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I wonder, sometimes, if you hate me.
I wouldn’t blame you, really. I understand how…strange, I seem. I-I mean, even just my appearance. I look like a Boss Monster, and, I tried to hide that from you, and Susie, and Kris, a-and I don’t even look that much like the image of the third hero, though, obviously, that kind of goes for Kris and Susie too…
And, of course, there’s, what I don’t tell the others. The “secrets” I’ve kept.
I don’t blame you if you hate me, not at all.
But I do want to help. Both you and them.
…try and imagine something, for me.
Imagine you wake up, one day, alone in a large building. You don’t really have any memories, not ones that actually happened. But you know things.
A lot of things.
As you explore your surroundings, you realize you’re entirely alone in this place. Not just the building you woke up in, which you learn is an empty castle, but the entire world you live in. You’re supposed to be the Prince of this strange town, but you don’t have a single subject, or even a friend or family member. You’re completely and utterly alone.
What you do have is some degree of power. You can reshape your surroundings to a certain extent; creating new buildings, new rooms in the existing ones, and even small items to mess with. So, you begin shaping the world around you into what you think it SHOULD be.
Based entirely on the knowledge you came into this world with.
See, you don’t know EVERYTHING, really. At least, not literally. There are so many things you don’t know at this point, things you won’t learn for some time. For a lot of them, you know the words, know the general concepts, but you don’t really have any understanding of them.
You know Love exists, that it’s something desirable, that it’s a bond between people, but you don’t know how deep it goes, or what people do when they feel it, or what rules it’s supposed to follow.
You know Friendship exists, that it involves kindness and empathy and makes people happy, but you don’t know how to express it, or how to find it, or what makes people want to be friends.
And, you know other people exist, know names and likenesses and the general shape of those you’ll one day meet. But, you’re still alone, you don’t know who these people will really BE, and you have no idea how much they’ll really mean to you.
What you do know, more than anything in the world, is the rules of your world, and what’s to come.
So, what you do, once you’ve made a town you think will help your future friends, and you’ve learned skills you think will help them, is write.
You write a lot.
You write the exact prophecy that you came into existence knowing. You write a more abridged version that leaves out the parts you know are “bad”. You write a manual to explain the rules of this world. You write tips for yourself, for your future friends, for anyone who you know will matter.
You plan out every single interaction you’ll have…even though you’ll never get it quite right.
Because, for everything you know, you don’t know what will actually matter. You don’t know what your future “friends” will want, what they’ll NEED, what they’ll even be like, really.
So, you decide…you decide to lie.
You keep secrets, of course. You keep information away from your friends, both on accident, when you don’t realize it’s important, and on purpose, when you think it might hurt them to learn. But that’s not what I mean by lying.
You come up with a story. A narrative, a way of thinking.
Because, as much as “bad” and “good” are just vague, foreign concepts to you, there’s one thing you were born understanding.
The ending coming your way…nobody wants it. It’s a tragedy, and one that will affect you, and the people you’ll care about. And, nobody likes a tragedy.
Well, nobody inside the tragedy, that is. I don’t hold anything against anyone who enjoys tragic stories, of course. Frankly, I only exist because of them. But, you understand what I mean. I hope.
So, you lie. You tell them what they SHOULD do, even though you’re talking nonsense for the most part. You tell them it’s important to be good, because you know the ending is bad. You tell them they should be nonviolent, because the path to the ending is violent. You tell them that you can make a happy ending…even though you know what’s really coming.
And that, no matter what you try, you can’t really change it.
…I won’t tell you what happens. That last part of the prophecy. I don’t know if you’d be as affected by it as I was, or as Susie was; after all, it’s all just a story. Maybe you have a healthy separation from us.
And maybe…maybe you’ve already figured it out. At least partially.
But if you don’t know it yet…I don’t know if you should. It’s…it’s not…
I-I’m sorry, I’m not making sense, am I? Let’s…let’s try another hypothetical.
Imagine that, for your entire life, there’s been this Clock. You can’t see it, not personally, but you can hear it. Every second of your life, you just hear it ticking away, always in the back of your mind.
A-and you know, somehow, instinctually, that the Clock is ticking down, towards some point in the future. You aren’t sure when, exactly, you just know it’s coming, some way down the road.
And you also know that, when the Clock hits zero…you’ll lose something.
I won’t say exactly what. Maybe it’s a person, or a relationship, or an object. Maybe it’s just an abstract concept, like friendship or independence. It’s just, something that could be good, could be important.
But initially, you don’t really care. Because you’ve never had this something; you’ve never met this person, you’ve never been in this relationship, you’ve never had that object or experienced that concept. You don’t really care about losing it, you just internalize it as “what is going to end up destroyed someday”, and move on. You live with the Clock ticking down, and you learn to ignore it.
And then…you find it.
You meet the person, you enter the relationship, you get the object, you experience the concept, whatever the case may be.
A-and it’s great. It’s so incredible, so wonderful, s-so much more important than you could have ever imagined.
That…that’s when it hits you. That’s when you realize, you’re going to lose something special, once the Clock is done.
And you realize, when you lose it…it will destroy you. And moreover, losing it will destroy EVERYTHING that really matters to you.
So, suddenly, you’re desperately trying to find some way to change things. Some way to stop the clock before it finishes counting, some way to undo this horrible curse, a-and…and you don’t know if you can, you don’t know if it’s even possible, or if it is, what you’d need to do to pull it off.
But…you have to try, right?
That…that’s what it’s like.
...I don’t blame you if you don’t believe me. I mean, I told you I’ve been lying, it’d only make sense for you to distrust me.
But, I swear, all I want to do is help. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do…for better or worse.
I just…I don’t know how much I can help anymore.
…I hear the clock ticking down.
I think it’s close to the end.
See you all there, I suppose.