Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 115 (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)

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Spirituality : 6

Shift Wood (1, Shape)

Small Promise (2, Domain)

Make Low Blade (2, War)

Congeal Mantra (1, Command)

Form Party (3, Civic)

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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)

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Animosity : - -

Amalgamate Human (3, Command)

Congeal Burn (2, Command)

Trepidation : -

Follow Prey (2, Perceive)

A small stone pulls itself out of somewhere that isn’t real, and onto the dead dirt near the deeply buried walls of the fort’s rear.  It has a texture I’ve never seen on a rock before, across seven different lives, and I use my glimmerlings to investigate closer than I would ever dare send a bee or one of the survivors.

Almost like a sponge.  Rough enough to scratch at the resin skin of the glimmerling, with a dull grey surface that looks the color of ash if ash were somehow more boring than it usually is.  Unlike the mantra that form flat coins, or the glimmer that come out as uneven gems, Congeal Burn creates something closer to an actual sphere.  A little marble of porous grayish rock.

If it’s hotter than any other stone picked up off the ground, I wouldn’t know it.  The constant low cry of the winds from the galesun do an excellent job of quickly stripping the heat from anything outside.  Even under the rays of the summer sun, the galesun’s winds would cool things down, and we are hardly allowed the whole of the day’s sunlight anymore.  In the fine tradition of the season, looser dirt, grit, dust, and ash have been kicked up in massive plumes.  Sometimes borne aloft by funnels in the air that threaten to turn into the great structure-killers.  But however it gets there, the combined debris brings a dim shade to the world, which lets the winds suck the warmth from everything with a casual dismissive ease.

The last time I saw Congeal Burn in action, it was with these stones being flung toward my companions.  Myself as well, I suppose.  And they were quite potently on fire; or whatever siege ammunition they were implanted in was on fire.  The relevant point is that I had hoped the creations could serve as a replacement for actual flame within the fort.

Our foraging team is still out there, and they don’t need the distraction of being told to bring back wood.  Our farmers, hard at work and occasionally dipping into my own nothingness reservoir for Bind Crop, are working as fast as they can while the only thing that there is to contend with is the scream of the winds.  I could - and have been - personally solving our need for firewood with Collect Plant and Form Wall.  The inability to simply place processed cordwood and kindling is inconvenient, but more than that, using my magics is draining.

Collect Plant needs to be targeted through Distant Vision with Link Spellwork, as I cannot safely send my bees or glimmerlings out to be my eyes anymore.  I tried, and one of my glimmerlings was caught by a current in the wind, lifted up, and rapidly pulled out of my range of influence.  So for now, it’s safer this way.  But I need both Link Spellwork and Distant Vision to continue developing our defenses, to respond to emergencies, and to continue using a number of tricks that I’ve come to rely on.

My magic recovers faster and faster with each new expansion of my souls.  But it never seems fast enough.  A very long time ago, in the life of the merchant I once was, a mentor told me that ability provides its own demand.  I wouldn’t say that I didn’t understand, but it is only here, now, that I can completely experience it.  Every time I find I can sustain an extra Distant Vision, I need to watch more things.  Every time I can apply Bolster Nourishment to more dishes of boiled roots and petal salads each day, I find that more people need to eat.  And everything I find I want to do with Link Spellwork, I find I need to do more constantly than I had ever imagined.

So it would have been nice if Congeal Burn could have solved one small part of the problem.  The issue of course is that I do not know what it does yet.  Just like beginning with Congeal Glimmer, I am required to learn anew.

There is a memory attached to the spell, as there is for much of my magic.  But poking at it, and the foreign soul of Animosity, gives me the impression of little more than frustrating betrayal, burning pain, and snarling irate anger.   Which is unhelpful.  Though it is very welcome to realize that there is not one, but two chunks of Animosity within me.

The first one I received, no matter how helpful the spell has been in saving Yuea and Kalip, I still find… disgusting.  Cruel and callous.  A memory of murder for the sake of murder.  This new one, though, despite being a soul cast in the same mold, is someone else.  And while I don’t know the whole of her like I do with my other six lives, the singer, merchant, soldier, scholar, farmer, and cleric, I know that she was trying.  Or perhaps that I was trying.  This part of her is part of me, now.  And no matter how utterly fucking furious she was, she wasn’t a bad person.

