Clock Gods

Hey, here's, uh... last month's short story? I'm definitely getting my feet under me better, I'll hopefully have the next short story to y'all soon. Again, sorry about all this.

Anyhow... Clock Gods is set on Ishveos, the world of More Gods Than Stars. It's on a completely different hemisphere of the world, and shares no common characters, but it does spoil more of the magic system than Sunken Gods, fair warning.

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Tithan Low’s first act on waking each morning was cursing the gods.

Well, one goddess in particular. Jolciet, the Wandering Clock— for the simple reason that she insisted on waking him up at the crack of dawn every single morning.

“You’re not a god, you’re a hells-spited chicken,” he muttered.

<And you’re a lazy old goat,> Jolciet responded from the depths of Tithan’s soul. <You’re the Saint of Sleeping Late.>

The other god possessing Tithan muttered sleepily, and both Tithan and Jolciet quieted down. There was no heat in their argument— they’d had some version of it every morning for at least twenty years now. (twenty-one years eight months three days.) He could have evicted Jolciet long ago if it really bothered him. So if Acci had managed to sleep through Jolciet’s morning alarm, no reason to wake him.

Tithan dragged himself out of his bedroll on the beach, his knees and back protesting. He’d been a Saint for five or six years now (five years eight months four days six hours zero minutes two seconds) but the unnatural stamina and endurance it provided didn’t do a gods-cursed thing to hold off middle age.

And this rocky beach was hardly the most comfortable place to sleep, for that matter. If they hadn’t worn themselves out so much the night before, he would have moved farther inland.

Tithan grumbled wordlessly and scratched himself as he gazed out to sea. The wandering isle they’d spent nearly a year on (nine months three weeks two days four hours nine minutes eight seconds) was already part-way over the horizon— it was swimming somewhere in a hurry. He felt Jolciet check on the handful of blessings and boons she’d sold to the locals.

<Not far enough away yet, to feel any differences,> Jolciet muttered to him.

He just nodded.

His wanderings were one of the main reasons why she stuck around with him, why she’d traveled with him all the way to the moon’s eastern hemisphere, where the gas giant Viseas no longer hung in the sky. He’d claimed Jolciet’s timekeeping boon years ago, and only fed her prayers out of friendship at this point.

For her part, the clock god was absolutely obsessed with the idea that time itself flowed differently in different places, and gave out her godgift to worshippers as cheaply as she could afford, to try and monitor said divergences. She likely could have grown to be an impressively large god if she’d ever stuck around in one spot, of course— well behaved clock gods were always in demand.

It would have been much easier for Jolciet to do the measuring if she’d been the type of god who could bestow their godgifts on objects, not just in people, but Jolciet wasn’t the least bit dissuaded.

By the time Tithan had packed away his bedroll and strapped his sword back on, Acca was awake, so Tithan started his morning prayers. His soul inhaled raw magic from the Firmament, metabolized it into soulstuff, and fed it to the two gods in his soul.

As he did so, he eyed the beach around him. He’d already spotted several stone mimics snapping open to eat insects and little crabs and such, which told him they were relatively unafraid of people. He’d wager it was because the mimics were used to them, rather than ignorant.

Acca fell back asleep the instant Tithan finished feeding him prayers, poor little god.

The last thing Tithan did before setting out was drag the little coracle he’d rowed from the wandering isle farther up the beach, in case of storm surges. He’d never need it again, but who knew, maybe someone else would find it and have use for it.

“You sure you’re right about what you felt last night?” Tithan asked.

<I hope not,> Jolciet said. <I truly hope not.>

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There were a number of dry ravines leading through the rocky cliffs above the beach, and it only took three tries to find one with a sandy footpath leading through it, then another hour (fifty-seven minutes thirty-one seconds) to follow it to a village. Wherever it was they’d landed, there wasn’t much growing— a few hardy plants in crevices in the cliff face, and half of those were probably mimics.

