Far Away and Long Ago
An Introduction
By Sif Shadowheart
…
Gwrtheyrn of the Cornovii was born on the Summer Solstice of Five-Hundred Thirty anno domini, the calendar system that the Romans had brought to his homeland along with their legions.
It was a heavy name for a small babe come a moon early, but given who his parents were, what families and tribes he hailed from, it was not unfitting for a babe born during a Great Rite of his mother’s and father-dam’s people with the dark brown hair of his father Artōrius Castus Aurelianus, son himself of a Roman legionnaire commander and the daughter of the last chieftain of the Cornovii by the name of Rhiannon, and the shifting deep blue-green eyes of the Caledonii that marked him as the son of the daughter of Myrddin Wyllt of the Caledonii. Angharad of the Cornovii had been taken by the eyes her daughter Branwen was given by her father. Indeed, it seemed a trait that passed down through the blood, as her son had them as well despite the rich-earth eyes of her chosen husband.
The Cornovii were known for two things among the other peoples of Britannia: their warriors fierce enough to gain their own legion in the Roman ranks and their ability to adapt.
When Rome came, the Cornovii fought and in the face of Roman discipline the Cornovii fell.
Then they adapted.
Rhiannon of the Cornovii was only the most recent daughter of their tribe to marry a warrior of Rome heritage and she wouldn’t be the last, as proven by her son’s bride.
She was not significant in this.
No, the significance of Rhiannon of the Cornovii was in the blood in her veins, much like that of her son’s wife.
For Rhiannon was the daughter of the last chieftain of the Cornovii, who had been slain by Vortigern in that usurper’s attempt to unite all of the Britons in the face of invasion from both the West and the North, giving her son the right of rule over the Cornovii, especially with the endorsement by the legendary sorcerer Myrddin gained through a pact of marriage between Myrddin’s only daughter and the young Artōrius.
A pact which was sealed by the birth of a child and so with his legacy secured, Artōrius went to war against the Saxon invaders who Vortigern had invited in to “help” the Britons fight the Picts and the Scots only to turn on the Britons in the end.
He was named before the Old Gods as Gwrtheyrn and his father’s God as Honorius.
But he wasn’t born under a charmed star for all that his birth was portentous and before he reached eight summers old his father was slain on the fields of Camlann, leaving the by-then young Prince a King and his mother as his Regent until he became a man.
Their home of Viroconium flourished in those years under first Artōrius then Branwen then Gwrtheryn.
He had no love of war but it seemed war had a love of him and before he’d bedded his first woman he’d blooded his sword.
For the enemy that had slain his father wasn’t satisfied with the blood of one man of Aurelian blood but wished to destroy them all.
Medraut, they called him.
A sorcerer, and more the apprentice of Gwrtheryn’s grandfather Myrddin, Medraut wished to end their line for daring to blend with that of Rome.
First he came for his father, then a few years later his mother, all the while testing his magics against that of his old teacher and the young King – to no avail, for Gwrtheryn was not the grandson of Myrddin for naught.
Gwrtheryn refused to live his life afraid of every shadow and in time took a wife and sired a daughter with more children to come – or so they thought.
Medraut, it seemed, had learned from both his mistakes and those that came before him and hatched an insidious plot: striking a deal of his own with the Saxon invaders that plagued the isle from the East to the high mountains of the West.
In the end, Medraut was destroyed by the boy-become-a-man that he’d hated for his impure blood and great magics in equal measure, but not without cursing Gwrtheryn in turn.
For a man and sorcerer who had a strong affinity for fire he bound him to the sea.
For a line that had dirtied itself with Roman blood, Gwrtheryn would watch as his line withered and fell only to grow anew: over and over again for all of time.
…
Black Marsh Circle, Shropshire, UK; Midnight, Samhain, 1995
Ash turned, breath still heaving as he climbed back to his feet, knees quivering from the massive drain to his powers.
Not totally.
He wasn’t completely helpless until his power rested and recovered from the strain and snap and drain of the ritual to free him from his binding to this island.
It had been his home, once.
But with his family line diminished to a single, if sweet, orphaned wizard, it hadn’t been truly home for longer than Ash cared to admit.
