Work Text:
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ARCHIVIST
Statement of Martyn Littlewood, regarding his lack of time. Original statement given August 28, 2025. Audio recording by Xisuma, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, Hermitcraft.
Statement begins.
ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)
Time is such an interesting concept isn't it. Its something that you lose constantly and no matter what you do, it will never come back and you just have to sit there with the fact that every breath you take every interaction you have every single millisecond of your existence will end.
We will all run out of time.
Even as I write this letter I can fill it, seeping out of my every movement. Every word every letter I write, every stroke of the pen, every moment to refill the ink, all of this is stealing away my time.
But some of us have more of it than others. Some of us can be chosen, can be given time. Most people just don't have the guts to take this valuable resource. Given the right conditions however, those inhibitions vanish.
I don't remember what I was doing before I got chosen. Probably wasting my previous time doing some meaningless activity that would ultimately achieve nothing. [small laugh] It's funny to think about it now, how this invaluable thing is treated as so expandable by people. It makes me sick.
It is sad to admit that I was also once like that, before They chose me of course.
But there's no point dwelling on the past I suppose, after all it's not like I'll ever get that time back.
If I remember correctly there were fourteen of us? I'm frankly not sure given that some of them lost their time quite fast. Which was quite a shock but also a relief in the sense that they were one less-
Oh, I seemed to have gone of base. It seemed that old habits die fast. Even after being gifted this newfound understanding of the precarious present that They so gratefully gave me, I still find myself going on meaningless tangents which in the end achieve nothing.
I should probably talk about the rules of the world I found myself in shouldn't I? In the most basic of senses, we had twenty four hours to live; the catch being that whenever you killed someone, you gained half an hour while the victim loses a full hour.
I cannot explain how we all knew this information, we did. If I'd allow myself to present a metaphor, it was as if we were hourglasses. We could feel every grain of sand that was falling down, we could feel the seconds leave our bodies.
It was as if small parts of our body were being painfully ripped away. Until there was nothing left.
Do you understand the kind of desperation that this feeling gives to people? Do you understand how it feels to feel your time slowly draining out of you, leaving you weaker and weaker and more desperate by the second? Can you even fathom that?
No, of course you can't. I don't envy your naivety because once you understand how little we all have until we turn to dust, that's when you truly start to live.
I saw with my own eyes what people would do to prolong their lives even by just a few minutes and obviously I also took part in those atrocities for time. How could I not? Every drop of blood from others was a drop of blood coming back to me. It was the precious time that I was trying to hard to hold onto finally coming back to me, only to slip away once again.
I had an alliance but I knew it was temporary just like everything else. Despite what everyone said, I knew that they were all lying thought their teeth. As soon as the time was almost over, teammate and enemy start to look the same.
I felt no quilt as I killed the other people there after all when the time would come they would have done the same. I just happened to act faster.
In the end there remained just three of us, our allies long lost to the ever escaping time. And the two of them, they wanted to abide by honor.
Even just thinking about it is making my skin start to crawl. How have they gotten so far?! How have they survived this long, managing to steal time from others and still think that honor had anything to do with this world that we were now in!
Was it simply luck that they had gotten so far? Or… were they chosen as a test for me by Them.
When they turned their back I killed them. The feeling of their time draining out of them and getting mixed into my very being- such a wonderful feeling.
I had won. I had been the one who had used his time the most effective and now I had it all to myself.
And yet… I still felt it slipping away from my fingers.
Even after everyone had been stripped of their time and there was no way I could gain any more, I still felt myself growing closer and closer to death.
Those last couple of hours are a bit fuzzy. I did… a lot of things to try to regain my time. Animals didn't add anything and I tried and fail to get time from myself but in the end nothing worked.
Of course it had to lead to this. All I had done was buy myself time, to delay the inevitable. There was no way I could have changed the ending and looking back I wouldn't have done a single thing differently.
Because when I finally exhaled my final breath, I saw Them.
'Saw' is the wrong word. I heard them.
The Listeners.
They had been the one listening to my every word, to my very breath all this time. They were the ones who had chosen me as their vessel. And when I started hearing their beautiful voices, that angelic song that revealed to me much more than I deserved, what could I do but listen?
Even after I got back, nothing has been the same.
It's as if I have a clock inside me, tick-tick-ticking away. But I know that at some point it will stop. I can feel it.
It's time for me to return to Them, to be put through another grueling game of Theirs. To watch as little by little my life and the lives of those around me slowly vanish.
But this time, I have Them on my side.
And I can already feel the ticking of my clock getting faster and I can't hide my excitement at getting to show my worthiness to Them once more.
I pity you. Being unable to listen to all the glorious battles I'll take on in Their name.
But who knows, maybe this time They'll decide to bring in someone new.
I'll hear from you soon Archivist.
ARCHIVIST
Statement ends.
[long pause, you can hear Xisuma shifting in his chair, placing his hands on his temples]
This statement if very similar to a couple other's I've recently had to record. A group of people being taken away at seemingly random intervals for a random amount of time in which they slowly kill each other but somehow they always manage to come back. It's…. hard to believe to say it nicely.
It could be a group of people that decided to do a "prank" and just send in all these statements but…
[long pause]
We have tried to contact mister Littlewood but he seemed to have vanished from his address and workplace. If I had to state my opinion I'm suspecting that he'll be back in a couple of weeks but… that would be pure speculation.
Either way ill keep an eye on any statements that have any similarities.
[another pause]
Recording ends.
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