Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 108 (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)

-

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)

I am multitasking, and learning about multitasking.

Some time ago, roughly two or three hundred seasons, I told Kalip that the glimmerling scout things I was making felt like extensions of my own body.  I had hoped that, in making more of them, I could also create extensions of my own mind.  As it is now, I have my powerful ability to split my thoughts, but what feels like a finite pool of thinking to make use of at any time.  The more I worry about Mela and Fisher’s recovery, the less I can worry about Kalip ruining their recovery by running them through training drills naught but a few days after the pair are back on their feet.

But if glimmerlings added to that amount of thought, the same way they ‘felt’ like my own limbs, then I could do so much more.  Even though each one I make limits the spell like binding a new bee, even when I make them through Stone Pylons.

I have been taking the process steadily and with a small fraction of my focus, working to make more of my little extensions, and to learn about what my limits are.  So far, I have had several successes.  More of the resin-hide scout forms, as well as learning the process for making a larger one of them out of the next step in size of glimmer.  It was not easy, the process seems arbitrarily twisted, and I dearly wish I could brag to someone about it.

I would brag to the bees, but they are busy, and it would take more of my focus, which is in use.

Another success with the spell was the creation of an ink rat out of the glimmer that I personally cast in my office.  The black shot stones do not form the same type of creature as those made on root and dirt; instead, I find myself able to continually produce small six legged creations with skin like dripping ink, though they leave no mark as they pass.  In place of a head, they have a shifting black sphere, which functions as the focus of their senses.  The rat tails that come off of them are a sharp contrast in color, and they can use them to pick up small objects.  I am trying to learn to use a quill with them, but it is a matter of finesse, and is slow going.

I’ve had no progress making a glimmerling with the Congeal Glimmer that I wove in the fireplace, either ablaze or ashed, or in the kitchen.  Nor have I had progress replicating the procedure with Congeal Mantra, unless for progress, I were to lie and count explosions that cause memory loss.

Work continues.  I am steadily casting Stone Pylon every time I can, mostly securing the easy routes to our fort through the Green, but twice I have made new pillars to feed Congeal Glimmer into so that I can continue building my army.  Being damaged means I cannot repeat the process six times each day, but I am still working my hardest.

The success is tempered though, by my failure to Spawn Golem properly.  The spell took so very long to recover, and I had hoped to make an expendable combatant.  Something that could move with the strength and endless vigor of a golem, but fight like Yuea or Kalip.  Something that could keep the far less expendable members of my people out of the battlefield.

If I were being charitable to myself, I would say that I had a technical success.  And I did learn quite a lot.  I learn rapidly from failures, after all.  But being less charitable, I would say that I created something that used all but a tenth of the accumulated emptiness of the magic, and then ripped itself apart from poor joint placement.  I will try again later.

That is all a part of my attention.

Another part is being spent on studying Lutra, and their… well, I want to say gift, but it was a needed part of the Small Trade we made.  Still, the compressed sphere of loose rock holds an interesting secret.

I noticed it when I was studying the mechanisms for Congeal Mantra.  I have, somewhere, acquired a second tiny vial of the empty fluid that powers the spell.  And tethered to it is a singular mantra.  Following the tether through overlapping magical senses and attempts to target spells led me back to the sphere that was traded to me days ago.

The sphere itself is doing something, though I don’t know what.  But at its core, perhaps one of the rocks used to make it, is a mantra that is letting out pulses of magic on a regular basis.  Though when it does so, it does it in the same way that any mantra I have made does when used; which is to say that I would never have noticed if I wasn’t bound to it.

Partly I am studying it to try to determine what it does, but also, I am making a study of the other apparatus.   Lutra is still having a difficult time… communicating.  Thinking, even, it may be.

I am almost certain that at least one of their lives was a child, and it seems that they are living in a constant state of tension and confusion because of it.  Or perhaps that simply makes it worse for them.  I’m not even truly sure where to begin helping, as much as I want to.  All I can do is hope that my own traded gift works to heal them.

Well, that, and to begin putting together a list of their magics, even if just academically.

What I do know about the orb is that it causes lethargy in those that approach, and it doesn’t take me long in looking at my own spell lists to find more evidence for a conclusion that has already been useful to me.  Souls do overlap.  Perhaps not completely, but spells are shared among them.  Lutra, I know, has Empathy and Spirituality.  And under Spirituality, nestled in the options, is Drain Purpose.

I practice letting a tiny bit of my mind work through the confusion of how a single mantra inside a rock tomb is casting a spell, while I put together my known list of Lutra’s magic.

Empathy

Shift Water (1, Shape)

Bind Fish (2, Command)

Hear Intent (3, Perceive) ?

Spirituality

Congeal Mantra (1, Command)

Drain Purpose (2, War)

Small Trade (3, Domain)

And One Other Thing

Make Sphere (?, Shape?) ?

Well.  At least I know that “and one other thing” is not a soul.

Maybe the mantra has been… taught, somehow?  Taught to cast a spell.  They do develop abilities related to what is done by those holding them.  It’s why Fisher and Vestment have coin face accuracy with their pistols after only a tenday of drills.  It’s why the larger bees can fly, despite their wings no longer physically supporting them; they inadvertently trained their mantra to let them fly, and now they continue that training every time they use them.

