Between heaven and earth there is much more than humans can imagine. The gods take advantage of myths to act and rule over everyone without raising suspicion. Immersed in their desires and luxuries they survive amid the misery and bankruptcy of the kingdom of men. Hela is the goddess of the Dead, tired of seeing the living frightened by death and especially withering away in life. She firmly believes that the gods have forgotten their true purpose in the universe. After being betrayed, she was humiliated, imprisoned and sentenced to marry Ina and live with her for a thousand years in exile in the kingdom of darkness. Ina, the holder of the secret of eternal life and the key to paradise, was punished by all the gods after they felt disrespected in the face of the possibility of the finitude of their own powers. The two accepted their intertwined fates and lived together for a thousand years until they realized that they had ambitions to live together for all eternity. When the thousand years finally ended, one of them would be able to return to her life in the Kingdom of the Dead, while the other would remain imprisoned in the realm of darkness as a mere mortal ready to die at any moment. A countdown began with Hela desperately looking for a way to make Ina immortal once more, without any concern if she would be forced to fight or kill whether they were men or gods, no one would disturb her again. Only one thing was certain: Hela would not fail a second time. __________________ Support me and give me a gift! https://throne.com/moonssiide __________________ I don't own the rights to the cover image, it's an image taken from the internet and I couldn't find the author to offer the due credits.
Hela watched Hermes and Ina go to their respective places and walked softly next to the teacher's desk.
Straight ahead and centered for all to see.
She smiled a little restlessly, a lot of people were watching her and it was a little terrifying, but Ina was there... Nothing should go wrong.
She propped herself up beside the table and faced the crowd of people in front of her.
It was definitely easier to face thousands of thirsty souls than half a dozen university students.
She thought briefly about where she should begin her train of thought…her mind wandered a million different topics.
Mythology and faith was a world, you could spend days and days talking about it.
"Well... It's really surprising that I'm here today, it wasn't part of the plans... My name is Hela Skygge and I'm the new Norse Mythology teacher... I was just passing through, but something unexpected came up and the Mr. Ralph asked that I have a brief conversation while he was gone..."
Hela watched the clock attached to the wall, she didn't want to waste her entire day in a classroom.
She mostly wanted to be able to walk around town a little with Ina. "... I shouldn't go on too long because I'm with my wife, I hope you can understand..."
The students smiled with satisfaction knowing that they would be released a little ahead of schedule.
The feeling of revulsion towards Hela was real, but some seemed attached to her beauty and others just feared her gestures and words.
Despite reactions of disgust and disgust being expected, humans were unpredictable and strange.
Some seemed to be legitimately drawn to danger and death.
Some characteristics stood out and stood out, making the individual's aura stronger than the simple nature of defense and existence.
Hela stopped for a few moments and could easily observe Ina with her reddened eyes.
Smiling happily, Ina was watching.
Hela would start this conversation from the beginning then.
"Well, what we understand about faith is really interesting… They are reports. People believe and live their own faith, according to their historical time and culture..."
Hela had a lot of knowledge about the evolution of the world and people, she understood well what they thought about the gods.
It really wasn't a secret to the gods how humans so easily let go of their beliefs, so they cooperated with each other.
Despite still caring for the descendants of their people, humans with the passage of millennia did not necessarily faithfully believe in the same as their predecessors.
It wasn't uncommon for people to show up in Niflheim without even believing the place existed.
But the growing number of humans and the dead piling up only made it necessary for the gods to continue with their existence and work.
But it was also true to say that the level of influence had declined exponentially over the course of human existence.
But once a god exists, he will never cease to exist.
Which only made Ina's situation more deplorable, she naturally shouldn't be experiencing that punishment of becoming mortal.
The punishment of mortality and oblivion are the worst punishments to offer a god, because it means directly compromising a god and people's beliefs.
It's cowardly.
But she tried not to focus her thoughts too much on Ina's situation or she wouldn't be able to fully concentrate on what she was saying to the students.
"... A god should not exist without humans to worship him and by saying that we enter into a great contradiction...After all, if there are no gods without men, who created the universe? Who created the something while everything was still nothing? Humans could not exist without the universe."
