"Now it's your turn, give it a try." Soren said while handing the clockwork card to Clyde.
Clyde takes the card and grabs his butterfly knife. He made a small cut. Blood begins to drip.
Drip. Drip.
He placed his blood on the card. A loud ringing noise can be heard. So loud! Is it not allowing me to resonate with it? The card began to vibrate violently.
"What are you doing Clyde, you're seeking help from a god not competing with it. Tone your lunar ichor down."
Clyde toned his lunar ichor down, the card's loud ringing noise and its vibration gradually came to a stop.
The blood starts to hiss. It's draining my lunar ichor. The card begins to glow.
"Tempus, umbra ultimae horae, dissolve filum tuum sine fine et sine ut potestas tua antiqua hunc secundum cruentem consumat.(Tempus, shadow of the final hour, unspool your endless thread and let your ancient power consume this bleeding second.)"
Ring! Ring!
A clear, single tone rang out from the card, nothing like the violent vibration from before. This one was clean and deliberate, the sound of something that had been asked properly and had decided to respond.
The cogs on the card spun faster. The clock hands blurred. The chains wrapped around the design loosened slightly, just enough to suggest they were no longer holding everything shut, just keeping it organized.
It's working.
Clyde felt the drain on his Lunar Ichor steady out into something manageable, the card drawing from him at a consistent rate rather than pulling violently the way it had when he first pressed his blood against it. He could feel the resonance starting to form, his wave finding the card's frequency the same way it found Hollow Edge's, the two patterns moving toward each other across the gap.
"Now," Soren said quietly. "Tempus auge."
Clyde said it.
"Tempus auge."
Nothing happened for a second.
Then everything went slightly wrong with time.
It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't the overwhelming rush of power he had half expected. It was subtler and stranger than that. The air in the lab seemed to thicken slightly around him, and inside that thickness he felt himself moving at a different rate than the room, the gap between intention and action shrinking in a way that was difficult to describe and immediately obvious once it was happening.
He raised his hand.
His hand moved faster than he had told it to.
He blinked. His eyelids moved at normal speed but the world between the blinks had shifted more than it should have.
Oh, he thought. That's what it feels like from the inside.
"Walk to the far wall," Soren said.
Clyde walked.
Three steps felt like one and a half. The distance closed faster than his legs should have covered it. He reached the wall and turned around and Soren was still in exactly the position he had been in when Clyde started walking, which meant from Soren's perspective barely any time had passed at all.
The room isn't moving slower. I'm moving faster. It's not the same thing but it feels like it from the inside.
"Stop," Soren said.
Clyde let the resonance drop. The drain on his Lunar Ichor eased immediately, the card going quiet in his hand, the cogs settling back to their steady baseline spin.
He stood at the far wall and breathed for a second.
"How does it feel?" Soren asked.
"Strange," Clyde said honestly. "Like the distance between wanting to do something and doing it got shorter."
Soren nodded. "That is an accurate description. Clockwork does not increase your physical strength or your technique. It compresses the time in which your actions occur. A strike that would normally take half a second now takes a quarter of one. Movement that covers ten feet now covers it in the time ten feet would have covered five." He picked up his clipboard from the table. "The limitation is your Lunar Ichor reserve. The ability drains continuously while active. The moment your ichor runs out the acceleration stops, and if you have been moving at that speed for too long, your body will register the sudden return to normal speed as a physical shock."
"What kind of shock?"
"Muscle fatigue, primarily. Joint strain if you push it too far. Your body adapts over time with practice but early use should be kept short." Soren made a note on his clipboard. "Also, your perception does not accelerate with you at this phase. You can move faster but your eyes still process information at normal speed, which means in a combat situation you may find yourself arriving somewhere before you have fully registered what is there."
"That sounds dangerous."
"Very," Soren agreed, without softening it at all. "Which is why controlled practice matters before you use this in the field."
Clyde looked at the card in his hand. The clock face still ticked steadily, the Roman numerals sitting at their positions, the chains resting loose now in a way they hadn't before he'd activated the ability for the first time.
"How many times can I use it before the drain becomes a problem?" he asked.
"At your current reserve, perhaps two activations of thirty seconds each before you start feeling the strain. Maybe three if you are careful." Soren set the clipboard down. "That number will improve as your Lunar Ichor reserve develops and as your resonance with the card deepens through repetition. Right now you are essentially introducing yourself to it. It does not know you yet."
It doesn't know me yet. The same thing Aurelian said about Hollow Edge after the Porin fight.
Clyde held the card up and looked at it properly for the first time since all of this had started. Up close, the craftsmanship of it was remarkable, each cog tooth sharp and precise, the clock face detailed enough that the individual marks between the numerals were visible if you looked for them. Whoever had first encoded this design, or whatever process had created it when Tempus's blood had been sealed inside it, had produced something that looked like it had been made to last longer than the people who would use it.
"Soren," Clyde said. "The God of Time. Tempus. Is he still active? Like the Alkahest God was active when I looked into your eyes?"
Soren considered the question for a moment, which was itself an answer of a kind.
"All of the divine sources are active in the sense that they persist," he said carefully. "Whether Tempus is actively aware of each individual use of his blood's power the way the Alkahest God was aware of you looking into his domain, I genuinely do not know." He paused. "I would not recommend testing it the same way you tested the Alkahest God."
"I was not planning to."
"Good."
Clyde pocketed the card. It sat heavier than its size suggested, the cold of it familiar now, the cogs turning against the inside of his coat in their quiet, continuous sequence.
"Practice the chant tonight," Soren said, returning to his chemicals. "Not the activation, just the words. Pronunciation first, then timing, then activation when you are confident in both. Latin rewards patience and punishes rushing."
"Understood."
"And Clyde." Soren did not look up from the tube he was measuring. "Do not practice in public. Temporal acceleration at this phase is visible to anyone paying attention. A person moving at that speed in a Cristae street will draw exactly the kind of attention we do not want."
"Right."
Forbidden knowledge. Invisible when you need it to be.
He picked up the Latin book from where he had left it on the edge of the table, tucked it under his arm, and headed for the door.
"Thank you, Soren."
"Come back tomorrow. We will run through it again."
Click. The door shut behind him.
In the lab, Soren set down his measuring tube and looked at the space where Clyde had been standing.
Two activations at his reserve level and he maintained resonance through both, he thought. First attempt. No instability in the wave.
He picked up his clipboard and made another note underneath the first one.
Then he went back to his chemicals and said nothing further to anyone.