Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

  Available Power : 2

  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)

  Shape Metal (5, Shape)

  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)

  Distant Trajectory (6, Arcane)

  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 (1, War)

  Pressure Trigger (2, War)

  Blinding Trap (5, War)

  -

  Animosity : - -

  Amalgamate Human (3, Command)

  Congeal Burn (2, Command)

  Trepidation : -

  Follow Prey (2, Perceive)

  Yuea is watching the soldiers.

  I can feel it in her, even my continually sharpening mind stretched too thin to partition our emotions at the moment. The suspicion. The distrust. She thinks, without actually thinking it, that they are going to let her down.

  She is wrong. I have not secured Hear Plots for myself, but I don’t need it to see. They might fall in battle, they might be overrun, they might die. But they are not going to give up, and they are not going to turn on her.

  Yuea lacks faith. And I have been too long in talking to her about the root of that lack, which is burrowed deep in her misunderstanding about who and what she is. She lacks faith in herself, as anything more than a weapon.

  Oh, I would never tell her she is anything less than the finest weapon. But she has spent so long as a sword, she has forgotten that metal and wood can ever be anything else.

  Currently, she is standing on one of the fort’s highest sentry points, though standing is a charitable word. The tall rampart, one of the few left standing from the fort’s recent battles, is occupied by both one of my golems, and its potential operator. So Yuea is left crowded to the very edge, and seems to be relying on a belt full of glimmer to prevent her fall.

  Her gaze slowly slips away from the sheltered spaces between the buildings where our ragged army waits away from the growing effect of the rainsun. But when she turns, she first turns upward to stare at what some call the least violent of the storming suns, and what others would curse as the worst. The second sun up, it won’t be with us this year long enough to cause any truly catastrophic floods. But just the fact that it’s already stormraining in the Green means that our region of the world will be rather drenched by the time we’re done.

  And the commander is thinking the same thing, as she looks out over the half-cleared area around us. The growing walls of the farm, the fields now covered in ridges of earthworks to stall a massed enemy and make them easier targets, the towering trees beyond that will either survive or regrow so fast they don’t need to care. I won’t read her thoughts as prose, but I know what she is thinking.

  ”Beneath this valley is an undersea.” I tell her through Amalgamate Human. It is one of the few spells that I recover faster than I have use for it, unless Yuea is busy testing the limits of my ability to put her body back together. Talking to her and Kalip at once, without making it a command, is difficult. But right now, with nothing to do until it is time to strike again, and Kalip far too busy outrunning clattering skeletons to make conversation, this is a refreshing use of my focus. “We may, in truth, be the safest place within ten thousand lengths from the rainsun.”

  ”Shiny, you can’t do that!” Yuea has nearly fallen off the tower as she angrily snaps back at me. I seem to have startled her, and the golem operator, one of the new humans, is looking her way as if worried that their commander is insane. She recovers and actively ignores the eyes on her, even though I know she has seen. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have either. “How can you tell? Are you a caverncowl now too?”

  ”I have been adapting Know Material with a geometric pattern of…“ I stop, this is not important and I do not believe it will help Yuea to know the details. “No, I cannot participate in caving. Sadly. I would fit in quite well though, do you not think?”

  ”That’s the first time.” She mutters. I utter a noise of curiosity into her head. “The first joke you’ve ever made.” Yuea clarifies. “About what you are. That’s progress, Little Rock. We’ll make a dusk joking soldier out of you yet.”

  Now that’s hardly fair. I’m sure I’ve joked about being a roughly hewn crystal and not a real person before. And also, one other thing as well. ”I died as a soldier. I am sure I made jokes about the end when it came.” I pull away from the old memories of lives that were lived by the people that make up who I am now. “The important thing is that there is an undersea. The rainsun can, and likely will, flood our position. But even should the falls I have found prove insufficient, or become blocked, Collect Material will allow me to open new ones. We will not drown.” Or, should I say, you will not drown.

  I do not breathe.

  Her next words are said with a false smile. “One less doom coming for us.” Yuea nods to the horizon, her vision bobbing before she glances back at the sentinel. “Good job.” She tells him, before dropping off the edge of the raised platform, ignoring the stairs.

  She fractures one of her legs on the landing, only almost managing to negate the impact with the body that is still unfamiliar to her in its capabilities. Amalgamate Human flares to life, the patterns and structures of the magic moving to heal her, almost as if she is directing it herself. It also serves to prompt me to end our conversation, reducing the strain on the spell.

  This is how Yuea tells me I need to focus on my own fight.

