Apparatus Of Change - Chapter 137 (Patreon)

Felt like coming back to this for a bit. Might write more over the next week? I dunno, it's tricky to get back into the mindset, but I feel like I finally have an idea of what I want to do with the plot, and this is a fun world to keep exploring.

I'm not gonna put the whole spell list on here cause Patreon's formatting is... bad. But the epub always has it, if you want a refresher.

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Shine - Apparatus Of Change

Soul of Unity

Available Power : 13

As with ever so many things in life, things seem to get worse.  Not before they get better, not before they get even worse, not hurtling toward some tipping point that will force a change.  Instead, they just… get worse.

There are, it turns out, several ceremonies that tie into fall.  The gobs have nothing, of course; not these ones anyway.  As a people, they’re too new to even really be prepared to accept that cultural viewpoints exist, much less to fully sublimate into them.  But the demons have shared their greeting of the final sunrise, and now the humans share their casual meal in turn.  Something that seems to be an almost ritually forced attempt at pretending things are fine, all while the wind and rain and crashing stones beat outside the surprisingly sturdy fort’s walls.

Both celebrations are new to me.  The world has not stopped while the parts of my unified soul were busy in their repose, and both of their peoples have found slightly different ways of living than I remember.  Some things remain the same.  But the feasts and celebrations… well, I haven’t been myself as I am now long enough to experience them all, but it is odd to me how unrecognizable they have become.  The scholar knew; cities might turn to sand and the names of empresses erase themselves from even the oldest coral, but the exact day on which a village gathers to drink and dance will go untouched for thousands of years.

Maybe it has simply been thousands of years.  Though I doubt that.  Hundreds, maybe.  But either way, something has happened to the people of this world that they may not even know the shape of.  Something that could change their most important days.

In happy contrast, the verdlings do have a rite I remember.  Not an especially complicated one, but even still, it is soothing in its own way to know that they are quietly communing with the woodland around us.  Ceremonial, more than clinical, and even if they were truly becoming one with the ecosystem as old lives once knew to be a common magic, I would be unable to feel it anyway.  But it is still something I have memories of verdlings doing during the last days of storming across many lives.

The duo of verdlings are still a mystery to many of my friends.  And I admit I share some of that curiosity.  I do not know where they came from, but I am certain I do not fully believe that ‘deeper in the Green’ is a real answer.  I do not know what verdling society looks like in this modern time - after all, anything could have changed like the festivals - but I do believe they often hide their relationship because their people would call it illicit.  They keep secrets well, even from Oob, who amuses me by sending occasional annoyance through Bind Insect to my connected thoughts.

But I do not believe they mean us harm.  They are, as everyone in these walls is, afraid.  

As they should be.  Fall is a day away, and storming and its baleful suns seem determined to leave their mark before they pass for another year.

The rain and galesuns cannot open their breaches within a fair span of the fort anymore.  And the walls are sturdy enough, the undersea deeper below the fort’s foundation keeping us from flooding.  Yet.  There are damages that can be done.  

Light flooding could be handled.  Pools of water could be drained by using Collect Material to cut away drainage.  Imbue Mending made certain the walls that had stood against the galesun continued to do so.  However, I will admit, the tree flung from over the edge of our sheltering cliff was a surprise.

I now command a growing collection of my resin glimmerlings to act as eyes.  Study enough to not be immediately thrown askew by the galesun’s more casual attempts, the myriad windows of light they open into the inner space of my magic and mind show me much of the surrounding Green.  I do my best, though I know my best is limited, to ensure that we are not so easily ambushed again by another apparatus.  With every step of advancement into Nobility my range grows, as does my ability to not only split but increase my focus on these various eyes I have built.  I am becoming something farther and farther removed from any of the mortal lives I once was.

And yet I do not see the tree until it has fallen with a cacophony so tremendous that it alerts even the still-mundane bees bound to me in their hive.  Every child, human and demon alike, makes a sound of alarm.  A yell, a scream, a start to a sob that is going to require time and care from one of the adults to sooth.  Every soldier grabs for weapons.  Every Yuea flings herself through a second floor window, prepared to begin being violent to what has broken the peace of their home.

