Weekly Digest 56 - (#179 - #181) (Patreon)

Time To Sit Down

"I'm never leaving my demesne again," Lori said tiredly.

She sat in her room on the Coldhold, curled up in the bed with her feet folded under her as the boat swayed, finally making its way up the river back to her demesne, its storage spaces full of the ingots of copper she had smelted. After having slept in it for the past seven days, the room felt thick and muggy, with an odor that seemed to hide from her most of the time but suddenly puffed unexpected if she sat down or moved. The room would probably need airing once she left.

Lori half-expected Rian to make a comment about how she said that every time she left as he sat on her stool just outside of the door, leaning back on the wall. Her lord sat slumped, his head lolling tiredly. Despite her orders, after all the ore had been audited—the total had come up to seven carts under the total River's Fork had claimed, which Lori had magnanimously excused as being the result of inconsistent cart loads—he'd taken the duty of staying up and watching the piles at night. He hadn't been alone, as River's Fork had begun doing the same, but her lord had been staying up late for day and despite having slept normally the night before, he didn't seem to have recovered yet.

"Good idea," he sighed. "In fact, let's not just never leave the demesne, let's never leave our beds at all. Just stay curled up where it's nice and warm."

Lori stared at him. Eventually, she said, "What about food?"

He waved a dismissive hand. "Eh, if we just stay there and sleep, then we don't need to eat as much because we're not doing anything that makes us hungry, right? Who needs to at more than three times a week? And it will let us cut back on food stores until spring! No downsides to this whatsoever!" His head slumped lower as he cradled his face in his hands.

Lori nodded. His idea sounded very tempting… "Well, you wouldn't deserve any food then anyway," she said.

"I've just stayed up all week watching piles of rocks in the cold with some surly people who kept making snide remarks about how warm and sping-like the weather was because we were annoyed a little girl tried to be cute with us," Rian retorted. "I definitely deserve all that food, I'm just not going to eat any because it would be too much of a hassle." He sighed and finally looked up. His eyes were half-lidded, obviously tired in a way sleep hadn't rid him off. "Next time you make an agreement like this again, let's have the accounting built into it already so we don't have to do this again."

Lori raised an eyebrow. "Next time?"

"She's still the only one nearby who can provide healing, unless you learned Deadspeaking without bringing it up," Rian said. "So one way or another we'll have to do business with her when the babies start getting born."

Lori's teeth clicked shut at the reminder. "Fine. But she comes to us this time!"

"No argument there," Rian said. "It's probably not safe to bring any newborns to her." He closed his eyes and slumped forward again, and Lori couldn't stop the urge to do the same.

It had been a long week, and the week hadn't even finished yet. Rian had needed to organize a change in workers a day in, as they'd already been tired from mining and hadn't expected having to stay longer, much less working outside. It was apparently much warmer inside the mine somehow. They had sorted the ore, while others assisted her, the blacksmith Lanwei—the name was still with her after actually having to use it for the past several days—and River's Fork's own smith by crushing the ore with the mortar, pestles and whatever blunt objects and buckets they could use while the three of them used her furnaces first to separate the copper from the ore, and then cast the copper into ingots.

Lori wasn't sure how the ingots had been divided, because try as the three of them might they couldn't make the metal bricks completely uniform, but Rian had taken care of that somehow. She'd seen him conferring with that woman who'd been keeping track of the accounting for Shanalorre, and… well, she trusted that he'd gotten them their share of the copper. He was the one in charge of talking to people after all, that sounded like his area of responsibility…

She knew when they finally crossed the border back into her demesne, even without the light dusting of Iridescence her vanishing. The air suddenly became completely comfortable instead of being too hot and too cold in patches, which actually made Lori sit up straight with relief, even if it didn't really overcome her general tiredness and apathy. She didn't move from her bed, but she did push her raincoat, winter robe and blanket off her legs and shoulders as she released the bindings around her hands and face. The firewisps from the bindings, she was amused to notice, simply began keeping her warm like all the other firewisps around her.