Tithan saw little trace of people along the trail, save for a single stone shrine alongside the path. The blister-healing god dwelling in the shrine, though, refused to speak to them, closing itself off in the Firmament the instant it felt Jolciet in his soul.

The little trail god was poorly fed, and should have been eager to meet potential worshippers. Its obvious fear, though…

Tithan scowled, and he felt Jolciet’s echoing displeasure in his soul.

Acca just snored. Tithan had no idea how or why he was snoring— gods didn’t have faces, windpipes, or lungs— but he’d worn himself out badly the night before, during the crossing.

The village became audible a few minutes before it came into sight, the ringing of bells and the gurgling of water echoing off the cliff wall.

Tithan didn’t hear many voices, though.

The ravine ended with startling abruptness, and Tithan found himself just a half-mile or so from the village.

His first impression was of greenery. The village was absolutely lush with it, the plant life almost garish against the barren stone and sand surrounding it. It had canals in its streets, aqueducts running above the buildings, and clay pipes stretching in mad tangles throughout.

There was too much water, for a village that couldn’t hold more than a few hundred souls. Far too much water for the desert.

<We need a better view,> Jolciet said.

Tithan knew exactly what they were going to see, but just nodded and withdrew back down the short canyon to climb the cliff.

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Tithan didn’t have any godgifts that particularly helped his climbing ability, beyond one that toughened his skin a little. It wouldn’t stop a knife, but he wasn’t going to cut his fingers on stone. No, he just depended on his Sainthood to climb— easy enough, with muscles that magically don’t get tired.

So it took a while (forty-six minutes forty-five seconds), but he made it up easy enough. As he did so, he carefully timed every single bell, finding them at predictable, constant intervals.

Once he reached the top, he carefully walked along the cliff-top, taking care not to silhouette himself against the sky. No reason to let the villagers know he was here just yet.

From above, it was obvious enough why the village had so many waterworks, why it had so many bells, at least to someone who had spent as many years with Jolciet as Tithan.

The village was a single massive water clock, shunting the water through its hundreds of pipes and dozens of canals and aqueducts. As the currents were redirected by valves, locks, and pumps, they rang the village’s many bells to toll minutes, quarter hours, hours, and…

“Nineteen minute intervals? Really?” Tithan muttered.

<It’s either a quirk of one of the clock gods in the village, or a quirk of the clock’s construction,> Jolciet said.

“Clock gods, plural?” Tithan said, mildly alarmed. “Rare, clock gods getting along with each other.”

Acca chose that moment to wake up. <Again fight to time?>

“Not yet, lad,” Tithan said. “Soon enough, though.”

The young god considered that for a moment (three and a quarter seconds), then made a sleepy noise. <Time it’s when me wake.>

<We will,> Jolciet said. <Now back to sleep with you.>

The two of them waited patiently for Acca to settle back down— he’d earned the rest, after last night. Acca was only nine months old (nine months two weeks one day two hours eleven minutes thirty-one seconds), and his godgifts would be exhausting to use even for a much older god.

<Rare for clock gods to get along, but not unknown,> Jolciet said, once Acca had fallen back asleep. < We’ve seen it before. I think the gods down below are trying to form a Pantheon. One is clearly more powerful than the others, though I can’t make out any other details.>

Tithan cursed softly. Most clock gods were difficult, through temperament if nothing else. Multiple clock gods merging their power together, especially under a single leader?

It was always trouble. And usually not the fun sort of trouble.

“There’s no obvious source of water,” Tithan said, a few minutes (six minutes twenty-nine seconds) of watching later.

<Think that’s the incentive, then?> Jolciet asked.

“The carrot, at least,” Tithan said. “The stick is another matter.”

There wasn’t much question that there was a stick.

A happy population didn’t trudge around miserably with their heads down. A happy population didn’t rush terrified at the ringing of bells. A happy population didn’t have brutish goons bossing them around.

A happy population didn’t live under the rule of clock gods.

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Tithan and Jolciet spent the rest of the morning (six hours five minutes twenty-two seconds) watching the village from above, moving from lookout to lookout atop the cliffs. They carefully observed the flow of water, the ringing of the bells, and the rhythms of the people, making frequent notes in Tithan’s battered old journal.

