Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 80 (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)

I have made a mistake.  Again.

The thought that I had was to break through the second apparatus - I decide to call them Dirt, before I lose my mind numbering my foes - and strike at the silkspinner apparatus from an angle they weren’t expecting.  They hadn’t seemed to expect resistance at all, but once they had it, they were quick to pour more violence than I could handle down the corridor.

My hope, from old knowledge and some of Yuea lecturing me about larger scale tactics, was that they would commit to a front that I had already abandoned, and would have too little left to protect themselves from me.

Instead, shortly after I have settled in to create a forward position with Stone Pylon and Fortify Space, maybe a claw of a candle before my bees are to take to the skies on their first strike, we are struck first.

If it weren’t for the fact that these bees are living creatures under my care, I would find the irony somewhat amusing.  As it stands, I am somewhat less enthused when a five-limbed thing made of dirt and mud, with living shoots of grass and vine trailing down its back, slams through the edge of my watchful Distant Vision and flings one of its evenly spaced claws at several of my resting bees.

It feels as if my heart slows to a stop, even when I have no such organ to speak of.  I’ve watched my soldiers die in fights, both in this life and others, but this is different.  This is an ambush, my mood is one of admittedly grim optimism, I am not galvanized to watch anyone die.  Even a simple honeybee.  Especially a simple honeybee.  Though they are far from simple.

The growing complexity of my bees is reinforced when there is a pulse of magic along the lines that connect me to the glimmer each of these bees contains.  The oldest of them have a glimmer and a mantra each, and though we haven’t experimented with giving them more yet, they make good use of both of those in their growth and development.

And something else, too, now.

Glimmer is the magic of what could have been, had things been different.  I am near certain this is a truth to the world and what the others call the timeless realm.  What ifs made real, through a truly deep form of arcana that remains a closed curtain to me.

The glimmer I have placed in these three bees, small stones nestled in their abdomens, pulse with power.  And then the claw of mud and rocks smashes down into the dirt, which is now amusing, because the bees are and always have been a short distance to the side.

The trio of insect soldiers take to the air in the same instant they move themselves.  I can’t tell with our bond out of range, but I suspect they are just as surprised as I am.  Their motions in the air seem to be more curious than anything else.  But then the mud beast lunges forward for another resting bee, and the whole squadron of them explode into action.

Bees take wing, the buzz of their flight silent to me through my watching.  But even as they rapidly organize and begin to strike back against the creature, a problem becomes quickly obvious.

When our group was making a break for the fort we now reside in, we fought hundreds of what I could call the smaller, less muddy, cousin of this thing.  And even then, my bees were of minimal use.  Dirt, as it happens, lacks certain features.  Things like a pain sense, or internal organs.

As mantras light to life and the lancer bees unleash barrages of stabs or piercing blows that would punch through the heart or lungs of a normal living thing, this mass of mud and loose rock doesn’t seem to even notice.  One bee even gets stuck in the mire of its skin, and is only saved from a sweeping claw by another bee pulling them out at the last moment.

The bees pull back to alight on tree branches, or circle overhead within the canopy.  The mud beast stops its own flailing, limbs curling in like a fist clenching.  I don’t know how it sees without eyes, but it seems content to just stop and cease fighting as soon as everything is out of reach.  Which is… suspicious.

See Domain confirms that this is suspicious.  This thing is cracking the foundation of my domain as laid down by the pylon pouring out Fortify Space.  I’m no fool, I can draw conclusions, but this fairly confirms this is one of Dirt’s creatures.

Then it vanishes.

Which is… not good.  My bees don’t seem to be any less confused than me.  All that is left is a patch of still dirt with some long grass in it.

Concern begins to build.  Can it, too, move itself through space like my bees are learning to do?  Where did it go?  I frantically search for it, but find nothing.  My supply of Link Spellwork is somewhat low, but with how fast it replenishes now I can at least flicker through perception magics to try to spot anything.

My Fortify Space pylon isn’t filling in the space the mud beast cracked open.  But even a very, very focused Know Materials in the area doesn’t show me anything.  See Domain isn’t helpful either; no new cracks are forming.