He would stay - of course he would - for Harry even if the now-broken curse hadn’t scratched and clawed at him between the years between the moment of Harry’s orphaning to the moment he found the young boy thanks to the muggle love of paperwork and despite Albus Dumbledore’s best efforts to keep him hidden.
Magic, Dumbledore knew better than most in the modern era, Ash would give him that.
He’d effectively hidden Ash’s last descendant for years from anyone with so much as a drop of active magic from finding Harry’s residence.
Residence, not home, for even a total idiot would realize after learning about Harry and the Dursleys that he’d never been welcomed there.
Suffered, perhaps, but not welcomed.
Which in turn led to Ash being able to find him: via muggle paperwork when Harry’s first teacher in the public system lodged a report of potential neglect if not out-and-out abuse regarding one Harry James Potter, Number Four Privet Drive, Surrey.
For many years during what is now called the middle ages, he thought that the plagues might overcome that Saxon cunt’s spellwork.
However as he had come to learn, it was an insidious thing at work in the veins of his descendants and they always survived even if only one in number to pass it down.
It had kept Harry alive when by all rights he should have died under a madman’s wand.
That madman was well and truly gone now.
Ash had seen to that, no matter how much that meddling old bastard Dumbledore had tried to keep him out of it.
There were times, however, where he wondered if Harry would’ve survived anyway, with the clever spellwork of his mother in play, only to die under the not-so-tender mercies of Vernon and Petunia Dursley.
They’d gotten their commuppance as well, in time, and now his last living family member was a sweet, bright, young wizard with nothing to fear.
Ash had also seen to that, he’d had to once he got invested and realized that if he succeeded at what he’d been planning for, for centuries to break his curse, Harry wouldn’t be able to rely on that same curse to keep him alive.
At least until he sired an heir.
Medraut’s curse could be a fucker of a thing at times, and had left more than one orphan in its wake.
Ash’s portion was done, now.
An alignment, a ritual, and a lot of blood and power was what it took to break his shackles.
Clever, he’d give Medraut that.
The Saxon mercenary mage had been clever, binding him in such a way that even if he had the power to break it – which he’d always had done – he would have to wait for the correct alignment to manage it.
A precise alignment of the stars and Earth that took fifteen hundred years and then some to occur.
The fucker.
His life, while bound to both his bloodline and this island, hadn’t been wasteful or a punishment.
Not at all.
Once he accepted it, accepted all that he had become and had been done not just to him but his family and people, he’d rather enjoyed it.
He was wealthy beyond measure with only a few older creatures such as the ancient vampires of the world outpacing him from sheer time to accrue wealth, he was as young and pleasing to the eye as he’d been when the curse had been layered upon him, perhaps even more fit from centuries swimming among and below the waves or fighting in a battle when he became bored (except for the brief comfortably plump phase he went through during the Renaissance), and he was, above all, powerful.
It was inevitable over time that he would gain allies, as he rarely concerned himself with the affairs of the land beyond that of his blood, when his curiosity would lead him to a witch-burning he would interrupt or finding a vampire trapped and about to be given to the sun or beheaded or staked.
He went through such a prolific meddling period at one point that the legend of the Selkie had arisen from him, the male version of a Siren with the ability to shift-shape.
It was rather flattering, honestly.
Except for the part where he was blamed for every indiscretion a sailor’s wife partook in for centuries thereafter.
Ash could always tell his blood family despite the rumors.
He rather thought after so long bound as much to them as they were to his curse that he always would.
“Hello, Traveler.” Ash greeted the ancient vampire who had somehow between his saving his lover from another master vampire in the 1300’s and the years in-between become one of his only true friends by his chosen moniker. He’d heard him coming from over a mile out, by the parting of the air before the unbelievably fast creature who, if he was to be trusted and Harry rather thought he might, was a Welshman (as things were now reckoned) even older than Gwrtheryn with a name to match even if Gwrtheryn was one of the only ones who remembered it.
It was from the Traveler that Ash – or Drust as he’d been going by that century when he’d saved Baltasar from his own idiocy whilst roaming the killing fields of the Norman Invasion and let himself be caught of all damn fool things – had learned of vampires and other creatures of magic that were starting to come to England’s shores in greater and greater numbers. An exchange that was hardly one way, given that Asherah’s island home and the ones neighboring it to the West, were well springs of power that had given rise to their own beings and creatures of magic. Not least among them being Ash himself.
