Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 112 (Patreon)

Okay.  So.

This is the last chapter of book two.  This, naturally, leads to some questions. So just to cover as much as I can now : there will be a book three, I don't know when because I'm trying to stave off burnout.  My current tentative plan is to, in a week, begin posting a new story for a while, which I plan to only be a single book.  When that's done, I'll look at going back to consistent App Chaps, but until that time, I may post advance book three chapters as I write them for patrons.  The early chapters are not a guarantee!  It'll just be a bonus if it happens.   But no matter how it works out, when I am ready to start writing Apparatus again, patrons will get built back up to a good supply of bonus chapters before they start getting public posting.

With all that said, here's the chapter.  If anyone has questions on the future, there'll be an announcement post this weekend that I'll be paying closer attention to.

_____


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)

Five people gather in my workspace.  Malpa and Jahn sit together on a bench that I think was stolen from the meal hall, their backs to the pile of broken furniture that was dragged up here that I keep telling myself I’ll repair someday.  Yuea has just come in and leans on the stone support by the patio, examining one of her hands like she can will her bruises away if she glares at them hard enough.  Fisher has taken over the flat desk that I was using as a glimmer experiment space and is sorting mantra on it, the gob diligently trying to catalog all the inscrutable odd letters that form when the things begin to take on personality.  And then one person sitting on the floor; a green and white spotted form, five legs folded under her, a neck that makes the room’s ceiling feel cramped.

Talquin is one of verdlings, and is here by virtue of the fact that we asked the new people to pick a representative for this conversation, and the humans and demons couldn’t decide which of their species should be allowed.  We would have accepted two people, but honestly, them putting forward a united front to send someone outside themselves is the best they’ve worked together so far.  So they sit, and watch the rest of us with a curious gaze, multijointed arms folded into clasped hands in front of them.

Currently, the room is experiencing a pleasant breeze, because the fort was built with good storm facing for the officer’s quarters, and the wind whistling outside won’t be a problem to this particular space for another tenday or two.  The room’s shutters are missing, though, and it’s going to be a real problem when the storm season gets worse.

The last person in the room is me.  Not just me, but also many of my bees, large and small, and most of the beetles.  And one bizarrely attentive eel in a tub of water.

It’s an odd collection.

“So.”  Yuea starts talking.  She cocks her fingers like a mock pistol at Jahn and Malpa.  “I had a fun conversation with Muelly on the way up here.”  She says.

“Oh?”  Jahn looks at her curiously.

Yuea nods.  “See, I figured even the end of it all isn’t a good excuse to sleep around.  And I like Muelly. So I tried to tell her something I’d been noticing.”

“Oh.”  Malpa looks like he wants to talk about perhaps any subject except this one.  One of the bees pushes a question through our connection, asking how humans change color like that, and why Malpa’s new color is red.

“You know what she said?”  Yuea asks, rhetorically.

“Something mortifying.”  Jahn answers.

Yuea shakes her head, and barks out a laugh.  “She laughed at me, and patted me on the cheek.  You wouldn’t happen to know why that was her reaction, hmm?  Or why I feel like I just got condescended to by a girl half my age?”

Fisher interrupts.  “How old are you?  I am unfamiliar.”  The gob barely finishes the sentence before Malpa is making a frantic ‘no, stop’ gesture in their direction.

The entire interaction feels, to me, warm.  Comfortable.  The kind of mood you get when a group of people who are actually safe have plenty of free time and choose to spend it bantering with each other.  And it breaks my crystalline heart to have to put a stop to it.

I reach out with a push of magic.  The effort of it hurts, but it doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as it did yesterday, or the day before.  It’s a sting, not a stab; a nip from an irate cat, not the severing of digits by some bizarre creature.  Through the eyes of my bees, I direct the magic to the blank panel of standing wood that sits at a wide angle against the other one which I long ago smoothed out and made into a makeshift map.

Yuea, I write with Shift Wood, stop teasing them.  We have work to do.

“Benefactor.”  The verdling’s voice is reverent, and they bow their smooth snakelike head to match the tone.  “It is an honor to-“

Fisher interrupts them, the gob’s rough squeak of a voice direct and without any malice to it.  “We don’t do that here.”  They say.  But then they grin, showing off rows of sharpening teeth that look suspiciously eel-esque.  “It is good you are back.”

“They didn’t go anywhere.”  Jahn grumbles.  “Though I agree.  I am pleased to see you writing again.”