They took care not to wake Acca— they might need the young god’s powers soon.

Everything down below was obviously, strictly scheduled to the rhythms of the water clock. The couple of times Tithan saw someone deviate from the town’s rhythms— a small child escaping their home to play, an elderly or infirm person who couldn’t keep the pace— the failures were met with swift responses by the enforcers. They didn’t do anything worse than yell or push the offenders about a little, but the villagers had clearly experienced— and feared— worse.

The enforcers, of course, weren’t bound by the schedule, and wandered freely. Such was always the way with towns like this— the higher up on the social ladder you went, the more freedom you gained, so long as you served the system’s interests.

If the villagers were the clock’s gears, the enforcers were the grease.

The water clock didn’t get all his attention, of course— he spent some time (thirty-two minutes zero seconds) observing the fields, orchards, and the road on the other side of the village— but that was all of lesser interest.

Once they had finished what mapping they could from the cliff-tops, Tithan descended (fifty-one minutes seven seconds) and set out back down the path towards the village.

As he left the shade of the cliffs, he took a deep breath, then suppressed his soul. He immediately felt the fatigue of the morning wash over him— without his Sainthood fueling his body, he was just a tired, middle-aged man. One with, admittedly, a dozen magical godgifts enhancing his body in various ways, but they made him no younger.

For all that, hiding his nature was for the best. A Saint always drew attention. If he’d been a traveling merchant or the like, said attention would be fleeting— anyone could buy their way to Sainthood, it just took enough godgifts. Hire enough prayer drudges, you could get there fast enough.

But a raggedy vagabond Saint? At the very least, the villagers would be worrying about him being a bandit.

No, best to go in quiet, until he knew more.

He got a few weird looks as he wandered into the village, but they were mostly the sorts of appraisals any stranger would get wandering into a mid-sized village. He was darker-skinned than the villagers, yes, but they were close enough to the Meridian that they’d surely seen others who’d grown up under the poisonous glare of Viseas. He lacked the tattoos that covered much of their exposed skin, but they would hardly be expected from him. He was coming from the canyon trail instead of the main road, but the canyon trail clearly saw at least a little use. He was armed, but it was a rare lone traveler who wasn’t.

Honestly, it was probably just his visible poverty that drew the most attention. Few villages were friendly to beggars— and while he wasn’t one, he didn’t look that far from it.

Still, all that attention didn’t add up to much. The people of the village were too beaten down and worried to spare him more than glances.

One of the enforcers confronted him just a few streets into the village, no more than a minute or two’s walk. (One minute fifty-eight seconds.) The woman had been physically reshaped to an absurd extent by godgifts— she stood closer to eight feet than seven, and was still disproportionately wide with muscle. The enforcer had left her arms, legs, and shoulders uncovered, to better show off those muscles and her many tattoos. She wasn’t a Saint, unless she was hiding her soul as he was, which he doubted.

Tithan wasn’t impressed. There were easier and more effective ways to enhance strength than increasing size. This was just vanity.

“Rhaeuz doesn’t have any need for beggars,” the woman said, in a language Tithan knew— Arrihu.

Not that surprising he knew the language. Tithan had been excellent at tongues even before he’d been gifted a boon for memorizing vocabulary when he was younger. He knew at least a dozen languages these days— though at a certain point, counting tongues stopped making sense. While he didn’t strictly speak Alymmats, for instance, his knowledge of Arrihu and their mutual cousin language Athoro made Alymmat more than comprehensible to him with a little effort.

“Then you’ll be pleased to hear I’m no beggar, just a wanderer,” Tithan said. “I can pay my own way. Now, is Rhaeuz the name of the village, its ruler, or its main god?”

The woman sneered at him. “Rhaeuz is all three. And you’d best not be lying, because if we catch you begging, well… you’ll be meeting my girls here.”

The woman held up her massive fists as she said that, and it was a genuine struggle for Tithan not to roll his eyes.

