Shine - Apparatus Of Change

  Soul of Unity

  Available Power : 35

  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 : 0 - -

  Amalgamate Human (3, Command)

  Congeal Burn (2, Command)

  Trepidation : 0 -

  Follow Prey (2, Perceive)

  There are far too many dead things at my home’s threshold.

  And I think, that for perhaps but a moment, I was one of them.

  Chaos has gripped the fort in the time that I was away. The remaining corpse soldiers, still moving despite their shepherd's death, have thrown themselves into the valley and against the patched defenses as if victory will bring them back to life. A large portion of one of the fort’s walls has collapsed, the gate itself is breached, and armored creatures of metal clad bone are trying to rip apart my friends and allies.

  There are bodies - not the twisted creations of the enemy apparatus, but of people living just moments ago - among the rubble and fallen soldiers.

  That, the soldier’s voice would say, is war. People die in it.

  Though she wouldn’t have been happy about it.

  Yuea is standing in the breach, having fallen back from the trenches that the defenders were lining with spikes and tripropes. There are others around her, but not in formation; they are there to simply stop the enemy from passing, while she kills them. The others are over or around the gate itself, a holding action as they try to funnel the mobile dead into the tight space and turn them into less moving dead instead.

  I can see everything, though it is from a hundred angles. Bees and glimmerlings and Yuea herself. The battle is already a nightmare of numbers and movements for myself, it must be a torture for those trapped within it, unable to see a simple and pure truth.

  We are winning.

  The enemy is uncoordinated and barely even seems to care about winning. Removed from the guidance and support of their creator, it is almost wrong to call this force an enemy. They are a herd of dangerous animals, devoid of strategy, empty of communication, and completely absent any reason for being here. The only thing that has allowed them any momentum is the destruction of one of the fort’s walls, and the beginnings of true panic that their numbers have brought.

  And we are not going to win, if that panic takes hold. If everyone fights as hard as they can, it will not be enough. Numbers will pull everyone down, even Yuea. Even Kalip and Mela when they return, hopefully carrying my body.

  Lancer bees glowing with the black light of active mantra harass skeletons who do not feel their stings. A galesun gust is singing from far too close to the fort and unbalancing everyone. Glimmerlings follow last-given commands defending patches of ground that the enemy isn’t near. The spearthrower golems on the fort’s raised watchtowers are either firing into positions that endanger our own people, or out of ammunition entirely. Half of those on the ground, mostly the recently arrived rescued soldiery, are missing weapons by now, and moments away from breaking, even if a rout would kill them only slightly slower.

  And closing in from not too distantly, seen by my glimmerlings amid the darkened and speckled sky where the gale and rainsuns are determined to make their presence known, a shifting and undulating cloud approaches. The enemy’s last army, a swarm of flying things, fighting the wind but still determined to join us.

  I have many problems to solve, and little time to act. And yet… I find that I am not quite so troubled as I would have been even a tenday ago. Something has changed. Before, splitting parts of my attention to manage tedious or divergent tasks was an effort that I knew I had a long path ahead of me to master. But now, while it has not become easy, there is a fluidity to my mind that changes what would have been a desperate exertion of everything I am, into simply a challenge of finding the right solutions.

  The Fortify Space around the fort is fraying, especially where the invaders are clashing against the walls, but it is still intact. And something from it echoes within the soul of Authority as I bathe the front ranks of the walking skeletons with Shape Metal. A use for the working that had been too quiet to notice before now suddenly roaring to life like a poked beast as I wrap my spell form around the armor and weapons of the invaders. And almost carelessly rip them away.

  The metal is not theirs. Not anymore. Make Low Blade is a spell that I have perhaps overused in more creative ways. While Shift Wood has allowed me to master one specific detail of its ability, Make Low Blade I have scattered across everything we have needed. But right now, it does not matter that I am a master of no one aspect. I have metal, bone, and splintered wood, and the spell takes them all. Feeding the flame of the magic with every drop of one of the only spells I have at full reserve, I arm the defenders.

  Blades and spears appear at hand to those who need them. It takes more effort, but arrows and bolts arrive for the tower golem teams and archers on the wall as well, the finished works defying gravity to reach their destination. Yuea herself receives three swords, because she keeps throwing them away as fast as I make them for her until I stop making swords and start making throwing spikes that she continues to use to put holes in skulls from ten lengths away.

