Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 119 (Patreon)

Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

Available Power : 6

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)

“Hey Sparkly.”  Yuea’s voice sounds distant as she calls to me, but in no way missing any of her familiar bitter humor.

I cast around the myriad windows that show me pieces of outside within my mind.  The small openings that my magic uses to allow in sensation from my bound, and information from my spells.  A strange mix of tactility that still is so alien from simply being able to touch things, even as I become accustomed to it.

And I find that I cannot find.  Yuea is not with any of the charmed bees that live within the fort.  She is absent from my study and the inkrat glimmerlings therein.  The commander is not within view of the pair of watcher golems I have made for the high walls of the fort, the dumb constructs slowly sweeping visual sensors that aren’t even a little bit like eyes across the terrain that surrounds us, feeding that ‘sight’ back to me in harsh colorless impressions.  Nor is she within earshot of Oob or Oop or any of my other cadre of intelligence beetles.

That is… impressive.  Just to be certain, I double check that Yuea is not accompanying one of the platoons of resin glimmerlings as they patrol our ‘border’.  If she is, she’s doing a fine job of hiding from them, though the creatures are of limited value as scouts despite their large singular eye.

“Shiny.  You there?”  Her voice, again sounding distant, like I am hearing her from the other end of a cave, comes to me.

There’s no urgency in her words, but I feel some all the same.  My attempts to locate Yuea become slightly more rapid.  I apply my developing tactic of using slightly overlapping and moving casts of Know Material to sweep through the fort, looking for pockets where cloth, leather, and metal spike upward briefly denoting a singular armed individual.  Anywhere I find, I cross reference with any lancer bees in the area, enlisting my bound to help me search for our wayward soldier.

This actually works surprisingly well, but only at finding Kalip and Mela.  I do decide to practice this more until I can do it on reflex and not simply when I put my full focus into it.  It would be a useful tool that would make use of one of my lesser spells, and when every spell used means the faster formation of a point of power, that has value indeed.

Where is Yuea though?

”I’m right here.”  She tells me, and I get a sensation for her presence atop the corner of the wall of the fort that faces the cliff we sit in the shadow of.  “So you can hear me?”

I can, yes.  But figuring out how I am doing that is causing me some annoyance.  Unless…

The fact that it takes me any amount of time at all to sort through the pieces of magical operations within my mind is a strong testament to just how much I have grown.  But once that sorting is done, the activity becomes clear to see.  Many of my spells move without my attention; motes seep in from my glimmer and mantra or walls and cheap blades being used, my bound draw from me, my promises flex and bend like trees in the wind.

And my bound, of course, send back information.  Sights and sounds that I can live through, in small ways.  With the bees and beetles, it was easy, early on, to simply snatch those senses.  But as I have tried more to respect my bound, especially as they grow into more deeply thinking creatures, and I grow to understand the majestic perfected patterns that bees live within, I chose a different method.  Asking.  Asking, and letting them choose how to share it back to me.

For bees that had ‘grown up’ learning how to do it, it didn’t take long to master, and from there, they continued to give me their emotions, and later thoughts, as they developed them.  But for Yuea and Kalip… I have intentionally been avoiding taking from them.  Partly out of respect, partly because doing it intentionally taxes Amalgamate Human far too much for safety.  Yuea herself still draws down seven or eight parts out of every ten just for her recovery as she overuses her body, and I do not believe that is a new development just because I altered her now having grown to know her more closely.

But when a bound shares with me, it costs the spell almost nothing.  Though it does cause movement.  Which is why I now see Yuea talking to me, directly.  Replying to me.

I find Yuea, sitting with her legs crossed, a focused glare on her face as her eyes stare unfocused at the distant dark sky where a cyclone is ripping through the green two thousand lengths away.  I see this because she sees this, and her focus is sharing it with me, I feel how it makes her itch to sit still because she feels restless.  I have always left our bond open, though largely unused, but there has never been time to explore it.  Now, though… she replied to me.  Can she hear me?

”Yup.”  She says the word out loud, and I realize why it sounds distant.  I am hearing her speak to herself.

”But you’re also hearing me.”  I say.  I say.  I don’t write, or carve, or command, or impress.

”Oh, that’s… is that what you sound like?”  Yuea grunts, one hand wiping at her forehead and in the process accidentally scoring a lightly bleeding line across her skin with one of her nails.  It begins to heal almost instantly as she draws on the magic that made her this way.  “Not what I expected.”

I’m not sure why I ever expected gravitas from this woman.  ”Apologies for failing to impress.”  I tell her.

