Flooded Ruins - A Moonlit Bay

It felt like a finger being drawn across her brain. Lightly at first then, every day, rasping ever deeper. Until she could not bear to ignore it. Another piece of the Clocktower had landed in these shores or, perhaps, Nina thought, was still floating, its direction shifting through the days. She felt compelled to watch the sea, waiting. As custodian and victim, it was Nina's responsibility to contain the Tower's magic. As a traveller, it scared her. Once, she had set off in a boat the size of a watering through for that same purpose, and another time she had walked through the blood-tinged flora of hell. But this was the edge of the world. Her fists clenched. On clear days, she could see in the distance the wall of mist that had nearly killed her encircling the land. She had travelled so far already; another step further, and she would unravel.

The young woman had not told her guardian, Sir Rudiger, of her findings. Of what help would that be? She had not told Molenya, either, but their host among the Tueima must have noticed, for she had cut their latest rune class short when her student would not focus.

The traveller needn't have worried. One night, she woke up feeling the magic just beyond her fingertips. She pushed up her boat that she habitually sheltered under, its feathers still carrying the warmth of the sun, and looked up to see the starlight spilling through the cracks in the roof. The metal strings wrapped around her nerves were ticking in synchrony with the new piece. Almost without thinking, Nina slipped into her boots and out of the door.

(Not that there was a door. Or much of a door-frame, for that matter)

The ruins were peaceful as she made her way through them. Only the flutter of a bat past her face, or the distant cries of beasts – monkeys? Owls? - ; she perceived them as sudden flashes of light in her vision. The marble columns seemed to glow under the moonlight; the water was like ink. Nina leaped past channels and climbed vine-covered walls. She was pulled by a longing that she would not be able to describe. Perhaps she was dreaming. Perhaps she should have waited; in the morning, asked for help from Sir Rudiger, Molenya, anyone. But the morning might have been too late. The Clocktower piece could have been washed away by the tides. Or...

Oh, it just had to be a ship, didn't it?

Nina's eyes went wide, as she pressed herself against a pillar. There was no place in the sunken city for a boat much larger than her own, so the brig had set anchor in a bay just at the ruins' edge. The island would shelter it from the heavier winds coming from sundown. It was a large ship, three-masted or so, that Nina estimated would take dozens of people to man properly. And the feel of the Clocktower's magic was coming from inside it. She swallowed tensely.

Nina kept walking.

Oh, she hid in the shadows, as Gray had taught her, in silence, stepping at the very edge of a path of round white stones. It might have once been a roof. Perhaps it was being woken up so suddenly that made it impossible to change course in the moment, Nina would later ponder. Or perhaps it was one's tendency to treat everything like a nail when their most reliable tool was a hammer. Either way, Nina decided that she would sneak onto the ship and steal the magic item. There was barely a ripple as Nina dived, swimming along the bottom of the bay and only resurfacing near the ship. The water was pleasantly cool. The barnacle-encrusted wood was rough under her palms.

Continuing what many would regard to be a vary bad idea, Nina climbed onto a rope ladder left hanging by the side. She pressed herself against the side of the ship, listening for any steps above, and extrapolating from her knowledge of ships for where a watch might be kept. There was nothing she could do about the water dripping off her, but hope it would not be noticed. She walked hurriedly, across and then under the deck. Though she could vaguely feel direction of the magic, this would not help her much in these narrow corridors. She advanced slowly, finding her way as much by touch as by magic and the light behind closed doors.

Maybe, Nina thought, it was the fear. That drove her steps. She gritted her teeth. It was a coincidence for the Clocktower piece to reach the same island, that some would call luck. Nina knew better.

The Clocktower played games.

Walking in darkness turned out to be a far worse idea than it had initially felt. As typical on a ship, there were things strewn about, leaping closer to attack her shins. (Nina really hoped that the cold round things were stones, maybe meant for a hearth, and not skulls). If she focused on avoiding stuff, then she couldn't truly focus on finding the magic which, here, was so close that it seemed to split and echo. It was like trying to find someone when they were shouting too loudly to pinpoint.

