Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 8 (Patreon)

Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

Available Power : 5

Authority : 2

Bind Insect (1, Command)

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Nobility : 1

Congeal Glimmer (1, Command)

Empathy : 1

Shift Water (1, Shape)

Spirituality : 2

Shift Wood (1, Shape)

Small Promise (2, Domain)

Ingenuity : 2

Know Material (1, Perceive)

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Tenacity : 1

Nudge Material (1, Shape)

Time, focus, and the draining and refilling of my spells, has left me with more power than I know what to do with.

Strictly speaking, that is a lie.  I know what to do; I narrow my attention down to the mote of bright something that floats within my body, and I tell it to metaphorically grab one of the options available.  Then, it takes no time at all for the spell to integrate into my amalgamate soul, and for me to have a new set of obtrusive mental controls that let me reach out and softly touch the world around me.

What I don’t know is what it is I wish to do.  What I think is important, what will be of the most help to my new human community.

The humans have stayed.  Their small vote of the adults in their party, and myself, has sealed it.  And they have decided to abide by the group decision, even the ones who don’t like it.  Possibly because they fear whatever is away from the group more than they fear me, but all the same, they have chosen to keep to the Small Promise I offered, and so too shall I.

I used to be six people.  Many of them are familiar with the idea of voting, in some small way.  The farmer remembers village meetings to decide land disputes, the merchant remembers council meetings for largely the same reason, just bigger and more ephemeral and for trade routes.  But the cleric’s soul remembers a lifetime of taking orders through a strict power structure, and the soldier the same.  The singer worked for lords and doges, and the scholar for kings who made unilateral decisions.

Voting for what your community does, and not just to solve small problems in it, is new to me.  It seems new to them as well.  Though I’m glad they chose this way.

Now, though, it is night.  They are encamped, my bees mostly asleep, and I am doing what I can to manage their fire.  One of the humans keeps watch, and for the first time in days, I feel a small amount of actual safety.

I am still buried in the dirt, and I still worry about revealing myself to them.  But I do not have quite as much concern as I slip away from watching through my bees, and let the dark expanse of my internal flow of magic take over.  It is nice, and it gives me time to think on what I will do next.

One obvious choice I see is to improve my Nobility.  If, as it seems to be the case, Congeal Glimmer is of enough value to these people that they’ll take the ultimate risk on me and my small ability, then it would be beneficial to empower it as soon as I can.  And, once I do that, I will still have points left for whatever new decisions it brings me.  Yes, let’s try that.

Nobility : 2

Congeal Glimmer (1, Command)

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Available :

See Domain (1, Perceive)

Shift Stone (1, Shape)

Lock Portal (1, War)

Know Resource (2, Perceive)

Stone Pylon (2, Shape)

Claim Construction (2, Domain)

This is exactly what I was talking about.  More choices.  I knew it was coming this time though, and I’m not disappointed.  If anything, I experience a small surge of elation as it feels like my deliberate planning for the future is actually working.

That planning, of course, could never predict what is offered to me.  I start making mental notes, partially wishing I had some way to take actual notes.  My new mind experiences things with a kind of clarity that my scholar’s life would have gone to great lengths to get, but it is not perfect, and memories do not stick exactly where I leave them.

Once again, I dismiss Lock Portal right away.  I have no portals to lock.  I make a similar judgement about Claim Construction.  Without any actual constructions of note, and with no idea what it would let me do with or to them, I cannot justify two of my precious stored points on this.  Know Resource intrigues me, as all perception spells do, because I am mildly trapped in an endless black voidscape, and my small windows to reality keep me tethered and excited instead of slowly sliding into madness.  However, I already have Know Material, and I can’t say how this would be different.

See Domain, though.  Do I have a domain now?  Small Promise calls itself a domain spell.  Is it generating a domain for me that I would be able to see?  Stone Pylon sings to a primal part of me; a part of both what I am and who I was, that says that we should build strong walls and sturdy roofs, and that we could make something, all these souls together.  But I hold myself to be a thinking, logical, person.  And my base desires mean nothing if I cannot see to put them into action.

Being organic and alive came with a whole host of base desires that it was a terrible idea to put into practice.  I am forced to assume that this new existence works roughly the same way.

I select See Domain, and the spell opens up to me.  And I become slightly less blind.

Only slightly, though.  Just as Know Material merely gives me a clinical analysis of quantities, See Domain gives me something that is less vision, and more a list of points and connections.  I know, now, where all five of the humans who have bound themselves to me through Small Promise, are.  Well, roughly where they are.  I can feel a thin resonance, like trying to catch mist, that points me in their direction.  It comes to me in the form of raw data, but ephemeral and almost impossible to understand.  The two that I first used the spell on to stop a fight, what feels like a lifetime of nights ago, those two are slightly brighter.  And the armored woman is easier still to locate.

It is with a jolt of realization that I understand that I know not only where she is, but who she is as well.  I don’t know her name or anything that has not been offered, but I recognize the flavor of her in the magic.

And all five of them are connected.  I can’t tell how, or how strong, or anything of that nature.  I can only understand the barest note of it.  But there are lines between them, and me, and I can see them now.  A web of connection, one that denotes what is mine, in a way that I didn’t realize I was manifesting every time I kept a simple promise.

