Conquest

It was a sheer drop, thirty feet at least. He did not go easily; he had to be dragged by the shirt collar, kicking and squealing, with a cuff and a curse added for good measure. The bottom of the gorge was deep and dark, with no way out save to scale the vertical walls.


He didn’t like the dark.


“I want some light around here!” he called. His voice was needle-thin. It barely penetrated the thick, stifling air. The echoes laughed, and there was no light.
“Light!” he repeated, beginning to grow a trifle annoyed, “I asked for light!”


“Asked?” said a voice.


“Yes, asked,” he repeated angrily.


“Asked?”


“You heard the first time! I asked!”


“You didn’t ask.”


This was an unforeseen obstacle. He tried to peer through the darkness, as though to cleave it with his very gaze.


“I asked,” he ventured eventually; in what he thought was a winning tone.


“You didn’t ask,” the voice persisted.


He sank into thought. He had never been compelled to think before, accustomed to having everything served up on a silver platter the moment he lifted a finger.


“OK, I didn’t ask,” he said finally. “I’m asking now…I want light.”


“You demanded, you whined, you moaned, but you didn’t ask. You didn’t and haven’t asked. I don’t call that asking.”


“Well, I do! I want some light and I want it now!”


The echoes laughed merrily along with the jeering voice.


“You call that asking?”


“Yes, I do, and you’d better get used to it!”


Silence.


“Light!”


Silence. Not even the echoes chuckled now.


“I—want—light!”


He was getting afraid now. Every time he spoke, his words splintered and scattered away like slivers of glass, and the silence came rushing back in waves.


There was something uncanny about that voice: he had heard it before. It seemed to be a part of him, and yet…so completely alien to anything he remembered.


“Please give me light,” he whimpered, throwing his head back, trying to catch a glimpse of light from where the walls of the gorge fell back to admit the sky. Even up there the darkness was complete.


He was devastated. He began to scrabble at the unyielding stone walls, feeling along the cracks, begging, pleading.


A terrible laughter exploded in his ears, and it was not the echoes’ laughter this time. It was the voice, laughing without mirth, enjoying the spectacle, unfeeling, unheeding.


It was the laughter that jarred his memory. The laugh ringing in his ears used to be his not long ago, not very long ago, before he had been pushed into the gorge. How often had he laughed like that, and at how many people, he could not remember. He had laughed at this very spectacle of himself scrabbling in the dark, looking for that which he could not find, from which he was barred forever. He had believed that the eternal light was his and his alone; that it could never be taken from him; that it was simply there to answer his call, to do his bidding. He had laughed—scorned, even—at the very idea of himself battling that which he had never feared before…
That voice—that voice! How often had he spoken like that, in such unyielding tones?
Was it possible that he was facing…himself?


Himself as he had been—as he had been, and would be again, if he ever escaped from this gorge. For human nature is like a rubber band, springing back to its true essence when there is light, and straining to its humbler form when bent by darkness.


He raised his head, with pride or with scorn, he did not know. Pride and scorn do not take shape in a soul when it is bent to its limit. When a soul is bent to its limit, all self-bred emotions take flight, and the ones remaining are fragments of a pure soul, the one left malnourished by an empty person with empty deeds and an empty life. This purity is either temporary or permanent. Temporary when it simply lingers until the darkness is over: at the first sign of light, hate, greed, pride, scorn, thanklessness and the suchlike begin to bubble and froth within as they used to before, and they take over the person too weak to hang on to the purer soul that became manifest within when bent by darkness. A strong person clings to this purer soul, and a new personality begins to take shape, and bud and grow. And when people say, “You’ve changed. You don’t care about money or status anymore”, the reply is, “I’ve learnt better.” Learnt better? Due to so-and-so calamity, this loss, that tragedy, and a sprinkling of impending doom. It takes the extreme to teach the lost souls. There are so many lost souls, and most of them don’t know they’ve strayed from the right path. That he could still feel even a hint of pride or scorn meant that he had not been affected by the sudden tip of the scale, and was too hardened to be even bent by darkness. You see, some lost souls are so far astray they can’t or don’t even see the straight road they’ve left behind.


Laughter again. Louder this time, threatening to drown him, envelop him, tear out his eardrums.


“You couldn’t beat me.”


He didn’t reply.


“You never could. Your good side was always your weak one.”


“I could!” The words shot out of his mouth before he knew it.


“That’s exactly the problem, you little wimp. You could, but you never will.”


He couldn’t answer. How could he overcome the challenge of self? The challenge the darker side always presents to the better one. Beat me, or submit to me. He had submitted. His heart, mind and soul.


But there was a third choice. There always is. Beat me, submit to me, or stay quiet. And the good side replies, “Yes, I’ll stay quiet, but when the darkness without is greater than the darkness within, let’s see which side triumphs, me or you.”


And here he was. Reduced by hardship to his meagre good side. His willpower was in such a poor state, it couldn’t cope with his dark side, being used to being propelled by it instead of challenged.


So he chose to remain quiet. Chose not to answer the challenge posed by the voice, his dark side. Beat me, or submit to me. I won’t give you any external light. You must beat me with the light within. First he had begged, pleaded—his internal light couldn’t handle his dark side. This was what he thought. But the flickering flame within him just needed the fuel of his will to spark up and engulf his dark side, and swallow it forever. But he would not provide that fuel. The fuse was inches away from the flame, but he wouldn’t let it light.


It was a battle lost before it had even begun. It was as if the enemy had flung aside its weapon in a bid for him to show his strength, but he, having depended on power instead of strength all his life, couldn’t—wouldn’t—take up the challenge.


When he ventured to look upward again, he sensed a change. Maybe it had all washed over and the challenge was no longer standing? A light kindled at the top of the gorge. A flickering little flame. His heart leapt at the sight.


“I am here to help you,” the light called. “I will lend you my strength. Defeat your dark side. Then you can climb out.”


But he was already on his feet, scrambling up the wall of the gorge.


“Defeat that part of your self!” came the cry. “Don’t use my help to escape—use it to conquer!”


He was almost there…he’d made it. He sprinted away towards the faraway glittering lights on the horizon.


The flame nearly fluttered out with exasperation. “If he had stopped for two seconds…but he didn’t. He thirsted for the attractions his darker side offered, and wouldn’t defeat it.” It blinked, shivered, and winked out.


The gorge waited silently. Don’t wait for your turn in there to think yourself out—is your better side your reigning one or your suffocated one? Only you can tell. Or the gorge will certainly teach you.