Tick Tock on the Clock (Tocky)

by **Aello** on July 20th, 2012, 2:05 am

Aello only nodded as she watched the girl get herself into a position more conducive to her mind's work than anything else. Confused by it however, she raised a single brow and simply folded her arms across her chest, before making herself a seat farther down on the fallen tree. When her behind had settled into the diamond backs, she let out a soft sigh, before retrieving her cursed blade. She stared at it, slowly rotating it across her palm with but the use of a thumb. Oh how you are hated, she thought, as she glared at the metal, glistening with old blood she hadn't yet found a way to strip it of. Again, she sighed as she closed her eyes and imagined what the dagger would be like if the cool air was gone. If it was but a dagger, with a dark hilt. A dagger which could grow warm to the touch if left out in the light too long. A dagger that could rust rapidly, and be cleaned with a cloth and water. Sharpened with a whet stone. A weapon would would glisten menacingly in the sun's first light. Cease to drip consistently with wasted life forces. She pictured it as a clean slate, with a clean bed of metal. Exactly like the dagger she had purchased at the Defiled Blade, and carried at her left side.

With this clear image in mind, Aello wove a simple tale, of herself standing alone on the top of a mountain. Weapon in hand, eyes fixed ahead as she stepped forward and then thrust it out to her right side. Testing its weight; the way it cut through the air, before pointing her right toe, and moving it around in a wide arc. Spinning her form around with it, before thrusting the blade forward, out then up. Smiling wickedly as she worked, the girl could only sense the lavender ooze that trickled out of her fingertips. Caterpillars which inched around the length of her blade. A shimmering shield that soon faded as though it had never been. A shield tasked to block out all sound. Thus, when it moved through air, the whistle of its severance faded. When it cut through flesh, the gut wrenching squish of blood beneath could scarcely be heard, despite the uneven nature.

With eyes now opened, and shield now tasked, Aello peered at the red head. Wondering how far in her brainstorming process she had gotten. It didn't seem like enough to the aurist, which made her chuckle. If only a shield could be put on her mouth. A muzzle, so that when she dies, not even she herself can pick up on her pitiful screams, Aello thought as her eyes glimmered. She'd wait only a bit longer before jostling the girl into further action. Or rather, a speed of which she could approve.

by **Minerva Agatha Zipporah** on July 20th, 2012, 3:28 am

Tock finally opened her eyes, the idea formed in her mind. She flipped off the tree, or, well, tried to, but just ended up fumbling about and landing in a tangled heap on the ground. "Ooof!" she groaned, pushing herself up and brushing the leaves and dirt from herself. Then she stretched, working out a kink in her back. She felt a bit better now. Calmer. No longer scared for her life. She had a project in mind, and she was on the clock.

"I needs a flower," she told the girl. "Ya done said ye'd 'elp, aye? Go fetch me a flower. Sunflower maybe? 'Ose'd be best. Either 'at o' one o' 'ose, whatchacaller, kinds what the petals bloom in the day? 'En closes up at night..." She didn't know flowers, she couldn't identify any of them by name, except maybe some of the really obvious ones. But she knew some plants were sensitive to the sun. "Dun matter what she is. Long as she done been changin' wit' the sun, o' moon, aye? An' she's gots ta been alive anywho," she added with a scowl at the psycho woman. "Roots intact, n'all 'at. So dun go givin' me no lip 'bout killin' no flowers, aye? But'cha wants yer clock, I needs a flower..."

Since the crazy bitch had told Tock she could use the tree for parts, she started doing just that. She set Choppy up along one of the thicker branches, getting him to chop it clean. She then sliced a disc from the branch, sawing it by hand, about the size of a large dinner plate. She figured Psycho wanted to be able to bring it with her, so it couldn't be much bigger than that. It wasn't as if she could drag a grandfather clock along through the forest.

From other strips of wood she began carving out parts. She didn't have time to make the number of gears and complex parts a normal clock would need, but she had a workaround. So for now she started out carving the hands of the clock, long and slender ones made from the living wood. She leaned against the tree to use it as a workbench, having Handy hold the wood in place as she used her chisels to begin carving. Since Psycho seemed to be all hot and bothered for the forest, she decided to carve the hands to look like natural sticks, with carvings in the appearance pointed leaves at the tips, in the same shape as the ones from the tree. She intentionally kept the shapes of the hands a bit crude and not quite straight, in order to make them look more like natural sticks. Not quite completely natural, since the flimsy natural twigs didn't have the strength to be solid enough. Instead, she cut strips of stronger wood that she could carve down to the size and shape she needed.