”I’ll recover.”  She snorts.  “Just wanted to see if this worked.”

”It does.  It… feels nice.”  It feels like something I’ve never had in this life.  The chance to speak to someone, as a peer.  There have only been two people I’ve actually talked to before now; one who was using me as an elaborate method of suicide, and one who is a somewhat unstable apparatus themself.  I don’t count the bees yet, though some of them may be there soon.  And I certainly don’t count the false promises of the scourge apparatus we killed.  “It has been a very long time since I’ve simply spoken for no reason.”

Yuea closes our eyes.  “Don’t get used to it.”  She says.  “I killed another of those lizard things.  Like the one that Lutra caught when they started doing the orb thing.”

”Oh. The sphere’s aren’t the source of… it doesn’t matter.  Where was it?”  This does explain why there was a thicker influx of motes from Amalgamate Human earlier.  A little extra going toward the ignition of another point of power, thanks to Yuea’s aggressive defense.

A much more complex impression comes across as Yuea talks to me.  A relative position, somewhere past the lake, deeper into the Green, but sideways.  If I were Yuea, I could walk there.  But I’m not sure that Yuea’s speed translates well to mapping the site out.  “It was wounded.  But not from the wind, some kind of weapon.  Axe, most likely.  Which means…”  She doesn’t trail off so much as she falters in her expression across our mystic tether.

I pick up the meaning though.  “Either two others like me are warring, or there are other survivors out there.”

”…not humans.  Or at least, not the Empress’ finest.  Can you look for them?”

There’s a kind of naked emotion to her question that Yuea doesn’t actually reveal normally.  But here, when she’s speaking like this, I don’t just hear her, but know what she’s really feeling alongside it.   The words are casual, almost dismissive.  A tactical consideration.  But in her heart, hidden almost even from herself, Yuea thinks every living person on this wretched world is worth saving from the violence that has erupted.  She wants me to say yes, even though it might be the wrong strategy to bring in more people when we’ve only just figured out how to barely stay fed.

So I say yes.  “I can look for them.  Resins are already moving.”  Reasons clash in my thoughts.  “At the very least, a patrol in that direction is needed, now that we know for certain there is at least one hostile thing there.  And perhaps… this will be an opportunity to empower myself in my favored method.”

”What, promising people you’ll help them then helping them?”  Yuea sounds sarcastic and bitter, but she wishes that her own life had lived up to that promise.

I answer her feelings, not her words.  “It is never too late.”  I say.  The words seem to surprise her enough that her focused state wavers and threatens to break.  But I interrupt her inner turmoil as something else calls my attention.  “Ah.  As it turns out, while my Stone Pylons make a poor defensive wall, they make an excellent net.  And something has just crossed it.”

”Ash and tar, don’t say things that way!”  Yuea snaps, wincing as she clutches her forehead.

I make a note to not speak spell names to her.  “Apologies.  But please prepare our forces, as I try to determine what is headed this way.”  All I know is that something triggered the Drain Health slowly building in two of my pylons, and aiming Distant Vision at a Stone Pylon is actually rather difficult.  So I am sweeping the spell across our border, looking for the incursion, and wasting precious time that an enemy might spend escaping my range.

When I spy the things coming our way, I feel an initial burst of terror that Drain Health may have just ripped pieces of life away from a band of refugees.  They stumble down the narrow trail that runs through the Green where there used to be a calcified thoroughfare for the last invading army.  The living environment has long since reclaimed it to a point, but has left just enough spaces that it is easier to hike through than much of the thicker vegetation surrounding it.

Humans and demons, wearing torn rags and staggering as they move.  They are quickly leaving the range of Distant Vision as they push closer toward the fort.  But… something is wrong.

They’re all staggering.  This isn’t how Drain Health would have worked; it would have killed some and harmed one or two others.  There isn’t really a condition that would spread it out like this.  The Pressure Triggers are too far from the pylons.

My mind sharpens, fear pushed aside by a sudden concern as I take in details.  They carry almost nothing, they have made no effort to fix their damaged clothing, some of them even tromp along with a single missing shoe, they don’t react to bugs clinging to them, roots grabbing their ankles, or shifts in the wind pushing them about.  The only thing any of them is holding is one in the center that walks with a little more certainty, something like a solid puddle of oil held out in front of them in a broken hand.

And all of that is secondary to their eyes.  Every one of them, their eyes are locked ahead of their group’s path with a sinister motive.  The same look in every eye.

See Commands tells me almost nothing.  They have been giving an impulse to follow something, and to… it is hard to explain.  It’s almost like a form of reporting back, but I can’t understand it.  The order is jumbled in what passes for their minds, though I’m not sure my magic even sees their minds at all.

