Demesne 182 - Expansion (Patreon)

For a long time, Lori just lay there, half on and half off her bedroll, the stone cool on her face. Her head… she'd had headaches before. Studying too long, staying up too late, not drinking enough water, trying to keep her patience with her mothers as they kept lecturing her about nonsense…

What she felt was similar to studying, throbbing in part along her neck and in a band above her eyes. She kept her eyes closed, feeling utterly exhausted despite not having moved. It was a familiar feeling, like she'd spent a whole day at a job just imbuing from the start of her shift to the end. She hadn't been concentrating that long, had she? She tried to gauge the time by how hungry she was but her body refused to cooperate, her stomach silent as if she was in the middle of reading.

So tired…

She hadn't felt like this when she had first made her core… but that had happened quickly. This had taken… well, far longer. She'd had to imbue wisps across the whole surface area of the sphere of her demesne after all, to a depth of… well, she didn't know. there must have been a depth, likely far deeper than 'one wisp wide' a ludicrous measure that was more an intellectual concept than anything you could use as a distinct unit…

And her mind was wandering again.

She needed to get up, needed to get back to work, needed… But the stone floor, still cool but only relative to her body, was strangely comfortable now. A part of her knew she'd ache for it afterwards, that blood was being restricted, muscles growing numb, but for now…

Distantly, she heard her name.

At first, she thought nothing of it. Her mothers were always calling her name for the silliest little things, like asking her to open jars when they were perfectly capable of doing so themselves, or making her 'clean' and 'organize' her room when it was already just the way she liked and needed it. If it was really important, they'd actually come to her and bother her face to face…

She heard her name called, louder than before. There was something strange about it. It didn't sound like one of her mothers, despite the nagging motherly tone—

Then Lori blinked, and she remembered where she was as she emerged out of her half-sleeping daze, and Rian's distant voice called her a third time. Shaking her head—ugh, headache—she pushed herself to her feet, limping as one leg seemed to have gone asleep and could only be moved awkward as a burning sensation of pins and needles spread over it. Warily, she bound some airwisps around her moth, and was relieved when it didn't make her headache pound harder. "Rian?" she called, the binding amplifying her voice, and she winced as her voice echoed inside the hidden chamber. Ugh, hopefully no one heard it through the wall and suspect this was here…

"Your Bindership?" she heard distantly. She'd sealed the hallway up, so Rian was at best at the top of the stairs, in the hallway leading to her room. "It's lunch time!"

Lori opened her mouth to tell him to start without her, and that was when her stomach made its hunger known. She sighed, rubbing her head, still feeling tired. She picked up her bedroll, bundled it up awkwardly, and tossed up towards the hole in the ceiling. It unfurled in midair, fluttered, half landed on the lip of the hole and fell back down. Lori sighed again, and this time her binding caught the noise, and she winced as the sound echoed.

"I'll be down," she called out, then dissolved the binding so it wouldn't catch any more sounds as she walked over to her bedroll and picked it up again. This time she rolled it carefully, securing the cords that had been stitched on it so that it wouldn't unfurl.

Then she picked it up and through towards the hole in the ceiling so it would land in her room. It didn't unfurl, moving as a single, solid object. The bedroll bounced off the lip of the hole, fell, caught the pillar of rock on the way down, crumpled to the floor and rolled to her feet.

Lori stared at it, scowling. Grumbling to herself, she picked the bedroll up a third time, wishing she knew Mentalism already so she could just use her mind to throw the bedroll up through the hole.

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"Ah, you're here," Rian said brightly as Lori sat down heavily onto her bench. "Did you decide to have a nap or something? Well, I supposed if you can't just stay in bed all day, then no one can."

The notion was both very tempting and mildly repulsive in equal measure. "I was doing magic," Lori snapped at him. She'd eventually managed to climb back up from her core. While her body wasn't exactly tired, simply awkward from lying down so long in such a position, she had still moved slowly and carefully, her mind filled with the fatigue her body didn’t feel. Even now it weighed on her as she took one of the two bowls of soup remaining with slow care. Even if her hands didn't feel weak, she felt like they should be.

Rian took the other, and sighed in relief it was still warm. "What kind of magic?" he asked, dipping his spoon into and blowing on it experimentally.

