"Oh I have no soul"

She was clearly taken aback by how casually I broke it down to her, but starting like this only makes it easier to get her used to the idea. I was never a normal man. Always was somewhat distant towards others and I always seemed to be out of touch with what was normal and whatnot. Some called me a sociopath, but I was still too "alive" to say the least in order to be one. I care and have always cared for others which is why I was able to marry My'rrha when we were younger. She always told me she fell in love with how I just resonated with her.

"What do you mean, are you undead??" she asked in shock as she stood up from our table. I told her "No. Not undead, just soulless". I cannot blame her for feeling confused. The only ways elves are taught in most of their cultures that one can lack a soul are by being reanimated as a walker or having it shattered and spread into items. I wasn't like this. Believe me, I'd know. I'd feel. But I don't. My flesh doesn't decay and I can't feel the faint warmth I once had in my chest.

Of course, she then asked me how I am still alive or rather how can I still exist. Truth be told, I don't know either. Most things have a soul, an identity or a heart as they tend to say. A hammer will have a spirit that resonates to those akin to its first user or creator. A sword once used by knights of yore will only allow itself to be possessed by those with brave hearts. A dog would only lick the face of a man with a kindered spirit. I don't have that. I don't think I can ever have that again either.

As to how it happened, it did when I was still a teen. Many winters ago. Many before even My'rrha was born. My village was attacked on a summer day by 4 dark knights, followed by 2 liches. They killed everyone and raised them as undead slaves and forced them to attack and slaughter the neighboring towns all the while I was still out to play in the forest all by myself, bathing my bare legs in the cold river water.

Hours passed by without me even realizing it as my father usually went after me to grab me home for dinner, but this time that didn't happen. I only noticed that It was late once the water became too cold and the sun began to set. I rushed home, being afraid of getting scolded and going to bed on an empty stomach only to find a desolate burnt field where my home once was.

I got pinned down and I could feel them ripping my flesh apart. The undead can generally hear the beating of a heart from hundreds of meters away. I got ambushed. Fortunately, the adrenaline kicked in and I could feel nothing as my mind eventually faded away.

In what felt like an instant, I woke up to a knight wearing bright armor riding a white horse. As he watched me, giving what I assume is a thirty yard stare as his face was covered he began talking on an intrigued tone: "Curious. I have been watching you for years. Every time you fell and hit your head. Every time you caught a cold and every time another kid hit you with a rock a little too hard. I was always there, watching you and only you. You reek. You reek of something that does not belong among the rest. You're not of our devine creation and now that you died your soul was claimed by something else and not by my blade. Pestilence reanimated you, but it died once it finished among any other plague that touched your body. You are mind without soul and are therefore out of my jurisdiction as you're neither dead, undead or alive". As soon as he finished, he quickly left.

From that point on, no plague ever touched me and no ammount of time ever left an impact neither on my skin nor my hair. Every strike I felt healed as if it never happened and every child I bore died soon after birth, usually together with their mother. I roam the world waiting for whatever is my creator, to finally let me rest. To finally accept me as their child.

As soon as I told her everything, My'rrha left our house feeling the need for some fresh air and some space. I cannot blame her, I cannot blame her in the slightest but I still feel deep regret for making her feel this way. She makes my eternal torment bearable and I know she can be here for me untill the end as her elven kin does not die due to age.

It was after dinner, and as we finished cleaning up I grabbed her around the waist, pushed my face into hair and breathed deeply. "I am the luckiest man in the world, and I am forever grateful for you."

She leaned back into me and sighed, then gently broke free and turned to look at me.

"How long is it now that we've been together?" She asked.

I cocked a quizzical eyebrow at her. She returned my look, asking again, "How many years now? Sixty?"

"Sixty-two, if you count from our very first meeting," I replied.

"Has it really been sixty-two years?" Now she looks off, wonderingly.

"Indeed. Feels like just yesterday, doesn't it?" I say, thinking that she's just doing that thing all elves do where they reflect on how, to them, a decade feels like a year does to a human.

"Sixty-two years together, that makes me ... 182, and you ... " she trails off.

"Eighty-seven," I answer.

"Eighty-seven years old. And yet, you still look the same as you did sixty-two years ago." She looked sharply at me. "How? Every other human we know has grown with over these past six decades, has grown up and out, weathered and greyed, but you... you are the same!"

"Ah, that." I sighed heavily, looking down. "I ..." I looked away from her eyes.

She stepped forward, guardedly. "You... what? What is it? What are you? Who are you?"

I sighed again, and softly took her hands, but she pulled them away. "Who am I? What am I? I am yours. Forever. Always. I swore this the day we were joined, before our loved ones and our gods." Silently I prayed to those gods now, for the allowance and strength to tell her what happened that night of our union ceremony.

A knock interrupted our soul gazing. She moved to open the door, where outside was a messenger, who simply said "Message for him", handed over the script and left. I took the message, silently read it, and nodded.

