• The sun was a black candle in the sky.

    And we waited. Never for long. And never for nothing.

    "The time is now," the shrill voice sounded. "The time is now we fight!"
    The call left a pain in our foreheads, but each and everyone one of us stood. Soulless stares and twisted hands reached for their weapons - some for mothers and children alike, but none were there.

    Varied noises of cataclysmic nature started in a low murmur amongst the crowd as we droned forwards, our heads low and hair wild. None of us remembered who we were and yet none of us forgot - it was times like these that made men of boys, and strangers of faces trusted long ago.

    We came forward with our weapons drawn - not of swords and daggers, but mechanisms and pieces of machinery left and broken. They clanked and rattled with a death-hum melody; dirty and ragged and forged with splintered bone and greasy blood. It mattered not what was shed. Everything held purpose.

    Lurching as a malformed mob we came upon the valley, gray and sunless eyes not watching but learning, calculating, and guessing. With an ungodly grind we headed downward, falling over ourselves and our godless armaments with aimless intrigue. The time is now. The time is now. We watched them frightened, drop their facade - and turn to flee.

    Their pleas fell on long-deaf ears, harmonizing with the melodic slaughter-piece our weapons rang so surely. An orchestration for the dead-end battle, written in the dirt and sand with their shameless blood. Read by martyrs, sung by their children - and all of this in vain.

    Too soon was upon us. The sun was a sun again, but no light was shed. Just tears. In our moment we stood face to the sky - and those gray-red eyes were blind. Our hands twitched open and our clockwork fell. Childless fingers held our sorrows and we fell to our knees - grasping for each other and begging. We begged for everything and nothing. Our cries were a thick miasma. It swallowed us whole and one by one we fell like cowards among the dead. Writhing, gasping like newborn children in a soundless haze.

    "The time was now," the shrill voice sounded. "The time was now. The calling heeded, you did your turn - now fall to earth and feel. Feel the time you've stolen, the deed you've done. You have done well, and now..."

    We felt ourselves picked up like dolls, back on our feet - but restless. Mechanisms still gone. Blank faces searched others in a moment of needless confusion - but in unison, we turned back.

    The valley walls were tall but craggy, and we began our climb. Hard going on those spider-fingers, we clawed our way out somehow. Crawling on hand and bent knee to where we came from. Our eyes bled ink to scribe our battle, but none of us had quill. We wept into open hands and empty hearts, filling them with our fragile warsong.

    A strangled note fell from the sky, flat and all corners. Black hands covered long-deaf ears for we could hear it; and it was deadly. Many tried to barter soul but knew it had no point. No soul to speak of was left with us, and the note was not silenced.

    Time as abstract; it lingered on until we forgot. We buried the note with our selves and hindsight.Bleak outlook was all we had. It watched over our shoulders, it made us nervous. We brought our eyes skyward.

    The sun was a black candle.