Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

  Available Power : 0

  Authority : 7

  Bind Insect (1, Command)

  Fortify Space (2, Domain)

  Distant Vision (2, Perceive)

  Collect Plant (3, Shape)

  See Commands (5, Perceive)

  Bind Crop (4, Command)

  -

  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)

  Fifteen thousand lengths into the Green, hidden in a valley near a lake, sits a fort. It shouldn’t exist, the Green should have consumed it years ago, even if it were protected, and yet, here it stands. Built on top of an ancient pit that makes physical vim magic, hidden from prying eyes. Filled with just over fifty people, a mix mostly of demon and human, with gobs and verdlings coming in at a minority; the battle damaged and patchwork repairs of the fort are their only defense against the end of the world.

  Human, gob, demon, verdling, a mix of increasingly wise bees and beetles and eels, and a pair of some other new thing besides. Holding on, as summer comes to a close.

  Twenty lengths outside its walls, a sword moves through the air as an unstoppable force. We don’t have a lot of swords; the armory is mostly carbines and pikes. But the sword was the first thing that was taught to the newest defender of our home. This hasn’t stopped Mela at all from going from novice to threat in a very short time.

  Something flickers against my senses, a movement of thought or words along the tightly woven Form Party link between Mela and one of the bees desperately clinging to a tree near her. I watch through Bind Insect and their borrowed eyes as she ducks, even as she keeps the hammer blow of the blade moving. The moss and dirt hexaped leaping at her misses by the thinnest of margins, while the other one is caught from underneath by her full strength strike.

  I slam down a burst of Sever Command spells onto the one that has passed her while Mela strains her muscles and lifts her target off the ground by a fragment of a length. She wasn’t trying to cut into it, instead, just getting it off the ground and unstable enough for her fate to help her make the next move work. Far overhead, the galesun’s influence chooses that precise time to throw a gust up from the floor of the Green. Dirt and sticks and anything not rooted deep enough is flung haphazardly as the wind whips fast enough to scour skin. And heavy as it is, the moss and mud form of the enemy moves easily from where it is hanging in the air when the combined force of the wind and Mela’s kick impact it.

  Before it has hit the ground from the cliff Mela just forced it off, the third and fourth copies of the enemy close in. One of them touches a hastily thrown down Pressure Trigger filled with Collect Material, and drops with flailing legs into a fresh crater in the dirt. The other is filled along its spine with arrowheads, the sharp metal forms packed with water and manipulated by my bees borrowing my Shift Water for detail work.

  While Mela charges the stunned beast and hacks one of its legs off on her way to a leaping strike into the crater, I latch onto the points buried in the last foe with Move Water. My magic, especially when guided by my own hand, does not like to interfere with the bodies of other living things without their permission. But the metal of the spikes is not a body, and the bees have already put them inside my enemy. So I simply exert far more force than they did, and rip the creature in half.

  Mela calmly walks back to the final injured monster as I Sever Command it again. She slams the heel of her boot into its core, punching a hole through it and dislodging the glimmer that holds it together.

  The battlefield doesn’t go silent. The howl of the winds doesn’t stop. But Mela has a few moments to catch her breath as she wipes mud off her sword, sheaths it, and holds out her arms for the bees to grab onto before she runs deeper into the Green.

  Four glimmerlings, mid sized, no special qualities. Shift Wood carves into the hanging board in the command room that I used to pretend was my personal space. No longer simply a mix between a records office and a laboratory, it serves as a point from which we map out our incoming foes and decide on where next to risk it all. Mela is fine.

  Kalip exhales softly, trying to hide his relief. The small ink skinned rat like creatures that I have lurking around the room as my eyes and ears don’t miss it though. This different breed of glimmerling my own personal creation, and ones I find quite a bit more aesthetically pleasing than the resin chunks I use as frontline scouts.

  Looking at where I’ve scarred the map, Kalip scowls. “That’s the camouflaged one for sure then.” He says as he tracks where we’ve caught incoming strikes. “Don’t need to be an oakstaff to predict that one.” He steals a term he’s heard me use before, and uses it wrong. I don’t bother to correct him. “We need to kill it.” The statement is flat, without emotion, and utterly certain.

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  Kalip is a killer. A soldier, for a long time, yes. But violence is almost burned into his blood. He sees the world as obstacles that can either be circumvented, or shot, and he doesn’t much seem to mind which. He’s also a deeply compassionate man, and his worry about his student as she hews off on her own to push the bounds of her newfound heroism is obvious to me.

  Maybe I’m a killer too. Because I don’t disagree with him. I can’t see, even with See Domain, where the rockfish skin effect of the enemy begins to take over the terrain. But I know it’s there, and it’s been growing toward us. Its thick creatures, durable and dangerous, have been coming more frequently. Probing attacks, seeking us out. Even without the backing of its worse magics; its strange fire and stranger illusions, they’re still dangerous. And I agree with Kalip that the thing needs to die before it hurts anyone seriously.

