135 years.

1,620 months.

7,039.3(rounding up) weeks

214,112.1(rounding up) days

156,301,977.6(rounding up) hours.

6,846,034,119,813.5(rounding up) minutes.

1,7991,397,383,448,131,584(rounding up) seconds.

That’s how long my Artifact experiment to create a clock tells me I’ve been living in this world.

The knowledge that you are no longer mortal, that time is a constraint that doesn’t exist except in theory…

It’s hard.

Very hard.

Rustle.

I agree, this is probably the single most defining reason I research.

Can you imagine in a thousand years?

A hundred thousand?

Millions?

What the utter ever loving Godly Gardener’s nutsack will I do with so much time.

I mean, think about it.

There are in broad terms a finite amount of things to learn.

Rustllllllllllleeee!

Your right, right, you are.

This is just depression brought on by a recent incident.

When the young man, Flicker, showed up screaming he was going to free his sister from our ‘vile’ and ‘corrupt’ influence it was amusing.

When he tore up my Garden with his hired thugs and glyphed out lackeys, the humor wasn’t there anymore.

He couldn’t even be bothered to ask his own sister if she even wanted to leave.

As if the concerns of the individual being ‘saved’ mean nothing?

Poor deluded fool.

What I give, I can take.

Did he think his power was bestowed by some Divine mandate?

Did the stupid creature think that it was his right?

No one comes into my Garden, wrecks it, and leaves.

Even now he quivers on the bridge between life and death.

Rustle.

Mercy to this clown?

Why?

Rustleee.

Hmph.

Fine then, since his sister has requested it alongside my two favorite foxes.

I will grant mercy.

Oh, yes.

Mercy, will I grant.

Tribulation of the Martyr has been cast. May the Divine have mercy on the target's soul.

I will not slay him, no, I will Bless him and Enchant him.

Am I not, merciful?

He will thirst, yet never die.

Hunger, yet never feed.

Live, yet never die.

Enemies cannot drown him in a sea of flame, or cook him in a vat of lightning.

His flesh will never falter.

Immortality indeed, true Mercy for a price.

All for the small, small price…

Of the Itch.

Perhaps, in a thousand thousand years, when my Garden has grown greater than before, and my anger has cooled…

Then.

I might be truly merciful.

Or not.