I like studying my surroundings, it’s one of the reasons I’ve been able to survive here in the chaos of Arcadia.
Once I watched as a candle flickered in the night, I saw a moth darting back and forth around the flame.
Some say that moths are attracted to fire because they’re cold-blooded and they seek out the warmth.
I personally beg to differ, this moth playing perfectly at home, its wings batting causing the fire to dance in the quiet night air.
It was playing with the blaze set before it.
It liked seeing it dance and it enjoyed the risk involved.
It wanted to see how close it could get before…
The inevitable happened and the blaze consumed it.
It reminds me of a story that is told in the circles of Arcadia.
The story of a whole moth family…
You know the mommy moth, daddy moth, and all their moth-lings…
They lived on the edges of Arcadia playing fast and loose with their safety.
Until the flames they danced around consumed them.
Only one Sole Survivor emerged from the ashes, burnt, and lost to Arcadia as a whole.
Then that daddy moth found a boy, an orphan no less, how fitting.
Who himself was playing with fires well beyond his control.
Now mummified the daddy moth let his fatherly instincts kick in and pull the boy back before he became his own destruction.
At least this is the story you want so desperately for all of us to believe Burned Man.
No, you’re just another moth playing in the flames under the guise of protecting the young son of the late Maxwell Jackson.
You danced around with Stubbins Doom to save the young lad from fate potentially worse than death.
Telling him that Doom would kill him all the while you knew that Stubbins could’ve just as easily done the same to you.
See, you play with the inferno just like your young protégé.
And this playing you do has led you here…
To me…
A man with an inferno in his stomach that’s unquenchable.
A will to survive that burns brighter than the heat of a thousand suns.
And this week you’ll have to dance in those flames.
My flames…
My inferno…
My fire and it will not flicker in your presence as you dance around it.
No, it’s going to seek you out…
It will burn you again and again…
It will char you to the bone.
There will be no escape, no way to take flight little moth.
You will suffer in the burning light that is the brilliance of Damien Wolfe.
Because I am not like you.
I am not a Sole Survivor.
No, I live and breathe in Arcadia looking like I do, acting how I act, and being the bastard among bastards…
Simply put, I am the Survivor.
And when it comes down to it, there’s not enough credits in the whole of Arcadia that would stop me from finishing what that arsonist started all those years ago, sorry… budget cuts, pal.