This was written for the RWBY Inn Fanfiction Scramble final round. Prompt: Destruction. Character: God of Darkness.
"What's being destroyed like?"
The Blacksmith rarely manifested eyelids–even more rarely than she manifested proper eyes–but she gave the impression of a blink. "I beg your pardon?"
Darkness found himself unable to look up at the towering figure. Instead he lifted a hand (he'd chosen a form like the Blacksmith's for this conversation) and pooled some of his power into his palm. There it sat, the magic of un-making, appearing like a flame that burned without fuel.
"When I destroy something," Darkness began, but shook his head. "No. When I destroy someone... what's it like for them?"
The Blacksmith set aside the figurine she was laboring over, putting it on a metaphysical table in her workshop, and cocked her head. "Interesting. Why do you ask?"
"I know my purpose," said Darkness. "I destroy the old to make way for the new. But... isn't that cruel? Aren't I inflicting pain and suffering on things that don't deserve it?"
"Whether it's painful or not is up to you," said the Blacksmith. "You have enough power that the things you destroy don't have to feel pain. They can be gone before they register the fact. If that's how you wish to go about it," she added, and seemed to peer at Darkness. "Unless you're destroying them in some other fashion...?"
"N-no," said Darkness, but he doused the magic in his palm all the same. "But I wasn't asking about the physical sensations, exactly. I know that when I destroy a thing, I reduce it to its base magic and elements, which can all be reused. When I destroy a person, it's the same, except there's more than just magic and elements left over. There's a soul.
"What's it like for the soul? To be ripped from the body, returned to the Tree, and recycled?"
Time operates differently inside the Tree, ebbing and flowing, the branches of the Tree being exit points in time as much as in space. It is difficult to specify any sort of objective time for what happens there.
Subjectively, Darkness felt like the Blacksmith took about a month to answer.
"You may have just invented Compassion," she said at length. "Or perhaps Empathy."
Darkness staggered, his body reflecting the way his mind had just rocked. "Empathy," he repeated.
"You're trying to explore or match or understand the feelings of others," said the Blacksmith. "Fascinating."
"Because you thought it'd be my brother who invented those things?" Darkness said, bitterness infiltrating his voice.
"I can never make such predictions," said the Blacksmith. "That's much of the fun of it. But I don't mean to dismiss your question. It's a worthy one."
That mollified Darkness some, and that made him bolder. "Well? What's being destroyed like?"
"I don't know."
Disappointment came crashing back. "That's it?"
"You've correctly stated the process," said the Blacksmith. "When a being is destroyed, the ingredients that made the person, soul included, are liberated. The soul returns to the Tree, to form the core of a new person. But while we both know that process, that doesn't mean either of us have experienced it."
"You don't have to experience something to know about it," said Darkness, trying to argue his way to a better answer.
"Not if someone else can tell you, correct," said the Blacksmith. "But even the few souls that remember some of their Before never recall their In-Between. The Tree, of course, has never experienced death."
"Of course," Darkness said, even as his mind reeled. The Tree was the world; the Tree dying was inconceivable. Trying to conceptualize personal oblivion was one thing. Trying to fathom universal oblivion?
Darkness shook his head as if to shake the thought from his mind before it consumed him.
"But the Tree is supposed to know everything," Darkness protested.
"It's impossible to know everything," said the Blacksmith, lifting one of the figurines on her bench and rotating it in her fingers. "Especially about people. Who knows what this person will be or do?"
"Light does," said Darkness. "At least a little. He creates them, and gives them roles to play, and they stick to their roles."
"Do they really?" said the Blacksmith, her empty eye socket twinkling (somehow).
Darkness opened his mouth to say 'yes', and found he couldn't.
"For the most limited beings," the Blacksmith said, "with the most specific roles and the least agency, perhaps. But I think you'll find that, if you give them even the smallest bit of control and decision-making, people will surprise you."
Darkness nodded. "Sure. Sure. But... I still want to know about destruction. About..." he frowned. "We need a different word for when a person is destroyed. It's not the same thing, when I destroy something with a soul and when I destroy something without."
The Blacksmith said nothing. She waited.
She had that luxury.
"Dying," Darkness decided. "Things are destroyed. People die."
The Blacksmith nodded. "So it shall be."
"I can't imagine it's pleasant," Darkness said. "Dying. To be part of one thing, but then ripped apart out of that thing into something else… I have to think it doesn't feel good."
"Perhaps not," said the Blacksmith.
"So why do I have to keep doing it?" said Darkness. "I inflict suffering, I end that story."
"All stories end," said the Blacksmith.
"Must they?" said Darkness.
"Are things better if there are only ever the same stories?" said the Blacksmith.
"But we don't have to end some stories to write new ones," said Darkness. "Right? Can't we just keep on creating new ones?"
