Amanda Hawk Personal Diary, April 17th, 2129
Returning to the Circles this year has been a strange experience, now that I've begun to understand so much more about them. They're still what I set out to make them in the beginning, a place for everyone to find family after the Sorrows took it from us. But they're so much more than that now, too. Billions of people, all united in a common purpose, seeking to make the world around just that much brighter. And at the centre of it all, there's me.
I don't lead the Circles. That's not what they were ever meant for. But whilst I know, somewhere deep inside, that they'd survive my death, I also know that I am still their most powerful single anchor. That's been the case ever since the beginning, and I don't think I ever could have changed it. As a social construct, the Circles maintain themselves by the presence of those who make them real, not that it precludes some form of leadership - the Hearts exist for a reason.
But it goes deeper than that, too, I can see that now. Gaskin's journal, and everything else he and a few others among the Elder First left me, gave me that. The melody that I can see between humanity, what Vega and others like her call the Web, the Circles changed it. Or maybe it's more correct to say that the Circles changed to be a part of it. Whatever the phrasing, the reality is very simple.
Every member of humanity holds a fragment of the power that the Dragons gave us, though only a handful among us are gifted with the strength of a Potential. And yet, most of humanity's thirteen billion souls are members of the Circles, one way or another. The ties that bring those people together are reinforced by their collective belief that it should be what it is, like how crystals form. And during the Second Battle of Sol, all that power was reflected in on me, at its heart. Looking at it, I think it might have happened even had I not been leading the battle from the Calypso.
It's a little paradoxical, but it makes sense. If humanity believes that the Circles should exist, then by extension the Circles believe humanity should. If one is threatened, the power of the construct reacts. Usually, that's something small, little bits and pieces that make the Circles stronger. Helping people find ways to close rifts and heal wounds, without causing more of them. But that's humanity wanting the Circles. When it's the other way around? Well, I know what I did with that power. But now that I know where it came from?
That makes the Circle an Artefact of Practice, perhaps my very first. Not for what it did, but for how.
Artefacts have been shown to grow with time, like how Kalilah's weapon doesn't need a power cell anymore. She simply needs it to fire, and it does, drawing energy through her Focus instead of something else. It's what gives it the ability to emit so much energy; no power cell ever built could keep up with the sort of output she operates at. But if the first Circle started to form shortly after my Awakening, at least in terms of becoming something Practiced, then they're one of the oldest Artefacts of the Second Awakening. Bryn and his fellows believe it did, and looking at them in that context, I find it hard to disagree.
The Circles were never meant, well, I never planned for them to grow so much. But if Practice was involved, if they were seen by my Focus as a tool of Mending? Then I can't be surprised that the first of the Circles became exactly that. One of many, founded in its image, and all of them spreading out across the world to help it heal. Even the way in which those who are part of it act could be laid at the feet of Practice, in some ways.
And yet, when I look at the world that they've helped create…perhaps it is arrogant of me, but I would call it worth it. Nothing I did changed anyone, I'm certain of that. It just helped make what the Elder First did to us greater. Where before someone might have failed to find common ground, or a way to patch broken bridges, the Circles help. In a world woven through with a vast web of life, they are a constant presence in helping it endure.
And yet I'm still here, so worried about the very idea of explaining this. I know that what I did as a child will be accepted, that it will be seen as just another part of the new world we forged from the devastation of the Sorrows. But, I'm not sure. Maybe it's simply a matter of me being my best critic. But if I won't be that, who would be?
It's too late for these thoughts, even for me, and I think I'm about to hit the flagged time that Mary set for me. Tomorrow, I meet with the Hearts to explain this, and with their blessing, to more than them, too. To give humanity the truth, no matter that I never knew until now, of my greatest creations. And to ask for help in making something that one day, I think, might even prove a match for it, in its own way. It's been a long time since I've seen who I think they'll ask. I wonder what V-
--Recording terminated by household datalock--
Message attached: Dammit Mandy! Go to bed!
