Chapter 18 – Really?

Silk still looked as old as when he vanished from existence and he was meditating in nothingness trying to compose his thoughts. "So, this is purgatory," he marvelled at his surroundings. It was the exact same place the hero had sent him to.

"Yes," a voice of indeterminate gender or tone answered. The voice came from a figure cross legged and fully hidden in the grey robes that was perfectly between white and black.

"I'm here because I classified as neutral and helped both sides in the war. I am just wondering but wouldn't some of my good deeds from before the war like my volunteering edge me into heaven?" He asked.

"No," the voice replied flatly.

"Well, death looks like a wonderful prospect now, cheers." Silk cheered lifting up a glass of wine he conjured from nothing.

Purgatory let you have whatever you wanted whenever you wanted however he couldn't change his surroundings.

"You do have another option," the voice revealed.

"Pray tell," Silk urged while doing something he had taken up recently, stroking his beard.

"You caused quite a mess with time and none of us gods really want to fix it." The voice informed.

"You want me to go try to fix it so none of the gods have to," He butted in. "I would not be honoured but I will do it anyway. Don't have too much hope."

"If you succeed I will send you down to a planet to live. I don't like having visitors on purgatory." The voice was strained.

"Do I have a choice on where I go?"

"Sure, a planet that has the whole church vs mages deal going about it. You would be a nobleman with riches and power while keeping your memories as that backwater planet means nothing in the long-term. You'd basically be a god." The voice suddenly started quietening down, "or you could go to a zoo."

"Tell me more about the zoo." Silk had his interest piqued.

"You could be a god though," the voice appealed.

"True but I need to weigh all my options so tell me more about the zoo."

"You would go to a zoo where gods keep legendary figures that have done the impossible. You would be on display for all of us to watch. You would be at the centre of everything but don't think of escape, you would have to go through countless gods who could all sense you are mortal from a hundred dimensions away. The other world is a much better idea. You wouldn't even be a star display as many others have done more than you."

"I'll go with the zoo," Silk decided immediately.

"Why?" The voice blurted.

Silk looked at the grey clad figure like it was an idiot. "The whole church vs mage thing is a cliché, if there is one thing I hate it is cliché."

"Fine," the voice could not argue with that logic. "I'll give you some abilities so you can live through being confronted with pure time and the guardians of time."

"There are guardians," Silk blurted.

"Yes, and how do I put this nicely, I don't think I can. They are asses." Before Silk could say anything else the figure flicked its wrist and it disappeared. "Peace and quiet again." The figure lay down in ecstasy.

Silk appeared in a house, it was posh with an oriental style. There was a window showing the view of a stream of energy, the was a large influx in the middle of the stream.

Seeing the stream, he had to act so he rushed to the window ad reached to unlatch it but struggled due to the advanced age of the body. "Dammit," Silk shouted and tried to break the window with his elbow.

A hand darted catching the elbow before it could do any damage. "What has the window done to you," the figure tutted.

He turned to see who had stopped him, there was a figure in colourful robes but you could not tell what hid behind the hood. Silk looked down to see a small unpleasant creature at the figures side.

"Ignore Rumpelstiltskin, it's just a pet," the colourful figure kicked the unpleasant creature away too prove it didn't mean much to the figure.

"Are you a guardian of time?" Silk asked.

The figure waved its arms and a table and chairs appeared in the room. It sat down and poured the tea on the table into two cups. "I've always presumed I am a guardian of time because I live on the edge of the stream of time and can't escape but who can say if I'm really a guardian of time?"

"Couldn't a god tell you if you are a god of time." Silk answered.

"I mean yes they could." The figure shrugged. "Gods aren't the nice sort of people though. They are basically all psychopath, leaving me here to guard all of time and not even giving me the title of god of time. It's not even like there is a god of time for me to dispute the title with, the title and power were all there to give to a hard-working time fanatic like myself." The colourful figure ranted.

"Couldn't they just be testing your patience." He suggested.

The figure made a sound that Silk presumed to be clicking of fingers. "You are right," the figure sounded utterly convinced. "The test of guarding all time in existence, imagine the power that comes from such a challenging task." It started laughing maniacally.

"I'm glad that you agree with me," he gave a strained smile as he knew what he said was complete and utter rubbish. Silk picked up the cup of tea and raised it, "cheers to the upcoming promotion."

