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Clockwork

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Oct 23rd, 2018
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  1. Tick… Tick… Tick…
  2. The clocks sent out their monotone voices, second by second by second, like the heartbeat of the tinker’s shop. All were in unison, from the grandfather clock to the metronome by the piano. The tinker tapped his tool to the thing in his hands in time as well. Tick, tick, tick. Tap, tap, tap. He hummed a tuneless sound as he adjusted his glasses.
  3. He started as the door opened and the bell rang. “Hello, Tinker.”
  4. The tinker grinned, adding a wrinkle or two to his face. “Hello, Sathe. Cathar Sathe.”
  5. The young man hid a smile of his own. “I’m not a cathar yet.”
  6. “You’ll make a fine cathar. No, no arguing. What brings you here today?”
  7. Sathe glanced at one of the clocks. “I’m here with a message from Cathar Belin. He wants me to look at your new invention. He didn’t say what it was, and frankly, I’m dying to see it.”
  8. The tinker opened a drawer and took out a key marked with what seemed to be fairly common holy script. The key was large, with a hefty shaft, and as the tinker turned a gear protruding from its back, the teeth of the key shifted and rose. The old man rose from his seat and turned around to unlock a door behind him.
  9. “Be my guest,” the tinker said, and motioned Sathe to enter.
  10. Behind the door was a short corridor, which led to a small laboratory. Gears and jars of oil lined one wall, unmarked boxes sat along the other. On a table near the center lay something shaped vaguely like a person, but bulkier, more angular. Light glinted off of something.
  11. As Sathe drew closer, he realized it was made of metal. It had two arms and two legs, and looked to be a little taller than he was if standing upright. It had a head, which appeared to be a simple piece of metal. It had no face.
  12. “I call it my Steel Cathar,” the tinker said, behind him. “You see those runes, connecting its joints?”
  13. “Yes, Sathe said.” They looked oddly familiar, but they didn’t seem to be holy script.
  14. “Those lift and fall as your own joints would. They enable the clockwork inside to move like a man. It’s slow, but strong, much stronger than any man. It cannot be possessed by spirits, torn apart by werewolves, drained by vampires, or raised by ghoulcallers. It is the ideal protector.”
  15. Sathe stared in wonder at it. “And it really works? It moves?
  16. The tinker wrinkled his brow. “Not yet, which is what the Church wanted you to see me about. I need more time if I am to perfect it.”
  17. Sathe nodded. “It makes sense that they’re impatient. This.. this machine… it’s incredible.”
  18. “The church is more motivated than ever to have a new defense,” the tinker said. “But they’re going to have to wait. It’s not finished.”
  19. Sathe stepped towards the door. “Thank you for showing me this, Tinker. I’ll tell the church you need more time.”
  20. The tinker waved. “Thank you, for your interest… Cathar Sathe.”
  21. - - - - - - - -
  22. The Steel Cathar stood at the gates of the graveyard as the cage door swung open and the cathar ran to rejoin his ranks. Six rotting ghouls stumbled out of the cage and recklessly stalked toward the impenetrable line of cathars.
  23. The faceless metal man blocked their path, and with one swing of his sword, two ghouls fell in surprisingly equal halves. Another ghoul simply fell apart as an iron fist crushed its chest, and a kick sent a fourth sprawling and legless. The Steel Cathar dispatched the remaining ghouls with efficient swipes of his sword. The line of cathars relaxed; not one of them had lifted a blade.
  24. “I have to admit, Tinker,” the captain said in awe, “Your creation here is simply… incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it. Those corpses had no chance at all.”
  25. The tinker was gleeful. “Did you see that sword? Tempered steel and edged with blessed silver. It can kill a werewolf in three blows. I know, because that’s what you tried yesterday, three caged werewolves. When will you be convinced that it’s good enough, Captain?
  26. “I’m convinced right now,” the cathar replied. “I’m going to send it on patrol with two of my best cathars. They’re going to see how many of that Cecani necromancer’s ghouls they can remove from the chapel just outside of Cistin.”
  27. The tinker arched his eyebrows. “Finally! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a success to celebrate and a new idea to try out. You’re not invited, Belin. You’re no fun at all.”
  28. Belin seemed unimpressed. “I’m devastated, Tinker, I truly am.”
  29. “I do have a request for you, Belin. There’s a new recruit- I think he’s here today? Ah, there you are, Sathe, hello! Anyway, Sathe here is a dear friend of mine, and I’d appreciate it if you’d send him on patrol with my Steel Cathar. No need to thank me, Sathe.”
  30. Belin sighed. “Very well, I suppose we can spare a new recruit. Sathe, you go with Vess and Natha to Cistin.”
  31. - - - - - - - -
  32. And again, the graveyard gates stood ahead, this time closed and carefully locked. Inside, low sounds could be heard as the ghouls in the chapel began to stir, awakened by the scent of food. One or two wandered out of the crypt; several were approaching from outside the gates, having tenaciously followed the small group. The Steel Cathar stood impassive, awaiting a more immediate threat.