“Yes ma’am,” he said politely, tipping his battered old hat at her. “Any place I could purchase some travel supplies around here?”

The enforcer glowered at him, then jerked her head. “Two canals west, then six doors north. Chandlery will be open for twenty-three minutes until the owner’s lunch, which will last precisely forty-five minutes.”

“Much appreciated,” Tithan said.

He took one last glance at her tattoos, then followed her directions, as Jolciet mapped the various aqueducts, canals, and pipes around them.

Tithan was pretty sure he knew where on the moon he was now— Arrihu was one of the most widely spoken languages near the Meridian, but he only knew of one archipelago, Loian’s Teeth, where people both spoke it and also had these sorts of tattoos, which carried information about ancestry, life history, and the like in such a distinctive style.

Not that he had been to the Teeth before— no, he’d had a lover a decade back (eleven years one month two days) from here. The sailor had spent hours explaining to Tithan what each of his tattoos meant, what they represented.

Tithan wished he could remember enough to translate the tattoos on the folks going past now. He could identify a few major tattoos— marriages, children, that sort of thing— but none of the more unusual or more nuanced ones.

He didn’t go to the chandlery right away— though he did idly wonder why it was called a chandlery, without ships. Instead, he ambled across canal bridges and wandering beneath aqueducts, carefully observing locations they hadn’t been able to map from above, and waiting a half-hour or so (twenty-five minutes fourteen seconds) for the bells to ring out the hour.

“Ready, Jolciet?” he asked.

<I do believe so,> the clock god said.

“Then let’s get to work.”

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For the duration of the chandler’s lunch, Tithan got up to trouble.

It wasn’t hard to evade the enforcers— even if they weren’t bound by Raeuz’s schedule, the people they controlled were— making the freedom of the enforcers rather illusory. And on the few occasions where one of the enforcers deviated, it was easy enough for Tithan to duck into a tangle of ceramic pipes, or hunch down between hanging vines.

A minute (precisely one minute) before the chandler’s lunch ended, Tithan was waiting at their door.

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The chandler was a second and a half (one and seven-fifteenths of a second) late unlocking his door, but even if Tithan had cared— which he absolutely didn’t— he would have been much too busy eying the chandler himself.

He was nearly Tithan’s own age, handsome in that salt-and-pepper way that had eluded the wanderer, and had a tattoo on one wrist that Tithan actually recognized— a mourning tattoo for a deceased husband, well-faded with time.

Tithan smiled broadly at the man and removed his hat, wishing he’d taken the time to fix his own thinning hair.

“Been a moment since we’ve had a stranger in town, save the weekly trade runs,” the chandler commented, looking nervously down the street both ways.

“Can’t imagine your gods appreciate their schedules interrupted much,” Tithan said.

The chandler tensed, then gestured him quickly inside.

Tithan only spared a quick glance for the inside of the shop— surprisingly well-stocked for a large village without many visitors, though there were some dusty corners full of travel goods and lazy mimics barely bothering to conceal themselves. There were at least six gods residing inside— two place gods, three object gods, and a coin-counting god in a little countertop shrine that didn’t fit easily into either category. The most powerful of the lot, though not by much, was a teakettle god, whistling quietly to itself in the Firmament.

This place had been around for a while, to accumulate so many resident gods.

“Not safe to criticize the gods here in Rhaeuz,” the chandler said.

“I can’t imagine so. The name’s Tithan, by the way.”

There was no spark of recognition in the chandler’s eyes, but Tithan hadn’t expected any— for all his exploits, names didn’t get much more common than Tithan. You could find variants of it in half the languages on the moon.

The chandler shook his hand with a firm grip. “Haeron. Now, what can I do for you today.”

“Just some basic travel supplies,” Tithan said. “Lost some at sea, need to restock.”

“You came in from the shore?” Haeron asked. “Not a lot of that these days, the winds and currents aren’t kind on this side of the island.”

“Wasn’t relying on winds and currents,” Tithan replied. “Hitched a ride on a wandering isle.”

