Miryam kept her spear pointed at the fallen angel. She knew it wouldn't keep her at bay for long. Alexandriel's grey, shabby wings were splattered with blood, much of it Miryam's. Too much of it. With only the sheer cliff behind her, and the angel in front of her, there was little doubt how this would end. The only thing she could do was talk and pray. She hoped it would buy the children enough time to escape. The angel, golden eyes shocking against skin like midnight, just stared at her as she spoke, and the serenity nearly drove her to madness.
"You're a monster. You know that, don't you?"
She merely inclined her head.
"How can you be so calm? What, this is just one more town's children to add to your pyre? Are you so inured to your own evil that you won't even shed a tear?"
"Would that help?"
Miryam startled, not expecting a response.
"What?"
"Would that help? Would shedding a tear reduce the monstrosity of killing innocent children? Will the parents, if they live, be even slightly comforted by the knowledge that it was shed? Would it make you feel better, if I wail and rend my garments and cover them in ash?" She paused, then somehow focused more intently on Miryam, the golden sclera and dark pupils becoming discomforting from even a dozen feet away. "Would it?"
Surprised by the genuine emotion in the question, she paused, and the creature continued before she could speak.
"I did not think so. However much I may regret what I have done, grieving will not change it. I will not dishonor the dead with my tears."
"I...you...you can't say you regret it! You're still doing it! Right now! You are literally about to kill me so you can hunt down more children."
"I can and I do. If I had known then what I know now, I would not have begun this quest. If I could undo it, I would." The solemnity of Alexandriel's words almost disguised their utter absurdity. Almost.
"THEN WHY ARE YOU STILL DOING IT?!" Half rage and half desperation, she lunged forward, trying to skewer one of the angel's wings. If she could just slow her down-
The angel batted the spear tip aside with one gauntleted hand. The other, moving with blinding speed, hooked up and around. Pulling against the haft in the opposite direction, the spear splintered, leaving Miryam with only a staff. She quickly shifted her stance, but the angel didn't pursue. Miryam hated the look of pity in her eyes when she spoke, more even than the certain knowledge she would soon die.
"How could I not?" the monster said simply.
Miryam was confused for a moment, nearly forgetting what she'd shouted before striking, and then her confusion only grew. Her puzzlement must have shown on her face, because Alexandriel continued,
"All the evils I have committed, every child whose soul burned on that pyre. How could I let them go to waste? I said I would not dishonor the dead with my tears, and I meant it. You asked why I do not cry for your children? Because if I started now, when would I stop? How much worse would I be, if I threw away their sacrifices to ease my guilt? No. I will finish this, and if I cannot say their deaths were not wasteful, I can at least ensure they will not be wasted."
Miryam's head nearly spun with the force of her fury, again overwhelming her grief and terror.
"Sacri-no I cant ev- GAHHH!" she screamed at the sky. The angel had begun to close the distance slowly, gauntlets ready to block any attacks from the impromptu staff, but she paused almost politely to let Miryam yell. When she turned back to face the angel, she felt empty, only the growing dread of knowing exactly what form her death would take. She opened her mouth to argue, to demand by what right the angel called murder a sacrifice by her victims. What came out was,
"That's stupid."
The angel actually paused for a moment, her mouth opening slightly.
"I beg your pardon?"
Never, she thought, but she said, "that's not how any of that works! You cannot change the past. You said it yourself! Grieving won't bring them back, but neither will succeeding in your quest! They'll be just as dead. Their parents will not be any less devastated. Your success will not vindicate you. The only just path is to stop now, and never use their murders as your justification again."
The angel froze as if slapped, and Miryam felt a brief glimmer of hope.
"You are right of course, and I twice the fool for it."
She almost started to lower her staff when the monster's eyes found hers again.
"I cannot change the past. But I can change the future. You are right, success will not change what I did to them. No more than failure would."
With a sudden, feral lunge, the monster batted aside the staff and shoved Miryam, the hand gripping her leathers the only thing keeping her from falling over the edge.
"But that blade cuts both ways. Stopping now will not bring them back. Will undo nothing." The monster's teeth were gritted, tension in every line of her body. The dark voids she had in place of irises and pupils pulled at Miryam's mind, and she noted with a strange detachment that she could make out constellations in the inky black.
"I did not lie. If I could undo my mistakes, if I could tell myself the cost would be too high before I ever began, I would. I would die for it, if I could." The tension left her jaw, her eyes almost soft.
"But I cannot. Compared to what has been paid, how little is left? If I cannot use their deaths as justification to continue, neither can I use them as excuse to stop. I will kill your children, and then four thousand more. I will burn their souls on the pyre and renew the seal, and I will consider the price of a mere 4,000 innocent children well worth a Myriad of peace."
Miryam desperately grabbed for cloth as the monster released her grip. But of course the monster's clothes weren't really there to grab. As she felt the mist-like robe slip between her fingers, she heard her speak.
"There is no justice to be found in this world, not for the likes of me. It will be a relief, I think, to follow them to my eternal rest. Perhaps the year in Gehinnom will be as well."
Alexandriel watched as the woman fell, watched as her body destroyed itself on the rocks. Her eyes stung, but she ignored them, gray wings unfurling. She yet had work to do.
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"I told you there would be consequences. But I have to believe that you'll face those consequences and you'll come out the other side a better man. I know it's hard to see right now, but, Jimmy, this is an opportunity. That's why I'm doing this. Not to punish you. To show you, truly show you, that you have to make a change before it's too late..."
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How is it that so many other people, upon discovering the persistence of class divisions in America, how all the efforts and pretentions to a society of “equal citizens” have failed to remove those divisions, decide that the answer is to “double down” and try harder to achieve the goal, rather than (more rationally) concluding that our failure to achieve the goal despite all this time and effort and struggle indicates that the goal, however desired, is unattainable and that we should stop trying? Why is it that they conclude, based on hope without evidence, that it could somehow ever be otherwise, instead of the more obvious conclusion that such inequality is a permanent element of the human condition that must be lived with (as I learned back in grade school)? Where’s “the serenity to accept the things we cannot change”?
Is it all just sunk-costs fallacy, optimism bias, and all the other biases hardwired into the neurotypical human brain that make one irrationally persistent, and unable to identify the point where it becomes rational to cut one’s losses and just give up?
