The Death of Immortality

Hyogo, Japan, Asia. 30.07.2021, 7:25 AM

It's been a while since she last saw sunlight without a deep fear burning into her heart, burning hotter than what the rays of the sun would do to her skin. So much time had passed that she could barely even remember how the sun felt, what kind of warmth it would offer her body on a summer day. Years, actually, maybe even more so. Decades, centuries, time measurements such as those became one, flowing into each other and passing like seconds. From the beginning of time, she blinked and she woke up two millennia later. Two thousand years had passed that she didn't even feel and she accomplished whatever there was to accomplish. Everyone knew of Anzai Hisako, the woman that managed to build a medical empire out of nothing, a company that surpassed continental boundaries, the woman who cured illnesses that seemed incurable. She had achieved what no one before her could, and that brought her a fulfilled life, a fulfilled heart, and mind, something she prided herself with. She did not seem to miss anything, but a corner of her soul was empty. Due to her time-passing being, her life was a cold spot in the hot areas of time, freezing the whole essence of her being, except for one small corner that would hold the memories of daylight. For her, daylight was one portion of life that she would only see in pictures and videos.

Light.

Something had lit her whole face, a bright flash temporarily blinding her. Seven in the morning, not too long until she'd succumb to the tiredness that governed her current mood. A small canister of metal had rolled from the only door leading to her office, now open by an unseen presence. She had smelled him long before he had made his way to her door but, as if she intentionally lied to herself, Hisako assumed that the distinct smell was just an altered scent of the multiple janitors in the skyscraper building she owned, because of those cleaning products she hated. The woman finally realized what was about to happen if she didn't pull herself together and came to her thoughts after not more than a quarter of a second passed since the flash grenade went off a few meters in front of her. What got her more, though, wasn't the blinding light that her eyes got over as soon as it happened, but the sound. It would be enough to disorient a human with their near-deaf ears, but her? For her the sound was so intense that her eardrums were pierced, her jaw being flooded by the blood pouring from her ears. She wasn't looking presentable anymore, that much was clear. He knew what he was doing, but he wasn't as smart as he would have liked to claim. Because soon, he would enter her office struggling to stay on his feet, with blood on his jawline matching hers, his ears bursting from the same flash grenade that he had thrown into the room she was in.

"It's been so long since I've seen those beautiful eyes." A rash voice that she could barely hear brought back so many memories that had her momentarily stuck in her chair, gripping the wood of her large desk until it snapped to pieces, splinters perforating her skin and drawing blood out of her palms until the regenerating flesh pushed them out. "You're getting too old to stay alive, aren't you? I'm here to fix that issue for you, free of charge." Until the moment he had joined her in her timeless journey through the world, Osborne had no other purpose than to end Hisako's endless life, one way or the other. And after more than a millennium and a half, he finally knew how. The plan was perfect this time, and it would end there once and for all. Because even if he failed to kill her that morning, then he knew she would end his being. She promised it to him the last time they met.

Somewhere in South Europe, ??.??.0200

"Listen, boy. This language of yours is strange to me. You survived my teeth, I do not know what that means." Her short hair covered most of Hisako's face as she bent down to check the corpses of men covered in metal. 'Soldiers, were they named?' The thought flew through her mind quickly, because the smell of blood made place for the slight scent of bloodthirst that the survivor had nurtured in his being. Surviving her fangs was an exaggeration of how he actually felt, with every inch of his body begging for death, the pain making him feel as if he were in Hell. Still, he was alive. And the pure fact that he could still muster the intense feeling of revenge was an impressive feat, to say the least, let alone the lunge that he gathered all his might into, his body crashing into hers and bringing her to the ground. For a being alive for more than hundreds of years, though, it was nothing. He blinked, even if he didn't want to. Every part of his flesh was covered in either blood or dirt, including his eyes, and he could barely see. He wasn't sure what got in the way of his vision. Blood, dirt, or tears. But whatever kept him from seeing would open his eyes forever, soon enough.

The one blink he took was more than enough time to allow Hisako to get up from the ground and look him dead into his eyes. "Are you blind, boy?! I have killed everyone in your so-called army, I will slaughter everyone in this village and you think you can bring me down?! You men are stupid. I bet one thing. That it's not your death that's bringing you tears, but it's the shame that you and all your filthy man friends were brought down by a woman. Strong, proud men, stricken down by a weak woman? Pathetic. Remember, for how long you have to live: you are still breathing because I willed it this way. Now cling to the last moments of your life as hard as you can. This woman's name is Kaneko, remember it." As fast as the wind, the survivor's head would be hit by the boot of the woman monster, hearing his own neck crack before closing his eyes and believing that he would never open them again. Killed by a woman who he did not understand in any way, her words foreign to him, as well as her motives. He understood something, though, from the look in her empty eyes.