Refusing to compromise her standards just because she was doing this job with a knife at her throat, she worked to carve bark-like grooves into the wood, using the natural twigs before her as a template. Leaning down close, she studied the texture, though wood was something she was very familiar with. Bringing out the shape of the bark through carving was a natural, easy thing for her. She hummed softly as she worked, tapping her chisel with the mallet, cutting out the detailed textures that duplicated the look of the bark. Then she worked to shape the texture of a leaf into the end of the wood, cutting tiny, thin lines that mimicked the veins of a leaf.

Bitch wanted the best clock she could make, Bitch was going to get it.

by **Aello** on July 22nd, 2012, 5:26 pm

Aello eyed the girl warily. "As you wish," she said simply with a small shrug. "They'll be a few for you to choose from," she added as she walked off, losing herself in the shadows cast by the trees. She moved slowly, her magic doing all the work for her; working as a pair of eyes in a scouting expedition, and as the day's watch. Just to be sure the clockmaker didn't try anything stupid. It was not long before the girl found herself before the first plant her magic had spotted. A vine which curled around the length of the tree, a softer green, which seemed to sparkle a pale yellow in the sunlight. The vine trailed down the length of the old oak's trunk, sinking into the ground beneath its roots. Sprouting from the central stalk of twisted vine were several teardrop shaped leaves, with sharpened edges, from behind which soft purple flowers with elongated dropping petals peeked. Aello pressed her fingers behind them, bringing them a bit closer to her. You may do, she thought, as she got on her hands and knees, and started to scoop dirt away from the stalk. After a time, she could see tendrils of white sprouting from its underside. Smiling to herself, she curled her fist around the lowest portion of the plant, and stripped it of the earth. Beads of dirt falling back into place as she freed the vegetation of its former burden.

When she had it in hand, Aello rose to her feet, and severed the stalk with her dagger at about her eye level. She then tore the plant away from the tree, and curled the vine around her neck before moving on to another portion of the forest, several paces to the left of the first tree. Gathered in a tight cluster around the roots of a white birch, nearly stripped bare of its bark, were hairy stems of no more than 75 centimeters. Sprouting from their tops were small, snowy white flowers, with flattened petals. A soft round, more akin to a cockle shell than anything else. Smiling once more, the girl's body crumbled, falling into a plush earthen bed. Rhythmically, as she hummed, she tore away at the earth, until the roots of the plant were exposed. At which point, she gathered a cluster, before returning to Tock. The aurist lay the white plants on the severed wood alongside the tumbling vine necklace she had pulled away from her flesh. "Here you are," Aello muttered. "Hopefully one of them will do. If not, there are a couple of purple plants to the east. Maybe some blues to the south."

The aurist shrugged as she awaited a reply. Not at all in the mood to deal with whatever the city brat had to say.

OOCThe first plant is a purple clematis, the second, sweet cicely.

by **Minerva Agatha Zipporah** on July 22nd, 2012, 7:13 pm

Tock spent several more hours carving out the clock with meticulous detail. Into the face of the round slice of wood, she carved numbers and small lines to mark each chime. She took careful measurements the entire time to ensure everything remained symmetrical, and the layout of the marks were precisely aligned. It wouldn't do to have a clock with crooked marks.

Then she took another segment of wood to use for working out her calculations. She used a gouge to etch numbers into the surface of the wood so she could work out the math. It was quicker sometimes to work out numbers this way instead of with a quill and paper. Without a complete set of gears, the magic would be rotating the hour hand to mark the bells, but she needed to keep the minute hand moving at a proportional rate to mark off the chimes. Normally each hand was linked to a different weight, which slowly pulled downwards to rotate the gears and move the hands at different speeds, each one following a separate pace. But she didn't have time to build three full sets of gears and Animate them to rotate each at a different speed.

Instead she simplified the design. One large gear would rotate in perfect unison with the hour hand. Then a set of smaller gears would be attached to it, rotating at more rotations per minute due to their smaller perimeters. The same speed that turned the larger gear one full rotation every twelve hours would translate into twelve full rotations of the minute hand, making it go around fully once per hour.

