Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 9 (Patreon)

Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

Available Power : 1

Authority : 2

Bind Insect (1, Command)

Fortify Space (2, Domain)

Nobility : 2

Congeal Glimmer (1, Command)

See Domain (1, Perceive)

Empathy : 1

Shift Water (1, Shape)

Spirituality : 2

Shift Wood (1, Shape)

Small Promise (2, Domain)

Ingenuity : 2

Know Material (1, Perceive)

-

Tenacity : 1

Nudge Material (1, Shape)

I wake up to the lingering memory sensation of being late for something.

Thoughts and lives blend together as I snap from the unfeeling darkness of rest to the waking flow of information into my self from the small windows into the real that my spells provide.  For a moment, I cannot tell if I am me, as I am, or if I am a young scribe who has overslept class, or if I am an older scholar who has awoken in fright at a dream of being a young scribe who has overslept class.

Has the rooster screamed at the sun yet?  Has the innkeeper already packed away breakfast?  Is my husband going to be silently angry for the remainder of the day at my laziness?

Lives swirl into a blizzard of confused thought over the course of a single second, until my pure and clear thoughts reassert themselves, and I am once again me.

Me, but perhaps not as much as I had thought.

I have resolved, and will maintain, that I will be my own person.  Someone and something new.  I will not be a simple continuation of one long passed life, and not simply because that would not be fair to the other five.  But I have perhaps misunderstood how closely and energetically those memories dance around in the calm emptiness of my own amalgam soul.

I am not six different people.  But you cannot live six lives and come out the other side unchanged.

Memories come unbidden but welcome.  The lives of a farmer and a soldier who both remember the process of taking a quiet moment and a deep breath to center themselves.  Of the silence of a morning just started, and the cold of the air as it stirs to life alongside you.

My home is a hole in the dirt, and my body has no sensation with which to feel wind or warmth.  But the memories help.

See Domain draws my attention, and I remember, now, that my home is not just a hole in the dirt.  It is also a poorly drawn oval of territory a span and a half across, and it is five adult humans who are mostly up and moving.  I think one of them is sleeping, probably whoever was on watch last night.

I follow through the eyes of my bees as they seek out nearby blossoms.  The warmth of the sun invigorates them, and I feel a brief moment of total contentment as I realize that their eyes are not the only sense I can borrow.  I do not issue commands or take control; they know what tasks they are set to, and I have no need to interfere at the moment.  Though I will be borrowing one when I need to see in specific later.

My bees are a careful act of balance.  Bind Insect offers me a wellspring of power now capable of holding perhaps twenty five of the creatures in my service, but that number is an illusion.  As for every bee that I tether to my spell, there is that much more of the magic that will never fully recover.  Parts of the magic reserved, untouched, until one of them leaves the bond.

I have another point of power now, and I want to save it, because I know that if I invest another two into my Authority, then the capacity of Bind Insect will grow.  The memories of the merchant stir, a deep love of organizing the world into numbers and knowledge prompting me to wonder if the increase will again nearly double the spell, or if it will merely add to it.  I laugh inside my crystal mind, the idea of being disappointed in only gaining some magic striking me as a grand joke.

For now, though, as the humans around the clearing stir, I put aside my personal jokes, and begin to consider how I can help.  And rapidly, I realize that my ability to help is severely limited by both the scale and the variety of my small magics.

I can, in some small ways, aid them with basic camp duties.  I can help build a good fire, I can strengthen a tent or other small shelter.  But that isn’t what’s needed, and that thought leads me to a much harsher realization.  I do not know what is needed.  And the only way I have to ask is, being generous with how I think about it, somewhat limited.

Still, it is a way to ask, and I decide to at least try.

Focusing my attention on the apparatus of Small Promise, I reach out through my new knowledge of my domain.  Seeking out the brightest point in the web of connections that See Domain lets me map through its arcane ledger.  The armored woman is not overly hard to find this way; certainly easier than tracking her down with a bee.  And I suspect that as I favor making arrangements with her, it will only become a smoother process.

I imagine what I want to offer, and ask.  I shape in my mind and with my spellwork an intricate lattice of trust.  And yet, when I try to push it into the world, I am met with failure.

Why, exactly, does Small Promise not let me trade a new glimmer for some simple answers?  It seems like the most basic exchange possible, backed by the trust the spell makes realized. And yet, it doesn’t work.  I am left with a small portion of my roiling dark supply of power gone, and only a new question to show for it.

It is the past life of the merchant that holds the answer, memories surging to the fore as I puzzle at the how and why.  It is because a promise is different than a trade, and while both are different from a Promise, consideration finds no reason it would be closer to the former than the latter.

