Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 79 (Patreon)

Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

Available Power : 5

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 : 6

Congeal Glimmer (1, Command)

See Domain (1, Perceive)

Claim Construction (2, Domain)

Stone Pylon (2, Shape)

Drain Health (4, War)

-

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 : 5

Know Material (1, Perceive)

Form Wall (2, Shape)

Link Spellwork (3, Arcane)

Sever Command (4, War)

Collect Material (1, Shape)

Tenacity : 5

Nudge Material (1, Shape)

Bolster Nourishment (2, Civic)

Drain Endurance (2, War)

Pressure Trigger (2, War)

-

Animosity : -

Amalgamate Human (3, Command)

Trepidation : -

Follow Prey (2, Perceive)

The survivors of the battle have pulled back to where I built the first array of Stone Pylons, to eat and sleep and let their wounds heal slightly.  I wish Bind Insect could heal them at this range, but while it cannot, at least none of the survivors actually have serious wounds.  Practically every strike in that fight was lethal, which is both horrible and a twisted mercy.

They are waiting while a new flight of bees approaches.  Volunteers from the hive, born to the growing and changing queen.  I bestow them with glimmer to bring them up to fighting strength, tell them of the battles to come to protect our shared hive, and offer them the chance to stay behind.  None of them accept.  I don’t know if they even understand the concept of the choice, and I worry I am taking advantage of them, but the Small Promise holds for now.

I learn a few things while I wait for my bees to regroup and refresh.

First, I learn that Stone Pylon is quite incapable of following complex directions.  I already knew that, but hadn’t found the time to test some strange interactions I was curious on.  What I want to try is having a pylon make another pylon, but the fact that they all act as if they are a second step soul in terms of their strength means it would take days for that.  And while I am focused on this campaign, and ignoring… hiding… not allowing home to distract me, I don’t have that kind of time to spare right now.

But I answer the question anyway, I believe.  I give one of the pylons Distant Vision for a short time.  Just long enough that I can let it build up the magic it needs.  Then I forget that without a Pressure Trigger to at least partially direct them, the pylons will attempt to cast the spell anywhere and everywhere within range.  Even with a Pressure Trigger, I’m not sure how I could use a Distant Vision pylon to look back at home.

Even more, I’m not certain how I could ever make a pylon make another pylon.  I’m sure there’s a way to set up some kind of chain of magic, with multiple pylons carving and moving stone into place, to have it converted.  Though how to move the finished product is beyond me.  And also… these things are useful, but very lacking in their own intellect or direction.  I don’t know if this line of thinking is worth it, at the moment, when I can abuse Link Spellwork to create patches of pylons wherever I need.

I also learn just how powerful those foundational spells become over time.  Collect Material is… absurd.  I’ve known this whole time that each new elevation of a soul through the spending of power allows all the magics within it to hold more of the empty liquid they use, and to pull it in from wherever it comes from faster and faster.  But it is one thing to see that I can produce more and better glimmer, or go from binding one bee to ten to a thousand, and another thing entirely to experience being able to tear whole units of stone out of the ground every candle, to strip away and store whole gardens worth of dirt and soil, to harvest every dead branch and twig within five lengths of my body with a single thought and simply have a supply of ‘wood’ ready to go when I need it.

And, finally, I learn a little more about my stolen magic.  I cannot elevate those souls, which is an issue, because I need Follow Prey to be more enduring.  I didn’t think enough about Amalgamate Human when I was using it, so I will need to pay more attention when I am called to perform that rite again, but with Follow Prey, it has the… texture, I suppose… of a soul at the second step.  Which is useful, and has a dramatically longer range than any other perception spell I have, but is still very limited in scope.

That scope is what I need, though.  Follow Prey asks for three conditions.  That the target be something I have encountered before, that they be within range, and that I actually be hunting them.  All three of those now apply to the apparatus that tried to overwhelm us with moving dirt, that pushed us out to the fort in the first place.  In return, the magic gives me three things.  One, the direction and distance of my prey.  Two, geographical knowledge of the motions of my prey over the last… well, it is difficult to say, I think day perhaps?  And three, it tells me if the prey is alive.

The second enemy has found its own way to secure its domain.  Follow Prey gets me to the border of its territory, and I begin tracking it through means that are more useful to me.  Distant Vision and See Domain, looking for any sign of it.  Its territory is not covered in Fortify Space like my own and my current foe, but it is instantly obvious that what I am seeing is a lie.  Distant Vision doesn’t break as it slides over the space, but it doesn’t show me anything except the Green in all its glory.

Still, lifeless glory.  Unmoving trees, grass that does not sway in the summer breeze, no foxes or rabbits or bugs.  The waters of the streams ‘move’ only as an optical illusion.

My bees arrive as I am scouting.  They will take time to rest and adjust before I send them forward.  I circle the target area with Distant Visions, and quickly realize the altered terrain is a circle.  A near perfect one, too, though with wrinkles and folds in it from the valleys and hills within the green.  The center of it, I believe, is the same spot I spied the apparatus the first time.  I don’t think it has moved, though Follow Prey only tells me it is somewhere within this strangely offputting space.

The next day passes uneventfully.  On enhanced wings, and without needing to stick close to injured and exhausted humans and demons, my bees make fantastic time.  I let them rest when they need to, using Link Spellwork to pulse small moments of contact and updates to them personally.  But they seem like they are pushing themselves more than I expected.