This tells me nothing about Congeal Burn though.  But the stone doesn’t seem to be killing the glimmerling poking it, and I don’t want to test running more of my magic through the connection to the burn, lest I learn how to start fires that consume dirt and stone, or form a new constructed creature, or simply cause another explosion.  So I have the glimmerling pick it up, and take it inside to find someone to hand it off to.

It’s not hard, because I have a bee or beetle with everyone.  Dipan is my target for this particular experiment.  I’ve already handed one to Muelly and Seraha, the two demon women as perplexed as I was.  Now it’s time for a new tactic.  The man stares at the glimmerling offering up the rock to him while balancing on its thick resin legs, sighs once, and says something that’s most likely demoralizing as he pockets it.

I wouldn’t know, because I’m mostly focused on listening to Yuea’s demoralizing talk while all this is going on.  The military commander who managed to lead a handful of people out of the end of the world to stumble across me what feels like a lifetime ago - and literally is one of my lifetimes past - is currently trying to convince me to make poor choices with my magic.  Specifically, she wants me to make a series of Small Promises to the people of the fort.  That I will do my best to feed them, shelter them, and share my magic with them.

We’ve been over this.  Thrice, now.  I write to her.

She ignores it.  “The thing is.”  Yuea is saying, and I am woefully listening to as a dutiful companion.  “You already swore to do this.  No oaths or spells, but you swore to me that you were going to try.  So what’s the difference?”  She stands on the wall of the fort, leaned against a sturdy parapet that refuses to bow to the galesun’s assault, glaring at everything in range.  I think she’s waiting for our forager group to return.

There’s a bee the size of a small pony clinging to the corner where the wall meets the rampart, sharply listening for me, and hiding from the winds.  The bee has far more courage than Yuea, I think, because Yuea has no regard for her own well-being, and the bee very much does.  But they’re out here anyway, so Yuea can give me poor ideas.

The problem with Small Promise, I tell her by putting scars in our sturdy shell of a wall, is twofold.  It is, inherently, small.  I cannot promise things that hold more weight than the magic will allow.  For some things, such as hospitality or truce, it stretches.  For boasts, it seems to stretch as well.  But not for serious offers in trying times.

“You really need to learn to write simpler, Shiny.”  Yuea snorts in the least dignified way I’ve ever seen across my lives, the commander spitting a wad of green phlegm over the wall during a tiny pause in the low winds.  “Go learn with the kids under Seraha.  Stop using so many words.”

The other issues, I continue undeterred by her crass nature, is that any such promise invites failure.

Through my bee, cowering and clinging as they are, I can see the moment Yuea’s mind begins to see the issue as of a tactical nature.  A simple “Ah.”  Or something like it, is barked into the wind.

If I falter.  Even slightly.  Then the Small Promise breaks.  I do not know where the power goes if there is no apparatus around, perhaps one of you could take it up.  But it would hurt me.  Perhaps damage my spell forms.  Perhaps it would be my death.  Regardless…

“If you’re hurt from failing one oath, you’re gonna be in a bad spot for the rest.  You’ll fuck up again, and now I’m betting the magic doesn’t care about context, huh?”

Very few things in the world care about context.  I sadly inform her.

“We’re not making it through this if you’re not stronger, Sparkles.”  Yuea says.  She has to half-shout to be heard over the wind, but even still, this conversation is safer out here where the others won’t overhear.

She’s probably not wrong.  There are two suns yet to rise, and with the galesun set to be around the longest, the only thing I expect to still be standing by the end of the season is the fort’s walls and hopefully the interior structure.  But that personal burning need to save these people doesn’t actually extend to any real ideas.

All I can do is continue to work my magic, to do what I can, to try to think of something.  The sudden reminder of the need to actually act pushes me to peer into my reserves, and see that many of them are close to full.  I put part of my thoughts to work, using several spells together, to add to the fortified ring of Stone Pylons that are slowly but inexorably gathering Drain Health to strike down any enemies that approach our territory.

I wish I could not imagine someone approaching our territory under these conditions.

Almost as if summoned by the hostile thought, there is a thud on the reinforced wood of the rampart.  The bee, the beautiful and cunning creature that they are, recognizes the impact Mela makes on vibration alone.  Yuea doesn’t, and I can see her start to twitch for a weapon before I pulse general reassurance to her through Amalgamate Human.

I’m trying not to use that to talk to her or Kalip.  It is too much like giving orders that cannot ever be countermanded or ignored.