Hela stopped leaning against the table to finally sit down on a random chair.
Hela had the serious expression that had all the students silently watching her.
She glanced at some of the students at the back of the room and smiled. "I want you to keep in mind that time is malleable...Imagine that the universe is a book, you can go to the first pages and then jump abruptly to the final pages...Time is not something linear for the gods and from the moment they exist they can go through the entire timeline in any way they want... "
Hela wouldn't go into too much detail, mainly because she felt it would be too confusing to talk about without delving into the subject.
It's just an introductory class, so she wouldn't do much more than touch on a few points to allow her thoughts to be understood.
"A god needs a human to exist, but that doesn't mean they'll emerge at the same time... Mythology is first of all a belief in something, everything begins with the faith of a people in the face of some tales and images... Let's think in terms of Norse Mythology which is my main point of knowledge..."
Well, she at least tried not to get too involved.
But how to talk about yourself and your existence being simplistic?!
At that university she was the greatest authority when it came to religion and mythologies, after all she lived it. But some of her lines could sound ridiculous or hallucinatory to many.
It was unusual for a god to defend himself and justify his existence to the creatures he helped create and maintain.
"... Ymir was born from the melting of a huge block of ice created in the middle of the void, he fell asleep and all the ice near him melted to the point where he was completely exposed to the heat that emanated next to him... He began to sweat and from the union of his sweat with the ice water, the first living beings were born... You may wonder what this would have to do with the creation of men and the universe itself, but Ymir is the personification of what we understand as the universe and all the following events were necessary for the emergence of other races and worlds... His body is the origin of what came to be Yggdrasil, for example."
"All this is probably not initially known by the gods themselves, but when we study all the events we understand that despite the violent attitude of killing Ymir, without it there would be no universe and as a consequence humans. In the end it's all a natural cause and effect relationship that at some point humans will need something and the gods act accordingly."
Hela wasn't going into details, but Ymir had a tyrannical and violent nature, his attitudes were aggressive mainly because of his instinctive thoughts.
The coexistence between the gods and Ymir was conflicted to the point that a war was necessary.
This is how the concept of honorable death is born, after all it is all about survival and legacy.
From a very early age there was the idea that the gods would need to fight for their existence again at one time or another and that way those who proved capable would serve Odin or Freya.
Ragnarok was not a new concept, everyone was hovering around the idea that at some point they would need to worry about the imminence of a new war.
Hela laced her fingers together.
She kept thinking about what she was trying to say.
"What is necessary for human existence? In that case, it was necessary to kill Ymir and transform him into everything we know... In this way, human existence was possible to exist and prosper in its own way. Doesn't it look curious?"
She watched her students' confused eyes and smiled, they didn't seem to understand much of what she was trying to say.
It was a little funny, a little frustrating.
Reactions she had never actually witnessed, dead people didn't show such feelings.
Dead babbled their frustrations and expressed their lamentations.
But they couldn't feel sad or happy, funny or frustrated.
This was all very new to her.
One student who perfectly represented the confusion of the rest of the class raised his hand for a question.
Hela nodded for him to continue.
"Do the gods know they are doing something to human existence?"
Hela arched her eyebrows and thought briefly about it, that was definitely a good question.
"Not necessarily, most likely the attitudes of the gods only took into account human interference when they came into existence, initially they were creating a universe that allowed their existence which coincides with human existence. After all, gods need humans to exist and vice versa."
Hela could see some scared students whispering among themselves a little worried about what was to come when they had classes with her.
"When you have the opportunity, observe and you should have no difficulty realizing that half of the myths we know involve situations where human need arises in the face of the need for a god, everything is intimately related."
The same guy asked a new question. "Do you mean that specifically for Norse Mythology?"
Hela thought for a while, maybe the answer would just make everyone more confused.
But that was nothing new.
She sighed a little thoughtfully on that subject.
But how to explain in words something that she lived so naturally every day.
It just was that way.
"This is a complex subject, we cannot empirically prove the existence of gods... All I can say is that I believe they exist in parallel, one faith does not cancel the other."
When Hela finished speaking, she heard the huge silence of the students in front of her and felt funny, that was a great way to introduce herself: scaring everyone.