Demesne 3 - How to Build a Dungeon's Core (Patreon)

The first thing any Whisperer learned, whether they were a savant or an initiate, was that wisps were everywhere.

In every speck of dust, every drop of water, every empty space, there were wisps. They clung to the magic in the air, inert and unmoving until a Whisperer offered them magic and bound them with will.

Not exactly the second thing they learned, more like the 25th, or possibly the 50th… definitely in the first hundred somewhere… was that all wisps could be found anywhere, even if only in relatively infinitesimal amounts. Within a lake teeming with waterwisps, there would airwisps and firewisps. In the empty air, waterwisps and lightningwisps would float. In the darkest cave which had never seen the light of day, lightwisps could be found. Also, death by iridiation, but if you went down that deep you were basically asking for it.

Normally, a Whisperer's control over wisps was limited. There were the wisps inside one's body, which were a part of you and had to be used carefully because while they were the easiest for a Whisperer to manipulate and control, they were a part of you and were needed for little things like living. Taking, for example, firewisps out of your body was an easy way to die of cold and hypothermia. Really, only a stupid or desperate person would do it.

Lolilyuri knew all this, as she was a properly educated wizard who'd learned from one of the many educational facilities in the demesne she'd grown up in. She'd done the work, spent hours in the local library, clubbed classmates from behind to check out reference books before they could, sacrificed nights of sleep, paid in blood, scars and student loans.

Sure, it hadn't been a big, old or important school, not like the big ones closer to their demesne's Dungeon where the Dungeon Binder ruled, but it had taught her the basics, the teachers actually knew what they were talking about and competently answered questions, given her a firm grounding to build up from, and, most importantly, she'd been able to afford it without prostituting her skills or herself, putting her in debt for years or getting a job that required her to, ugh, talk to people.

She'd be sure to repay them by thinking about sending monetary support their way once she had a Dungeon in only her mid-twenties and was pulling riches out of the ground as easily as sitting on a latrine. She'd wouldn't actually send anything, but she'd definitely think about it and feel mildly guilty when she certainly and inevitably didn’t send money. It was the least she could do for their contribution to her success.

Because dangerous as it was, the school had still taught her that there was some advantage to using wisps from your own body. They responded with alacrity no matter their distance from her, meaning she didn't have to be in contact with them to make her will known. It also meant that they could be used as a conduit to affect, imbue and bind wisps around them.

She laid her numb hand on the stone with her baby teeth, breathing in magic and channeling it through her bones and nails to remind the teeth to whom they belonged. They were her weakest link, because she was NOT using one of her bones, and while fingernails were good for channeling power to earthwisps, they wouldn't do for this.

Lori breathed in magic, imbuing it with her will, channeled it through her blood, her bones, her teeth, her organs and muscles and nerves and brain, through her lungs and her currently one working eye as she stared at the light of the candle. Then she channeled it outward. The magic seemed to leap through the air, crossing the distance and reached out to the wisps that had been part of her. It wasn't as quick and efficient as direct contact with her body or conducted through a wire, but it went. The magic she sent spread from her wisps, stimulating the piece of this land that had known her will.

Lori took in a long breath, drawing in magic. This was it. The moment before the plunge. That last, fleeting chance to stop something before you throw yourself at the mercy of outsides forces for the foreseeable future.

She wanted this.

She channeled magic through her wisps, to the matter they had been joined to, through the gold-plated lead, through the ground and air. She spread her magic, carried by her wisps. The matter she prepared burst as the water and blood vaporized, as the cork popped from the bottle of her breath. Light shone from the cracks of the box of mirrors, and a seeming cloud of darkness spread from the upturned cup. Heat bloomed as all the wax in the candle became heat and flame, even as Lori used her wisps to guide the heat around her, dispersing it into the air and stone. Her tooth and the rock on which it lay melted like wax under her hand, becoming one with the stone beneath her as the quartz suddenly shattered as it twisted apart from within, and she felt her hairs tingle and sparks dance on her skin as bits of quartz.

Her wisps spread, binding other wisps to her will as she breathed circularly, drawing in more and more magic, spreading it around her, until her lungs needed more air than power, until…

She slammed her wisps, of earth, of air, of fire, of water, of light and dark and lightning, into the sealed bottle of powdered Iridescence, dragging the matter and substance they were part of with them. The bottle shattered as stone, rock, water, air and six discs of metal pulled in with them slammed into it, releasing the powder stored within.

The Iridescence began growing, greedily trapping her wisps. And in the moment, when as the bane of all life fed on her magic, as it was overwhelmed by more wisps and more power than it could use to grow more of itself…

Lolilyuri, wizard, Whisperer, desperate… bound the Iridescence to her will.

There was no endless moment where she thought it wouldn't be enough. No desperate breaths as she tried to push in more magic to overwhelm the Iridescence. No internal screaming as she focused every last drop of her will. She'd studied the ritual. She'd measured the amount of Iridescence she'd prepared. She'd measured her average capacity and the Iridescence's relative absorption and growth rate. She'd done it right.

That didn't mean she didn't still collapse into a boneless bundle of relief as she felt her binding snap into place, as her wisps became part of the Iridescence and the Iridescence became part of her wisps, as they collapsed into bring light and darkness and heat and cold and strands of melted metal and the feeling of sparks on her hairs as her components collapsed together. Wisps that had been part of her were pulled from the matter they had inhabited, pulled into the Iridescence she had claimed, reinforcing her hold on it as it started to pull magic from the very air, growing in size, pulling in more of the wisps around her…

Before her eyes, her Dungeon's heart, its core, its center, its focus… it came into being, rising weightlessly into the air, a trickle of melted gold and lead connecting it to the ground. Suddenly she could feel the air around her, the stones at her feet, the water still clinging to the cave's far walls and ceiling, the melted gold and lead that had been beneath her fat candle. She could feel the dark of the cave and the light shining through the fluttering edges of her blanket over the cave entrance, the potential for lightning in the air…

Beneath her feet, deep within the ground, beyond the touch of the rain and the flowing river, she could feel Iridescence start to break apart, releasing their bounty of wisps. She could feel her awareness growing, spreading in all directions as the demesne's started to grow, devouring magic out of the air and ground, as the number of wisps bound to her will as if they had come from her own body began to grow exponentially, every pace of distance her influence increased adding more and more wisps to her power…

Lori didn't know when she started laughing in triumph, but she didn't stop for a long time.

Finally, at long last… she had a Dungeon.