He didn’t technically lie there— just didn’t tell the whole truth. No reason Haeron needed to know his stay on the isle hadn’t been entirely voluntary.

Tithan made idle chit-chat for a few minutes as Haeron gathered jerky, rope, and a few other items for him— and waited for the man to relax a bit before treading into sensitive territory.

“So this Rhaeuz— what’s he a god of, exactly?” Tithan asked.

Haeron tensed, checked the door reflexively.

“Clockwork,” he finally said.

“Manifesting, powering, or maintaining?” Tithan pressed.

“Powering,” Haeron said, looking more uncomfortable as he confirmed what Tithan had already been fairly sure of.

“Think I get the gist of the story, then,” Tithan said. “New god appears in town, offers to pump more water out of the ground. He just wants a clock built in exchange, along with enough prayer. Then another clock god shows up, and another, and another.”

“I really shouldn’t be talking about this with you,” Haeron said.

“Each new god has their own useful gifts, and they only demand a few more rituals each, a new holiday, or an expansion of the clock. Each individual demand wasn’t too onerous in isolation, but they slowly got worse and worse.”

“These are dangerous topics,” Haeron warned.

“Always knowing the time is handy at first, and makes meeting folks and arranging deliveries more convenient. Until it starts feeling more like an obligation. Until the clock gods stop offering measured time as a service, and begin using it as a manacle.”

“I think you should go,” Haeron said.

“Of course,” Tithan said. “You take gemstones, yes?”

It was a rhetorical question— most everyone took gemstones as payment, so long as they were transparent. Not many mimics out there that could go transparent, while there were plenty of mimic species that could disguise themselves as metal coins. Paying in gems could be a hassle, but removed a lot of the risk of mimic counterfeits.

Haeron didn’t even drive a hard bargain, accepting a few citrine and peridot crystals for the supplies, obviously eager to get Tithan out.

Pity. Tithan wouldn’t have had time to stay and flirt, regardless.

Ah, well.

Time to go speak to a god about a clock.

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There were plenty of enforcers hanging about the clock church at the heart of the village, lounging on the stairs smoking and drinking. None quite so big as the first enforcer he’d seen, but most stood head and shoulders above average.

Tithan strode right past them, not paying them any attention. One or two protested, but walk confidently enough and you’d be shocked at the places you could get access to.

A couple of the enforcers followed in his wake, but they weren’t actively trying to stop him.

Several clock priests of various gods stood clustered about inside the church— at least one of whom was serving as her god’s vessel, as Tithan did for Jolciet and Acca. He ignored her, though, heading straight for Rhaeuz’ hulking clockwork shrine.

“Rhaeuz isn’t accepting prayer right now, that’s scheduled for…” one of the priests said, but Tithan ignored him.

“You build bad clocks, Rhaeuz,” Tithan said loudly.

All the protesting voices went silent, and several of the enforcers drew weapons, while others used boons and blessings to manifest temporary weapons out of godstuff.

Three enforcers he could see manifested spider-like legs on their backs made of gears and clock hands, coming to lethal-looking tips. One of Rhaeuz’s subordinate gods offered useful combat gifts, it seemed— perhaps Tithan should have spent more time interrogating Haeron.

That would have been cruel of him, though. Besides, there hadn’t been time.

The clockwork of Rhaeuz’s shrine slowly ticked to a halt, and then the god spoke— both through the Firmament, but with each word, gears and axles twitched and whirred, offering mechanical counterpoints to each syllable.

<MY CLOCK IS A WORK OF BEAUTY AND PRECISION, FOOL,> Rhaeuz said. <WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION MY WORKS?>

“Your clock is disgustingly imprecise,” Tithan replied. “It’s off by nearly a full second a decade.”

<Twenty-three twenty-fourths of a second, to be precise,> Jolciet said privately to Tithan.

