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I made all this for you.
I say in a broken, raspy voice.
I did it all for you, I say on your 16th birthday.
I give you a four-sided die that you clutch near your chest, a flash and now it shines where once your heart was.
I did it all for you.
You have fun, enjoy the freedom you were never allowed, play games that go beyond the one being played now, and risk your morality for the allure of your Voice pulling strings - heart-strings and life-strings.
I did it all for you.
I scream while watching you vanish away from me. I’m trapped inside my own game - maybe I was never its master. It masters me like you once did.
It’s all for you.
I whisper from the dark, shaping this world to make it fully, undeniably my own, which just means I’m making it fully for you. I send my die into your hands, 25 years away from me. So different from the ones I saw reaching for me on your 16th birthday.
I made all this for you.
And you are back here beside me, against me, you wanna leave again and I did it all for you and I beg you to stay - in my world, in your world.
I hear your Voice and the flames burning your throat, your eye, and my heart.
I did it all for you, please don’t destroy it. I say while using the limit of my powers to stop you. Shattering what I once shaped - I created a game that played me and played you and played us.
There’s a hidden dagger in your hand and a hidden light flashing for a second on your die when I die.
“01001001 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 for you”
I rise from life into the fallen I’ve been forced to be since you first left me here. Fallen as in dead but also fallen for you and your cold fire.
You drag me across dead lands with dead soldiers and the irony escapes me. You say you want to interrogate me. Will you use your Voice on me? I long for the only fire and warmth I can feel.
And then your past comes to haunt you. Like I am not haunting you enough.
I made all this for you I say muffled by the glass walls trapping me. Are they protecting you from me or the other way around? Are you afraid of what you may do when you look me in my dead die eye? What would you say? Not the simplicities and repetitions of “Tell me everything”, but rather your Voice embracing me in flames, torturing me to tell you the truth of why this is all for you.
“Ash, it’s all for you”, I say tapping my Game Master die - but never a master of my own heart.
“Ash, it’s all for you”, I say looking at you through my kaleidoscopic eye while you walk away.
“Ash, it’s all for you”, and my d20 shines in the shape of the d4 that consumes it.
Inspired by this panel that fully broke my heart spoilers issue #11