TW; Self harm, violence, suicide
Consider eternity. You can’t, can you? The human brain simply isn’t hardwired to grasp the concept of forever. The idea that you might conceivably exist unending, until the stars rain down from the heavens and all of creation ceases to exist, there will only be you. Alone.
I’m not telling you I’m immortal. I’m telling you that I think I might be immortal. You won’t believe me, of course. No one does. I stopped talking about it a long time ago. That being said, the endless memories are starting to get to me and, well. People like to read about horrible things on the internet, so I might as well put my bad memories where people actually want to hear about them, pass this all off as fiction.
Let me start at the beginning. This universe is not the only one there is. There is actually an infinite multiverse out there with infinite possibilities as to what exists within them. “Like the Marvel multiverse?” I can almost hear you thinking, and quickly losing interest. No. And yes. It’s…complicated. The Marvel multiverse is a universe cluster. All those variants exist only within their universe cluster, the “Marvel Cluster” I’ve decided to call it. They can’t leave it. None of them can, not even the most powerful beings within it.
Every universe is part of a cluster. I–I’m not even sure if “universe” is the right term. Maybe “reality,” or “dimension,” but my human brain is limited and I don’t understand. So “universe” it is. As far as I can tell, every cluster is focused around a “Core Universe.” That Core Universe, well, we know about the Cores. Or at least we know about the closest group to the Cores. We call them “works of fiction.”
Listen, I know I’m losing you, so let me try to explain. The multiverse is infinite. Infinite. That means that every possibility isn’t simply a possibility, it’s a reality. I’m fairly certain that the reason we know the Cores is because people who had past lives there remember somehow, and they think they’re coming up with stories and characters but what they’re actually doing is subconsciously remembering their pasts. I know how that sounds, believe me I do. But…that’s why I think I’m immortal. I don’t remember every past life, I’m sure. But I remember enough. And don’t ask me what cluster we’re part of or even if we’re a Core, because I don’t know. This is just my way of explaining the unexplainable.
So…immortality. In a word, terrible. I remember good things but it’s simply human nature to focus on the bad, and since I’m human again I have to be content with how my human mind processes information. I can’t tell anyone irl about any of my bad memories because it would make them sick, it would make them horrified and drive them away. But you people love scary stories. I do too, and if you can derive some form of entertainment out of the horrible things that have happened to me then all the better for everyone involved.
I’m not going to tell you any names from my past lives. It would make everything sound like some shitty fanfiction. No names of people, places, or important items or powers. I’ll make do with initials and vague descriptions. If you figure it out, then good for you. Just…please don’t make fun. Another thing. My narration style is probably going to change based on how I feel about the…events I’m describing. So. Right. The beginning.
The first time I was born, it was in a cottage hewn of wood at the edge of a forest. That time I was born a girl, with little naked wings clinging tightly to my back. My human parents had no idea why I’d been born with them, but they decided it was the nearness of the magic wood. Humans were relatively new in that world, and though the Fourth Age of our universe would soon be upon us, the race of Man still knew itself to be the youngest race of our world.
As I grew, my wings sprouted brown feathers, and I developed what my parents called “the strength of beasts.” I grew less and less welcome in my tiny village, and on the day I became a woman my parents gave me a horse and told me to go. I did not need a horse. My wings were not simply for show. But I needed company, and I didn’t want to abandon the poor horse. So I took him west, and we soon came across a town by an ancient hill. I settled there for some time, keeping to myself and pretending to be a hunchback when I had to go into town.
Several years later, there came to be tales of shadows hunting in the night, seeking someone or something. The few unlucky enough to come across these shadows had either been killed or sent them further west, and one stormy night all nine shadows came to the town. The person they were seeking was staying at the inn that night, and he and his companions moved on as soon as possible. Several nights later there was a fire at the top of the ancient hill and the night was full of inhuman, terrifying shrieks. My fiery curiosity and foolish fearlessness got the best of me and I set out the next morning, the seventh of October, to see what was about.
One of the shadows intercepted me, and though I fought as hard as I could he defeated me. Instead of killing me, he placed a curse on me. I had one-hundred-and-forty-two days to retrieve the item they sought for them, or I would die. As all curses must be reversible by nature of being a curse there was indeed a way to bring me back if I did die, that being a declaration of love from someone I truly loved. Foolish, you might think, but both the shadow and I had seen my wings and assumed no one could ever love me.
