Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change

Available Power : 19

Authority : 6

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)

-

Empathy : 4

Shift Water (1, Shape)

Imbue Mending (3, Civic)

Bind Willing Avian (1, Command)

Move Water (4, Shape)

Spirituality : 5

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 : 5

Nudge Material (1, Shape)

Bolster Nourishment (2, Civic)

Drain Endurance (2, War)

Pressure Trigger (2, War)

-

Animosity : -

Amalgamate Human (3, Command)

Trepidation : -

Follow Prey (2, Perceive)

Kalip’s body changes without too much trouble. Though I’m saying that relative to the one other time I’ve done this, and Yuea practically ripped a bed in half and ruined her room. And compared to her apparently screaming loudly enough to wake the whole fort thinking there was a wrathwalker outside, Kalip controls himself admirably.

I assume. I still block off most of my senses so I can focus as clearly as possible. All but one bee watching, so I can monitor.

I use slightly different materials than for Yuea. I have no more crow shadows and I am unwilling to bind a bird just to harvest it; so instead, I use one of the shadows of a loyal lancer bee. It is from here, I think, that I draw out the swept back antenna that grow from Kalip’s head. Also possibly the thin stripes of yellow and black fur that sprout across his limbs and back, though that was unintentional. The glimmer is the same; creating a replacement for an organ that is leaking poison magic into his body. I forgo the soft bark skin that I gave Yuea as a natural armor, but I do still blend Kalip’s muscles with noose vine, having found more samples to snag with Collect Plant. He will, again, be able to use a bow to his specifications.

That makes four. A honeybee shadow, a glimmer, a plant, and Kalip’s own body. I need one more.

I considered using a mantra, or perhaps making use of Collect Material to have more options. Leather or cloth could make him tougher, or more flexible, and while we don’t have much extra around the fort, I’m sure some could be spared. But that is not the direction I choose to go.

Kalip asked for this specifically. Otherwise I would never use what’s left of the wolv in him.

The lines of fur he has widen in a dark black that contrasts with what the bee’s shadow gave him. His eyes grow larger, then narrow as their shape changes away from anything human. Something sharper, something more predatory. Bones and flesh grow and crack as he gains height, and I know that when he can stand, he will loom over everyone else quite easily.

My experience doing this with Yuea helps. I guide the process more, giving broad commands rather than trying to force the details. When I do focus on details, it is to stop the wolv shadow from imposing drastic changes; as much as it wants anything, it wants him to have more legs, more scythes, more of a taste for blood. I hold that back, while the rest of the spell works. The magic reacts better to this mix of directions. It costs less, takes less from me. Which is good, because with Yuea keeping the spell from refilling more than two thirds of its reservoir, it actually takes longer to complete this change.

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A fact that I do not think Kalip appreciates. Like Yuea, he tries to remain still during the spell’s work, and also like Yuea, he ends up snapping one of his own arm bones as he writhes under its effects. Once it is done, and he can draw on the magic to heal as well as be gifted what I have left from Drain Health, it will be fine. But I have several memories of broken bones, and while all of them are muted by the way minds keep you from feeling fresh pain every time you think on a past folly, I do know that none of them were fun to live through.

Changing him takes time. By the time I’m done, and he’s stabilized and starting to heal, it’s been almost a candle. Yuea almost rolls his body into the lake as a way of rapidly cleaning him off of the blood, vomit, and liquified skin that cover him, but I grab her through the bond. Not a command exactly, but somewhat akin to snagging your friend’s arm so she doesn’t start a tavern fight with the city militia again.

Did the soldier I used to be have a more exciting life than me? I think she had more fun than me. This is a travesty.

The other consequence of changing Kalip, and keeping a bond with him, is that I am absolutely sure I could not do it again. If we run across another magetouched that’s overexerted themselves according to the strict controls put on them by the Empire’s court magi, then I would need to detach myself from Kalip or Yuea to help them.

And I am suspicious - not certain, but a gnawing feeling that I am close to a truth - that doing so would have them degrade and die in short order.

But it is done. Kalip is alive, and recovering. I reverse the flow of Drain Health and put what I have left into him while Yuea yanks his bone into place. It takes a candle, but much faster than his commander, he’s relearning how to walk, and scrubbing himself down in the cold water of the lake under a sky of shattered moonlight.

Yuea complains the whole time. But Yuea still sticks around to help Kalip get dressed, and helps haul his newly reformed body back to the fort to get some painless sleep for the first time in a while.

I’ve been having a hard time understanding Yuea. Everyone else, I think I have a clear picture of. Muelly is scared and alone, and the best way I can help here is just by being there with her. Jahn feels like an outsider and a monster because of how everyone has treated him, and I can fix that by being the same way and forcing the issue. The gobs feel like they should be doing more, and I can help by giving them more to do and more to learn. Seraha feels like the world has broken somehow, and I can’t help with that because she’s right, but I can do everything in my power to give her a safe place to adapt. Malpa feels a painful loss and wants to rebuild the world to undo it. Mela feels a painful loss and wants to break the world to keep it from happening to anyone else. Dipan…

Okay, I have not figured out Dipan either. Perhaps I should listen to more of the gossip Oob and his people collect.

