Demesne 178 - Smelting Copper (Patreon)

In retrospect, while using a perfect insulator as the material for a furnace was greatly advantageous, having a completely transparent material proved to be slightly problematic when the ore inside started to glow with heat. She'd needed to integrate a binding of lightwisps to the structure of the furnace to blunt the amount of light passing through, so that they could still see the progress of the smelting process, but without going blind. It was also giving of a lot of heat, which confused Lori, until she remembered heat could be carried on some forms of unseen light.

It would have been the most annoying thing she'd have had to do all day, as binding lightwisps was normally done by channeling magic through one's eyes, which… was seldom safe. Fortunately, the radiance from the furnace reached a point that its glow could penetrate her skin, reminding her of something Rian had pointed out once. It was… a new sensation, passing magic through her eyes to align them with lightwisps, and then instead of using that magic to claim and bind lightwisps, channeling that magic just under the surface of her skin to her hand, where she claimed the lightwisps that were passing through the edges of her extremity. It was far more convenient than bringing things close to her eye.

The binding of lightwisps was simple, a mere reduction in intensity so they could still see what was happening inside, though in muter orange tones, as well as reflecting all the unseen light back inside the furnace, causing the heat inside the hut to plummet drastically. The sudden cool in the moments afterwards was a relief. Once that was done, and all the heat from the furnace was stabilized, Lori took a step back and allowed the blacksmith to step back in All she was there for, really, was to maintain the heat and the furnace. The smith had to do most of the real work.

As she watched, the smith slowly added in more and more crushed ore, using a poker to stir the conglomerating mix of charcoal, ore and what was probably slag. She deactivated the binding when he did this so that the poker wouldn't be forcibly heated to the temperature of everything else inside the furnace, ruining the temper. The smith covered and uncovered the top of the furnace with a thick metal plate—so that Lori could still imbue and adjust the furnace's bindings as needed—to control the flow of air, keeping the charcoal from properly burning. Normally, this would have been to affect the temperature of the furnace, but as the heat wasn't being generated by combustion, in this instance it was to keep the air away from the coals so they would produce the alchemical gas needed to separate the copper from the slag. Most of what he was doing seemed to be agitating the contents of the furnace to encourage the copper to sink down, adding more charcoal and ore as needed.

After what seemed far too soon, all the crushed ore had been poured into the furnace, and through the transparent walls, Lori could see shapes distorting, saw them break apart from the heat, exploding and striking the metal plate on top of the furnace. Each impact made her flinch, and she was glad the pieces were so small. That had probably been intentional.

It was a surprise to Lori when she looked outside and saw how dark it had gotten. At first she thought that they had worked until night, but as she stepped out of the little smithy to check, she realized the gloom had been caused by the dome and the angle of the sun. It seemed her estimate of 'three or four' tests had been overly optimistic. Outside the dome, snow had begun to fall, the clouds obscuring the sky further contributing to the twilight.

The workers seemed to have finished carting the ore into new piles and were cleaning up, the fire they'd been using for warmth burning low as Rian spoke to the woman who was keeping track of the progress on behalf of Binder Shanalorre, gesturing at the eight piles of ore. There was still some ore left in the trough of solidified dirt. She'd have to cover that, just to make sure none of it got misplaced or covered in snow…

"Will you need me to adjust anything else…" Lori faltered briefly, looking around wildly and finally spotting the note to herself she'd written on the ceiling, "…Master Lanwei?"

The blacksmith paused, possibly thinking it over, more probably surprised she'd remembered his name. "I'll need you to let the furnace rest, your Bindership," he said.

"Will that be soon?" she said.

The blacksmith looked at the contents of the furnace, stirring it slightly with his poker. "A little bit more, your Bindership."

"Then I'll leave you to it while I deal with this," she said, stepping out.

