Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 61 (Patreon)

Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

Available Power : 8

Authority : 6

Bind Insect (1, Command)

Fortify Space (2, Domain)

Distant Vision (2, Perceive)

Collect Plant (3, Shape)

See Commands (5, Perceive)

Bind Crop (4, Command)

Nobility : 4

Congeal Glimmer (1, Command)

See Domain (1, Perceive)

Claim Construction (2, Domain)

-

Empathy : 4

Shift Water (1, Shape)

Imbue Mending (3, Civic)

Bind Willing Avian (1, Command)

Move Water (4, Shape)

Spirituality : 5

Shift Wood (1, Shape)

Small Promise (2, Domain)

Make Low Blade (2, War)

Congeal Mantra (1, Command)

Form Party (3, Civic)

Ingenuity : 4

Know Material (1, Perceive)

Form Wall (2, Shape)

Link Spellwork (3, Arcane)

Sever Command (4, War)

Tenacity : 4

Nudge Material (1, Shape)

Bolster Nourishment (2, Civic)

Drain Endurance (2, War)

-

Animosity : -

Amalgamate Human (3, Command)

Morning comes, and with it, a shift in my focus.

Over the night, I spent my time working with some new beetles that have joined my growing collections of Bind Insect tethers to bring them to the same level of curiosity and capability as Oob and Oop.  There is a feeling there, something strangely familiar, when I push my magic out to shape them.  The feeling is like those shadows that hide within the spell; the imprints of the deceased honeybees.  I could, if I were so inclined, overlay one of those shadows onto a new beetle, but… they are not the same species.  What would that do?  Change them to what the shadow remembers, or into some new blend of the two?  Old parts of me, the scholar and merchant, are curious about the possibility of making something new.  But I think that for now, I would rather have small points of sharper senses than spend my daily influx of magic on a gamble.  There will always be time later.

The rest of my night was spent trying to better understand Bind Crop, and coming to the conclusion that binding a mixed garden was a mistake.  Not a colossal error, by any means, nothing that will doom us.  But every mental investigation I begin ends with the thought that this is a major inefficiency, that the magic is bottlenecked by the variety in the garden, and that the best I can do through the spellwork is to encourage growth.  Perhaps, maybe, to make the plants slightly more durable, or slightly more pointy.  But I know this doesn’t approach the limit of the spell.  Perhaps with more Authority, I could do better.  But I don’t think I even need to spend the power on that, when I could instead simply use the magic on a crop, as it was meant for, and learn from there.

My efforts, as well as the constant influx of motes from Claim Construction and Small Promise as the fort stands along with my oaths, have coalesced an additional point of power within my collective soul.  I still haven’t spent them, despite having something of a plan.  It’s just… a challenge, to leave myself vulnerable.  Even now.  I value the ability to react more I think than I value the potential new source of power.

And now, the sun comes up.  And I turn my mind away from the quiet contemplation of how my spellwork touches on the plants and the bugs, and to the community of people around me.

Today is the day Kalip makes contact with the other camp.  And I find myself nervous beyond words.  New people, different people.  People who won’t know me, who I’ll have to start all over with.  And yet, still, people who represent a potential influx of ability and safety to the survivors safeguarded in our fort.

Distant Vision never really leaves my mind, at this point.  I am still bound by a single consciousness, but I am learning to be reflexive with my understanding of my spell.  To let the quiet mind within myself softly touch on the visual panoply it shows me, and to alert myself to changes or concerns, only turning to it fully when I am actually needed.

Or when I wish to relax myself, watching lonely patches of the Green.

I did not fully understand this place, until it was explained to me.  The Green, the vast empty expanse to the west of civilization.  What an impossibility; a forest that goes on forever, a place that should have been the ultimate strategic resource for a kingdom, or the frontier of a lifetime.  The scholar I once might actually have literally killed to explore here, even if it meant leaving the comforts of academia.

And yet, no one lives here.  Villages don’t last, expeditions don’t always come back, political treaties keep anyone from making use of the place.  A hundred small events and ideas seem to be in confluence here, that this is space that is not to be tampered with.

I don’t understand why.  From everything I’ve seen, it is a perfectly normal semi-tropical old growth forest.  There is wildlife, and some plants I am unfamiliar with, but in the time we have been here, the biggest threat to our lives was the other apparatus.  There is no reason this place shouldn’t have been a cradle of civilization.

Water, life, lumber, a bounty of forage.  And also, an endless peaceful expanse, thousands of lengths wide, that I can take a stroll through with Distant Vision.  But almost untouched.  Why?

