I sat at the lake and gazed out over the waters, alone. For me, loneliness was mandatory, as is dictated in the Phasmatis Somes; I was not permitted to associate with beings that were restricted by the elemental domain I resided over. Lest my personal emotions affect my ability to properly govern. Or at least, that was the assumption, Only Luminarium Eve understood the logic behind it's cryptic messages, being its author. However, our understanding was not required, only our obedience. I had seen for myself what became of those who chose to establish companionship with their subjects. And although the result was different for all of us, depending on the kind of communication we had, and what element we resided over, the effects were all gruesome and at highly undesirable. Mare was the recipient of this punishment..

She was sociable, even before she was converted, I remember watching over her while she was human, outgoing, beautiful, joy-filled, but not without her qualms, sometimes, a little too curious, and more than a little rebellious. That's partially how she entered this afterlife. But that's  a different story entirely. She used her aquatic abilities to help people in dry or infertile countries, she spoke with them, lived and played with them, completely disregarding the Phasmatis Somes as the obsolete ramblings of a deranged god. However, in  giving some nations the water they needed, it meant taking water away from other nations, thus upsetting the world balance, as a result wet areas had mass crop failure, dry areas suffered from severe erosion, native animals and plants became waterlogged, native infrastructure was washed away during flash floods. Millions of people died, either through starvation, or from being washed away, regardless the death toll was in the millions, the water in some regions was dyed red with the blood of hundreds. For those living there, it must've truly looked like hell itself, bloated corpses drifting atop a sea of blood, limbs, organs and other chunks of miscellaneous gore  floating in a sort-of macabre soup. It was a worldwide crisis.

Mare never survived to see the full magnitude of her actions, and perhaps it was for the best. She came to me just as the effects of her actions were beginning to have a lasting effect, but, that was not her motive for contacting me. She came in the advanced stages of her punishment, hoping that I could somehow undo everything with my command over time. She showed me the results of her meddling, she said it had started immediately after she began fraternizing with the humans, first it was minor, a small peeling of the skin, and rotting around the fingers, but within a week her entire hand was shrivelled and black, completely dead, and rotted, the skin was falling off, her fingernails were falling out, and chunks of flesh were beginning to detach from the bone, since the tendons and muscles had been completely rotted away. Her symptoms were somewhat akin to leprosy, however, it was accelerated and far more painful, partly due to the fact that our kin, being inhuman, could not utilize things such as anaesthetics. At the first signs of this she hid it from everyone, fearing that the humans would be repulsed and she would be unable to continue her charity towards them without inhibition. She covered the affected areas with bandages, and ignoring the pain, she left them on for a week. In the second week, the pain had intensified and the infection was spreading, she was also noticing an odd itching sensation in some of the living parts. Thus, she was forced to remove the bandages, when she did, and to her horror while wads of shrivelled rotting flesh fell out, maggots and other parasitic bugs that had been feeding on her dropped out as well. Left on her arm from the wrist down was bone. Furthermore the flesh above her wrist was beginning the same process. She quickly examined the rest of her body, and realized, with severe panic, that  black blotches had already begun to appear all over her body. She became very trepid, and padded her arm with bandages so others would not notice her lack of flesh, by the third week she was nearly completely covered in bandages. This is when she came to me, begging me to reverse the flow of time so she could undo her mistakes, she was crying, and by this time, her flesh had rotted to the point where it was beginning to fall out of her bandages. She had grabbed on to me, I could see that her existence was fading, her hourglass was on its last sands. I didn't want to suffer the same fate, and so I abandoned her, I was used to it, watching but doing nothing, such was the job that I had been give. I pushed her away, and her bandages loosened, she screamed as her entire body began to crumble, her nose and lips fell off in moulded lumps to the floor, her teeth, fell out of the rotted gums. The shrieking was unbearable. Her eyes dangled out of their sockets the rotten tendons holding them in began to break, as her internal organs fell apart her screams halted, and thus she was nothing more than a pile of bones atop soggy bandages and a mass of black flesh. The ocean spasmed, as if crying out for its master, the waves became violent and uneven. Then, from the heavens descended a man clad in entirely black robes, someone I rarely saw, the guardian of death, I assumed. And he began to devour her remains, picking up the globs of flesh and tearing at them like meat, it was almost animal in nature, how primordially he devoured  her body, how neatly he finished every last scrap. Then his teeth extended, and he chewed the bones, devouring them in an animal fashion, the crunching rang throughout the valley.  Finally, after the uncouth ritual had been completed, he lifted his scythe and struck her bandages, causing them to catch fire, I was lost in the flames for a moment as the last scrap of fabric burned up the ocean calmed once more. When I looked back up, the man was gone as well…

"Chrono!!"

My memories faded as the voice rang clear in my ears I looked up at the young woman who was shaking me out of my trance. I brought her into an embrace, and while doing so, glanced down at my arm, covered in bandages. Mare's cries rang clearly in my mind once again..