I took her hands again, and as she started to ask about the message, I continued. "Before anything, you must know this. I am human. I am yours, forever, always. This is and will be ever true." I dropped her hands and showed her the message. Two words, it read: "Tell her", and marked with a symbol - a face-up coin.

"On the night of our union, we were blessed. By our families, and our friends. By each other. And by our gods."

She looked at the message, then back at me. "What do you mean 'by our gods'? They were there?" She whispered.

"One was, for sure. Maybe others."

She looked stunned. "And they heard our oaths? Our vows?"

I nodded. "They did. And they agreed to keep them, so long as we do."

Her voice dropped lower. "How did you know? And why didn't you tell me?"

"At the gathering, after the union ceremony. When we were playing games of chance. Do you remember? We had lost every match, but..."

"But it didn't matter, because we were playing together, and besides it was making the others happy." She finished for me. "Until that one lady sat to play."

"Right. And all of a sudden we couldn't lose."

She looked at the message again, at the symbol. "Tymora? Lady Luck herself?"

I nodded. "She came afterwards, to me alone, I don't know why. She said that she'd had a fantastic time, and believed our oaths and vows were made truthfully and righteously, so she blessed our union. Then she swore me to secrecy, I was not to tell you 'until the right time', she said. Which is now, apparently." Once more I took her hands. "And by the grace of Tymora, I am the luckiest man in the world!"

"Alright! I'm a troll."

"What?" shouted Eleanor.

"I'm a troll, not a human. Are you happy now?"

Eleanor shook her head in disbelief and turned to face her husband as he started to walk into the next room.

"No, that doesn't make any sense. You're a human. You look like a bloody human."

I turn to Eleanor at the door to the living room. I was fed up with lying. I was done pretending to be someone that I'm not.

"I'm not human. You think I'm human. Everyone thinks I'm human, but I'm not. And this is why. You can't accept the fact that not all trolls are ugly and evil. I knew you'd never believe me, so I let you see what you wanted to believe."

Eleanor backs away in confusion. "No. No. That's impossible. I'd know. Trolls have magic. I'd know!"

I close my hand and slowly open it in front of her and reveal a small blue flame in my palm.

"Yeah, they do."

Eleanor was stunned. I never did magic in front of her before. I never needed to. She was better at it than I was. I then snuff out the flame and place my hands on her shoulders, and lean in close to whisper in her ear.

"Don't tell anyone."

...

Ok, so. There's this spell that is meant to heal injuries attained in war. I learned it from the medic in one of my first battles. Apparently not many humans inquired about spellcasting, and he was proud of making this one up himself so he eagerly explained the inner workings of the spell to me: In sacrificial magic, there are no rules or constraints as to what must be sacrificed to power the spell, contrary to popular belief it's not just blood or a life that must be used. Anyway, he figured that if he could get a soldier to hold the catalyst while he did the casting, he could bind the soldier to a sacrifice: in exchange for the energy on the battlefield (fear, anger, pain, from not just the subject but those around them), the soldier could return part of thier body to the condition it was when they casted the spell. And it worked. He would bind as many soldiers as he could before they entered the fight, and they would emerge from battle with an easy treatment for their wounds.

I saw lots of potential in this, and asked him to write down the spell for me. After the war, I continued my studies in spell modification, and was able to work what was meant to be a convenience into something far greater. The sacrifice of the energy gained from a brief battle was not enough for what I wanted. I searched what little texts I could find on sacrifice magic for any ounces of power I could pile onto the spell without causing detriment: the heat of breath, anxiety, disgust, whatever I could find. In the end, it came down to a simple problem: I had piled on enough sacrifices to power the spell, but gathering this power would take time, and the spell catalysts I had access to were.. leaky vessels. I needed a catalyst that could hold the energy long for the time required to gather enough for the spell. So I searched.

And about a year before I met you, I was looking in the tomb of some great warrior from long ago, and next to his coffin in the heart of a forest I found not one, but two catalysts that had been left for his journey in the afterlife. I was excited, but I knew better than to simply steal them. I set up a summoning circle in the dust of the tomb floor, and prayed hours in the dark to commune with his spirit. And with enough patience his confused ghost briefly took form. "Are you still using those?" I asked him, pointing to the catalysts "Why of course not" he said, "My gifts have served their purpose, and my journey ended long ago." "So I can just go ahead and nab these off you?" "I don't see why not" he responded. I thanked him and sent him back, leaving the tomb with the power of immortality.

"Wait" said my wife "why did you take both of them?"

"I'm getting to that"

Anyway, with two powerful catalysts, I could go further with my plan then I had previously thought. The spell was finished, and I bound myself to a sacrifice: I would surrender some of my anger, disgust, urine and about a paragraph of all the other random things I could tack on to this spell, and in exchange, when it was ready and when I was willing, I could return my entire body to the state it was when I casted the spell.