Promises aren’t business, they’re personal.  They sing with emotion and need, and like a real relationship, they can only tolerate so much transactional behavior before they crumble.

I rephrase my words, and I ask again, spending my spell’s reserve eagerly.

If I know how to help in small ways, I will.

The woman’s presence in See Domain shifts.  Strengthens slightly, realigns.  It is interesting to watch.  And, it is at this moment, that I consider perhaps I should have already tracked her down with a bee or two, because if she is writing in the dirt for me, I am not around to see it.

As I try to dispatch a trio of buzzing observers who are least needed in their hive at the moment, I learn another of my limits.  While I can point my spells through each other easily enough, I cannot simply order a bee to go to wherever a certain line in my list of domain elements is.  Bees are subtly brilliant insects, their constructions and long term planning is shockingly impressive for such small creatures, their social structures are something every larger and supposedly intelligent person could learn from.  But I fear I have learned one of their limits as well, and that an individual bee cannot understand even the concept of a domain, much less how to navigate it.

It takes me some time to find the woman, and by the time I do, she’s sitting with a stick and a patch of dirt, a few things spelled out in blocky letters that are mercifully large enough for me to read with the eyes I have available.

It seems what she’s written is a list of needs, using mangled grammar and some letters that look different than what I remember.  Many of which I cannot provide, but that is to be expected.  I appreciate it all the same, because without knowing what is needed, I will not know what I should focus toward.  Food supply, scouting, permanent structures, a wall, more glimmer, a homecaller, these are all big things.  I appreciate that she has given me distant horizons to begin the long march toward, assuming I have read her words correctly, but these are not things I can accomplish yet.  Then, underneath, perhaps realizing what she has been doing, she has sheepishly added a few more things.  Watch the children, mend clothing, fetch firewood or water, these are things I can do, in some way.

Though I find myself curious.  This woman has placed a tremendous amount of faith in me, based entirely off two small stones that I do not know the purpose or calling of.  And a part of me, driven by suspicion and doubt, wonders if perhaps she knows more about me than I do.  If only I could speak to her, if she would be able to tell me what my spells are, why I am several souls, how I have come to be in this small summer glade.  Anything.

But we cannot talk.  And more than that, for all that I have bound myself to these people with promises and compassion, I do not know anything about them.  I do not, truly, know if she can be trusted.

I banish the thought.

There is only one direction that thinking leads.  To a life lived in fear of others, on constant guard against slights and attacks both real and imagined.  And I will not lead that life.

If only I could laugh, I would have a great hiss of joy at the knowledge that Feel Fear is not, in fact, a required working in order for me to feel fear.

That joy buoys me, but it also does something else that I did not realize was creeping up upon me.  It reminds me that I am, still, alone and isolated.  Staring out of the dark through tiny points of light, reading the world in ledgers and not with true senses.  It reminds me that I am still alone.

But that does not mean that I am alone.  And so I set to work upon my chores.

I cannot collect firewood, exactly.  Any source of wood is beyond my range, except for what I believe is the tree near me.  Shift Wood and Know Material have the same distance to them now, and unless my memory has slipped, the increase did not bring any additional wood within my reach.  But the humans have gathered some themselves, and what I can do is continue to make it the perfect firewood.

Shift Wood to crack it open, Shift Water to pull the moisture out.  I lack fine control, and I do not think this is working exactly as I intend.  I try to observe through a bee, but those small eyes are also inexpert tools.  Still, I feel as though I have done something.  Shift Wood lets me peel back scraps of bark and turn them into efficient kindling, lets me stack sticks into a campfire starter after I sweep away the ashes of last night with Nudge Material.

I mix the ashes into the dirt around my tree.  ‘Ash’ shows up as a material on my ledger as well, but only after I’ve disturbed the fire pit.  I do not know why, but I remember it all the same, and hope I will learn eventually.

Now, for the next thing I can handle.  Water.  I am too far from the stream nearby to actually fetch water from it.  But… but I know that I could reach.  The stream is covered by the range of Shift Wood and Know Material both, my reach stopping just before that fallen log over the small creek.  And Shift Water is handled by Empathy.  If I absolutely need to, I could spend my last point to extend my reach.

I hold off for now.  I do not know what the day will bring, and I choose to be slightly selfish in an unseen way.  It is not that I will not use my magic to help, but I will use my magic to help in ways that cannot be replicated by sending a small child with a bucket.

The next chore.  More glimmer.  This I can do.  I see the tethers to my spell from the glimmer I have made so far, the two of them drawing small lines in my mind as outside knowledge is slowly fed to me.  I do not know what song they are singing, but I can hear the notes in the distance.

