Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 117 (Patreon)

Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

Available Power : 5

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)

A quiet day of recovery, and another point coalesces.  The ambient harvest of owning the fort itself has been continually providing me with motes, and while I can’t prove anything without a way to measure any of my soul’s odd abstractions, I believe that they are better somehow.  The light dusting of them that I pull inward has a steady rate, but as light after light of power stacks up, each mote from the fort has the same proportional effect as it used to.

This is distinctly unlike how many other things have been.  My barely founded suspicion that would make some of my past lives flinch at the lack of rigor is that the fort is one of the largest influences I’ve had so far.  Each spell inflicts change on the world in its own way, but Claim Construction has never had a bounty quite this heavy before.  Beehives and makeshift bridges were never going to be fonts of power for me.  But here, this place, is the site of a critical battle, a home and a refuge, stolen from a distant nation and a dead creator of monsters.

Or maybe it’s simply very large.  When I have time, and there isn’t an omnipresent light gale occuring, I should try to apply the largest Form Wall that I can, and see if it brings the same harvest.

My growing emotional exhaustion is making my thoughts stray.  Or at least, that is what I tell myself.  I’m certain that I have always been properly focused on the task at hand.  And while my actual ability to think has not seemed to grow over time with my magical might, my ability to split my focus and build new and strange reflexes has.

Which is why I am focusing properly on three other things, aside from how important the fort itself is.

One is the continual production of Stone Pylons, though these ones are of a different variety.  Instead of the defensive Drain Health, I am giving each of my creations Fortify Space.  It won’t be my domain, but I do not care.  Each of them is dropped in the nearby green, planted in strategic spots that my glimmerlings give me sight of and that the farmer and cleric’s old knowledge of the land help me to pick.  I leave them active, to spread out their rings of territory.  If an intruder gets past the outer defensive ‘wall’ of Drain Health pylons, then they will find these seeds ready to be chewed up with almost no resistance.  But it’s not for them.  It’s for the galesun.

I could feel it.  I cannot comprehend how vast and terrible it was, but I could feel it through See Domain.  I know that doesn’t make it an apparatus like myself; the court mages that twisted Yuea and Kalip into obedient puppet soldiers left their own touch of a domain, for example.  But that is my point; the domain I imprinted was able to fight off their hostile magic.  The galesun isn’t a natural effect.

The galesun is magic.  And outside magic is not allowed in a Fortify Space territory.

I worry about annoying it, because if that happens, it is simply over.  I cannot fight the galesun anymore than I can fight the howling teeth.  I struggle to fight singular specimens of wildlife, I am in no condition to battle geography.  But if it doesn't care, then all this will mean is that the breaches that open in the green around us will, slowly, be focused away from the worst areas.  Winds will be slowly pushed away from the easy paths of travel, and then out of the valley entirely.

It’s not fast, and it might not work, but if I can have it done before even one of the other suns rises, it could be our salvation.

And it’s only one of the things I am working on.  Because as too many past lives learned the hard way, betting your survival on a single key element is an excellent way to end up dead for a while.

Most of my actual thoughts dwell on the Form Party bond between myself and Lutra.  We have limited time, but the other apparatus has never been in a healthy state of mind, so communication is… frustrating.  I am trying, so very very hard, to not be frustrated with them.  At least one of their lives was a child, and the person they are now was trapped in their own dark prison for far longer than I was.

And yet, I need their skill and attention.  But I cannot rely on it.

“Look!  Look!”  Their voice rings across our connection.  Lutra is the only one who can survive sharing Form Party with me, so even while annoyed with their distracted words and fending off old thoughts from the merchant about optimal use of time, I still cherish being able to hear them myself.

And to speak as well.  “I cannot look, I’m afraid.  The storms keep even the heaviest of my creations from nearing your lake safely.”  I pause momentarially, before asking something I hope will be taken well.  “It may be worth considering moving you to be with the rest of us.”

I am concerned that Lutra might think we are trying to trap them, or hurt them.  But also, I am afraid that Yuea will find out I have made the offer, and be irate with me.

Lutra solves the problem by ignoring my comment entirely.  “The winds are bad!”  They give me the impression of a child folding their arms and pouting.  Form Party tells me of their well being, their general location, and also their broad emotional state.  But while that last part is rather difficult to pin down, the other apparatus makes use of it almost expertly to broadcast their feelings to me.  “They tried to throw all the sand off part of my lake!  And they pushed a tree over!  The long fish hurt their teeth trying to save me from it!”