"So you age a few seconds at a time, and bind yourself back to the spell as soon as you can?" Said my wife "That doesn't really count as immortality"

"No, that wouldn't but here's where the second catalyst comes in"

With two catalysts, I could cast the spell twice at the same time, and when I used one of the sacrifices, the other one would still be gathering power, and I worked it out so that I could re-bind myself to the casting time of the first spell, with the second catalyst. I can never permanently age or get injured. At all.

"But what if you die?" My wife asked "wouldn't that kill you just like the next guy?"

"Not really" I said

I would be dead, but different to most corpses, a spark of hope remains within me. The emotions that one undergoes in their last moments are more than enough to power the spell, sometimes twice over. So it's impossible for me to die without at least one charged catalyst. If somebody can find me, and grip the catalyst in my corpses fingers, then carry out the second half of the spell, I will be returned to my condition at the time of casting.

"Which is alive" my wife realized.

"Exactly"

"And why, exactly, are you only telling me this now? I could have found you dead, and I would've thought I lost you for good. Who, exactly, did you expect to revive you??? I can't believe you would just leave me in the dark about all this. Why didn't you tell me you were immortal on the day we met??"

"First of all, chill, I made an arrangement with the spirit of that guy who's catalysts I took to whisper instructions into the ears of those near my body. Secondly, I can't exactly going around telling everyone I have the secret to immortality, because they will want me to make them immortal."

"Why don't you want me to be immortal?" She said hysterically "I'm your wife!"

"Well I've only got just the two catalysts and.. Actually I could just bind you the same way the medic bound the soldiers. Or I could just teach you the spell. We could share the catalysts and that wouldn't really make a difference. That's a pretty good point you made"

My wife stared at me, dumbfounded.

[deleted]

I took a little spin and switched roles a little, it flowed easier from the elf pov.

“Look babe, we have been through this before, I just take care of myself. You eat nothing but vegetables and can’t seem to stop doing yoga, or dance, or even that weird sword fighting stuff. No one has sword fought in well over 100 years. I do everything you do. It’s proven by science and everything.” He throws back at me. The arguments have turned fairly defensive lately displayed in a tone that turns my suspicious demeanor even stronger. Why can’t he just tell the truth?

“You just turned 55, from my count you should have some sort of age on your face. What does it matter what we both do, it’s obvious I won’t age but I’ve been alive for 380 years. I’ve seen man age. You haven’t! Your excuses have gotten out of hand. We have been married for more than 20 years and you look exactly the same. There is no way!” As the desperation exudes from every word I can’t help but think that this argument is going nowhere, again. I have been building experience and instincts for a few hundred years has made it incredibly easy to read people. This man is lying.

His shoulders, pulled back, in an attempt to make himself appear larger and even have the confidence a 21 year old tells no truth. At his age the old pretense of being the biggest and strongest in a room should have washed away by now. Bellowing out, his aura of youth spilling with every rise in emotion. Nothing had changed since he was allegedly 35 when he perceived there was something to prove.

“You’re getting out of hand and crazy again. Overreacting like usual. I’m starting to think your intuition is clouded somehow. You’re just like all the other women.” His snide remark seemed to come out of nowhere. Honestly is a virtue and this dug deep. Eloquence of language had never been his strength.

Responding with a coolness that should have been a warning, “Seems that you’re fighting dirty because you know I’m right. You’re not what or who you say you are.” That should stop it

Of course he didn’t take the bait. Drawing a breath from deep within,” 300 years and you’re just an old suspicious hag.”

I let a deep sigh escape from within my soul. Despite knowing this would come up one day, I still felt ill-prepared. So, I reached deep within my soul and mustered up as much courage as any husband could when his wife is tapping her foot underneath crossed arms.

“Okay, so what happened was-“ I already could see the life in her eyes dying from annoyance. “So, you know when we were dating, and I went to the mountains with the boys? The hunting trip when I brought back the eight point?” I gestured to the mounted head above our fireplace.

“Well, Danny showed up.” I froze when Alivani’s hand shot out to stop me. She strolled over to the liquor table. The mouth of the bottle did not but kiss the rim of the glass before she chucked the latter behind her and gulped heavily.

“Continue.” she said.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds.” I assured her with pumping hands. “I know Danny doesn’t always have the best ideas, but this one was solid.”

“You mean like the time he blew up half a mountain?” Alivani reminded. “Or the time he pressed you all into being military conscripts? Ooo! Ooo! Or, was it as good as when you kidnapped a crime boss’ wife?”

“That last one was Vortre’s idea, actually.” I corrected politely. “No, so Danny caught up to us, and, as it turns out, we were camped near some ruins with supposed treasure.”

“It sounds crazy, but I knew for a fact it would be safe because a group of adventurers had cleaned out the goblins the week prior.”

“Wouldn’t the adventurers have taken the treasure?”

“Well, the hope was that we could get the scraps.” I responded. “So, we get there, search a bit, and then we get attacked by a shade.”

Alivani’s eyes didn’t blink as she took a hearty swig. “A shade?” She took three more. “It took your soul?”

“No.” I said. “I took its soul.”

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