She stepped back in to leave her wand behind and grab her staff, grabbing some lightwisps from the furnace, binding part of them to the head of her staff for light. The rest, she imbued and hung in the air to illuminate the piles, because it was too colors dark. The snowfall that was one of the reasons for that darkness had left a nearby dusting of snow. It wasn't particularly thick or dense—the snow had just fallen, after all—but it was better than nothing. By the time she was done gathering all the nearby snow into one cold ball of slush that glowed after over the cold, hard mud, the sun was barely a suggestion behind the hills to the east, and Lori had the lightwisps on her staff as bright as she could endure, the sphere of radiance blocked in a little wedge towards her face so she wouldn't be blinded.

Lori just threw the slush on top of the pile of ore and solidified the water. Slowly, since unlike back home she couldn't just mitigate the sudden burst of firewisps squeezed out of the water by the process. She looked over the pile and nodded. No ore would be misplaced, and when the imbuement ran out, the cold of the ice itself would keep it solid through the night. Lori turned to head back to the covered smithy and jerked to a halt as her staff remained embedded in the ice shell. Oh. Right.

She sighed.

After managing to detach her staff from the ice, she returned to the smithy to find the smith in the middle of holding a metal spoon over the open top of the furnace, preheating it to get rid of any moisture on the surface. On the ground next to the furnace was a bucket-like ceramic pot, it's open mouth wider than its base, with two long 'ears' for lifting, one of the tools they'd been carrying along on the Coldhold. It was never good to rely on someone else for buckets, after all.

"Your Bindership," he said, nodding to her. "Can you deactivate the heat so I can scoop out the slag? Then we can work on getting the copper out."

Lori nodded, and after anchoring the binding of lightwisps to the ceiling, she slipped her staff back inside one of the furnaces and grabbed her wand, touching the tip to the brim of the furnace to do just that. The contents of the furnace continued to glow, but that was merely from its own heat. "Firewisps deactivated," she called out.

The smith nodded in acknowledgement, and began using the heated spoon to scoop things out of the furnace. The familiar debris of slag was drawn out from the furnace and tapped into the bucket-like ceramic pot, where it quickly cooled down enough to stop glowing. This was deceptive, as they'd still be more than hot enough to cause droplets of water to flash into steam on contact, and the blacksmith was very careful to keep everything but the end of his spoon away from the inside of the bucket. Smoke and a strange, alchemical smell were rising from the bucket, though thankfully the slight breeze passing through the smithy kept it from lingering. The bucket had clearly been heated beforehand, as it wasn't making any distressing cracking and snapping noises. The glowing coals soon followed, what were left of them, tapped out on the ground to glow for longer than the slag.

"How are you two doing?"

Lori blinked, turning to see Rian stick his head into the smithy, one hand up to keep the light out of his eyes. "Progressing. The metal is cooling now, I think."

Rian nodded. "How are you doing, Lanwei?"

"Just getting the copper now, Lord Rian," the smith said. "There's not a lot of it. Only a third of the ore I put in seems to be copper. Maybe only a quarter."

"That… doesn't sound good?" Rian said, exchanging looks with Lori, who frowned.

"I'll know more when I can weigh it, my lord," the smith said. "And perhaps it was just a bad batch. Quality can vary. Your Bindership, is there any way to let more light back into the furnace? I can't see what's inside."

Lori nodded, tapping the outside of the furnace and deactivating the binding of lightwisps around it, the new, strange feeling of channeling magic over her outer skin making her tentative as she did so. Yes, she definitely needed to try this more. It was much more convenient than putting things close to her eye. Some of the things she hadn't understood in class at the time finally made sense now, and explained why so many of her classmates had been faster than her at forming bindings of lightwisps…

She shook her head, clearing it of such petty details as the blacksmith put aside his poker—also putting it into the tube of an unused furnace—before taking his tongs and carefully reaching inside the still-hot furnace. What he drew out was a large, slightly smoking mass that looked barely distinguishable from the slag he'd been removing save the fact it was large and solid. It even had a glowing coal stuck to one side.

"Is that it?" Rian asked.

