Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

Available Power : 3

Authority : 5

Bind Insect (1, Command)

Fortify Space (2, Domain)

Distant Vision (2, Perceive)

Collect Plant (3, Shape)

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Nobility : 3

Congeal Glimmer (1, Command)

See Domain (1, Perceive)

Claim Construction (2, Domain)

Empathy : 3

Shift Water (1, Shape)

Imbue Mending (3, Civic)

Bind Willing Avian (1, Command)

Spirituality : 5

Shift Wood (1, Shape)

Small Promise (2, Domain)

Make Low Blade (2, War)

Congeal Mantra (1, Command)

Form Party (3, Civic)

Ingenuity : 4

Know Material (1, Perceive)

Form Wall (2, Shape)

Link Spellwork (3, Arcane)

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Tenacity : 3

Nudge Material (1, Shape)

Bolster Nourishment (2, Civic)

Drain Endurance (2, War)

The human man’s name is Kakoa. He’s from the same town as the other humans, I’m told, but clearly has a bloodline from somewhere else; as his deeply tinted red skin attests to. Recent, too. Mother, perhaps grandmother. Maybe they were from the Agien Archipelago, or somewhere farther south in the uncharted sea.

Maybe the sea isn’t uncharted anymore.

Maybe I am distracting myself too much.

“You cannot hold me forever.” He told Yuea. From anyone else, the words might be a snarl, but from him they had no bite to them. It was a resigned sigh, more than anything else.

It is evening now. He agreed to wait, on my urging, long enough for me to attempt to Form Party with him. To talk, to at least try to dissuade him from his attempts at suicide, if not to pressure him to pull himself back into life.

I think he thinks this is something else. But he sits with the others around the campfire as the sun sets; many of them nervously watching him, while the children just sit and eat in exhausted silence without understanding the tension.

We’re leaving tomorrow. Everything is as close to packed for travel as possible. All that is left is to sleep, and wake, and move. And a few other small details. I won’t be ‘sleeping’, instead just waiting through the night, watching the far spaces as I wait for the others to wake.

I occupy myself trying to use my spells as much as I can. Collect Plant has taken the tree the bees had their hive upon, and maybe someday I can return it to them rightfully. Make Low Blade with some of the river stones that Malpa and Dipan brought me, infused with Imbue Mending through the channel of Link Spellwork, lets me try my hand at making self-repairing knives. If nothing else, they can be swapped out for some of the wood or bone blades that are showing cracks already. Truly, these are low blades. And I consume the stamina for my Congeal Mantra and Congeal Glimmer spells making more of both the small charms for the survivors; though the understand at least slightly the latter, the former puzzles them as much as me, for now.

But eventually, I can waste no more time. And nor should I.

Are you ready? I ask in the dirt through Nudge Material. It is still a painstakingly frustrating process, to form words this way. But I make the effort, as it is still the best I have in many respects.

“I am, spirit.” Kakoa says solemnly, and then closes his eyes to wait.

I do so wish I could sigh. But I can’t, and I most likely never will again, so I shall get used to it. And in place of complaining endlessly, I reach out my strangely personal magic, and cast Form Party upon the despairing man.

And upon myself.

I watch only briefly as he twitches at the spell’s contact, before I let the eyes of my beetles go. I am using almost all of Bind Insect to hold a beehive as bonds right now, and have no extra effort to spare. Instead, I focus my senses inward, to where something has changed.

It is not like the senses that come with a new spell, when information is simply deposited like cargo for me to know and focus on as I choose. Instead, it’s something that feels almost wrapped around me. The cleric’s memories twinge at me, telling me an old story about what it feels like to commune with the ethereal. The farmer’s memories tell me a village tale of what it feels like to be taken by the dreaming. Of the two, I think I prefer the former.

It doesn’t feel warm, exactly. But I don’t actually know what I am doing with this new sensation. It isn’t clear even what it is. So I reach out to it, like I have done with so much of my magic, and simply… ask.