At first the debt bonded them, then in time an appreciation of each other arose, and before Ash really knew it as the years churned on he had a vampire for his only true friend given that while his island was gifted in magic it wasn’t teeming with others who didn’t experience time as a fleeting thing.
He’d lost enough friends and family and loved ones during his first century. Thereafter he didn’t – willingly – attach himself to humans with their mayfly lives. He might have been something like human once, back when he was a boy learning to fight with sword and magic, then a young king with a pretty wife and a beautiful daughter.
But the Saxon’s death-curse laid upon Medraut that was unleashed with that bastard’s death had well and truly accomplished taking vengeance for Medraut and there was little left in Asherah Potter of Gwrtheryn of the Cornovii besides his memories.
“How does it feel to be home again, old friend?” The Traveler asked as he came to a stop before the tattooed form of one of his oldest friends, indeed his only friend outside of his lover and constant companion Baltasar.
“Strange.” Ash’s mouth twitched into the roguish smirk that had been his to own since before he became immortal. He glanced at the current visage his friend was wearing - as the Traveler jumped bodies as easily as shedding clothes - with idle curiosity. A swarthy Saracen-type for the moment. Interesting. He always knew the Traveler for whom he was. He could feel him even when the master did his best to fool him. It had led to some interesting escapades over the ages. “And free.”
Shropshire was one of the extant-counties of England that had once been part of his father’s – and then his – kingdom, traditional tribal lands of the Cornovii.
Their lands had spread over the now English-Welsh border, giving Ash quite the swathe of land to call “home” if one wished.
The Traveler, apparently, wished.
To Ash, he hadn’t had a real home besides the sea in centuries, only rising above the waves in recent years to check his calculations to see how much longer he had to wait to complete his ritual or to meet with the Traveler or pick up a newspaper, at least that was his way before Harry.
In ages past he would also leave the lulling comfort of his home below the waves to see to his investments or in search of food other than the fish and seafood and kelp he ate in his seal form.
Or, when he was feeling particularly bored, start a new legend or myth.
He did so love bards.
No, he corrected himself. They weren’t called bards anymore. Storytellers, songwriters, novelists, poets. The wielders of the mighty word.
His mother’s influence he thought, the relentless Cornovii heart of him at war with his Roman practicality.
Traveler took his words with a simple slow nod of understanding, having never doubted Ash’s ability to achieve what he sought, merely what the outcome of breaking the binding might be.
He would never admit it, even under the pain of burning or death, but he had known fear for the first time in ages at the thought of the binding being removed also taking back what it had given his friend: his impressive and unique form of unending life. He feared what he might find in this simple stone circle in Shropshire. A human born in 530 AD should only be bone and dust. Not standing strong and ebullient with the remnants of ashes and blood surrounding him even as his golden torc – the one remnant of his old life he had kept all this time beyond his tribal markings – shining with a dull sheen against his sweat-slicked sun-browned skin.
With the adoption of the wizarding child, Traveler had felt hope that Asherah would do all in his power to survive, where once he might not have been as concerned with survival over freedom, but still…he had worried.
A foolish worry, or so it seemed.
Even Ash’s scent was as it always was: a strange but tempting mélange that at times reminded him of the Fae but without the unrelenting thirst that came with it, tinged with wisps of ember and the sea.
“And your powers?”
In wordless answer, Ash’s smirk stretched into a manic grin as he held up his hands: a spark staring and then growing into a ball of fire in one and an orb of spinning water in the other that he slammed together in a crash of hissing steam.
“Restored fully, though I’ll be tired for a time.”
It had been far too long since fire had answered his call, that part, fully half of himself it had seemed at times, intrinsically bound by the curse.
“My my.” The Traveler answered Asherah’s smirk with one of his own. “The fully empowered son of King Arthur running around the world, what in the name of the blood will happen now I wonder?”
“At the moment?” Ash arched a brow then closed his eyes and used an infinitesimal amount of power to clothe himself in the leather he was fond of, with a simple “t-shirt” made of silk covering the tattoos upon his chest.
Gods-bless the modern age: he didn’t have to cover his head with a hood to shield his eyes and keep mortal humans from remarking over his tribal marking that ran from temple-to-temple over his eyes and the bridge of his nose in a solid stripe of earth-brown pigment.