Sighing, she stood up and began to roll up her bedroll so she could transfer it to her room when they arrived back home. She folded her blanket, put her pillow aside and put her boots back one, wincing as she noticed more cracks on it. She'd been maintaining it with a mixture of beast fat and bugwax that Rian said was what everyone else in the demesne used on leather, but either she hadn't been doing it right or it wasn't enough. Hopefully it would last a bit longer…

She was the last person to step off the Coldhold after it docked, carrying her pack with the few changes of clothes she'd bought, now filled with used garments, as well as her staff and new wand. She wore her rain coat—thankfully its leather seemed to be faring better than her boots— with the hood up. Snow was falling and she didn't want wet hair from the snow melting because of the warmth around her. Behind her, Rian followed carrying a large sack made from her winter robe, filled with her bedroll, pillow, and blanket, the padded garment making for a large and slightly unwieldy container as they walked over the planks to the outriggers of the boat, and from there onto the stone dock. Despite how long she'd waited, there was still a crowd in front dock, though thankfully it was in the process of dispersing. Wives and children, parents and siblings were helping husbands and sons bring their packs back home.

Someone was still waiting, of course, though it wasn't for her. Riz quickly took the sack from Rian, who let her take it gratefully as he embraced the northerner woman, shamelessly using her for warmth as she kept her balance, apparently enjoying the contact. Lori glared at the two, daring Riz to let the winter robe touch the ground. "Rian, don't linger," she said, turning and heading towards her dungeon.

"Yes, your Bindership," she heard him sigh behind her. "Sorry Riz, duty calls."

"I'll walk with you. You look like something a Deadspeaker woke up."

She heard footsteps behind her as she walked.

"I've been doing night watch the last few days."

Snow had built up on the ground, though a few paths had been shoveled clear between the main road, the baths and her Dungeon.

"Huh… not very tough, are you?"

There wasn’t' such a path between the dock and her Dungeon, just some disrupted snow where people had stomped through.

"I'm softer than bread dough when it comes to the cold."

Gleefully, she claimed and bound the waterwisps in the snow, taking delight in just being able to will it so and not have to use the staff or wand she was carrying.

"Cold bread dough is pretty hard though."

Lori made the snow fuse together, and from there made the ice flow to either side of where she was walking, opening a path to her Dungeon.

"Softer, then."

The ground was mud and she didn't want to ruin the soil in case they grew desperate enough to dig it up or wanted to grow ropeweed or something on it when it became warm again, so she just froze the mud to make it for all intents and purposes dry.

She didn't almost slip. Not at all.

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After lunch, the copper was unloaded and transferred to the dragonscale vault. They were piled more or less neatly next to the storage jars full of finely ground blue and green copper ore. Rian was to find someone who knew how to turn it into dye, and if there wasn't anyone, then they'd either sell it in Covehold when it was warmer, have it made into dye or ink, or just melt it into more copper. They'd didn't really have a need for pigment right then, but it was the cause of the extended suffering in River's Fork, so they had it.

Rian suspected that River's Fork did have a dyer who could turn it into pigment, otherwise there'd be little reason to want to retain any and no reason to test it for viability. Despite everything, it seemed the other demesne was still getting the better end of the deal.

Thankfully, Lori hadn't forgotten any of the bindings she'd needed to imbue while she was gone. Having to force herself to check each and every single binding in her demesne without the benefit of her reminders had been greatly exhausting, and upon checking her list she had sighed in relief at not having forgotten anything. The rest of the afternoon had been spent curled up in bed, reading her almanac in a tired fugue with none of it being retained in her memory.

Both her and had still been tired even during dinner. She didn't bring down any of her game boards, not feeling in the mood, and while Rian stood up said something loud and pointless that had people… not so much cheering as being just loud and affirmative. It didn't feel like one of Rian's usual speeches, just empty and false. No one seemed to notice, the dining hall descending once more to the usual murmur of dinner conversation, but the women around Rian clearly did.

"Are you well, Rian?" Umu asked, looking at him with concern.

"Just tired, Umu," he said. "And cold." Then he groaned.

"What is it?" Mikon asked, looking past Umu towards him.

"I don't know if I have any firewood," Rian sighed. "I have to go get some after dinner…"

Above his head, Mikon and Riz exchanged a look, and the latter nodded.

Ignorant of this, Rian shook his head. "Uh… anyway. Um, your Bindership?"

"What?" she said bluntly, not looking up from her food.

"Now that we have so much copper… could you perhaps authorize it to be used to make new pots for the kitchens? Since its winter now, having metal pots instead of what we have now will let the kitchen staff cook meals much faster and using less fuel."