It was a strange kind of comfort, to know that the abrasive and brash woman was also the same person willing to throw herself toward the first sign of trouble.  Perhaps, maybe, a part of that was Yuea’s own reckless love of that danger.  But the thought that maybe she was at least becoming a little protective of the people here was enough to feel like a whole field of walls against the storms.

That thought was mostly idle on my part, because Yuea’s lunge was unneeded.  There was no enemy, no great and terrible new beast, not even someone pinned or lifted by the winds who needed rescue.  Instead, there was just a tree.  A large one, to be certain, and it was currently in the process of applying cruel physics through its impressive bulk, destroying one of the sets of interlocking transportation golems that I so carefully assembled for the upcoming expedition.

That stings.  I am, even still, becoming used to my renewed life.  And one thing that I have been struggling with ever since the acquisition of Collect Material is the expendable nature of many of my creations.  Stone Pylons can be replaced, weapons and armor can be replaced, fortifications can be reset with Form Wall and Claim Construction and Imbue Mending.  Even food can be harvested at an accelerated rate.

This golem set, the platform with the seats and commanding dials, the swappable ‘legs’ that will perform across the roughest of terrain, even the ‘saddlebags’ that were easier to make as part of the golem than to use our dwindling supply of leather on.  All of it is ruined.  Stone is an impressive material, but eighteen thousand units worth of tree plummeting from the sky makes a convincing argument to the laws of the natural world.  The fact that the trunk has landed in a near perfect line to snipe this singular golem from among where its fellows stand waiting to be used is perhaps the silliest thing in the event; it couldn’t have been more targeted destruction if it was Kalip had fired a single arrow into it himself.

And it is replaceable.  I don’t need to be upset about this at all.  But I still Collect Plant the tree out of the fort’s courtyard before its bulk can roll and crush anything, or anyone.  And I feel perhaps a small amount of satisfaction in wiping it from the ground, erasing for a time this small part of the Green that delivered its own spiteful strike here at the very end of storming, as if it were determined to at the very least waste my time.

Oh, Yuea didn’t see the tree before I took it away.  I watch her through a dozen compound eyes as she whirls through the mud of the yard inside the fort’s walls, searching for an enemy that was never there.  I should get her out of the rain before she either freezes, or begins to believe she is actually one of the plants that she has been amalgamated with and tries to plant herself in the ground.

”Yuea.”  Speaking through Amalgamate Human still feels so liberating, even if I can only do it to two people, and I must always caution myself to never phrase something as a command.  “There isn’t a threat.  You don’t need to freeze out there.”

She pauses before replying to me, and through our bond, along with all the constant information the spellworking signals to me about her health and position, I can see her disbelief as her alert state persists for a talon of heartbeats before her actual thoughts catch up and her shoulders dip.  “Good.”  She replies.  “Because it’s fucking cold.”

”I feel I should remind you that you are allowed to wear shirts or coats.”  If there is one benefit to the fact that every resource I possess replenishes with sufficient time, it is that I can afford to use them for small things.  The taste of pleasant - if slightly sarcastic - conversation is a flavor that I have been hungering after for most of this life.  “You are not,” I remind Yuea, “required to bare yourself to the suns as a form of taunt.”

”Yeah but what if that worked?”  She shoots back at me.  “Can you imagine?  They’d write about me in the imperial library for it.”

I send her my amusement, a magically conveyed laugh over what is meant to be nothing more than a channel for giving orders.  “Would that be before, or after, they add your name to the archives for every other reason?”  I inquire.

It is certainly more direct than I have been so far, though still circumspect.  Yuea presents herself as someone with nothing to hide; a bold human who has neither shame nor secrets.  But I’ve watched Yuea keep quiet while the others slowly open up to talk about lost homes and missing family.  I’ve seen the look on her face, shared only with Kalip, when anyone mentions the past.  She is holding a close secret, and while I don’t think there is a thing in this world that would make me doubt her character at this point, I cannot help but be the collection of feelings and behaviors that come from who I once was.

And every single one of those people was a nosy little revabel.

