Lost Paths

Redemption

When the world was at peace, he created chaos.

When people were friends, he turned them into enemies.

When life was full of joy and happiness, he brought pain, sorrow, and death.

He desired power, obedience, fear. He desired to rule the world. He desired for everyone to know his name. Mythiya.

And so, just as he wished, the Great war struck on Da'Ariya planet. Nations killing nations, kingdoms burning to ashes, leaving no ruins behind. Rivers were flooded with blood. All the light was suddenly consumed by darkness.

But he forgot to remember that power never comes without a price, obedience can't live under one roof with love, and fear always involves hatred.

Together people of Da'Ariya stood against the evil. Mythiya was banished. Locked away in Nav world – the world of shadows. People wouldn't let him die, because death would be too easy punishment for such a monster. Instead his soul was doomed to live in agony that it once caused. Forever.

And now, left and forgotten for eternity, Mythiya watched people live their lives and wondered... Why? Why would the entire world turn on him? Why all that everyone could see was the crime he committed? Why in everyone's mind he became a maniac, a lunatic, worthy of no redemption?

"Mommy, why do people hate each other?" He clearly remembered the day he asked that question for the first time. The question that changed him forever. The question that made him who he was. Or what people thought he was.

"Oh, Mythiya, they do not." Mother said looking at her son. Her shining eyes were warm and loving, but Mythiya couldn't stop noticing something else there – some kind of sadness deep down, sadness that seemed to come straight from mother's soul.

"I heard the old lady in the street today. She said she hated you."

"She really did not. She is just lonely. She had never had her own family, no one to care for her, no one to love her."

"So she's jealous? Because you have something that she does not?"

"She's not jealous, she simply does not understand. Some people do not see that if you want to have someone to love you, you must love someone ultimately first."

"I should make people see then, make them understand."

Mythiya watched the vision of past vanish from his mind. He was back in the present, back in the shadow world again, but words were still here. I should make people see then, make them understand. And he did – he tried to make people see. And it brought him here, to the place where he could never see his mother again.

"Would you take me to the other side?" Mythiya asked Death once as it walked past his shadow cell. "To the side where my mother is now?"

"People prayed to me, begged me not to take you there," Death answered in its rasping voice. "They still do actually. I cannot disappoint them."

"Would you at least tell what's there? On the other side?"

"The point of staying here is in not knowing."

Mythiya sighed – tried to sigh with his shadow body, for his real one was long gone. He tried to understand why he was sentenced to endless restlessness. He tried to understand it for centuries already, but still could not.

"Do you know why I am here?"

"I am Death. I know everything. War that you started in the world of the living brought me lots of trouble, lots of work to do, lots of lives to take. And I remember every life I once took."

"I didn't want to bring curse upon people. All I wanted is to be a salvation."

"Salvation created out of misery and despair? Even I do not do that. And the living fear me more than they fear you."

"If you know everything, don't you hear everything and don't you see everything, too? Don't you know that people hate each other, betray each other, destroy each other? I didn't ask them to do that, all I asked them was to reveal their true nature.

"I wanted the world to be a better place. Couldn't people see that? Couldn't they see that their perfectly built lives were nothing but fiction? A decoration to cover their rotting selves. A closet, where they stashed their dirty secrets. Pretense, where they buried their spoiled spirits and hid their filthy eyes. They showed only fake smiles and mendacious kindness to each other. And all I wanted was to make them see the truth, show them the way to cure themselves. Before it was too late."

"Do not try to justify yourself in front of me," Death laughed with its deadly laughter. "I know every ugly thing that people are capable of. It has always been like that, it will always be like that. Thieves, murderers, liars... Everyone does bad things one day or another. That is why actually those people are still alive – they've got something to learn. World of living will never be a paradise, it is made to be crooked, wicked, and cruel. It is made for people to suffer. You can never change that."

"If I can change nothing then life has no meaning."

"Let's make a deal," Death said suddenly.

"What kind of deal?"

"I will free you from your shadow cage and take you to the other side, once you find meaning of your villain life."

"Didn't you just say people prayed to you not to do so?"

"They pray all the time when I come, yet they all die. Do you want to see your mother again or not?"

"I do."

And now Mythiya started thinking. How could his war gone awry be a righteous thing? How could grief give birth to joy? He was guessing, assuming, and presuming. Hour after hour, day after day, year after year. But Death refused to accept all of his answers.

"I give up," Mythiya finally said. "I don't need my redemption. I did nothing wrong. I did not compel people to start a war, I did not make them hate each other, I did not force them to kill each other. The world was corrupted long before me, there was nothing to ruin. Sloth and pride were hidden behind so called peace, gluttony and greed were driving friends mad, lust and envy were the real cause of pain and sorrow. But with me as a face of the one true enemy, as the essence of everything bad and sinful, people stood together, they found a purpose, a course – they united so as to get rid of me, to get rid of the evil. Maybe they do not see the truth yet, but now they know where to look."

Death smiled.

"Every bad thing is invented to cherish the good one."

And so Mythiya was redeemed.

But we shall never be, until we see the truth.