“Can you hear me?” I try to say.

It is very faintly, in the far distance, and after a great while, that I hear a response. “Yes.” The voice comes in. “Yes, I can.” It grows, becoming less soft, more alive.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

And along with it, I start to feel something else. A name, a… figure? A portrait of a man pressed against my souls; not who they truly are, but how an artist and an accountant would see them paired in unison. I can tell he needs sleep, and that he is not in good health. I can see the things he has said, small bubbles that I can touch upon to listen to captured words once again.

“Amazing.” I whisper to myself. And also, I suppose, to him.

“You wished to speak to me.” The man, Kakoa, says. “Before the end.”

Ah, yes. That. “I wish to forestall the end, truly.” I say. “For a time at least.”

“Why?” He seems genuinely curious, the emotion coming across the strange connection strong and true. “Why not take what I offer? The other things like you would. Wouldn’t they? Like they took…” He does not finish the thought.

“From what I’ve seen so far, yes.” I agree with a sigh. “And I can’t tell you if that’s because they can’t think like me, or simply don’t care. There are… people like that, after all.” My physical body twitches slightly as it continues its endless rotation; a slight shudder of disgust. “Some of who I was came close, before, but never like this.”

“I do not understand.”

“I am… was… I am not an empty creation. I had lives before. I contain the records of six minds, six lives. Their souls are the parchment on which my spells are written. And I remember all of them. We aren’t quite the same, but their lives were enough, for me to learn who I wanted to be.” I tell him. “I have never been able to give a full accounting of myself to the others; there is always too much to write. Not enough time to simply… be. To talk, as companions, or friends, or even passing strangers.”

Kakoa takes some time before speaking again. I think he’s telling the camp what I’ve said; passing on a message. Though why he chooses to interrupt our conversation I do not know. If Form Party persists, we will be able to speak more, should he choose life with the survivors. When he does next speak, though, it is on that exact topic. “My daughter.” He says plainly, cutting to the heart of it. “She is gone. But Yuea tells me that when things die near you, you take part of them. Is this true?”

“It is not false, but it is not correct.” I say, an old and well worn phrase from the scribe’s mentor, and then the scribe’s own life. “There is something, from a death, that passes by. Especially one I had a hand in. When your daughter left, there was… more than I’d ever seen, from anything else. I felt I could have taken it, but I chose not to. Pieces entered me, and have formed parts of some of my spells. But they are not your daughter, any more, I think, than you are your blood.”

“You spoke of souls, before.” Kakoa says abruptly. “As if you are so certain of them. Was that my daughter’s soul, then? The critical piece of her, the prince’s spirit? And you simply let it go?”

“I will not take without asking.” I whisper. “Ever.”

“But you will not take what I offer.” He retorts.

“I didn’t ask for it.” I say. “You speak as if I am some engine of hunger, and not a living person. Tell me, if one of the children saw you were sad, and knew a rite to make you happy that would require only their death, would you accept that?”

“No!” His word comes through with a snap of rage.

Exactly as baited. “And what, then, makes you think this is different? That you are not throwing your life away to accomplish a goal that you did not ask to help with?” I feel my own anger rising. “You refuse to even live long enough to become one of us, and you think to offer something even I do not understand?”

“Heh.” The simple tone of a dead laugh comes back. A single chuckle of someone who is caught off guard. “I did not understand.” He says, forlorn. And as he does, something in the spells wrappings tugs at my attention. “The slayers tried to tell me. So did that damned goat. But they don’t even know really, do they? Who you are?”

The question catches me off guard. “Of course they do. I’ve told them.” I say, too quickly. It distracts me from what is off about Kakoa’s impression in the spell. “Yuea told you, as you said.”

“No, no.” The man says with a cheerful laugh, his mood brightening rapidly. “She thinks you’re some kind of protector spirit. They all do. They don’t realize, how could they? They don’t know. I’ll tell them, before. But they just don’t realize. How much you actually care about them. As people. As a man.”

