We had been separated into many, and from these many we had all chosen our separate paths and delved into the individual world that we decided to name our imaginations and our creativities to find something beyond the ash left behind by our predecessors to build upon. It was stupid for us to believe it wouldn't end differently, and so someone decided to build something different. When they created fortresses, imperial strongholds, entire empires from which they could begin their own struggles against the impending threats that loomed in the distance, he created from the soil something simple, yet more complex than the eye could manage to understand. He did not make swords or weapons, but rather he created with the dust and sand, an hourglass. And with that he sat, and used this to not defend himself from the onslaught as it occurred around his prone form, to not assist his family, his friends or whatever remained of any possessions he had ever owned, but he simply sat. And as time ravaged and took its toll, the changes of the surrounding worlds pressing down on the man, he did not resist to them. Eventually, several generations had passed and depleted, and yet he remained untouched and unscathed by the furious battles passed about him, many may ask why this happened and why he did not fall like so many others, but there is a simple answer to come, if the time is taken to read it.
A massacre. Blood ran like water. And he walked through, over the bloodied corpses, hourglass in hand with the grains of sand falling in microscopic cascades of earth, the one protection from the death and destruction that was almost inevitable to the others. Their weapons were useless; they were useless in all of their futility to harm the ones that plagued them, the beasts forged from the souls of those that had been their brothers and friends, a disease spreading about the lands taken physical form. They called them something too hideous to be caught in the tongue we use today, for which there is no suitable translation to inscribe to this story as I write it. The reason of their creation was something else entirely unknown, possibly to maintain a darkened balance occurring in other undisclosed locat1ons. But as he stepped over the charred corpses and rubble that had once been endless shelters and defences, the elder ruins of those that he had witnessed before him remained unscathed. He became the outcast, the elder and the revered for his discoveries, praised for an accomplishment no-one had yet seen or known. Perhaps they were right in their reverence, perhaps not. But deep down, he was nothing. He was nothing more than a withered husk left after the blight of all that he had loved and treasured burned in the infernos brought about by the foul demons that had once set to destroy him too.
Because of the hourglass he had been spared, for what purpose was unknown as he watched all that he had ever known, and even all that he came to know in the coming years, decades, centuries, die in horrible massacres before his eyes, blood splattering his body yet unmatched with his own. Time blurred, yet in his hand the instrument counted every second that passed for the next wave of destruction and tyranny to occur, consuming him under the unending death that was inevitable for all. The hourglass became the key and the prison, and he was its master and its slave. He was something far beyond what we could conceive, and from the realisation of this he gained his strength under the endless accounts of events that led to each outcome, his own stronghold untouched and unmatched by either the mortals that revered it or the unnatural that loathed it. He transferred and manipulated the hourglass that he had made, and with it he grew to control the worlds around him and their events. Through the ages he ventured and emerged at all different periods, at all different locat1ons, and watched, learning as he had before of the secrets behind what could only be dreamed of knowing, and in those depths he discovered something foul and horrid, the reason for the endless strife and destruction, and he grew to loathe it as it loathed him. He wrote the stories, the confessions and the dishonest lies of what he had done, the thing that he had created that he knew would bring about the final end for the endless generations to come. This is one of these said confessions. I am Father Time, and I will end what I have begun. I swear on the ends of Time itself, and all that shall bring it.?
Chapter 1; Standing.
