Six weeks before the collapse of the Empire

When the Clockmaker spoke it was in the language of magic itself, and so if there had been anyone left alive in the room to hear him they would have instantly understood across any possible language barriers that what he had said was "Interesting," but what it had meant on deeper layers was "well, shit".

Stepping carefully around droplets of blood suspended in the air, he passed the main lever of his masterpiece and placed a hand gently on the casing for its central decision engine. Lenses flickered into and out of phase with reality in front of him, allowing the Clockmaker to examine the various parts despite many of them being invisible or sealed behind alchemical metals, and as one particular lens snapped into place his breath caught. The spools on either side of the room had been emptied, and a tangled knotted mess covered the entire middle portion of his device.

If the Clockmaker had known the term "plot armor" he would have muttered it as an epithet, but as that phrase wouldn't be invented for almost 1500 years he just sighed. He had the right tools to cut the invisible threads away, but that would be dangerous without examining every inch first.

The regulating spirits were gone, somehow, but the decision engine was still working. Disconnected, powerless, but working. When he had pulled the lever, it should have begun the slow and careful process of finding a path through which the Empire could last forever in peace and order. The Clockmaker would have validated the results, and locked them in. He'd estimated it would take an hour or so. Instead, all of the inscribed gears that were meant to indicate its progress showed impossible results.

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Paths searched was still at one, as if it had barely begun - or succeeded on its first try, which seemed unlikely especially given the fact that his daughter was the imprint for one of the regulating spirits and they had... differing ideas... about what the future should look like. Paths forged, which should be zero since he had never fully engaged the engine - and in fact should never be more than one regardless - was well over seven thousand. And finally, the most baffling discrepancy, the date for the furthest out it had received a confirmation of vital criteria was 720 days past the last possible date the machine should be able to reach.

That last one wasn't a limitation of the machine but of the laws of reality, and hadn't clicked over to that date until after the Clockmaker had tried to shut the machine down. The moment he'd pulled the emergency cutoff there had been one, final, path forged into the future that seemed to break everything. That was when the three assassins had appeared.

The Clockmaker turned and looked at two corpses, one of which was still hanging in the air in multiple pieces. The closest intruder had somehow been keeping the temporal defenses from freezing everything until his death, so unlike the crumpled form in the corner he had yet to hit the floor. Lenses clicked in and out of place in front of the Clockmaker again, but there wasn't much to see now that the attackers had been killed. He would have to capture the third one alive - assuming he could find her. She had vanished a split second before she would have been frozen in time, and as the Clockmaker looked back at the device he knew that hadn't been just dumb luck.

He allowed time to resume and the body parts thudded to the ground as alarms finally went off. For a moment his facade threatened to fall, but he managed to remain calm and prevent his eye from twitching, his heart from racing. He kept the panic at bay. It was fine. Everything was fine. He could fix it. His empire would last forever. There would be order.