Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

Available Power : 0

Authority : 4

Bind Insect (1, Command)

Fortify Space (2, Domain)

Distant Vision (2, Perceive)

-

Nobility : 3

Congeal Glimmer (1, Command)

See Domain (1, Perceive)

Claim Construction (2, Domain)

Empathy : 3

Shift Water (1, Shape)

Imbue Mending (3, Civic)

-

Spirituality : 4

Shift Wood (1, Shape)

Small Promise (2, Domain)

Make Low Blade (2, War)

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Ingenuity : 3

Know Material (1, Perceive)

Form Wall (2, Shape)

Link Spellwork (3, Arcane)

Tenacity : 3

Nudge Material (1, Shape)

Bolster Nourishment (2, Civic)

Drain Endurance (2, War)

What is a community?

I’ve lived through several of them. They take different forms in all my memories. All those old lives had a different idea about what it meant to be part of something. But somehow, the broad perspective brings me no closer to the truth.

The cleric would have said it was tolerating people long enough that it became more work to fight than to just exist. The farmer would snort, and argue that it was the people who loved you, that you loved back. They’d be looking at different sides of the same coin.

The scholar would say it was those who shared your passion and expertise, who you could trust. The singer would laugh and say it was anyone who you trusted not to trust, that covered your own failings. They saw different sides of the coin.

The soldier would say it was the people who surrounded you, that you lived your daily life with. The merchant would say it was the people who weren’t quite so close, distant torches in the dark of the world that you shared quiet correspondence with. Different sides of the coin.

Through the eyes of my beetle and a few of the growing bees, I look down at the words the survivors have written to me.

“What are you, and what do you want?” The writers look down at my insect allies expectantly, as if the bugs themselves will furnish some kind of answer.

It’s such a simple question, but there’s a lot pieces that I need to answer to myself before I can really understand what I am saying. I want… I want to not be alone. I want to be part of a community. But what does that mean? I know so many things from my last lives; how to till a field or decode a dead language or entertain a crowd. But I don’t know how to say that I just don’t want to be alone.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the coin we call community, that they all saw different sides of. A village, a faith, a school, an army… they’re all just ways we found to fight that monster.

What I am is easy to answer, and they did ask that first, so I start there. I am a crystal of some kind. I write with Nudge Material, thankful that I didn’t waste the supply of it with my distraction. Even more thankful that I find its movements stronger and easier than before, since I elevated that part of my collective soul. I make the mark we have agreed on for “there is a lot I don’t know” and continue. I woke here only days before you arrived. I have magic, and maybe am magic, and I know I can gain more.

I wait to let them read, trying to watch faces through the eyes of my bound insects. My bees are getting larger, but a human or demon face is still huge in their vision, and it is paradoxically hard to see the bigger picture. But I still see them tense, grimace, and snarl, as what I have written is read aloud by Seraha.

Then I try to answer the second part, smoothing the dirt down to write again, taking mild satisfaction in Nudge Material still having an ample amount of stamina remaining. I could - and will - get used to this.

I want… I start to write, and falter. Why is this so… hard? I am not bound to any commitments or laws any longer; I have been remade to make myself anew. All of my selves. All of us, free from the binds of others, I could do anything I wanted. I could let them leave, and have seasons of quiet days to play with combinations of my magic and never become bored. I don’t need anyone. I don’t need to worry about being vulnerable. So why is it so hard to simply say what I want?

I have paused in my writing, and the survivors have noticed. I didn’t pay attention, but the fighters have their weapons close at hand, skin and fur idly wrapping around the hilts of knives that I made for them. It strikes me as amusingly ironic.

The feeling draws a line of comfortable familiarity through all my memories. I’ve always been someone who liked to laugh, even at myself.

I wish I could sigh. Take a deep breath. Maybe one day. For now, I finish my sentence.

I want to not be alone. I tell them. I want to help. I want to learn, and grow. They soften, ever so slightly, like they aren’t sure if what I’ve written is some kind of trap. And I remember that I likely know why they are so suspicious of me; the reminder prompting me to add one more thing. And I want to fight the enemy. I write, hearing even through the limited range of the beetle that Seraha’s narrating voice falters here. There is something out there like me, I think. It is making monsters. It needs to be stopped. Can you tell me what you know? Will you stay?

