After the incredibly awkward dinner, I was told to return alone. Figures. I couldn't manage to ask Albert about how to control my powers. The Hitler thing had been more of a haze than I cared to remember. Magic sometimes functioned with intent instead of the actual rules I came to learn.
Anyways. I am stuffed now. I am gonna go to sleep.
-----
Arthur's Pov
Arthur sat in the family gallery. He wasn't doing anything. Just drinking from a small, pristine glass bottle. The Goldencross gallery had the photos of every member of the family over the last thousand years. Half of these photos were older than the mansion itself. And it was an old mansion, mind you.
He was sitting on the floor. Above his head hung a photo of a beautiful brunette. If it were shown to Agatha, she would recognize that woman as her mother, Eleanor. A file lay open right beside him. On it was a photo of Eleanor.
His brother had gone all out to spite him. Why wouldn't he? James had been after her. Albert and Helen had clothed and fed her, too, while he ran off to make the world a safer place for her. She was not just his daughter. Albert and Helen considered her theirs, too.
He had legitimately made a whole official report about everything he found. It was clinical and efficient. With no extra details. Just like any other report he had made to him over the years.
Arthur never told anyone. But he regretted sending her away a lot. But he had been younger then. More stubborn. Almost 40 years had passed since she left. At first, he thought that she and that wolf man of hers would get a reality check and come back in a week. After all, from the moment she was born, she had been bathed in gold. What could that scholarship student of hers give her?
(Supernaturals live longer, but their babies are fewer due to low fertility.)
But when she did not come. He went to find her. Dragging her back, before the next consolidation occurred. Albert had tried to stop him, Margaret and Helen tried to stop him. Even Robert and Sybil came to beg. But he was not a man who stopped.
(Consolidation refers to the solidifying of the timestream. Once consolidated, the time cannot be changed without using an Origin Crystal. It could only be seen.
Number of Origin Crystals presently known to exist - 0)
But Eleanor had run. No matter how many times he dragged her back, she ran. And when, in his rage, he killed her lower, she broke.
It was a simple matter before consolidation. They both knew that either of them could go back a few minutes and change it. He hadn't meant to go that far; it was just that the wolf had been too weak. It was an accident, really. But seeing the love of her life die right in front of her had tightened her resolve and broken something between them. He still remembered her haunting scream and broken eyes. She took him and vanished. The world of mages knew her as a prodigy. It just hadn't realized how much of a prodigy she was.
She vanished, along with her lover, and no one could find her. Arthur Goldencross himself couldn't find her. He had swallowed his pride and asked the other 3 clans for help. Still, no one could find her.
Yes, there were a total of 4 clans at the top. All of them are Time mages. Arthur sat at the top, and they were like his generals. It was scary to see how these fewer than 50 mages controlled the world. They did not rule in the light due to the covenant, but, among them, they controlled every man and organization that mattered. Every supernatural clan obeyed their will. They looked themselves, hired hunters, and called in favors. Still, no sign of his daughter.
As he grew older than 40, he slowly realized that there were things more important than pride. And that maybe, his father and grandfather did not know everything. An excursion had taken them too soon. And he had been thrust into a role at 20, he thought he had decades to prepare for. Chaos was what he inherited; control was what kept him going. Control had been his creed. He had established the council era through the sheer might of his shoulder and will. He had created the Time alliance through blood, sweat, and sacrifice.
By the time his eldest grew up, he had the world under his control. Just not his daughter. They said that he had too much pride. That he had united the clans in his arrogance. He had let them think that. It was better to be feared. But the truth was, he had done all this for one reason alone. During the last to last excursion, the world was divided. And so a lot of clans, even Time clans, lost a lot of people. Less due to the excursion. More due to backstabbing and politics. He had lost a lot of people. And he said never again. He will lose no one anymore.
A ridiculous promise. But one he made into reality. The world could not make him lose anyone if he controlled it. The Time clan that had backstabbed his father was forced to fight to the last man. He did not stop. The races of the world united. He did not stop. When the Time clans united, he still did not stop. He was the greatest mage from the greatest clan of mages to have ever lived. And no matter who or what stood in his way. He did not stop.
After the second, no major world wars ever occurred. They were too terrified of him to occur.
He had single-handedly destroyed the last excursion so quickly and decisively, using only the other time that the world never even realized that it had been under threat before it was over.
But he still lost someone, someone precious to him, by his own actions no less. Arthur Goldencross was a hard man. But he was hard no more.
He had placed that fake as his daughter, so that when she came back, she could pick up where she left off. But she didn't come back. He raged for the better part of the first decade. He wanted an apology and penance. For the rest, he wanted her to just come back. A simple apology would suffice.
By the next half, he would have agreed to the marriage. And as her disappearance neared 20 years. He would have danced at her wedding and invited everyone he could find. His pride broke 18 years ago with the life crystal above his head. His family still loved him and still respected him for all he was, even today. But they hated him for what happened to Eleanor. They never even found her body. Let alone someone to blame. He had kept the fake still. In hopes that she would just come back and tell them that it was a lie.
And just like she had done the impossible by hiding from them. She had tricked the crystal, too. That's why he didn't let them hold her wake. That's why she had no grave in the family cemetery.
And today he had seen her daughter. The granddaughter he never had. He knew Albert wouldn't say anything without confirming first. But he couldn't accept it. Accepting it meant he had waited eighteen years for nothing. His suspicions and accusations about impure motives in their love had been for nothing. That his little girl died in exile for nothing.
Yes, he blamed himself for her death. Eleanor was dead because of him. He had known she had done something forbidden in her bid to escape. Nothing else made sense. That was also the only other plausible reason for her natural death, as the report had stated.. Nothing else could kill a time mage.
The accusations he had leveled and the actions he had taken rose from the darkness in the gallery as dark, shadowy phantoms of regret and loss. It had all been for nothing. After all, what impure motive was there to a man who died in exile for the love of his wife?
Just then, the door opened. Bringing bright yellow light with it. And Albert stepped in.