Read Villains by Necessity for Free Online

It tilted up, its wobbling halted. "... the world is unbalanced.
    Death outruns life, night is forever, even the creatures of evil finally slip into death in their own darkness." She righted the bowl, set it wobbling again. "This did not happen. The Victory saved us from the evil... but something just as bad has happened. Light conquered, and drove the darkness away, far, too far away." Her fingers pushed slowly harder down on the other side of the bowl with each turn of her fingers. Its wobbling slowed, grew unsteady, began tilting under the gradual pressure. "This is what happens now. We are unbalanced. Nature is affected; the nights grow shorter, and the stars are brighter at night. The animals reproduce more, and the weak and ill do not die as they should, to make room for the new life. The vegetation runs riot. The people are slowing, drifting into ennui of constant prosperity. Every day, the balance is upset further, as more of the creatures of darkness die in the light, and people such as you vanish. You are not servants of darkness, but you represent it, wittingly or not. Your existence is a facet of darkness ... but though the people curse you, and your darkness makes you alone, you are as necessary to the survival of the world as predators are to an environment. If everyone and everything were evil, the world would be plunged into eternal darkness. If everyone and everything were good, the world would be sublimated in a dazzling brilliance."
    "I wouldn't want to be sublimated," commented Sam.
    He still felt weak, dizzy. Arcie looked up at Kaylana with a quizzical expression.
    "What if everyone were neutral, like ye, then?" he asked.
    Kaylana looked at him, and pressed her fingertips into the center of the bottom of the bowl. It stilled. "Stasis.
    Everything would slow to a stop. Neither light nor day would come, so the world would be in perpetual twilight.
    The world would not move, nothing would grow, no wind would blow, no animals would run, no water would flow. Nothing would die, nothing would be born. Nothing would change. That is why good and evil are necessary.
    It is the conflict that allows change that allows existence to continue."
    "So what's yer point of all this, then?" inquired Arcie.
    "The point is, the world is in danger of being, as I said, sublimated. The balance is distorted, the world is slipping over. Soon, it will pass the point of no return, and there will be no way we can bring the scales back to level. It will be the end, but for the final flash of light."
    I
    "But don't the mages and other wise men know this? If the world's going to be destroyed, surely they wouldn't want that to happen?" Sam looked startled. He wasn't sure quite why, but he believed this so-called Druid. He himself had felt that the increasing goodness wasn't right, somehow ... like icing on a cake that was too sweet, so that you couldn't eat it...
    Kaylana put the bowl away wearily. "If they know, they do not believe. They cannot. They are Good, you see. They cannot tolerate evil. It goes against what they believe. Even if you could convince them that evil, that monsters, Nathauan, dark dragons and trolls and thieves and assassins were necessary for the existence of the world, they could not allow such creatures to exist and move in their evil ways. They have to fight them; it is what makes them good, and in the past that conflict was the motion that drove, the world ... as long as neither side won. They do not realize that by destroying their opposites, they undercut their own existence." She looked at them. "I feel you are among the last of those who once were the necessary dark forces of counterbalance. You are indeed evil ..." Arcie started to protest, but Sam hushed him. Kaylana looked at him sternly. "Yes, thief.
    But understand it is not an insult. You know that what you do is wrong, but you do it anyway, for your own reasons, and simply because, though you do not realize it, somebody must."
    Sam realized what she