  The rest of what was the army’s armory I use the last of Make Low Blade to turn into simple hollow metal bolts, filling the inside with the product of the rainsun as they are sealed shut. The bees, loyal and courageous, are granted a new weapon as Link Spellwork pours Move Water and Shift Water both into their bonds. And the lancers, hovering around the defensive lines and clinging to the walls, are suddenly a much more dangerous deterrent as their targets lose any defense to go along with their new capability.

  It isn’t the only thing I can do to shore up the defending soldiers though. Drain Endurance and Drain Health alike have been allowed minimal use against things with neither of those traits. But that does not mean I do not have stockpiles. Stockpiles that appear to have lost some measure of their strength, while I was busy nearly fragmenting, but still, usable ones.

  Reversing both tools is a function of the spellforms I have made ample use of before, and do so again now. Drain Endurance for those still standing who need to press on, and Drain Health for those who have fallen, one last chance to keep their wounds from turning lethal.

  If anything saves lives now, it will be this. It is fortunate that I do not need to put my actions in order; there is no priority anymore, there is merely what I am doing, so long as I do not let the list of tasks become overwhelming.

  Now, the galesun. Oh, such sweet irony that the easiest of the problems to handle is the season itself. The very motion of the cosmos and our world nothing more than an application of Fortify Space away from no longer being my concern. That spell is also near full, and while I will need all it offers and more to rebuild from this, right now, what I need is the breach of the galesun thirty lengths away to end.

  It is not as simple as pouring the magic into the space and hoping it works. For one thing, I do not have a clear sight of the wind point. But I do know that it is moving, See Domain and Claim Construction on the low defensive earthworks around the fort letting me ‘feel’ through the raised dirt as the wind advances. It is not malicious, merely inconvenient.

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  I know from experience that trying to Fortify Space a galesun’s point will lead to mental exhaustion, pain, and perhaps an anxious breakdown. But I also know that the points cannot intrude. So Fortify Space is targeted with quick estimations of distance and position, layers of my best domain magic being settled down like a new style of wall between the oncoming weather and our home.

  The wind stops abruptly as it stumbles in and vanishes. But I am already too busy working on another problem to cheer just yet.

  On the walls, a towering verdling takes aim with a magetouched-style rifle. Nudge Material tweaks the aim just enough that the bullet rips through one of the last standing fleshy corpses. They have more strength than their skeletal counterparts, but they die far easier, and the oversized gun taking the thing’s entire lower body off before the projectile carries on to shatter the leg of a skeleton behind the target does quite a lot to stop its unliving movements.

  Similar applications of Nudge Material take over guiding the spearthrower golems I had previously made. More dramatically, their aim is pushed outward to launch their lower speed weaponry farther afield to the enemies still struggling through the trenches and not into the melee below. More bodies fall, while our own people are put at less risk.

  Congeal Glimmer, ever elusive in what it is for, is right now for ordering the product of its strange hopestone to spring to action. To close ranks, and march against the flanks of the feral creations that have ignored the unliving resin forms standing in the field around the fort. Their flat footed quadruped forms stomp through mud and through the earthwork defenses with a fearsome agility as they close on the back ranks and stragglers of the invaders.

  Bind Insect sings to me from every direction. Bees and beetles engaged in spotting and defense, but many of them calling out to me in fear. They felt me fall away, but even the small bees in their secured hive stayed with me.

  Even now, in the depths of storming, in a strange place with people that are not like them, the simple nature of bees continues to delight me. As mere insects, they would never be able to stretch their idea of community like this. But here, within Bind Insect, the natural ideals that their species creates within its hives are amplified and extended outward. Our people are their people, and… so am I. While they may not understand what I am, or how different we are, they have decided that I am a part of their community. And they feared losing me.

  And now, I empower them again. Half of the largest of their number still capable of fast flight sent on their own sortie. Launching themselves from the highest points of the fort, carrying material created for them, they take advantage of the sudden calm air to take to the sky on a path to intercept the incoming flock. Granted Move Water brutally shoving aside the product of the rainsun to clear their flight path.

  All of these tasks are mixed together and overlapping. Their orders were among the first thing I gave, and so their mission is seen by very few of the defenders. Below the bees, the melee tips direction as Shift Wood and Form Wall grow tactical defenses around our people; keeping the monsters at bay, yes, but also drawing on the soldier’s instincts to herd them into formation again. The demons and humans are still, even now, shying away from standing shoulder to shoulder, and in this moment of battle I am no longer willing to entertain that.

