Tick, tick, tick, tick.

A heavy thudding beat resounds around floor forty-six as I stand atop the large, horizontally spinning gear. The beat of each vibration of the mechanical heart rattling my armor as I stand there, looking out over the mechanical floor before me. Dozens, hundreds of giant whirring gears interconnect with each other, all of them spinning in a precise dance as they power the clockwork mechanism.

Clocks are cool I guess. But they’re a little spooky, you know? Like…

Why would humans even bother coming up with something like that? Something that measures your time? Why would you want to do that? It sounds horrible.

I leap, climbing over to the next gear. A pile of broken scrap clatters beneath my feet as I land. Pulling my leg free, I kick the dead trash-mob to the side. A small mechanical automaton. There are dozens like it around here. They kind of look like red-caps actually, but they’re made out of metal. I bend down, looking closer at the little oddity. They even have a little hat and everything.

Ugh.

I hate red-caps. Maybe it’s better that they’re dead.

Anyways, what was I saying? Oh yeah, clocks. Why?

Why would you want to live every day watching the clock tick down to signal the birth of a new day? Why wouldn’t you just look at the sun and the moon? Why would you care about every single second of your life enough to measure it? It’s a waste of time. Ironically enough.

I leap, moving to the next gear.

Do you think slimes care about time?

“No,” bubbles the slime and I nod in agreement. No, they don’t.

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Slimes don’t care about time. Fish don’t care about time. Lizards don’t care about time. Crabs don’t care about time. Only humans and humans alone really care about time, because they’re such cowards. Because they think they matter more than anything else. It’s disgusting. ‘Oooooh, I don’t have enough time, waaah, waaah.’ Shut up. I hate humans. Die with some dignity like a lizard does. Humans are just the trash-mobs of the surface and I’m tired of them pretending that they aren’t.

Anyways.

It’s an abstract thing, time is nothing but an abstract measure of dread itself. After all, the only point of checking the time is to see how much of it you have left.

The answer is always ‘not enough’.

You don’t have enough time left. Ever. It’s basically already over every time you look at a clock. Sure, I suppose it can be useful to help organize things. But what are you really doing that’s so important that you need to measure something as precise as the flow of the water of the cosmos? You have to go to work? You’re going to die and float in the void forever and ever, if you go to work or not. Why would you even waste your rare time going to ‘work’? You’re playing make-believe. None of this is real. You have an appointment for a priest to look at that weird bump on your foot? Wow. Great. You just have ugly feet. Live with it. You have to buy food so you and your children don’t starve to death? You won’t. The human body isn’t meant to eat every day and you’re putting on some weight anyways, let’s be honest, you’re falling apart at the seams. You have an important meeting to buy a home near the ocean? Just go live in a cave, what’s your problem? Why are humans so uptight about everything? Just go die once in a while like I do, you’ll be fine, you babies.

Unbelievable.

I leap, grabbing hold of a whirring gear that spins with a slow, vertical rotation. Now, what you could do with your time instead of measuring it, instead of wasting it, is actually using it. Be a lizard, friend. Go sit in the sun. Eat some bugs. Live the life you were meant to live, not this weird human fantasy of yours. Tear out your eyes so that you can finally see that they aren’t real. Go kill the hero. Go escape the dungeon. You don’t need a clock for that. All you need is a pair of boots to hide your ugly feet and some time.

A giant pendulum swings from side to side, crashing just over my head. A rush of air follows after the swooping, giant piece of metal swinging towards the left, the rush of air pulling my body to the side, pulling my cape to the side as I barely manage to hold on. Quickly, before it comes back, I pull myself up the spinning gear and rush across it, leaping over just in time as the pendulum swings back across.

I wonder if the hero-party has managed to start chasing after me again? I bet they have. The thing that skitters can’t keep them there forever without breaking their charade. Though, I wonder what it’s deal is too? Does the thing that skitters care about time? Or is it just skittering for the sake of it? What does it want? Specifically, what does it want with me? Is it helping me? Or is it following its own goals?

Where is the encroacher? What does it want with me? Why does it want to eat my eyes? Where did it all go wrong? Did the dungeon-master ever like me? Did anyone? How did I even get here and what would have happened if I never started trying to escape the dungeon? What happens if I escape the dungeon? What about everyone else who stays behind? Will the rot subside once I leave, or will the dungeon continue to fester even after? When I escape, do you think I’ll get to be a fish? Or a lizard? Or will I be a human? Or will I be this thing that I am now? This undead amalgamation of bone and metal?

I sigh. There are just too many mysteries in life. But that’s fine, it’s fine. Because I have all the time in the world and then some.