Neytopia › Part 1: Dawn › Chapter 14

History's greatest irony

If the independent states of the North had been hard and unforgiving on her kingdom, it was nothing compared to what she did. She rebuilt the army, revitalized after the day of the Big Cold. After a few months of recovery, she marched against the North. Those who had survived the chilling winds and the famine that came after them now had to face her.

This time her attack was unlike anything she had ever done. The enemy did not fight her because it didn’t have the tools, manpower nor will. In every state, she gave her new citizens one chance to embrace the Greater man. If they refused, execution. If they didn’t seem too convinced, execution. If their blood was noble, even if they accepted Him, execution.

She spent years personally combing the northern continent for traitors and oldthinkers that consciously or unconsciously refused the Greater man. One day she tracked down the last heirs of a great ancient bloodline. Two of them were children and the other two were barely adults, but she hanged them anyway. As she watched them twist in their ropes, something snapped in her mind,

What the fuck am I doing? I thought I was doing the best for mankind, but every time I get inolved, I only cause pain. For all I’ve achieved, all the time I’ve spent creating empires, civilizations, communities… was any of it worth it? What if I’ve been wrong all along? What if the skeptic man was right all along? What if… No, he was wrong. The alternative is too terrifying. It would mean that, for the past two thousand and forty-eight years, I haven’t helped mankind but harmed them.

What if my power over men is destroying them from the inside out? What if I am, after all, the devil that my first killers called me? In all my years here in the North I’ve seen and done things, bad things. Things I can’t say out loud for shame. Just look at me. I’m not young and beautiful anymore. The years have wrinkled my skin and weakened my bones. LOOK AT ME, I’M AN OLD WOMAN FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

She abandoned the army abruptly, saying the Greater man needed her elsewhere. She went to the mountains to free her sister. Sadly, she had forced herself to forget where she had buried her, and though she tried for years, carving huge holes in the mountains, she eventually gave up, crying for the damage beyond repair that she had caused. Her sister was buried so deep not even her insane cries could reach the surface. Only her blood ebbed from the rocks whenever she died, which men called the “blood of the mountain”.

Why did I do that to her? I-I don’t understand, it was an atrocity, it was the kind of act I set out to eradicate. I was the cruelest of them all, but why, I only tried to do good, I swear.

Can’t you see it yet?

Shut up narrator, I can’t take your shit right now.

You know what you are, right?

No, stop. Please, stop.

She couldn’t stand the air, she couldn’t stand the ground. She wanted to flee from herself, but had to settle with fleeing to the South. The southern continent was now a torn land ruled by warring tribes. There she made herself a home in a small cave. She promised never to talk to another human and to use the time she had left to pray for forgiveness.

But praying was not enough, since deep down she knew the truth, even if she refused to acknowledge it. She had created the gods to turn people against themselves, to make them hate themselves. And not only hate, but inflict terrible, cruel pain. To themselves and to others, just like…

No…

Yes, admit it.

Just like me. All I’ve ever done, either to others or myself, was cruel…

The only thing she had left was death. So everyday in her cave, she would pray to atone for her sins in the morning, and immolate herself in the afternoon. And for some time, it worked. She spent years trying to find forgiveness in pain. Until one day, she realized something had changed. A new man, one like the skeptic man, had been born. Nobody told her but she knew he was her second chance. She had to meet him. Through him she would fix the damage done. Through him, she would save the world.

On her way out of the cave, she saw her own reflection in a pond and cried. She was an atrophied shadow of her former self. There was absolutely no life left in her. But, truly, had there ever been? Hadn’t she always been the enemy of strength, of pride, of skill and craft? Hadn’t she always been what she was trying to destroy? She ran her fingers through her torn face, finally understanding History’s greatest irony:

She was Cruelty incarnate.