Mortal Shackles Of A Fated Adversary

20251113

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

At first I thought it a failed curse. Laughed at my foolish adversary. Granted, he was panicking, watching me bleed out at the feet of another villain. The burst of magic he swamped me with was barely shaped, operating on raw power and emotion.
“Only I may end you!”
How I wish that he’d said “kill”. It could've saved me so much suffering over the centuries.
The agony burned in my gut, my soul peeling away in an attempt to escape the suffering before it overwhelmed me. And then I came loose. Blessed relief, albeit one with its own kind of ache. Grief for what I was losing, everything I would leave behind.
But as the absolute darkness wrapped around me like loving arms, that ache faded. I relaxed. Accepted my fate.
How long was I floating in that void before I realised something was wrong? The darkness couldn’t get a proper grip on me. Tendrils of my being somehow slipping through its all-encompassing grasp.
Then white-hot pain stabbed through me again, and the light roared back.
My lungs choked and stretched, reaching desperately for air. My vision swam. It was being born all over again.
Someone pounded my back. Garble resolved into sound and finally into words.
My comrades had found me. Rather, they found my body in a state of mysterious not-death and desperately tried a healing spell, pulling me back to life.
When I realised what had happened, what my hapless fated adversary had done, I was delighted. Youthful foolishness. I thought only that, once we had beaten the aspiring Lord Of Evil I would be invincible.
And I am.
No matter how horribly I die, given enough time I will be pulled back to the world of the living, in the same state I was in when he cast that curse - except for being in perfect health, rather than bleeding out. Thankfully, or this cycle would be truly horrific.
It can take time. The worst was apparently three years, after my body got lost in the bottom of a frozen lake, though to me it felt like an eternity. Floating in the dark, unable to move. Unable to comply as death tried ceaselessly to guide me onwards.
Despite my best efforts I cannot follow its directions. I’m sure if I could, I would find peace. Or perhaps be born anew, free from this prison. But my shackles are too tight.
That void… it’s like slipping into a bath the exact temperature of your skin. Gentle pressure. Soothing. Welcoming. It ushers you from suffering towards… I fear I will never know.
But I am determined to find out.
It has taken decades to gather enough of my fallen rival’s remains to attempt a blasphemous ritual. “Only I may end you…”
I will force him to do so. He will free me.
The candlelight flickers. No, it’s threads of the utter dark breaking through. Death itself pawing at the magic, trying to keep something on the correct side of the Veil.
I’m sorry, old friend. But I need this.
A pinch more incense, a whispered incantation, and death is brushed away. A presence fills the bones. They twitch. Flex. He’s here.
If only I’d been able to find his skull! I’d make him apologise. But at least there’s enough arm to hopefully do the job, with this lightweight dagger. I press it into his fractured palm.
“You bastard. I’ll never-”
With a tinkle the knife drops out of his grasp as the hand raises and folds and… it takes me a moment to realise that he’s using soldier signs.
“‘Sorry’? You’d better be sorry, you-” I falter as the hand shakily signs ‘my fault’, ‘mistake’, ‘regret’… then gropes for mine.
I take it. His bones, cold and slick against my warm, ever-living fingers, thrum with a soul far more earnest than I remember.
Death once again paws at the bones, and this time we let it. He’s pulled back through, to the other side of the Veil, where he should be.
Where, by now, we both should be.
For the first time I can see the magic binding me. Coating my soul. Keeping death from getting quite close enough. But his hand pierces through - and now that we’re here I can see all of him, his expression woeful as he rips at my unwanted shield.
“I am sorry, I didn’t… I thought I was going to kill you and it wouldn’t - which isn’t much better now I think about it, but-”
Dumbass. I laugh, the suffering falling off me as death cradles close. The rage I’d been feeling moments before all but forgotten. I place a hand over his mouth, letting the void be silence once more, as it should be. I hope my smile is enough to reassure him.
It’s time for us to both have peace.
Soft tendrils guide me, pull me, into the depths I could never reach. Everything fades away. My body - my sense of a body, that is - dissolves. I’m growing… cold? I think? Except I no longer have anything to feel cold with.
My soul unfolds. Stretches until I can reach between stars.
My final thought, before it truly ends, is at last.

Prompt was “Write a descriptive piece which focuses on what the moments between life and death are like.”