Lori blinked and stared at him. "What?"

"Now that we have so much copper… could you perhaps authorize it to be used to make new pots for the kitchens? Since its winter now, having metal pots instead of what we have now will let the kitchen staff cook meals much faster and using less fuel," Rian repeated.

Lori frowned, looking towards the kitchen. "What have they been using, then?"

"Stone pots," Rian said. "You know, the ones you made on the way here? They take forever to heat up, so sometimes they still need to use the cooking ingots to heat the water."

Lori stared at him. "Tell me again tomorrow," she said. "I don't want to deal with this right now." She could already feel her legs aching as she sat down next to the forge, providing heat as the smiths shaped the metal into the pots in question…

Rian sighed. "Fine."

Next to him, Umu, Riz and Mikon all leaned back and exchanged looks behind him.

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In her room, Lori lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. Ah, so comfortable, so nothing at all like a hard plank of wood under her bedroll. All these months, and her bed still felt so comfortable…

She really needed to get rid of those names on the ceiling, it would give her more space for reminders.

Really, she wouldn't need all those reminders if she was capable of Mentalism.

…

Lori sighed. It was finally winter. Her demesne was sustaining itself and, more importantly, herself, and they were no longer constantly on the edge of starvation, thirst or other forms of resource-deficient impending death. Sure, it was cold, but a lot of time had been spent cutting and curing wood for fires. People could handle that without her.

Save for, it seemed, authorizing Rian to use their new copper to make cooking pots, there was nothing that actually needed her attention. It was time to do what she'd been putting off.

It was time to sit down and begin expanding the demesne's borders.

It was time to sit down and force herself to try and learn the other forms of magic by herself, with no teacher, no texts, and no assistance.

…

Rian was to never know how much she'd been procrastinating. She'd never hear the end of it.

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Most Definitely Not Procrastinating

After a night of finally getting to sleep in her own bed, Lori woke feeling only the usual degree of wanting to curl back and sleep. As she finished putting on a new, clean set of clothes, she eyes her bedroll and the clothes in her pack, and debated whether she should keep putting off doing her laundry. And whether she could wash her bedroll in her room or if she'd have to carry it out to the laundry area…

"So, as I was saying last night," Rian said brightly, "would you be willing to authorize using some of the copper to make new cooking pots for the kitchens?" He seemed to be feeling much better that morning, sitting up straight with that annoying smile on his face.

"Find out how many pots are needed and how much copper the smiths will require," Lori said. After all the smelting, removing the slag that wasn't copper and pouring everything into ingots, they had returned with over three thousand, eight hundred sengrains of copper, but there was no need to be wasteful. They would probably need to sell some of it in Covehold for things they couldn't make themselves yet.

"I'll ask and get you the details by lunch," Rian nodded. "Also, as you lord in charge of telling whether it's hot or cold, I should tell you it's gotten a bit colder, so you should probably make it a bit warmer."

"Noted," Lori said. "Is that all?"

"We might need more storage for more firewood," Rian said. "I've been informed that as winter gets colder, people work less, eat less, and just stay in bed as a family to stay warm, only getting up to tend to the fire." He glanced at Riz at he said it. "I'm… not sure if it'll get that cold, but best to prepare for it. Maybe move some of the firewood down to the unused hallways in the third level so they're not just out there if a dragon comes."

"I'll leave that to you," Lori said.

Rian nodded, then seemed to remember something. "Ah, you asked me to remind you that you were going to make the laundry area usable again when we got back from River's Fork." Next to him, Umu, Mikon and Riz all nodded in enthusiastic agreement.

What was he… oh, right, Lori remembered now. "I will deal with the laundry area issue after breakfast."

It wasn't procrastinating, it was necessary immediate creation of infrastructure for her demesne!

After breakfast, and adjusting the bindings of firewisps keeping her Dungeon warm, Lori went out to the laundry area. The place was deserted, the hot water in the long basins rippling in breeze, snow melting on the stone and the areas immediately around the basins. Lori didn't even need to force herself to feel the cold. This area was obviously too cold to be used properly—wait, not completely, several people seemed to have hung shirts to dry on the mostly empty washing lines.

