Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 107 (Patreon)

Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

Available Power : 0

Authority : 7

Bind Insect (1, Command)

Fortify Space (2, Domain)

Distant Vision (2, Perceive)

Collect Plant (3, Shape)

See Commands (5, Perceive)

Bind Crop (4, Command)

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Nobility : 6

Congeal Glimmer (1, Command)

See Domain (1, Perceive)

Claim Construction (2, Domain)

Stone Pylon (2, Shape)

Drain Health (4, War)

Spawn Golem (5, Command)

Empathy : 5 ><

Shift Water (1, Shape)

Imbue Mending (3, Civic)

Bind Willing Avian (1, Command)

Move Water (4, Shape)

-

Spirituality : 6 ><

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 : 6 ><

Nudge Material (1, Shape)

Bolster Nourishment (2, Civic)

Drain Endurance (2, War)

Pressure Trigger (2, War)

Blinding Trap (5, War)

-

Animosity : - - ><

Amalgamate Human (3, Command)

Congeal Burn (2, Command)

Trepidation : -

Follow Prey (2, Perceive)

Physically, I can’t feel the effects of tension in a room anymore.

It’s an interesting dichotomy, between what I am now, and the six lives I remember having once lived.  When people say the tension is palpable, or that they could feel the pressure of a situation, it’s often not entirely a metaphor.  Living bodies have a score of small feelings that they experience in concert with more mindful stress.

Hands and jaws clench, blood flows and brings with it heat, breath runs fast, eyes twitch and expressions crack.

I don’t do any of that.  Well, except crack, I suppose, but that’s not a real parallel, that’s just an unfortunate coincidence.

I’m not blind to tension, of course.  I have six lifetimes - technically seven now though this ‘lifetime’ hasn’t been exceptionally long yet - of social interaction to draw on for experience.  But it is worth remembering that while I can understand and mentally process when things are uncomfortable, I don’t feel it the way everyone else does.

This might be why I thought it was a good idea to gather everyone in the fort after an early dinner, to directly address the tension between the survivors we’ve taken in.

The fort’s meal hall was made to hold a hundred soldiers.  Yuea says it’s a standard border fort design, and that there’s some kind of Imperial prophecy about why it’s important to have it standardized.  I don’t know if she was just joking when she said it though, and Kalip can’t confirm anything Yuea offered.  But either way, this place far from the actual borders, deep in a place that people aren’t normally welcome to live, that was made for an Imperial garrison of perhaps twenty people, has a meal hall that can comfortably sit everyone who lives here now.

The comfort ends at the space available, though.

There isn’t a good way to make a meeting of sixty people feel cozy.  But a merchant’s life of tactical galas helps a little.  Tables are organized in such a way that no one can fully isolate, no matter how much they want to.  And the two tables that are used by my close people are placed such that no one can ignore the deliberate mixing of species happening at them.  The children’s table is near the kitchen, though, and it’s all but emptied fully now that dinner is over.  Kids, smarter than the rest of us, have already decided to not waste time with a group gathering, and have fled to play a game of seekers around the fort.  The bees watch them, which means that Dipan and Sharpen, both of them watching for an excuse to vanish, have no easy out.

The human tables - because without pressure they will continue to divide themselves - hold thirteen people.  The demon tables have an additional fifteen.  I wanted to create a guest dais for the verdlings, but Shift Wood is still broken with the rest of me, and it felt like a frivolity that could not be tolerated to use Bind Crop to try to grow one in something more like the traditional way.  Rounding out the survivors were another three gobs, but they aren’t at any particular table.  One of them, Cover, who presents as emotionally young by human standards, has run off with the other children.  The others are with my people, having been accepted by the gobs that live here without question, and everyone else shortly after.

The verdlings in particular look uncomfortable.  All five legs folded under their bodies, both of them looking around the room with twitchy motions of their long necks whenever someone speaks too loudly or a dish clatters.  Their skin is a familiar deep green and soft white, partly covered by the makeshift skirts that some - Dipan I assume, he’s been fixing every other problem around here - has sewn for them.  The long arms coming from where their necks transition to chests are eerily familiar to a demon or human, though with an extra joint.  The hands are the same though.  I’ve always found it interesting, how every species that can speak, always seems to have hands.

Except me, I suppose.

At the head of the room, a table serves as a makeshift stage, and two women and six bees make a show of clambering up onto it, drawing attention from the room.