  I don’t, though. I spare a glance at the array of arcane vials contained within the false space of my mind. Distant Trajectory is still refilling, as is Congeal Glimmer though that one is pulling in its supply of emptiness far faster as a result of how much that soul has been fortified since my arrival. A second check of Know Material shows that I am still moving, Kalip and Mela pulling my form through the sharp eddies of the wind and rain to get to the third point where I have been plotting out attacks from.

  I have some time yet. Not much, but I do not think a single one of my lives, even the stolen ones, was ever good at doing nothing.

  So I search through the eyes of my bees, the ones that are too small and fragile to safely leave the fort’s interior while the galesun is up, and I find the others who are too small and fragile to leave the fort at all while there are monsters about.

  Talquin has been joined in one of the cellars by Seraha, one of the duo acting as an organic obstacle course for the children with too much nervous energy, the other softly reciting a fable to the others while she sits with them in one of the corners. Collected bedding makes a small nest, the stolen blankets and pillows needing to be returned to whoever survives the night later.

  They are… the only ones here.

  I knew, in a sense, that holding back in any meaningful way would not be an option. But Dipan is not here; he is playing dice with a soldier while they wait for the enemy. Jahn and Muelly and Malpa are not here, they are taking a private moment on the wall, half as sentries, half as lovers, that I leave them to. Sharpen is not here, none of the gobs are, they are above preparing the same as everyone else. Even Talquin’s mate, Parox, is not here; the larger and faster verdling having recovered enough that she is comfortable wielding one of the magetouched rifles above when the time comes.

  The only people left hidden in this cellar, barely more defended than anywhere else in the world, are an old demon woman with breath running short and fur fading from pale pink to grey, and a verdling who I think has been ordered to stay hidden by her mate. Also I do not believe I am supposed to know the two sacred mothers are mates. And, of course, seven children, the mix of humans and demons the last spark of meaning for half the soldiers standing between them and the end of the world.

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  And one beetle. Oob shivers against our connection in Bind Insect, my listener bug letting me know that he is here to keep attentive to all happenings, and to engage in noble combat anything that crosses the top of the stairs. He doesn’t use exactly those words, but I can understand the small ember of intent growing in his expanding thoughts.

  Before I have the time to be proud of one of my first bound companions, a voice reaches me. Or comes from within me. The terminology for Amalgamate Human escapes me for the moment and will need to be relevant when Kalip finishes talking.

  ”Third position. Ready, little dream?”

  I am. I have only a slight change to my plan, based on what I have seen this latest enemy apparatus do. It is with frustration that I notice that Distant Trajectory has not recovered in full, and in fact, not recovering further either. It feels very similar to when I swap magics with Lutra; a block against further drips of emptiness. It seems that the theft of my magic was less singular than I expected; I will need to be even more cautious.

  With a push outward of Shift Wood, I inform Kalip and Mela that I am beginning. My rings of Know Material give rapid fluttering changes to my thoughts one last time before Mela situates my form securely, and holds me in place while my bombardment resumes.

  I don’t know how much of a lead they have stolen on the pursuing skeletons. While the duo holding a ridge within the Green can inflict tremendous damage, they are still but two people. Hero or altered human or otherwise, they tire, and they will be overwhelmed if I dally.

  This third ridge is less of a ridge and more of simply a place where there is a slope. It is also far closer to the fort than I would have liked. Both sides of the enemy army are closing, the ancient tactics this foe is carrying out with determination so far having not been stopped by my attacks so far.

  There is only one thing I need to do.

  In a heartbeat’s moment, I reach out to Lutra through Form Party, using Link Spellwork and Distant Vision again to extend my range back to the fort, and speak a greeting.

  ”Hello little fish.” I say across the coiled binding with the other apparatus, the spell allowing us at least direct communication even if it offers few of the benefits the others get.

  Lutra’s return “Hello” is almost strained, two voices overlapping, but somehow not fighting each other. An older and younger woman speaking together, though in a way separately. “It is storming. The long fish have never seen storming before.”

  The eels. Of course. An ancient buried thought that I actually cannot place as either the scholar’s, the singer’s, or the merchant’s, tells me that good eels sleep through the rainsun. This was apocryphal knowledge of all their lives, and it offers me a strange sense of inner connection.

  No matter what life I was living, sea sleepers skipped storming.

  ”Do they enjoy the rain?” I ask, wishing desperately I could take the time to see around Lutra’s lake hiding spot.