  33. The two cathars, Vess and Natha, unlatched the gate and backed off hurriedly. Sathe eyed the broken graves with apprehension as rotting bodies began to emerge. One was nearing him from behind, two more close on its heels. He drew his sword and nervously stepped towards the ghouls. This was his part in all this, to cover the more experienced fighters while they cleared out the chapel; this was what he had been training for, waiting for his chance.
  34. He swiped his blade across the foremost corpse. It hissed and fell, the dread light leaving its eyes. The other two were closer than he had realized, and as he pierced one and saw it slump lifeless on his sword, the other sprang with a speed that its slow approach had not betrayed. It was on him, biting and clawing at his armor- he was bringing up his sword, but too slowly, too heavily, and it was nearing his throat- and then it was flung aside, too quickly for his eyes to follow, and then it was nothing but a broken pile on the ground. The Steel Cathar, having no time to draw its blade, had simply kicked the monster aside. It turned away, back to the gate, where a wall of flesh was beginning to form as the cathars kept the ghouls at bay.
  35. Sathe felt his terror fall away as he cut down a ghoul with a missing eye. This was it, this was what he was born to do! Adrenaline rushed through his body, and he broke into a run, darting back and forth across the hill to dismember assailants long before it was necessary. The Steel Cathar, up to its chest in moaning ghouls, was barely beginning to struggle, and the chapel was yielding no more enemies; Sathe returned to the gate and began hacking at the mob of ragged shapes.
  36. It was over in minutes; the metal knight destroyed ghouls with ruthless efficiency, never pausing for breath, never feeling pain. Its breastplate was slightly cracked, and an armor plate had fallen off its arm to reveal a bright streak of red, but it was otherwise unharmed.
  37. Sathe blinked. Red? The other cathars were salvaging what they could from the chapel; they both seemed to be ignoring the Steel Cathar, its purpose fulfilled. He stepped closer to inspect the arm.
  38. “Ah… Excuse me? I found… I found… you need to see this.” Vess and Natha were ignoring him. He spoke again, louder. “Sir, please.” Vess, a tall man with dark eyes, looked up from a gravestone. “What is it, ah… Sathe? Is that your name?”
  39. “Yes, sir. Please, sir, I found something.”
  40. Natha, holding her helmet under her arm, followed Vess to where the clockwork guard stood with the new recruit. Their eyes followed Sathe’s hand to the broken gauntlet. Underneath the missing armor was a twisting, clicking layer of gears. But underneath that, something different.
  41. A scarlet strip of flesh, bare of skin and fat. A clean, white bone, protruding from the bloodless muscle. A runed ring of brass, perhaps copper, glowing faintly and foully. A black liquid was seeping from somewhere, too viscous to be oil. Sathe recognized it in a flash. He had seen jars of it, stacked in neat rows, in the watchmaker’s back room. Natha touched it with a gloved hand, then pressed it to the holy symbols on her gauntlet. It sizzled, hissed, and burned away.
  42. They looked at each other with pale faces. “Viscus vitae,” Natha said softly, her voice saturated with horror. “He’s a stitcher.”
  43. “And this…” Vess swallowed, looking up at the faceless steel. Slowly, deliberately, he reached up. His hands shook as he gripped the iron mask and eased it off of the machine’s unmoving head.
  44. It had a face, after all. A face that... surely couldn't be alive, and yet it moved. A face that Sathe would not find it easy to forget.
  45. “Skaab,” Natha whispered. “Avacyn protect us.” But their only protector was the clockwork man.
  46. - - - - - - - -
  47. The door gave way after just a few blows, the already half-rotted wood collapsing into splinters under the cathar’s shield. Sathe kept well to the back as the guards stepped into the shop.
  48. The small space was untidy, strewn with intricate metal parts; no clocks ticked, no gears whirred. The key to the back room was in the lock.
  49. The back room was as neat as the shop was unruly. The table, empty; the jars, gone; the shelf was free of dust, and of books. The atrocities the tinker had wrought were nowhere to be found.
  50. “Sathe.” Belin was speaking directly to him. He gazed vacantly at the pristine table where he had first seen the Steel Cathar, which was now just a metal shell full of ashes in the town square.
  51. His eyes focused on the captain’s stern face, and he stood bolt upright, shocked. The captain was deigning to speak with him, and he hadn’t even noticed! He began to stammer out an apology, but the captain cut him off.
  52. “You knew the tinker as well as anyone, yes?”
  53. “I- I imagine so, sir. He was eccentric, but he took a liking to me. I got to know him better than most, but… I never knew much about him, if you take my meaning, sir. I don’t even know his name.”
  54. Belin smiled, humorlessly. “And he never gave any hint of his… hobbies? You never saw him do anything suspicious?”
  55. “No, sir,” Sathe said quickly. “I never knew- if I had any idea-”
  56. “Thank you, Cathar.” Belin turned to another guard and they spoke briefly; the cathars began filing out. With no direction to the contrary, Sathe stayed seated in the tinker’s chair, doing his best to get his thoughts in order.
  57. After a time, he slept.
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