He’d grown mortally-tired of hooded capes and cloaks, even if he would reluctantly don one to keep from drawing unneeded attention when squiring Harry around the wizarding world.
Being a seal was much simpler than dealing with human concepts of modesty and attire, and simpler yet than the trends wizards tended to cling to with utter zealotry, at least before the movements of the last thirty years.
From Saxon invasions and the arrival wholesale of Christian missionaries to the nineteen-sixties he’d spend far too much time worried about the state of his dress revealing his tribal markings and outing him as an outsider.
He might be immortal, recovering from wounds that should have killed him time and again as he’d found over the years, but even so he had no desire to experience the pyre for himself.
Ash stretched his arms over his head and blew out a deep breath.
“I’m going to continue taking care of Harry and do some traveling on our breaks.” He admitted with a roll of expressive sea-green eyes for his “employment contract” that Dumbledore liked to pretend had any actual sway over him. But after the disaster of Harry’s first year at the anachronistic Hogwarts, over Ash’s dead and rotting body would Harry ever find himself in danger from a teacher again. Even if that had meant taking the place of Defense teacher - and subsequently breaking a curse on the position - himself. “There’s places and locales I have heard tell of – from yourself and others – that I wish to see with my own eyes.” He gave a soft sigh, eyes tracking over the moonlit fields that had once been his home. “This island has no more secrets to discover, no more hidden charms to unearth: it simply is. I wish to know more than this. I wish Harry to know more than this and the small box that the wizards are so insistent on shoving him into.”
“Ah,” The Traveler smiled and clapped him on the back. “My progeny will welcome you should your travels and wanders take you near him. Or you are welcome in Paris, though I imagine the foibles and follies of the Council wouldn’t be much to your liking. In the meantime,” he arched an inky brow at his old friend. “Baltasar has taken rooms in London for us, you are welcome to join as we discuss a few things that are growing on the horizon.”
Intrigued, Ash nodded and then gave the Traveler a wicked grin disappearing from sight with nary a sound.
Rolling black eyes, the Traveler ran, clearing the distance between the Hoarstones, also called Black Marsh, in no time at all given his great age to find Ash already greeting Baltasar at the vampire-owned hotel in London they’d taken accommodation at.
“Recovered powers other than your fire, have you?” He asked, unimpressed with the showy display.
It was hardly the most startling thing he’d seen his friend do over the last centuries after all.
The Traveler greeted his lover and human servant Baltasar after the handsome man of Ausci origins finished fussing over Asherah.
The three chatted as Ash tucked into the meal Baltasar had ordered in anticipation of his arrival, the vampire sipping on a glass of blood as the humans - or human-adjacent - ate the luscious beef wellington with accompaniment and rolled the rich red around his palate in hedonistic enjoyment.
It was often that the Traveler lamented Asherah’s own undying state.
He would’ve made quite the vampire with his personality and lust for life.
Even if two-thirds of that life had been lived below the waves.
After all, to make a vampire the human has to die, something that his old friend was categorically incapable of.
“First things first.” Baltasar announced in his deceptively soft voice after Ash finished his meal and the tray was removed, handing over a file. “As you asked when your freedom came within reach: your investment portfolio for the Americas and other overseas locations.”
“Thank you for this.” Ash told them, setting the file aside to peruse later. With Harry in his custody and only yet a teenager, it would be years yet before he truly was able to put the Isles behind him. Ash had already begun making plans to leave long before his line was pared down to Harry and gave him firmer roots to England, his old friends doing in person what he could not from abroad.
Especially a hundred years ago.
But that was fine, he could wait to see what Traveler and Baltasar had set up for him abroad.
He had time.
If there was one truth he had learned over the years it was that there was always both too much and not enough when it came to time.
The Traveler waved his thanks away.
It was nothing between friends as old as they, and so he told him before changing the subject to the news he’d alluded to at the stone circle.
“There is talk of the preternatural coming out of the shadows, seeking tolerance if not acceptance and rights under the law.” The Traveler told him with a sigh and an eyeroll. It wasn’t his favorite plan and he saw much drama, pain, and irritation coming from it. But, it is what it is. The decision had been made, now they had to deal with it.
With the advancements that the humans made, it was already an open secret.
Seeking legislation to go along with the knowledge of what went bump in the night was merely…prudent planning.