“I suppose you’re wondering why we’ve called you here tonight.”  Mela speaks, and the quiet mutters among the groups either settle down or erupt into a few of them yelling things.

Personally, I ask a bee to hop up and press their forelegs against Mela’s hip.  Large multifaceted eyes staring up at the girl who tries not to stumble as the bee gets her attention.  “What?”  She asks, surprised.

The bee taps out the signal for clarification.  “More about what?”  Mela asks.  “All I said was a line from a play!”

That is what I would like clarification on, yes, Mela.  Thank you.  Because I’m somewhat confused why the cultural touchstones that she’s quoting sound familiar across at least three of the lives in my mind.  I want to be the scholar again; I want to dig down into this, and ask the question of why that joke has lasted so long.  I know it’s a joke, Mela’s voice had that tone to it.  But how many years has it been?  How many other things should have interrupted it?

“If you want us to consider putting on plays, I’m with you.  But now might not be the time.”  Muelly slightly misinterprets what I am trying to express through a bee that is somewhat new to the idea of complex thought.

“Excuse me.”  A man at the human table speaks.  He has dusty red skin, a familiar trait from an archipelago I lived on once, which seems to have spread through the current Empire quite effectively.  “I don’t want to rush our execution, but if you’re going to kill us, can you get it over with?”

Off to the side, Oob sends me a vision of Yuea making a strangling motion with her hands, and Kalip straining to hide a snicker as he pushes her arms down.

“We’re all wondering it.”  Another human barks out, his face a mess of scars.  “Are you just fattening us up?”

Sounding like he’s experiencing a moral crisis to even come close to agreeing with a human, one of the demon soldiers chimes in.  “If you’re planning to try to ransom us back, you won’t get much.  The Court of Seven Ports is gone.  We aren’t worth anything as your prisoners.”

“I do not wish to be kept here.”  One of the verdlings adds to the growing clamor.  “But I will not let you kill us.  I am weak, but I will fight.”

It takes a minute, but some of both the humans and demons, eying the verdlings without really knowing what it is, all start yelling agreement.  I suppose it’s a unifying theme, at least.

“No one’s killing anyone.”  Mela declares in a voice that stops every other word in the hall, and also gives pause to Yuea, who was in the middle of standing up to presumably start punching people until I stopped her.

“We just needed to talk to all of you before things got out of control.”  Muelly says.  “Or… okay, she needs to talk to you.  But she can’t.  So we’re here instead.”

“The demon.”  One of the humans speaks, a little too loudly.

Muelly folds her arms, an indignant look crossing her face as she plucks at her fur in a nervous motion.  “That’s rude and inaccurate.” She mutters.

“That’s both rude and inaccurate!”  Mela yells louder, pointing at the offending speaker.  “She’s an apparatus, not a demon.”  Mela frowns.  “Also she’s the only reason you’re all still alive.”

“One of those things did that to us to open the book.”  An older demon man’s voice rises.  He sounds sick, like his voice is too wet, and I check on how much of a reserve I’ve built up with Drain Health.  It’s not enough, and the spell is recovering so slowly that it may as well not matter.  “How are we to trust you?  You’ve kept us well enough, warm food and beds instead of jagged stone and rotten meat.  But you work for a monster.  You’ve got a pack of them sitting on the table with you.  What do you want from us?  We can’t fight back, just tell us why we’re alive, and be done with it.”

Mela looks like she’s prepared to offer some kind of reassurance, but it’s Muelly who actually answers.

“How many people have you killed?”

The words come out as a challenge.  A part of my memory, from the life of the singer, hooks on those words as something old, and uncomfortable.  Something you’re never supposed to ask a fighter.

The older demon shoves himself an unsteady stance, hooves cracking against the wood floor.  “You would-!”

“One, personally.”  My bees can see Muelly practically ripping the fur out of the crook of her arm, but she sounds so calm when she answers.  “Sort of.  It wasn’t a person anymore.  Maybe that doesn’t count.  Everyone else here is probably more.  Yuea, how about you?”

“Lost count.”  The soldier shouts back.

“How about you?”  Muelly directs her stare at the demon who has taken a few halting steps toward her.  My bees fan their wings at her feet, prepared to lunge if needed, but not making any hostile buzzes.  “How many deaths?”