Wrath.

The bloody battlefield, one month after the survivor's death.

Verdandi knew what and who happened there, her own creation. Her mind recalled memories from centuries before, when she took pity on a half-dead girl, her body beaten and used, with her clothes ripped apart from her body, nursing her back to health, protecting and caring for her as if she was her own child. The child had noticed that the woman wasn't like any other, managing to achieve the inexplicable to an untrained mind. The world was still young, but Kaneko knew what the woman was capable of doing was not something natural. Drawing power from gods, spirits, and the earth itself, Verdandi was fit to consider herself superior to the mortals that brought her and her adopted daughter to their knees, within an inch of their lives, at their respective times. She had been alive for too long, even before history was made into a concept, a victim to the Norse savages raiding villages and turning them into their own war grounds. Using the power borrowed from the gods, she was able to save herself and soon her daughter from the savagery of humanity. Rituals with costs of blood, of other lives had brought them to their glory. The gift of love to her daughter had turned her into the monster that caused the bloodshed she was now seeing the consequences of.

The old woman glanced at her palms and with tears of despair and sadness in her eyes, she pleaded to the source of her power. "Gods, I beg of you, show me the one capable of taking down the monster I created. He must be here." From the piles of bones remaining from what Kaneko had left, the skull of one had the socket of its eyes lit up, a burning flame illuminating the dark night, revealing the strong soul of a warrior filled with anger and a deep sense of revenge. After Verdandi took her slow and painful steps of an entity plagued by the poisonous magic of angry gods, she grasped the skull in her slender fingers and picked it up, throwing it up in the air as high as she could. After the remains of the fallen warrior hit the climax of its possible height, the old Norse woman touched the tips of her fingers together and space would rip open above her head, revealing an ebony domain where light would not dare to enter, shadows populating the magical space with the primordial magic they reeked of. The skull fell in effortlessly and the creation of a new being would commence. Days passed and Verdandi could feel her magic drained by the creature she was trying to forge, with no help from the gods. Even now, with her life force seeping away from her, she could hear the deep voice of Odin commanding her to fix her mistake, the decision she took out of false and blind love. After she had created the monster that she once considered her daughter, the woman would perform rituals every night, asking that the gods allow her the last favor of ending the life-taking creature she had pulled into existence, until one night Odin had made his presence in her sleep. Nothing she could see, except a dark forest and two ravens in front of her, who she recognized instantly. Huginn and Muninn, the Father of Men's companions. At the same time, they opened their beaks and a heavy voice shook her whole being, echoing through her skull and hearing it as if it were inside her head.

"A tree falls the way it leans."

She had created an abomination, and she would fix it.

After many suns and moons, she could finally feel it complete. In one last effort towards Kaneko's death, she united the tips of her fingers one last time, opening the portal to the eldritch space directly above the ground and another abomination of the same type as her daughter crawled out, carrying the face of the man he once was. Between gasps of air, Verdandi felt that her time had come, for with the last amount of her power she managed to give another monster its power. But this was a monster to hunt monsters. "You, born from bone, you know what you have to do." A mixture of blood and tears would flow from her eyes, creating an acidic mixture of poisonous blood, melting the flesh away from her bone as her tears ran on her cheek. The dark and naked figure of a new monster turned his head around and watched her face slowly loose of skin and meat, revealing a skeleton tainted by the darkest magic ever known, turning her whole being into a clump of meat stuck to an ebony bone structure, fueled by nothing but the will of the ones that gave her power. Verdandi's strength was all out now, her muscles unable to hold her body anymore, collapsing into the pond of blood that contained the anger of the gods. Soon, nothing but the shadow of despair remained where she was. And a promise for a new beginning for the lives that her creation had ended.

New intelligence, a new body, and a new life purpose, the survivor had taken a new name, one that fit the creation of his whole being into what he truly was. "Ossis… born? Ossborne? Osborne." The new name came to him as a lost thought from memories which he did not own, of warriors, teachers, hunters. Everything he needed in order to catch a beast that had learned to hide its tracks. His whole existence had one purpose and one only, to kill the monster that had taken everything from him, and would take from countless others. But to kill the monster he had to become one himself.

Hyogo, Japan, Asia. 30.07.2021, 7:26 AM

Barely a minute had passed since her eyes had adjusted to the light, coming to their former beauty. And, even with the full ringing in her ears, her words came out as a soft melody to Osborne's ears, not because he felt anything for her, but it was his life purpose to get near her and put an end to her life reaping. Even though his ears hurt as much as hers, it was as if a superior force allowed her words to get through any sound obstacle they came across, just for him to hear what she had to say. She had been judged, and he was the executioner.