Mother of Circles: 61 + 33 = 94. Synergy Solid Success
Those Great Creations: 51 + 34 + 20 (Arsenal of Wisdom) = 105 + 169 = 274/200
September 25th, 2129
You looked down at the complex diagram that had taken you most of a year to produce, and took a deep breath. You were confident that the schematic would work; it felt right, but that hadn't been the true question ever since you'd met with the person who'd helped you create it. The question at this point was how effectively you could create the design in front of you. And it wasn't as if you had any experience or knowledge to fall back on to help guide you here. No one had tried to build an Artefact like this. Until recently, no one had thought it was even possible.
"You're trying to borrow trouble again, Amanda." The words had a slightly clipped accent, with no shortage of gentle amusement. It had been decades since you'd last seen the woman behind them, but Veda had played a part of such significance in your life that few others could match.
"I thought the phrase was that one was borrowing trouble, Veda," you said, looking up from the display. The woman leading idly against the doorframe had slightly tanned skin, a reminder of her ancestry in what had once been India. She was also a Potential of Insight, and the woman responsible for the first Practiced Miracle in human history.
"Only if the person succeeds," Veda replied, stepping into the small lab. There wasn't much in there, just the imager and a table with two chairs. This hadn't been the sort of problem that had required anything more, not physically. "And you don't get to today."
It would have been futile to argue the point, especially when she was right. Today, after all, was the day that you got to see if everything you'd done in creating the diagram before you would pay off. All the confidence in the world couldn't have made you completely certain, not with everything that was on the line. Insight had confirmed in the last month that the Regulars would arrive by 2131 at the latest, giving you less time than you'd hoped for. It was a coinflip now, if you'd have another year, or if this really would be the last one before you faced the Shiplords once again.
"It's easy to say that, Veda," you said out wryly, acknowledging her point even as you gathered one of your own. "But you aren't the one who's about to do something that no one ever has before. And before you make the comparison I know you want to," you knew each other's moves in this conversation so well by now that it was almost instinctual. "Almost everything I did before I did in the heat of a moment, with no time to think about it. This is different."
"Which is why you aren't allowed to borrow trouble today." Veda said, her tone resolute. She sat down beside you, and touched a key to bring up the full model in the air above you. It was difficult to look at, even after all the months of work you'd spent working with it. "I don't get this the way you do, Amanda. But I know it's complex in a way unlike anything you've done before."
You rocked back a little in your chair. This was new.
"But this is important in a way few things have been for you in a very long time. And if you getting it right means that we have to help you..." She made a gesture, and holo around you changed, sweeping out around you to fill the room with a very different image. No, you realised a moment later. Images. Plural.
They showed rooms, stadiums, meeting places, all ones you'd stood in over the past months, to explain to the Circles what your Practice had made them. You'd never been asked to apologise, not once, but the sentiment behind your words had been very close to one. Now those rooms were full of people again, and countless eyes suddenly faced you. There was a calm focus in them, something your subconscious mind recognised instantly.
Members of the Circles stood in a pattern of interconnected concentric rings, each one reaching in towards the innermost ring, made up of that Circle's Heart. Those stood, in contrast to almost all the rest, with one hand on a neighbour's shoulder, and their free hands were held into the centre of the ring their body formed. They met there in the middle, hand to hand with fingers clasped, completing each pattern.
"Then we'll be there," Veda finished, as your head spun. What were they doing? And quite suddenly, you remembered something that a young man called Adam had said to you, when you'd approached the Circles in preparation for something you'd subsequently never pursued.
"If we're going to win the greater war, that we all know is coming, we're going to need to learn how to replicate it." Had it really been almost ten years since that day? It was hard to tell if you just looked at the faces of those in the images around you. But it had been that long, and the Circles had never been a passive entity. They'd tried and, it seemed, found some success.
You could feel the fragments of power gathering at the centre of those webs, shining light flowing down the rhythm-channels of the construct. A construct they now knew was there, because you'd told them so.
"Veda," you started to say.
Tinker Assistance: 99 + 33 = 132 -> Mender's Soul DC reduced by 102
Not in time.
