Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

Available Power : 1

Authority : 2

Bind Insect (1, Command)

-

Nobility : 1

-

Empathy : 1

-

Spirituality : 1

-

Ingenuity : 1

Know Material (1, Perceive)

Tenacity : 1

Nudge Material (1, Shape)

I should name myself at some point.

Or is that not how I should be?  It’s an interesting question to ponder, as I wake up again.  This time, my final remembered life wakes up as well.  All six of those calm ghosts now connected to me in a way I can clearly understand and contextualize.

Farmer, merchant, soldier, scholar, singer, and now cleric as well.

Six lives, six souls, six avenues of viewing the world through different pieces of the mechanisms of enduring cosmic power.  Though I find it amusing that the constructed facet of my soul made from the memories of a cleric is not, in fact, the source of my Spirituality, but instead my Ingenuity.  Authority from the farmer, Tenacity from the singer.  The others stay unclear to me, maybe because I have yet to truly delve into the magic of those pieces I am made from.

Regardless.  I am awake, and there is no sense it waiting now.

I want Distant Vision, the power offered to me by my increased Authority.  I love my little bees, and I have checked on them to know that they are doing well.  But I wish to see with my own senses.  I have the nagging feeling that this spell will not give me what I want, but I still make the attempt anyway.  And it does not work.

I am short on power.  I need two, it seems, for the spell that says two next to its name in my mind.  Or perhaps for my second power in a soul aspect.  Both of these ideas make a kind of sense, but I cannot honestly attest that I like it.

So I decide to test something new, instead.  I select for myself Shift Wood, from within my Spirituality.  It pains me to let go of Congeal Mantra, but I now suspect there is no upper bound on my growth, and it will be my pleasure to experiment with that at a later date.

For now, I let the new spell mechanism grow within my mind, and instantly, I observe differences.

Nudge Material lets me manipulate, in a tiny way, but mostly it is an application of force in one direct.  Shift Wood, I can already tell, will work on but one thing, and one thing alone.  This I expected, but what I had been curious about was the scale, and flexibility.  And it brings that to my magical fingertips in a way that Nudge Material did not.

I cannot simply point at a pile of sticks and command them to become a chair.  Not with this, no.  But I could shape an indentation in a log to make it a suitable seat.  I could make rough tools, perhaps, or repair those broken.  I do not think I can make wood meld with itself like liquid, but under my direction, flexibility lasts as long as my power says it does.

Given enough time to let the liquid emptiness restore itself, and the wood provided to make it happen, I do believe I could build a rather competent cabin.

I have memories of construction.  Farmer and soldier both, but surprisingly also cleric and singer.  Many of me have helped with homes, shelters, or palisades.  To be able to do what they did once, with my own version of saw and awl, I think would make my memory selves both jealous and impressed.  I know I’m certainly impressed.  Though I have yet to prove to myself or anyone else that I can make good on those promises of skill.

Right now, though, I see how far my spell can go.  Can it, for example, work on a still living tree?  Sort of.  Can it work on a fallen log?  Well, yes, it appears to count as wood all the way through for the purposes of the magic, even though I have more than enough memories of experience as a carpenter to know that you would never ever use something that wet and rotten as true building material.

I make a small indentation in the tree the beehive is in, opening up more secure space for the hive to grow into.  As a thank you, to the bees who are giving me my eyes.  Relationships should not be transactional, but a gift shows compassion regardless.

And then, I begin to practice.  I direct a bee to look at a few of the fallen branches around their hive, not taking too much of their time as I spend my energy bending, shaping, and Shifting Wood in ways that I would never have been able to with the broader purpose of Nudge Materials.  I find that I cannot, in fact, move wood that is too close to the hive itself.  Too close to any living thing, it seems.  The bees give a feeling of interference, which extends to all my shaping.

I make myself some shapes, to practice.  I am, it seems, very out of practice.  My cubes come out lopsided.  My rings come out… also lopsided, but in a way that at least looks more natural.  When I turn the spell away from the material I am working with, its flexibility ends immediately, locking it into a shape.  In some ways, this could be useful, but in others, it does little more than add to how brittle my constructs are.  I will never be able to make a good huntlady’s bow with this, not as it stands.

Oh, the shape, absolutely, but the supple spring?  Never.  Not this spell, no.

I lose myself in the magic.  It doesn’t take me long, simply making shapes, to have spent three quarters of my available might.  But as I pause, take a deep mental sigh, and skim my attention across my other three spells, I find that the wood I have shaped is already beginning to emit the feeling of something being added back to my reserves.  Especially from, strangely enough, the gap in the tree the hive is already considering expanding into.

I spend some more time with my bees, observing their colony.  They move in harmony.  I admire these small creatures, far more than I did in my memories.  If only my old lives had known.  We could have built something so much better.  Bees are selfless, it seems.  And while a nuisance to an large thinking two legged person coming to break their hive or take their honey, to each other they are brothers and sisters.  They dance to each other, and I smile to myself inside my mind.

I spend some more time nudging dirt out of the way around me.  I will not dig deeper; I can sense that my Bind Insect will not stretch much farther, and I worry that the bees I have already are holding bound more of my power than they otherwise would, due to the distance.  But I can excavate a small space around my body.  I don’t know why I do this except to do it, and because I can get the feeling of flecks of significance coming back to me from the moved dirt.  Though markedly less than before.

This time, as my spells empty out, I make the choice to wait.  To let those bits of light come back to me, and feel myself refilling and refining them.  I think on the nature of names.  I must have had one, before; technically I must have had at least six, all of my lives were people with names.  But I cannot seem to remember a single one.