Lori walked back and forth, wearing her rain coat with the hood up to keep meltwater out of her hair, trying to judge how best to do this. Pillars supported a wooden roof that was meant more for shade than protection from the rain and snow, a mix of warped and cracked planks that had gaps between them for light, and panels made of branches laid out in parallel, secured by ropeweeds, what looked like shavings of bark, and leather scraps. Snow was piled on many of the latter, blocking off the light, and a few and icicles growing down from them

A part of her just wanted to take water from the snow and the river, turn it into ice and use that to make walls to keep the wind out so she could put in bindings just under the roof panels to warm the area. It was very tempting… no, that would just be another thing she'd need to keep imbued—

"Hey. Want some company?"

She blinked and turned to see Rian standing next to her. "No," she said. Why would she want company? "Aren't you cold?"

"Very much so," Rian said. "But with so few people outside, if you had some kind of accident and fell into the river or slipped, fell and broke something, there would be no one to see, so as Lord I've decided to keep an eye on you to keep that from happening."

"And if something happens to you because' you're out here?" Lori asked.

He shrugged. "My death wouldn't make the demesne collapse. I'll risk it. After all, you already have my potential replacement lined up, so it's not a problem for you."

Lori gave him a flat look. "Well then, make yourself useful," she said, pointing towards the laundry. "I need to raise walls and trap in heat so that the laundry area can be usable again. How can you see this being done?"

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Lori was almost not surprised that Rian actually proved useful. For one, he pointed out the walls didn't need to be load bearing, only strong enough to not collapse under its own weight and sideways pressure from wind and snow building up against it. She had forgotten about snow building up. While Taniar was far enough south that they had snow during winter, actual snow in the ground had been rare for her. Between the street sweepers, the mountain that the demesne's Dungeon had been built inside acting as a wind break for the city, and the fact that she generally stayed indoors, she wasn't used to thinking of snow in those terms.

So the walls made from stone previously excavated from the third level were relatively thin compared to her previous constructions, and tilted slightly outward so that it would actually be resting on any snow banks that built up around it, supporting the wall rather than being a load. It had required some stone support buttresses at intervals, but that wasn't too difficult. Lori had even bound snow and ice and packed them against the outside of the walls to give the process a start.

A wall on the side of the laundry area facing the river was obvious—with openings for the used water to flow out through, of course—but deciding where the entrances into the laundry area should be on the other walls had required discussion. Lori had been all for making the openings in the middle of walls on either end of the laundry—to get in from the baths and to get out to where the drying lines were—but Rian had pointed out that meant that cold air coming from the river or parallel to it could potentially get into the laundry area and be trapped inside, likely making one side noticeably cold than the other. And while his suggestion of using a curtain of warm air in front of the entrance to actively push any cold air out seemed workable, it would be another binding she'd have to make on top of a binding to warm the air in the first place.

In the end, Lori made an opening in the middle of the wall opposite the one facing the river, with short, stubby stone walls on either side of it to disrupt the flow of air and minimize the wind that could potentially get inside. Another wall slightly inside the opening forced people entering to go sideways, but also blunted any wind coming directly through the opening. Since there was a natural rise on that side of the laundry area, any such wind would be minimal.

"It's already getting pretty warm," Rian commented, unwrapping the sock he had wrapped around his face as Lori held up a hand, trying to judge how much of the wind from outside was getting in. She had to admit, her hand didn't feel as chilly as she thought it would. "I don't think you need to add anything more to make this place useable. Just let it get warm overnight from the hot water and by tomorrow people should be able to start washing their clothes here again."

Slush fell through one of the gaps and landed on his hair with impeccable comic timing. Huh. She thought that sort of thing only happened in novels.

They both looked up towards the ceiling, and Lori had to step aside to avoid water that was starting to drip. She didn't know if it was melt water of condensation. "Perhaps not completely useable yet," she said flatly.

Through her leather hood, she felt slush drip down onto her head.

The binding of firewisps she eventually place just under the patchwork roof prevented heat from passing through to the snow and slush above, greatly minimizing the melt and dripping. Instead the heat was made to flow down the walls and finally be released from the ground in front of the entrance. It wasn't Rian's suggested curtain of air, but the added heat there helped mitigate the cold air coming in from outside, even if the heat did make it a little muddy from the snowmelt. She also bound lightwisps to the corners of the laundry area, since between the overcast sky, the snow on the roof and the new walls, it was just a bit too dark to work in comfortably.

