Skull, way back before he was 'Skull' before he had known he would have 'forever' before he had been lost to apathy and loss and death, before everything he had seen, was actually a Warrior of Atlantis.
That's right.
Skull was from that 'mythical' Great City.
He had been taught by his father to be a great defender of the Royal Family and the weak.
Skull had been one of the 'strongest' even before the Arcobaleno, blazing through his training and very quickly becoming the undisputed 'top dog' in Atlantis bowing only to his King and Queen. (Even his General did not receive a bowed head from Skull, only his loyalty and respect until Skull had risen been promoted to General himself.)
Atlantis had been a very large city, had been the most advanced of its time, and even eons later it still had some technology that far outstripped anything Skull had seen since its fall, and the entire place had been a city of Warriors. Even the scholars had been warriors, had been powerful and dangerous, and Skull had stood undisputed at the top of the pile.
He can remember the Fall of Atlantis quite vividly despite the eons that had passed.
His childhood home had been placed in the very center of what the people of the world now called The Bermuda Triangle and it had been an earthquake-volcanic eruption combination that had taken it down.
The fall of his home was also the day Skull had discovered he was immortal.
Not dying did not mean 'no pain' just to be clear.
He had been caught by the lava, herded away from its heat and further into the city. The earthquake had been like nothing he had ever seen, literally destroying the ground beneath his feet , ripping giant holes and fractures into his Island home that quickly filled with ocean water.
Eventually he had fallen into the ocean water- superheated from the lava that was pouring into it though not so hot it melted his flesh from his bones- and the rubble of his island home had followed him down into the water where it had knocked him out.
Skull knew he had drowned there, could even remember the brief conscious period under the water where his lungs had burned and he had been gasping in nothing but water; his eyes and throat and lungs all screaming in a way he never wanted to feel again. He had passed out after that, sure he would die, but he had woken a long time later on the shore of another land, his lungs, throat, nose, stomach, eyes and muscles all screaming and raw like he had taken sandpaper to his insides.
Even so very long after the fact Skull cannot find the words to describe the horror he had felt upon realizing he could not die.
It was not pleasant to realize that for Skull there would never be an end.
He had lived for a long while after the first hints of his immortality, had interacted and loved people around himself, had lived as if he could die, even after the first two hundred years he had kept going.
Then the first five hundred had passed.
And then one thousand.
At first Skull had thought he would be unable to die of old age only.
Fifteen hundred years into his life Skull had tested his Immorality and had known for sure what he had only suspected until that point.
He couldn't die.
Nothing killed him. He just woke up with his body put back together with the echoes of whatever pain he had been caused there to greet him.
The Witch Trials had been hell. Burning alive was not pleasant.
Hated by the Grim Reaper indeed.
