Jordon
Legacy Name: Jordon

Jordon Smith was exactly the kind of person who's good side anyone would want to be on. A self-made man who was rich, good-looking, highly influential, deliciously suave and surprisingly down to earth. He owned several estates, a distillery and a chocolate factory. All of them well-manned and the only thing he did with regards to them was sign-off papers.

What, then, did Jordon during his leisure hours? He was a socialite. The best parties and events in the city were held at Jordon's manor. Crystal chandeliers, gold champagne glasses and exotic dancers, coupled with exquisite food, artifacts and jewellery - strategically placed to fall in the line of sight of his visitors.

Although Jordon loved to please his guests, there was a side of him that nobody knew of. When Jordon was younger, he came across a hidden room in his grandfather's library. The room was a stockpile of old scrolls and books, hand-written in languages he could not comprehend. Ciphers. He took it upon himself to try and decode them, and he did. The decrypted ciphers revealed notes of a subject called 'Alchemy'.

It involved the transmutation of one matter into another - a balanced chemical equation of substances. It was discovered to find a way to transform lead into gold. However, gold was dispensable to Jordon. He could get his hands on anything in the world. He wanted something money could not buy. The ciphers spoke of a special potion that could grant eternal life to the drinker. It was called the "Elixir of Immortality".

For fifteen years Jordon tried to formulate the perfect balance of the Elixir. Mercury, Sulfur, Arsenic and Gold. None of them consumable, all poisonous. Jordon tried ingesting a minimal dosage of the potion but it had lead to a gruesome reaction due to which his left arm was slowly disintegrating. Jordon always wore long sleeves and gloves to cover it up. However, the infection was manifesting. He was unsure if there was any antidote. This only urged him to solve the puzzle of the Elixir sooner.

Jordon refused to test the potion on himself after the previous disaster. He decided he would use his guests as lab rats for the greater good of mankind. As an act of righteousness, he drugged one or two of his guests every time he held a party and noted their reactions to it. The effects would not settle in immediately, therefore, nobody could pinpoint the source.

"A bad reaction to the shrimp.." was the best explanation anyone could give.

Jordon monitored his subjects, as he called them, with great care. He followed them around, taking note of how often they became hungry or thirsty. Things seemed normal until one by one, they dropped dead like flies.A frustrated Jordon found himself back at his manson, stripping naked and regarding himself in a floor-length mirror. The skin on half his back was powder-blue. When he carefully brushed his fingers over his skin, it came off, like dust. He turned around, his front facing the mirror. The powder-blue was slowly creeping up his neck, on the base of his jaw and on one side of his face. He was decaying, turning brittle and fading away.

Jordon had no choice. So far, he had only transmuted metals but now he had to try what the deciphered scripts warned him not to. Human transmutation. Jordon began to draw a transmutation circle with white chalk on the floor of his bedroom - an outer circle and an inner circle. He then drew a pentagram within the inner circle. Lines were then drawn inside the pentagram. They were intricate, precise and were etched to dictate the flow of energy that would course through Jordon's body as the transmutation happened. Jordon then placed the base elements on five joining points of the pentagram. A lit candle for fire, a glass of water, a handful of dirt for Earth, an empty jar for Air and a he placed a block of metal on the fifth point.

Jordon crouched and touched his palms on the ground, where the lines overlapped. Almost immediately, he felt the chemical wave surge through him. The energy that passed through him was great and he felt charged. He screamed, throwing his head back in agony, his eyes rolling to the back of his head. He felt immense heat surge through his body due to the chemical change. He also fell a sharp pain on two places on his head, as if, something was going to break out of his skull. He held his head in his palms, crying in pain. Reeling with pain, he reached out for a bottle on his side and poured a few drops of the elixir on his shivering palm and licked it up. It was the same elixir that had killed his subjects, but with one extra ingredient - blood. Jordon fell to the ground, singed and fatigued. Smoke emanated from his body and he was covered in blisters.
Jordon did not wake until the next morning. It was a blessing that he had woken up at all.

He crawled to the mirror and could not believe his eyes. His reflection showed something grotesque and mangled. The blue powder had covered one half on his body from head to toe. On his head there were two thick horns protruding at odd angles. His hair was ripped off at certain places, leaving patches of baldness. Jordon's eyes began to water at his own reflection. The transmutation had gone horribly wrong. He rubbed off the lines of the circle, howling. He ran to his study and tore at the notes and scrolls in rage. He ripped apart the books he had studied from, throwing the pages in the air. While they fluttered to the ground, Jordon's eyes rested on a dagger hanging on the wall.
He unmounted it and removed it's case, revealing the shiny, sharp blade. There was no point in living this way, he thought to himself. It was time to end the suffering he had gone through.

He held the shaft with both hands, blade to skin. He buried the dagger deep in his chest in one swift move. He felt dizzy as the warm blood oozed onto his hands, down his arms and onto his stomach. He pulled the dagger out with a groan and knelt down on the ground. He looked down at his chest, touching the wound, expecting to see the blood gushing out. Instead, he found that there was no wound at all. The surface of his skin was reddish but had not broken.

Jordon's eyes widened. His body had healed by itself. Which only meant one thing: the elixir had worked! He was immortal.

For one split second, Jordon was overjoyed. Then, he remembered that his body had already begun to disintegrate and he had grown horns. If he was immortal, he was stuck in this grotesque, mutated body forever.

Jordon knew why this mutation was forbidden. Immortality had come with a heavy price. A man with everything was reduced to a man with nothing to live for, but to live forever. He was cursed until the end of time.

Credits:
Profile: chi ♥️
Story: Chii