It took her all day to finish building the walls, taking a break for lunch. Rian stayed with her, using a beast-jaw shovel to clear what snow he could from where she was working so that she mostly didn't need to divert her attention to using waterwisps. The two of them worked in relative silence, save for when Rian intercepted people coming to them and sent them on their way, or when she wanted him to shovel a to prioritize one pile of snow over another.

Compared to the hurried, almost frantic pace of the past few days as she mass smelted copper ore, this slow, thoughtful construction was positively relaxing.

"All right, everyone!" Rian announced as people gathered and waited for dinner, standing on his bench while Lori set up her chatrang board across from him. "I'm happy to announce that her Bindership has finished enclosing the laundry area, and by tomorrow morning it should be warm enough to use." There was actually a round of applause and some cheers at that, which hwas new and quite surprising. "Sadly, the drying lines are not similarly enclosed, but at least you don't have to try and do your laundry while taking a bath anymore." For some reason this was followed by laughter. "I caution everyone that it's probably still a bad idea to use the laundry area for baths, as well as the outside showers, but at least we all have more time in the day to take baths now." More laughter for some reason. "That's all for now. Please be reminded of the new woodcutting assignments, and remember to control your fires so as not to waste wood. If you want to get warm, just come by the Dungeon, there's plenty of heat."

Lori paused at that, but… it was true, wasn't it? Well, she didn't see any reason to make an issue of it. It wasn't like people had stared sleeping there…

After one more laugh, Rian sat down with a sigh as Lori finished setting up the board. "Ugh, what a day… "

"What are you complaining about?" Lori said, waiting for Mikon to get back with the food so that she and the other woman could start playing. "I did all the actual work."

"When has that ever stopped anyone?" Rian said.

Lori tilted her head in acknowledgement of his point. "I'll be in my room studying the almanac and conducting research I've been putting off," she said instead. "Call me down for meals there tomorrow, all right."

Rian seemed to perk up at this. "Oh, research? More tests? Anything I can help with?"

Lori was about to open her mouth to tell him 'no' when she paused as she realized something. "Yes, actually," she said. "I need you to operate one of the smaller boats for me. I have to set something up at the edge of the demesne. It will be a quick trip. "

Rian nodded. "I'll ready Lori's Boat. It's been a while since the two of us have ridden on the old girl. After breakfast, or will you need more time?"

"That will be acceptable," she agreed.

Rian nodded. "Ah, by the way, I forgot to tell you earlier. The smiths say they won't need much copper, only about an ingot, but they also need tin. They need to line the pots with tin or else it will turn green and food will literally rot through it as its being cooked."

Lori blinked. "Oh… yes, that sounds familiar." She considered it. "How much tin?"

"Not a lot," Rian said. "Just enough to coat the inside of the cook pot, and only the inside. It will wear away, but that's supposed to take years, and by that time we should have more tin, or gold."

Lori blinked. "Gold?"

Rian nodded. "Gold is better than tin for this sort of coating, since it looks nicer, conducts heat better, lasts longer and doesn't corrode, but since you've had the gold drawn into wire, they didn't bring it up, since you might be planning to use it for something."

Lori titled her head, then nodded. "We still have some dragon scale. Tell them to use gold. Tin is better off used for more useful things. Best to make the useless metal actually good for something. I still have all the wire I need."

"I'll tell them, then."

Riz slid into the bench next to Rian, who greeted her with a smile and an enthusiastic hug that was still a blatant attempt at using her for warmth. The woman endured it with a fond smile. "Rian," she said, "why is there so much firewood in our house now?"

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After dinner, Lori returned to her room, staring at the new reminder for the laundry area's heat displacement binding and lightwisps bindings.

There was no putting it off any more, and until she put down a marker to signify the current edge of her demesne, trying to expand would be… well, no useless, but definitely not verifiable. So, this first for tonight…

"All right, all right, all right…" she muttered to herself, opening the almanac to the section on Mentalism flow diagrams and strange reminders. She had absolutely no idea what they were supposed mean, but it looked like a textbook, it made her feel better, and maybe it would inspire something. "Mentalism, mentalism… what do I remember? Come on, come on…  Mentalism uses thoughts, which can only be found inside the body…." She frowned. No, wait, that wasn't right… "…can only be naturally found in the body…" Did that mean it can be found unnaturallyoutside it? No, wait, of course, there was thought force, that was outside the body…

Lori muttered to herself into the night, staring unseeing at the open book on her lap.

