So it is done

Time

Humanity has a lot of troubles understanding large passages of time. Decades and centuries are just words for them, they can't possibly comprehend what such lengths of time entail.

Ozpin has lived such a long life that there was no way for an outsider to believe it.

Thousands of years and hundreds of generations. He had spent that time fighting Salem, for hundreds of generations, and his lives, he had killed her, again and again.

Through subterfuge and blackmail, through armies and politics, through laws and economics, there was no means he had not used in his fight against Salem.

There was no means to which he had not stooped to.

At first, he was simply killing her. Simply and without any special thought.

By magic, by blade, by poison, by fire, by strangulation, there was no method of murder in the world that he had not tried on Salem.

But it was not enough. No methods he employed could kill Salem for good.

If he cut off her head, Salem would simply grow a new one. If he choked her until she stopped twitching, she would simply open her eyes as soon as he let go of her neck. He'd burn her body to the ground in ovens once, and she'd rise from the ashes.

The human mind is capable of committing the most vile acts, to the hardest measures, when given the will.

Ozpin had once caught Salem, after which he divided her body into pieces, then he poured concrete over each part, after which he dumped some of the cubes into the abyss of the sea, buried some, entrusted some to humans, and dumped the rest into volcanoes.

It was an act that would evoke consternation, disgust, horror in those who heard of his actions, inhumane as they are.

Ozpin, defender of humanity, genius Hunter, one of the last mages, of the last shards of the old world, did such terrible things again and again.

To stop Salem, there were no evils that he didn't commit.

To the woman he loved, the mother of his children, his beloved co-ruler of the world.

He had torn her to pieces, a body mutilated to the utmost.

Salem still feels pain.

She had become immortal, but not insensate.

Ozpin was causing her pain, terrible pain, every time he tried to kill her.

It was not enough. It had never been enough.

Salem and Ozpin were always two equals, and yet Ozpin was the only truly cursed. His magic was weakening, slowly, drop by drop, it was draining from his body.

Salem's magic was not.

The madness of pain could hold Salem back, but it could not destroy her. Even if he were to torture her to madness, time heals all wounds. And even the hundreds of years of respite that Ozpin received then did not stop her.

Ozpin and Salem were still humans, too. Changed as they were, at their core, they were human.

And people get used to everything, even pain.

Even death.

Even if Salem's body was torn apart, it couldn't destroy her mind. And after spending hundreds of years in agony, she would be able to find the strength to break free from the madness. Moment by moment, she chipped through her shackles, mountains would crumble, flames subsided, and even lava cooled.