Speaking of shouts. Nina hid in what she hoped was a broom closet, as what felt like the curses of an ancient language shook the timbers off the ship. She imagined the captain, trotting around on a peg leg, waving around a hook hand for gutting enemies, and carrying a chronic pain condition in his missing limbs that made him constantly miserable and prone to lash out. She swallowed, as the daze of the search was fading to leave her feeling very alone. There was not even the shelter of the Gray's magical borrowed cloak to protect her now.

Pressing her ear on the door, she walked out. She had managed to find some rushlights stored in a cup just by the door, and lit one up with flint and steel from her tinderbox.

So she walked, with a single spark of light atop a thin thread revealing her way. Of course, focused on all the new things that she could see, and what that revealed about the inhabitants of the ship, she stumbled upon someone at the next intersection.

Nina decided to go on the offensive.

“Right, my good man!” The traveller exclaimed, waving her rushlight around. “Remind me where are the captain's quarters? It's as dark as the bottom of the sea here!”

The Tower played games.

Not always consciously. It was in its nature to use people as things, just as a clock smith might rearrange their gears, cut them down to size and, once they'd served their purpose, reforge them. This particular piece of the Tower had lingered on the shore, too feeble to sink its teeth into its environment, until someone picked it up. It then stole the smallest bit of life. Just enough to make one's hand grow cold. Then it flared with magic. It could not sustain this, but it did not matter. For another piece of the Tower had noticed it. Like two cords in a lute, the echo of one's ticking was enough to stir the other to life. And it was getting closer.

Nina rested her head against a door. Her temples were pulsing with a cold, regular 'tick!' out of tune with her rushing heartbeat. It felt like her nerves wanted to leap out of her skin. Somehow she had managed to cross much of the ship without raising suspicion, despite leaving a trail of water behind her. 'Thank you, young man. Take care,' she'd said. Dizzily, she wondered if she should have asked whether he needed to be rescued. But back then she had been more focused on copying the strange greeting-gesture in enough haste and with enough fluttering of her rush-light that it would hide her ignorance.

Thinking back, the boy had not seemed afraid of his captain.

But Nina was.

She pressed her fingers onto a heavy wooden door. Just on the other side...In truth, she had never intended to meet the captain – it had been a distraction – but to her horror, the ticking drew her in the direction the boy had mentioned. Would she have the guts to just run in, steal the piece and then run out?

In the captain's quarters, the ticking started again. In the normal plane, it was subtle, the occasional barely-audible clink that might be mistaken for the creak of wood, an insect, imagination. In the magical plane, it had the feeling of a wave rising that had forgotten to break. On the wall, a cutlass tilted a little bit as Roona watched. Just enough that it might leave one bracing for a missing wave. Then it fell on the floor. Then it would slide across the floor, as if the floor had tilted, into the pile of clothing. At the exact same time that these three events were happening, there was a knock at the door.

Tock. Tock. Tock.

The Clocktower knew about time.

This piece, at least. Knew. That time was, in a way, like space. Not a straight line, but a landscape. Small actions – natural or otherwise – could have large effects in it. And just like Roona hunted for it through the cluttered floor-space, the watch sought its goal among timelines in a space of probabilities. Not consciously – more like water running across a waterwheel. Aiming for...what exactly? It did not steal much of the captain's energy, even as she picked it up, because that had been more of an emergency response than a purpose. In truth, the watch did not normally feed on life.

It fed on death.

Nina was startled by the young voice that came from inside the cabin. The captain's daughter? Everything felt too bright, too magical, and the Clocktower was singing in her veins, leaving little space for her own thoughts.

“Aye.” She said, to buy time. Then continued, “I brought the key-”

Yet as the traveller opened the door wider, things precipitated. Some sort of bolt or key fell down from the door, and was propelled into the pile of clothing, tangling with a pair of socks in an improbable way to prop up the sword against a knot of wood and have it slash at about ankle level at Roona. Even if the captain avoided this fate, a loose, mangled link in the chain holding the watch would brush along the magic jar, as if by chance, scratching the runes into something more favourable to it. Not quite containment – more like shelter. And somehow, all these seemingly disparate actions were synchronized with the steps of the one who had just walked into the room.

Tock. Tock. Tock.

Nina froze as the door closed just behind her.

“I brought the key for it.” She said.