Her last thought before she fell asleep was that she should probably write this all down…

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Borders

Lori ate breakfast feeling half asleep. She had a feeling she'd stayed up fo far longer than had been advisable, but without some kind of clock in her room, she didn't exactly know how long she'd stayed up beyond her usual bedtime. All she knew was that she'd sent that time dragging up what general knowledge about Mentalism she'd learned in passing, repeating them to herself and trying to use them in any way to begin gaining sufficient understanding of the subject to perhaps figure out how to start. In at least three separate instances she remembered feeling like she'd actually forgotten something she should know about the subject, only to not remember what she didn't remember, and sat there trying to decide to force herself to try to remember or just move on and try to remember something else.

It had felt excruciatingly like trying to remember answers to a surprise test when she had comfortably not thought of the material for weeks because she'd thought they wouldn't be bringing it up until the exams. Only somehow worse because it was all self-inflicted…

"Are you feeling all right?" Rian asked over breakfast that morning as he and Riz came with the food. "Do you feel sick? Should we see if we can still get Shana to heal you?"

Lori waved a hand dismissively. "I just didn't get much sleep last night," she said as she took one of the bowls. "I'll be fine."

"Shouldn't you be old enough to know when it's time to stop reading and go to sleep?" Rian said as he handed out the rest of the bowls to Umu and Mikon, while Riz set down the cups of water and Lori took one.

"Rian, shut up so I don't have to kick you," Lori said, and began to eat.

"Shutting up about it, your Bindership," he said brightly as he sat down. Mikon moved to make space as he did, but Riz sat down on her other side. The pink-haired weaver looked bemused for a moment, then shrugged and patted Riz's hand before getting started on her own breakfast. "But moving on to other matters, are we still on for this morning?"

"Yes, yes," Lori said. "Get the boat ready after breakfast, we're going as soon as possible."

"How far are we going?" Rian asked.

"I told you yesterday, weren't you listening? We're heading for the edge of the demesne."

"Do we need to go in any particular direction?" Rian asked. "Because I don't think you've been upriver yet, and neither have I. It's probably a good idea to see what's up there for ourselves."

Lori waved her hand again. "I have no preference, I simply need to get to the edge. Either direction is fine with me."

"Upriver it is, then," Rian said cheerfully. "Riz, do you mind coming along and bringing a spear? I'd like a second set of eyes to watch for beasts, just in case."

"Hmm?" Riz said, turning to look at him, then needing to lean forward slightly to look around Mikon. "Oh, sure Rian. Should I get a second person too?"

Rian looked towards Lori inquisitively, but she just waved her hand again. "If you think we need it. I'll be operating the tiller, so I can't really do much while we're moving."

Lori simply concentrated on her food as she let Rian take care of matters, trying to shed the 'stayed up late studying' feeling from her mind.

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"So… that's it?" Rian said as she finished setting up the little stone markers. One stood on the edge of her demesne, while the other was three paces outside of it. Both markers were hollow, to maximize the volume of the stones she'd been able to gather, standing on patches of riverbank that she had cleared of snow by the simple expedient of moving that snow into the river. Most would probably have turned it into steam, but that was just asking for the steam to condense almost immediately into snow again.

Lori nodded. "That's it," she said. "Tomorrow or the day after, we might need to come back so I can check on them, but we can return now."

"What, that quickly?" Rian said, surprised. "I thought you were going to do some kind of test?"

"The test will take time," she said. "Hence returning later."

Rian looked towards the two markers, standing on open ground surrounded by fallen snow. Above, leafless trees stood, looking dead. Shimmering color marked the difference between trees inside and outside of her demesne, the snow on the ground a blank whiteness free of color. The iridescence on the trees were occasionally patchy, as if they'd been rubbed off. She supposed that was snow falling on them. "All right then… I guess we go home now, before some beast decides to pop up."

Lori frowned, looking back out onto the stark, even whiteness. It had felt so strange to not be able to see the border between her demesne and the Iridescence until she'd walked through it. "Are there any beasts out there?"

"They'd have to be," Rian said. "Maybe sleeping in dens or huddled up together to stay warm. Those feathers theirs are good for that. Why do you think we use it for blanket stuffing? A few of the small ones are probably awake and looking for food, and we might count."

