Slightly based on The Tale of the Three Brothers

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A beautiful boy with hair of gold and eyes of silver, veins of black and lips of pink. A nomad, a vagabond. Unaccepted and outcast. His name he couldn’t remember; only that he woke up before being put to death on the gallows…and somehow-vanished when he saw a bright glow. He did not know why he was going to die.

He came to in a meadow.

While contemplating his lost memories he came to a busy town. He tried to keep a low profile out of fear of his difference he noticed, but failed when the townspeople grabbed their pitchforks and chased him. Suppose he wasn’t a simple wayfarer.

The blinding light saved him again. He woke up in an extravagant castle. Rows of women suddenly burst from the doors and forcefully got him changed before bringing him to a court, in which sat a woman, unquestionably a queen. The queen offered her help and protection, seeing as he is convicted and persecuted in many kingdoms. Any man would take up the offer, seeing as a beautiful queen was lending her services and him, guaranteed safety. Yet something in his mind compelled him to politely reject. Enraged and engulfed in a fire that bloomed abruptly, the queen stood from her throne and bellowed for him to stay. Her eyes flamed and her black hair turned red. Two guards that stood by her since clinked in their armour to get him before he shut his eyes tightly and disappeared.

The boy expected he’d be in another kingdom or bustling town, but it seemed that he had come somewhere far more dangerous. Buildings were tall as the sky, and carriages that emitted smoke. People dressed much simpler, and some were clad in metal projections that stuck out of their ears and faces. But what surprised him the most was that many had given his face a glance or two, but said nothing.

Yet streets were darker in this unfamiliar environment. The air reeked of a suffocating smoke, painful but intoxicating. Again he wondered what will happen to him while sitting beside an old man putting a smoke projectile into his mouth. A man who watched from afar approached him, put a cloth to his mouth and nose until he fainted.

When he awoke another man was sitting before him. This time the boy’s eyes flitted to the expanse of this room. He saw nothing but black walls. The man began to speak to him. Instead of promising him protection and power, he only told him that he was in grave danger. That he was not like others. That he was his kin.

Baffled, he protested that he had no family. Nodding to him, the man revealed his arms whose clothed sleeves were tucked into thick gloves. The veins that line them were a deathly black too. Tugging off his cap, his roots glistened gold too. The man had assured the boy that the colour change in his eyes were the work of some human invention.

 

They told him they were time travellers. They told him they weren’t only capable of that and had the potential to do more. But the boy had learnt not to trust so easily. He excused himself from their presence and said that he needed time to think. The man presented him with shelter, saying he needed one and couldn’t possibly be staying out in the winter.

Oddly, the boy wondered how they conversed in the same language either. Everyone else spoke differently.

 

The next morning, he wanted to escape. He knew that danger must present himself to him and that fear inside will find a temporary sanctuary. But dangers in this world were divergent from what he knew. He saw that there were no gallows in town squares, but something similar and more…enclosed. Death here was worse. People collapsed on streets and no one implied to bother.

In time, he decided to recollect that night and ventured off into a place he hoped was silent. Running and running through jungles and empty winding paths, he found an abandoned hut. For ages he experimented with himself to discover what could possibly be his other potentials.

One day his labours came to fruition. He projected light from his hands and soon enough, was able to control the elements of this world. No one was around so he thought he might die here, the hut had barely anything to keep him going and he resented this life.

 

They tracked him down and found him again. This time, imprisoned in a house that created the impression of being far away from the ground. He felt sick looking down.

Occasionally men came to give him food and he always wolfed them down savagely.

The mysterious man observed him constantly and pondered over his sudden existence. He pondered over how the boy did not realize he began a legacy.

 

It was a battle against time.

 

Nightmares flooded the boy in his sleep. The gallows on which he had aroused, a hooded man with obsidian eyes and a wide smile. A woman, hair up and soft features. A strong young woman with flowing hair, and the mysterious man he had just met. He believed a hard hit on the head would help him remember. A block somewhere in his mind prevented that.

Day by day, bit by bit, his powers grew and formed, hopefully without knowledge of the man. The man undoubtedly knew and observed this in amusement.

Finally the boy managed to break down the doors that held him captive. There was no escape and he killed the guards by accident.

Horrified by his actions, he fled.

Out in the city, as the man called it, he began to see others like him. The defining feature, their veins, were boldly visible too.