Doing this required making sure the smaller gear had a perimeter length 1/12 that of the large gear. It took a bit of math for her to work out that a six inch diameter gear would have a perimeter of 18.84 inches, which in turn meant she needed the smaller gears to have a perimeter of 1.57 inches, and a diameter of a mere half an inch. She also worked out the spacing needed to ensure each gear would fit together snugly while still allowing for fluid movement.

She found a branch just about a half inch thick, and started cutting, working gear cogs into its full length. Once it was carved and filed down to the proper measurements, she cut it into slices, each one identical in size and shape since they had been carved as a single length. Thirteen of the tiny half inch gears would be needed to reach from the outer edge of the larger gear in towards the center of the clock. For each one she carved out a small wooden peg that she nailed into the clock face as a pivot point for the gear to turn on. Then with the set of gears lined up across the clock face, she mounted the larger gear over them, its center hole carved with a spacer that jutted from the wood an extra half an inch. This mounted the large gear with a bit of a gap that prevented it from rubbing against the smaller gears beneath it. It would also protect the smaller gears from being jostled, damaged, or knocked out of alignment. A few small spacers were also fixed to the wood around the perimeter to keep the disc of the gear straight and parallel to the clock face.

The large gear was mounted on a thick ring for rotation, and through the hole in that ring, a central axle rose. She attached the hour hand to the ring so it would rotate in unison with the large gear. The minute hand was mounted on the axle which connected to the concealed gear underneath. Once it was all done, and everything was tested, aligned, adjusted, and made to fit perfectly, the clock body was complete. She rotated the main gear slowly by hand, watching as an inch and a half turn translated into a full rotation of the tiny gear, spinning the minute hand fully around while the hour hand shifted from twelve to one.

Satisfied, though knowing it would never be as precise as one built in a proper workshop, she fired up the magic to start giving it life. She didn't have a floor to work on, so she dug out the Animation circles in the dirt, hoping it wouldn't rain before she was done. This sort of work really didn't belong outdoors. Once she had the linked circles completed, she placed the clock in one and the cicely in the other. Then she pricked her finger, dropped some blood into the dirt, and began the Animation process.

As Automatons went, this was about the simplest one she had ever made. She closed her eyes and focused on drawing forth the spiritual energy, sitting beside the circles with one hand raised towards each. The plant's life force was so simple, so basic, that drawing a Soulcore from it was easy. The plant began to glow with a soft blue light, a faint drop drifting off it and into the clock.

She had no need for complex Directives here. The clock wouldn't have anything close to a sentient mind. It would be more like her crutches, programmed only to obey a certain task and that was that. So she programmed it only with a simple Directive: continuous motion. Just as the sun and moon never stopped their journeys across the sky, the clock would rotate forever, unless it were damaged in some way.

Then she instilled it with everything she could copy from the spirit of the plant. No intelligence. No knowledge. Just the imbued ability to move, the way the plant rotated its leaves to stay in line with the sun. The plant followed the same path every day, from sun up to sunset, a slow, steady rotation that perfectly matched the passage of time. She instilled that same rate, that same speed into the clock, the most natural and basic type of timekeeping possible.

The carved leaf shapes on the clock hands glowed with Djed and began to slowly rotate. It took her the rest of the daylight hours to complete the transfer, but it was soon done, and she gave the clock its life spark to awaken it.

She lifted it from the dirt and held it before her, watching for a few minutes. The gear slowly rotated, almost invisible to the naked eye. And it would never stop, never need to be wound. She had never made such a simple Automaton. All of her others had directions, commands she could give them. Multiple ways to move. Even her crutches could move forward or backwards, or at different speeds. But this just rotated, slowly, steadily, at a pace dictated by the plant's history of aligning itself with the sun.

Without looking at the psycho bitch, or at the distant, setting sun, she said, "She's done..." She almost didn't want to hand the creation over. The forest bitch didn't deserve a magic clock...

by **Aello** on July 24th, 2012, 11:48 pm

Aello ignored the fact that the girl had nothing to say upon her return, and simply, took up residence against a nearby tree, folded her arms over her chest, closed her eyes and waited. She supposed the girl would offer her another task to pass the time, but she never did, leaving the aurist to fall asleep for a time, before she was roused by the shrill tones of a mad woman announcing the final tick of a bell. Announcing cessation; completion. Like a cat roused from slumber, Aello lazily stretched her limbs before coming to her feet, glancing at the sky to note how much time had passed. It seemed like a lot to her, considering how the colors were stretching, losing their vibrancy, and turning to the night, but she supposed that's the time it took to achieve greatness. To build a masterpiece. Smiling weakly as she sauntered over to the clock maker to inspect her work, she said nothing before lifting the clock from its earthen bed. Turning it from left to right as her fingers ran across the wood. "It's lovely," she said after a time, before lifting her right hand off the side. Furling her fingers so that only the pointer was exposed. To run over each of the numbers as the hands twisted ever so slowly. Smiling a little more openly now, she placed the clock back down, allowing it to lean up against the fallen tree.