He and his would be safe, none of them had any intention of complying with demands of registration or whatever insipid policies were mandated by the humans.
They would go on as they always had.
Save for perhaps the Mother of Darkness herself, there was not a single soul - living or undead - who could force him otherwise.
“That’s going to go over about as well as a red dress in a convent.” Ash noted with a soft snort. “I haven’t heard news of the wizards planning on following them.”
“Depends.” Baltasar shrugged. He’d paid a bit more attention to the machinations of the various races than his lover and master, but then he was younger. He had less recourse against them if he was caught alone without his master or vampires who respected that a human servant was the living voice and will of their master. “If things go at least in a zero-sum manner they likely will, especially in the Americas. The more traditional cultures will stay hidden and laugh at the foolish others who thought that muggles had evolved to a state of acceptance.”
“You’re the guinea pigs of the supernatural world.” Ash laughed a little at that. “Well, you are the fastest and in many ways the strongest so it has merit in protecting the less-defensible peoples from the backlash that the humans are going to dish out with their worldview being shattered.”
“You’re human.” Traveler pointed out with a laugh.
“I used to be human.” Ash rolled his eyes. “The very same as you, though under different circumstances of change. I’ll hardly be more welcomed with open arms than any other creature that goes bump in the night.”
“But you’re not a predator by nature.” Baltasar made the distinction. “Vampires are and it’s only that we’re nearly on par numbers-wise with humans that will make this work - along with the powers that masters can use to… influence events.”
“You forget that ship-sinking phase he went through during the Elizabethan era, my darling.” Traveler reminded him. “Our Asherah can be very predatory.”
“The Inquisition irritated me.” Ash shrugged. “Nearly as much as the tales coming from the New World of depredations. They didn’t deserve those treasures after what they’d done to get them.”
“And the sailors?”
“Collateral damage.”
“Predator.” Traveler corrected with a smirk. “Just of a different nature.”
“Given how many conquests I’ve lived through.” Ash snorted then rose to his feet. “I think I’m entitled.” He lifted the file and repeated his thanks for their hospitality, then disappeared once more.
“Oh, he’s going to have fun in America.” Baltasar predicted with a laugh. “Especially the South, when he finally decides to go sight-seeing.”
“Good thing he’s not bound to the sea anymore.” The Traveler grinned himself. “Or I’d venture there’d be multiple freak squalls and sudden shipwrecks ravaging the U.S. coastline soon.”
…
In the last fifteen hundred years – give or take – Ash had procured many homes on the island he was bound to, even if most of his time was spent in his comfortably furnished cave on an island that was little more than a rock off the now-Welsh coast.
That was his home, where he’d found himself after being bound and cast into the sea.
It was supposed to be his prison, he’d made it his home.
More fool the Saxon cunt that layered that death-curse over Medraut, as it took more power than either of them had wielded against him to do more than fulfill the basic tenents of the curse, leaving him more than enough room to maneuver within and through it, either by shape-shifting to swim from rock to coast with his ability to magically transport himself hobbled or in a variety of other ways that he’d spent over a thousand years poking holes in the curse meant to drive him mad.
Knowing he would shortly need to contact both his lawyer and goblin banker to begin the process of cutting most of his ties to the home that became his prison, deciding to become truly a multi-national creature: Swiss banks he’d heard were the best, especially when run by goblins, and while he’d keep a home or two in his home country he’d heard wonderful things about the warm waters of fantastical places like the Caribbean, Fiji, and Hawaii.
Not to mention, given the status of his last remaining family member, now on the fiftieth – approximately – generation from his own daughter, he may decide to settle near them once more when Harry eventually decides where he wants to put down roots after he graduates.
Ah well.
Harry James Potter was only just fifteen.
He had years yet to make such decisions, and Ash would be right there supporting him in whatever way he required.
…
Cleaning up his affairs was simpler than it would be for a mortal, though it still took time that Ash used to do some research on the current state of the world beyond Britain in between teaching at Hogwarts and training Harry privately in his…less accepted talents he’d inherited from the Potter bloodline.
Necromancy wasn’t a skill or talent that Ash himself possessed, it being an addition to the Potter Line predating one of his descendants marrying in, but he didn’t let that stop him.
Or the small factor of it being strictly illegal in Britain to the point that even speaking about necromancy with too much interest might see one carted away to Azkaban.
