They called me a cruel man. And why? Because I loved my child enough to protect her? Because I was content to reside in my castle as her guardian and not indulge in the sunlight and the foolishness of lesser men?
They came -one after another- with lust burning in their eyes and arrogance bubbling in their hearts. They all had the same goal of taking her away from me and using her for their own salacious ends, and every time I fought them off, every time I saved her from their dishonorable intent, she only hated and resented me more, and men only saw a greater obstacle to overcome, a greater monster to slay… and a treasure so wondrous to satiate desires both subtle and gross.
My daughter hated me for protecting her. And the men kept coming to my doorstep with weapons drawn, never allowing the failure of their predecessors to stay their hand. So I bested them - killedthem, when it proved necessary. They hated me outside the walls of my castle, calling me mad, calling me callous, calling me possessive… all because I wanted to spare my daughter the suffering these men intended for her. She thought they would rescue her from my clutches, she thought I was trying to keep her forever… my only wish was her safety, a concern far from the mind of any of these would be suitors.
When one emerged I could not stop… Salem stopped briefly to look upon me. For a moment I thought it was a sign of concern, a need to verify the man absconding with her was not so ruthless as to kill needlessly… until I saw her eyes, and the cruel mockery of her grin. It didn't matter to her that her only surviving family lay broken on the ground: she had what she wanted.
And the world would cheer her for it, saying she was at last "free" of her father's control. The man who defeated me would be hailed as a hero.
A "hero" who took a man's daughter and left him to die.
My wounds should've been enough to kill me. But just because I shunned the light did not mean I had forgotten the gifts granted to me.
They call it 'magic' now, but then it was nothing unusual; nothing special. It was a gift bestowed on all of us, and I had enough in me to return from the brink of death. I entombed myself in ice, sealing myself away and allowing my body to rest and rejuvenate. I cannot say for certain how long it was -I think a hundred years, but I cannot say for sure. I knew I would need time to be rebuilt, to cheat the death I had glimpsed so close at my heel…
...but when I awoke, far more time had passed than intended. I woke to a world of… nothing.
No men, no sunlight. Nothing but empty buildings and barren lands. What others scorned me for shunning proved to be unworthy of praise. The world I emerged into was a dead one and I had no idea why.
I only knew that my daughter -my reason to return at all- was gone from me, and I was alone in the dark. Not dead, but alive without purpose. It was hard to know which was worse.
For a time I wandered, the last survivor of a dead world. I did not know how long I'd live, but strangely enough… it no longer seemed to matter. Perhaps having nothing to live for robbed time of its power to steal from me, or the long rest in ice staggered aging, but I did not change. I did not die, and I did not live. I just wandered over barren rock and infertile soil.
I circled the sphere a dozen times, but never found another soul. Perhaps it was some sort of punishment…
I returned to my castle to sit at my post and wait. My daughter was long gone and no suitors would ever again break into my hall to challenge for her hand, but I could think of nothing else to do.
Just to sit and wait, a sentinel without a ward…
I do not know how long I waited. I had no need to tell time, and time did not hold me in its grasp. I remained at my post even as the walls crumbled away, even as vines uprooted the floor, even as my family standard withered to dust. With the god's light still within me, I did not feel the elements as they poured into my keep, and disregarded all I saw wandering outside my hall…
Until a man I did not know walked into my house. That was a sight I understood, and so I reacted as I had.
He was strong. Stronger than I was. But he was naught but flesh and metal. I had so much more than that to bring to bear. When I struck him with the simplest spell I left him in awe.
I had no intention of claiming his life: the fight woke me from such torpor that I had no wish to harm him further. He was the first other person I'd seen in a lifetime -a hundred lifetimes, a thousand lifetimes- that I needed to know more.
He told me his name was Nicholas.
I reentered that torpor. I cannot say when or for how long. I know only that I did not die and I did not live.
"What is so important, father?" a voice I do not know inquires. "Why should this matter to me?"
"Because nothing is so valuable as knowledge, Whitley. And there's no greater source of it than this."
That voice I do know. Nicholas called the man his son; husband to his daughter, father of his grandchildren.
His daughter had even worse taste in suitors than mine. I'd have never let her leave with anyone so petty, so cruel, so greedy as this one.
I see his eyes: blue like the ice I once lay entombed in, blue like the 'dust' he encases me in when he does not need me.
"This is our family's greatest secret, Whitley," he explains. "That magic is real… and that we -and we alone- have it."
I am become relic. What for me was commonplace is magic to them. But what they do with manacles of steel and charges of electricity seems more like magic to me.
And here I am now, again condemned by the failure of a man defending his daughter and succumbing to an unworthy host.
They called me cruel. Life is cruel that it should lead me to this… to live without my daughter, with greedy eyes scanning me at every turn and scouring me for secrets of a world they never knew…
"My Queen, a moment of your time?"
"What is it, Doctor Watts?"
"Something in Atlas. Something scientists cannot identify, despite relentless study… something they do not comprehend.
"They're calling it magic, from a man so old it beggars belief…"
A cruel eye turns to him once again, turned from cold blue to bloody red. But it is not a mocking grin that finds her lips now.
It's a despairing frown, as she must quell her words before her subordinate hears him. She must not let him see weakness; not let him know that the queen he has pledged loyalty to feels some… attachmentthat he alone would be poised to exploit.
Not see a daughter learn her father survived… and know her cruelty be snatched away by time… and an even greater cruelty inflicted by the man she believed saved her from him.
She thought her family all gone from the world since her daughters were taken from her, but… cruel as he may have been, he was her father still. And she far exceeded his cruelty when given the seat of power… so perhaps…
Perhaps it was possible to feel something other than anger and despair in this life now. If she could but see him…
Atlas was to be her last target. But now…
The past had returned to the present. It seemed an apt time to change the future.