Mela lands from her leap, rolling and kicking up to a casual walking stance, strolling toward Yuea like the girl is unaffected by the whipping gusts that tug at the salvaged clothing she’s wearing.  She wears a grin that could split a mountain in half, so pleased with herself.  “Look what I can do!”  She announces herself to Yuea.

“She’s cheating.”  Yuea gripes to me.  “I don’t know how, because you won’t fucking tell us, but I know she’s cheating.”

She just jumped almost three lengths straight up, of course she’s cheating.  Yuea doesn’t see my written note, and I make a glimmerling somewhere roll its eye so I can feel brief catharsis by proxy.

“You’re supposed to be resting.”  Yuea used her command voice, the kind of heavy bark that the woman put on when she was giving orders without any expectation of being disobeyed.

Which was, of course, the wrong thing to do with a hero.  I didn’t know how much I should tell her, didn’t know if any small pieces of information might ruin Mela’s own journey and progress.  But heroes, historically, did not do well being told not to do things.

“I’m fine.”  Mela responded instantly.  “I’m not even hurt.  And if I was, it wouldn’t stick.”  She looked so much healthier now than the half-starved fisher girl who I’d met only a season ago.  “There’s a wolv around.  A real one, whatever that means.  I’m going to go scare it off, but she said I needed to tell you first.”

Yuea scowls down at the bee, who meets her eyes knowing that it’s not the actual target for the woman’s ire.

Under her hand, I sketch words into the structure she’s leaning on.  I have to work off of memory, which might make the letters shaky, but this way she can peek, and not show Mela.  This is how heroes grow.  I tell her.

Yuea doesn’t stop scowling.  But she does nod at Mela, accepting the girl’s words.  “Take one of the lancers with you.”  Mela brightens at being taken seriously, and puts up no argument as she drops sideways off the platform and bounds across the courtyard.  My bee, at my direction, buzzes irately at her.  “This is how you grow, too.”  Yuea says.  “I don’t know what the difference is, but it-“

She cuts off as a howl opens nearby, the galesun creating a wind point only a handful of lengths away from the wall.  If I had the bee look at it, we might be able to see the distortion rotate as it roared wind into the world, but I don’t, because now is the perfect time to hunker behind the wall.

The trees near the point have branches snapped and whipped through the air almost right away, sticks that verge on logs thunder against the fort like rain, with a particularly leafy bough slapping Yuea in the face even as she catches it before it can spear her.  Then there is a pause, as the spot rotates, and then the wind is back.  I count the second rotation out, and realize it must be almost level with the ground; three times as long away from us as toward.

Yuea is yelling something as she crouches near the bee, something about killing that for more magic, as if I have any kind of ability to murder a weather event.  She may as well ask me to stop a sunny day.

When I feel my connection to the tethers that Bind Crop has created waver, I try anyway.

The farm plots, painstakingly put together by Jahn and the others he’s been guiding through learning to become farmers, are not built to stand up to this level of wind so close.  The exhalation of the galesun, like a sweeping blade moving slowly in a perfect circle, touches with every pass on the high walls I’ve built around the plots to keep them safe.

Fortify Space doesn’t keep the wind out.  Though I am starting to believe that it keeps points from forming inside my domain, which is madness, as it means my magic is holding back the galesun.  But it doesn't stop the wind itself.  And the walls, with their open holes to keep the farm plots tethered to Bind Crop, don’t protect the soil and irrigation from something so direct.

I can feel the farms being uprooted, torn apart, wind spilling in with each pass.  More than that, through Claim Construction, I can see my walls breaking.  I cannot build the way the fort’s creators could, even with my magic, and my defenses may as well be paper before the galesun’s winds.

And while I always knew that I’d have to abandon the farm plots as the storm season progressed, I had hoped it wouldn’t be this soon.  And so I don’t simply let it happen.  I push back, with the tools I happen to have.

Fortify Space is first, because I think it has the best chance of working.  The bee on the wall with Yuea, at my urging, wavers to their feet and moves to peep between the parapets.  Yuea sees it, and grabs a nearby shield off the secure rack with fingers that clench too strongly on the straps.  She leans into the wind, catching loose rocks and twigs turned into bolts by the storm, shielding my eyes.

Looking through the bee, I judge roughly the number of lengths between here and the distortion.  Confirm my accuracy with See Domain, tracing mental lines out from myself, to where I want my magic to go.  My body is close enough that I can reach it, I simply need to put the spell where it belongs.

All the math the merchant hated learning and the cleric loved teaching gives me what I think is an accurate estimation.  And it is; I get it right on the first try.

