Balancing the Books

You could say I'm a people person. It's part of my job, after all, being charming and charaismatic and convincing people to come with me. But it just gets so hard, sometimes, if I really like the person I'm dealing with. The last thing I want to do, if they're friendly, is tell them that they're done.

For these people, I offer them a last shot. I go out, find a soul of equal value, and I tell my friend that if they can live with this choice, I can take the second soul. All they have to do is kill the person. It doesn't matter whose soul I collect, as long as they're worth the same amount of points. And this way, I can keep my books balanced.

This act, if they do it, doesn't really change anything. They'll still come to me eventually, I just allow them time to finish whatever they wanted to finish. But it's amazing how many people, when faced with a choice of their death or another's, will choose to die instead of kill. A long time ago, humans were spiteful, resentful creatures, and wouldn't even hesitate to stab that poor nun in the back.

But now, there is so much deliberation about it that it gets tedious. And at the end of the day, I do have to fill my quota. If they hesitate too long, I take back my offer, and reap them both. And that's when I choose their After. A person who seriously considered the choice gets sent to the Darkness, to feed the forces there. The victim gets sent into the Aether, to be recrafted into a new entity. And, if at the end of it all, the original soul has given their own life in exchange for a stranger's, they go to the Light, where they can rest forever more.

There's a long history between the three. None of them like each other, and they could never agree on who got which soul. So, they hired me as a mediator. My job is to collect and judge souls, and decide where each one goes. Oh, sure, occasionally I'll keep one, and just fudge the numbers. But they don't know that. They don't understand that, as a spirit myself, I need sustenance. I can go for millenia without, due to their influence, but once I start fading, I keep a soul and siphon it for a few days in order to gain power.

It may be dawning on you now, that as death, I must be responsible for all the catastrophes in the world. And the answer to that is yes and no. I am a strategist, and the world is my game board. My quota is always large, and it grows larger every year, since more and more people are coming, with less and less value. Yes, I was responsible for the holocaust. Yes, I took millions of souls. But at the same time, I took Hitler before he did too much damage, didn't I? And that lowered my quota for a good long time. Yeah, I still have to take several each year, but not nearly as many as if it had never happened.

It's all a grand plan. I have to balance one death against another, and decide what's worth doing. The Black Plague? Yeah, that's what kept me from having to kill all but a hundred people over the course of decades after. The holocaust? If I hadn't done it, there would be about thirty people scattered around the globe right now. So, what I'm saying is that I do these things because I care. Of course, if I didn't care, then I'd be out of a job, so take that with a grain of salt.

As for you? Well, you'll find out why you're here later. Get some sleep, while I go do a few jobs. I'll be back before the Light has faded.