Rhaeuz scoffed with a clatter of cogs. <A TRIVIAL CONCERN, ONE MANAGEABLE WITH A MINOR MANUAL ADJUSTMENT EVERY THREE YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, TWO DAYS, AND FOUR HOURS. YOU THINK RHAEUZ UNAWARE OF SUCH PETTY CONCERNS, MORTAL?>

“I had no illusions of your ignorance,” Tithan said. “In truth, if you had been unaware, I might have thought more highly of you. But no, that imprecision is just one of a dozen different compromises you built into your clock.”

Rhaeuz’s shrine began ticking more swiftly. <ALL CLOCKS REQUIRE COMPROMISES. YOU ARE CLEARLY NEW TO THE STUDY OF HOROLOGY.>

“All clocks require compromises, certainly— metal clocks must adapt to changing temperature, pneumatic clocks to changing air pressure, wooden clocks to humidity. But all of those compromises exist to better measure time— whereas your compromises exist to better schedule it, to shackle it. You have built your clock as an instrument of control.”

<ALL CLOCKS ARE INSTRUMENTS OF CONTROL,> Rhaeuz spat. <ALL CLOCKS EXIST TO SYNCHRONIZE SOCIETY, TO MANAGE LABOR AND INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY. YOU THINK ME A FOOL? I KNOW PERFECTLY WELL YOUR INTENT, YOUR OWN DESIRE. YOU WOULD CLAIM TO BE HERE TO FREE MY WORSHIPPERS FROM MY TYRANNY, BUT MY CLOCK DOES NOT DOMINATE THEM— IT FREES THEM FROM INEFFICIENCY, ALLOWS THEM TO SAVE TIME THEY WOULD OTHERWISE WASTE. NO, I CAN FEEL THE CLOCK GODDESS HIDING IN YOUR SOUL— YOU MERELY WISH TO SUPPLANT ME, TO HAVE YOUR GODDESS TAKE MY RIGHTFUL PLACE ATOP MY INEVITABLE PANTHEON.>

Rhaeuz’s subordinate gods chattered among themselves in their shrines, hosts, and reliquaries.

Tithan smiled. “Not exactly. You asked me who I was— it was rude of me not to answer. My name is Tithan Low.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from most of the people in the room, and an echo of that from most of the gods. Like Acca, many gods inherited the habits of the people whose deaths had given birth to them.

“The Clockbreaker is a prisoner on the wandering isle of Ordoa, after he destroyed their fire clock,” someone said. “In a prison built for Saints, and you are no Saint.”

Tithan’s smile grew wider, and he stopped suppressing his soul. His fatigue faded rapidly as his soul began fueling his body once more, and he wanted to sigh in relief. “I was imprisoned on Ordoa, yes. Not that it was unpleasant— I was well-treated, and I was allowed to visit much of the island. And then my Jolciet felt your clock.”

<YOU WILL NOT BREAK MY CLOCK, TITHAN LOW,> Rhaeuz commanded. <YOU WILL NOT EVEN TOUCH IT. FOR ALL YOUR CUNNING, FOR ALL YOUR TRICKS, YOU DO NOT NUMBER AMONG THE MOON’S GREAT WARRIORS.>

Tithan chuckled. “See, that’s the thing about tricksters. They’re always learning new things. The Ordoans could have kept me, if they’d remembered that.”

Jolciet whispered through the firmament. <Acca, it is time to wake up. It is time to fight, Acca.>

“I am not here to usurp your rule, Rhaeuz,” Tithan continued. “I am not here to free your people— though that will be a pleasant side effect of my actual goal. I am here for one reason, and one reason alone— to smash your clock.”

<I HAVE ALREADY TOLD YOU, FOOL,> Rhaeuz insisted, <THAT YOU WILL DO NO SUCH THING. YOU SHALL NOT TOUCH MY CLOCK.>

“You know, you made one more important compromise,” Tithan said. “You made your pipes out of ceramic. Great material for pipes in almost every single respect but one. Terrible, terrible compressional strength.”

<Awake I’m,> Acca muttered blearily.

The bells of the village of Rhaeuz began to ring the hour.