  Yuea bellows a battle cry, rallying those around her as they step forward in a line, exposed hostile bones snapping from weighted blows and trampling feet. Gunshots, scattered but precise, signal the last of the powder being used up. The injured and exhausted who have been locked in melee for however long I have been pulling myself back together pull pressed squares of vim from pouches and pockets, the substances keeping them going with renewed strength despite the headaches later.

  If they survive, then the headaches will be worth it. That has always been my policy as well.

  On the ground, the tide turns. The wet earth rises to meet the falling forms of another score of corpse soldiers. Rearmed and reinforced, the glimmerlings pincering the enemy against the desperate and rallied living defenders, the survivors begin to win. Several of my lives have seen battle, and so it is with an almost abrupt shock that I come to understand that the tide is not changing, it is breaking. The dead are not going to rout; they have no one giving them orders, no thoughts aside from violence, no intent or command at all. They are simply going to fight until there are none of them left.

  It is not without peril though. On the field, I see two soldiers separated by a final press of those skeletons that are still so armored as to be difficult to break apart. One of them slips in the slick ground, toppling to her back. The human next to her boldy swings a spear that snaps in half on the plated shell of one of their enemies, my work not holding up to prolonged use before he is tackled by one of the last of the enemy. The other defenders at the gate rush to help, but even in a small skirmish, confusion and distance are killers.

  So I am gratified and relieved beyond measure when Mela falls from the sky, the fool of a girl having chosen to ignore the normal looping path back to the slope into the fort’s valley, and instead simply leaping off the cliff overhead for the easiest route into the fight.

  The hero’s sword catches in the thin sunlight as even the rainsun pauses for a moment to observe her descent. A gleaming moment of violence captured in amber as she strikes through two of the threatening creations without stopping. Then, of course, her feet hit the muck of the ground, and hero or not, Mela is still subject to the physical consequences of her actions. She slides what feels like a score of lengths before slamming into the back side of a raised spike wall, her clothing shredded in a way that exposes very little of her skin due to the complete shell of mud and blood that now coats her.

  She flings her battered gleaming blade from her sprawled position, and the last skeleton falls before it can even realize that something has changed. I make a note to tell her to stop picking up tricks from Yuea. We do not have a surplus of swords.

  And so, what I thought was a change in the flow of battle is, very very suddenly, the end of the battle.

  The last skeleton falls, a newly forged sword breaking in half along with the horned skull of the deceased demon. And that is it. There are no more.

  And in the sky, my bees spot the birds carrying the roiling slick stones that guide the animate weapons toward wherever the apparatus wanted them to go. Their path cuts a single time through the flock, a vanguard of insects with their soft fur and fanned wings glowing bright from the mantra and glimmer they all carry as part of their bodies. I watch through their eyes as they twist and juke the pecks and slams of the rotting monstrous fliers, but it is not until they take a sweeping turn near the floor of the Green that I see the result.

  Very few of the flying creatures are dead, but the small water-filled arrows the lancer bees carried in their wake have struck true. In the sky, there are multiple oily splotches of iridescent black, slowly being washed away like stains. And also in the sky, the flock they had struck simply… gives up.

  The bats and birds and other things besides let their dead bodies keep gliding, but they make no more turns, and no more momentum is built. Some few of them that spot the bees try to strike at potential prey, and those ones do not last long, but the danger to the fort is simply gone if the things have no more guiding stones and no more motivation.

  I call back my bound. I drain myself dry of Fortify Space securing the fort once more. I tap the last dregs of Form Wall to pull back together the collapsed section - my own construction proving to have held up far less well than the original creators of this place - and reminding those outside the wall to return. I make use of Follow Prey to locate those skeletal beasts that are not quite dead, and dispatch my glimmerlings to finish the job among the mud and gore.

  As the bees return, some of them hurt but none of them lost, I feel the dry scraping as Link Spellwork finally reaches the end of its own endurance. Their miniature lances drop away from them, and with Move Water returned to me, I use it to project a flattened dome of intended motion overhead.

  The rainsun can continue its work, I both will not and cannot interfere with that, but for a short reprieve, there will be no more falling droplets on the fort’s gate and mustering yard.

  I am almost entirely exhausted. Again. A commonality that almost every confrontation and crisis has brought to me is that, even devoid of such things as muscles and tendons to feel sore, I am tired. There is a familiar creeping darkness around the edges of everything contained within my inner space, the press of the void, calling for me to simply slip down into unconsciousness and rest.

  That darkness is held back by what remains of my lesser used spells, as well as the slow drip from the empty nothing that refills the others. It would be a lie though to say that my own willpower plays a role; that resource, more than anything else, is a well running dry.