Irritating fuckers.
Necromancy was an innate, inborn talent that demanded to be used.
Harry could no more refrain from using it than he could cut off a limb - but if the wizards had their way, that’s exactly what he should do rather than use the “dark” talent he’d been gifted by his father’s bloodline.
But, he was thrilled to learn, not every country was that way.
For so long he hadn’t had to concern himself with anything outside of his homeland that he found himself impressed with the global mentality that the mortals had acquired. How open to certain things some places were. He’d stayed abreast of things mostly by swimming to the coast at least once a week to purchase newspapers and periodicals once printing became a thing. That was a fun time.
He still missed Will Shakespeare and Geoff Chaucer the witty fucks.
King James he could’ve done without, especially that mis-translated trash that was accredited to him.
If pressed to pick his least favorite monarch he’d watched rise and fall, Ash would have to flip a coin between either Ӕthelred and James the Sixth/First, though James’s crazed cousin Bloody Mary was high up on that list.
Mary’s Spanish husband and zealotry brought the Inquisition to his home, giving rise to what the Traveler still called his “ship sinking period” as Ash’s only real form of retaliation.
It certainly made him glad that after his death, no other member of his bloodline ever married into one of the many royal families that eventually filled his homeland, since that would’ve been a bitch to deal with thanks to his curse.
Asherah kept his “rock” as his lawyer called it, along with his cabin on Loch Ness that he’d made into his and Harry’s home years before, and a townhouse in London, the rest from the shabbiest flat to the finest estate were all sold off other than the land he’d kept but never modified or updated in and around his original home near Viroconium.
The bones and ashes of his immediate family lay there.
He would never let it go so long as there was breath in his lungs even if he only visited every Yule to spend the Rite with his only true family instead of ever-more-distant descendants, Harry excluded of course, as once the child came into his care, Harry had joined him on the pilgrimage back to the land of their forefathers.
Ash saw the Traveler and Baltasar again before they left London for their home in Paris, promising to visit within the year – which given that none of them had to worry about time was the mortal equivalent of somewhen in the next week or so – learning more during their second visit of the planned “reveal” of the preternatural.
Idiocy as far as he was concerned, but vampires, therianthropes, and necromancers didn’t listen to the council of their own kind let alone an ancient sorcerer and shapeshifter.
They had dinner together where Asherah learned that the slight changes he’d experienced in his power as it replenished, making him realize just how hobbled he’d been by having to work around and through the curse-binding, were changing him in another way.
Specifically: changing his scent.
Where before it reminded Traveler of a less-tempting Fae with hints of fire and the sea, now it was rich with the ozone-shock of a lightning strike, a scent that Traveler hadn’t known in ages since the Christian faith had tried to extinguish most of the powerful magic bloodlines and forcing the Statute of Secrecy, making him think of a lightning storm on a summer sea both warning and beckon all at once like a siren from myth.
Come, touch, but pay a price.
Ash would have to be careful around young vampires, and potentially even therianthropes, who were too naïve and/or brash to read the warning and would fall to the temptation.
Gods-knew that Ash would have no problem smacking them down for the offense.
The gods or nature or simply magic itself had put in place a curious set of checks-and-balances for all living things, even the most powerful.
Vampires had several lethal weaknesses to balance their physical power.
Fae were vulnerable in similar if different ways themselves.
Weres and shifters didn’t have the extended lifespan of other magical species.
And magic-users?
Magic users were in many ways the weakest but balanced that with their ability to strike back at even the oldest Fae or vampire with their magic.
Like with many other species, age equated to power for magic humans.
Now that Ash was unleashed, he was a force to be reckoned with.
The Traveler half-wished he would be in the New World to see it.
Gods-knew, none of those young upstarts would know what to do with themselves if they ran afoul of the Traveler’s friend, save perhaps The Chevalier, Obsidian Butterfly, and the Dragon’s Roman.
It was tempting to accompany his friend to the States when the time comes just to watch the ripples and fireworks he was sure to cause but being a member of the Council wasn’t all fun and games despite how many of the children in the New World behaved and he couldn’t leave the other councilors to their plots unchecked while he ran around the globe with Asherah.
Pity.
His friend was always good for a laugh or a fight, and when you lived forever neither was something to be discounted.
…