This I had not heard.  “Are you alright?”  I try not to let my alarm come through.  “Did your eels recover?”

“I got rid of it!”  Lutra tells me.  “I’m getting rid of all the things that fall in now!”

“That is… very good.”  I pull back some of the part of my mind that is listening to Sharpen and Seraha work out rationing, and trying to recruit Dipan to explain it to the children.  This seems like it will require more effort to parse.  “How are you doing that?”

“Magic!”  Lutra cheerfully tells me with childlike glee.  “My children always knew I was a grimlady.  No, no... someone else thought that.  Why do I think that?”

My frustration leaves me.  It is so hard to be angry at someone confused and hurting.  “Calm yourself, little one.”  I say gently.  “You remember different lives, but they’re not you.  Think of them as very vivid stories.”

“…okay…” Lutra sounds so small.  “I’m sorry.   I’m sorry.  You told me to ask you about magic, and I didn’t.  I did something wrong.”

“You chose a new spell.”  A gentle smile pushed across the bond.  Comfort to remind them that it is going to be alright.  “It sounds as though you acted with good reason.  Never think that you need my permission to take action when it is required.  Though I would be pleased to know what you chose.”

Lutra’s emotions shift again, fear and anxiety fluttering away as they lose focus on why they were upset to begin with.  “Consume Organic!”  They tell me.  “I can eat now!  I eat all the bad plants in the lake!  Only the ones that are supposed to be here are allowed!  But I can’t eat those, because then the big fish would get hungry, and they like the floating dark ones, so I can’t eat those.”

That must be a spell under their soul of Vibrancy, as it is not one I’ve seen, and I know Lutra’s other souls are not as reinforced as my own.  I allow myself a small moment of jealousy, because the way they phrase things, it sounds as though they are actually eating, and while I’m not eager for the taste of tree bark, I wish I could taste anything at all.

Whatever an apparatus of change is, my mind is not meant to be deprived of sensation for so long.  And I have a sudden longing to sink my own fangs into anything and drain it of flavor and blood.

But that will have to wait.  Perhaps I can ask Kalip if he would mind me sharing his senses more fully for dinner tonight.  A frivolous use of Amalgamate Human when so much of it is needed to keep Yuea from ripping her own body apart training, but perhaps one that I need.

I again reassure Lutra that things are fine as I extract the details from them, the singer’s mastery of teasing secrets out of people helping guide my words.  By pure chance, or perhaps a weaving of fortune, Consume Organic is almost exactly what I need right now.  Unlike the spells I have that collect, the material eaten doesn’t go anywhere.  Instead, in confused words, Lutra explains that it burns like a deepwell, and is slowly ground down into more of the nothingness that gives our magics life.

It is a way to turn all of the green into fuel.  Not just for the fires that warm the fort as the temperatures drop, but for the magic that lets us persevere.  More than that, it opens up an opportunity for learning, and practice.  Something Lutra needs more than I do, perhaps.

They begin complaining very quickly as we start working through different permutations of how they can use Form Sphere.  The child part of them sees it as work, another part of them sees it as altering their lake beyond the aesthetic they want.  I try not to sigh, keeping my emotions steady so that Form Party doesn’t drain away any faster trying to keep up with my thoughts, and we switch to Small Trade instead.

I give Lutra some of the yams that I have previously acquired with Collect Plant, and we confirm that they can use Consume Organic on those as well.  We also establish that at least one of their lives has an unhappy relationship with yams.  Either that, or every demon, human, and gob in our group has been covering up the fact that my yams taste like ash and preventing me from taking action to fix that.

In exchange, Small Trade gives me back twenty yams worth of Hear Intent.  And here I learn something else; Small Trade might require that a trade be made within certain parameters, but by no means is this a fair trade.  The merchant never much dealt with charms or glowing tools, but she knew very well the value of magic placed into objects.  Twenty yams could buy you permission to look at a low quality charm until the seller became bored with you.  Touching it would run you two units of yams in the thousands, and you’d have to deliver them yourself.

I put aside my frustration with how our magic assigns value to things, and practice with Hear Intent while I set Lutra to the task of thinking of new ways to use their own magics.  Practice might be the wrong term; it’s more application.

While the refugees - mostly soldiers - who we’ve taken in have begun to accept their situation and each other, tensions are still high.  Kalip and Mela each helped me prune away the ones that were planning to actually kill me, or others in my care, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is suddenly happy.