"There are limits to how many there can be," said the Blacksmith.
"But what if we found a way for there to be more? What if we could push those limits out?"
"You may be solving the wrong problem," said the Blacksmith, and with a wave of an arm she conjured a vision of an Afteran. "Think of this creature. Its purpose is to build dams in the Lake Acre. Let's imagine it has built all the dams it can. The Lake Acre is finished, and so is its story. It hasn't died, but all the same, its story is over. Must it stay there forever with its purpose complete? Must that soul be trapped without purpose because we are reluctant to take the next step?"
"Does that apply to us, too?" said Darkness with sudden urgency.
"Only if you let it," said the Blacksmith.
"But how will we know when something's purpose is complete?" said Darkness with ever-increasing agitation. "How will we know when something's story is over? How will–"
The Blacksmith laughed. "I have no answers for you. These are the very questions that you and your brother are supposed to figure out for yourselves. And you will learn far better out there than you will in here."
"It's just that," said Darkness urgently even as he felt invisible forces pushing him away from the Blacksmith's workbench, "is dying really the only way?"
"You were born before your brother, you know," said the Blacksmith. "That wasn't an accident."
"But what–"
There was an almighty push, the world blinked, and Darkness was back in the Ever After proper, looking at the far-distant but omnipresent Tree.
"Did you get your answers?" said Light– and Darkness wasn't at all surprised he'd been returned to his brother's side when his audience had ended.
"Sort of," said Darkness as he tried to process the conversation. "She didn't answer the questions I asked... but she might have answered questions I didn't."
"Interesting," said Light.
"That's one word for it," said Darkness.
"So now what?"
"Now," said Darkness, "I have to think about how much dying is the right amount."
"Ah," said Light. Then, after a beat, he asked, "What's 'dying'?"
Darkness was proud of humanity in many ways.
He had learned much about dying across his experiments, and applied all that knowledge to this creation. With humans' finite lifespans, their stories would naturally come to an end. With the process of aging, they would know that their end was coming and plan accordingly, using his brother's gift of Knowledge. Their understanding of death, the knowledge that their life had limits, encouraged them to write their stories with energy and passion.
And Darkness had gone further, putting in place things like sickness and the grimm, so that humanity would know that death, the end of their stories, was always there, ready at any moment. Humans would have to live to the fullest in the time they had, knowing it could always end before they wanted it to.
(Not that Darkness would ever admit it, but putting in place systems like the grimm and illness meant humans would die without Darkness having to kill them himself.)
Yes, Darkness was proud of this creation, this humanity.
That bunch of ingrates.
They didn't get it. Their fear of the end, which they fought against with all their might, made them fear the sources of death… which all traced back to him. He'd failed utterly in helping them understand why they aged and died, and not only why but why it was necessary.
Didn't they understand that without death they would have filled the world shoulder to shoulder in a few short generations? That there would be no more stories because there would be no room for new ones? Sure, humans could change roles and adapt in ways Afterans never could (one of the changes the Brothers had put into humanity that was the most exciting), but humans still fell into the same habits over time, and would ossify completely if left alive indefinitely. Did they not realize that? That death was a gift?
Of course they didn't, Darkness thought resentfully. Pilgrims flocked to his brother's shrine, while his own temple... well, he was lucky if someone set foot on the same continent as his temple.
Every once in a while someone did come with a request for him - but it was always a request for the destruction of other people, people the supplicant didn't like. They viewed death not as a necessity, nor even as the counterpoint to life, but as the worst fate to be inflicted, something they wished only on their bitterest enemies.
So he, who was at least coequal to Light in terms of having crafted humanity, was seen by humanity as their great evil, and he languished in angry solitude.
Imagine his surprise, then, when a pilgrim did come to his door. More than surprise– gratification! And if Salem's request was not fully in keeping with the ideal of balance, or cleaving to his agreement with his brother, well…
…perhaps Darkness could forgive himself for indulging a little.
After all, if he was responsible for ending stories, surely it was in his domain to let certain stories have a few more chapters… right?
They understood nothing.
The human army was gathering on Light's doorstep, and Light didn't understand, couldn't believe what he was seeing, but Darkness did. He was the father of empathy, after all.
If ever there was a creature that thought it deserved more than it had, it was a human being. A species driven to risk death to repel death, taking that instinct to the logical extreme.
Of course when the humans launched their attack, they concentrated on "the evil one", Darkness. Of course Light was too shocked, too paralyzed by their temerity to do anything.
So Darkness reclaimed his gift, ate back up the magic he'd given the humans, that they'd dared tried to wield against him. He understood what the humans didn't.
Darkness breathed in.
Humanity had told all the stories it would tell. It had fulfilled its purpose. That purpose was to exercise Darkness' gift of Choice.
And humanity had chosen.
It had chosen destruction.
He breathed out.
end