Distantly, Lori saw movement between trees, glittering rainbow colors moving where they hadn't been before, then disappeared. Lori shivered, and carefully back up towards the boat, keeping her eyes on where she had seen the movement. Off to one side, Riz and the one she'd brought along lowered their spears. They must have seen it too. "Let's get back," Lori said. "I have more work to do."

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Thankfully, the blacksmiths didn’t need her help to make the copper pots. Copper was soft enough to be worked when it was solid, it just took time and a lot of hammering, and any softening could be done with the forge. After she went to check that the laundry area as working as intended, keeping most of the warmth from the hot water in, Lori retired to her room after a quick detour to the rock pile. The pile of excavated stone had grown so much she'd stared a second pile on the other side of the entry way, the better to quickly construct a bulwark in the event of a dragon.

In her room, she sealed the hallway behind her before she took that stone, softened it, and used a stone blade and some leather to make some stone tablets so that she'd have something to write on for notes. Best to do it now before she forgot…

And she was procrastinating again.

Still, Lori finished the tablet she was working on before she pushed it aside and rose. She glanced back and forth between her bed and the floor, considering, before shaking her head and concentrating on a particular area of the floor, an area that had nothing on it and nothing nearby. She reached through her connection to her core and bound the earthwisps there. Slowly, carefully so that nothing would fall down, she made the stone flow back in a circle. The stone parted, revealing a space underneath her room.

Lori carefully looked over the edge of the hole and sighed in frustration. Then she reached down with her will and moved the stone pillar that she had made to step down into the hidden space so that it was it was directly under the hole she had made instead of a pace to the side. Walking to her bed, she took her bedroll and tossed it into the hole, and there was a soft sound as it struck the floor at the bottom. Carefully, Lori sat at the edge of the hole and lowered herself down until her foot made contact with the pillar. Still holding on to the edges of the hole she carefully made the stone comprising the pillar flow without turning viscous, compressing down and making it bulge outward to slowly lower her down.

Once the pillar was low enough that she was about to lose her grip on the edges of the hole, Lori stopped the binding and dismounted from the pillar onto the floor below next to her bedroll. She opened her bedroll and arrange it on the floor folded over on itself for cushioning. Then she sat down and faced her Dungeon's core.

Her core hung in the air in the exact, geometric center of her demesne, a glowing solid sphere. Its radiance wasn't intense, certainly not blinding, but back when her Dungeon had been a small cave that consisted of her core, bathroom and a space for her bed, she had needed to throw her raincoat over it at night for her to be able to sleep. A thin thread of gold still hung from it, melted from the process of claiming that had created her core in the first place.

The thought occurred to her that she should really get around to wiring her core to be able to provide power to some of her more permanent bindings. She had the wire now, and there were a lot of bindings that ran constantly enough it was worth the time to do it…

Lori shook her head sharply, rejecting the thought. No, no getting distracted—even by, admittedly, essential infrastructure that needed to be built—she needed to do this! Last night she hadn't made any progress on Mentalism beyond making her head ache at trying to remember things from years before that she hadn't really bothered to learn. Today, at least, she was at least going to work on expanding her demesne. She had put it off for months because it hadn't felt necessary, then because she didn't think she had time. After all, how necessary was it? They were barely using more than a fraction of the resources on one side of the river, much less the entire demesne…

But the Golden Sweetwood Company would potentially arrive next year, sending a new group of settlers, settlers with their own wizards, settlers that some of her people could potentially leave her for. After all, they had come under the auspices of the Golden Sweetwood company themselves, and even though they had abandoned the demesne they had established in favor of hers… what was stopping them from doing so again?

She could imagine it easily. Her demesne hemmed in at all sides by other demesne, restricting her growth. Their own expansion blocking off gaps between them, until she was trapped completely, unable to grow anywhere but up and down… unless she took the initiative and attacked first, killing the Dungeon Binder and claiming the core of at least one such entrapping demesne, allowing her to expand in that direction…

Or she could start now and be too big to contain. Be the one that hemmed in anyone foolish enough to rise near her, stifle their growth herself. Now was the time. Her demesne was stable, secured, provisioned. For the next season, there was little she absolutely had to do, and no reason to do so. The population of her entire demesne could fit into her dungeon; they had protected stockpiles of essential resources. They had a dungeon farm begun, and while the plots they had currently built were too shallow for growing trees, they just enough for shallow-rooted grain plants, already sprouting and growing. Rian could handle any problems that arose, and even some crisis did arise, they had enough resources make time to find a solution.