On a whim, I form a thought of everything I know about the creature from its brief attack, and then, I attempt to find it with Follow Prey.  The new magic is still unfamiliar enough to me that it slipped my mind to use it initially, but now is as good a time as any to learn to be comfortable with the spell.

And something strange happens.  A similar phenomenon to when I attempted to use it on the Dirt apparatus.  It traces a path directly into the empty space where the mud beast vanished from.

It’s still there.  But I can’t see it.  I can see that something is wrong, but aside from looking strange and distorted, it’s just another patch of the floor of the Green.

Another mud beast storms into the area from out of my line of sight, from just over the border of Dirt’s domain, where I cannot properly see into it.  It runs by rotating the dirt joints of three of its limbs in a strange sort of circle, plodding into range of my Fortify Space and then simply stopping, planting itself firmly like a brawler preparing for a fight.  The domain starts to crack around it.  Then a third one joins them.

And then a line of the smaller scrabbling claws of dirt come rushing into my sight, scampering into the place I was using for my bees like a wave.  Thirty, maybe forty of the things.  This time, though, my bees are far larger than the first time we met, and many of them drop from the trees to smash the dirt constructs into pieces before buzzing away as the others try to grab them.

The domain is breaking down, though.  And the little claws are rapidly making their way toward the Stone Pylons and the small supply of glimmer I have there.  I can detonate the glimmer to keep it from the hands, but I cannot do the same with the pylons.  And I now know the pylons can be stolen.  This attack needs to stop, now.

I pull on a small bit of inspiration I had recently about Link Spellwork, and how it seems to almost always change how a spell is targeted more than anything else.  Letting magics affect things they are not meant for, or be sent to places they should not reach.  Now, unable to actually see my targets, I try something clever.

Link Spellwork.  Drain Endurance.  Follow Prey. Find that irksome pile of walking mud and rip whatever vitality powers it away.  And to my surprise, it actually works.  To an extent.  Follow Prey can only target the spell to the limit of somewhere inside the zone that I cannot peer inside of.  But unlike firing spells through Distant Vision that requires me to, in fact, see the target, this simply feeds the magic into the whole space.

It is not a very large space.  It does not take long before two of the mud beast’s claws become visible to me when the thing sprawls into the mast of the forest floor and out of its protected area, most of its endurance now safely stored inside me.  I repeat the process, still using Drain Endurance so as not to overtax Link Spellwork, but it is a surprisingly economical combination.

I use about half of what is left of Link Spellwork to slam down a Sever Command across the whole area.  The dirt creatures stop moving.  They stay stopped.  And this time, I know why; despite that they are putting small holes in my Fortify Space, the spell is still active.  And bound creatures within a Fortify Space?  Well.  As I’ve recently learned, you cannot communicate with them.  There are no orders forthcoming.  And these things, obviously magical as they are, still seem to be quite dumb.

My bees aren’t.  They take advantage of the cessation of motion to start picking off the creatures one by one, each kill sending out a tiny spray of motes that I snatch up bits of.  I send them a rapid impulse to break the domains that are leaving concealed holes in my vision, and a few of them divert to head toward the first of the points where the mud beasts charged them.

Three of them buzz into the space.  One of them almost instantly flickers and appears to the side, flight path curving away.  The other two come out the other side a moment later, white smoke pouring off their bodies, wings and chitin blackened with lines like a root network.  One of them crashes to the ground, while the other lands a little more controlled but still heavily.

Well then.  That is quite bad.  The secret spaces aren’t safe.  Does this mean the entirety of Dirt’s territory is nothing but a lethal field for my bees?  I can’t even tell, they didn’t open it up enough for me to see inside.  Though at least neither of them died from the brief contact with whatever is in there.

I take too long thinking, and by the time I have even started to realize that I need a plan to handle this, another set of mud beasts has entered the area of my domain, with a fresh swarm of dirt claws flowing in around their limbs.