“I’m hardly a…” I cut that thought off. “Before what?” I demand. And then, I see it. Through Form Party and the connection it has opened between us. The feeling of what he is and how his own form is holding up.

He is dying.

Quickly.

“I’ve passed on what you’ve told me.” He says. “I think they will understand, eventually. But if you do truly care, know this.” Kakoa tells me with a dire tone. “Do not use this spell on them. On anyone you do not wish to kill. This is… quite painful.” I can feel the exact moment the fear creeps into his voice. “I will tell my daughter of you, in the next...”

“No.” I utter without consideration. And then, start scrambling to cut the link. But I am deep within the mental mechanisms that Form Party creates, and not the commanding magic that would let me sever the link with a thought. It takes me precious seconds to find my way to it, and I do not hesitate to throw off the tether - it is only from here that I can see the flaw; it is horrifyingly unbalanced and everything I send is ripping apart the other end of the line of light - the engulfment of my souls dropping like a cut away shroud.

But I am a fraction of a heartbeat too late.

Somewhere near where my body is buried, next to the warm flames of a campfire, an empty body falls into the dirt to the sound of panicked yelling.

And a dunestorm of small soft motes of something dangerous and beautiful fountain out into the world. I can feel it, see it, sense it with a feeling there is no word to describe. A vast number of them resonate with Form Party, while bits of the cloud attune instead to Nudge Material or Bolster Nourishment. But as the wave of their passing washes past my newfound form, these portions of what remains of a dead man seek me out like loyal hounds.

I try to push them away. I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this. Consideration for what I should do doesn’t even enter my thoughts. I feel only a deep disgust, a violation of my self. I have been used as a tool in someone’s suicide, and now the last pieces of his intent are trying to worm their way into my souls as if to mock me; to tell me that really, this is a favor and not an avoidable tragedy, an abomination.

My resistance is meaningless. Oh, I can refuse to draw in the excess. But those bits that have a connection to me seek me out all the same, directly into my body.

A point of power forms. Then another. It takes more and more each time, it seems, and so only two come of this. If I had honored his wishes, mayhaps I could have had more.

If he had honored mine, this wouldn’t even be a question.

I find it hard to care if this would be the difference between success and failure, between life and death. I cannot, in this moment, feel anything but a screaming, impotent anger, blended with a withering sorrow that leaves me feeling hollow and dizzy despite my lack of a stomach or head.

I cannot even cry. Cannot throw my hands over my head and bury myself in blankets.

I could bury myself in the dirt, though. Into the stone and metal and bone underneath. I could dig myself away, so far from the living this would never happen again. I could run and hide, and spend the rest of forever looking at the same unchanging list of rocks.

The memories of the merchant know this feeling; when her husband would have a deal turn and would lash out at her, she would want the same thing. The memories of the farmer know it too; when his son died and he never wanted to see the sun while sober again. From the cleric, it is the feeling of seeing the predetermined outcome of a false trial. From the soldier, the grinding loss of friends not to battle but to simple mistakes or age. From the singer, rage at the world that wouldn’t understand their differences. From the scholar, it is the dark feeling that must never be put into words, the secret and terrible desire to throw oneself into the void.

Everyone I have ever been has, at some point, wanted to dig a hole in the world and run into it.

Strangely, knowing I am not alone makes it more bearable. But only just enough that I do not start digging now.

Outside, I don’t even know what is happening. Oob tries to make me listen, through the bond, but there isn’t enough of the spell left for me to hear.

I grab a chunk of the dirt, I hope near the campfire, with Nudge Material. And spell out, in block letters I hope I get correct, a message, shoving the words through my emotional exhaustion.

I am sorry. I say. I need to be asleep. Please don’t leave without me.

Please don’t leave me.

I need to be alone. But I do not want to be alone. But right now, I am trapped here, in the dark emptiness of my mind. And so the choice is taken from me.

All I can do is hope they will understand. And hope that the night doesn’t hold any more surprises. Because I simply…

Do not have the life in me to help.