

Silas was understandably wary when he returned to find Qetsiyah waiting for him.

“I brought you and Amara a gift,” Qetsiyah said sweetly.

Silas was still wary but opened the box for the cure.

“Take this, become mortal, and I’ll forgive you. We can be happy together,” Qetsiyah offered.

Silas snorted. “I never loved you. Keep your cure and get out of my way.” He brushed past her and entered the tent. The strong scent of blood and death was overwhelming. His eyes grew wide at the amount of blood covering the walls of the tent. A single heart lay on their bed.

“No… no…. Amara…” Silas sank to his knees in despair.

Qetsiyah lingered at the tent’s opening, savoring his pain and heartbreak, measuring it against her own. Amara wasn’t truly dead, but she wanted Silas to believe it, to feel his heart ripped from his chest. Her purgatory needed to last forever, so she’d bound the spell to Amara, anchoring it with her immortality. “What do you say now? Choose me or be alone forever.”

Silas whipped his head to face her. “Have you been touched by the madness of Dionysus? Or has Eros struck with an arrow so that you are blind to anyone’s feelings but your own?”

“You need time to grieve. I understand,” Qetsiyah said, ignoring him completely. “I’ll give you that time. Then you’ll take the cure and we can be together!”

Silas was no longer a witch and was defenseless against Qetsiyah. She took him and locked him away somewhere remote with the cure, assuming at some point he would take it and then kill himself.

When she returned home, she planned to lock Amara away somewhere equally remote but far away. She was shocked to find Amara gone and her homeland deserted. The neighboring coven had used Silas and Amara’s blood to curse them all in an attempt to appease the gods. The curse prevented her people from prevented them from settling, from calling any place their homeland, and in doing so, preventing them from channeling nature in their magic.

The newly named Travelers had been waiting for her return. They thought that killing her would remove the purgatory she had created, not realizing she’d already anchored it to Amara’s life. As they slit her throat and the last of her blood flowed onto the ground, I was waiting for her.

“Qetsiyah, what have you done?”

“Who are you?”

“Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld,” I said, introducing myself.

Qetsiyah had enough sense to look shocked and afraid. “My lady… what do you accuse me of?”

“Do you have no shame? You have cheated death!” I yelled, furious at her impertinence.

“It is not I who took the immortality elixir. It was that craven Silas who stole it from me,” Qetsiyah explained, as though that absolved her of all her wrongdoings.

“Yet it would not have been possible without you,” I accused. “And besides that. You’re preventing souls from crossing Styx. Charon cannot ferry them across if they’re caught in your web.”

Qetsiyah blinked as though she had not thought about anyone but her and Silas. “I did not…”

“You anchored it, fool. It may have faded after you death, but now someone has to kill that poor girl you cursed-”

“Poor girl? That whore stole my one true love! Shouldn’t Queen Hera be here? She has done nothing less against her own faithless husband.”

“The revenge of gods is not for mortals to partake. I need the cure,” I said, losing my patience.

“No. He has not suffered enough!” Qetsiyah insisted. “I will not allow you to free either of them from their suffering.”

Realizing she would not budge, I left her to her misery but began searching for a way to make Amara mortal again. I knew Silas had a cure and had hoped that I could find him before he took it. As centuries passed, I could not find him, but I took heart that he never appeared in Qetsiyah’s purgatory. I made a habit of visiting her. She always refused to help me. Claiming he had not suffered enough and never revealing where she sealed him away all those years ago.

Then, word of doppelgängers being born began to spread among the witch and Traveler circles. I began to search for them, but they often died young, their blood was a potent ingredient in spells and their luck was poor.

I wondered if they were all destined to die at the age Silas and Amara took the immortality elixir.

Now, nearly 2000 years later, I finally found one. I settled back into my life as a mother and grandmother, waiting for events to unfold, waiting for fate to bring all three pieces together.