“You’re right, though, I’m not going to break your clock!” Tithan shouted over the ringing of bells. “I already have!”

The village filled with the noise of shattering pipes.

The bells began to fall silent.

And the church, the heart of Rhaez’s water clock, erupted with violence.

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Clocks are processes, not objects. A clock can be anything— any energetic system at all, with only a single requirement.

A clock must repeat a consistent pattern. It must oscillate.

You could make a clock with water, with gravity, or gears. You could make a clock with people, with music, or pressure. Dry and wet season were a clock, if an imprecise one; while the movements of celestial bodies made a much more exacting timepiece.

Even a calender was a clock, though Tithan was careful about who he said that to- no reason to pick fights with calendar gods if he didn’t have to. The portfolios of gods were definitional, taxonomic; and redefining calendars as clocks would quite rightfully be seen by said gods as an act of war. And while clock gods were useful enough, calendar gods were best understood as strategic assets, some of the most powerful weapons in the hands of theocracies and empires alike. That was a war Tithan Low could not win.

There was no such thing as the perfect clock, as the best possible clock; because all clocks had specific goals, specific purposes. Some clocks were built for navigation, using a variety of carefully measured alloys to compensate for the expansion and contraction of metal in different weather conditions. Some clocks were built to stay accurate over centuries, millennia; while yet others were meant to time ever-smaller intervals with precision. And some, like Rhaeuz’ water clock or the great fire clock of Ordoa, had served additional purposes beyond timekeeping.

The Ordoan fire clock had started as a lighthouse, one fueled by the waste-gases of the floating isle. It had become a clock almost by accident, when the locals came up with a way to store the gases emitted by the giant creature and release them at regular intervals to the fire. It had only taken a few years after that for a clock god to take up residence— one, in fact, that Tithan had been hunting for years. He’d smashed no less than four of the god’s clocks— each of which was crueler and more controlling than the last.

It would have been quite the site for an epic confrontation— a duel atop a lighthouse, either Tithan or the rogue clock god’s host cast into the lighthouse flame at the end.

Tithan, of course, hadn’t bothered with that. He was decent in a fight, but he hadn’t been a warrior-Saint then.

No, he’d just sabotaged the gas pipes, blown up the whole lighthouse.

It honestly made him a bit sad— so far as he knew, it was the first fart-powered clock in history.

The rogue clock god had started seeking control of the wandering isle, but hadn’t conquered it yet. The Shore Council, divided evenly between fishing gods and human elders, had only just begun debating opposing the clock god. Their ambivalence, and his resulting comfortable imprisonment, led to Tithan spending time (nine months three weeks two days four hours nine minutes eight seconds) around a clock he’d destroyed for the first time ever.

All of the fire and clock priests inside the lighthouse gave birth to gods on their death, but one of them gave birth to a clock god— Acca.

And of course Acca had settled into Tithan’s soul. Who else on the island knew or appreciated clocks so well as him?

And as for Acca’s powers, well…

Other clock gods powered clocks, or built clocks, or were clocks.

Acca made everything around him into a clock.

For Acca was a pendulum god.

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Three seconds into the fight, when most folks had just realized there was a fight, half of them went tumbling to the ground as Tithan used Acca’s godgift.

And three seconds later, it happened again.

Every three seconds, Acca forced them all to oscillate. He measured the kinetic energy of their movements over those three seconds, then reapplied that force in a single vector, one that was the inverse of their averaged movements.

Tithan could exempt himself from the power if he wanted to, but that was more exhausting for his soul— and besides, it would be a missed opportunity. Since Acca took up residence in his soul, he had secretly trained with the god’s powers. All of which had culminated in last night’s daring escape, after Jolciet detected Rhaeuz’ clock at a distance.

Whenever Acca’s power activated, Tithan was ready. He worked with the abrupt reversals to spin and lunge at an enemy behind him, or to turn retreat into advance. He took advantage of the brief interval of force to make motions that wouldn’t be part of the oscillations.

