Fairy Tale - The Hourglass

Disclaimer: random fairy tale is random and possibly riddled with random mistakes ;D

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Once upon a time, long ago, there lived a greedy king; so great was his desire to posses everything rare and valuable around him that he tasked his bravest and most skilled knights with fetching him the most wondrous treasure in the kingdom; "the sands of time" an hourglass that legend told would grant it's owner eternal life.

Many of them died as they tried to fulfill their king's wish, for the treasure had a guardian, a dragon of great strength and brutality; those who survived were not foolish enough to tempt their luck a second time.

Years passed with no success, the king continued to grow old and increasingly frail and even more desperate to posses the treasure which would allow him to live forever, in his moment of desperation he ordered his guards to fetch his young heir as well as a caravan of his most treasured possessions and set course for the dragon's cave.

Once there he hoped to reason with the creature, offering him his most valued treasures as well as his son's life in exchange for eternal life for himself; after all, he explained to the dragon, if he would live forever he would have an eternity in which to gather even greater treasures and power... and he would have no need for an heir, the boy would only be an inconvenience, as he had been up to that point in his life.

This complete disregard for anyone but himself disgusted the dragon greatly... not only was the king greedy, he was selfish as well; where he wore clothes of the finest quality, his son wore nothing but a coarse looking tunic, and worn looking sandals... Despite this the dragon decided to grant the king's wish. Giving the hourglass to the young prince for him to give to his father; who immediately jumped upon his prize like a starving dog would a bone, pushing the young prince aside.

He peered into the hour glass, the sands within it falling from top to bottom steadily, never filling, never emptying, always moving but never ending. and he waited, and waited; but nothing happened. Looking up to the dragon with a surprised face the king accused the him of treachery.

The dragon explained, in a rumbling voice that the King had to remove the hourglass' top; a jewel of deep royal blue, to unleash the artifact's power. Upon hearing this the king smiled; the prince of course was of a kind heart and feared his father had gone mad and could not sense the danger the treasure posed but the dragon held him back.

Finally opening the hourglass, the king let out an insane laugh, his laughter slowly turning into screams as a massive amount of sand rose from the clock and began to cover him from head to to toe. the sounds dying out as the sand began to fill his mouth and lungs, then as soon as it had started the sand began to return into the glass and then it was gone, the king along with it.

The prince turned to the dragon, looking horrified as the creature retrieved the hour glass from where it lay on the cave's floor " Don't be frightened, your father is not dead;the sands of time have granted his wish for eternal life" for those who would possess the hourglass indeed lived forever, turned into grains of sand, never filling, never emptying, always moving but never ending.

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XD random quick drawing, and random story... like I said, random <3

Vermy belongs to and so do elements of this story that tie in with Vermeil's actual canon XD... tho they're distorted to fit this fairy tale world.