This isn’t working.  I have no force projection, just bees I do not actually have a willingness to use as expendable soldiers.  My opponents have a seemingly endless supply of soldiers, and a defensive position as well.

I use the last of Link Spellwork on another blanket Sever Command, and then a little bit of Bind Insect to send a new plan to my bees.  They aren’t suited for this fight, and without the element of surprise, which was clearly lost some time ago, this attack isn’t going to work the way I require of it.  So, I ask two things of them.

One is to come back home.  The other is to move the glimmer that have been formed here around slightly.

In the time it takes them to do that, the Fortify Space zone cracks a little more, and some of the dirt claws start moving again.  But the bees are gone into the Green before any new surprises can manifest.

Then I detonate the glimmer that sit against my Stone Pylons, doing my best to ruin the relics for the enemy.  I feel the connection to two of them snap as enough holes are put in the objects that they simply cease functioning.  The magic pouring out of them like a mug with no bottom.  But two others are still drawing in nothingness from the air around them, still building reserves for the spells within them.  And as the claws close in, I have a sinking suspicion that I am about to lose my control to these pylons for some time to come.

In the event that they are stolen, and not destroyed, I change the magic they copy from me to Bolster Nourishment at the last moment.  If the Dirt apparatus wants them, it can have a tactically unimportant feast of them.

I feel tired.  So much of my magic has been things that my old lives would have found… not amazing, that word is too small.  Apotheosic?  The claws and fingers and syllables of some impossible thing dipping into the world and making alterations to suit its whims.  Power, on a level beyond the sorcerer kings, beyond the college of the litany, beyond the grand devils.  All I need to is focus slightly and the world bends to what I demand of it.

And it is not enough to break an enemy.  Not just one enemy, either, but two of them.  Oh, perhaps I could, if I were to treat my bees as expendable fodder.  But I swore a Small Promise to never do that, and I will hold to it even when it means retreat is the only viable option because of it.  Though, I feel some small guilt as that Small Promise feeds a thick stream of motes into my form from somewhere sideways of the world; I didn’t need an oath to make me care for these bees as individuals.  But if it says I have earned the power, I will accept it.

As I try not to sink into a despairing mood, my bees make it to the crossing point of the river.  And I remember something else.

There are four known apparatus out there.  The silkspinner maker, the dirt controller, the one making firebugs, and the one in the river itself.  Two of those, I have failed to crack.  One I don’t even know the location of.  But the last one… well, neither of us has seriously antagonized the other.

And my offer to speak with it still stands.  My Small Promise to speak with it, even.

I use the small restored drops of Link Spellwork to call my bees to a rest, which they accept readily.  The wounded ones will require real help from Bind Insect when they return to heal fully.  But right now…

Perhaps… one more try.  One more distant arrow, that I don’t truly expect to hit the mark.  But it costs me almost nothing to take a candle or two to try.

Also the sun has gone down, and the soft light of dusk is fading.  Waiting the night will be safest for the bees.  Before they come home.

Home.  I’ve been avoiding it.  Avoiding everyone.  For days, now, I have been waging a campaign without even talking to any of the survivors.  The guilt of it gnaws at me, but what would I say?  I want them to live, to thrive, but the world in every direction closes in with fang and claw, and I am not enough to hold it back.

They’ve given me space, given me time.  I love them, more than I had expected to find I did.  But I need a little longer before I come back myself.  Even though my body is still there with them, I am not.  I am here, with my bees, on the edge of a river, waiting for dawn.

One more day, yes.  One more mark of summer’s passage, one more chance at a positive outcome, one more apparatus to confront.  And then I will make my way home, with my surviving bees.

A magic prods at me, and I cast without thinking.  A Small Promise, to myself this time.  I didn’t even know I could do this, but I make it real all the same.  I will be home by the end of tomorrow.  I speak into the world, and feel the magic take hold.

My voice sounds strange this way.  I wonder if this is what the others hear.  If this is ‘me’, as I am now.

It doesn’t matter, I suppose.  I’ve been strange ever since I was born.  At least now I can be strange, and no longer make excuses to ignore my companions.