A few of the clock goons figured out tricks to stand up to Acca— moving slowly or even holding still to minimize the strength of the backlash; or for those cleverer, trying to copy Tithan’s own rhythmic swordplay. Most did a terrible job at it.

Jolciet’s timers let Tithan perfectly anticipate each oscillation, while his foes had to count for themselves, or rely on the many clocks around them. Still, Tithan hated to fight fair, so he promptly switched the interval. Not to another consistent interval, but to staggered interval. That was an aspect of clocks most didn’t consider— each tick of the clock didn’t need to be separated by identical intervals, so long as there was an overall repeating cycle.

Tithan set a cycle with fifteen different intervals.

He didn’t even pass through them all before Rhaeuz’ minions were all on the ground. He’d only stabbed or struck about half of them— many of them had cut themselves or each other in the chaos, while others had accidentally concussed themselves against walls or pillars.

Outside, Tithan’s sabotage was drawing to its conclusion.

Clay pipes may be cheap and sturdy, both essential for communities like this one, but they had an important downside— you couldn’t pressurize them too heavily, or they’d simply shatter.

There were plenty of safeguards against that in Rhaeuz, but it had been a simple enough matter for Tithan to circumvent those, and rig the system to push too much water through some pipes.

Some, not all. Because smashing a clock like Rhaeuz’, one driven by real community needs— in this case, water— took more than simple physical destruction. Tithan couldn’t eliminate the village’s need for water, but there was something else he could deal with.

“Clock pantheons,” Tithan said to Rhaeuz, the other clock gods, and the room at large, “require even more compromises than any clock. They require compromise on hierarchy, on interval, on frequency. They require compromise on philosophy and purpose, on questions of geography and relative perception of time. Listen to the bells still ringing, and tell me if your compromises still stand.”

The gears and pendulums all stilled as the gods and priests listened.

Around them, throughout the city, bells rang discordantly. Some rang ceaselessly, some rang at incompatible intervals, while a few rang at random. The damage Tithan had done to the pipe systems had been carefully mapped out for more than simple destruction, but to bring chaos, to force multiple contradictory measurements of time into being.

To render the clock’s oscillations uncontrolled and uncontrollable.

The gods and priests began yelling at Tithan, at each other, and most of all at Rhaeuz.

<Their consensus has collapsed,> Jolciet reported with satisfaction. <They have lost their chance to form a Pantheon.>

“Brilliantly done, if I do say so myself,” Tithan said, and turned to leave the temple.

<Good do Acca did?> the young pendulum god asked.

“You did fantastic, lad," Tithan said.

Behind him, Rhaeuz’s clockwork pumps stilled and the water stopped gurgling. The bells around the village began falling silent, in a futile effort to halt the chaos among the clock gods.

Tithan paid no attention. He’d seen this before— it never worked. Even if the much-shrunken ranks of the enforcers could somehow reassert control over the village, could force them to rebuild the clock— both unlikely propositions— it was almost unthinkable that the gods could restore their consensus, build new compromises. At the very least, they would blame Rhaeuz for their failures.

He idly wondered whether the villagers would thank him for freeing them, or curse him for cutting off their supply of easy water. Both, he imagined.

Well, he wasn’t sticking around to find out. Pity, he would have loved to apologize to the chandler, get to know him better.

He paused in the temple entrance and called back to the angry, confused crowd inside.

“Remember— clocks should measure time, not control it!” he called.

Rhaeuz’ gears spun to life once more. <YOU, TITHAN LOW, ARE A MADMAN, AN AGENT OF CHAOS. I CURSE YOUR NAME, AND SWEAR MYSELF YOUR FOE.>

“Best of luck with that, Rhaeuz!” Tithan replied. “You’re in crowded company! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got places to go, clocks to smash… time to kill.”

The Clockbreaker laughed, and was gone.

There was a silence, as the failed clock cult collectively and wordlessly decided against pursuing him.

Finally, a lowly acolyte spoke up. “Time puns? Really?”

There was a collective groan, and a moment later (two and two thirds seconds) they all fell back to arguing.