The armored woman has asked for more.  And I can provide.  Congeal Glimmer flows out of me, into the world, at the base of the tree where I made the last one.  This time, however, empowered by my risen Nobility, the spell does not take me a whole cycle of rest to complete.  Instead, the vial of nothing liquid washes away like the night sky giving way to the sunrise, rapidly blurring into true emptiness all at once.  And a glimmer forms.  A new tether takes hold, this one to a piece of the world larger and somehow more than its predecessors.

And then it is done, and I find myself with a deep tiredness.  But already, I can sense somehow the small opalescent wisps and motes beginning to refill me.  And that is what I can contribute from that for the day.

Which brings me to the children.  They still hover around the edge of the camp, silently prodding at the dirt in a familiar way, barely taking the energy to brush away bugs, slowly recovering from exhaustion and what the scholar’s memories tell me is shock, or trauma.  They may not recover from that, unassisted.  The soldier remembers.  The merchant remembers.  There are wounds in the mind that do not fade with time.

And I cannot speak to them.  Cannot tell them that it will be okay, that I will help.  Because I don’t know if I can.

But I aim at two of their resting spots through my bees, and Fortify Space around the ground around them.  One of them has a bedroll they share with a younger one, a sibling I assume.  I make that space safe.  One of them has found a large rock to lean against, I make that space safe too.  My reserve is drained.

The empty liquid of my spells dwindles.  I can only do so much.  But I keep going.  I find one of the children through my bees as I try to account for them all, sitting at the very edge of my range, softly crying.  He holds a scrap of colored cloth in his hands.  Like the others, he is dirty, his clothing ripped, his feet cut.  But unlike the others, I remember the look in his eyes.  Even through a simple honeybee, I can see this child, just old enough to understand, has lived through a nightmare.

I collect my bees.  I have had a thought.  That perhaps I can show that I am there for them.

Fourteen small honeybees land on the ground in front of the child.  In obvious sight, and in a pattern that they would never bother to make in the wild.  A simple circle, but a still one.  Looking up at the boy, watching.

His silent sobs are stifled.  I see his confused look, see him scoot back, uncertain.

I keep my bees steady, but ready to fly if the boy attempts to hit them.  He does not.  I move one forward, wings extended in the closest thing I can manage to a wave.

He raises an uncertain hand - two fingers missing, the singer winces at the memory of an old wound - and waves back.

I direct my bees into the air.  The boy flinches at the buzz, but I bring them in a lazy flying loop around his head.  A handful of these small, soft insects, flowing around him in a loose ring.

He flinches again, but then steadies.  Sees what’s going on.  It’s hard to tell without a designated observer bee, but I think the boy smiles.  Slowly, he reaches his hand up, and with another command, a score of bees break off from the ring and land upon each of his fingers.  He stays oh so still, as if terrified of being stung, but I have utter confidence that won’t happen and I hope he can tell that.

While he is staring at the bees on his hand, the rest land upon his shoulder, taking stock of his damaged clothing.

The tunic has been ripped open by something, and an angry line on the boy’s skin makes me think it didn’t stop there.  Part of me wants to bend the world to put this back together; all of me, really.  I am in agreement with myself.  But I lack the skill and spell to do it.  I could shape a wooden needle, but I know, certainly, I could not sew with it.  Could not make a proper patch.  I could try to Shift Wood a shirt of thin bark, but I know it would be deeply unpleasant, even if I could make it work.

I can do little here.  Next to nothing.  And I find myself feeling a deep frustration.  It is not the first time that my lack of influence upon the world has irked me, but it is deeper now.  More personal.  I truly wish to change this, but wishes are not kingdoms, as the cleric’s memories remind me.

Really, the only thing I can manage is, with the most careful touch I can, to Nudge Material some of the dirt out of the boy’s tangled hair.

The spell works, somewhat.  But the closer I get to the boy himself, the faster my stamina is siphoned away.  I barely manage to do more than ruffle his hair, before I find myself exhausted.

I pull my bees away slightly, before releasing them, the last finger’s worth of empty fluid draining slowly as I continue to watch the camp.  It is barely past midday, and I’ve exhausted myself trying to accomplish anything.  I can see the small motes floating toward me, in my new body’s senses, but I do not feel as though I have done anything of meaning.

I do not know how to help.  Yet.  But I know something important now.

I need to do more.  I need to be more.  I am a handful of tricks masquerading as a person.  This will not be enough.

My reservoirs depleted, what little I have done done, I let rest claim me, only dimly aware of the influx of soft light motes into my body.  I hope tomorrow I will be of more use.