I would attempt to Sever Command one of them to test what I suspect, but that would give away too much too soon.  So instead, I draw on Follow Prey to mark the incoming warband, and focus on their location, marking it on our strategic map as they move and as the others begin to gather in my den.  A lesser used spell itself, but one I am finding is going to be quite useful whenever anything slips through my border.

Maybe that’s what I need.  Not a wall of Stone Pylons, but a series of watchtowers.  They tell me nothing except when they trigger, but even that is enough to point me in the right direction, or tell me to look at all.  And from there, Follow Prey lets us watch the enemy close in.

For a time at least.

I will not be able to maintain this.  I have no Trepidation of my own, only the stolen spell, so it recovers quite slowly.

”How many?”  Kalip asks.  I hear him through the inkrats as he pulls himself up onto my study’s balcony and into the room, and not through our bond, which is a strange difference.  I also hear his rumbling almost-growl as he breathes from the exertion, the wolv part of him at work.  “And what are they?”

Thirty six.  The number is easy enough to pick out from the threads of Follow Prey.  They are dead.

”Already?”  Mela joins her mentor in scowling at our map of the local Green, though her glower is less grumpy and more eager to fight.  How quickly a child with a sword believes herself invincible.  “Are you working faster today?”

Before she can start to relax, I disabuse her of the notion that the battle is over.  They are dead, and there are thirty six of them walking toward us.  That I have found so far.  Even now, my clusters of glimmerlings scramble across the forest ground to track them and perhaps engage ahead of the others.  The winds are mercifully low today, so the heavy resin creations can rush without fear of anything except being mistakenly stomped by one of the larger residents of the Green.  Ah.  I write so close to reflexively as my bound tools find another group of them.  They are still fifty lengths from the group I am tracking.  Another… twenty five.  The same composition as the first group.  Moving corpses, puppeted in our direction.

”The commander did complain about fighting skeletons at one point.  Fool me, assumed she was talking about people starving.”  Kalip flicks his tongue over a sharpened tooth.  “Where is she?  Yuea?”

Taking my instruction literally and arming our fellow survivors.  I still cannot grumble effectively through just carved text, but I think Kalip takes my attitude, especially when the inkrats around the table settle back on their hind legs and cross their whip-like black tails in my indignation.  She has a group of twenty, including my lancers, preparing to move.

Kalip is still frowning at the table as I make a mark on the side of the map to denote and explain the composition of Yuea’s makeshift army, and then add that mark to just above our fort.  “How do we kill walking corpses?  Wait, are they even enemies?”

”We should ask first.”  Mela says, like a beautifully naive waif.  “They might still be people?”

I do not believe they are people.  And I do not believe I wish to converse with an apparatus that uses corpses as either weapons or messengers.  But her words still make me hesitate to think; my initial options for reclaiming any sense of agency or even sensation were bugs or fish.  What if I had been born with a soul that only let me use bodies?  Would it really be so bad, if I made use of some of the growing ranks of the fallen in this time of upheaval?  Especially if I didn’t murder just to claim a corpse.

And yet.  They are not approaching with open intent under a banner.  Mela is right, they may not be enemies, but that is a larger number of bodies.  Some of them children.  And I am wary.

”I could go talk to them.”  Mela offers.  “With your help, they can’t catch me anyway if I need to run.  And it’s an easy way to find out.”

”Not yet.”  Kalip says, holding out a hand.  And then, remembering the bit of advice I felt it was safe to give him, he calmly explains himself instead of simply forbidding the nascent hero from doing something foolish but brave.  “We don’t even know if they’re going to find us.  Look at the lines so far.  If they follow places they can actually walk, it’s possible they skim off this valley.  No discovery, no fight.”

In a world where everyone has a high chance of being a deadly encounter, not being seen in the first place is a very strong defense.  But there’s only so long that works, especially as I spot and mark the path of a third group of ambulatory bodies.

So far, all of them have been demon and human.  Old, young, fit or frail, that doesn’t seem to matter much.  None of them are yet what I would call rotting exactly, but they all have wounds if I look closely enough, and their various furs have begun to fall out in clumps.  This pack I encounter by accident, and I have to simply freeze my glimmerlings in place and hope they go unnoticed amid the swaying branches and fluttering leaves as the group passes by.

Third group.  I write.  An unexpected trajectory.  They will be heading far deeper into the Green, missing both us and Lutra’s lake.