The farmer would have denied it but known his truth anyway.  The soldier would have denied it and meant it, and been wrong about herself.  The singer would have said it like it was a burden.  But the scholar, merchant, and cleric all knew what they were about; the drama and gossip of a life that was slightly outside what was normal.  The blazing desire to simply know hidden truths about people, for no other reason than to know them, without malice or intent to make use of the knowledge.

Well, maybe not the singer.  They would have ruffled their feathers about it, perhaps, but certainly would have used those secrets if it was a matter of survival.

I had been feeling something like a smile while dwelling on the past, but now, a thought strikes me.  I have, for this whole life, been trying to piece together the old lives of who I once was.  Six old souls, and parts of four extras now, that aren’t me but are certainly sources of who I am.  Farmer, soldier, scholar, cleric, singer, merchant.  I know them like I know myself, inside and out.

And yet this is the first time I have realized, that every time I think of the experiences of the singer and their upbringing as a young demon, their dangerous and often damaged lifetime on the run, operating as an espier, and eventually growing to understand their own trust and love…

At no point did I wonder why they had feathers?

Feathers were, after all, perfectly normal features for a demon to have.  A thought that I turn over in my thoughts now, for long enough that Yuea has given up on being rude to me and gone inside to dry her green-tinged skin by one of the hall’s fires.  Demons have feathers.  Not always, but often enough that it isn’t worth comment.  Do they not?

Through the eyes of bees and glimmerlings, I examine the people collected here.  Mixed in with the humans and gobs and verdlings, there are more of them now, and I cherish the presence even of those who still doubt me.  Those I know are easy to find.  Muelly, black furred and starting to regain some of her weight, she doesn’t have feathers.  Serahah’s faded pink fur and cracking horns show her age, though she is on her feet again and Drain Health will keep her there as long as I can manage.  Daurthy is spotted and has the longer facial structure of one of the plainsfolk I remember, but few other signs of that heritage.  Of the younger ones, Zhoy, Ahalan, and Marrko all bear clumped fur and dirt marks shared with their fellow human children, but fur and in one case the nubs of horns are as far as their traits reach.  And Distant Vision, where it can find survivors out beyond the edge of the Green that aren’t covered by the standing city wards, sees much the same from the locals.

”A question.”  I ask Kalip and Yuea together, binding our voices through Amalgamate Human.

”Oh, you’re back now.”  Yuea speaks out loud around a mouthful of something she’d been frying on a stick over the hearthfire.

I ignore that.  “The two of you were in a military, you must have known something of your polity’s neighbors.  Are you aware of any feathered demons?”

”Flyers?”  Kalip’s response comes with raised eyebrows that I can feel through our connection.  “That would have gotten attention.  Maybe even an edict to counter.”

”Not flying, simply demons with feathers in place of fur.  Or sometimes along with it.”  I clarify.

”You sure you know what a demon is?”  Yuea inquires.  Well, ‘inquires’ implies a politeness that is absent from the soldier.  But I know she would inquire if she had the capability.  “Are you thinking of birds?”

I will plot my revenge on her later.  For now, I let the conversation lapse with only a pulse of exasperation sent toward the two of them.  There are things for me to do besides worry about the alien world I have been born into.

Always more to do.  Spawn Golem won’t be ready to build a replacement for the crushed tool until well into tomorrow, but that is acceptable, and will leave the expedition properly equipped.  Stone Pylons need to be grown.  Imbue Mending needs to be used.  All of the arcana I’d collected through the exchange of burning points of power, constructs built inside the darkness of my inner self over the last two seasons, it all had a purpose.

Sometimes, that purpose was no longer active, or was long past.  I didn’t need to See Commands at the moment, and with everyone who needed it equipped, Make Low Blade couldn’t do more than refresh the edges on the worst of the kitchen knives.  Sometimes, the spells were things I had never wanted, and refused to use now, out of a fear for the consequences.  Consume Ecology was the primary culprit there; sitting in the middle of a possibly literally living ecosystem seemed like a poor place to test if it would feel me taking a bite from its hide.

But for all the other tools, there is a rotation.  It is becoming not rote, exactly, but something I understand.  Multitasking comes easier and easier to me with each spell’s use that I have a clear goal for.  The planter boxes in the cellars are grown and harvested and traded out to reality almost on a schedule.  The bees and beetles under my banner grow and thrive and are bolstered with glimmer and mantra as they learn to love this small community.  The wooden field maps in my command office are updated with points that hold pylons or the quarries I am using for golem materials.