"Once you get the slag off, Lord Rian," the smith said. He carefully put down the mass and reached into the furnace again, pulling out another similar mass. That was set down next to the other one too, then the tongs were set aside and he grabbed one of the buckets. The smith stepped out for a moment and returned with the bucket full of snow. Taking the tongs in hand again, he set the smaller of the masses in the bucket. Sizzling sounds immediately began to come from the bucket, the mass starting to sink down as its heat melted the snow into water, then flashed it into steam.

While this was happening, the smith placed one of the demesne's few copper-mesh screens over the slag bucket, then set all other tools aside as he readied the mortar and pestle. Lori, for her part, deactivated all the binding on the furnace save for the one keeping the ice solidified, conserving most of the imbuement for tomorrow. A little would be consumed just to keep the binding together, but at least this way she wouldn't need to rebuild the binding.

The smith moved the large mass to the mortar, then grabbed the pestle. "You might want to back away Lord Rian, your Bindership, pieces sometimes go flying and could hit you in the face."

Rian immediately took two steps back, while Lori stepped sideways to put the smith between the mortar and her as he began to pound away. From the sound of it, the mass was much softer and more brittle than the ore, and after a seemingly brief time, both chunks had been smashed. Setting aside the pestle, the smith picked up the whole mortar in a show of strength that made Lori's arms and legs ache just watching him and carefully tipped the contents of the pestle onto the copper mesh.

Dust and debris poured out, the former slipping through the screen into the bucket full of slag, the latter bouncing on top. Every so often the smith put down the mortar and sorted through the debris, tossing some aside and pouring the rest into another bucket. Eventually, the mortar was empty.

Lori stared into the bucket that was perhaps a three-quarters full of nuggets and spiky debris. Maybe two-thirds. "This is all the copper we were able to extract?" she said. Next to her, Rian tilted his head for a better look.

"I'm afraid so, your Bindership," the smith said. "It's still not completely pure either. There's slag there that we'll need another melt to get out, and the bucket has a lot of air. That batch didn't have a lot of copper in it. Sometimes it's like that. Maybe it was ore from the edges of the seam."

Lori frowned harder, then turned to Rian. "Is all the ore like that?"

Rian sighed. "I really couldn't tell. I'm not an ore expert. But going from what's left of the pile of ore you had to work with…" He shrugged. "Some of the other ore is greener, some less so. I'll have to take a close look tomorrow." He looked around, then sighed. "Do you two mind if we use this place as a guard post for the one who'll be staying up to watch over the ore? They'll also be able to watch the tools, since it's a bit late to bring them all back to the Coldhold." He sounded frustrated and annoyed, a very rare state of affairs for Rian.

The smith glanced towards her. "I don't mind, Lord Rian, though it's going to be a little cold for them."

"For me, you mean," Rian sighed. "I didn't really do much, so the others need sleep more than I do."

"No," Lori said instantly. "You keep the tally. I won't have us needing to repeat because your too tired to confirm the count. Pick someone else." A thought occurred to her. "Perhaps someone who stayed on the Coldhold. They didn't do anything."

Rian hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. It was a mark of how tired he probably was—record keeping was tiring, no matter what anyone said—that he didn't really try to press his idea. "Well… if you insist, your Bindership." He glanced around. "Though it might be cold for them… "

Lori waved a dismissive hand. "I'll make a binding for them. As long as they don't stick anything into it, it should last until morning." She'd need to put something over the opening to hold in the heat. "The two of you clean up while I do that, so we can all get to dinner."

"Yes, your Bindership," the both chorused. Both sounded tired, probably for different reasons, but there was no helping it. The work wasn't over until everything had been cleaned and put away.

Ignoring her hunger—she did not feel a gnawing in her stomach, she'd eaten at lunch—Lori set about doing just that.

She really wished she was in her demesne. Her nice, warm, brightly lit, comfortable demesne, with her bed, her almanac, her game boards, and someone to crush utterly…

Lori shook her head, glaring at the open back wall of the smithy and started to rub her hands together to create enough firewisps to start a new binding. She'd made an agreement, and she was keeping it!

But next time… next time… any agreement was going to include she could do everything from the comfort of her own demesne!