It still hurts.  I won’t be doing it much.  So.  Let’s stop talking about Malpa, Jahn, and Muelly’s romantic life, and figure out how we live through the storms.

“Right.”  Malpa leans back on the bench, pressing against the splintered edge of a wardrobe that I really do promise I will fix when I can do it without the magic hurting.  “We need more food.  How long do we have?”

Fisher answers instantly.  “Sixteen days.”  The gob says sharply.  “Seraha says we can stretch it.”

Jahn clears his throat.  “Also the farm plots aren’t gone yet.  They might last a while, though we’ll be pulling in yams in the storm.  If you could wall them in, that would help, but I don’t even know if the magic would persist.”

I’ll find out.  Pick one for me to try it on.

“The new plot.”  Malpa says instantly.  “Some kind of spicy ground root.”

“They’re onions you backwards fool.”  Jahn tilts himself sideways to bump his shoulder into Malpa’s.  “But yes.  The one we can most afford to lose now should it fail to work.”  I don’t hesitate to dispatch a pair of heavier glimmerlings into the wind to bring me vision of the farm, and a target for Form Wall.  Hopefully I will have an answer by the end of this conversation.

Yuea raps her knuckles on the stone beside her.  “Even with the farms, we’ll need something more.  I want to send out hunters.  A lot of the soldiers can shoot, and Kalip can too.  We can pick up something that’s on the move with the storm.”

“Many of us cannot eat meat, in one way or another.”  Talquin offers, the verdling looking unsure if they should contribute.

True, but it eases the burden for everyone.  I write. I can help with that, too. Guide you to animals I Drain Health in my search.  I’m trying to keep my writing short to minimize the pain, and because the spell is simply not regaining empty liquid fast enough to make for prolonged conversation.  I hope my meaning is coming across.

Fisher nods.  “Yes.  And more mantra.  For moving in the winds, and… rains?”   They look curiously at the others.

“Yeh.”  Malpa chews on something as he talks.  “When the galesun’s first, that means the rainsun’s up next.”

“At least this time the ruinsun won’t be around for too long.”  Yuea sighs.  “But I think glimmer would do the job better.  Not that we really have a list of what makes them different.  Get on that, sparkles.”  She points my way accusingly.

I have been busy.  And injured.  You do it.

Talquin cranes her neck back and forth between Yuea and my writing in a nervous way.  “Benefactor…” the verdling starts to rumble.  I sketch a mark to show I am listening, and she continues without being any less nervous.  “Is there… a form of address that…”

Yuea calls me whatever is on her mind at the moment.  I explain.  You can do the same.  I don’t mind.  I don’t have a name yet.  And at this point, I don’t even know how I would have a name that wouldn’t feel like an ill fitting tunic.

“Okay.  So.  Walled farms, more glimmer, what are we doing about any other monsters coming to eat us?”  Yuea asks bluntly.

Fisher doesn’t look up from the mantra they’re inspecting.  “Shoot them?”

“Powder can be finicky during the rains, and we have a limited supply of it.”  Malpa says.  Yuea and Jahn both give him curious looks, brows raised.  “What?  I can learn things.  I talk to Kalip sometimes.”  The big man sounds defensive about basic socialization.

Yuea shrugs.  “Sure.”  She grunts.  “Why isn’t he here, anyway?”

He is training Mela.  This also helps explain where Mela is.  They are outside, in the winds.

“I’m worried he may push too far and harm that girl.”  Jahn expresses a concern that I see on a couple other faces as well.  Some of my bees clearly agree, bobbing their antenna to the words they’re starting to really understand.

He won’t.  Can’t explain, but Mela will be alright.  I write to them.  I am getting steadier through the pain, though it hasn’t stopped hurting.  I can’t wait for this injury to finally be truly healed.

“I have a thought.”  Fisher says, dragging us away from that conversation.  “You are healing, yes?”  They address my slowly spinning form directly, and I get a bee to offer an affirmative.  “How far will our food go when bolstered?”

That’s a very good question.  I don’t actually know.  I made liberal use of the magic to keep everyone alive on what amounted to below half rations for a stretch of time, but it wasn’t a whole season.  Whether or not there are unfortunate effects to it, or if it has a limit, I’m not sure.  But it certainly could help.  The only problem is, I need to be put back together before I can start using it fully.

Yuea cracks her knuckles in a way that I am forced to believe is bad for her.  “Okay, that one’s fixable!  We just need to find your friend some stuff to kill!”

“I am confused.”  Talquin states.