I muse on this sometimes when I take those calming travels.  But right now, I set aside that aspect of my sight to focus more at home.  Watching through my bees and beetles, guiding them to help the survivors with their morning chores.  The tougher bees rouse the children who insist on sleeping late, playfully dodging swats that the young ones don’t realize could actually harm some of the smaller bees.  The new beetles help set the table for breakfast while listening in on Yuea arguing with Muelly about Amalgamate Human.  Still.  The small bit of house magic giving them quiet pause as they watch plates and seasoning bowls be moved into position.

A half dozen spells of mine find their daily use.  Life becomes… not easier, exactly.  Possible.  There is simply too much to do for a group this small.  There is a reason for the old saying that a village is needed to be a village.  But with my aid, I can at least pick up a portion of what needs doing.

Just under three thousand lengths away, Kalip is already up, while everyone in the fort is beginning to plan out their day.  I leave them while Jahn is organizing a  group to explore the lower level of the fort, and start to pay attention to the distant bowman who carries some of my bound with him.

I have noticed, these last few days of watching Kalip, that he does not move like someone who is familiar with the forest.  Many of my past lives have spent time among the trees, and there are tricks that one picks up over time that show when you have the opportunity to watch from afar.  Steps that do not break twigs, the knowledge of what noises can be ignored, the simple act of finding paths through dense foliage that don’t lead you to denser foliage.  Kalip shows none of these.  He learned some quickly when I shared small secrets with him, but I had not noticed before how much more comfortable he was fighting from a perch on a wall, or assaulting a fort.  He’s a road-soldier, as an old memory labels him.

I won’t hold it against him, though.  Especially because right now, he’s not a soldier of any kind.  He’s our emissary.

I’ve left a message for the others, back at the fort, that I will be focused elsewhere.  And right now, I am watching with every tiny fragment of mind as Kalip takes a breath, and stops trying to move quietly, making a good deal of noise as he approaches the camp ahead of him.  He seems more nervous now than I’ve ever seen him, the bees picking up on his nerves and flitting from branch to branch around him as he walks into the open.

The camp is even more makeshift than what my own survivors had when I introduced myself to them.  ‘Camp’ might not even be the correct word.  It is a single badly arranged fire pit, a few branch and grass beds, and a few tattered packs hanging from a high branch of a nearby tree.  They’ve positioned themselves near a creek, which was a good idea, but their good ideas seem to end there.  A pit only half the size it should be sits nearby holding the bones and charred remains of a hunt, and they seem to not have bothered with any kind of sentry or even alarms.  There are six people I know are in the camp, three human men and three gobs, but right now, only two humans are actually there.  They sit almost dejectedly, one of them turning a small necklace over in his hands while the other just leans against the tree under their packs and pretends to nap.

I don’t think Kalip is any more impressed than I am.  He calls a greeting to the camp, which I cannot hear through Distant Vision.  I keep Link Spellwork in reserve, in case something goes wrong, and so sound is outside of my senses for now.  I am left to interpret through context what is being said.

One of the men jumps to his feet.  The other, pretending to sleep, cracks an eye and tenses, his hand going to a light rifle partially covered in leaves and grass beside himself.  I believe Kalip notices.  He says something else, keeping a polite distance, his hands not exactly in a pacifying position, but Kalip keeps himself unarmed for now.  The bees linger on tree branches behind him, while Oob still sits perched on his pack.

I watch as the other men approach, and Kalip slings his pack to the ground, Oob moving quickly to keep a position on Kalip’s back, out of sight.  Kalip pulls out a couple wrapped bundles of smoked meat, and hands one over, the man in the back instantly loosening his grip on his gun as he takes a portion of the food from his companion, digging into it like someone who hasn’t had a properly prepared meal in a long time.

I don’t understand exactly what is going on, but Kalip listens to them say something, before giving a sharp glance back at my bees and a tiny shake of his head.  Whatever negative feelings I’ve had, it seems I’m not alone in my estimation.

Not knowing what words are being exchanged is not helping me.  I was saving my magic, but this seems to be exactly what I should be using it for.  Kalip isn’t in danger, as far as I can tell, so I bring Link Spellwork and Bind Insect to life, feeling my connection to Oob and the two bees reestablish with a vibrational snap.  Oob dutifully taps Kalip on the back repeatedly with his growing mandibles, letting him know I am listening, while I work to process the words being said.

“-nothing good from ‘em, though.”  One of the men is saying.

Kalip nods, but it’s all too easy for me to see the disagreement in his face from my surrounding vantage point.  “Kept you alive this far, though?”  He asks.

“Ah, true enough.”  The man slumps his shoulders.  “It’s not the worst.  Empress sure didn’t protect us, that’s true enough.”  He spits onto the ground, and I’m actually amused to see Kalip not react at all.  He might have been a soldier of the Empire, but in the fine tradition of good soldiers everywhere, cursing the command structure is not only accepted, but sacrosanct.  “But you know how it is.  Like with the goats.  Can’t trust anything that looks that weird.”

