Word Count: 1,514
He sat in his immense throne of shimmering black obsidian. The Timekeeper, a giant of a man, held perfect posture, gripping the arms of his throne with his bone-white fingers. He was gazing nonchalantly past the billowing gossamer curtains, out into the grey snowy skies, and over his metropolitan empire. He held in his hand a letter he had read through no less than a hundred times, yet it wasn't until now that he could bear to throw the letter to the floor in disgust. It was a warrant for his arrest, signed by the High Chancellor, and approved by the seven other Chancellors of the Society. Why? The Timekeeper's reign over the city had come to its appointed close, yet the Timekeeper, like numerous others before him, had grown dependant of his power, and refused to step down and hand the city over to his apprentice in waiting. He sat in his throne, well aware that the High Chancellor was climbing the very steps of the Timekeeper's tower, with twenty of the city's most disciplined guards in tow.
The Timekeeper rose from his throne, and with elegant strides he walked across the room to his liquor cabinet. He poured a translucent amber toxin into a crystal glass before raising the glass to his thin, dry lips and letting the warm potion slither down his throat. He turned back to glance at the door. A magnificent darkwood mass, framed by a tall, golden archway. Beyond that door, his destiny approached. Five hundred steps, the High Chancellor and his guards had climbed, yet five hundred more remained. There was not a drop of sweat on his brow, instead, the furrowed lines of determination. The Timekeeper stared at the only door in the room, he knew there was no escape.
The Timekeeper took another gulp of his beverage, savouring the smooth taste as it swelled and blossomed in his mouth.
"It shouldn't have to come to this" he said to himself, with bitterness deep set in his voice.
The drink in his hand was imported Clementine Whiskey, no ordinary alcohol, and it had already begun biting down on the Timekeeper's mind.
"My apprentice should have-" He left the sentence hanging, his eyes seemed to have glazed over, lost in a reminiscent trance. "My apprentice..."
He drank deeply, and memories from his past came gushing forth in brilliant clarity, yet these memories rolled before his mind for the last time. The alcohol worked in mysterious, mystical ways, he recalled his memories too perfectly, only for them to erase from his mind moments later. Such was the tragic beauty of the Clementine grog.
"My apprentice should have been here a week ago, to relieve me of my duties. My apprentice should have been here with me, with the eight Chancellors of the Society, but he was not." The Timekeeper spoke as if poisoned with a truth serum, not intending to say what he did, but compelled to regurgitate his thoughts and memories to the empty room. He wasn't in the tower, so the Timekeeper remained until such a time where the Council thought it suitable to terminate his contract.
The Timekeeper sucked in the remaining liquid from his glass and walked over to the fireplace. With a strike of flint against the stone wall of the fireplace, sparks flew onto the dry logs. He sprayed the whiskey from his mouth onto the little fires, providing them with enough juice to grow and flower and latch onto the logs.
"The council's guard found no trace of the whereabouts of my successor. They could not find him because I murdered him." He threw his glass into the fireplace, giving in to a mischievous chuckle, breathing in the alcoholic fumes that emanated from the flames.
He drank some more, he lifted the bottle clumsily to his lips, not caring to wipe away the dribble down his chin, not caring that he sloshed the bottle and stained his robe.
"I tutored my apprentice. I taught him everything he knew, from everything I knew, yet he failed to understand the power and responsibility as I did. He was irresponsible! Incapable of lasting a week or two in the job, let alone a decade!" The Timekeeper spat in frustration before staggering across to his desk. He picked up some documents and ditched them aggressively into the fireplace.
"They told me I should sit tight, and they'd come for me once they'd sorted this mess out. They reassured me, they lied to my fucking face. They knew I'd done something to my successor, they just needed the time to forage for evidence." The Timekeeper laughed malevolently and grabbed the stoker from beside the fireplace. With aggression piercing through his muscles, the Timekeeper flailed the stoker dangerously along the wall, knocking down photographs, paintings and certificates. He flung the stoker across the room, where his pent up aggression bounced harmlessly off the wall.
"The Chancellors, they were like ravens. Vicious, vile creatures of prey. They lied, and I believed them. They hadn't figured out my murder just yet, but it was only a matter of time before they fabricated documents and had me carted away. I wasn't just going to hand down my legacy. Did they expect me to just hand over my life's work, the result of a lifetime of my own sweat and blood, to an amateur? Did they expect me to walk away?" He continued to drink himself into a sea of troubled memories, further into the path of destruction and despair.
The Timekeeper howled a mournful, melancholic cry of which only tortured and wounded beasts may cry. The Timekeeper was as ruthless and vicious a leader as they come, yet his devastation proved that even he, even the Timekeeper was not immortal, even the Timekeeper could suffer as we do, we men of flesh and blood.
"They hated me, they loathed me. If they could have, they would have killed me shortly after I became Timekeeper." He grappled the table, and in one swift motion, he upturned it, sending the numerous foreign objects on it soaring through the air. The Timekeeper's ornate silver knife, which doubled as a letter opener, reached its apex somewhere high above his head, and came down with a frightening precision, penetrating the stone floor with its sharpened tip, cutting deep enough to remain upstanding. It joined the rest of the clutter on the floor.
Another swig, and the Timekeeper became wilder and more aggressive as he sunk further into inebriation. In the chaos and confusion, his memories came faster, and with a sharper clarity, piercing his mind, cleaving it into millions and billions of fragments, pulling the synapses apart and bestowing upon the Timekeeper with the mother of all migraines. He stumbled to his knees, mumbling unintelligible curses. The High Chancellor and his Guards were within earshot, their echoed footsteps amplifying infinitely, crushing his eardrums and causing the Timekeeper to writhe and recoil in agony. They came to claim him. They came to take his tortured body from the wreckage that was his office.
"No..." The Timekeeper whispered, his past flashing before his eyes, his mind destroying upon itself. Blood trickled from the Timekeeper's numerous facial orifices.
The High Chancellor wrenched open the door to the Timekeeper's office.
"NO!" The Timekeeper said aloud, his pinkish blood bubbling from his mouth.
"Hello Timekeeper" The High Chancellor said, with a hint of malice intoned in his voice. "As you are no doubt aware, I've come to arrest you."
"NOOOO!" The Timekeeper cried out in anguish, for he knew that he would rot for an eternity if he went with the High Chancellor.
The Timekeeper mustered all his remaining energy, picked himself up from the floor and leapt through the gossamer curtains off the edge of the balcony and out of the tower, the wind rushing past his face. People on the street looked up in shock and horror, the High Chancellor ran to the balcony, watching the old man's body tumble around in the wind. He fell high and he fell hard, dead on impact, all the High Chancellor could see was the pile of rags that was the Timekeeper's robes. He rushed to the stairs, running down them as fast as humanly possible. He barged open the doors of the tower, and knelt by the Timekeeper's side. The High Chancellor shifted the Timekeeper's robes, to see his face, yet there was no face to be seen. Nor was there a body, either, the robes seemed void of any mass or life entirely. The High Chancellor lifted the robes into his arms, at which point he could feel something moving in the robes. He untangled the bundle, and was greeted with the slight whimper of a perfectly healthy baby child.
"Blessed be the Timekeeper" The High Chancellor uttered to himself in disbelief. He lifted the child in the robes above his head and spoke to the crowd of onlookers. "Friends, my dear friends, we have witnessed a miracle today. A new Timekeeper is born. Long live the Timekeeper!"
