Demesne 12 - Working with Tools (Patreon)

Even though they had decided to send a group with Rian to Covehold Demesne to somehow acquire things the settlement needed and wanted– and to be honest, most people expected him to have to rob the bank– that didn't mean they would leave the very next day. Supplies needed to be gathered and preserved for the trip. Preparations would have to be made, since they wouldn't have Lori with them to provide water for cleaning, fire for cooking or stone for wheels. Attempts to dissuade the young women going with him would have to be attempted by their families. Sadly for them, no one seemed to mind that the astrologer or the idiot intent on getting his barrel back were leaving.

Part of the delay was that, upon their arrival to the current site of Lori's Demesne, they'd started dismantling the water wagons they'd been traveling with for wood. That meant they'd need to inspect the remaining water barrels still functioning and pick the one that could still roll and needed the least repairs to make it water tight so they'd have water to wash off the Iridescence with.

"Wait, why do we need a water wagon?" Rian said when this was explained to him. "Can't we just make a boat and travel downriver? I mean, Covehold's on the water, so if we just follow this, it's bound to come out near there eventually. And this way we'll always have water to wash with."

…

Part of the delay was that they needed to build some kind of boat. Lolilyuri couldn't really help with that. Controlling wood wasn't a Whisperer thing. At best she could control the waterwisps in the wood, or set it on fire, but actually reshaping it was something only a Deadspeaker could do. Well, a Dungeon Binder could do it as well, but as she still hadn't worked out how to do anything besides Whispering, the matter was in practice irrelevant. It was very strange. A Whisperer could use Earthwisps to control the form of coal from the ground, but not its close cousin charcoal and wood.

Well, they had a means of travel, and possibly even a means of getting back, once they worked out sails and oars. Still, it would take time. While they had several skilled carpenters (probably, Lori's only experience with their work was her bed), by their own admission they didn't know how to make a boat, and it would require a lot of work to cut the beams and frames a boat would need.

"Can't we just cut a big tree and hollow it out?" Rian said. "I mean, that way we wouldn't have to worry about it leaking."

…

At which point Lori just put Rian in charge of making the boat that would take him to Covehold and let him figure out everything.

Lori herself was, of course, busy. Stone tablets containing the new laws that she enforced were placed in prominent areas, such as into the wall of the dining hall, in the shelters and on the cliff side next to her cave. For some reason, the law against public urination seemed to draw a lot of amusement. Did they think she was making all those latrines because she liked it? Fortunately, after what happened the last time, they seemed to understand she meant business, and aside from the occasional small child running into one of the bushes while in the midst of seeling, everyone used the latrines.

She eventually just placed a latrine with stone lining the bottom to prevent seepage near where the children liked to catch seels. Flogging a child would probably be fatal, and she couldn't Deadspeak yet. She even put some bushes in front so it would feel familiar.

Lori had to put making new houses on hold to build the new… she supposed hospital was as good a name as any. And with that being the case, she figured she might as well make it strong and permanent. She dug upwards into her cave, making stone flow like wet clay as she increased the height of the ceiling of her current abode, reinforcing walls to prevent collapse. So close to the dungeon's core, she could quickly imbue a lot of magic into the stones to make them be strong, though she'd need to remember to imbue them again every few days. She was probably doing something wrong. Given the things you read about that Dungeon Binders did in their biographies, they probably didn't need to do this much maintenance of their dungeons themselves. Still, she didn't have enough wire to test her theories right now. So this brute force, manual solution would have to do.

At least she now had a nice, high, vaulting ceiling out of it, which made everything much more airy.

She made sure to pick a spot where the bedrock was close to the surface, using the varying sensations the earthwisps were giving her to judge. Lori had tried using the same technique to differentiate between rock and metal ore, but so far no luck. She built the foundation first, since this would be an above-ground building, making dirt flow aside until she reached the bedrock, then making the stone she'd removed from her ceiling pile on top of it. The first time, she did it wrong, and ended up with a significant air bubble, so she had to open up the stone to fill in the gap. It probably wasn't that all significant, but the perfectionist in her was annoyed by it anyway. She built up the stone until it was a hand span above ground level– or possibly dirt level– before she began trying to smooth it down to something smooth and level.

This ended with abject failure. While fluids would naturally find an even level when left alone, stone being softened by earthwisps to act like a fluid didn't naturally act like that, moving more like clay or molten glass. What resulted was a bulging mess not unlike candle drippings. And while she could will the stone to move, there was no way to be sure she was willing it to be level.

Lori sighed. She needed a tool.

After finding the carpenters– who were not the sawyers, despite also working with saws and wood– and specifying what she needed, Lori left the floor alone to build up the walls, which at least she knew how to keep straight. A weight on a cord as a visual reference, and then she just had to force the stone to rise, create a lip and then sort of… drip downwards. With the right fluidity, the surface along the inside edge would be perfectly flat. Then she just had to thicken it and made sure the strata would bear weight instead of cleaving diagonally or something.

The building wasn't finished yet by the end of the day, but Lori considered this good work.