To cut a long story short, I joined the group that held the item. The item had to be destroyed, and so us nine were to guard the one carrying the item. As I am sure you can guess, I refused to retrieve the item once I understood the gravity of the situation. I had resigned myself to death, but then I found myself becoming close with one of my traveling companions. I’ll call him the prince. On the one-hundred-and-forty-second day, I drew him aside and told him the truth. It took him five days after that to call me back, but love me he did.
The story as you might know it happened just the same after that. Fifteen years after the end of it, the prince and I were married. Twenty years after the end of it, a new war began. That war is where the worst of things happened.
You’ve heard of lightning bolts, yeah? Bet you’ve never heard of a darkening bolt. After the shadows lost their king, they vowed to take the world as their own. They developed a new magic that stole people’s minds and turned them into mindless soldiers devoted to the shadows who’d kill their own baby if ordered to. They threw these “darkening bolts” out across the world at random and so people of all races and creeds came together to try and get their loved ones back.
My husband was hit with a darkening bolt. I’d been upset, and he came and sat across from me, took my hands in his, and pecked me on the lips. As he leaned back, I saw shock and pain fill his face, and then before my eyes I watched as my husband suddenly didn’t recognize me anymore. Then he was gone. I stormed into the king’s war room and demanded that we retrieve my husband. The king, my friend, couldn’t do anything and so I threw down my bow and selfishly declared that I wouldn’t fight until we got him back. I have no defense. I was mad with grief, I guess. Several months passed, and I only returned when the shadows made an offer. One of their champions vs. one of ours. Winner took the forest we’d been skirmishing over for weeks. Wanna guess who their champion was? My husband. Him being both not-human and the only member of his race, other than the queen, to remain on our continent, I was the only one who could hope to stand against him. So I battled my husband nearly to the death. In the end I guess I hit him in the head in just the right way to wake him up, or fate just played some stupid joke on us, because the blow that should have killed him just removed the effect of the darkening bolt.
But you’re here for the torture, right, you twisted motherfuckers? As if that wasn’t emotionally ripping enough. Alright. Well, a few weeks later I was on a routine flight and I didn’t see the net launcher that the enemy soldiers had hidden behind a rock formation. The metal weights on it broke my left wing and I yelped as I fell. I hit the ground with a sick crunching noise, my ankle very much broken. The face of a former friend sneered down at me.
“Told you she was stupid,” she said, turning away. “Break the other wing.”
It took three of them working together but they snapped the bone clean in two. I screamed. It felt like fire, filling my entire wing with heated agony. The pain radiated across my back, down my arm, and into the other wing where the pain radiated right back. Ignoring my yelling, they tied my wrists to my neck and wrapped a heavy chain around my broken ankle. I groaned through my teeth with every move I made, and couldn’t stop myself from screaming when I was tossed into a cart.
“Can we not silence her?” one of the soldiers asked annoyedly.
“Go ahead,” the one seemingly in charge said dismissively. The one who’d asked the question grinned and his hand drifted to his belt.
“You dare and I’ll bite it right off,” I told him. He only rolled his eyes.
“You’ll receive worse treatment from the orcs,” he said. That shut me up. For the rest of the journey I breathed heavily through my nose, only making noise when the cart hit harsh rocks and the sharp waves of pain skyrocketed into agony.
“Walk.” The man who spoke had me by the back of the neck, and I had no choice but to obey. You know how sometimes you get a headache so bad that you can barely see, barely think, barely think to breathe? Every step was like that, but so deep in my wings that I thought for sure my whole body had become one massive nerve that had been set on fire. And that was just the beginning.
They turned me over to the orcs, as promised.
“Get rid of her,” they said. “Just make it as long and painful as you can imagine.”
And dear god could they imagine. They started with the basics; whipping, branding, pulling out fingernails. Well, first they stripped me naked. Then they whipped me until my back was nothing but raw flesh, my feathers were half ripped out, most of the bones in each wing were fractured, and I had my first broken rib. They argued about which tribe’s brand to put on me, then decided that “all of them” was the right answer. They strapped me down on my back, pulled my arms out to the sides and branded my arms before letting me fall to the ground in a haze of pain. My vision was going dark, pulsing in time to the blood pumping through my veins and pulsing down my back.
