"Apology accepted, and thank you for it."

And then she turns to go, all thoughts of looking at the clock forgotten in the wake of these people that make her deeply uncomfortable. She would like to get away from them yesterday.

"Wait—please, would you stay a moment and hear our plea, revered one?" says Mimeon while Casmeen seems even more shocked that her apology didn't earn them... much of anything. "We have need of help with this clock, this construction of your sire's—"

She pauses.

Okay, so on one hand, she wants to be elsewhere, and on the other hand she is still very curious about that clock, and on yet another third hand that may or may not be part of the original body plan, she sees an opening to get two things she wants just by putting up with some people that were only mildly rude and seem to quite regret it.

"... Will you pay me for my time?"

Pay? As in money? What on the Ninth World would a castoff need money for don't they know they can get anything...?

Mimeon is immediately nodding as soon as she asks. "Absolutely, revered one, anything you want. If you will?" He takes a step back and gestures towards some specific faces on the, and it is indeed a clock, as he says.

"All right," she agrees, going to go look at the clock that is very exciting and looks so familiar and what no she is not easily won over, that would be silly.

"Dark figures seem to circumambulate these clock faces," he explains while she looks. "My theory is that your sire's creation of the time-shields that protected this city established a connection with his future selves. Given this, we believe those figures may be castoffs—or ghosts of castoffs, perhaps." He shrugs a bit, and his fingers sparkle. "The Clock is unmoored in time, and we do not have a knowledge sufficient to investigate. Your connection with your sire... may be enough to give you the edge we lack, align the clock with the present time, and uncover who these figures are." Then he smiles. "But even if you cannot, we will not be poorer for the knowledge gained in the attempt."

The castoff gives a nod and inspects it critically. While trying to figure out how this works from absolutely nothing sounds like a fun challenge, it is probably actually smarter to start at the proverbial beginning. Which would be whatever she remembers. So, what had she been doing when it... wasn't her that was doing it?

She is working at the clock. It is no longer transparent, but perfectly solid.

Arcs of energy stretch out from the clock, over her shoulders and to its victims. She doesn't bother to even look. The way their screams disappear tells all she needs to know. That's that problem solved, then...

.... Aaa? Aaa. Yes, aaa. She grimaces at the unpleasantness of the memory.

Are. Are those figures the same figures that her sire trapped in there? However long ago it was? ... The memory didn't feel like it was in her body, she was too tall, the skin was a different color, and her shoulders were larger. This is completely nonsensical. How can she remember things from that far back? Experiences that actually happened while her sire was using this body makes sense, but picking things up from before that implies a level of connection that is... kind of unsettling.

When she returns to the present, she can immediately spot the effect she's had on the clock: three beams of ?light? seem to be arcing from it to three ancient statues (devices?) scattered around the cultist encampment.

Of course her sire would make everything only respond to bodies of their own creation. How maximally unhelpful to the overall good of the world. Ugh. What an asshole.

"Hm," she says, instead of saying how her sire sucks out loud to the people that worship him, and then goes to investigate the devices themselves.

Aleks silently follows her, looking over his shoulder a couple of times to make sure the creepy cultists aren't coming with.

The devices seem to be made out of some metal, the tallest of the four pillars only a bit taller than she is, and with her activation of the clock the centermost pillars of each of them seem to have acquired a glowing symbol to their faces. As the castoff approaches the first one, something... changes.

Aleks gets a very quiet, "Sorry," and an apologetic smile when they're sufficiently far enough away from the creepy cultists. She will definitely be more careful about wandering off to poke things in the future. Mostly because they might be surrounded by people that are much less easy than whatever neat thing she wants to poke.

And then she gets to the first device and immediately gets absorbed in her subject. There are two sets of images - ones on the device itself, and changes to the city around her. The people, their clothing, the very buildings themselves shift to what is clearly another time. More colorful, with less cultists, and the buildings look like they've suffered less weathering. So... probably the past, then. In comparison, the images attached to the device are more mutable, with her choice between three, offered to her throught... some kind of mental interface. She can view any of the three that she likes, and does so. Somehow she knows that if she wants, she can pick one to lock to this particular device, showing it and only it.