And then I have to smother my connections to my bound at once, for fear that I might inflict my pain upon them.  Fortify Space spills out, the empty nothing something that powers it flowing like no water in the world as the spell attempts to resolve a discrepancy.

There is simply too much space to fortify.  I cannot say what the galesun does, not even the scholar with a lifetime of knowledge of natural philosophy could answer that.  But I now know, painfully, achingly, that whatever it is doing, it does not want to be influenced by a lonely apparatus.  Every dram of my magic splashes into the targeted area, and instead of imposing a quiet and peaceful order upon the world, it is nothing more than a raindrop hitting a pond.  There is a domain there, so large that See Domain doesn’t even let me feel the edges of it, but I know the sensation I am pushing against.  And I cannot, out of reflex or magical compulsion or perhaps simply the nature of the spell I have purchased from some unknown place, cannot stop pushing.

After what feels like candles, but is really only heartbeats, Fortify Space is empty and dry, and the magic stops, as does the pain.

The wind pauses just long enough for Yuea to lower her shield and peek.  Then it howls back to life, kicking up a spray of grit from the dirt road out of the fort’s front gate.

I feel like I want to sleep for a week.  Drained and enervated.  But I am a spinning mass of crystal, and sleep is not my life anymore.  So I try other things, lashing out with Drain Endurance, Sever Command, even Form Party just to see if it will work.

Nothing does.  Nothing even connects like Fortify Space did.

“Fuck the wind!”  Yuea is shouting at me.  “I take it back!  Get something up around your fucking yams!”

I latch onto her words, the command guiding me to swift action.  If I can’t stop the wind at the source, I can at least keep the farms from utter destruction.  Form Wall dips into the massive reserve of raw stone I have pulled from the ground, and begins to grow a low barrier between the galesun’s maw and the farm plots.  The soul of Ingenuity is strong enough that I can spend the magic liberally to correct for the pressure of the winds, but I still am not fast enough on the first pass.  Not fast, or not clever enough; a portion of the wall being toppled as it reaches too high without being braced properly.

Part of me wants to react with anger, a primal urge to kick something inanimate that has wronged me.  But that won’t help anyone.  Instead I steady my focus, and continue letting From Wall set a line in the dirt between the wind and the growing food supply.  Imbue Mending will make the wall hold itself together, and Link Spellwork lets me cast a Congeal Mantra through Claim Construction so that the wall can learn how to hold itself together.  And while the wall learns, so do I.  Thickness is important, but I need to be economical.  I lose a few stones that I reabsorb with Collect Material, but I’m growing in confidence as the construction progresses.

The farms come out of this damaged, their own walls cracked and wobbling, the low winds that are omnipresent in the air continuing to batter them.  But this source of the storm will at least not ruin everything today.  And all it cost was two day’s supply of five different spells, and the inconvenience of a stone barrier cutting across the main route through the valley floor.

All that is needed now is to hope that the galesun doesn’t simply open another distortion two lengths away and start the process all over again.

“That’s not gonna hold!”  Yuea yells.  I’m not sure who she’s yelling to, but I agree, and I send a pulse of acknowledgement to her.  “Get Jahn and the gobs out here!  We need to bring in everything now, before it’s too late!”

The farmer I was knows not to trust Yuea with any matters of the soil.  But this is less about weather patterns and more like siegecraft.  And she’s right.

Bees and beetles alert people across the fort, small notes written out for them to read.  My messengers begin to assemble a group to pick the last harvest we’re going to get this year.

No matter how much faith in me Yuea has, I cannot fight the storm.  Only delay it, briefly.

But that seems to be enough, regardless.

A point of power forms amid my souls, motes shaken from the wind and the world by the change I impose.  Then another.  By the time the harvest is done, and the bursts of soft motes have finished erupting from every yam and carrot and eliee that we’re growing with Bind Crop, I have a third.  And for as long as the wall stands, holding the wind off and filling its role, Claim Construction feeds a steady supply of new motes back to me.  They mingle with the constant string from the fort itself, from my myriad promises that I am struggling to keep on top of, from the constant push against the way of the world.

Yuea wants me to be stronger.  But I think what we’ve both missed, is that the fastest way for that to happen, is for me to be smarter.  To struggle and achieve in spite of circumstance.  Or, at the very least, to not lose it all outright.

It’s going to take more struggling to keep everyone alive.  But as long as I can avoid losing, maybe, just maybe, we can live long enough to count it as a win.