And so I roam the halls of the fort, aiming magic out through the pattern of the structure with a combination of Link Spellwork and Claim Construction.  Listening in, partly reveling in hearing voices and feeling the sensation myself, and partly satisfying my curiosity on the feelings of those residing here.

It is a strange thing, to hear intentions.  And this is no way to unravel a conspiracy, I realize.  I would need to apply it when there is actual planning happening, or when it comes time for action.  Now, I hear small intents.  Not a running narration of their lives, but the choices they are making ahead of time.  Someone is going to turn left and not right and take the path through the outside despite the wind.  Someone is going to skip lunch.  Someone is going to dare to seek approval to lead martial practice inside to stave off boredom.  Someone is going to hit someone.

I cross reference where I am hearing that last one with the eyes and ears of my insect bonded.  And then double check through the information that Amalgamate Human offers me.  It’s Yuea.  I’m hearing Yuea.

Such a simple thing.  But so powerful.  I have a hard time thinking that Lutra made poor choices with their spells, when so many of them seem to let them escape the dark.  Oh, I can feel through my bonded, in so many different ways.  But it really is different.  It’s not me.  This is, even borrowed as it is.

Then the traded portion of Hear Intent runs out, and the spell’s formation in my inner world crumbles away.  A few soft motes escape it as it fails, some to me, others to Lutra.  The vast potential of what we’re learning irrelevant to the actual real change inflicted, it seems.

“Thank you for that.”  I tell Lutra, reigniting Form Party to check in with them, keeping an eye on just how much of the spell I have left and finding it dipping closer to my safety margin.  “I would like to trade for more of that spell, when you have it.  Or, perhaps you do now.  How much magic does a single yam provide when Consume Organic is applied to it?”

I get the impression of feet shuffling in anxious patterns, a strong and complex emotion pulling at the edges of Form Party. “Oh.  Oh, oh…” Lutra sounds distressed.  “I did not check.  I did not like the yams, I gave them away.  Oh!  But a limb of one of the very sappy trees restores two claws worth of a small spell!”

I have been things with claws before, but I do not know how much that is meant to measure.  That also isn’t what I am most concerned with.  Something else is of critical importance in that sentence.  “Lutra, you have done nothing wrong, but I would like you to tell me who you gave the yams to.”  I keep my voice calm, and abandon fully the meeting I’ve been putting less and less of my focus into at the fort.

“The long fish!”  Lutra happily announces.  “They like them!  They think they taste better than the clear plants or the dark plants or the slimy plants.  Can I have more?”

“…I will trade you several for temporary use of an eel.”  I offer.

Lutra’s magic strikes at me across the bond a short moment later.  Small Trade isn’t something I can actually deny, which makes it a worrying magic in terms of what could go wrong if Lutra loses themself or errs.  But when terms are arranged, it seems to take the path of least resistance.  A collection of yams leaves my inner realm, and a specific sliver of Bind Fish appears, along with one connection.

I look through the bond with the eel, borrowing senses and offering a balm of reassurance to it as it swims with its brothers and sisters.  The sensation is as odd as always; feeling the pressure of the water like a map around it, seeing only what moves as indistinct shapes to be targeted.

Then Lutra makes a Small Trade with the eel.  And I feel the creature weaken, tiring in a sudden burst of exhaustion as something vital and living is taken from it.

And a yam appears at its flank.

Well, something appears.  A small oblong shape that has a rough exterior and crunches satisfyingly in the eel’s vicious rows of teeth.  It tastes like uncooked yam.

“Please do that again.”  I ask Lutra, abandoning every other project I have to focus.

And they do, satisfying my curiosity.  When Small Trade takes objects from me and gives them to Lutra, they appear in the same form.  The various plants I’ve had equally varied reasons for acquiring do not reappear in the world; instead, they reform in Lutra’s version of their thoughts.  Just like with myself, their magics can influence or work with the various things, but no amount of pushing or pulling with my will alone has ever let me move something out into the waking world on its own.

But some things can.  Form Wall, Spawn Golem, Stone Pylon, these magics can take from what I have stolen, and give it back.  So I knew it was possible.  But you cannot build a wall out of yams; the magic knows, and rebels against the attempt.

And Lutra has had the key this whole time.  It’s so simple, I wish I had the opportunity to cry.

“Lutra.  Do you know the eel that we keep in the tub at the fort?”

“Yes!  They are special, they grow on the inside not the outside so they don’t overflow!”  I can feel Lutra’s attention flicker.  “They are listening to the angry lady now.  She is talking about shirts.”