I would name myself, but the more I dwell on it, the worst that idea seems.  What if I give myself a name I do not like?  Imprinted onto my soul like a tattoo I cannot carve away.  I plan to be exploring for a long time; being stuck with a name of my own folly would be bad, I believe.  Much better instead to let someone else name me, so even if I do not like it, I can shift blame and name myself something that at least I know will be better.  Especially so I don’t give myself a name that will lead to poor choices.  What if I called myself ‘King’ only to learn that monarchies are obsolete in the current world?

Parts of me would have found this honest appraisal of self imposed nominative determinism amusing.  Part of me still wishes to be called King.  I ignore that part, it is almost certainly going to get me into trouble.

And then, something pulses within me.  Within my souls, my soul.  The flecks and spots of weight coming back to me from what I’ve touched push out against the boundaries of the universe, and with them carry my self along.  And I become more whole, closer to what I am meant to be, and more true than I have ever been before in any life I have ever lived.

The feeling is without description.  I am a burning fire, a loyal steed, a forged sword, a clasped scroll.  I am all I ever was, all at once, and more, and know that I could be more still.

I have been wasting my new life, sleeping through this.  I will never sleep again.  I will learn patience that would put the shaman doges to shame.

And then, among the rushing flood of vital everywhen entering my being, my mind twitches, and my spells exert themselves.  I move dirt, watch bees, know mass, and undo some of my woodwork, all in one torrent of action.

Once again, darkness claims me, and I find myself asleep.

But when I awaken, I am possessed of spells filled once more with empty liquid, and I observe myself anew.

Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

Available Power : 2

Authority : 2

Bind Insect (1, Command)

-

Nobility : 1

-

Empathy : 1

-

Spirituality : 1

Shift Wood (1, Shape)

Ingenuity : 1

Know Material (1, Perceive)

Tenacity : 1

Nudge Material (1, Shape)

I already know what I am going to do.

I could make myself larger.  Stronger.  That will happen over time regardless, though.  And what I desire right now is more of that.  More of the feeling of completeness.  More of the influx of sparks and dots from the world around me.  And as each of my spells draws it in, though in different measures, the fix is obvious.

The two slots I have open, one in Empathy and one in Nobility, must be filled at once.  The third slot in Authority I could also fill, but I will actually want to put Distant Vision in there when I next have points.  Assuming I do not change my mind again between now and then.  That happens regularly, it seems.  Though that is the nature of life; to exist in ever changing conditions, and to see plans crumble to dust.

Scholar and cleric memories war over this thought.  They may disagree all they want.  I am here now, and I have decided that I will be working with a vision, not a strategy.

Congeal Glimmer is an easy choice for Nobility.  I do not know what it means, and I wish to.  It is that simple.  For Empathy, though, it is more difficult.  I do not think I will be finding any willing birds nearby anytime soon.  Nor do I wish to feel fear, whatever that refers to.  In the end, unwilling to commit to setting random alarms around myself, I choose what is left, and add Shift Water to my soul.

And then, with a few checks to see that everything is still in working order, I get down to one of the more interesting applications of magic I’ve seen so far.

Look at me.  A connoisseur of magic already.  Six spells and I’ve gone mad with power.

Congeal Glimmer feels strange compared to the others.  It’s empty liquid source of functionality isn’t, I know on first glance, enough to actually complete the task of the spell.  I still don’t know what that task is, exactly, but I can at least try it out, see what happens, and work from there.  As an absolute worst case scenario, it catches fire.  So, perhaps I put it over by the water.  That is… well, it’s actually outside of my range at the moment.  I cant even get to it to shift it, much as I’d want to.  I only know it’s there because of my bees.

But I’m curious, and maybe boredom, is making me feel slightly reckless.  So, I begin to weave my magic, looking through a bee’s eyes and designating a spot that is presumably somewhere close above where I am buried.

The first thing I notice is that the casting of Congeal Glimmer causes a tether to begin growing, in the a very closely familiar way that it does when I bind to a new bee.  The second thing I notice is that it feels far, far, far simpler than a bee does.  In almost no time at all, the empty liquid is drained from the spell’s construct, and the tether is only a little over half done, and I don’t think it’s connected to anything in particular quite yet.  But I can already tell what I am doing.  It comes to me intuitively.

I am making something.  Something to command, like I command my bees.  Only this thing isn’t meant to be a living thing I take over or work with.  Instead, it is an empty vessel, something almost foundational.  Maybe two or three functions of a thinking being, flattened down to their basest parts, and put together, with just enough empty space for me to insert the controls of the spell that made it in the first place.

Because I am making it.  I am making life.  Or making an animate creation.  Out of nothing, or out of whatever it is that I use to perform my small magics, it doesn’t matter really.  I’m making it anew.

There is no memory in my mind, and no part of my new self, that doesn’t think this is mystical.  Beyond simply commanding the elements or rather aggressively befriending a few insects, this is True Magic.  This is the domain of legendary sorcerer kings and the ancient mana guilds.  With this…

Well.  I suppose I understand now, why I have this strange instinct to defend myself.  Why I have a nagging feeling that protections aren’t simply available, but rather desired.  Sooner, rather than later.

I don’t yet know what a glimmer is.  I let my bee go, rather than watch the hours long process, and it’s not done yet anyway.  But I know what it means to conjure something from nothing.  To call from beyond the horizon to the woken world.

It means that I am valuable.

And every one of my memories tells me that mortals can have a somewhat twisted relationship with value.

Perhaps I will invest in some protections after all, before I learn too late that I will need them.