1 Over and Over
"The sky, heaven, your friends. You will become immortal. You will become eternal, infinite. You must accept that you will live to see your loved ones die, to see their grandchildren die, and their children die, and their children after that. You must live to see the end and the end to see you. Can you accept that? Can you accept that burden, that loneliness?"
---
On the peak of Mt. Helvellynit. Year 1312.
"Witch, why do I have to do this? Can't there be another way?"
Demophon sat exhausted and tired from his long journey up the snowy mountain.
The Witch in her long silky robe and tall foreboding hat leaned forward over the crystal ball.
The winter wind raged outside as the warm interior walls of the hut glistened in a soft red glow. They stared at each other. Demophon sitting on a small stool as the Witch stood tall over him.
She spoke in an old wrinkled tone, "your journey was a tough one, traveler. You saw beautiful sights, met amazing people, made many friends, many lovers, lost many more, killed even more. And this is the only way to bring your sister back."
"But there should be another way?" he asked again, his face turning scared, his eyes lost in the cycle.
"No... The cycle of yin and yang must continue. For the lives you have taken, you must give yours. A thousand years for a hundred lives, for a hundred sins. You must live every single one. For every second. In pain in remorse. And once your time is up. Then your sister will return."
The Witch flung her wrinkled hands into the air. Her black nails sparking against the red candles. Her black robes flowing with them. Like a black curtain to his life, the world began to spin.
Sinking.
Falling.
Screaming.
The screams of the souls he'd taken.
The war he fought.
The yelling, the pain, he felt every slash, every stab, every kill, every single one.
The running, the dying, over and over and-
---
Demophon climbed back down the mountain. The ringing in his head. The hands climbing from the snow, reaching for his legs. His body tumbling.
Falling.
Sinking.
He slid down the mountain. Over and over and over. His head crushed. His body split apart. Against rocks, ice, trees. He died over and over again.
Over and over. He came back to life. Over and over.
He ran across the world. Over and over.
Dying over and over.
Years passed.
Decades passed.
Centuries passed.
---
Seven hundred years later. Somewhere in the northern part of the United States.
"So there I was. On a mountain making a deal with a witch. She was all wrinkly and shit. Then she looked into her magic ball and the next thing I knew. Bam! I was hearing voices in my head. Nonstop... Crazy right?" exclaimed Damon, his drunk face running in circles.
Hill, a slightly less drunk woman stared back at him, confused.
"Is that a show or something?" she asked, leaning back on the barstool, sipping her beer.
Damon looked at the palm of his hand. He tried to remember the last seven hundred years. But it all turned into a blurry mess. A mess of nothing but boredom and pain.
"Hill, I think I've gone insane, hahaha," he laughed to himself.
His head spinning. He drank and drank. All the problems seemed to slowly disappear.
"It's just three hundred more years! Just three hundred more and I get to see her again!"
Hill leaned forward also drunk.
"Good for you man, but, is she really worth it? I'd say the show needs more of a compelling plot. Kinda seems a bit lackluster. Like, I would have killed myself after a hundred years," she said slowly sliding across the lacquered bar.
The night was deep into its third quarter.
"Well, that's the point Hill. I can't die. No matter what..."
He looked into the bottles on the other side of the bar. His face reflecting the same as it did hundreds of years ago. Blue eyes. Blonde hair. Blood.
"I can't even remember her face. How she looked... All I can remember is the feeling. The way she talked to me. Loved me. It felt forever. Unlike this impermanent permanent life. Immortal bullshit of a life! I was thinking of ending it all the other day. Just splat against the wall! Over and over again I think of ending it. I've tried. I have tried so much. For so long. After two hundred years, I tried jumping into the ocean. I drowned myself. Then two years later I was fished onto the beach, and let me tell you, I'm never doing that again, I was awake for every second under there... Wanna hear an even worse one. Once I jumped into a nuke. Woke up all radiated and shit... No matter how many new skills, new books I read, the advancements the world has made. No matter how many bullets I take, how many heads I chop off, how many times I kill myself. It's over and over and over and over and over and over and-"
He turned to his left, "Hill, you still listening?"
Drip... Drip... Drip...
"Huh?"
He looked up at the ceiling. Blood dripping down.
Hill was dead in an instant. Her body crushed up against the ceiling like gravity was reversed. Damon watched as her skin slowly peeled, the gravity increasing, the magic spreading across her limbs and bones, and skin and hair. All until she-
Pop!
She exploded into a fountain of raining blood.
"What?" he said confused, almost like her death was just another out of the many.
He looked across the bar, a woman stood in an all-black suit with a long white tie. She tightened up her black gloves and stepped forward ready to throw down with Damon.
"You... You did this?" he asked.
She stood silently, "yes, Immortal!"
She stepped forward ready for the fight of her life, but he just sat there, not caring. He looked back up at the ceiling, at all the people in the bar. The people he knew, the people he pretended to care about. The people he spent days with, the people he saw around the town, the people he watched grow up, the kids of the parents, of the grandparents, of those parents of parents of parents. Every single one of them dead. And he didn't care. It was all just another name in the book. All dead. All of their bodies splat, killed, squished to mush. All of their faces gone, all their heads caved in, all their brains disintegrated to dough.
Damon turned back to the woman. Her powerful stance, straight and narrow, determined and angered.
"Not again..." he sighed in pain, his head swaying back and forth.
He drunkenly fell off the barstool, rolling across the ground, the dripping blood splashing against his grey sweater.
"Just kill me, lady," he groaned depressed.
The lady didn't respond, so he stopped and looked up at her serious face.