I clearly haven’t been paying attention myself.  I ask Oob for an update on what Yuea is yelling about in my study, and the beetle rapidly figures out what I am actually asking for, communicates with his fellow listener beetles, and composes a brief report for me that would make the soldier’s old senior officer weep with joy if she’d ever given scouting intelligence that effectively.  It’s not Yuea, but Dipan, and he’s mostly talking to himself as he looks over my own notes on the fort’s inventory.  Oob sums it up for me, and I reward him with the strongest thanks I can push across our bond.  Dipan is upset because the forts stores weren’t exactly in good condition when we arrived, and the thirty extra people have utterly exhausted them.  There aren’t enough blankets, and the surviving clothing is well into wearing out, especially with the constant danger everyone is in.  A few people have some experience patching holes, but at a certain point, the thread and cloth is going to run out, and that point is fast approaching.

It’s another problem to solve, but it’s one for the future.  Right now, I get Dipan’s attention with a trio of inkrats that I command out of the drawer they’re residing in, their semi liquid forms moving into his line of sight and getting a drained look that clearly says “What now?”  Then he echos those words out loud.

Shift Wood works with my ever-improving skill to etch out a message for him.  You may feel tired in a moment.  I write.  But tell me… No, not me.  I smooth the words out, and abandon euphemism for clarity.  Tell Lutra, through their eel, clearly.  How many candlemarks of rest would you give for a hundred yams?

“A hundred?  That’s, what, something like two days of food for everyone, isn’t it?  The weird ones you grow anyway.”  Dipan taps his chin, the skinny scarred man looking like he’s actually considering the value proposition.  I applaud his commitment to actually answering the question with intellect, but I wish he wouldn’t take the time right now.  “A full night, I suppose. A real full night.  That’d be about worth it, if I get to nap afterward and not have to tell the whelps that they need to go hungry for the rest of the season.”

“Lutra.”  I call across our tether.  “Did you hear?”

“Oh, oh, I see!”  They dance with their words.  And despite the drain of the emotional connection, I dance with them.

It takes a few more words and a small amount of explaining, and by the time we’ve arranged the first step, Form Party is well below where I would normally keep it and heading for empty.  But Lutra now contains almost everything edible that I possess.  Possessed, rather.

And then both of us watch through different bonded creatures as Dipan abruptly ceases worrying about how many pairs of boots they have, and drops to the floor in a limp pile of a man.  Concurrent with his fall, a hundred rough skinned pale pink yams, cleansed of dirt at least, pile over his unconscious body like a burial cairn.

Communication through Amalgamate Human is still limited to vague impressions, and puppetry orders.  But I still manage to send Yuea and Kalip running for the source of the abrupt thump with a brief pulse of my own intent.  They’ll make sure Dipan doesn’t die buried in the answer to one problem.

Relief floods me, even as I say goodnight to Lutra and promise to speak with them again soon.  We don’t have time to make arrangements, but I wager my hope and trust against their damaged souls that they will understand what they can do to help and act on their own.

One problem is not solved.  I will still need to secure more sources of food to pass on through this method.  But now, Distant Vision, Link Spellwork, and Collect Plant will be able to replace foraging parties.  No more losing lives for half full baskets of food.  No more worrying if starvation will kill them all before the monsters do.

Now all that is left to fear is those monsters themselves.  And the wind spear that I witness through Distant Vision as I sweep it across the green on my constant patrol for any approaching threats.  The galesun might be the weakest of the three this storming, but sometimes these things happen anyway, and the line of blackened air cuts through the forest with callous hostility, ripping up trees and boulders, flinging every bird and bug and animal it encounters into the air, most of them dead from the sheer force before they even have a chance to crash back to the ground.

Mixed into the casualties, I witness dozens of crawling beasts with flexible pale limbs and spined shells.  I’ve seen them before, at the outset of this new life.  But never encountered what was making them, only the aftermath of their assault on the demon’s that were running as fast as the humans I met first.

Well.  Maybe the sky will take their creator, too.  It would be a start of an apology from the galesun for what it’s already taken from me.

The catharsis from the crumbling stress has left me now energized enough to be angry.  But I cannot afford the luxury of indignity at the moment.

I turn back to my own spells, and my own work.  What is needed will never have an end, unless I make one.  And my goal will never be reached if all I do is complain.  Step by step, day by day, we will make it through the end of this storming, and everything else as well.