  ”They do! They are happy there is water outside of the water.” Lutra’s enthusiasm flows down the connection, and then, suddenly, cuts off like a door slammed shut. “You are fighting.” They say suddenly.

  I send them affirmation. “I am. And I need more ammunition.”

  It feels wrong. To ask someone who feels so very much like a lost child to arm me for war. But Lutra takes my words with a calm understanding that goes against everything they normally exhibit. “Yes. I remember. You are far away. But I know the sequence. I know the way. I will help you be our hero.”

  The words tear at my attempt at calm. The mask I put on for the fragile apparatus, the attempt at giving them something real that they can hold onto, to reassure them that things are going to be alright, slips away. “I… am not a hero.” I say back quietly. And I mean that. In the literal sense of the worldly effect, Mela is our hero. In the more metaphorical sense, I am just another one of the cataclysms that has sprung up. I just happen to be killing fewer people who I know than all the others.

  ”You are.” Lutra says back, echoing multiple voices carrying confidence in the elder tone and awed respect in the younger. The smaller voice continues alone, just for a moment. “I know what heroes are. It’s what mother taught us.” The older voice rejoins her speech, along with two other individual tones, all of them flowing together. “A hero is the one who stands up.” Lutra says, all of themself put into the words.

  Before I can reply, before I can even think of what to say, their own cast of Distant Trajectory hits my position. They have practiced this singular shot, and we are in the right place to receive it; coordination that would be impossible without some distant communication. But between the two of us, these magics can be used together, and so, use them we do. We’ve learned by now that we cannot trade enough spells at once to allow Lutra to use my own range extending trick, especially with how quickly it drains away, but we can give them one that works on its own.

  The Small Trade washes over our group, finding me quickly as the sole possible fulfilled of the conditions of the mercantile working. Bolster Nourishment flows out of me, every drop that the full spell contains used as payment for the influx of Form Sphere Lutra has launched outward. I catch it all like the world’s crowning achievement in sport, lifetimes of knowledge about a dozen different games of ball all having led to this.

  And then I shape it, conjure it forth, and send it on to a new recipient.

  The notes of the song are the same, only the cadence is different this time. Distant Trajectory, Form Sphere, and what remains of Link Spellwork to add my recently freed stockpile of Congeal Glimmer to the material component without making it the spell being deployed. It is so, so very strange what magics will and will not accept others, and for what purposes. But I do not wish to send glimmer this time, I wish to send a projectile, and so I must work around the limitations on Distant Trajectory with the tools I have.

  Fortunate then that I have failed to die enough times to have a great many tools.

  The carpet of flyers offers the enemy knowledge of everything close to it somehow, and the twisted paths around where they are cutting a line through the Green offer further defenses against trickery and ambush. So I simply ignore those things, and trigger the spell held in Distant Trajectory while it is still ascending. The magic imparts momentum upon the Form Sphere, though I have the distinct feeling that they have come out lopsided. That matters little however when I believe I have the trick to the warspell secured.

  One. Two. Five. Multiple scores of spheres take to the storming sky. The galesun obliges my request to get out of my way, the repeat casting drains all the quarried stone I have collected with Collect Material in uneven mixes of rock, and as soon as I have depleted the magic needed to commence my barrage, I switch to a second working.

  Congeal Glimmer has begun to recover its stamina far faster with the loss of clawfulls of glimmerlings. And before the stones land, I am already flooding the compacted hopestone at their cores with energy. Blundering through pathways, ignoring routes, forcing the issue in a way I know is destructive. Because destruction is the goal.

  ”They’re here.” I hear Mela say through Kalip’s ears. “What do we-“

  I don’t hear her finish. I am instead watching through Distant Vision, right on the very inner edge of the spell’s range, as my projectiles rain down like a new twist on the old storming season. Even my flexible and empowered new mind twists and stretches as some of them hit patches of empty air and are, abruptly, in multiple places at once before being somewhere else. It may be worse for me, even, as I ‘see’ it happen through the bonds of Congeal Glimmer.

  I make hits. A score of corpses broken, a pair of armored skeleton lancers shattered, one of the wagons toppled, another unit of corpses sent sprawling though with minimal damage. But the twisted space protects the most vulnerable and packed targets.

  So I detonate my weapons.

  The enemy apparatus, I am willing to give grudging respect to, as once the first explosion sends shattered chunks of rock through the bodies of a whole blade of its troops, it begins to react almost instantly. Tendrils of that arcane pilfering assault the exterior of the spheres, deterred by the inert and mundane stone, but pushing past it fast, seeking the glimmer at the center like a treat for their vicious hunger.