Something in her eyes must get to him.  Because he drops his hand to his side, and tilts his head to the side, one broken horn highlighting his confusion.  “Seven.”  He says.  “Only seven.  And that was too many.”  There are mutters of agreement, from the soldiers of both sides.

“She’s killed three people.”  Muelly says placidly.  My body isn’t in the room right now; Yuea wouldn’t allow it.  So she has no one to look to.  But everyone knows who she means.  “Every one of them was a monster like the one that took you as slaves.”  That is not technically true.  But no one contradicts her.  “Do you know why?”

No one says anything.  They’re just listening now.  Mela speaks like the two of them rehearsed this.  “Because she doesn’t think anyone should be slaves.”  She says simply.  “Because she wants the world to be better.  Wants us to be better.  That’s all.  That’s it.”  The girl shrugs lightly.  “Sounds like a kid’s dream when you say it that way.”

The same verdling as before adds their voice to the room.  “Children dream large dreams that must be tempered to reach for the power to dream small dreams.”  They say.  “But that is not the problem now, is it?”  There’s a realizing there, in real time.

“We don’t even know if this one has power!”  One of the humans yells.  Someone behind a few others that none of my bees can see.  “What-“

I am growing tired of the second guessing, and I believe my bees are too.  It takes almost no effort to nudge them to action.  From the table the two young women are standing on, four bees flicker in soft blue outlines of themselves, and then vanish.  Viewpoints in my mind shift abruptly as they appear on the arrayed tables as if they had been their the whole time.  The bees move nimbly, glimmer in them pushing extra energy through the lines on their bodies, while their mantra for movement and flight lets them dance a new dance.

One by one, each of the demons and humans in the hall are tapped on the nose by a bee moving faster than they can react to.  Maybe if they were in better health, if they weren’t still recovering from trauma, if they were armed, maybe.  But maybes are not truths, and my bees playfully strike them all before vanishing again.  They land in front of the verdlings, and give a light series of bows to the two who have so far not said anything inflammatory, and the vanish once more to land around Mela and Muelly, the blue light washing off them like water.

Shouts and yells follow in their wake, but when Muelly starts yelling, everyone focuses on her immediately now.  “You’ve been through a lot!”  She declares, with a tone that implies but does not outright say “Who hasn’t? You’re not special.”  Her actual words continue.  “So we’ve been taking it easy on you!  But you’re living in the wrong world.  Wherever we used to live, it’s gone.”  The last word comes out like she’s choking on a sob.

“The honeybees help keep us safe.”  Mela says.  “You’re eating food grown with magic, irrigated with magic.  Sleeping on beds built with magic.  Safe behind walls fixed with magic.  Her magic.”

“We brought you here together tonight to tell you something you’ve all been ignoring.”  Muelly is far less pleasant than Mela when she talks.  It’s clear that one of the women has lost her patience, while the other is still speaking like she’s trying to soothe.  “You are welcome here.”

If there was something the crowd was expecting to hear, that might not have been it.  There are some confused mutterings, especially from the people who are soldiers, and not civilians.  Most of the survivors are soldiers, but not all.

Mela follows that up.  “We know some of you had plans to raid the armory, and make a run when you were healthy.”  She points at a few of the humans.  “We know some of you were planning to kill our living dream.”  She points at the old demon soldier.  He’s not the one Yuea choke slammed a tenday ago, but I think the other one knew about the plan, because he flinches too.  “Or kill each other.  Or even just piss each other off.”  Points across at demons and humans alike.  “It doesn’t matter.”

“She wants you to live.”  Muelly says quietly, and the hall is silent as everyone strains to hear her speak.  “She wants us all to live.  And we’re going to.  And if you want to, you can join us.  But you have to change.”

“No more of this.”  Mela waves at the tables.  “No more pretending you’re different.  No more stupid hatred.  No more acting like being old means you can’t fix yourself.  No more pretending things done a decade ago mean you can’t heal.”  She snorts derisively.  “If you want to stay, you’re us.  Not human, or demon, or… sorry, I actually don’t know what you are?”  Her dramatic speech falters slightly, and I realize that earlier when I was working on this moment with her and Muelly, that I never did figure out how to tell them what a verdling was.

The green and white person in the middle of the room bobs their neck.  “Verdling.”  They offer.  “We are called verdlings.  Or perhaps it would be right to say we were, before now.  We will stay, if you will have us.”

“What if we want to leave!”  A woman shouts from the human side.