  There’s just one problem. Who would go? I ask him in the wood. It can’t be you or Yuea, you know that. Nor any of the bees, especially the knights and lancers.

  Kalip and Yuea are mine. Bound to me through Amalgamate Human the same way the bees and beetles belong to Bind Insect. Yuea, I have woven stranglevine roots into muscle, and subdermal bark into armor. Kalip is part wolv, and part Congeal Mantra. Both of them I did this to to save their lives, but it doesn’t change the fact that we can’t risk them killing an apparatus.

  Because it may as well be my own kill. And when I kill one of my own kind, I take from them. A piece of salvaged memory, and a single spell, and also a forced expansion of my soul that has been getting more and more painful with each act. Painful, and damaging.

  It was only today that I finally was capable of healing myself fully, and only thanks to the contribution of Lutra, the other apparatus living in our nearby lake. One of their eels sits in a wooden bath of water in the corner of the room, watching us and lazily gnawing on a rabbit carcass. The two of us are, perhaps, the only sane instances of our species on the world, and even then I’m not quite certain Lutra is sound of mind just yet. But now I can speak to them again, through Form Party, and once the magic is ready again, we both look forward to doing so.

  I turn part of my attention back to Kalip, who is muttering out potential force compositions. We have an abundance of soldiers here, though the majority of them are from human and demon forces that were decimated by the onset of apparatus activity. And hate each other. It has been a tenday since the galesun rose, which also matches when the last active resistance from our guests was put down. But the new residents, while they are willing to adapt, still don’t trust each other. A mixed species expedition could be either a new start for them, or an utter disaster, and I don’t care to find out which.

  Lutra. I tell Kalip. Don’t say it out loud. I’ll talk to them later. But it would need to be… Lutra. They could do it safely.

  “Hm.” Kalip grunts, flicking his eyes to meet mine through one of my glimmerling extensions. “I’ll talk to Yuea later.” He stoicly declares. It might be all I get from him right now. Sometimes, he’s like that. Closing off when he worries he might have to make a hard choice that he won’t like.

  I leave him to his morose mood, and turn to where I am keeping an eye on some of the others. It is not inaccurate to say I am keeping an eye on everyone in the fort, really.

  There is a hive of bees sitting sheltered against the inside of the windbreak near the back well. They aren’t exactly normal bees anymore; the hive is expanded in size, the queen is tied to me with Bind Insect and augmented with Congeal Glimmer, and beyond that, has been changed by my magic to be smarter, healthier, and larger. But one thing I never touched, and actively encouraged when I could, was the bee’s sense of community.

  Bees were the first thing I really saw when I was reborn. The mixed souls of a farmer, a scholar, a soldier, a merchant, a cleric, and a singer, all compressed into this new shell of mine and settled in the dirt at the base of a particularly unnoteworthy tree in the shallows of the Green. Bind Insect was my desperate attempt to escape the darkness I was trapped in, and it showed me a hive. A wonderful tiny world; a semi-coherent non-society, full of behaviors to dissect and understand, and creatures that contain multitudes of answers to questions I never knew I would have had.

  I love my bees. Truly. Not just the ones that have grown, and stand sentinel with us, almost larger than the people they protect. Not just the ones that act as my evolved eyes around the fort. All of them. And in return, I believe, they share that love in return.

  Intelligent bees, on their own, could build a perfect civilization. Or at least a very kind one. But we aren’t alone, and yet, they are willing to forgive that slight, and help me build a home that merely includes them alongside us.

  As my own practice with this new life grows, I have learned that I can split my attention without the problems of when any of my old lives were walking the world. And right now, I am using my bees to help me see where to cast a half dozen spells, putting small amounts of thought into them as I pour out the empty liquid of their sources into the space around the fort.

  Fortify Space presses outward, securing us against foreign magics bit by bit as I claim ground. Bolster Nourishment weaves through every one of the small meals being produced in our kitchens, stretching rations as far as they will go. Form Wall reinforces and repairs the barriers around our farm plots that the wind howls through like a furious beast, and Bind Crop pushes those plants to grow as fast as possible to keep the people fed. Stone Pylons go up in a growing barrier around our secured territory, filled with hateful magics that can be stockpiled to unleash on invaders.

  But beyond just helping me weave magics, the bees help me stay with the people I care about. The beetles do too, Oob and his adopted siblings listening in like incurable gossips to every conversation they can. But the bees are much more beloved.