“Get her up,” I remember one saying before I was dragged. I could see a thick trail of blood follow us and vaguely wondered what other poor soul had been trapped here before I realized with a sort of distant horror that it was my blood. The realization made me pass out, a welcome relief from the pain. It didn’t last long.
I was woken with a slap to the face, and the pain came rushing back. I was sitting in a chair. My broken body couldn’t possibly keep me upright on its own, so I’d been fitted with a thick collar and chain attached to the ceiling, pulled tight so I dangled by the neck. My burning arms had been cuffed to the arms of the chair, which seemed to have a singular purpose: to hold people as still as possible. I soon found out why.
“No…” I groaned weakly, spit bubbling in my mouth. “Please.” I choked on a sob and coughed, agony rocking my body for a few desperate seconds.
My torturers only laughed.
“How long do we have to kill her?” someone asked.
“As long as it takes,” another giggled. Giggled. At the prospect of my very long, drawn-out, painful death. Lovely. The giggly one came closer with the pliers and slowly pulled out my left thumbnail to the frantic encouragement of the others. I couldn’t stop my cries from coming out the whole time, and I finally devolved into weak panting when it was over.
“Who’s next!?” The pliers were tossed into a pile of suddenly arguing orcs and I started to drift in and out of consciousness, coming to every time there was a pull at my fingertips. Slowly, one by one, my fingernails were all ripped out and I was tossed onto a filthy pile of straw for what was apparently break time. There was no way I was going anywhere on my own. I lay there shivering, I don’t know how long, before they came back.
Have you ever burned yourself by taking something out of the oven or putting wood on a fire? Maybe, but I doubt you’ve been burned on the soles of your feet. That’s what they did next. I screamed so loud that something in my throat ripped, and I couldn’t scream anymore. Only wet, weak, little noises escaped my mouth while red-hot bars of iron were rolled across the bottoms of my feet. Blood pooled in an alarmingly large amount under me until the orcs noticed and decided they wanted me to live longer so they could enact more torture on me. At this point I was praying to die. My fingers were roughly bandaged up, my back cauterized, and water forced down my throat.
What else? Was all I could think. What else could they possibly do to me? I was about to find out.
There was no way to tell time in there. The soot-stained walls and filthy floors were illuminated by braziers, forges, and torches. The low visibility only added to the disorientation and hazy mind. The ominous glint of metal caught my eyes in my delirious state and I remember thinking it reminded me of the stars. I slept some, but I was always woken up by waves of pain. It had reached a point where it couldn’t possibly hurt any more than it did, it could only spread to new places. I alternatively dripped with sweat and shook with cold. There were at least three guard changes before my tormentors were back with more ideas.
“I’m hungry,” one whined while popping blisters on my feet.
“Well, take some flesh from the bitch,” his companion said exasperatedly. “She’ll just go to waste anyway.”
I was suddenly wide awake with sheer terror, adrenaline filling my every inch. Were they going to take an arm? A leg? A foot? It was almost worse. I didn’t even have the luxury of the pain-haze to escape into when the whiny one pulled out a little curved knife from somewhere in his putrid clothing and started cutting a strip out of my calf.
“No,” I whispered, unable to make any noise louder. “No!”
They only laughed.
“She thinks she can stop us!”
“You’re a dead woman walking, your words mean nothing here.”
The one with the knife came around to where I could see him before slowly and deliberately placing the dripping chunk of raw flesh into his mouth and chewing. I passed out at the sight. When I woke up, I counted six distinct red-hot lines of pain running up and down my legs. The despair and exhaustion knocked me out again.
The next time I opened my eyes, I heard shouting from outside. Outside…I didn’t know how long it had been since I’d seen the sun, breathed clean air, watched the moon, flew in the chilly evening air.
“What is that?” A new orc grunted curiously.
“Doesn’t concern us,” the other one said. “Come on, we’re taking her eyes today.”
My eyes? I thought somewhat manically. Sure, why not, why don’t you take my tongue, my heart, my liver while you’re at it! End this! I silently begged.
“Put that poker down,” the big one barked. “You want to eat ‘em, right?”