It seems likely that is what Lutra did somehow.  Teaching the mantra on Drain Purpose.  Maybe it’s not an automatic process at all, and the aquatic apparatus is just… afraid.  Using a non lethal way to keep everyone away from them.  Though that still doesn’t explain where the rocks come in.

I add to my list using Claim Construction on it when I have the chance, so that See Domain will let me delve into more deeper truths of what this odd ball does.  I’ve been exhausting the spell faster than it recovers to rejuvenate my domain of both the fort, and the growing beehive on the ridge line above us.  But now I have a new use for it for later.

The part of me that is making a scholar’s study of Lutra is also slowly having a conversation with them via bee-eel relay.  We don’t talk as much as I would like, partly because of the limits of our magic right now, but also because the other apparatus is just not always willing.

Right now, though, I am answering a list of questions they have.  A lot of them involve assuaging small panics, but others are curiosities.  Where are we, how did we get here, what made us happen.  Also social questions; they want to know about the children.  Especially Zhoy and Ruuet, the oldest of the girls under our protection.

When the kids do come out of the fort, under escort, Lutra’s lake is currently the safest place that isn’t behind our walls, and Lutra’s eels seem to love the kids just as much as my bees do.  The apparatus wants to have friends, but has no real way to communicate beyond just languageless play.

The work with the glimmer is slow and deliberate.  A constant exercise of effort to push magic down the right paths until I gently overcome the barriers and a creature blooms.  The work with Lutra is slow and curious, study and contemplation occasionally broken up by bits of a conversational exchange.

The third thing I am doing is slow as well, though primarily because if I went any faster, I would start looking for a way to scream in rage.  I’m partly there already; in addition to my own perception, old memories both distant and incorporated into my souls keep pointing out small things that add to the picture of the world that I am building.  And the picture doesn’t look quite stable.

Distant Vision with my soul of Authority recently fortified, or enhanced, or whatever process it is that occurs when I exchange accumulated points of power for a more worldly version, has a range that is beginning to become unwieldy.

I haven’t tried looking much deeper into the Green yet, but what I know so far about my range is this; at almost six thousand lengths minimum I can see the outer edge of the Green; enough forest that I can see the shift from tree-dotted grasslands to denser woods.  Beyond that, I can see almost eighteen thousand lengths.  A staggering distance, and enough to find the settlements and communities on the outer edge of the Green.

I’m not focused on them.  I’ve seen it before, on the return journey with our newest batch of refugees. The fires have died out, but so have most of the people.  Things are bad.

What a stupid statement.  Things are bad.  But there aren’t words to describe the devastation that I can see creeping across the land in twisting lines and small pockets.  I could, if I were so inclined, simply keep stacking adjectives until the scholar’s legacy is satisfied that I have adequately described my state of mind.  Horrified, disgusted, terrified, bitter, furious.  I feel too small to make a mark, too wounded to do anything but hide, and too cautious to risk what little I have managed to protect.  And all of that combines into a ball of creeping guilt that I cannot expel from my thoughts; that I should be doing something.

Every life I have lived has had thoughts on power.  The farmer would say that power gives you the tools to work the land, and the satisfaction to use them.  The merchant would say that power offers you a taste of freedom, and the urge to chase it.  The soldier would tell you that power is a weapon, and you need to use it before your enemy uses theirs.  The cleric would think of power as ability and responsibility, all in one bundle.  The scholar’s thoughts on the matter are extensive, but come down to the simple personal truth that power is complicated.  And the singer… the singer would probably say that power is more trouble than it’s worth.

But all of them had some of it.  And all of them are me now.  And all of who they were, who I was, has come together now to be someone who thinks that if I can, then I should.

I don’t know what I can, or how I should.  But I am using Distant Vision to sweep the edges of the Green for new batches of survivors, fleeing from the growing numbers of monsters and horrors stalking the plains beyond the first tree’s roots.  I have found three groups so far.  Two of them are still alive.

This part of my work is slow, tedious, and despite taking comparatively little of my creativity, it is an emotional burden that I cannot compare to anything else.

Three tasks, all at once.  I believe I am balancing them quite adeptly.  The scorching sun of the day passes into a hot evening as the majority of my mind tries to work as fast as I can.  Tries to be ready for the next nightmare.

And then, when night falls, and most of my magic is drained fully, I shift my focus to the last tiny part of my thoughts.

It is a strange spell, Follow Prey.  I didn’t think that my cruel reward for losing one of the children to a wolv would be useful for much of anything, as I’m simply not a hunter.  Never have been, surprisingly, when I consider that I’ve been so much else.  But I’ve been flickering the spell on every claw of a candle for the day, and matching my results to Oob and his brethren’s own espionage efforts.

And so when two humans and one demon - and it would be a plot that pushes them to work together, wouldn’t it? - slip over the wall in the dead of night, I am right there with them.  Tracing their location as they move out into the Green; not too far, they’re not running, but they are trying to get out of range of anyone spying on them.

Good luck to them.  Especially since Kalip, who I feel quite strangely about marking with Follow Prey, is slipping through the trees thirty lengths behind them.  A silent shadow.  I assume.  I can’t actually hear very precisely at that distance through the glimmerlings that I have set up around the meeting location that they’ve used for the last two nights.

I pull all my thoughts back, and begin to intervene.

These people might think themselves my enemies, but I don’t actually want Kalip to shoot them all without at least trying one more time to talk.