Unless by some bizarre turn of events a large group of people suddenly arrived and necessitated her quickly building emergency shelters for them to sleep in as well as the necessary expansion of current infrastructure that would need to follow to cope with the sudden population boom, Lori wasn't needed by her demesne beyond keeping the currently active bindings imbued. Any work she could do wasn't something that was desperately needed.

No more excuses. No more delaying. It was time she did this. She had all she needed, now.

Basic principles. Anyone who could create a demesne could expand it. The process was the same. All she had to do was… do it.

Lori sat on her folded bedroll and let herself… relax. Let herself become aware of the wisps around her. All of the wisps around her. The darkwisps under her clothes, in her shadow, in the folds of her bedroll, in the minute cracks in the stone. The lightwisps emanating from the core itself, filling the air, burrowing just slightly under the surface of her skin. Lightningwisps flowing inside her head, down her spine, though her extremities, going back and forth. Everywhere, airwisps, filling every open seemingly empty space. Waterwisps floating as vapor, churning in her mouth as fluid, spread all across her demesne's surface as a solid. Firewisps floated all around her, inside her, clung to the edges of the voids of wisps that were people. Earthwisps under her, all around her, filling one half of her demesne just as air filled the other half.

It had been a long time since she'd allowed herself simply… revel… in this feeling, of everything around her already bearing her affinity, the lightest claim of her will, waiting only for her to bind and imbue. For months, almost every day, she had ignored it, focusing on the bindings she had to form, the problems she had to solve with them. The chores she had to do.

For a long moment, Lolilyuri just sat there, letting herself feel everything. In the darkness behind her eyes, she let the feeling fill on, of every wisp in her demesne, from the air and light and water vapor at its greatest height to the earth and stone and water in its depths far, far beneath her. She felt her demesne's boundaries, of dirt covered in snow, felt the river passing through it all, flowing and twisting with the land's contours. Felt the water in the trees.

Then she took a deep breath and let the moment pass. She had bindings to form. Problems to solve. Chores to do.

She drifted on her awareness, focusing on the edges of her demesne. Where it seemed like she simply… stopped. Where her demesne ended, and she knew the Iridescence began. Beyond that point, the wisps weren't hers.

So she had to claim them and change that.

There was power in the core, power that could reach any wisp in her demesne when she needed it, imbue any wisp as she needed it. She let the power course from the core, letting it flow through the land, the water, the air, through the light and darkness, let the magic flow through her to pass through heat and lightning.

Lori didn't know how long she sat there, channeling the power in her core, aligning them to all seven wisps, gathering the magic on the edge of her demesne. She kept her eyes closed, trying to minimize distractions as she spread that magic all across her demesne's border. It was a familiar sensation spread to a scale she hadn't realized was possible, even if she should have. After all, ever since she had formed the core, the demesne had acted as an extension of her body. It was why she could control the wisps inside it.

Long before she had become a Dungeon Binder, she had already been controlling wisps outside her body.

She could feel them, beyond the boundaries of her demesne. Wisps. Unclaimed, but not free.

All across the surface of the sphere defined by her demesne, her magic bound the wisps just within her borders. Then she reached out and claimed. In all directions at once, wisps of earth, of air, of fire, of water, of light and dark and lightning surged from her borders, out into the world of tainted Iridescence. Her wisps and magic met the colors that grew beyond her borders, and she began to lose control. The Iridescence greedily trapped her wisps, squeezing the imbuement from them, and Lori knew that beyond her sight, on the edge of her demesne, the colors were growing as they used her very magic as fuel to crystalize.

She didn't stop. She drew more power form her core, pushing it out to the edge as the Iridescence devoured more and more power, greedily trapped more and more of 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, Lori reached through her awareness, through the wisps she had claimed and bound on the edges of her demesne, through the claim and the binding they were part of to the wisps that the Iridescence had trapped in its structure, still imbued, still hers, still a part of her…

Lori reached out… and bound the Iridescence to her will.

Her wisps became part of the Iridescence and the Iridescence became part of her wisps

Eyes still closed, Lori barely managed keep from hitting her head on the cold stone ground as she collapsed.