Fiction - Empathist's Downfall

Disclaimers:

1) This is an Archived post, it was originally written and published in 2013

2) This is a side story for my fictional universe for which no comprehensive unifying work exists. But it may be interesting anyway.

Klick. The broadcast ended, leaving several dozens of people baffled. The tallest man in their ranks flapped to the ground. Karen slowly turned her head, looking at the man sitting on the ground, hanging his head. “Mastakov, who was that woman?” she mumbled. Slowly the tall man looked up “That, was Pan Laifgaim. And he was a colleague of mine. No! A friend. Once, a long time ago.” tears started to run down his face “Thousands of years ago, he was there with me when we split the world, and made new rules for it.” Karen was baffled. This was the first time she had seen that man cry. The very man that appointed so many people as new wardens to watch the world in his stead, the very man that had let them run into their misery, question themselves and allowed them to hurt others. Seeing that man just sit there, with tears on his face was not only new, it was also unreal, like something not meant to be that way. “That Karen, was a Temporal Herald.” said Senzaro, a young man of about Karen's size. He walked up to Karen and laid his hand on her shoulder “And don't worry about the pronouns, remember, we're not a bigendered culture, and as we are practically genderless, so is that man, if you want to call him that. He describes the empathist's downfall, he is what happens when Timewardens move away from their path of empathy. When they have to fill the hole in their hearts with something else.” quickly Karen turned around, facing the man “What is it about this empathy thing anyway?” she turned around to face the rest of the group of people in the room. Another young man with scruffy dark brown hair, a much smaller white haired boy in the corner of the room, silently watching the scene, and a woman with orange hair, about a head smaller than Karen. Her girlfriend Mina. “Cydric” she looked at the boy in the corner “you told me this culture is about empathy and love, how can people like that man exist? That sadist talked about killing my people, and trampling over their corpses without so much as a whimper.”

Senzaro put his hand back on Karen's shoulder, then he took a deep breath. “Karen, he is not a sadist, he is just devoid of empathy. He rid himself of that a long time ago. Let me tell you something about us, maybe then you will understand what type of person we are dealing with. But first, sit down, give your legs some rest.” he said, while helping her sit down on the ground next to the wall.

Then he looked into the group of people, and went on “This very culture, the culture and organization of the Timewardens lives from empathy. It's what makes our lives worth living. You see, once we were like you, like the Elon and Aiden. Living of war, destruction, reaching our hands out for salvation, but ended up having to grow out of that ourselves. Over the course of centuries, we rid our culture of lifestyles, religions, the need for different sexes and constitutions. It took us many many centuries to get to that point. Until we hit out very peak. The cultural peak. Nothing left to explore, to find out about ourselves, and we had all the resources available to basically live forever. But for what? We had to give our lives meaning. Something to strife for, something we wanted to achieve while everything else seemed solved. We found that in warding the universe, warding other worlds, dimensions and galaxies. But when you forgot about wars, about pure hatred, racism, homophobia and xenophobia, how can you help others in getting out of that? When you look at the universe, at so many worlds and the people who live there. How can you care when everything and everyone seems so little.

That's why we dedicated our lives to empathy. And we cherish it like a creed. You see, our children are being taught empathy in school, in the same way you would be taught about math and languages in your world. We learn to dedicate our lives to empathy, to enjoy it, until we really do it. It's the last thing we can do to give our lives any meaning. Else, where we are, at our peak, there are just two alternatives left. Starting anew, and extinction. Acknowledging what we managed to become, and then take responsibility and go extinct. Leaving space for the next cultures to reach our level. But instead of that, we took our hopes, and reached out for meaning. Else, there would just be a hole in our hearts. And we strife to fill it, no matter what, until we cannot live with ourselves anymore and decide to go.”

A peaceful calmness filled the room. There were no smiles on anyone's faces, but everyone listened. The man in the middle made a short break. He closed his eyes and raised his head, and after a long moment of quiet breathing he lowered his head again. “Let me tell you all a story. A story about a man that reached the peak of empathy, only to fall so very very deep in the end.” he started again.

“A long time ago, about a century or two, there was a man called Alayne. A good young knight in his early years in the service, and an even better Seraph later on. He allowed the feeling of empathy and true love to become his biggest joy. When he could watch other beings help each other, heal and bring joy to one another, he too would be filled with the deepest happiness. Until it became an addiction to him. And to him, there was not enough going on to bring humanoids and other beings to their best. He started enjoy watching wars go on, just to be there when it ends, and the survivors treat their wounded, bury their dead, and rebuild entire cities. Everyone working together, and sharing so many happiness in rebuilding their world. One day, we just started noticing that he changed. Sure, we leave the worlds alone for the most part, but a war, a slaughter is still pain to our hearts. And we now, the empathy afterward is not worth all the pain. But he wanted to see them feeling, feel them himself. You know, empathy is our ability to know and understand how others feel, and share their feelings deep down inside of us. He grew addicted to feeling, addicted to feeling emotions and witnessing them in others.