  I touch on the sight of Seraha, the old woman directing the mixed orphans of the fort to fetch her water or vegetables for the night’s soup. I watch as she watches them scurry out of her kitchen, before her shoulders slump and she bites back a sob, thick skinned fingers digging into the faded pink fur of her arm. She’s figured it out, I think.

  I briefly look in on Jahn and Malpa. The two of them are working alongside several of the forts gobs at one of the farm plots. The ‘wall’ that protects it from the winds has gaps in it, so the farming magic will work, so they’re having to shout to be heard over the constant storm as they dig out irrigation trenches and collect the plump wild beets they’ve been cultivating. There is a quiet moment, when Sharpen and Cover and Vestment are gone from the farm, where Malpa turns and stares out of one of the gaps in the wall. The big human’s fist hits the magically shaped stone hard enough that I wonder if I could feel it through the spell, before Jahn wraps his chest in a hug from behind. They don’t speak, but they have figured it out, I think.

  I check up on Muelly. She’s sitting in one of the fort’s cellars along with Zhoy and Ruuet. The two young girls who have decided they’re sisters watching raptly as Muelly pulls my magic out of the air, trying to hold her hands apart as a window to focus a Distant Vision. I can feel it working, my permission letting the demoness who is so close to me use my spells as her own, if she can find the right way to do it. Suddenly, she claps her hands, shaking her head and telling the girls that it’s not working today. The summer has only been over for a tenday and already they miss using Move Water for play fights in the courtyard. Muelly shoos them upstairs, the dejected mood fading fast as a few bees offer them a game of seekers. But in the empty cellar, Muelly tilts her head back and stares at the empty shelves, silently gnawing at her lip. She, too, has figured it out, I think.

  I watch Daurthy, the woman given a second chance that I will not infringe on by Mela, lead a foraging party down the cliff line of the valley. Four other people, two humans and two demons, follow her. She’s the only one who lets a bee cling to her back against the screaming winds. None of them smile. All of them move rapidly to strip barely ripe berry bushes or beans, or uproot buried squash. Their packs are stuffed with everything they find, even if what they find isn’t much. None of them smile, even when they discover a fragrant herb bush that will at least add some unique flavor to the meals. They, too, have figured it out, I think.

  I look in on Talquin. She is with her mate, the verdlings helping some of the new humans sort out spare clothing and bedding. I like Talquin, even though I haven’t known either of the verdlings long; she seems honest, and philosophical, but also willing to act when she can. With the summer ending, she and her mate have been spending more time out of their cellar, the cooler temperatures more bearable for the cold weather creatures. She freezes when handing the winter coats stored in the stockroom that the humans are trying to sort through. Looks at them a little too long. Let’s out a puff of tinted breath as a verdling sigh before her thin hands start moving again. I think she knows.

  And finally, I check in with Yuea. She moves like a typhoon, standing on the fort’s wall. Fists and knees striking imagined opponents as she keeps herself composed in a tight ball of violence. Her new body, which she is only just trying to learn to control, still moves with more force than it can handle. Bones creak, muscles tear, and I know for a fact she is suppressing her pain through our connection of Amalgamate Human.

  But she keeps practicing. Pulling on the magic to repair herself as fast as she causes damage. Training for whatever comes next. She wants to be ready. She wants to be in the fight.

  Yuea knows.

  She notices the bee, the size of the largest dog I’ve ever met, lurking on the edge of the wall and watching her. The hive’s knight filled with a pair of mantra and glimmer, and preparing herself for more in the future. The bees of this caliber aren’t insects or animals anymore; they can think and feel like anyone else, even if they haven’t been educated yet. But it watches her for me, and it understands, and it sympathizes.

  Yuea nods to it. And me. “Hey Shiny.” She yells over the galesun’s attempt to scour us from the ground.

  She doesn’t say anything else. Just waits, and then shrugs, and goes back to throwing punches that could crack bone.

  I don’t know what to say to her. Because she knows that we aren’t going to make it to the safety of fall. The storms are going to starve us out, if the monsters we can’t fight fast enough don’t get us first.

  But she’s practicing anyway. Because I swore I’d make it happen. And because she at least pretends to trust me.

  I need you. I eventually write on the small wooden panel that has been sunk into the wall up here for me to work with. To help me kill something.

  Yuea pauses mid strike. Reads the words. Nods.

  “I’m your girl.” She shouts as she turns and throws herself off the wall and into the courtyard below, the winds barely shifting her heavy frame at all. “Let’s fucking go!” She yells back at the honeybee knight watching her stride across the fort’s grounds with a casual ease that I know she doesn’t feel.

  She knows. I know. Everyone knows.

  We’re doomed.

  But we’re going to fight back anyway.

  Overhead, the galesun watches, uncaring. Winds that ablate skin and topple less sturdy trees pick up for a fresh bout. And in a small improvised war room, I begin to call my soldiers to plan.