horology | the darkling

how time hated a man

white horse - taylor swift

'that i'm not a princess, this ain't a fairy tale
i'm not the one you'll sweep off her feet'

/

'strange how we decorate pain with the thorns of hatred' - adapted words of margaret atwood

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Time is transcendent, glowing and alive.

But Time is also a cynic, a scoundrel and a liar.

Time is the ultimate judge; her power topples kingdoms, crumbles monarchs and ends eternity. She held unfathomable meaning and more power than the Universe itself.

Time is an anomaly; the only celestial element to gain a being, a conscious thought. Starlight courses through her vines, planets and stars form the very molecules of her astral body and the cosmic matter of the Universe fuse together to create the immense power of her brain.

But she didn't ask for it, for any of it. Perhaps her existence was engineered by another being; one with more power and more bloodlust.

Time is a tyrant goddess; she murders her creation indifferently until the skies run onyx black with their blood. She paints her face with this colour to remind herself of what she is and what she is capable of.

But, she also paints onyx to remind herself that all the bloodshed is nobody's fault but her own.

Time kills without reason, without mercy and without consequences. She does not heed the cries of the dead souls who wail about her injustice. As far as she was concerned, the souls of the dead were an inconvenience, a fly that she had to swat away.

But she locks the cries into the back of her mind to remind herself that they are crying out for her. For their saviour and their slayer.

Time bears no love for anything. Everything was meant to end and she made it end. Fate was a ruse created by non-believers who stuck their nose where it shouldn't be. Philosophers were people who would never be able to comprehend the full presence and omnipotence of her being.

Religious leaders made peace with their Gods upon their deathbeds but there was no God, no divine being who was going to judge them based on good and evil when they died. Instead, their only judge was Time. And she didn't care what they did in their lives; they all go to the same purgatory anyways.

But she wanted to feel, like her creations did. To feel what it was like to be furious, frustrated, fixated and free. Free from, as far as she was concerned, Hell.

Time rules unchallenged in the Heavens, sitting on strands of dark energy woven together to form her radiant throne and she strategises the death of existence. Her hands whisk up immense black holes that swallow desperate light, too weak to escape its deathly grasp. Her mind conjures the serial killers and the incompetent doctors who kill their patients with their mistakes.

But she continues to blame herself for their wrong doings and their misdeeds. It hurted her to see what she had become, an immoral deity. Ultimately, they were created from her mind and hers alone.

Time became bored of reining supreme. She, like any anomaly, had a weakness; a particular one that could not be quenched simply but spilling blood or by pining away in the dark abyss that she called home.

She didn't want to be alone. Loneliness is a burden; it is a depression that has to be carried to keep it from crushing the soul. But even the Titan Atlas did everything in his power to take that weight of his shoulders, just for a little while. So she would too.

In her eternal life, a thousand years was no more than a few minutes; a few minutes of her reality where she didn't have to be consumed in excruciating solitude.

Time thought and thought until she believed she had discovered a way to accomplish her dream.

She needed something else, another being to be her companion; something she could cherish and conceivably love.

So, Time created a man out of shadow and bones. He was her masterpiece; the very elite of her creation. As a gift, she gave him eternal life; one of the greatest and most dynamic gifts she knew how to give.

She should have given him her heart because she loved him deeply, but like any deep rooted fear, she could not bring herself to say the words. Instead, she manipulated him; twisting his words and filling his head with treachery. She was scared of change, being overwhelmed but most of all, she was terrified let down her walls because, what if her soul was as rotten and scared as her sins?

Time believed he loved her too and perhaps he did. But not for long. He had grown tired and fed up of her tough love and disregard.

One day, he stole her shadows and fled down to Earth, not in seek of anything but to simply get away from her and her web of deceit. Becoming human required him to make a sacrifice: he had to give up his eternal life.

But everything was worth escaping from the clutches of Time.

Time wept tears of galaxies when she found her companion missing. It was a different type of heartbreak; the pain of abandonment accompanied by the despair of numbness. The destitution drove her mad, a pain she knew that she was the cause of and yet he couldn't help but blame him.

She blamed him for everything that went wrong; for her fall from grace, her transgressions and her hatred. It was wicked and unfair yet it was all she could think of.

Then, she had an epiphany. She had to become human; a living, breathing embodiment of herself in the world he so loved. She craved for the nostalgic fire of her own vengeance. She needed a being who had motive to get revenge on him.

As a celestial presence, she could not be confined to a physical space; it was too disrupting and it could destroy her astral form. She needed an alternative action.

Casting out her mind's eye, she found a woman in heavy labour, fighting for her life as the people around her lay dead; bodies decomposing right before her very eyes. So, Time willed herself to attach a piece of her to the child; she willed for her blood to turn red, for her powers to diminish and for herself to be free of the shell that encased her epitome.

With the final push, Time exploded into a pumping medley of exhilarating colours, pulsing and pulsing until she was pushed out of a womb, screaming and crying in terror and thrill.

Time was now a victim of the man of shadow and bone. The family she was born into were brutally slain by the Black General soon after her birth in his crusade for power and control over territory. She was the only survivor. As cold as the hearts of men are, they do not take the lives of infants.

Instead, she was taken by one of the men who was in desperate need of a child, a father who lost his son in a bitter feud. He thought twice about taking the baby, hesitant about her dead parents. Then, he remembered the joy on his wife's face when she held their son for the first time, many many years ago. The man reached down the scooped the tiny frame of the baby into his arms.

Seraphina Vessensky was born with the powers to Time and she was destined to become a legend among men.