"He throws his cloak's hood over his head, his skin turning even darker by the shadow, brightened only by the stray strands of silver hair that escape capture, and he enters with careful, silent steps, toes touching first, then heels, a habit more than anything, for there is no way he can be heard above that noise. The noise... That is the worst part. Not the metal smell or the heat or the heavy, lifeless, suffocating air. It's the noise. Sighs and cracks as cogs turn, round and round, and metal arms push and pull, screams and hisses of pressured steam released, as it moves through everything, as it moves everything, like blood through veins of a being made of cogs. But above all, it's the relentless tics, the accurate, unfailing condemnations of another lost moment. They pierce his mind, even as the rest of the sounds shred it, and he winces then he cowers, he, the ageless, he, the fearless, each puncture an image of old, an opportunity lost, a memory bleeding:

 

"Tic" says his dark elf half.

"Toc" whispers his faded kind. 

"Tic" sing the dead Swans.

"Toc" mourns his ruined country.

 

The clock's arm moves to the next line, like a stone slab sliding to place.

 

"Tic" shouts the one love he failed.

"Toc" cry the ages between.

Tic...Toc...Tic...Toc...Ti...

He never utters the "enough" in his mind. Nightweaver does, as he plunges the ancient sword between the nearest cogs he finds. Metals cry and steam screams, as if the monstrosity around him aches by the blow. Its pain seems to go on for a while and then, with a sigh of hot air, silence. He smiles crookedly. Of all the strikes he had delivered through the ages, he enjoys this one the most. 

Someone claps, slowly, mockingly. 

 

"You must be the one they call the Black Swan" a cold voice says, enunciating every syllable perfectly. He turns and sees a model of a man, who brings his hands behind his back. Cruel eyes scan behind silver glasses, black hair combed back, smoothly angled face and a body covered by a suit tailored to perfection. He looks flawless. He looks disgusting. 

 

"And you must be the Clockmaster" Alquamor replies. The man stands at the other side of the hall, on a platform about 20 feet above ground. Behind him, the huge arms of the clock declare the new day is near. The man nods and the elf lowers his head, allowing his long, silver hair to fall before his face. It is no bow or salutation. He hides his dark eyes as he scans for the nearest path to reach his target.

"Do you like it?" the Clockmaster says, motioning around him. "It is magnificent, no?"

"I have seen many terrible things in my life" he replies. "Demons, dragons, hordes of monsters charging to destroy, nations butchering each other for a piece of land smaller than a farm's yard and whole races been eradicated from this world. But this...This is the greatest monstrosity I have witnessed".

"Come come" the man says, laughing. "Surely it is not so. They say you created something called the Swansong, did you not? A kind of fighting style, honoring the passing of your fragile, dreaming kind?" The elf nods. "They also say you had an army of such fighters, the Swans or some other avian of the sort, and that you led them all to death and you alone survived, when your kind's last kingdom fell to Man. You are something of a living legend, my friend."

"Or a curse" he growls smirking.

 

"The last surviving member of a long gone kind..." the man ignores him. "Alquamor the elf, the Black Swan, the last Swansinger... Surely, you can tell, can you not? It was not Man who destroyed your kind, elf. It was not our new weapons, our aggression or our cruelty that eradicated you. It was history. It was the ever turning cogs of progress which you failed to follow, even as we rode them to evolution. It was the cruel pressure steam, created by water heated by reality which your day dreaming, fantasizing, romantic kind saw as...as clouds, even as we saw it as power. It was this clock, and the tics and tocs you so feverishly attempted to stop? They are the real Swansong of history, Black Swan."

 

"There is no music in your turning cogs, Clockmaster" he replies, even as he takes slow, indifferent steps forward "there are only cries. There are no choir voices in your steam, only screams. You think it your pendulums can cut time in pieces and that those pieces you can count but time is not measured in swings or tics and tocs or turns of wheels. It is measured in laughs and cries, in joy and pain, in experiences and memories and if your pendulum cuts anything its the life of your people living by the creed of those arms pointing at numbers. There is no art, no creation, no beauty in your machine for it is an instrument of torture and the voices you hear are no song but the pleas of your people suffering in it, as you have placed them between those cogs and crash their lives and dreams in them."

The man shrugs, smiling. 

"You truly are the last of your kind" he says at last. "A dreaming elf, believing life can be lived by talking to trees, singing to the stars and giggling with the wind. And to think that, unlike the rest of the elves, you had millennia to learn and to adapt. A pity, but history waits for no one."

"Fool" says he coldly "history is shaped by men and not the other way around. And your machine turns history to passing time."

"And yet the machine cannot be stopped. The pressure will break your sword. The cogs will turn and the steam will flow and the arms will move. Your feeble attempt to kill the clock will be but a momentary lapse of time and as soon as the ticking resumes, all will forget it."

"Maybe the clock cannot die" the elf says. He has found a path. He is near "But the man can."

 

"Ah ah! I have a gun, Black Swan. You do know what a gun is, don't you?"

"Yes. I've been aching to see if I can strike faster than it fires" he says calmly, taking that one last step, his hands cupping the hilts of Dawnbringer and Daehith under his purple cloak. There is a pause, neither moves. The Clockmaster reaches in his suit. The elf jumps to the nearest cog.

 

There is a sigh of metal. There is a scream of steam. There is the sound of Nightweaver breaking. The clock resumes. Neither a dying scream nor a shot can be heard above the noise."

________________________

From "The Black Swan and the Steam Engine" by some mr. F.R.