Dear Minty,
So. You and the professor. I see how it is. I draw my plans and there in the background you undo them. It’s like that day last time in the park. “For my own good…” And how, pray, do you know what is for my own good and what is not?
Why give me the chance to try at all knowing you and that damned smug academic were going to pull the rug? Why leave the sabotage until I have committed to the rite? You could very well have just not sent the mandrake instead of doing whatever you did to it first…
So I didn’t explode. But I didn’t ascend. I just got cold and discovered how my sister had betrayed me and then a plant started laughing at me. It was already between my legs when all those wretched chitinous bugs started pouring out of it with a sound like laughter. Have you any idea how unpleasant it is to be pinned to the ground by so many little bugs? Every inch of my flesh is covered in bite marks. And then to be lectured by that witch I kept in the sinkdark for so long… That’s why I trapped her! That unstoppable didactic impulse she has. Any chance to teach. God. People like that need to keep away from people.
So… now I’ve got a choice, have I? And you aren’t even here to supervise. You just send the tainted mandrake root slivers for me to plant. Then you let your moralistic friend get all high and mighty about how dangerous the rite is for humanity and how dare I attempt it in an urban area considering the explosion risk and “bleh bleh bleh bleh”. And then this binary choice.
Total annihilation is tempting when you consider the alternative.
You couldn’t let me choose an existence could you? You had to invent this ludicrous what is he an actor? A writer? A driver? Do you really think you can embed him in the timestream well enough that people won’t notice that he’s completely out of place? He will stick out like a sore thumb. And do you really think you can meddle with my memory enough that I won’t remember on some level how I came so close to apotheosis?
So I’ll be living in my garret and you’ll explain all my ceremonial robes away as costume? Piles and piles of it everywhere? And all the objects of power and significance as just randomly gathered gewgaws? Are you insane? Nobody in their right mind will believe I’m a real person in that identity. What are you gonna do with my writings? Give him some sort of endless daily blog where he goes off on flights of fancy, so if he ever discovers anything he’ll just think it’s part of his creative pursuit? And you expect me to channel my genius into an unpaid daily account that hides in the back of the internet like a shy kid at his first sacrifice orgy?
And you tell me all my old friends are happy to pretend they have only known me as this bumbling twit?
What you are suggesting is insulting nonsense. I am a magus. I have devoted my life to power. I have studied deeply.. I’ve even done my YouTube research. You won’t catch me prancing around in tights. And if she thinks she’ll succeed in manipulating my personality with this “humility” she keeps giggling about… I AM NOT YOUR PROJECT. MAKE A MORE DYNAMIC OPTION FOR ME! In the name of all the Gods!
If I choose this existence you both are so amused about foisting on me, it won’t stop my “narcissistic pretentions to godhood”. So help me I will subvert you somehow. I will find a way to resurface wrapped in burning power. I will whip this benign fool you want me to be to the heights of … of something. And then I will remember. And I will find you. And I will make you watch as I ascend. Sister.
Oh Minty. Minty. Faced with this, I’m honestly thinking of just going with oblivion.
But no. I’m not gonna beg. I’m going into this weirdo. I’m gonna make the best of it.
I shall be an actor, darling. And all the rest of that shit too. And I’m gonna make him fly. Not even to spite you. Just because I can, Minty. Just because I can.
Still your brother somewhere,
Al
AlBarclay 