There was a point in the watch's design where time became space.

...complex, multidimensional...

Where space became time.

...a single path, inevitable...

The weight of a human fell on the watch, nearly closing off the jar that the artefact fell into, clinking. But the containment was incomplete and the breathing, thinking human was very close. It turns out that human beings are very easy to break.

A single strike to the chest can, at the right moment, stop a heart. Not due to sheer trauma, but because of breaking a complex network of electrical impulses-

Tock. Tock. Tock. Gradually, Roona would find her heartbeat grown unsettlingly loud, unsettlingly clock-like.

“The key.” Nina hissed between her teeth. She moved her arms in wide arches, tapped her feet, gritted her teeth as if she'd eaten something bitter, all the while trying to pick at the strings of magic she felt in the room, trying to pull the piece of the Clock back with clenched fingers from that single path it tried to slip towards – death. With her ankles she tried to pull down her boots, to be more in contact with her environment, but all she managed was to squelch pitifully.

From the folds of her blouse, with a gesture like a ritual, she pulled out a clock hand attached as a pendant, which grew to the size of a sword as Nina slashed her forearm with it. She tied the clock hand to a rope that she pulled over her bleeding arm, before throwing it closer to the stranger – and the clock hand was at once a sword and a pendant and the perfect size to unlock the watch. With the blood and the rope, it remained in contact with her. The one the watch was meant to obey.

“Try to unwind it.” Nina said. “I'm not sure I can get any closer.”

Blood and binding.

The magic was old, very old – and dangerous. Many a mage had been defeated by having their blood fall in the hands of their enemies. Blood was part of you, a reflection of you – and it was also, in some way, alive. By spreading her blood, Nina was saying:

'I am here! And here, and here, and-'

But what she spoke out loud was:

“A promotion? My, wouldn't want it to be said I've undressed my way to higher places.” She didn't mean it. But it would help keep them both calm.

The blood carried her signature of the Master of the Clocktower. Yet even with that support, it was Roona's hand that had to turn the key while her own body hovered at the edge between life and death. One wondered...would turning in the wrong direction kill? For a moment, the clock hand sword seemed too large for the small jar, the ticking too loud. Then the sword point clattered against the watch, the watch clattered on its side, as if by chance, and the sword-pendant grew smaller, smaller, until it fit into an unremarkable hole on the clock's side.

Roona turned. And then again.

Something unwound in the air around them. And Nina finally breathed. Magic coursed through the rope, making miniature nettles sprout out of blood, much like those she had woven the rope from. A tiny boat made of red feathers coursed among them, and one nettle even had time to set seed on the floor before, like a sigh, the magic ran out.

It was silent. Nina swallowed, as if to pop her ears, and carefully took a step. She thought, maybe – maybe the other had turned the key once too much – there had been a click, hadn't there, that left her feeling hollow, as if a mechanism was released.

That probably wouldn't cause any problems at all.

The more pressing concern, to Nina, in the moment, was that she had been found out. The traveller looked at the other girl.

She looked around the captain's cabin, noting that the clothes strewn around would likely fit her. She looked down at the rush-light, and decided that the best defence was a good offence:

“That is my watch.” She pointed at it. “How did it get here?”

Pulling back the rope with the key at the end, Nina slowly coiled it around her left arm. The sleeve was turning a faint purple. She winced. It would have to do to staunch the bleeding for now. Through the sting of saltwater, she tried to focus. She was cold, she was wet and in pain and overall not having a good time. Because of that, the glamorous posturing coming from the green-haired woman passed entirely unnoticed until her lips were on Nina's lips, until her eyes were locked together in shock. They waltzed backwards through the room as if floating. And all Nina could think of was that she didn't have the Clocktower piece.

...hadn't that door been closed? Did it swing open in the meantime, or did this wild woman open it precisely so she could stick swords across the doorway?

“I'm so so sorry!” Nina gasped, the moment her mouth was free. Her right hand wasn't, and she felt a blade across her back. Speak about gratitude! “What happens is”

The traveller raised slightly on her toes, as if to whisper or to kiss. Then she bit hard on the stranger's lower lip, and clung on.

“ 'irst, 'y 'atch.” Nina would demand.