"In 1892, I told you one thing. Should I see you again, I would make sure your fate ended. I never left you alive because you mean something to me, but because you are the only one I've met that comes even remotely close to what I represent." Hisako was full of pride, a primordial sin that she was told would bring her end, but she did not care. All she wanted now was to see to her promise from two hundred years prior, which would end his eternal hunt for something she knew he could not achieve, for she was the pinnacle of evolution, a god amongst men. But that would have to wait, as a wicked smile on his face signaled that he'd savor the last moments before his release from immortality.

"And what are you, eh? What do you represent other than a fuckin' plague for humanity?"

"I represent what humanity could never. Humans are so focused on killing each other that they forget to pay attention to what they are and what they should be. I am the fate that this world deserves. If I'm a plague, that means the gods willed it for me to be here. And you are nothing but a dog, a servant for the ones that fear me. And you will die like one." Her words cut deep into his mind, placing some questions that he knew he would not want the answer to. Osborne was aware that, if he killed her, he would not be allowed to live anymore, and that was exactly what he wanted. Life, for him, was torture. All he desired was to be with his family, and Hisako was the only thing that kept him from it. Centuries filled with rage and despair were about to be left out free, focusing his whole mind on ending both of their lives. His release was being kept locked because of her still existing and he had every intention of stopping it. All these thoughts were cut short when he could a dark dash started from where she was and ended in front of himself.

Hisako was wearing a dark suit, keeping the appearances she struggled so hard to hold, probably tailored from the most expensive material she could find. At the beginning of her life, she had nothing, which she was trying so hard to compensate for late in her immortal life. Everything in her office was the most expensive she could find, psychologically putting herself above others, just as she considered herself to be. For Osborne though, her punch on his jaw felt even worse because of the expensive rings she was wearing. Immortality wasn't the only quality they had in common, but also the unnatural strength that the man felt fully in his jaw. Immediately after being thrown to the wall, the gold and silver rings on Hisako's right hand would get tainted with blood and loose flesh. For beings like them, though, that was barely a scratch. And as Osborne recovered, staggering to his feet, he could feel cold air flowing directly into his mouth, even though his mouth was closed. His jaw was now uncovered of layers, and one had a clear sight to his teeth and tongue. It was a sight that Hisako felt ecstatic about, the greatest joy of the century, of seeing what she considered to be the only thing that could kill her, hurt and bleeding. It didn't take long before the magic that created their whole beings would work towards fixing the damage the immortal woman had done, his body automatically latching tendons to tendons in order to add layers to his uncovered teeth.

"You can't kill me, you pest. And if we both wait here for the remainder of the morning, until the sun comes up, we'll both die. And who is to say I'm not faster than you? You can't win. This is your last chance." That was the moment when Osborne knew he had the upper hand. If it was one thing he had learnt about her after millennia trying to hunt her, it was that she would never back down on a promise. That meant knowing his prey, something he felt proud about. And that gave him a confidence boost that allowed him to straighten his back and look at the windows behind her and her desk.

"Who are you trying to fool, you hag? I've gotten the plans of your building, I know about those windows. They're made to block the light from the sun, so even if sunrise comes and you're still breathing, it won't make any difference." An ear-wide smile matched his eyes of a pitch-black, as they glanced at his left hand, where a watch was. "Speaking of which, it's about time." Osborne felt his heart fill with joy as he could finally complete the one life purpose he was given by bitter gods and humans with too much power. And it was time to come clean in front of her, as the last thing the two of them would hear again. "I know I can't defeat you physically, that much is clear. Memories that are not mine tell me that a creature such as yourself only gets stronger, faster, and more durable with each day that passes. You're like a magic leech, you drain the magic from this plane as easily as you drain humans of their lives. This is why I won't even bother going against you physically." Reaching into his pocket, Osborne pulled out the one thing he needed in order to end both of their lives.

After seeing what was in his hands, Hisako felt confused and offended at the same time. If he really thought that he would be able to kill her with rocks, then it meant she thought so low of her that it made her blood boil. Another man, underestimating and considering her nothing but a purpose, an end to justify his means. She left behind all possible fear, all compassion and made it her current goal to show him what she truly was. That thought was cut short when she heard a loud crash behind her, saw shards of glass flying near her, and felt some of them dig into her back. What hurt more and brought endless pain she harbored into her soul were the rays of sunlight that had already burnt through her clothes and set her whole body ablaze, illuminating the room. 'The sun, I forgot the warmth it gave.' Those were the last thoughts she had, between a river of tears flowing from her eyes that fell on the flames of her body only to get ignited as well. Every part of her body was imbued with magic that could only be undone one way, by fire.

Watching his prey burn and his life completed, Osborne would lay his hands out and wait for the sun to take him as well, waiting for death, the key to his cage.

But it never came, even when he noticed that his body did not combust into flames so he walked forwards near the window, and he felt the warm touch of the sun without any success towards his demise.