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“It doesn’t matter. I just need to live long enough to see this through. And you’re going to help me, Collector…”
the eerie music and light stopped as a shadow grew in size to meet the other’s face.
“I’m free! I’m finally! Wait… I’m still stuck ugh!”
The Collector said rolling their eyes at the person holding them in their cage. He couldn’t do much but whine and project his shadowy forms on reflective surfaces. Where was that big guy when he needed him?
A clearing of the throat.
“As I was saying, Collector —“
“Yes… that’s me! Unless you wanted some OTHER Collector but I’m…THE BEST! So you should free me! and then we can play together!!! and be BEST friends! I can even teach you some cool spells! we could play tag and an - I could be ‘it’ and –“
Philip’s face contorted into something akin to a child tasting a lemon for the first time.
He hadn’t expected The Collector to be a child he had taken the whole ‘child of the stars’ title as more of a metaphor accolade, he didn’t expect there to be a literal child for him to look after. But this is The Boiling Isles everything seemed to be literal. Hindsight was fifty-fifty. Twenty-Twenty?
“That sounds… fun, but I am unsure exactly to go about freeing you?” He was lying about it being fun, he had no intention of indulging the child’s sense of humor. Not to mention, he did know how to free the child but he didn’t get this far by not playing dumb.
“Pfbbbt of course you do! Just ask the big guy to let me out duh! it’s been so long! Where is he anyways?
Surely the Titan wouldn’t just leave him behind, right? Right! The Collector felt uneasy by the silence that followed his question went on for far too long. He studied the facial feature of the person before him. He looked scraggly, almost sickly. He had round ears like himself but everything else was wrong.
“I assume you’re referring to the Titan that once… lived here, there’s no delicate way of putting this, the Titan has been gone for quite some time.”
This wasn’t fun. It wasn’t fun anymore, It was just a joke, right? It was just a joke! It was a dumb joke and he just wanted to go home! He clenched his hair in his hands and wailed.
“YOU'RE FIBBING I DON'T BELIEVE YOU! HE’D NEVER LEAVE ME BEHIND! HE PROMISED HE’D COME BACK FOR ME!”
Something in Philip’s chest lurched at those words. he shook it off as the whiplash of events of meeting The Collector. The last thing Philip wanted was to deal with an unruly child with powers beyond his comprehension.
Yet, something about the child reminded Philip about himself as a child, always clinging to Caleb and deluding himself into thinking they’d have time to play witch-hunter forever without growing up, oh how naive he was. Regardless, Philip saw this as an opportunity to be seized.
“Oh, poor child, you’ve been betrayed by the only one close to you. I too, know the feeling. You’re aren’t alone in that regard.”
While Philip didn’t like children, their minds were far more malleable to changes. Promise them something then they’ll follow you to the edge of the Earth. What fools children were. The pathetic slobbering things, with no dignity or respect for how they presented themselves.
“Really?”
The Collector hiccuped as tears, or what one could assume were tears, welled up in their eyes as they dove into Philip.
Despite their intangible nature, they had no difficulty using Philip’s shirt as a handkerchief to dry away tears in an almost comical manner.
Philip suppressed a groan alongside the urge to push the child off of him that very instant,
he ought to teach them a lesson about not making such a childish display.
“If I help you with whatever you want, you’ll set me free? I’ll be even tell you how to do it! then we can be best friends and play right!”
The child’s voice came out rushed and desperate, something about it almost, Philip didn’t want to say scared because that was a ridiculous notion. Philip wasn’t scared by a desperate child, god-like powers or not. He wasn’t.
“Of course.”
“Pinky promise? Promise me? Promise! You have to promise me!”
Philip had no idea what a “pinky promise” was, it could be a type of demonic deal for all he knew. And yet, the child just extended a shadowy visage of his smallest finger as if to grip it around something. Philip’s curiosity got the better of him as he extended his own “pinky” towards The Collector who wrapped his finger around Philip’s own.
“Pinky promise.”
Something in the remains of Philip’s soul trembled.