––––––––––––––––––

The next day, Lori came back with her tool. One of the planks of notes Rian had left behind that she'd already finished transcribing to a stone table has one of its edges cut straight and carefully rounded, lashed to a relatively straight branch with cord made from seel skin and held in place by all sorts of clever joinery. One could have thought it a simple shovel, or wooden ore, or even some sort of sign post.

For Lori, it was her stoneworking tool.

Holding the tool in both hands, the straight, rounded edge flat on the stone, she willed the stone soft again and dragged her new tool across it, then squatted down to see the result. It looked much flatter than before, though… She softened the middle of the stone, drew a deep line across it with her finger– it felt very much like working with strangely cold, dry clay– hardened the stone, and then pulled water out of the air, making it condense to fill the line. As she suspected, the surface of the water and the surface of the stone weren't in line.

Well, at least the stone was flat. That was something…

Eventually, she worked out a method of using water-filled lines and careful sweeps of her new tool– she had to stop every so often to pull off the stone building up on the tool's underside– she was able to get the stone floor mostly properly flat and level, and was even able to use the tool to even the walls a little. When she was done, she… well, she was standing in a large stone box without a lid and a doorway knocked into one wall, but it was a very even box with mostly flat sides. She was just glad it hadn't rained that day, though from the thunder in the distance that was unlikely to last long. Still, it had a stone foundation, and stone walls. That seemed pretty good.

Dinner was not poisoned, and was hot enough it was unlikely to matter if it was spat on. She sat in her cave, transcribing more of the notes into stone– everyone had a lot of things they said was essential for the demesne to have– listening to the falling rain and having vivid, painful flashbacks to all the nights she'd had to copy down notes from reference books while hiding from people she'd clubbed from behind. They were unlikely to know it was her, but they'd definitely recognize the book…

––––––––––––––––––

After removing the water that had pooled on the stone floor after the night's rain, Lori sighed and added some texture to the stone in case anyone came in with wet feet so they wouldn't slip and hurt themselves. She softened a thin layer of the stone on top, and used another rock she'd found to gently press textures down on the floor like a stamp. That took some time, but hopefully it would be a good safety investment.

After consideration, she also made some internal rooms. A storage room, two side rooms big enough to house a bed and some other furniture so the doctors would have someplace private to sleep, two lavatories– she'd figure out how to deal with the waste later. Maybe just pull it out of the base and replace the stone?– and place where she built a water cistern, with a packed-earth stove. Technically it was a fire pit, but as it was elevated above the ground to be level with a table, she felt justified calling it a stove.

These new internal walls and doors still left plenty of room for beds for sick or injured people. Certainly more than what they currently had in the shelters, even after she finished knocking holes in the walls for windows and putting in fireplaces and chimneys. It still lacked a roof, door and windows, but she felt her part was done.

When she went to the sawpit– really, they couldn't blame her for getting the carpenters and sawyers confused, they worked right next to each other!– she found them all standing around Rian, who was pointing at a drawing scratched out on the muddy ground.

"–that way we have a wider, more stable base and are less likely to capsize," he was saying as all the men tilted their heads to the side, as if trying to understand what they were seeing. "We'll have to make two hulls, but this will give us the capacity to– oh, his Lo– er, Binder Lolilyuri," he said, finally noticing her approach. "Hey, quick question, how good are you at controlling fire? Because the fastest way we can hollow out this trunk is to set fire to the insides and scrape off the burning bits once they've gotten soft."

Lori blinked, her inquiries about when they'd be able to put the roof on the hospital now that she'd finished putting up the walls and other bits slamming into Rian's… Rian-ness. "What?"

He explained, gesturing towards the drawing on the ground, which seemed to be of… two boats side by side, with poles connecting them together, and some kind of floor laid on the poles, which supported a shelter of some sort? Apparently, the two boats would be made by hollowing out tree trunks– Rian apparently already had a tree in mind– and was meant to give both buoyancy and stability so they could comfortably travel down the river to the coast. The platform built between the two hulls would allow them to carry cargo and let everyone have plenty of room to sleep in without crowding.

"Won't this be extremely heavy?" Lori said.

Rian nodded. "Yeah, but that won't matter once we get it into the water."

"But definitely heavier than four people can carry, right?" Lori said.

"Well, yeah… but they have docks in Covehold," Rian said confidently.

"Are you sure it will go down the river, though?" Lori said.

"Well, it's not meant to be that long," Rian said. "Or wide. The drawing's not to scale."

"What about rapids?" Lori said.

Rian stared at her.

"Rapids?" Lori repeated. "You know, when rivers get really rocky or have a sudden drop and–"

"Yes, I know what rapids are," Rian said, turning to stare down at his drawing. "Um…"

Lori left him to it. Instead, she turned towards the carpenters and sawyers. "The hospital's ready, it just needs a roof," she said. "Thank you for the tool, it worked exactly as intended."

Leaving Rian to his drawings– he seemed to be drawing wagon wheels on his boat– Lori went off to have lunch. And a bath. They had a bath house now, and she still had some soap. A bath sounded wonderful…