I didn’t even realize how desperate I was when the last small question seems to slip into my magic almost unbidden.

There is some talking. Some yelling. I don’t particularly know the details, but they are discussing. I stay nearby with my beetle, trying not to let my mind wander too far. I do a simple chore that I’ve become fond of over the last few days, using Congeal Glimmer to make a handful of the small gemstones, in accordance with the camp’s vote. They have not changed how they voted since last time, but that is alright. I make them the magic all the same, even if they might be leaving.

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Small Promise seems to resonate with the action. An echo of magic blooming off the spellwork and into the camp, a line of change that I can see not with my magic but with my new body and the strange senses I am still learning to understand. A rush of those motes of power are moved by the expanding ripple, many of them beginning to make their way back toward me.

I am not sure that I wanted to learn that my promises are literally a source of power for me. It almost cheapens them. But I will worry about that later.

“We will stay.” I never stopped looking through the eyes of my beetle, and I refocus my full attention just as Yuea finishes the last letter of what she has carved in the dirt with the flat of her hand. And my souls sing with relief. They will stay. They aren’t leaving. They aren’t afraid of me. Or at least, they aren’t afraid enough to drive them off from the value I provide, a cynical old memory whispers. Yuea stands, dusts herself off, and walks off, like that’s literally all that she needed to say. I think the human woman is oversimplifying things, but I cannot lie and say I don’t appreciate it somewhat.

Then, in much more elegant handwriting, using a small twig she’d acquired, Seraha started writing as well. “You truly do not know what you are?” The question in the dirt came.

No. I write back. Only what I puzzle out.

“There is a reason we are afraid.” She writes, a pang of hurt moving through me as I read. “How long can you read?” She asks.

I check my spells. Bind Insect is my only real way to read, and it is dwindling, but still will let me watch for a while. I wish I could hear their voices properly, it would make this so much easier. A candle, at most. I write. I could do more with a bird.

I am watching her hand, not her face. But I can almost feel the grimace as her pink furred grip freezes at my words. Her hand shakes slightly as she moves her twig, and without thinking, I aim Shift Wood through my beetle, smoothing the bark down, sharpening the point into something like a stylus. I didn’t think before I did so, and I regret it as she flinches, almost dropping it. But then she starts to write regardless.

And in the small window of time I have where I can both read and write back, I begin to get a picture of their circumstances.

Only a season, since it all began. At the start of risen summer. It started small at first. Small happenings around her township. Animals acting strangely, the fishing catch dropping. Lights in the night and shadows in the day. It had started to become worrying, when they sent a courier to the next hamlet over. Their village was on the edge of the human and demon territories, and I get an unintentional picture of the the tensions between their species around here. I don’t know how long it has been since I last lived, but this kind of utter separation was not common, even in places where discrimination was the norm.

If the courier returned, they would never know. The problems amplified. Rumors and anger built as people began to get hurt, buildings eroded, and the world seemed to be closing in. Then, hope. A young pair of twins hiding from a rabid ouk found themselves in an old abandoned cellar on the outskirts of a long abandoned farm. And they had found something… like me.

A small crystal. Grey blue, with a dozen spines of crystal coming off it, an irregular shape that hovered and spun even when not touched.

The town had destroyed it, their mayor calling it cursed, and the problems had just… ended.

Until the monsters came out of the lake. And out of the woods. And the soldiers marching down the road had arrived as rotting bones and gnashing claws.

Within a tenday of the first death from one of the twisted fish things, a fisherwoman dragged off her skiff and torn apart, the monsters grew. More of them, worse of them. They took to land, the spearfishers turning harpoons to a frantic defense, the guard emptying their pistol supply in days. But the monsters didn’t stop. And neither did the problems.

Doors would not hold. Food would rot. Words wouldn’t be heard properly.

Only a few hundred of them made it out, making the decision to flee the crumbling, burning remains of their home. Thousands died.

Then, their exodus claimed more, and more. The deaths mounted. They tried to ask for help from the nearest village, humans or not. But they found only corpses and ruin. Here, the stories overlap; two groups of survivors, running from the wave of death and war washing over their small homes. The humans had actually gotten a magetouched unit arriving to their aid, for all the good it did them. I piece together from context that this term, magetouched, means something important to them. The magetouched were too late, and were themselves running from the deaths of their main army. It didn’t matter that they’d killed three things like me; there was always another. Always more monsters.