But Yuea? Yuea is rude, crass, abrasive to everyone, hiding at least two secrets that I have seen hints of from her, and devoted to the use of combat as a tool to solve all her problems.

She is also, though she would never admit it, compassionate and loyal. Fiercely so. Mostly to Kalip, but to the others as well. For all that she’s an aloof and smug emotional provocateur, she is still constantly throwing herself into fights to save lives. I just wish I understood why, when she doesn’t seem to like any of the lives she saves.

Even Kalip, who she is currently trying to ascertain the reflexes of by jabbing him in nerve points as she carries him into the fort. The bond with Kalip isn’t strong enough for me to see it as anything other than spikes of pain as she pokes at him, but I imagine it would not be inaccurate to see the man’s mind as a riot of smothered irritation.

I am going to find a spell for sighing. I need it, for my own psycocog health. Express Exasperation, maybe. Or Feel Frustration. Something that…

A connection forms in my thoughts. In this moment, all I am is my inner world, and one small portal to a bee that is keeping an eye on the two reforged soldiers. It’s quiet in my mind, and perhaps if I spent more time in this quiet and didn’t force distraction after distraction on myself so that I didn’t feel trapped in the darkness, I would have noticed this sooner.

When I speak, write, or even think the name of a spell or soul, they come out different. I am certain that if I do not use the right context, this does not work; I have absolutely said the word empathy before without talking about Empathy. But when I am thinking of spells…

Even if I don’t have access to them, I can know they exist. I can map the landscape of magic, bit by bit, if I have the time and the lexicon to work with.

As soon as I start thinking of how I might use this, though, it becomes clear that it’s not that valuable as a tool. Whatever strange echo sounds when I speak a magic, it can only confirm things I already know, or tell me things that may never matter. Knowing whether or not Improve Furniture is a real magic - okay, it is, interesting - is just that. Interesting.

This is not a tactical advantage. Even when it comes to other apparatuses, at most it can confirm that the spells they are using against me are real. That is not useful, that is just naming your opponent’s martial forms. The singer has a bold memory of being slapped up and down a training pitch for doing that once as a child, and I have no desire to replicate the process.

None of this helps me sigh. So I set that aside, and open myself back up to my bound, and my other magical senses. I let the sounds of the Green and the sleeping fort come back to me.

Fisher patrols on the wall, exceptional gob night vision helping them watch for anything approaching. They take their time on guard seriously, but I think not so secretly relish it as an ‘adult’ task to have been assigned. I ask Oob, and the beetle through his little insect information network confirms my suspicion with stolen gossip.

Muelly isn’t sleeping again, sitting in the meal hall next to my body, rhythmically tapping her horns against the stonework by tilting her head back. I leave a short greeting to her, and part of my attention on the area with some of the sleepy growing bees curled up in makeshift beds under the tables. If she needs something, I’ll be here.

Everyone else is in their rooms. Or in someone’s room, anyway. There is a strange side to being able to know everything everyone is doing, to some extent. To know who is sleeping where, and perhaps also why. I cannot stop myself from admitting that some of my old lives would make judgements on it. The farmer and the soldier had opinions on this, while the merchant had opinions on blackmail material. But I don’t. Or rather, I won’t. I won’t let myself. These are my friends, and I think I will care for them over any creeping old thoughts from lives that aren’t here.

The bees, especially the ones that aren’t now large enough to be mounts for the younger children, tell me it is getting cooler. That the night air is a little less of a warm blanket. That summer is coming to an end soon.

I worry that we might see storms upon us before we have carved out real safety.

I worry what those storms will mean for us. What I will need to do to keep everyone alive.

Then I laugh in my own mind. There is no sense in worrying without action.

I begin using Congeal Glimmer. Emptying out what has refreshed itself with small drips from somewhere into a vial of nothing liquid, to form more of the small stones. I make them in my office, seeing them shot through with black curving lines. Later, I will take them outside, and make them into something to help us fight, or to live, or to survive.

For now, I add them to the pile from the Stone Pylons. And discover, to my annoyance, that the pylons are not producing nearly as many as they should.

It doesn’t take long to learn why. The glimmer they have made is still mine, really. The connection goes from the hopestone, to the Stone Pylon, to Congeal Glimmer itself, and then to ‘me’. There are only so many steps, and the blockage is not hard to identify.

The Stone Pylon in question has far less capacity than it should, even with how weak these constructs are. But the nature of it is familiar. It is identical to Bind Insect or Amalgamate Human is; slivers of the total reservoir sliced off and kept in use by the tethers themselves.

On the one hand, I am frustrated that there is a limit to how many glimmer creatures I can make. On the other, I know now that I can circumvent it simply by making more and more Stone Pylons. And it is good to learn now, rather than in a few days, when we go to make a preemptive strike.

I make my pile of glimmer regardless. I don’t think, at this point, there is any way in existence to be overprepared.