The tapping of my staff upon the cobblestone roads echoed down the shanty-town alleyways as I walked alongside it, the hood hanging from the top of my head downcast over the brim of my eyes to give them a grim shadow and cover the glare that had long since embedded itself after my many experiments over my own body and on the surrounding world. Many people turned to me as I passed, staring at my robed form as I wandered through the streets and ruins of the old town. They knew who I was; it wasn't difficult to tell with the staff that had apparently been aptly dubbed ''The Staff of Time'' beside me. Some of them moved out to the side to make a column through which I walked silently through, passing the incessant mutterings of the crowds that had gathered around me. It was not often that I abandoned my 'fortress' but a meeting was to be held and I wished for it to be on neutral grounds, as much as the rest of them did. It was an impasse; there was still much strife about the discovery of the other three. It hadn't taken long for my journeys to take me to their grounds, and as the others had found one-another they had been wary at first, it was visible on their features as they had met for the first time, in the middle of one of the Desecrated Lands. Space, I, Nature and Balance circled at one of the last solid fragments of stone that had once been part of a majestic sentry tower. It was surprising how each of them had come together, and heard each-others stories, listened to similar tales of dread and slaughter that had spread across the endless lands like a repulsive corruption, a disease that had spoiled the balance, which had especially annoyed Balance he had said. They knew that something had to be done order to change the ways as much as I did. And that would begin today, I knew it would happen today because the sands were nearly over, the final grains had begun their descent into the abyss below and soon the time of righting would begin as the others would end. I stopped, taking a moment to watch as one particular person forcefully barged their way through the crowd before me, a small cleaving dagger drawn threateningly only to be instantly disarmed by a mixture of several armed guards in chainmail and steel helmets and rag-donned civilian alike. He had known, in the back of his head that he would not be harmed. Not only would countless people be drawn, even without his influence, to assist him should anything at all happen that was out of the ordinary scale of events to occur in the near future, but also because he had long since outgrown the mortality of a single human being. It was inevitable considering the amount of time that I have lived in without a single hair greying upon my head. Not to mention the input of the hourglasses abilities into a number of other objects, including the dark grey cloak that even now flowed down from my shoulders and wavered behind me, as if of a mind of its own as it flickered and swayed with every footstep, which I knew would do much more than simply stop the blade in its path should it come anywhere near it. At last though, I found myself in the central square of the town, market stalls facing in from the surrounding and a tower of water lifting from a stonework fountain not too far off from the centre, in which I now stood and equally was surrounded by a perfect circle of rag-clothed beggars, blood-soaked butchers and merchants, as well as other unrecognisable faces and incomprehensible authorities. It didn't matter in the end, I knew, because they'd all die in exactly the same way. Some may have a few more seconds to live as they threw others before them, others may have openly submitted themselves to the sharp blades of teeth that awaited their throats. It was all inevitable, or it would have been. Perhaps this time it would be different, I thought casually. Equally so, perhaps not. The circle widened suddenly, as where there had once been one mysterious figure, there were now four. Balance's white cloak shimmered in the afternoon air, twisting itself into complicated patterns behind him, the suns light reflecting as if he wore a texture of mirror and glass, while Nature's cloak remained stable, not even the sharp gusts of wind flinging dust across the shanty-town could set the dark green fabric into any sort of motion, but the intricate floral patterns inscribed into the material seemed to writhe on their own accord. Space's adornment left a dull glow in the air surrounding it, almost as if not entirely corporeal, blending at the edges into the rest of the world that he was a part of in more ways than one. But as we four stood in the middle of the large surrounding circle, I realised that it must have been a rather odd sight to see indeed. There were many more just like this place, many more cities scattered about the ruins of the different lands, all in different stages of turmoil and deterioration, but all headed to the same path, I knew. Even if a victory was struck today it would only be one battle of many, many more to come, and neither would it be the most difficult or challenging, far from it in fact. But the faint cries in the distance far too shrill for the humans around them to notice told them that this would be one to be remembered nevertheless.
We waited as the others fell. Arrows hit scales in a cacophony of battle and vicious bloody war, but it had soon turned into a one-sided massacre once again, like so many before them and as so many would come to pass after them should they fail in their stand. The monsters had obviously noticed our presence, for they manoeuvred themselves around the central portion of the town, rather ransacking the surrounding buildings with even more destructive force than I?d previously seen them enforce. The others had moved themselves out and over them, but as one began its flight it was obvious there was something wrong with one of its wings, and quickly the other showed signs of the same difficulty, an inability to open them fully, a crushing force bearing down on its body, Space's hand raised towards it as he sighed softly with the slightest pinch, the mighty figure falling, deceased from the numerous wounds exerted at once onto its body. The others had turned, a hate in their eyes the likes of which was enough to make Nature visibly shudder from the piercing gaze, all four of the cold black eyeballs fixed upon him. Space however had begun walking towards the point that more of the foul things had already begun to emerge, hands moving in several separate directions, performing several different actions, and My brow furrowed in concentration at the increased speed of such things, my mind wracked with intense concentration in the burden of using my abilities to such