“The thing that he is,” Malpa nods at me, “they get stronger, or more magic, when they… what, win fights?  Survive things?  We know about killing, and… and the other way… but they don’t like that one.”

The verdling’s white spots flush grey.  “And I am glad of it.”  They say anxiously.  “So we must give the second apparatus a challenge, so that it might pass on the result to heal this one?”

Yes.  But also, no. Lutra is a child, we can’t…

I don’t get to finish my writing before Yuea cuts in.  “And?”  She snaps.  “Our kids are going to have to go out and help carry fruit or some shit back too.  There’s no room to slack off now, we left it too long.”

“Yuea.”  Jahn whispers, staring at the wooden floor of my office.  “It’s different.  You’re asking them to kill. There is a difference.”

In response to the conversation about them, that they are being excluded from - a feeling I know all too well - Lutra’s eel starts to bob its head back and forth in the tub of water it is watching from.  Once it has our attention, half the water in the tub rises up, forming uneven orbs in the air of the otherwise dry office in a casual display of magic.  Lutra’s eel stares at Yuea, the closest one to the tub, and the blobs of water move to sit over her head, eliciting a resigned curse out of the woman.  Then they fall, but instead of impacting her head, they simply… slide to the side.  Splashing back into the tub instead of splattering to the wood.

“Oh.”  Malpa says slowly.  “I get it.”

“I do not.  Elucidate?”  Talquin sounds like someone who wants to be exhausted, but has just seen one of the primal elemental forces of the world moved around like a child’s toy, and has a small amount of wonder in her voice.

Malpa waves a hand, before bringing it back and settling it on Jahn’s knee.  “It’s not just killin’.  Right?”  He looks to the rest of us for confirmation, and I give it.  “Well, the stormsuns are going to stop us foraging.  But if someone were stopping the rain… we could stretch it out a lot longer, right?  And that would be something worth doing.  Or… I think so.”

The eel tilts its head back proudly, the creature partly a companion and right now partly Lutra moving through the long fish, glad that someone understood the demonstration.

“And that gets Sir Rock closer to put back together.”  Yuea nods.  “Love it.  Okay.  Next up, walls.  We need more and better of them.  Not just for the winds, but for whatever is going to come at us when we can’t react as well.”

“Can we even build more walls?”  Fisher asks.  “Seraha’s teachings about the Green say this place shouldn’t even be here.  More walls might… annoy it.”  The gob scratches their pebbled arms as they say that, like the idea of not maximizing utility makes them itch.

Yuea shrugs.  “The fort seems to have something special about it, though fuck if I know what.  I’m not privy to military secrets.”  Malpa snorts a laugh, and Yuea glares at him.  She keeps the glare up as she keeps talking.  “Reinforcing the place should be okay.  But what do I know?  Don’t answer that, you bastard.”  That last part is aimed at Malpa.

Talquin looks beyond nervous.  “Toying with the benevolence of the Green does not sound safe.  I did not want to ask when hunting was brought up…”

“Oh, shit, yeah.”  Yuea tilts her head to start out the back of the office.  “Maybe we don’t do both.  But we need the walls to last, and the repairs Pointy made aren’t going to hold forever.”

I could reinforce or add to them with stone.  I offer.  But the magic to easily collect stone to work with is… broken.  For now.  I would need help to quarry some to work with.

“We don’t have time to spend on that.”  Jahn states.

The verdling interjects.  “There are twenty four persons who would be willing to do something of value.  Foraging and farming are needful things, but they mean little if the walls fall.  I will take this back to them and find some who are willing to break rocks.”  They pause, perhaps unused to the unified nods of agreement they get.  “Though, I would ask.  Both groups who sent me here, they are worried.”

“Why now?”  Yuea is done with human-demon diplomacy.

“Worries about who will be given the safer jobs, I believe.”  Talquin looks almost embarrassed.  “I have planned to solve this by simply mixing the work force.  But I wished to inform you.”

“Yeah, we know they’re awful.”  Malpa says, letting out a grunt as Jahn backhands him in the chest.  “For now.  Awful for now.”  He corrects.  “So.  Dig up and haul some stone back, and-“

Now it is my turn to cut someone off.  No hauling.  I cannot Collect Material a solid mass, and my magic to separate rock is what is damaged.  All I need is broken chunks I can grab.  I will mark the close ridge on the map where I have been taking from.  I pause, and draw a line to indicate a new thought.  My secondary focus on the farm has just borne results.  Walls that enclose to a roof break my connection.  But leaving small gaps allows Bind Crop to continue.

