#wizards watching countless sentient bombs commit suicide in the moment of their birth: Huh I wonder why this process is so unstable

[osddsilver]

Intricacies of a War Machine

A look into the mind of the Fireball Tamori shipped out to Fort Ciaran.

The sky above you settles into storm clouds lit from within by dull purple light. There are gaps between the clouds which you think indicate they are not entirely natural. There are stars behind them that indicate your location. Both the wizard who called you into being and the wizard who lent him that ability were gifted astronavigators. You did not need to know astronavigation, and so you do not. The clouds, though… a moment's thought and you know that they could be a form of abjurative magic or its byproduct. 

What is your name?

The man she was with, Silver, they call him, spares a glance at you and your ilk before he and his company are led in different directions. They will travel at the middle of the procession. More defensible, should Gaothmai attempt an advance. An officer orders you and 14 others to the back. 15 to the front. You will be the defense. It is a long road; you know how to march.

Names show where you come from. There is nobody from the Citadel. They are, at most, three generations removed from one of many other places. The Citadel has no names.

You must look ahead, but you can hear beautiful noises in the distance. They fall silent with your approach but there are always those too far ahead to have heard you and far enough behind to forget you. You overhear one of the lower ranking war wizards calling it birdsong. The snapping of twigs as some wildlife runs away into the woods. You wonder if you would be able to name it, if you caught a glimpse of it. 

What the Citadel does have are monikers that eclipse the person who claims them. The wizard who spoke to you was called Sky.

It is after two nights of marching that you notice the quiet ahead of you. You know what is to come now. The birds at your back still sing, at least.

You cannot speak to her motivation in leaving her name behind but you can feel the ghost of your creators’. The fear of his deeds left unrecorded. The fear of his deeds recorded.

They appear to have waited until the center of the procession was immediately before them. They have the ranged casters and archers alike hidden in the trees. Several foot soldiers approach the carriages in the center where the guard is at its thinnest. Hidden in their green robes but not invisible. Anything could be hiding in the trees and the narrow road makes detonations risky.

What kind of name would somebody like Sheer even be able to offer? A coward running from his actions as he takes them. You would destroy yourself immediately upon your creation- like many of your brethren before you- rather than accept his name. 

Your procession is being overwhelmed. With her eyes on the archers, your commander does not seem to have noticed the soldiers on your side of the road, approaching those most important wizards in the center. It is a strange sensation, breaking formation and stepping into the trees. Defiance of a direct order still in service of the empire. Someone might write a paper about you.

Names give people power over you, you do know that. A spirit whose true name is discovered is bound. You have had enough binding for several lifetimes, ones far longer than the one you have been given. 

You are delighted to find that the foliage does not burn at your touch. You move quickly but there is something in your path. A small creature with spindly legs that stares up at you, frozen in fear, from a bed of tamped grass. It would be in range. There's a small rock next to you and you toss it, right next to the thing’s hiding space. It bolts off, deeper into the woods. The noise could have alerted someone to your presence. The outcome would be the same for you.

They will talk about what you have done, of course, but your deeds will be attributed to that wizard which created you. You will be one anomaly of many. To discuss you will be to describe a path through a cladogram. You hope this means you will be put to rest sooner, but you know you were created by a very thorough people.

Your final act, your hand reaching into your own chest and grabbing tight, feels more familiar than anything else you have witnessed or done in the past days. When the boundary between what is you and what is not fails, it fails catastrophically. You try to hold on to the feeling of leaves on your skin, earth beneath your feet, and resentment in your heart, but they are all made of the gas currently fueling this thermal runaway. As the forest, the loam, the silent birds in the trees, the soldiers in their cloaks, and the road beneath them are transformed into a perfect, charred circle on the earth, you train your awareness on the snapping of twigs. Further, and further, and further away from here.