I wrote you guys a story: Ticking in the Darkness

Ticking in the Darkness A short story By Catbat

Zilean tinkered with his enormous clock. He may carry himself through time and space itself with this machine but that didn't mean it didn't need fixing every now and then. Occasionally he needed help with his task, and it wasn't hard to find a hand, especially when he was in a time when Orianna was part of the league. The robot proved invaluable with help especially with her delicate clockwork fingers that could reach tighter spots than Zilean himself could reach without taking apart his device.

Zilean hummed to himself as he memorized the script to this particular visit to reality. Having the curse of reliving his own timeline multiple times has burned memories into his head even if he wanted to forget. "Now Orianna, I'm going to need you to replace the chrono-capacitor, it is close to burning out. Then we need to fit a few new cogs and it will be good as new. You remember how to do that right?" Zilean was finding joy in the tinkering as it distracted him from his past. The script was always the same. He knew he would get this done and have some time to read a few books before slipping to another section of his life. This comforted the old man.

Then it started, the deviation. It caught Zilean by surprise as they weren't frequent. Occasionally there were deviations from the script, but overall it stayed the same and only minor things changed, like a dress picked, a ribbon or even different flavored pies; however the dialogue never deviated, or at least not before.

Orianna stopped what she was doing, putting down the tools she was working with. "Zilean, why do you let the ticking continue over and over again. Why not make it stop?"

It took Zilean a number of minutes before he could come up with a response. He had been living on autopilot through his centuries so many times, he almost forgot that he could form responses having memorized what they always should be. "I- What do you mean? I cannot die, I am tied to time itself. There is no end or beginning, there is no starting or stopping, only existence."

"But if that is true, how can we go against programming? There is something keeping us here. There are more than what we see in this universe and there are many of us throughout other worlds. Are you tied to time or is time's ticking tied to you?" She said. Orianna went back to replacing cracked cogs while Zilean thought and grabbed replacement parts from shelves around his room.

"Of course I am not bound to time or else I would have undone the atrocities that happened to my people. I would stop the person responsible for the destruction of my family." He said as he finally came up with the answer. He was getting old he thought, or was it doubt? It couldn't be. He relived his life so many times he knew it would snap back to the set path as always, there were no meaningful deviations. "Time cannot be rewritten, it always snaps back."

Orianna and Zilean worked in silence for a while and they finished up. Zilean got up and opened a window. The repairs were almost done but he wished they were done minutes ago so the deviation would never occur. Orianna finished working and closed up the clock that Zilean wore on his back. As she left, stopping at the door. "What if the person who won't let you change the past is yourself? Maybe you can't bear to face the loved ones you lost as it would break you to dream of their deaths and see them alive, knowing it is only a number of ticks of the clock before you outlive them aga-"

"s- stop... STOP! Stop!"Zilean sat at his desk, staring at his device as thoughts or memories flooded his head, the deviation shook what he knew was real. He sat at the desk before time whisked him away, to another time. To another place, away from the seeds of doubt as the script always snapped back. It always snapped back and that used to give him comfort. It used to give him comfort.