I’ll bet you didn’t know he killed my brother. Or that I even had a brother. Yep, shoved him right off a cliff, just because he showed an ounce of promise. My dad was a murderer. That’s why they exiled him in the first place (this was before he went to work for the government).

        This is the man praised for building an inescapable jail for some poor bloke who was already born cursed! He tried to trap me the same way, until he needed a guinea pig to test his escape plan on.

        You know he made me jump first, don’t you? Needed to see if his little “invention” worked before he tried it himself.

        Hubris, my ass. I didn’t deviate from his flight plan because I was proud or excited; I didn’t have any pride left at all. Truth is, I would have been happy to burn or melt or drown to get away from the bastard.

        I mean, think about it: you're telling me that Daedalus, probably the greatest inventor who ever lived, a man who literally gave man wings, couldn’t manage to build an altimeter?

        That’s why I had to fake my own death. I knew he wouldn’t risk his own freedom to look for me or my body. I packed a bedsheet as a parachute and got Apollo to catch me in his hand right before I hit the water. I've been hiding out ever since.

        Say, you're not going to tell anyone else about this, right? You can't repeat this to anyone. Promise? Yeah, hit me again.

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-Mark Hendrickson, Spellbinder, Summer 2024