"Good work," Aello added, as her eyes grazed over the land now that the colors were lazily ascending from their slumber. Vapors rising from the center of the world. "But the hour has grown late, and the forest creatures restless. Those who pose little threat have turned in to the night, and those monsters have been roused by the parting sun. The time it took to make this has come and gone, leaving the path ahead of you all the more perilous. Treachery lies in your wake stranger. It is closing in." There was a slight pause as the girl's eyes passed over Tock's form before moving onto her animations, lingering for but a breadth before easing towards the east. "Judging by where we now lie, you have either come from Sunberth perhaps, or Zeltiva. The latter seems more likely, although it's difficult to say why." She paused again for a moment, allowing her words to settle in before she spoke again. "Your way back home lies in this direction," Aello explained, as she waved her hand out to the right of their current position, before sweeping it dramatically back in, allowing her gaze to follow. "The path I shall follow runs west, towards the shores of Lake Ravok. This then, is when we shall part, for our lives lie on opposite ends of the world."

With that, the aurist could only smile as she started to walk towards the city she so loathed. "The clock should remain here for a time. Although, how would one know if you were to take it?" she asked, as she peered over her shoulder at the likely bewildered girl. Her eyes fell as soon as the words had passed between them, and seconds later, she was once more, turning away. Taking a few steps towards the fate she knew awaited her upon arriving at the docks. "Oh," she added, as she stopped short again, "do mind that which reaches for you," she finished before moving on through the trees, idly watching the way the lights flickered in her stead. In the trails she left behind.

by **Minerva Agatha Zipporah** on July 25th, 2012, 12:25 am

Tock always took pride in her work. Yet that pride was tainted a bit by the woman's praise. She listened silently to the compliments, arms crossed, refusing to look at the woman. When she said, 'Good work,' Tock turned her head to the side and spat on the ground. She didn't need this woman's compliments; she knew it was good work. She never allowed herself to do sloppy jobs.

Tock barely listened when then woman started yammering on about monsters and treachery and something closing in. Tock was a simple girl, with no education growing up, and very little in the way of 'book-learning.' Thus the woman's delicate prose was mostly lost on her, and left Tock confused and wondering what the hell the bitch was blathering on about. Was she making threats?

The only part she was sure she understood was when the girl started giving directions. "I know 'ow ta git 'ome, ya blimey..." she cut off, biting her tongue in a rather uncharacteristic display of self-censorship, since she wasn't keen on the idea of being pinned under the woman's knife again. "'As fun in Ravok," she said with a sneer. "Lots o' nice psycho fanatics 'round 'ere... ye'll love it..." The woman would fit right in with all the crazies up in floaty-town. "Oy, if'n ya meets a crazy midget redhead what wit' a big slashy-stick, o' a stuck up poshy what thinks as 'e owns the 'ole town, feel free ta smack 'em one fer me! An' tell 'at poshy," she jabbed a finger towards the girl's chest, "what as 'e better be treatin' M'lady right!!" Tock hadn't made any friends in Ravok. Only enemies. They deserved to have this crazy woman thrust upon them.

She glared at the woman's back as she walked away, leaving the clock behind. After all that, she wasn't even taking it with her!? Well, Tock wasn't about to leave it here to get ruined. She started packing up her tools, grumbling and muttering to herself the whole time. She'd wait until Crazy was far enough away, and then if she didn't come back for the clock, Tock would take it home with her. It was alive, and didn't deserve to be abandoned in the wilderness like some stray animal...

by **Paragon** on July 31st, 2012, 3:06 pm

Adventurer's Loot

Aello's Loot :

Minerva's Loot :

Fun thread, you both played your parts well

- if you have ANY questions or concerns about this grading, don't hesitate to PM me.