A Thousand Years Later

Within the nexus of the seal, time itself is murky and convoluted. Your thoughts are hazy and unformed, with memories of the past swirling around in your mind constantly. After all, thinking is the only thing you can do right now, confined within this spell of unimaginable power. At first, when you were first defeated, you had thrashed in fury in an attempted to escape, but calmed down after a few centuries due to a lack of results. Now, you spent the time contemplating your defeat, all the circumstances which led to your meteoric rise in power, as well as the reasons for your downfall.

At the height of your power people called you many things: your allies called you the Hero of Darresia, the rightful ruler of the continent of Karne, a singular which would unite the fractured nations of the land. Your enemies instead opted to called you the Scourge of Darresia, a conqueror with the blood of millions on his hands, sacrificing the lives of others for his ambitions. Neither title made much sense, seeing as you'd never been to this Darresia in your life, but all it took was a single drunk bard who claimed to know your birthplace for the titles to stick. In truth, you were the third son of a minor noble house in the nation of Axalan, never destined for any greatness, but you were always one to challenge fate. You possessed much talent, but the poor financial circumstances of your house meant that only your older brothers could have tutors. Knowing that skills such as swordplay were difficult to learn by yourself, you opted to read instead, learning of battle tactics, political theory, and most importantly: ancient tombs of text containing the arcane arts. Sorcerers were not considered a glamorous job, because at that time the power level of spells were so low. Even the best sorcerers of the Hawk's Perch Academy could only blast several fireballs consecutively before running out of mana. Most court sorcerer's were no better than lowly soldiers, capable of mundane tasks such as igniting candles and putting out fires, but nothing more. Through your hard work and dedication to the art of the arcane, you became a competent sorcerer in your teens, and because of your noble connections, you became aware of the coup in which the king of Axalan would lose his life. In the ensuing power vacuum, you wasted no time removing your elder brothers to ensure that you were the sole heir of the house before joining the battle for the throne. You aligned yourself with General Reav, who saw your talents and mentored you in the art of war. With you as his second in command, he took the throne swiftly, crowning himself as the new king of Axalan.

Naturally, your ambitions didn't stop there. While Reav was busy with kingly duties, you sought out more power in the form of knowledge. Reav was a masterful tactician and strategist, but he did not value books or the knowledge contained within, so he granted you full authority over the nation's great library. From there, you made the greatest discovery of your life: a map which detailed the existence of ancient arcane artifacts scattered throughout the world, and though many have tried to uncover them, most have failed and died in the process. However, you were not "most" people, you had patience, time, and most importantly, you had money now. With Reav comfortably on the throne, you could leave his service and begin your search for more power. With mercenaries meant as meat shields under your employ, you set out on your journey to recover all the artifacts that you could. It took well over 40 years just to uncover the three hidden within the borders of Axalan, but with those three artifacts, you could reverse engineer them and divine the secrets which they held.

It took roughly another 30 years of research, isolated in your cabin in the woods before you succeeded. At this point, Reav has long been slain by his son, who now rules Axalan with an iron fist, and your existence has been entirely forgotten by anyone and everyone, just as you wanted. By reverse engineering the artifacts, you managed to unravel the arcane words, and have finally comprehended magic at the deepest level. You could create any spell with your near unlimited mana, and there was no one in the world who could pose a threat to you, short of the Gods themselves. Though you were over 80 in age, your body was effectively immortal now, so you appeared only in your early twenties. With your overwhelming power, you easily ascended the throne of Axalan, obliterating anyone along your way, including the current king and his supporters.

Having spent the vast majority of your life travelling and researching alone, you kicked back and reveled in debauchery as soon as you became king. Seeing as you had near unlimited stamina, it was quite possible you may have impregnated every woman in the kingdom. After all, appearance was no issue when you could simply adjust their looks to appeal to you. Consent was also not a factor, of course. All minds bend to your will, though some particularly willful girls you opted not to manipulate, since you enjoyed watching them struggle against the pleasure.

Eventually though, endless orgies got boring, and it was time yet again for your conquest, though calling it conquest was a bit generous. With a snap of your fingers, an entire city would be leveled by a meteor, and none could oppose you. It was probably at this point that the Gods got themselves involved, since they likely predicted your inevitable ascension to godhood and wished to prevent that to preserve the balance of power. Their first action was to grant their powers to a chosen one, a hero prophesied to rise up against the darkness. Unfortunately for them, prophecies were not absolute, and you slew the first hero without ever knowing. To this day, you still aren't really sure who the first one was because of how insignificant they were. Despite this victory, fate was against you, and repeating such a victory would prove to be more and more difficult. At the same time, the power level of the land rose, and suddenly everyone was born wielding magic. The average peasant was able to master arcane concepts which took you decades. The Gods were sparing no effort to remove you before you became a true nuisance. Greater and more skilled heroes appeared, sometimes together to form parties, backed up by the remaining nations on Karne which weren't under your control. It was to one such party that you were defeated.

Fate is difficult to escape, and though you had centuries to ponder, at the time of your defeat, you still lacked the power. As such, your defeat was pre-ordained. The hero, the White Lily she called herself, as well as her party of misfit adventurers lead the armies of the resistance and delivered to you defeat after defeat. When you think back to those days, one critical mistake you vowed to fix was getting more competent subordinates. While you were more than a match for any one of them singularly, even you could not be everywhere at once at full power. This culminated in a final battle at the fields of Uija, where your army was defeated and scattered, and though you unleashed every spell in your arsenal, you could not defeat the champion of the Gods, despite her stupid name. Fortunately, she was a hero through and through, which meant she was not the type to kill someone who was down for the count. Instead of just lopping your head off and being done with it, she and her allies cast a powerful spell which would theoretically seal you for all of eternity, as if that was better than just regular . Luckily for you, no spell ever lasts for all of eternity, so you were content to be patient and await the day the seal weakens enough for you to break free.

And that day is now. For the past centuries you could feel the cracks widening, but today was the day you could finally break free and feel your limbs for the first time in over a millennia. With an thundering splitting sound, the seal shattered, as did the earth in a 50 meter radius around you, leaving you in a crater. In your mind, you had envisioned a grand return, with glorious fanfare in the background. In reality, you faceplanted onto the ground, gasping for breath while simultaneously dry-heaving. Definitely pathetic, but at least there was no one here to witness it. As it turns out, being stuck in an arcane seal for over 1000 years was definitely not good for your body, and you had to manually breath for several minutes before your body finally remembered it could do that automatically. Your limbs were certainly weaker than before, as is your magic. There would be no more meteor dropping until you could recover to full strength.

Slowly and painfully, you hauled yourself onto a nearby rock and sat down, breathing heavily. Now free from the seal, your thoughts are more focused, clear, and you could now establish a purpose for yourself in this world which has forgotten you.

Feel free to leave comments, suggestions, criticisms as you like. I'm just trying to improve. Also feel free to tell me which path I should focus on, if any. Finally, add your own branches if you like.