And also, one more important thing.  Through it all, I keep a part of my mind on watch.

The fort in the middle of the thriving overwhelming vegetation of the Green stands against all three stormsuns.  Wind and rain and ruin drape themselves over the ground and sky around us.  But in the repaired structures, children play, soldiers rest, a commander eats dinner and plans for a future that I think we see similar shapes to, and an old demoness gives in to my persistence and lets herself know that she will be alive tomorrow to teach lessons from the few texts stored here to the next generation.

And an unlikely collection of faces and facets collect themselves for tomorrow, when they will leave this place.  To once again - or for Luetra, for the first time - march through the Green.  But this time, to exit, to emerge into the plains and border villages, to find a road through to the city of Wavewatch and the survivors there.  And to return with supplies, news, and a picture of the shape of the disaster this world is shuddering under.

For many of the old soldiers, it is just another march.  Though maybe that is uncharitable, and even the most weathered veterans understand that things have changed forever.  But for Mela, this is her first hero’s journey, and it will be the one that defines her almost as much as her lakeside declaration.  It is, however, in my nature to have faith in the girl.  Or perhaps it is in the nature of heroes to draw faith to themselves.  The scholar never really did learn the answer to that ancient echoed question.

No matter what it is though, a march or a journey or even a Formed Caravan, it will be something we will rely on.  There are, at the end of the accounting, too many people here still with injuries or conditions that would make it impossible to get all of us out of the Green intact.  Not to mention the fact that out there is no more safer than in here, or that Wavewatch’s population may simply reject us entirely.  So those of us here will wait, and fortify, and build a place worth returning.  And for the one of us that is an apparatus, we will have Distant Trajectory ready to provide every mote of support to our far away friends.

The thought comforts me through the night.  While the others sleep… well, while the others who are not on watch, or Kalip, who I cannot seem to recall ever seeing with his eyes closed, sleep… I work.  Work my magic, work the land, work at planning.  With the steady drum of rain I cannot deflect all of and wind that refuses to give up as my background orchestra, I pour every useful drop of the blank nothing that powers my magic into reality, and put it to use.

And when the dawn cracks the horizon, my glimmerlings and partner insects alike perch on the fort’s upper wall and towers.  Giving me a view of where Auor and its broken grin hang in the sky as the true sun makes its presence known with golden light that is worth more to me now than the material it shares a name with ever could be.  The sky, painted with streaks of purple and orange, lit aglow by the simple start of a day, shows a lot of color, but no trace of the stormsuns among its territory.

Vanished during the night, leaving just the traces of their last gasps behind.  Storming is over.  The winds have stilled, the rain has ceased, the quakes quelled.  The effects remain; that ridgeline will be a problem, of course.  And the mud alone would be enough to drive the soldier to tears if she had to wade through it herself.

But Storming is over.  Fall is here.  And we survived.

Not all of us.  I will never forget that.  Whether it was through malice or mistake, we are missing people who should share our tables.

But it could be worse.  And for those who remain, I believe I can find the strength to keep going, and take joy in the act as I do.  There is nothing quite like a devastation unfathomable to make one realize what they have in the moment.

The sleepers in the fort stir.  Slower and softer than when the suns were trying to slaughter them all.  Comfort coming easier when there is no fear just beyond the walls you have no choice but to trust.  I will not wake them myself, though I fear that my bees might have other plans for their larger partner’s cozy nests.

Instead, I finish one last piece of work, before I turn my full attention to greeting everyone on this most precious day.  Just enough of my reservoir refilled to arrange stone from Collect Material and ironic chunks of the offending tree from Collect Plant, all filtered through the shaping tools of Spawn Golem to create one last traversal tool for the expedition.  This one made partly of the final thing that tried and failed to stop us from making it through the storms, I think will be a favorite.

And it is only then, with that last bit done, that I go to say my momentary farewells.

And after that, perhaps I will allow myself a moment of my own kind of sleep.

Devils know I think I’ve earned it.