“Then you can leave.”  Muelly says sadly.  “Our friend will help you recover, though you might want to stay until you feel healthy again.  We’ll equip you, arm you, as best we can.  Get you maps, if we can.  And there will be no hard feelings.”  Her shoulders slump.  “We’re not… we’re not a prison.  We’re stuck, but we’re not trapped.”

“…we can just leave? Just like that?”  The same voice, the woman still not standing, like she hopes to blend into the crowd.  It won’t work, I know each of them, face and voice.  The last few days have given my beetles time enough to profile every new person in this fort.

“Just like that.”  Mela nods.  There’s a quiet pause, and then she adds, “We don’t have much else to say.  But if you all want to talk, you can.  Figure out who wants to stay or go.  All the gobs are staying.  If you have questions, you can figure them out and ask one of us.  We’re kind of busy though.”

She hops off the table, the bees leaping off after her, one landing on her back and clinging on with a heavy thud.  Mela turns and offers a hand to Muelly, who follows her down with legs that shake now that their time speaking to a crowded room is over.

“I’m never doing that again.”  Muelly says in a voice only Mela and my bees can hear.  “Make Yuea do it next time.”

“Yuea will choke slam the first person who pisses her off as a warning to the others.”  Yuea says.  A little too loudly.  Both because someone nearby overhears, and because Yuea can hear as well with her enhanced ears, and the rapid nod she gives from across the room is unsettling.

Yuea has been worrying me lately.  I know Kalip changed, when his magetouched chains were broken.  But I hadn’t seen much of the same change in Yuea.  I had thought, with how unrestrained her personality was to begin with, that perhaps she had some different tethers on her.  Perhaps no tethers at all.  But bit by bit, I start to wonder if maybe she was simply being held back in different ways.  Limits on how impulsive she could be, or how cheerful she could be about it.

I’ll talk to her later.  When I can talk at all.  If I can ever talk at all.  I need to speak to Lutra again.  Though I don’t want the other apparatus to be overwhelmed; it has only been a half day.

Mela and Muelly sit again, the bees climbing onto benches to accept pets and scratches from my survivors.  Everyone watches the hall with apprehension, wondering just how this will tip.  I was the one who pushed - as much as I could advocate at all - for revealing that we knew of their small plots.  I don’t want them to feel afraid; I want them to feel like they don’t need to plot.

Many of them speak.  Quiet words between each other.  The humans and demons don’t reach across the gaps in their tables; one small moment isn’t going to be enough to force the issue.  Instead, what they have now is an opportunity to choose, to decide to let the issue be forced every day for as long as we’re here together.  And it is the making of that choice that matters, not that they instantly show that they can fix themselves.

I think, perhaps, I am lucky.  I lived six lives, from many different perspectives.  I worry what I could have been like had I been more limited.  Would I even understand there was a problem to be solved?

Their conversations are quiet, but I hear them anyway.  The beetles are very good spies.

Some of them talk about the bees, about the implicit threat.  Some of them worry about having to learn to be farmers, which the farmer in me finds insulting. Some of them complain about being fed cursed food.

But all of them know where they are, deep in the Green.  Many of them have to fight back bursts of panic or weeping as memories of their torture assault them abruptly.  Most of them saw the things that attacked our trip back from where we dragged them out of a living nightmare.

The eldest demon makes a tired remark about how the food reminds him of what his grandmother used to make.  The human captain who has been hiding his magetouched status mutters something about how the fort is the safest place within thousands of lengths.  They aren’t talking to each other, but they’re talking.

It’s not perfect.  Some people still want to leave.  I don’t think they should, I do earnestly believe they will be dead within a tenday.  But I won’t stop them.  The offer to let them recover is sincere.  The offer to let them leave is as well.

“We’re going to have to break up their groups.”  Jahn comments as he eyes the group of people who look like him, but are no longer his people.  “Mix them up.  Get them to work.  We’ll need things to work on.”

“We’ve got things to work on.”  Malpa says, patting Jahn’s shoulder.  “I just hope they say yes.”

“Because you’re just like her, and want to save them?”  Muelly asks, her brow furrowed.

Malpa snorts.  “Because I don’t think Yuea and a dozen bees can stop them if they decide to turn on us.”  He says.  “Not if we give them another tenday to heal.”

I earnestly hope we can prove his worry to be unneeded.