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MENTOR

A fire burns from within me, and yet my sword is cold, calculated and decisive. These are the movements I must make in a wood which would choke sun beams in a mottled embrace.

In this darkness, I played the game of the evil and rose above the trembling, sickened aspen, it’s claws lifting me like a trophy to capture praise, good feelings, infamy. All false, demonic, empty. And the gas bubbles oozed up from the swamp, gasping the truth of the smashed peat, the foundation upon which this cursed wood stood.

While wading the slurry, she looked at me and praised me for stirring the sluice, for bringing a color different from usual to this gray recipe. The denizens of emptiness ate every morsel of me. To her recitation, I smiled through the false teeth I’ve grown here. How could I tell her I was about to betray her?

When we did it, and we tried to slice the veil and bring light to this hell again, and in the deafness of battle she looked to me with calculation and maybe she meant it maybe from the deepest of her innocent heart, she, trapped in this place too, she tried to tell me how to cut throats and breath lies, and how to keep it all inside.

My mentor, you were, and I thank you for guiding through this stomach acid, but these walls are not just. My mentor, you were, but I could not walk this treacherous path for long without alighting the bramble which bit me. My mentor, you were, but I knew you deserve to escape too.

And I could see the flaws in the cards and the spells you dealt me, you’re not the witch who knows my heart, your color is tainted by a mad man so how could you see the true wavelengths?

Or perhaps I mistake your expertise in the whole for this pocket dimension which creates you. I escape, and I remark!

You are kind to try and hold my hand and show me through the entrails. I’m sorry for the damned who had no one, and I’m sorry to you for damaging the damn walls which keep you together.

If you ever escape, let’s meet and speak freely.

I want to know who you are without the belly of the beast keeping your shape.

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