Until the End of Time

It started innocently, like most obsessions tend to. After all, after you’ve lived for centuries already, it’s only a matter of time before you get bored. 

Caspian became immortal by accident; he didn’t really remember how it happened – I remind you, he has been alive for quite a while. He does remember Archimedes running through the streets shouting “Eureka!” though, if that gives you some context. He remembers being one of the few surviving members of his community after a rat-borne disease swept through the continent. It was around that time he considered moving beyond the ocean after that ordeal – the first true test of his immortality carrying him through unscathed – but still he found himself back on familiar ground watching Galileo looking insane as he threw balls from the top of the Tower of Pisa – this was in its pre-leaning days. 

He remembers his fondest friend Isaac and remembers laughing at him after an apple fell on his head as he was trying to explain some crazy math problem to him. While Isaac was around, he had fun and companionship but once Isaac started getting suspicious of Caspian’s eternally raven black hair without a whisper of grey well into their age, he reluctantly decided the time had come for a new location. Still, it was hard to leave Isaac, and so began the time Caspian started becoming bored and frustrated with immortality – not to mention Isaac’s math. 

Year in, year out of things seemingly changing but not really. Decade in, decade out of the slight perturbation of the perpetually same. Century in, century out of an endless stream of similarity. Yes, the world was evolving but it seemed like humanity didn’t know what to do with it. Passive, indecisive, all the world’s greatness at their feet, in their hands, and all humans knew to do was destroy the beautiful things they created. 

Above all, the thing that never seemed to change, the thing that forced him to keep changing, was Caspian himself.

And he was fed up with it – with himself – time after time after eternal time.

There was rumored to be a spell to undo his curse, using new world ingredients – what a pumpkin was, Caspian didn’t know yet, but he knew he’d soon find out when his boat docked in newly-named Plymouth by a rock. Alas, the pumpkin didn’t work, and substituting squash, tomatoes, or sweet potatoes failed even more epically and gave him quite a stomachache even his immortal health couldn’t suppress. He finally developed a potion using cranberries, but his village friends ended up using that as a sauce during their first celebratory dinner with the locals – needless to say, the potion possessed no magical powers, but the recipe graces holiday dinner tables to this day. Caspian skipped the dinner though, pouring tirelessly over spell books and cauldrons to fix his potion, and by the second-year anniversary, he’d already moved on to a new place. 

A thought passed his mind if he’d ever have any substantial anniversaries in one place, and that crushing thought drove him deeper and deeper into enchanted rituals and ingredients – drove him deeper and deeper into insanity. He was careless with his spells, sometimes summoning black magic that caused him great physical and mental injury. The physical healed quickly but the mental scars stayed, causing him to push the boundaries of the impossible, calling forces of heaven and hell because he didn’t know if he was angel or demon anymore. He was careless with his life because he knew he could never lose it. 

His breaking point was attempting a spell with hemlock and the fires of the underworld. There was a war waging on the battlefield between the new colonies and the old country, and there was a war waging in his soul between good and evil.

He broke the spell before he could cause irreversible damage to himself. For he could never die, but he could become something no living person would recognize. It still took his accelerated healing twenty days to recover.

Needing guidance to not destroy himself, he ventured further south next, where tales of ancient Aztec magic lured a desperate Caspian in with hopes of a cure. Tropical charm and primeval energy hummed like a live wire that wasn’t yet invented, secret sorcery and shamans not advertised but trusted through centuries of civilization. Caspian found one such witch doctor that took him under his wing, mentored him through the most basic brews to the most complex concoctions. In such a secluded enclave dependent on old powers, Caspian’s agelessness became less conspicuous, everyone chalking up his prolonged beauty to effective potions from the fountain of youth.

Eventually though, all things must change, and again, they change by not changing. As science and technology and rational thought permeated the ends of the earth, even the most remote village cast suspicious glances at Caspian. Un demonio, they whispered, averting their eyes when he approached. Un chico maldito, they scurried away warily, crossing themselves repeatedly.

Despite the rumors and the danger, Caspian was not ready to leave yet. Firstly, his cure was not correct yet, despite all the willow bark, coriander, and sap he mixed together under the chanting words and warlock’s watchful eye. But above all, he’d finally become comfortable again. 

But lasting comfort is not a luxury an immortal could afford. One could get snippets of comfort, but never anything more. Such is the price of forever. Even though Caspian was never given the choice to buy it or not. 

As the world evolved and innovated, Caspian’s primal powers became more and more obsolete and his cover became more and more thin. He moved frequently, never visited the same place twice within the same generation – sometimes two should paramours still recall him from nights of youthful debauchery. All along, he searched for ingredients, elements, words that could cast his spell and break his curse. He tasted various oriental teas once the borders and economies opened up, he mixed up eucalyptus drinks that put his thieving buddies to sleep but did nothing to slow him down, he tried every known plant and fungus known to man and some still unknown deep in the rainforests. He may have poisoned himself a couple of times, but his immortal body never knew it.

Eventually, he settled in his hometown – a place he hadn’t visited once since he left when he was 28 years old. It would take him eons just to count back to 28 from the age he was at now. The town was so unfamiliar that it felt like a new place, but somewhere deep down, Caspian knew he didn’t have the heart to move again. He holed up in the basement of a toy magic shop under an agreement with the owner that he would help at the register. Two years they worked together until the so-called great war began and the owner never came back. The building fell into neglect and so did Caspian.

He worked day and night on his spells and potions – no sleep, no food, no water, no sunlight for what use has an immortal for such trivial necessities? The only time he stepped foot out of the basement was upstairs to the magic shop where the shelves were still stocked with the bits and baubles he used in his brews. He saw no humans so he forgot what humans even were – certainly he wasn’t one anymore. He wasn’t human the moment he became immortal. Since then, he’d progressed through warlock, demon, vampire, and whatever he could call himself now – but human certainly wasn’t one of it.

With each new recipe, time moved forward behind Caspian’s boarded up windows. 

Eye of newt. A second great war.

Twig of sage. Man landed on the moon.

Wing of bat. A wall was torn down.

Sprig of rosemary. The turn of a new millennium.

Scale of dragon. Touchscreen phones.

Mandrake root. Self-driving cars.

Shard of quartz. Sentient computers. 

Pinch of salt. Colonies on Mars.

Leg of frog. Highways between the Kuiper Belt.

Drop of blood. The sun supernova-s. 

The potion is complete.

Caspian takes a parched drink, immediately feeling his body adjust to mortality, and he sighs in relief: he’s done it.

He emerges out into the sunlight for the first time in billions of years he never realized had passed, only to realize the sun doesn’t exist anymore. 

He’d chased immortality until there was nothing left of life.