  But there is nothing left for me to do.

  ”Good job shiny.” Yuea whispers through Amalgamate Human. “You got ‘em.” She says, before she bonelessly collapses in exhaustion.

  I can’t even find the effort within myself to reply.

  Traced lines that tether me to my created weapons give ghostly impressions as they are dropped from sore hands. Those who stood up to defend our fragment of home are not done yet, though. The wounded and dead are pulled from the mud, the badly repaired gates are pushed closed after Kalip returns the normal way through the valley to find the fighting over, and the tally of our loss begins to take shape.

  It takes little time for me to get a full count. There are six dead. Six. A number that should be a devil’s grant, given the circumstances, but instead leaves one more weight pulling at the fragments of what calm I can muster.

  I find myself sorting them into categories before a sickened pair of memories from the scholar and merchant make me feel that I am turning people into math. But the knowledge is there regardless. All six were combatants, two apiece from the human and demon soldier units that have joined us, one of the new gobs that was rescued alongside them, and one of my lancers, whose shadow now rests in the second layer of space around Bind Insect.

  Things seem to move so quickly after that, and yet with a paradoxical dragging pace. Blades and guns are returned to the armory, everyone does their best to clean up before falling into salvaged bedding or finding empty halls to wander, those who were eating vim like day cakes find themselves slumped over tables in the dining hall, the children and noncombatants emerge from the cellar to find a world that is the same and yet different, and…

  And I don’t know what to do. My thoughts, no longer pushed to their limits, are swimming. There are so many things that need to be done, and yet I seem to be required to pay down a debt of focus that I have accrued from my actions.

  But then Oob, interloper that the little eavesdropping beetle is, pushes a sound front and center into my thoughts.

  Someone in the fort is crying.

  And it isn’t one of the people I’m close to. I would recognize that; I’ve heard them all cry, even Yuea, though I would never tell her that.

  So it is one of the newcomers. Though with how fast everything has moved, I may need to reassess what it means to be new. But still. There is someone, in my home, in pain. And Oob wants me to know.

  I ask one of the smaller bees to follow the sound. Though the fort is more occupied now than ever, that does not mean it doesn’t have its share of empty halls and quiet corners, and I find who I am looking for sitting outside with their back to one of the Stone Pylons that are set up around the courtyard that holds the smaller secondary well many people use as a water source.

  He’s one of the soldiers; a young human man staring up at the dark grey sky and the deflected rain with unfocused eyes. His cries are more like heavy breathing, and the singer remembers well the sensation of not being able to stop breathing once terror and anxiety take over the heart fully.

  He twitches violently as the bee lands in front of him. The creature, changed and larger, but still no bigger than a child’s game ball, moves forward without direction to press furred antenna into the soldier’s bloodied knee. That unfocused and tearful stare turns down to the bound insect, now, and for a moment I am worried he is going to lash out.

  But then I find my own voice. Small Promise, one of those spells that is holding back my own exhausted rest, touches on the target I can see through the bee’s eyes. If you want to talk, I will listen. I swear-whisper to him.

  It takes some time, but the young human does start talking.

  As does the next one that Oob leads me to. And the next. And the next.

  There are a great many people within my home who are hurting. But I find, strangely, that the clarity and split focus which served me in combat, is equally vibrant when it comes to managing multiple conversations.

  Some of them, I write back to. Some of them do not speak at all, and I leave the bees in their presence to offer the comfort of not being alone. Some of them simply need to voice their fears and pains. Some of them are people I know, Muelly telling me of the horror of waiting underground to learn if she was going to die, Sharpen expressing the dawning disgust they have with the use of blades as weapons, Kalip muttering that he knew he was going to be too late and not enough. Some of them are newcomers, soldiers who have now survived two battles that are more like fever dreams than the skirmishes they expected from their careers.

  I listen to them all, until I cannot anymore.

  And when I do pull back, excusing myself as best I can to let unconsciousness take me away along with all those who have pushed themselves past their limits, to be left in the care of the others within the fort, I find myself… better. Not healed, or calm, but ready.

  My last act is to remember, before it slips my mind for far too long, to actually see what piece of a soul I have stolen from our enemy.

  Avarice : -

  Consume Ecology (3, War)

  I am certain that will be another new solution in search of a problem. But it is one that will need to wait until tomorrow.

  Outside, distant winds endlessly whistle, and fresh rain comes down in pointless patterns. And inside, I loosen my hold on every connection I have, and let myself, finally, finally, rest.