They didn’t know what I was, or where I came from. They had rumors and superstition, religious doomspeakers and cynical words from distant nobles.

But they recognized me, even if only as a threat.

I told them I was too tired to keep reading, and we could continue tomorrow. But in truth, I just needed to collect myself. This species version of excusing myself early from the guild meeting, I suppose.

I am not even two tendays old.

How long have the things that killed their people had to prepare? To grow? How strong are they going to be? It feels impossible. Like I am looking up at a cliff that I cannot see the top of, and did not know was there until I was already at the precipice. I have a handful of honeybees I have sworn to not turn to weapons, and a handful of ugly knives to pass around. What possible chance do I have against something that is sortieing out a dozen beasts each three times the size of a mortal soldier?

Something distracts me. One of my bees, that I have left to its own devices in the hive, is approached by another bee. The other one is not one of mine, but it still treats my changing bee as an equal. Or, perhaps not. It moves in a complicated bee dance that I am only beginning to understand, but that seems to indicate that my bee should follow.

I let it go, I have no need to interfere. But what comes next leaves me wondering exactly what is happening to the hive that I have buried near, and feeding my magic into. Because as I watch through my bee’s senses while it takes wing and heads out into the world, I find it led by its smaller hivemate to… a human.

One of the children. The little girl, the one who hides behind the older boy every time I see them together. She has fallen, skinned her knees and hands. She lies in the dirt, curled up on herself behind the wall of one of the huts, silently crying to herself.

The smaller bee brings mine to the child, and then leaves without any preamble, off to some important honeybee task. But mine stays, observing. And then… through Bind Insect, I feel it reach out to me.

Help. The word isn’t a word. It’s a small, atonal feeling. But it isn’t scared or worried. It’s just aware of me, and moving the need for help up the chain of command.

How my bee knows to even ask for help, however, is another question that I do not even begin to have an answer for.

But help is needed, and help we can provide. It would be easier to do this if I had not used up Link Spellwork earlier, but I simply mark the lesson that I should be more careful in how and when I experiment. Shift Water is still ready though, the empty liquid of its spellwork stocked to the point that I do not feel at all concerned using it.

I send my bee to the nearby stream, aiming the magic through it as I grab a slice of the water, coiling it into a sloshing ball as I pull it back to the camp, guided by my little watcher.

The bee alights on the ground in front of the girl’s face, her eyes going wide with worry for a second before she recognizes one of the small insect creatures that have been following the children through their nearby adventures. She uncoils slightly, face pained as she reaches out a scraped hand to the little bee.

I am worried at first, that she might hurt my bond. But her touch is soft, and strokes over the fuzzy abdomen of the bee with tiny fingers, the girl rolling to sit up as the bee crawls into her hand and is raised up.

I bring the water I am holding in closer, trying to clean the dirt and bits of blood off her injuries. But try as I might, I cannot make the spell make contact with her. So instead, I hold the ball in front of her, the bee crawling up to her shoulder in a motion that tickles against her skin, as I invite her to clean and cool her scraped skin.

The girl shakes slightly as she does so, and it takes me a double check through my bee to realize she is giggling to herself, playing with the water. I cannot touch her, it seems, but she is under no such restriction, even if I’m still holding the spell active.

But this is exhausting to my magic, and all too soon, I let the water fall into the line of greenery outside the camp, doing my best to not make mud where it would be a problem.

I leave my bee to its business, but it stays with the girl, even as she stands and brushes herself off and gets back to whatever chores she was assigned or adventures she and the other kids had planned.

Two interactions, so close to each other. Some of the people afraid, someone else curious and compassionate. Some of them I reach out to, some reach out to me. Some of them obviously only tolerating me, on edge about what I could do; but then a child who doesn’t care, and who accepts help without question. Two sides of the same coin.

I don’t really know what a community is, even still. But I’m part of one already.

It makes the frightening power of the other things like me all the more worrying. I have so much more to lose that I did not realize I already had.

If we are to fight back, we are going to need something more.

Some of my magic yet remains, and many of my spells are already refilling themselves from the world around me. And so, I set myself to work. To find some way to be more, to search for ways our shared community can be stronger.

We’ll need all of it.