[WP] Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Tell how you've become practically immortal.

...

Original copy and whole Autobiography of Gillian the Great, Ruler of The Western Continent, and Grand Wizard of the Eras.

Text found in the Ancient Holy Library of Dotera, and reviewed by Zahra the Wise. Presumed source stated as "Recovered from the Ashes of the prior era" and placed upon the Shelves of runic sects, for those ancient texts of spell weaved inks and page.

Dated 1203 BD

...

When I was born, the world was a different place.

Unlike the strange and uncomfortable piece that looms like clouds over the present lands, or the alliances of trade and commerce that hold a foothold in the heart of those people who mingle about in the streets below, the history of my youth was instead a time of death and violence. I was birthed in an Era by which Kingdoms clashed, people starved, and armies slaughtered one another by the most practical matter of course.

Such times held to the one true law: Not money, nor wealth, nor Loyalty or bond. In their place, power was just.

Power was all.

Grave a picture as I may have drafted in your mind, or men wielding bronze and stone to bash one another with mindless violence, as luck might have it, civilization was far from the barbaric ways even then. I was truly blessed in such lands and times through which my arrival from whatever worlds lay before birth, to stumble into a tiny place of ignorance. The first ten winters of my worldly experience passed, and I did not come even the slightest bit closer to understanding the hardships which beset the land.

I did not know that the kingdom in which my village lay along the borders, was waging battle against eyt another- or that some distant and far off King had ordered the draft be sounded. My unawareness was nothing but a product of my upbringing, for what I lacked in knowledge- I think now that surely my father, as well as any other living man within the village, also found themselves without. No forced taxes had come down from across the fields of untold miles in generations, and no bandits had been seen in twice that time. The world was a bubble that ended where the crops ceased, and centered around a warm hearth and table never short on bread.

I had not yet learned that simple truth: That if you wanted to achieve anything of greatness, it was to take it by force. Perhaps I was blessed in that manner, removed from the troubles of the world for a sacred time I can often not recall in anything more than simple pictures- framed and repainted by my mind's eye to combat the rotting canvas beneath.

All I know for certain of my origins, that as suddenly they began- they were truly and abruptly ended.

My Mothers screams, then sobs, then quiet gasps among the curses and yells of unknown men. My father's bloodied corpse, my neighbor's heads upon spikes and fencing: There was little choice in the future before me, if my memory still serves me after two thousand years.

As for most without the wealth for armor and horses, weapons and practice- my fate was set to die by their hands in act of rebellion there and then, or die on a field far away- possibly with slightly better chances. In that muck and destitute squalor of a peasant in times of war, I enlisted beneath banners of Purple dye.

A farming tool turned weapon, the likes of neither I have afforded, and a body unprepared- sent to war to kill and die in turn. Even now, I still remember the cart taking me from the world I knew, and watching the smoke rise up on the dawn, a secret soon forgotten to all but the sun and those sworn beneath it. What was once a small village that birthed me, and the headstones of all that lineage which came before, now lay in ruins: Raped and pillaged for all its worth. Out and onward into the distance beyond the plans until not even the trees seemed visible, surrounded by strange faces of youth and terror, and the scents of piss; it was only the smoke that lingered there, and it is only the smoke that I truly remember.

Of my poor and equal company, those boys whose names I might have once known- families I perhaps should have recognized in my terror: I think now it was for the best that we lacked the comradely of bonds and knowledge, for all but three of those were dead in a under a single week's time, and in a year only I remained- I, so as to say, the life which holds the body now writing, but not to say the boy who was taken from his home to die. That boy is long since passed, and did so with all the rest only to be born again in the blood-soaked filth of a distant battlefield. So it was, I found myself a peasant no longer. The gift that would lay forward in my destiny beyond the years of ordinary men, had sprouted.

Souls... To understand my power, one must first question the abstract. When the Gods of the Old came together in their infinite wisdom, smashing in a violence to bestow the rights of victory to the one of many, it was said that life was brought from the pieces of their bodies. It is said that we are but slivers of Gods, pieces of what was once whole.

Regardless of what the legends, the churches, the rooted pagan beliefs of Kings or Serfs: I now choose to believe that we are something more. Perhaps not fragments, but children. Fledgling chances of a greater possibility than helpless shards. When I discovered magic, such thoughts of lesser men and life held less power than before, and my questions crushed what little false-truths they sand, portion by wretched portion.

The Magic spoke to me upon that first battlefield- and all those which came after it: As the lights of life slipped into shadow, as breath ceased, as screams halted with horrid abruptness, Fae hummed and buzzed in my eyes and I saw the weaves of power sprouting among those sacred places of power. The Church and faithful were drawn to those lands as if moth to flame, but in their short-sighted folly: They believed themselves the source! In those years, alive when I knew I should be not, I learned of mankind's Hubris.

Wars returned, as they always do in time. Kingdoms once again rode out on horses of armor, sharpened bits of metal and wood taken by hand and fist for the sake of plunging it into another stranger for the sake of a man Richer and more powerful than they. I once again found myself among such ranks, but not for the hope of ballads and songs to be sung, not for the foolish belief that I might hide from death and the horrors of such terrible deeds soon to be performed.

I returned because I missed the feeling of power that came with taking a life. I missed the burn of taking what was not in the rights of a mortal to take- and watching the magics buzz into my skin, my lungs, and my flesh. The Dark Scythe of legend, known to those in the fields of huts and wood still to the days of this passage. The hooded figure of Death, was I.

Not until my own defeat, did I realize that mankind's hubris was my own as well. That magics, no matter the power they grant the wielder- no matter how loved by the spirits and creatures of mana and earth, can become refined in ways surpassing that of nature and strength.

Just as steel can come from the earth in iron and ores to be smelted: Magic can be honed into shape, perfected into pieces, applied in complexity.

The horror I felt as I realized my mistake. As I watched, motion slow as a maple's, the weapon I had swung shattering into ten thousand fragments- the power imbued flinging free to serve a withered hand of practiced years. As Earth rose up to wrap my arms, my neck, my legs- as air froze as pulled from lungs and the sun broke through clouds far above my cloaked and covered face. I was held like clay and putty to be molded- a life to be plucked and smited to oblivion, if only it was desired.

In this way, I met my Master. The Great Sage of Legend, now only remembered in far off fables of dying tongue and song: A Man so powerful, even now I question if I have risen to his equal.

Merlin of the Blue Cloak, Caster of Virtue, and Voice of Dragons.

In this way I met the man who would mold me to what I find myself as my ink does flow to the page below it, and in this way I swore upon my very soul to kill him.

Though a study of great interest and curiosity, the Fragment ends along the faded stain of ink- Illegible even to the trained master of pen and arts upon the writing which lay beyond it for rare exception of the 33rd, 57th, and the passages and diagrams noted along the 412th through 502nd pages: The summary of which falls under protection of the Bishops, are bound by seal of blinding, and can not be permitted for any without High-Church approval.

Imbued as the worn and crumbling as the remaining pages are, for fear of damage and magical interference, it is suggested that the passages still found legible within the frame and binding be copied by Privileged hand to a new manuscript, and stored upon the Holy Shelves of Ancient History and Reclamation.

Reference of these passages are only to be granted to those of Faith. Those beneath the rank of Priest or Paladin are forbidden, and Order of Scribes is recommended caution under threat of repercussions to the alternative.

-Zahra the Wise