purpose, the bending of action and reaction until nothing remained but a surrounding mass of the dead corpses of the foul things, and yet so many more awaited them, massing themselves from the points ahead. Balance and Nature's hands unblooded, we began our walk towards the mass in the distance, where we knew countless more would wait for us. During the second wave encounter, Nature was spurred into battle, hands pressing to the cold dead earth to amass it to her will, crushing the things beneath it to stop them from passing towards whatever remained of the town behind them. Now as we pushed our way through the endless onslaughts it seemed as if they had become less prepared, simply massing into streams of force rather than using any tactic, and the situation of protecting the town no longer remained an issue, rather the creatures had amassed themselves in order to surround and attack the group through whichever means proved necessary. Wicked talons snapped at us as bird-like figures emerged from the sickly black clouds above, quickly dispatched as their wings ceased to function, crushed under the space surrounding them converged into a single point. Endless thralls pushed themselves forwards, over the bodies of the deceased before them, mountains of the previously dead piling around the group as they continued to press themselves in the seemingly endless battle, until Balance raised his hands, palms aimed to the corrupted dark sky. The grounds had shifted, and a dark aura had descended from the clouds above, leaking as if water squeezed from a wet towel, dripping down to the Earth and burning away at the creatures, their shrill screams of pain ringing out like grating of jagged metal to bone, and yet so poetic to come from such vile creatures in their destruction and cleansing it was as musical to their ears as the singsong voice of a nursery rhyme to a new-born. It surprised all of us as much as it did the remaining creatures before they were likewise burned away to ash and bone as the skies had cleared slightly. It was barely noticeable, but the clouds seemed less thick, less blackened. Balance seemed surprisingly unfazed by the phenomenon, and as we continued to approach, I nodded at Space and together we launched our group forwards and towards what we hoped would not be our end. Although we had no clue of what awaited us at the opposite end of the portal slamming us through the endless reaches of existence, we thought we had a pretty good idea. The creatures that had been fought were experiments, developed by the forces that now wished the end of order and abundance of what could be labelled as ?good?. And they were what we would reach, and destroy, through whatever means necessary to restore Balance.
That?s where it?d all gone wrong.
I and Space tore a grip in the fabrics through which we all suddenly found ourselves; Nature had travelled between the gaps since he was still gathering power after laying seeds about the desolate lands behind us to begin the reformation of his strength, and to begin to bring an end to the remaining creatures that plagued the lands, and Balance had his own means of transportation that had brought him next to us as if he had always been there. The place that we had landed inside seemed very different than the others inside the expanse of realms the other corruption had lay, and yet it seemed strongest here. The reason for this soon made itself clear, as the dust beneath us began to shape itself into columns, twisting intricately into complex shapes and indents as the skies folded into a painted ceiling held by the walls, stone shaping itself along the floors and walls to create an ornate dining hall, stretching out to a headboard of six chairs. From each column lining the sides of the room, shapes had shifted themselves from carvings of stone into armoured knights, almost melting in droplets of material and stone from the walls and reshaping in smaller tendrils and rivulets, each revealing a very malicious halberd at their sides. Before Space could react, being closest to one of the figures that had emerged, three bladed tips pointed at his throat, and judging by the entrance of the guards, neither they nor their weapons were of the world where they would do little to no harm to each of them. Soon however, it was apparent that a previously un-noted entrance had been made, as each of the six chairs had been filled with six almost identical pale-skinned figures, each wearing a dark-blue coat woven with different shades to make it seem to blend and ripple with waves. Even more surprising was at the opposite end of the room now stood one with a similar cape, although of a much darker shade than the others, and holding a blue-tinted glass in one hand. The liquid inside swirled in small circles as he turned it, before lifting his head and smiling, as if having just viewed some comical joke performed by a troupe of clowns and jesters alike. His face seemed soft and gentle, although considering the circumstances that the four were now in, it was hardly comforting. The six accomplice?s during the time it had taken for the four to take their eyes away, had already moved behind Space, two hands slamming palms outstretched into the back of his head with enough force to break a normal skull to powder, but for him simply sent him stumbling forwards a few steps. Balance stepped before the four gathered, while I took the other two, the time taken for them to make each advance seemed ridiculously slow under my perception as I unleashed a series of devastating blows into their stomach and chest, launching them back across the room using the same concentration for drinking water. Meanwhile, Balance was moving at unnatural speeds around the four, causing them to deteriorate as they fell to the ground, melting as the knights who now stood around them without moving so much of a finger seemed to have made them, although now in reverse as they dispersed into the marble floor. Likewise had the other two thrown across the room by me, melting back from where they had most likely originated. Only now had the final man stopped smiling, turning the glass in his hands as liquid slowly filled it from the bottom. His mouth opened, and with a crystalline voice he pronounced,
?I?ve been awaiting your meeting. Time, Space, Nature, Balance, my name is Iryleth. And I have a proposition for you...?
All reality is a game. Physics at its most fundamental, the very fabric of our universe, results directly from the interaction of certain fairly simple rules, and chance; the same description may be applied to the best, most elefant and both intellectually and aesthetically satisfying games. - Iain Banks.
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