“That’s… that’s something.  We’ll need more stone.”  Jahn says.  “But if we get it, then we can do this.  Keep food coming in through the storm.  We can make it.”  His voice before wasn’t hopeless, exactly, but now there is something else there.  A spark of heat, like this simple route forward can now be followed with a lot more vigor.

“Yeah.”  Yuea stares up at the ceiling.  “All we need is a half dozen overgun to kill anything that tries to ambush us.  Got any plans there, Shiny?”

I’ll keep you informed.  I say.  Now, my magic runs low.  And this hurts.  Shall we get started?

There is a murmur of agreement, and everyone moves to stand.  Even Fisher, still absorbed in trying to understand the mantra they have been closely watching this whole time.  I give the gob leave to take several of them back to their shared room; the magical tools seem to be a particular favorite of the gobs in general.

Before the whole meeting ends fully, though, Talquin raises a hand.  Turning to Yuea as the verdling rises onto their unfolding legs.  “Now that we are done surviving, I would ask.  Among my people, the powerful matriarchs claim many mates.  Is that not shared among your people?”

“I’m going to bed.”  Malpa and Jahn state in the same resigned gruff voice, at the same time.

“I’m liking this talk of powerful women claiming mates!”  Yuea rubs her hands together, and I try to not watch as I know she is abrading her altered skin in doing so.  “With all the magetouched restrictions out of my head, it sounds pretty good right about now.  Something to distract from the storm at least, eh?”

Outside in the distance, there is a series of creaks and cracks over the wind, and then a noise like thunder as an old tree is shoved out of its roots and to the ground by the growing gale.  By tomorrow, the Green will have turned the fallen log into a whole ecosystem, and new trees will be shooting up in its place.  But for now, all we hear is the crash.

It is going to be a long storm season, distractions or no.

The others leave, one by one, to tell the rest of the fort what we’ll be rushing to accomplish over the next tenday.  To get what can be done, done, before the wind is joined by rains and blasts of force and heat.  Even my bees move out, going to do their best to collect the rest of their origin hive that they still hold a familiar love for.  We’ll find a place for them here to weather the storms.

Eventually, all that’s left is myself, watching through my little rat glimmerlings, and Yuea.

“Are you going to tell them?”  She asks me.  There is no trace of the humor she had during the gathering.  No anger either.  Just a tired old woman, no longer quite human, no longer a soldier, no longer anything she once was.  But still asking.  “Or were you planning to keep it to yourself?”  She continues.

I will tell them if they need to know, to survive.  I write, ignoring the sensation like a bread knife being dragged across a bone I don’t have.

She snorts at me.  “It’s not about needing.”  Yuea states.  “We’re not going to make it.  This fort was broken when we got here.  It won’t last.  We can’t feed everyone.  And you know the storms won’t stop everything coming for us.”  She stares out the patio, into the growing chaos of branches whipping in the oncoming wind.  “Tar and ash.  We’re more the walking dead than those fucking skeletons I had to fight.”

Not if I have anything to say about it.  I make my stance, even knowing it likely sounds hollow.

“Do you?”  She demands.  Not harshly, just with a sad resignation.  “Have anything to say?”

More monsters than I can remember have tried to take you all from me.  Is what I have to say.  They are gone, and I am not.  And I refuse to let the weather do what they could not.  I will find a way.  I won’t give up on you now.  I swear it.

Yuea doesn’t look back until a long time after I’ve finished writing.  But when she reads the words, she gives a small shake of her black feathered head.  “Just believing isn’t going to be enough.”  She whispers.  Barely loud enough to be heard over the wind.

No.  I agree, filling the last of the space with my final words to her before the spell is truly empty.  But without it, nothing will ever be enough.  So this is where I start.  Believing in all of us.

She reads it.  Thinks.  Let’s out a bitter huff of a laugh.  And then turns to leave herself, only pausing at the door to the office to offer one last thought.  “I won’t tell them we’re doomed.”  Yuea states.  “But it’s your job to make it happen.  Got it, shiny?”  Her hand lingers on the doorframe for a second before she slips out into the thin upstairs hallway of the old fort.  And before I can truly think on what she has said, her voice carries back into the room.  “And erase that before someone sees it and gets depressed!”  The commander orders.

I check Shift Wood, and my own fraying mental state, and decide to just have my glimmerlings turn the panel around instead.

And then I face the oncoming storm, and begin to work.

End Book 2