Three images for three devices? Are they the same images for each of the devices? Looking at the others verifies: yes, the images in the devices are the same three, and it's the changes to the city around her that are the real difference. Some sort of... time alignment, then? Align the times of the images to the times shown in the changes around the device? That seems almost too easy, but nothing she remembers implies that this is some kind of trap. The trap was already sprung, against her siblings, long ago. This isn't a grand puzzle left for her sire's wayward children, it's a simplistic self reminder for a being that is centuries old. In case they ever want to come back. For some reason.

It's laziness.

For some reason this bothers her more than just trapping three people in a temporal clock device. Trapping three people could be justified, but abandoning them in it behind a simplistic memory aid, out of sloth is just. Horrible. It's horrible. She hates it.

The first device she sets (or, well, the third she looks at) is the easiest to match up. Ancient surroundings of a city under siege, and one of the three images is of a man and a woman, in that siege. Figuring out the other two is a bit trickier, and she does not want to see what this thing might do to her if she gets it wrong, but with a mix of careful observation of fashion choices and a vague sense of how old each of the images are, she attaches them to each other well enough.

When she connects the last image to the last environmental changes, the devices go dark, and the clock fades back into reality.

And the clock is now active, the movement purposeful, the time shown—real, the present. It is anchored.

Time to go poke that too, then! Maybe there's a way to let her poor siblings out. She really doesn't feel like being pissed at their mutual sire is reason enough to be trapped in a clock for eternity.

Aleks, as usual, follows.

And there's the central clock face, with the three shadowy figures, almost detailed enough to see...

...until they surge out of the clock towards her and everything goes dark.

The castoff abruptly tips to the side and falls to the ground, unconscious.

But this is not, precisely accurate. She is not unconscious. Her mind just... isn't inhabiting her body anymore. It's somewhere else.

There, it's dark and confusing. With distinctly non-Euclidean geometry.

And she is not alone.

The three figures seem—maybe even more disoriented than she is. They don't even notice her there, at first. And they are definitely also castoffs; if nothing else, they all have a tattoo like hers.

"What befell us?" asks the leftmost member of the trio, a woman dressed in powerful armor with a scarred face. "Did they do something? Are we still in the clock?" What new torture does the Changing God have for them?

"Uh. Hello," she says with a little awkward wave, somewhere between shy and distracted trying to figure out how the geometry doesn't work. "No, I was the one that did something. Are you three okay?"

The three of them look at her, then. The rightmost one, a small and tense man carrying a shield, says, "Probably. You did this, then? We were—ingested into your head. I saw it. How is that possible? Who are you?"

"Uh. I'm your very youngest sister, about an hour old if you round very generously. And... you were ingested into my head, sorry about that, I uh. Didn't mean to." Why would that have happened, though...? "... Did the clock separate you from your bodies? Trap your minds and leave your bodies to starve as vegetables in your wake?"

"...yes, I believe so," says the middle one—tall, dressed in black, a violet fish-like crest attached to the top of its head, large yellow eyes squinting at her.

    "An hour old? That's not possible, we faced the Changing God only days ago and yours is not the body they wore then."

        "Centuries ago, not days," corrects the third. "I believe we may have been trapped in that clock for much longer than we think, Kamose. Something... about it... it messed with our perception of time."

"Time is an illusion," shrugs the middle one, looking at the void that replaces the sky in this location. "'How long?' is the wrong question." It turns to the latest castoff again. "What is this place? Where are we?" Outside time, then as now, he wagers.

“I… am not entirely sure. I think we’re somewhere in my head, but. I’m not sure it’s… just mine. This only feels like a very small part of it, but this place is so vast, and it scooped you up so easily.” She frowns. “… do any of you three remember things from before our sire used our bodies?”