Times Amiss

They say that long ago, when the Bloom first emerged, there lived a clockmaker by the name of Rannis Quill, the proudest man to ever polish brass. He claimed that, while the Bloom may be able to swallow cities, consume forests, and even eat whole mountains, time itself would never falter.

But fate dislikes a boastful tongue.

One day, Rannis noticed that his workshop clock ticked backward. At first, he thought it simply a trick of the eye, but then every other clock in the city ran wrong - sundials threw crooked shadows, hourglasses never ran out, and the city belltower chimed at midnight instead of noon.

The folk of the city grew scared, whispering that time itself was coming undone. Some claimed it was the influence of the Bloom. Others spoke of something beneath the Dwarven city of Broyoto awakening. Rannis did not believe any of these claims, but rather remembered an old tale told by his Master of a clockwork device used to measure the heavens themselves kept deep in the now lost kingdom of Calgalli.

And so, Rannis set out to prove himself right. He carried his finest tools, venturing into the ruins of the once great kingdom. His young apprentice followed, trembling at every crooked shadow and bending branch.

It is said that the deeper into the ruins they went, the stranger the world became. Fish swam though the air, rivers flowed uphill, and collapsing towers hung midfall for eternity. At the heart of the ruins', they found a cracked bronze sphere, humming like an old man's cough. Ever the prideful man, Rannis declared it an ancient Dwarven clock, and that he would fix it.

The moment Rannis touched the orb, it was as though time itself rebelled. The apprentice grew old in one moment, then young the next, as though caught between moments. Rannis kept working all that time, adjusting gears that moved before his hands, tightening springs that were simultaneously too tight and completely unwound. It is unknown as to his true fate, though it is said that he was there one moment, and gone the next, somehow having slipped through time itself to a space between the ticks of a clock, between seconds, between moments of time itself.

The apprentice staggered back to the city alone, aged by years that weren't his own, yet still impossibly young. He told the people of the city what happened, and ever since, whenever a clock runs wild, or a bell chimes at the wrong time, the people of that city will simply shake their heads and mutter:

"Times amiss...times amiss...Let Rannis wind the gears while times amiss."