  It finds one, and I counter. Resisting the tug on my spellwork is not quite so easy as I would hope, so I abandon my attempts to deflect, and instead amplify my attempts to detonate. I win the race, and the sphere bursts like a ripe popla, seeds that will never grow more fruit springing forth to reap more soldiers for my side of this distant war. It wins the next race, stealing one, then two glimmer before I can destroy them. They still pop inside their munitions, I think, but with no vigorous force, and no destruction around them.

  Half the corpses continue their march outside of my Distant Vision dome, out of sight until they meet the glimmerlings I have around the fort to add to the defenders. I try to focus on the projectiles I can see, the ones that have landed within my sight only half the ones I even launched. I may need to take time to clean that up, should I survive through the day.

  As I focus, suddenly, an opportunity. I think the enemy sees it at the same time I do, too. One of the wagons, pulled by those enormous beasts made of shaped and bare red flesh, has marched not just near one of the spheres, but practically on top of it.

  I can feel the moment when both of us divert every last scrap of our respective magics to that single unassuming stone. There is no time for finesse, no time for tricks. If I had been prepared, or had any Link Spellwork left to work with, perhaps a quick Fortify Space could deflect it long enough to work my own efforts. But I wasn’t ready for this duel, and I do not believe my opposition was either.

  Our tendrils race. One stabbing through the outer shell, aided by a sudden second lurch that begins to peel back the different types of mixed stone from each other. One rising from within, overfilling and pressing for something to break before it can be taken away. My world narrows as I fight over the smallest singular bit of control for my munition, the most force I can manage and then a little more on top of that pushed through Congeal Glimmer in such a rush that I feel actual pain from the exertion.

  And then, abruptly, victory.

  It is only one blast among many, but as I turn back to destroying the others and inflicting what damage I still can, I am freed. No longer being fought at all. The reason why, in grim fashion, is sitting within the grisly cargo that has sprayed forth with a mess of gore and shattered wood from the wagon I have just destroyed.

  That one, that one, was carrying a cargo of corpses like all the others. Some of them are even moving, or beginning to move, being animated in the moment to be added to the enemy’s forces. And I believe the other apparatus has begun with these corpses because of proximity. Proximity I can see. Because there, bouncing across the carpet of rotting bodies, a gleaming orange polyhedron comes to a stop in the crook of a dead woman’s neck.

  It’s right there.

  And it is so far away.

  Especially as it begins to move. A feat that I am incapable of, and it makes it seem effortless, rising away from the corpses it has been transporting itself with, and wavering in the falling sheets of rain. Both of us are so stunned that our battle for the remaining bombardment payloads ceases, and I watch as the fragile and exposed monster sways like one of the singer’s more inebriated dances before it picks a direction and begins to flee.

  I don’t have time to check how many of my solidified points of power have built up. I barely have time to think before I am acting.

  The closest ensconced glimmer violently bursts, and sends fragmentary shards of rock out in a wave. It takes only a single one clipping the fragile orange crystal to shatter the top half of it, gleaming shards swallowed by the rain and the mud just as fast as the churned gore of its victims and soldiers all around it.

  I have moments. Through Amalgamate Human, I glimpse Kalip and Mela fighting hand to hand against skeletons that do not care that their controller has perished, and shout. “Retreat! Back to the fort. I may not be-“

  The first of the soft motes spill from the crystalline corpse. I begin cutting off the magics I have active, pulling inward and bracing myself as best I can. But I can still see, feel, smell the storm of them in the distance. Sensations beyond any sense I ever had in life; where before it was an act of will and careful study to even see a few motes moving, now there are so many of the things crawling their way into the sky in overt defiance the stormsuns that it vibrates all the spellworks within me.

  Know Material’s show me as moving, the shift in numbers meaning I am moving fast. Mela and Kalip heard me. Good. I shut that window to the outside. My bees are anxious, and I brush reassurance against the link, before I close off our bond as well. All my little portals, one by one, shaded and sealed, leaving me in the dark emptiness of my senseless mind.

  Maybe… maybe it would have been smarter to have simply let it crash into our walls. To fight it there. Maybe I could have had Lutra help me. Maybe I could have sharpened myself against this enemy like it were a whetstone until I had the power saved to be certain of healing what damage is to come.

  There are many maybes in my life. But there is only one certainty now. My home will be protected. Nothing will put holes in space or steal the minds of my friends where I hold sway. Not now. Not ever.

  In my own way, I stand up, and let the endless ocean of motes crash against me.

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