The Bla(n)ck Canvas

Thanatos had found an heir and lost him. His rage was unbearable to see, worse yet to feel. Eons were completely deleted from the flux of time, worlds collided into one another, gods were vanished in a heartbeat, and yet, his anger was unappeasable. He had lost what he had been looking for since the beginning of his quest. A man who could truly control time without being pray to remorse or guilt. He smashed thousands of his clones, disintegrated hundreds of his servants and yet, he still had the power to be angry. His immortal carcass had been failing him completely for the last couple of days. He had seen this man, his heir, walk through his empty halls framed with thousands of millions of cogs, with the power of infinity within his ruling chamber, and yet, he had told him “no”.

Thanatos went back to his dreadful artifice, and caressed the precious memories than still made him tick. While doing so, out of the blue, a man became the subject of his attention. The son of his heir. With big, brown eyes that echoed a glance of both brilliance and lunacy, a wide array of tools in a second-hand cloak and a completely unfashionable combination of accessories around his neck, face and arms, he knew immediately that the sins of the father had been passed down to the son. His name was Edwyn, and he was also obsessed with time.

Thanatos rage subdued. With a very calm demeanor, Thanatos started to go back and forth in the wheel of time assessing this young man’s future. He has always been cynical, introverted, and carelessly willful. He had no one to call a friend, and no one to call a mother. She had fled when his father had warped through time, apparently, and his father was now so busy with impeding him, Thanatos, of actually having a successor, that he had forgotten about his son almost completely. A lonely orphan, for all that mattered, with a knack for power and an obsession with time. Thanatos glared at him for what seemed forever. In this boy’s eyes, he had seen himself during the long past wars of his kin. He would understand. Without hesitating, Thanatos created a magical figurine and put him aside as he once again resumed his duty of finding other potential candidates for an heir. This boy had given him the spark needed. That look, that grin, the way Edwyn crunched his fist as he worked with time, was all it took for Thanatos anger to collide. “Time is of essence” he said, as he rushed through the forgotten time. More than anyone, Edwyn would suffer, and in his suffering, understand. His fate was sealed.

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Thanatos continued to analyze the endless flow of time as he lay with his back arched against the machine he had just built. More than 20 years had passed and still no sign of another worthy of time. He took a gentle walk around the vast space of nothingness and finally, his heart skipped a beat when he saw the crystal sphere that lay a few feet away from him. “A druid” - he thought, giving a snort while closing to the sphere. There he was; a tall, vibrant, audacious young half elf with skin as hard as a tree’s bark and with his hair as long and sharp as vines of a chestnut brown. He was currently hunting his prey - a beautiful and exotic hummingbird that was gliding from tree to tree. “A rare collector”, thought Thanatos, as he began to become intrigued by the druid. He took a leap through time. He saw his fate. Disciple to Elminster. Friend to nature. Foe to the artificial, to the untruthful, and most of all, to himself. Beneath his facade as a strong, relentless and wise druid lay a fragile, confused, and most of all, a coward half elf with a knack for martyrdom. Thanatos took a glimpse of his end, and he rejoiced. There are very few things that will spurt a smile for a man like Thanatos. This was one of them. Fear. Unstoppable, soul-eating, fiendish and obsessive fear. In spite of all he knew, of all he felt, Yviggo Kai Nu’mei was a bundle of insecurities. Thanatos would make sure that those arose and took the best of him. Only then would he, Kai, be able to understand Thanatos’ own fears. If so, he had found an heir. His fate was sealed.  

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Thanatos went back and forth through the wheel of time, searching for the appropriate successor. As he intrigued his way out through the Crown Wars and plummeted down in Netheril, he found one that would, in due time, be worthy of his crown. His name was Argaen Stormcrow, one of the last high elves to survive his people’s exile. Young, introverted, a talented magician with a taste for darkness, and gifted with a unique puzzle-solving mind, Argaen’s past made him a suitable candidate to control his legacy. He was an orphan, a loner, and as such, had learned to live in the harsh society of Westgate, bargaining and tricking friends and foes alike in order to survive. His fate turned for the best when he fell in love with a goddess that could not bear to see him become evil. The goddess learned to love him back, but her time in this world was short. The goddess returned to the endless sky, and Argaen decided to give back some of the good he had been given. He enlisted the army. He fought the phaerimm. He tried to save time. And then, the turn of the screw: his union with the goddess had created an offspring, but that offspring’s fate was to die. Thanatos laughed silently while he took one of the time-lines in the endless flow and placed it behind him. One of the thirteen had been chosen. Thanatos knew the pain involved in loosing a child. He knew what people would be willing to do to get them back. Thanatos laughed once again and placed Argaen’s figure in the stone-tablet labeled “The Architects”. His fate was sealed.      

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