Philip had no idea how much time had passed...time didn't seem to matter much to him anymore...he lost everything...his love...his family...and after a while, his humanity began to go as well. All the while, the voice of the Titan was the only thing that accompanied him. As the decades went by, it became more difficult to find palistrum wood, and he resorted to finding abandoned palismen and draining them. One day, he even drained his own palisman in utter desperation. He started to look disfigured from the amount of times he'd gone without the magic from palistrum wood.
His outlook on life began to become far more nihilistic and cold. The youthful and optimistic Philip that first stumbled across this realm was long gone by this point. He had longed for the end of his existence for some time now, but he had begun to accept that this was just his existence now, wandering without a purpose...until one day, when the Titan revealed his purpose.
Philip...your time has come to ascend to the throne...
"What do you mean?"
These witches...they don't use magic in the way I intended them to. They use it freely and wildly, with no regard for order...but you can make a change...
"Why are you telling me this now? Why not tell me this when Elizabeth was alive?"
It was too soon to reveal your purpose...
"Was part of my purpose to live forever in agony? To lose the ones I loved? To have to live with the knowledge that I will outlive my whole bloodline?"
Such foolish whims are of no concern to me...and they shouldn't be to you...you will come to understand that soon...
"But I loved her...I still love her..."
Such attachments are fleeting...your purpose lies ahead of you...you can make everything perfect for the Day of Unity by showing them the way...
"The Day of Unity...I understand...I know what must be done..."
Excellent...first, you must get the portal...
"Why do we need the portal?"
The Day of Unity cannot proceed without the portal to the human realm...don't worry, I don't plan on waging war with the humans...you do know where it is, don't you?
"I left it with Elizabeth...so...I'd need to see if my family still has it...only issue is that none of them will know who I even am..."
Philip made his way down to Bonesburough for the first time since he lost Elizabeth. A lot had changed in the few centuries he was on his own. Glandus had grown from a small single classroom school to a full fledged magic school. He wore a mask to conceal his face. He didn't want anyone to see the disfigurements on his face.
He arrived at the house that had once belonged to Elizabeth. It hadn't changed all that much, at least compared to the rest of the town. Nobody seemed to be home. The door was locked, but he could see through the window into what used to be his study, now having been converted into a bedroom. He didn't see the portal though...
"What the hell are you doing here?" A man with red hair yelled at Philip from across the yard. He was about ready to pull out his staff.
"Please, I mean no harm. This house belonged to Elizabeth Clawthorne, and..."
"How do you know about her?"
"Are you...descended from her?"
"Yes I am. But what I want to know is why you're looking into that bedroom?"
"Did you see a portal?" Philip didn't react at all to the question he had just been asked, his mind still being on the portal.
"A portal?" The man was confused.
"Yes, a portal. It looks like a briefcase, and when it opens, it looks like a door with an eye."
"I haven't seen anything like that here. What are you...?"
Before the man could finish his question, Philip had ran off.
He couldn't believe it. The portal was gone. And he no longer had the schematics to the portal because he felt he had no need for them. He had extremely fuzzy memories of that time, and he had lost that knowledge centuries ago, so he didn't know how to create the portal again. How was he supposed to help the Titan now? He then figured that for now, he should focus on how he was going to ascend to the throne. After that, he would figure out the portal.
He returned to where he had made his home and started looking through the research he did have. He still had his research on staffs. He figured maybe he could use them, but he wasn't sure what for. Then, he had a revelation. He could improve on the staff by incorporating technology in it that can produce artificial magic, a concept he had played with once before but he didn't have the means to pull off. But, with these strange human items that sometimes appears in the Boiling Isles, some of it was of use to Philip, for he could study these items and create formulas based on the technology and improve on it greatly.
After some time, he had a prototype that was ready to be tested. He started to see how he could convince the residents of this realm to make him their ruler. If he came to them as a powerful witch who could speak to the Titan, he could get enough witches on his side that he could seize power. But being a human, how would he go about convincing people he was one of them?
He would need a new look...and a new name...one that would strike both fear and admiration from his followers...he then thought of an old Latin word meaning 'lord...'
Belos...
With a plan in mind, Philip went to work creating his new persona.