So one day, he started hurting people. He hurt them just to watch others come to help, to watch the beauty of people's love for each other, whilst beginning to accept that pain is the price that needs to be paid for that beauty. He started wars, slaughters, which consequently ended up in more empathy between the involved beings. Love, despair, sorrow, all the feelings triggering his needs. Until one day it wasn't enough anymore. He needed to be there, and feel it for himself. And as he try to interfere as little as possible with the beings of other worlds, we also rarely interact with them. But he started to need that. He needed to be close. He needed to give empathy, happiness and love himself, while he gladly paid the price for that privilege. He started collecting people. He tortured them, just to then heal them again and mend their wounds. Killed their friends in order to watch them in sorrow, and being comforted by their remaining friends. Made them show their love, running down their faces in the form of tears. He feed up on emotions. He was addicted to them, he became sick, and it turned him.

When we finally noticed it, and started hunting him, he fled. From world to world he ran, from slaughter to slaughter we tracked him. Until we finally got him. And while we debated about what to do with him, he laid there, in his cell. After about a year without input, and still no clear idea about what to do, he started cutting himself. But not out of sorrow or despair. He cut himself, to then mend his own wounds. He feed up on the last thing he had left, the relief of mending a hurting wound. Without pain, there can be no mending. To heal a wound, there must first be a cut. And for sorrow to exist, there must first be a fatality. He uttered these words, lying in his cell. Every day, until he died. And one day he did. But these words, his words, where forever burned into my mind. But this was not the end of the horror, as his existence gave an example to many other Timewardens. He showed them what could become of them, if they would loose themselves in their need for empathy, in their need of a goal. Of a person that reached so high, only to fall so deep.”

Karen's eyes were wide open “So you killed him? That man. Alayne. You killed him in the end?” she quickly asked, interrupting Senzaro's speech.

“No” Senzaro replied quietly “It's no longer in our culture to apply death sentences, and while extreme measures might be needed sometimes, it's nothing we decide lightly on. That's why our debate about his fate went on for so long. Because we didn't want to kill him. But we didn't know what else to do with him either. Especially with being such an anomaly to our culture. He ended up dying of blood loss, after the wounds he put on himself were so severe, that they were out of his control. But please, just be patient a little longer.”

Now Senzaro went to the side of the room where the big screen was before, and mostly out of instinct, the other people in the room formed a circle around him, waiting for him to go on.

“Alayne's case showed the other wardens an alternative. By our definition, Alayne became one of the first rogue Timewardens. Temporal Heralds we called them later. And while he became one extreme in embracing empathy too much, people like Laifgaim became the other extreme. Leaving the path of empathy. Questioning the whole system, until they know longer feel it, understand it. When they can no longer define it. We don't fully understand why Laifgaim chose this path, but something must have brought him away from the path of empathy, from this culture's creed. And without it, we loose what we always strifed for. What was pushed onto us since our birth. Like beings of other worlds loosing their religion after believing in it for over a century. And as we have not found anything else in our lives, it leaves a hole in our hearts. The heralds had to fill these holes, and many of them filled them with the lust for power. The power to destroy, the power to reign and the power to survive. We are an incredibly powerful culture, with the potential of becoming the biggest threat in the universe. And some of us decided to take that path instead. They kill, they conquer and they destroy worlds in their eternal search for power, in the hope that it fill the hole in their hearts. But what then? What happens when such a person finally reaches ultimate power? Become leader of a world? Unlikely, until they reach this point, they will have forgotten about the beauty of a functioning society. They would destroy the Timewardens, they would destroy the universe and survive ever on, until one day, they are alone in the universe. And then they will realize that their lust for power accomplished nothing, that they were not able to stitch that hole in their hearts. And then, one day, they too will die. Leaving the universe in ruins. That's the kind of person Laifgaim may very well be. I don't know if that is what he strifes for, but right now he wants to reach the Twilight, and settle there because we have no means of watching it, and we can't get there either. He will be unreachable for us. This means, if he manages to overcome us, if we fall, then our universe may very well be at it's end. Because there is no other force that will be able to stop him. Our only option to stop him then, is to burn down the Elon and Aiden, as without these parts, the Twilight cannot exist either.

Karen. Mina. Save your world!”

Character Registry:

Karen – Protagonist, from Elon and current warden of Aiden. Elekir.

Mina – Karen's wife and Queen of the Twilight Realm.

Senzaro – Timewarden at the rank of Seraph and direct superior to Cydric.

Aganon Mastakov – Timewarden at the rank of Seraph that appointed Karen as new warden of Aiden.

Cydric – Timewarden at the rank of Knight.

Rajax – Friend of Karen, shares a boundry with her and is also an Outlander from Elon. (the dark brown haired man).

Pan Laifgaim – Temporal Herald that announced attacking the Twilight Realm before the conversation.

Term Registry:

Elon – Karen, and Rajax's homeworld. And one half of the dimension Earth. Therefor basically the normal world.

Aiden – The other half of the dimension Earth, also called the Soulland. Gathering place of the Mana.

Twilight – A pocket dimension between Elon and Aiden, an anomaly to the Timewardens. Place of Mina's origin.

Timewardens – A highly technical advanced race watching over the worlds in the universe.

Temporal Heralds – Rogue Timewardens, seen as extremely dangerous criminals.