I ask why.  Link Spellwork can handle the cost of longer contact now that I’ve strengthened the soul of Ingenuity, so I make use of its greater recovery speed and use some of it to have something like a conversation with my bees.

The new ones don’t fully understand.  They are still honeybees, despite having a suddenly broadened horizon and heightened intellect.  But some of the older lancers, the ones that have been with me almost since the beginning, have something strange to share as I hold a Distant Vision over their rapidly moving flight.

This is not abstract, or instinctive, to them anymore.  They don’t say it, or know how to say it, but their desire to protect and comfort their fellow bees is changed from what it once was.  It has grown, just like they have, to a sense of community, a knowledge of personal friendship.  Bonds - mundane bonds, not mystical ones - that make individuals important to them.  That make them individuals in turn.

They understand, in their small but bright minds, that other things that are not bees are still alive.  They understand that they can care about those things, those people.  Both as living things, and as discrete lives.

And some of them, six of the oldest of them, remember Sivs.

Not just as a member of their strange and growing community, not just as one of the children as I often find myself thinking of that cluster of people.  But as a person.  As a companion.  As a friend.

While I have been silently simmering in my anger, and pushing my focus away from the fort and the people there, my bees have been learning from me.  Learning a way that they can focus the sense of loss and tumultuous chaos in their souls.

Almost without knowing it, I have taught them what revenge is

The memories of my past lives offer a litany of revolts against this.  Some of them, the soldier and the cleric, know that revenge is just a downward spiral that never ends in anything but more pain.  Others, the merchant and the singer and the farmer, have a variety of more tactical views on the subject, on how revenge is an obstacle and not a goal, or how to forgive whoever hurt you.

It’s the quiet remembrance of the scholar, though, that has the strangest thoughts on it.  That if you take your revenge, you will only achieve one of two things.  Either you find fulfillment, or you find an emotional void.  But either way, the fire in your heart that reminds you who you lost, is gone.

I think that old life has more to say to me, than to my bees.

I try to communicate to them regardless.  Try to share what I know and what I feel.  Try to tell them that we don’t have to do this.  I feel the hardened emotional shell I’ve been wearing the last several days start to crack, whatever is left of my frantic emotions spilling out in a flood.  Feel myself falling apart.

The bees reply, reaching back to me with small minds and burning hearts.  Reminding me of the other thing they find important.  Which is that if they can understand the concept of others, understand that a hive can be a community, can be anyone, then their nature can be extrapolated to something of a powerful focus and noble intent.  That they should protect everyone.

And if these things that hurt our people, killed our friend, are left to do what they want, they’ll just do it again.

Well, the bees say it a little less elegantly than that.  But I understand what they mean.

Maybe what they were learning wasn’t about revenge from me, but about the virtue of preemptive strikes from Yuea.

I don’t know if the glimmer explosions I’ve gotten good at generating are going to be enough to kill an apparatus, even with a sustained barrage from a swarm of bees flinging the things down on them.  But I’m willing to try.

As my bees cross the river upstream from where our group originally made the passage, flying high over a section of rapids that look like stone fangs chewing through the water, I begin to set up another collection of Stone Pylons.  Collect Material has some issues being fed into the magic at this extreme range, and I get the worrying impression that Link Spellwork is being pushed to arcane limits I did not know existed as I continually abuse it to operate far beyond my own body.  But my magic continues drawing in more strength from the world around me, and I get into a pattern for the remaining half day before the swarm arrives.

Harvest more stone, set up a pylon, give it a spell and an order to activate or a Pressure Trigger if that’s what it needs, repeat.  I take the opportunity to run another small test, giving a Stone Pylon the magic of Bind Insect and telling it to cast it freely.  I want to see if I can perhaps sustain my creations from afar, since my ability to alter the pylons is not yet bounded by long distance.

It doesn’t work, of course.  Not because of any strange esoterica of my arcane mechanisms, but simply because the pylons are very stupid.  It tries to cast it on nothing, and fails, and this process repeats several times before it draws my notice from my continued creation.  I don’t actually have time to play watchmother to a rock right now, so I resignedly tell the thing to adopt Fortify Space and begin creating a protected bubble around it and the other three pylons I’ve made.

With Nobility at six, I can make four to twelve pylons a day, depending on whether I provide it the stone and the shaping myself.  Link Spellwork somewhat limits how many I can make at distance to around four, if I want to be able to do anything else.  I’m not achieving the best results, but I am creating a military doctrine on the back of the tail.

Soon, my bees land in a place they can safely rest and eat.  In a candle, the sun will begin to set, and while I cannot see the colors of the sky through their eyes with Link Spellwork almost completely drained for now, I can still see the way it paints the trees and grass around them.  And against that colorful end of the summer day, they will collect the glimmer the pylons have made so far, and take to the skies again to see if this trick continues to work.  Behind them, as a fallback, the pylons will begin collecting the empty liquid for Drain Endurance.

My plan is simple.  Eliminate this apparatus, take what I can from it, then swing the swarm back across where our old camp was.  Cut past to where we know the one making silkspinners was, come at it from an angle it won’t be expecting, and kill it too.

I admit, it’s not much of a plan.  Really, it’s more of a furious snarl at the things I call enemies.  But I don’t care, if it works.

I’m tired of just watching monsters assail us without fighting back.  I wish to know how the other apparatus feel when the monsters come to them.