Kalip has stopped studying the map and instead looks at the rats.  Looks at me, like he’s searching for something.  “So do we approach, or not?”  The question is direct, and unwelcome.  I don’t have an answer.

Adding to my indecision is Yuea sending word that she will be ready to move her soldiers out in a quarter candlemark.  I don’t remember ever giving Yuea command of anyone actually, but I suppose the military survivors from both nations would fall into old routines well enough.  My bees I think are following her out of a need to make sure no one gets hurt, and it is through them that I see the last of the uncertain survivors truly start to understand our sincerity as the are handed weapons from the last of the armory’s supply of carbines and pikes.

Yuea doesn’t send word through our bond, or even the bees, though.  Instead it is one of the children running a message to my study.  Aware that they are helping with something important and eager to tell Kalip the news and participate, while also aware in that way children often are that the world might be about to fall apart once again.

My memories come to my aid again, old lives pushing and pulling me as they so often do.  Appropriately, the soldier, her life of professional combat demanding I find more information and more opportunity for value from this.  But oddly, something echos and reminds me of being the merchant as well.  Value, yes, but also… decisiveness.  The importance of making decisions even with incomplete information.  Because the worst thing that you can possibly do is to make no choice, and allow your opponents to make all the choices for you.  The merchant, she wasn’t exactly ruthless, but I believe Yuea would have liked her.

Mela.  Can you find your way to the splinter group?

”It’s going to be crossing one of the creeks that go into the big river, right?”  She traces her finger across the map.  “I can find it.  It’s almost a straight line.”  That’s a lie, she’s going to have to skip two switchbacks and a gulch, but I have a comforting amount of faith in the young woman.

Go, now.  Take some bees.  If they’re hostile, send the bees back into my reach to report as fast as they can go, then flee yourself away from our home.  Lead them on a fine chase.  If the galesun interferes, go to ground, don’t risk yourself.

Kalip barely has time to open is mouth before Mela nods to my glimmerlings, and then throws herself out of my balcony.  “I wish she’d stop doing that.”  He says with the frown still fixed on his face.

No you don’t.  You wish you could do that yourself.

”For someone who’s both a rock and a court lady, you seem out of patience.”  Kalip mutters.

Rocks are naturally impatient, they just can’t do anything about it.  And now I need you to move as well.  Stay within the distance of Amalgamate Human, but be ready to wipe out the far group.  Yuea and the others will hold off the rest only should they approach the fort, but I believe we can keep them as a defensive force.  There are other things moving in the Green, and I will not leave the others defenseless just to keep our home secret.

Kalip nods and starts to sketch a salute before halting himself.  “You’re just assuming I can do that.”

You’re the second most dangerous thing in this home of ours.  I tell him, truthfully.  I have seen what he can do, how he mimics my own magic with the mantra that is now part of his body, how he can turn an arrow into an explosion with a precisely violent thought.  And how he never seems to have a problem with the galesun when he is practicing on his targets deeper in the Green.  Now go.  Tell Yuea, as she is not in a state to hear me directly.

The lightly furred archer nods once stiffly, but takes a more sedate route out of our war room than Mela did, opting for the door and perhaps even stairs later, rather than simply throwing himself out of the broken window.

I reach out, to all the myriad senses I am slowly building.  To see the recovering prisoners and defiant refugees mustering in the courtyard under Yuea’s orders, to see the vegetation of the Green whipping past Mela’s companions as the lighter honeybees cling to her desperately, to see the movements of enemy soldiers through my own puppets.  To feel the tiny shifts in the world through the numbers of materials available, and the buildup of fluid nothing within my pylons.  To continue tracing the orders given around me, using See Commands in a new way as I stretch the spell like a thin cloth across a vast amount of terrain; unable to clearly see any specific order, but enough to tell me if orders are being given and in what direction.  Early warning if anything approaches.  Even Form Party is used to lightly inform Lutra of the potential threat, the small and frantic apparatus already beginning to pull themself to focus at my simple words.

No decision will be perfect.  Already, I feel that we need to adapt our plan as the inkling of something being given a command on the edge of my range comes to my attention.  More of us may die, or be harmed, or even simply break under pressure.  But we cannot simply do nothing.

Some of my spells, fully rested now, are prepared for violent action.  Kalip isn’t the only one who has been practicing his martial abilities.  And while he may have settled on thinking of me as a noblewoman, for some reason, I think that he is so willing to trust my orders because we both know the same thing.  My ire is directed now outward from these walls, and that is a terrible thing to cling to.  But all the same.

I am the most dangerous thing in this home.

Things may change, but no one is going to take it from me.