She slowly walked up to him. Her silver eyes, lush and bright, filled with determination. Her black hair, smooth and flat, pressed in a small bun.
She took off her gloves and pointed at Damon. He noticed that half of her fingernails were missing, bleeding.
She said, "sorry about this. But all Immortals must die!"
She pointed out her fingers and cast a magical spell on Damon.
Gravity Spell: [Weighted Pressure x50]
Thunk!
A wave of gravity pushed against Damon's body. It pressed him to the floor. Harder and harder. He felt his body squish and break and burst, all until-
Pop!
His clothes, his skin, his muscles, everything exploded under the pressure of the woman's gravity spell. It was like he had fallen from a plane and landed flat on solid concrete, all within seconds.
The woman stepped forward looking at Damon's mushed-up brains.
"Now all I have to do is take you back."
She pulled out a jar.
Slush!
Sloosh!
She stepped back confused as Damon's muscle and skin and bone and body all came back together. She watched as within five seconds his entire body was reconstructed from his feet all the way up to his fingertips.
He sat up, his naked bloody body.
"What was that...? Magic?" he asked not caring that he was just turned into a pile of mush.
The woman stood in shock. Her body paralyzed by how fast he regenerated. By the speed and position of his regrowth. At how he could come back from a mushy mess to a full-blown naked human within seconds.
"You... Are you really just an immortal?" she asked her silvery eyes widened in shock.
"What do you mean?" he asked back confused by her sentence. "Of course I'm immortal. Why wouldn't I be."
"Why wouldn't you? Do you not know? There are two types of Immortals. Regular Immortals and True Immortals. Which one are you?"
"I'm... I'm just Immortal."
"Just immortal? That was not just immortal that was..."
She couldn't understand what was happening. She couldn't understand the possibility of what she had just witnessed. An Immortal not from the organization. An Immortal without any knowledge of Witches or the secrets of his own Immortality. But he was still Immortal, or was he a True Immortal? Or was he something entirely different?
She went through hundreds and hundreds of possibilities but gave up quickly after coming to the realization that there was no need to find out who this person was. That all she needed to know was that he was immortal and that all she needed to do was kill. And kill. And kill. And kill she must.
She pointed out her fingers and sacrificed the rest of her fingernails. She sacrificed half of her blood. She sacrificed all of her energy. She sacrificed until she couldn't sacrifice any longer.
Gravity Spell: [Weighted Pressure x100]
Gravity Spell: [Feathered Fall x100]
Gravity Spell: [Reversed Pull x100]
She cast all of the spells she knew. All the types of ways she could use her magic.
And even after killing Damon, ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred times. All he did was come back the same. Immortal, without any exhaustion, without any resemblance of pain. He would come back with the same blue-eyed stare, the same bright blonde hair. The same engraved eyes, of tireless sleep, the look of boredom, of being lost, of being depressed.
The entire bar was now covered in his blood. Everything, from the walls to the windows, to the ceiling, to the shelves of alcohol. Every little inch was blown apart, and in the end, Damon still remained. His naked immortal body covered in blood and guts and gore.
The woman was defeated, so she slowly walked over and sat at the bar.
"I don't get it!? Why won't you die?!" she snapped frustrated and pissed off.
"Lady, I already told you. I'm immortal. I can't die," said Damon as he fell back into his pit of despair, into his pools of blood.
"But..." She reflected on her idea of immortality, "but that doesn't make sense. All Immortals die eventually. They're not all infinite."
She leaned forward, slumped and defeated. Damon slowly stood up, his body naked and exposed.
"I don't know where you come from lady. Where immortal people die, but I'm the real deal. I do not, ever, ever, ever, ever die. Well, not until..." He did the counting in his head, "not for another three hundred years. But if you can live that long, then sure go ahead, kill me, I'm not stopping you."
He looked at the woman and thought about the idea of killing her, about the idea of ending her life right then and there, but that idea slowly faded as a new idea came into his head. An idea of fun, of adventure, of the world of possibilities this woman could bring to him. He then thought about the magic she used, how clueless he was to its origin or abilities. But most of all, he thought about the possibility of death, that this woman could lead him to his salvation, and rid him of his eternal pain and suffering.
He walked up to her.
She looked at him, her eyes pearly silver and slightly green, like a deep dark forest, filled with hate and revenge.
She asked him for a sudden favor, "can you help me. I... I need help... And you... I think you have the secrets I'm looking for."
Damon stopped his movements. He instantly knew that he had finally found his salvation. A way to live again.
"I'm after an organization. I thought, since you know, you're the oldest immortal I've found so far, that you'd have information on this organization, and I capture you."
"What's this organization?" he asked back, taking a seat next to her.
"They call themselves The Hippoi Athanatoi or The Immortal Horses in English," she explained.
Damon thought back two hundred years, to when he was addicted to reading about ancient Greece.
"Immortal Horses...? Nope, nothing comes to mind... But... You know what... I have nothing better to do. I'll help on your little adventure," he smirked leaning back on the stool, looking at the beautiful woman next to him.
"Really? Just like that? Your gonna help me?" she queried confused by his sudden switch from depressed to nice.
"Well..." He looked around the bloodied bar, "I've lived a long time. I've had a lot of adventures. And I've never seen someone use magic like that before. And... Well, you did kill all of my old friends, but I don't really care about all that. They were too boring anyway."
"Oh..."
---
And thus the adventures of Damon and...
---
Damon hopped in the woman's car.
"By the way, what's your name?" he asked.
"It's Aurora, or you can just call me, Aria. Yeah, I prefer Aria. What's your name?" she asked back.
"It's Demophon, or you can just call me Damon."
---
And thus the adventures of Damon and Aria began.
