The Clockwork Sphinx guarded the Cupid Archives in the Cupid Homeworld.
In 2022, the Clockwork Sphinx was awoken by Auteur, who had hijacked the shadow of Herodotus-724 and was attempting to escape the Archives as part of his effort to return to the Third Universe. The Sphinx leapt upon the shadow as it approached the exit, seeming to break its hold, although in reality Auteur was unfazed by the attack and simply transferred himself to the shadow of another Cupid who was passing outside the Archives.
Later, the Sphinx was one of those affected when Auteur brought life to all of the fiction contained within the Archives. Though it was still in the Archives, it now proudly protected the city of Thebes and was "so happy" to hide it from terrible thieves such as the wicked troll Larrikin. Herodotus subsequently leveraged Auteur's spell to mark the Abecedarium which had summoned him to the Homeworld with his "REJECTED from collection" stamp which, in the present state of affairs where everything in the Archives became true, expelled Auteur from the Homeworld and returned everything to normal. (POEM: Auteur and the Homeworld [+]Loading...["Auteur and the Homeworld (poem)"])
Behind the scenes
The Clockwork Sphinx, as it is called in the single mention of its full name in Auteur and the Homeworld [+]Loading...["Auteur and the Homeworld (poem)"], is a recurring presence in The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, the series with which the poem was a crossover. The Sphinx is usually known as the Mechanical Sphinx in the rest of the series but was renamed on this occasion presumably to better fit the metre.