Strange, my bees are not part of the web.  I thought they would be.  I do not know what marks the humans as part of my domain, but the bees as not.  I don’t worry though, for I suspect I will have plenty of time to learn.

I have now two points left.  After a short check to see if I can being using Congeal Glimmer again, and learning that I cannot, I settle back to continue to plan.  I could save them, to further improve Nobility.  Or I could select another Authority or Ingenuity spell.  I remind myself quickly of what is on offer there.

Ingenuity : 2

Know Material (1, Perceive)

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Available :

Collect Material (1, Shape)

Invite Low Mammal (1, Command)

Make Spike (1, War)

Form Wall (2, Shape)

Collect Focus (2, Civic)

See Lineage (2, Perceive)

Authority : 2

Bind Insect (1, Command)

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Available :

See Rank (1, Perceive)

Shift Dirt (1, Shape)

Drop Trigger (1, War)

Distant Vision (2, Perceive)

Shift Metal (2, Shape)

Fortify Space (2, Domain)

Of course.  Distant Vision, that old and far off friend, whom I have been longing for these last few days.  Oh, how I yearn for its soft touch upon my… crystal.

As much as it brings my personal and quiet amusement to let the poet in my memories take over, I do now wonder if my body can even be considered a body, in the same way a living creature is.  Do I have skin?  Or is my surface simply more crystal?

It’s not worth worrying about now, I suppose.  I have a choice to make, and my distant and forlorn want for the ability to see is going to have to be put into a pen to wait, because there is no justification for spending all my points on something that I can do with my bees now.  Scouting is no longer my goal; protecting and sheltering these humans is.  And so I need tools for that.

Fortify Space or Form Wall each seem perfect for that goal.  But, knowing as I do now that whichever I pick will occupy one of my precious and rare spell slots, my thoughts begin to think not in terms of which of these will be best, but which of these will limit me the least.  I will be taking one of them, but afterward, what then?  What next when this is done?

The answer isn’t even complicated for me this time.  Everything under Ingenuity draws my ethereal eye.  I do not know what I would do with anything I collected, be it focus or material, but I am willing to try both.  Similarly, if I could bind a yessik or a raccoon to my service, my options would expand immensely.  Especially a raccoon, really.  Small hands and night vision, together in one infuriating and thieving combination.

The interesting thing is, I can feel that thought coming from my memories, and not myself.  But the emotion behind the soldier’s lived experience is so powerful, I cannot help but feel some of it myself.  As I step away from the thought of those horrible beasts, I find my emotional self clearing again, and I feel, for the first time, worry.

Who am I, if I can be so easily influenced by the people that I once was?  I suppose this was always a problem when I was alive.  None of me, save the singer, ever got a chance for a fresh start with a new life.  But now that I have one, I am afraid.  Afraid that the memories I hold might want more from me than simply to be my best self.  Afraid that they will leak into my heart, and turn me into someone I have not chosen to be.

It is a small thing, now, to learn that I dislike raccoons.  But I did not want to learn that.  I wanted to experience it myself, not be told by a person I once was that this is how it will be.

I resolve now to befriend a raccoon.  Out of well intentioned spite.

I also select for myself Fortify Space before I can second guess my intentions, and set myself upon the path of the protector once more.  In this, I find no fault with agreeing with my memory selves.  I have been a father, a mother, a friend and a keeper, and all of what I was agrees with all I am making of myself.  This should be a safe place.

The spell, inside my mental space, has a strange texture to it.  I can feel a few things it shares in common with Small Promise, oddly.  A kind of sympathetic similarity between what the two arcane tools do, that I start to theorize is due to the shared style of spell.

The mental machinery, much like almost everything else I can do, can be aimed.  And in fact needs to be aimed.  Which is an issue, as I do not quite know how to go about doing that.  But after an hour or so poking at it, occasionally taking a break to add small amounts of fuel to the refugee’s fire, I believe I have figured out at least what it wishes me to point it at.

I activate the spell, and push the empty liquid power of its casting through one of the points where my domain overlaps onto the world.  If I understand what I am doing properly, which, to be fair, I may not, then I have centered this on my own physical form.

See Domain shows me a blossom of new activity.  Not a line, but a shape.  An entry on the list that defines a geometric space, a patch of land, and my relation to it.  This, here, now, is space that my power makes safer.

And I can see it somewhat.  I know now, the geography of a small one-length-wide circle around my buried body.  I know the contours of the ground, the shape of the stones, and the empty spaces where there is nothing in my sight that conform to the size and outline of a human child.

The empty space that is a sleeping child shifts slightly, unfurling just oh so slightly where they sleep over my form as my spell takes hold.  And I know, in the deepest parts of all my souls, that they are feeling what I was feeling.  A tiny sliver of safety, however temporary, in a world that has been large and scary up until now.

My resolve firms.  I have made the right choice.  I cast Fortify Space again, aiming for the edge of my newly claimed domain, and extending the shape of my safe zone slightly farther.  I will do this over and over, until the whole of the camp is kept secure, and I…

I have run out of the empty liquid this spell needs.  Is that really all I can get from it, a low two uses a day?  I realize, as I flicker my attention over my spellwork, that a great many of my magics are running low.

Perhaps I should take a cue from the sleepers above me.  With a small effort, I close away the links between my attention and my magic.  When the sun next rises, they will still be there.  And I will begin anew.