The figure suddenly stopped laughing, the atmosphere suddenly became tense. "Thanks," it said solemnly. "You don't know what this means to me," the figure sounded like it was tearing up.

"Do you think you could help me go over to that stream to fix it?" Silk asked hopefully.

"That stream of time does not need fixed," the figure shouted angrily. "You only came to take my job from me," the figure continued.

"To be honest, yes." Silk answered with an uneasy smile.

The figure held a pose like it was glaring at Silk but then it loosened up. "I like you, while I'm usually difficult to gods no doubt you think I'm an ass. I will help you however."

Silk nodded at him showing respect, "thank you."

"Take Rumpelstiltskin with you. I have trained it to be useful." The figure kicked it to Silk's feet.

"I will take care of Rumpelstiltskin." Silk didn't really like the guardian of time from how it treated Rumpelstiltskin.

"Do as you wish," the figure waved its hand and the walls of the room disappeared and silk felt a great force propelling him forward. The streams of time were beautiful but something caught his attention, all the streams stopped at a certain point, they all seemed to stop at an invisible wall. How could the time of all universes stop like that? It didn't seem natural.

Silk started noticing times of different universe were entangling with each other. He looked closer at the streams were made from smaller threads which were considerably smaller. The threads probably represented people which meant interdimensional travel between universes was possible.

Silk suddenly stopped at a fading timeline.

"this is it," Rumpelstiltskin said in a gruff voice. "It is not broken n the conventional meaning. The universe had to cut itself off from the time energy to fix itself from an idiot with a time machine."

"Yes, I am an idiot," Silk muttered. "Do you know how to fix this?"

"Yes, I want to see you try first though," Rumpelstiltskin grinned evilly while saying this.

"Could I cause irreversible damage trying to fix it in the wrong way?" He asked.

"Yes."

"Could you give me a clue then?"

"Yes, I could," Rumpelstiltskin answered. It declined to answer.

"You're an ass." Silk shouted. "Of course, it was obvious." Silk grinned.

"What's obvious?"

"Fine, I will do as you ask." Silk headed to the time stream and touched it. He saw a period of time in his world, it was in a fly's perspective. The world was medieval, Silk flinched away and went further up the stream of energy.

Silk touched it again and this time the time he saw a bright future for the human race in the perspective of some weirdly evolved animal. Humans were very different, taller and thinner, but that wasn't the time he was looking for. Silk was surprised that only a few steps made such a big difference in where he was in the universes timeline.

Silk looked closer and saw that the threads of energy were tiny, they split off after a while and he guessed that this was family. Threads did meet at points to create new ones which reaffirmed this idea. Using this principle, he looked at the start of the stream of energy as this would show the start of all life.

Silk pointed at the start of the stream of time with a grin on his face which looked unnatural on his elderly face, "look, I probably shouldn't see that." Silk started walking with a sight spring in his step.

Rumpelstiltskin saw that Silk was going to look at the origin of life and realising that wasn't a good idea and it breached the contract of the gods to mortals it waved its hand. The wave of the hand made Silk trip and fall face first onto the floor.

"You can't see that," Rumpelstiltskin scolded.

Silk gathered himself and got off the floor. "Who knows if I trip and see something on the timeline I should not, it seems that you don't want to see that and the only way to guarantee I don't is for you to do the maintenance for me," he asserted. "If it isn't fixed I will just have to try maintenance myself," he added.

Rumpelstiltskin was taken aback for a while but regained its composure. It glared at Silk, if looks could kill he would be on the ground spasming. "Get out the way," it bellowed.

Silk grinned as he had gotten what he wanted. Rumpelstiltskin summoned the colourful figure to its side. He deduced this figure was a fake guardian to mess with people.

The fake guardian walked past Silk to the stream of time, as it walked past he stepped on the robes and they came off revealing a high-tech robot underneath. Silk's eyes bulged and he couldn't resist asking a question. "Why would the true guardian of time need a root to repair an anomaly?"

This got underneath Rumpelstiltskin's skin. "Isn't it obvious, if I touch it I see time which stops me from repairing the stream of time," it snorted.

"That makes sense," he realised.

"I said it so it obviously makes sense," Rumpelstiltskin responded.

Silk turned to look at the robot's progress and it was complete already. "That was quick," Silk commented.

"And now it's done you can go away," Rumpelstiltskin shot. It waved its hand and Silk could no longer be seen.