Veda and raised a single hand towards you, and invisible power flooded into the room around you, until you could almost see sparking in the air. Less than you'd wielded at the Second Battle of Sol, you realised, but that made sense. That had been the focus of billions, and even with the gathering places you could see filled to beyond capacity, there were at most perhaps millions present. And yet Purify had outshone the light of Sol itself. Even if you reduced it a thousand times, that would be a truly phenomenal amount of energy.
Yet the energy requirements for this Artefact, if it was going to work as you'd planned, had been phenomenal, too. It had been the largest reason for your doubts, and Veda had known that. Of course she'd known, that was who she was. All the way back to the Miracle of Prologue, she'd had a gift that was, in its own way, just as powerful as Vega's. She'd seen what you'd been missing then, and helped find a path to where Prologue could be made real. And now, she'd done it again, as if the differences in scale were entirely irrelevant.
With her free hand, her left, she touched the imager's controls again, and the multidimensional outline of what you were trying to create flowed into the air around you. You looked at it, at the shapes and the possibility, at how it was almost real, yet not. Missing pieces, like it was broken. And at that thought, your Focus took hold and all your doubts vanished.
You were a Mender. That was what you'd always been, even before you Awoke as a Potential. You fixed broken things, and made them better, if you could. That was who you were, who you always would be. This creation around you was incomplete, but you could make it whole. What more was there than that? What more could there be? All you needed right now was enough energy, and looking around you, it was all right there.
So you opened yourself up to it, everything that had been offered, and your world changed. Everything brightened impossibly, as if under a giant's flashlight, revealing everything you needed to see in perfect clarity. You didn't move, didn't gesture, didn't even speak. You just let that power come pouring in, down into your Focus, to the heart of your self.
And your soul answered.
Tinker: Mender's Soul: 86 + 47 + 20 (Arsenal of Wisdom) = 153. Synergy Overwhelming Success.
You are very glad, after the fact, that you'd had Mary monitoring the room with every sensor the full support of Arcadia and two Ministries could supply. Being able to go back and see the process of this artefact taking shape proved invaluable in coming to terms with what you'd made. Veda had done exactly what she'd done decades before, and found a way to help you abandon the limits you'd placed on yourself. With help, yes, but that had been the point. With the aid of the Circles, the power they'd brought to you, and the far more important commitment behind it, you'd surpassed yourself.
Invisible energy wreathed you now, even with your Aegis retracted, a constant presence around you in a way that was entirely yours. Whatever you'd done had brought your Focus closer to the surface, and made it more a part of your body. Every Potential's body was a Practiced vessel; that had been known for decades. You'd taken it a step further, now. It was like how Marcus and those like him became vessels for their Foci, but they'd done that through years of intense practice. You knew the theory, but it had never been planned to apply it here. And that was only the side-effect.
The artefact was bound into the physical vessel of Sidra's existence, strengthening them just as much as it did you in physical terms, yet remaining curiously opaque to the Unison Intelligence in all others. Most artefacts were, well, if not simple at least understandable to a Unison Intelligence after integration, and the manner in which it had been connected to the Platform should have ensured at least some sort of connection. And there was at least something, just…nowhere near as much as there should have been.
The artefact was present in Sidra's awareness, but the intelligence lacked any point of access to it beyond being able to tell that it existed. That, and that it was almost unimaginably powerful. It had made your Aegis stronger in the same way it had strengthened your body, but beyond that? The power was there, but you weren't sure how to connect to it. Everything you'd found so far had just been passive effects.
And yet…
You'd built this artefact for a battle that was yet to come. You'd known that was its purpose, deep in your bones. Could it be that it really was that simple, that what you'd created would not come fully to your hand until that battle came? That was less than optimal, but given the circumstances involved in its creation? It would make sense. And it would also explain why you couldn't settle on a name for it.
You'd waited for truth before. And you knew the strength that had been granted to you, if everything you had seen were simply passive side effects. So let the Shiplords come. You would be ready.
(Amanda Hawk gains Trait: Risen Focus. Mender's Soul Tinker project complete. Integration theoretically complete, but currently non-functional. Circles are organising)