“We get to eat the eyes?!” The new one sounded so ecstatic. Good for him. They’d be shoving their dirt-crusted, blood-stained, infected fingernails into my eye sockets. I had no doubt I’d get sepsis and die. I only hoped it’d be soon.
The door at the end of the hall was kicked open, followed by the next, and the next, and the next, all empty. They’d moved me down from each one as they’d used up all their toys in the one before. However, those doors were heavy oak. The only way they could be forcefully kicked open was…
“M! Where are you?!” It was my husband. I couldn’t shout, I couldn’t call for him, so I did the next best thing: I used my good ankle to kick the poker out of the hand holding it. There was a yelp, and then the sound of running feet. My husband stopped dead in the open doorway and then so fast that my sleepy overwhelmed mind couldn’t track it, the orcs were falling dead, arrows in their eyes. My husband rushed to me, wrapping me in his arms. My vocal chords made a valiant effort to scream in pain and he quickly withdrew his hands from my still sticky back and shattered wings with an expression or horror on his face.
“It’s alright, it’s alright M, I’ll get you out of here.”
I survived. I survived to the end of the war and after. I never flew again, though, and I always walked with a limp from my ankle. Not long after the war, I got pregnant. I was overjoyed. I loved my baby long before he was even born. I talked to him in my belly and sang to him at night, and when he was born he grew quickly. He was walking by the time he was six months old, talking by eight months, and jumped into his father’s arms just after his first birthday. We were so happy. He was the last of the half-elves, the last memory of his father’s people in our land.
Then I made a mistake. I…I got sick. It was just a head cold. Just a fucking head cold, but my husband’s people weren’t used to human viruses, and my baby boy was gone in a week. No sooner had we sent him down the river than my husband also collapsed. I carried him home, through the gates of the abandoned kingdom that now belonged only to us, and stayed by his side until he took his last breath.
When his pulse faded, I felt something in me break. My baby and my husband, all in the same week, and now I was…I was alone! They’d been a piece of me and! And now they were gone!
I could feel my chest begin to heave as the despair got heavier and heavier until it felt like a stone in my gut, like an ache in my chest, like a pull in my throat.
“No…no! No! Please!” I screamed. I started hyperventilating. I…I couldn’t do this, I had to get out, I couldn’t be here–!
I ran.
Through the halls, out the gates, down the forest paths. My vision was blurred with tears. Every thump of my feet against the ground sent pain shooting through the old broken ankle. Still hyperventilating, crying as I ran, I stumbled and tripped over exposed roots and pebbles in the path. I was so panicked that I didn’t realize I’d strayed off the road. I finally slipped and tumbled down a short hill, landing in a heap of bushes at the bottom. Still hiccuping over sobs every few seconds, I curled into a ball and prayed, screaming in agony to the gods. I had never been particularly religious, but still I prayed to every god the people of our land worshipped. I prayed for them to take away the pain, to kill me so I could be with my family. Thoughts of my parents came to me unbidden in those moments. I never could have abandoned my baby. So why did they abandon theirs? No matter.
I received no answer from the gods. Eventually, the realization that I still had my knife in my boot came to me. I laughed a little as I realized that the way out had presented itself to me regardless of divine intervention. I stood up. With an exhausted determination, I started walking towards the spiders’ territory. When I was close enough, I raised the knife with a trembling hand and slit my own throat. As my consciousness faded and I heard large legs moving through the trees, I felt content knowing I’d soon be with my husband and son.
As is obvious, I was not reunited with my family. Instead I opened my eyes as a wailing newborn baby, in a different place, in a different time. But it’s almost midnight and I can barely keep my eyes open as I type. So I suppose this is the end of part one. Some explanations before I go to bed, though. This isn’t supposed to be goreporn. This isn’t supposed to be shock factor, ooh, rape and abuse and torture, no. The concept of eternity is what I’m trying to explain here. It’s going to be hard, but…I’ve been alive for millennia. I think I can at least try to get across my meaning by the end. In fact, I have a suspicion that the reason I’ve lived so long it a direct result of the final action of my first life. I fully believe that choosing to terminate your own life results in the inability to die permanently. Action, consequence. And don’t worry. The next installment is much less physical. It’s mostly emotional. Action, consequence. Shit, fate thinks she’s so funny.
But again, I’m almost falling asleep as I type, so I’ll continue this tomorrow.