I was the last man to see her before she was burned at the stake. She knew what was coming, so as the last endeavour to do something good she gathered all her strengths to grant my wish to stay forever 21.
I was in fact granted two gifts that day. The gift of being immortal myself, and the gift to grant a single other person immortality as well. I was overjoyed with the idea of spending endless amounts of time doing whatever I loved and having someone tag along on my neverending journey.
I thought long and hard about who to share this magnificent gift with, spending weeks, months, years deciding whether to award it to one of my parents, my brother or Aelliana, my first true love. I came up with all sorts of psychological tests to try on them; after all, I was to spend my entire life alongside them. An eternity. That was yet another thought I couldn't wrap my head around. Eternity. The more you think about it, the less you can imagine something so abstract and yet so simple.
For ages I was stuck in my own head, struggling to comprehend the situation. I had alienated myself in hopes of not making the wrong decision. The burden was too much for a single man to bare. I had eventually lost touch with the real world altogether. I had lost touch with Aelliana. I had lost touch with my family.
By the time I pulled myself together my parents were dead and Aelliana and my brother old. I didn't know how to step foot in front of them not having aged a single day. I didn't want to spend an eternity with an old person. I didn't even know who to choose. So I stayed in the shadows and silently overseered.
My brother passed away first, and I still regret his death. But then again, it wasn't any easier when Aelliana died. I regret her death as well. And given another chance, I wouldn't have changed a thing. Let me elaborate.
I decided to try and enjoy myself. Blow off some steem.
I traveled, I loved, I gambled, I robbed, I ... got bored of life.
There's this thing about immortality. You never truly get over the deaths of your loved ones. The memories never fade. Each next loss is worse than the previous. The memories keep piling on top of one another and soon enough all you remember is not joy-...
But death.
After spending centuries lurking in the shadows after my many families I couldn't be part a of and watching them slowly drift away into nothingness, I had alienated myself again. I was not given a gift. I was given a curse.
And hence I answered my life-long question.
I awarded the gift of immortality to the greatest living villain.
Not to grant him eternal power,
but eternal misery.