I disagree.  Through the active Form Party link between Kalip and the insects with him, I get to come to know his own disagreement as the bees relay his feelings back to me.  I’m trying to figure out how to resolve this, how to come to an understanding, when Kalip just decides that he has no interest in diplomacy that isn’t once sided.

“We’ve got a place.”  He says suddenly.  “Safe walls, no monsters we can’t handle.  Food.  But if you want to join up, you need to drop that shit.”

The other two men share a confused glance.  “Why do you care?”  One of them asks Kalip.  “You’re a glow, aren’t you?  You kill demons.”

“Not anymore.”  Kalip says bluntly.  “You’ve got until your buddy gets back to decide, though.  I won’t wait for you to figure it out.  There’s no room for that attitude in the new world.”

“The piss are you talking about?”  The one with the rifle asks, shifting in his kneeling position as he pockets the remainder of the food Kalip handed them and slowly creeps his hand back down toward his gun.  “You some kind of goatfucker cult?”

Kalip’s eyes flicker to the man, and I don’t think the other two humans realize how close my envoy is to just killing them.  I can tell, though.  I can see the frustration, mixed with a lack of empathy, in the coiling of his muscles and the settling of his jaw.  He’s not happy with them, and I think Kalip has decided that the world as it is now doesn’t need their style of idiocy.  “No.”  He says.  “I’m just telling you how it’ll be, if you want to follow me.”

There’s a crack of a branch behind him, though Kalip doesn’t react.  “Or maybe,” the man with the gun says with a grim grin, “you just take us there anyway, and we’ll figure out ‘how it’ll be’ when we get there.”

Kalip’s nose flares as he lets out a tiny breath.  The only sign of exasperation that I’ve seen from him in this whole trip.  He already knows about the third man sneaking up on him, Form Party means that he has already been informed by the watching bees that there is someone with a gun drawing a point on his back.

“No.”  Kalip says, again with that simple, almost dead tone that he uses sometimes.  No longer interested in humoring these people.  In the blink of an eye I no longer possess, he flickers forward and kicks the kneeling man in the chest, sending him tumbling away from his rifle with a pained yell.  The other man doesn’t realize what’s happening before Kalip has disarmed him, bending his arm behind his back and plucking the thief’s knife out of his failing grip.

There’s the sound of a gunshot, a plume of black smoke and a crack of a contained blast signaling the third man has decided to go for a kill.  The ball misses Kalip though, and then I see in painful detail as my honeybees descend on the shooter’s back, taking a pair of stings each before flitting back into the trees and leaving the man screaming as he bleeds on the ground.

The man with the rifle has recovered from his tumble, and is trying to pull a small pistol from his shirt.  I don’t recognize the design, but I realize it’s a weapon before Kalip has turned to sweep him with his gaze.  I switch Link Spellwork to Drain Endurance, and take the man’s stamina away.  It takes less than a heartbeat before I’ve stolen so much that he can’t keep his arm moving, and another handful of beats before he slumps unconscious.

I switch back to Bind Insect, keeping an eye on the steadily draining reserve for Link Spellwork, just in time to hear Kalip muttering “-a fucking mess…” to himself.

I have Oob signal him, as one of my Distant Vision casts begins to follow a different target.  Then I switch to Shift Wood, and carve large letters into a nearby tree.  The other three fled.  I write.  This way.  I mark a direction.  My bees can help, but the trail the gobs are leaving is so wide even Kalip should be able to follow it.

He says something, and I don’t hear him, but I can follow the motions of his lips well enough.  The men were using the gobs as servants.  Well, slaves, really.  I think the word is easy enough to read on Kalip’s lips.  He’s hesitating, not sure if he should chase.

Bring them home.  I write, and he relaxes.  Nods ones.  Then takes off into the trees, pausing only to shoulder his backpack and avail himself of the weapons of the fallen men.

I’m not surprised by this.  Not really.  In fact, if anything, I am relieved that this test was so cut and dry.  But then, all my old lives knew that monsters could look like men, and I suppose I learned that lesson well.

We’re building a home.  And we’ll take anyone.  But Kalip and I talked before his departure, and we agree on one thing above all else; this is our home now, and we have no room for the killers and slavers and thieves of the old world.  Not if they won’t leave it behind them.

The men should be lucky that Kalip didn’t just kill them all.  Yuea will certainly chastise him when he reports in, for not feeding more of their lifeblood to me.  Though even now, a waft of soft motes rises out of the wounds of the gunner dragging himself off the forest floor.

They’re not worth consideration.  The gobs, however, are another story.  And as Kalip closes the distance to them, I find I have a much better feeling about our chances with these three.

I keep my magic ready to spin, though.  Just in case.  I’m learning something, from my first encounter with new people.  Be polite.  Be direct.  And have a plan for when the shooting starts.

Kalip and I are learning a lot from each other today.