Once, he tried calling out to a girl like him. Without a proper response she screamed for her parents and stood rooted to the spot. In the back of his head he realize children of this time were awfully afraid of strangers.

At once she stopped and he glanced behind to see the cause. A brown haired man and a red haired woman gaped at his figure before breaking down and beseeching him to follow them.

The boy was terribly confused.

Their home was a humble one, compared to what he had seen currently. It felt very normal, save the painting of his visage that hung on the wall. But he wasn’t the only one. The man with obsidian eyes, the beautiful woman, they were all there.

He was shocked and confused. He begged for an explanation.

They gave him one.

Hundreds of years ago the boy was said to be a gifted man. The woman on the wall, accepted him and became his wife, thinking there would be no complications because of simple physical uniqueness. She did not know of his secrets. But their children, beautiful baby twin girls with ebony hair, weren’t normal either.

Once resembled him, the other didn’t. Instead, the younger twin soon betrayed the fire within her. She grew up evil and resentful, and was cast away to the mountains. His wife was sorrowful that he never told her, but still loved him as much and stayed. On the mountains, the younger twin met a young lad, who vowed to destroy her father for her. He too, was like him but unfortunately had manipulated them for dark use. The lad called himself Death. His daughter’s lover had tried to kill him in his sleep, but his wife caught on. She sacrificed herself for him, while his older daughter watched in fear in the shadows. It had been said that he fled with his daughter, training her to master her abilities and protect herself from the darkness of their kind. There was a good and evil to everything and at a first impression they were indistinguishable was what he had taught her and imprinted into her mind. Until she matured, he never left her side. When she was powerful enough, he hunted the man who defiled his powers without letting his daughter know.

He had always told her to continue their bloodline if he died, and left his cloak by her side.

There was a war. Flashes of light flew everywhere and blood spilled like water. It was a battle between two men. One of evil, one of good. But good did not triumph this time, and he was defeated. No one knew what happened to his body, but the people who witnessed the ending said that he promised to return one day and that evil will perish.

No one believed him.

And no one knew where Death had disappeared to.

 

He could hardly believe the story they had just told him. It was impossible that that man, hero and almighty, was this puny golden haired boy who had no clue of why he was standing on the gallows with a noose around his neck. It fit together but a patch somewhere was missing. To his horror he realized the queen who tricked him might have been his daughter.

The family seemed genuinely worried for his well-being. They offered to let him stay. Yet another kind proposition. Carefully he declined and vanished from his spot, leaving them hanging there.

He didn’t know what to do.

Pacing and pacing, he finally found the solution.

 

He must travel through space and time, and find the man who snatched his memories and his entire life.

 

Years passed, and he was experienced with most of the world now. He recognized skyscrapers, apothecaries. Hospitals to witch burnings. There was no sign of Death. No, he didn’t even know if he’d be able to recognize him.

And then he remembered the painting on the wall of that family. Death had an angular face which was slightly withered, eyes meant to be silver but drastically black and dead. And he realized that he had been staring at the bastard all along. The man who trapped him was Death himself, adapted to the centuries and disguised cleverly. He muttered to himself at his blindness and struggled to find his bounty.

And there he was.

Death never aged for the fifteen years he had searched for him. And neither did he. Death congratulated him for having been clever enough to evade him. But before he could lay a finger on Death, he had to ask if his daughter was still with him even though he never knew her. They fought just like how it was told in the stories. Slashed and cut, he tried not to die again. He had grown stronger and more powerful. It was time to defeat him. With one final flick of his hand he had managed to deliver a fatal blow towards Death. And so Death died doubling over in chuckles whispering ‘I will never lose to you’.

 

That was when all his memories came back.

 His mauled figure dragged by the opponent, the lies weaved by him saying that he used his magic to kill, the uproar of the people who wanted him dead.

The smug smile on Death’s face when they decided whether to behead him of to hang him. He knew at the time that he couldn’t try to evade the imminent punishment in order to keep his dignity despite the fact that he would be disposing of it by admitting to a crime he didn’t commit either.

He was going to depart his life on the gallows of the public, washed over by his own guilt and blood. Until his powers stepped in.

 

Slowly, he felt his skin crackling and breaking apart. His eyes burned and veins pulsated black. Gold hair losing colour and lips turning blue. Flesh peeled off layer by layer and then he knew why Death was laughing. He may have kept his memories preserved and locked away, but he also did the same with his youth. His dark magic enabled him to destroy his immortality.

But he did not feel sad. And so he greeted the real Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, departed this life