Lori didn't bother, just putting the spoon straight into her mouth from the bowl. She ate, swallowing three times before answering. "Necessary work for the demesne," she said.

"Ah?" Rian said, sounding unsure. "Uh, is this necessary work why you're so tired in the middle of the day?"

Was it that obvious? "Yes."

Rian nodded. "Um, are you liable to be like this all day, or would you be rested enough to play some board games over dinner?"

Lori raised an eyebrow at him. "Why do you care?"

"I don't, personally, but a man in my position has certain responsibilities."

Lori stared at him blankly. "None of that made sense, but if you must know, no, I might be tired later as well."

Next to Umu, Mikon slumped slightly.

"I see," Rian nodded. "Uh, will this tiredness last long, or is it likely to end sometime soon?"

Lori paused and glared at him.

"Oh, don't glare at me like that," Rian said. "What if your demesne needs you? Like a dragon happens to show up tonight. Will you be rested by then?"

Lori continued to glare at him, but acknowledged he had a point. "I'll hopefully be fine after some rest," she said. "And sleep."

Rian eyed her and nodded. "Anything you want me to take care of in the mean time?"

She waved a hand dismissively. "Just keep everyone from killing each other."

"Noted. Well, while I have you, I should tell you some issues were brought to my attention while you were in your room."

Of course there were. Why wouldn't there be? "What is it?" she asked, feeling tired all over again as she ate.

"Well, first off, there's the issue of water for the Dungeon Farm," Rian said. "There's no source of water for it on the third level, meaning it all has to be brought down, and I've been getting complaints from the ones in charge of cleaning the dining hall that those passing through with water have been leaving spills. There are also spills on the second level, which are becoming a hazard because no one is cleaning them. Everyone cleans their own areas on the second, but since these spills aren't their fault…" Rian shrugged. "So, we need a more convenient, dedicated source of water for the third level to reduce the spills on the floor, and possibly someone dedicated to cleaning the second level. We should still enforce having everyone clean their own areas, but this way there's someone to clean the things that the rest of it. And perhaps the third level as well. The farmers and children clean the messes they make, but unless there's someone dedicated to cleaning, it's eventually going to be assumed the children have to clean it, and I know you hate that sort of thing."

"Do it," Lori said. "I'll leave the arrangements to you."

"I assume you're talking about organizing the cleaning," Rian said dryly.

"Yes, yes, I'll find a way to get water down there." She really should have done so sooner, she realized. Well, she supposed the water reservoir was longoverdue proper permanent infrastructure and improvement… "However, for now, tell them that instead of bringing down water, bring down snow and dump it into the drainage cistern. Tell them fill—" she made a quick assessment "—half of the cistern so that the water will last. I'll put a binding to melt it down for them to use while I work on the issue of water. And tell them to clean up their own mess in the meantime."

Rian nodded. "Yes, your Bindership."

Lori knew what she was doing. It was tempting, so tempting, to just fall back into the flow of building things for her demesne, putting off the expansion 'until she had more time'. The headache, the tiredness, the difficulty of what she had done this morning… if it was like that for everyone, no wonder all the demesne near Covehold Demesne were so small. And it made Covehold's size much more impressive. She tried to recall when Covehold had been established, but the knowledge evaded her. Lori knew the continent had been discovered within her lifetime, and she'd already been learning magic when she'd heard of its existence, so… ten years or so? She tried to think of how hard it must have been to grow Covehold to its current size and shuddered inside.

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After lunch, she went down to the third level to put down the binding. Fortunately, there was some water at the bottom of the drainage cistern, and it was a simple matter to put down a binding of firewisps that would raise the temperature of the water to her body's temperature. It would be well above melting, but not so extreme that it would be dangerous for anyone that stuck there extremities in. allowing for individual differences in body temperature, it was as close to harmless as she could make such a binding. Of course, if something hotter that that came into contact with the binding, then it's temperature would be lowered drastically, but since people would be dumping snow into the cistern that was unlikely… hopefully.

Once that was done, Lori retired to her room again. She still felt fatigued from that morning's attempt at expansion, and it occurred to her that she didn't really know if it had worked or not. There had been a sensation that she had only ever felt when she had created her dungeon's core… she had seen—thought she had seen?—her core ripple…

Lori considered doing it again, and shuddered at the thought. No, not right now. No matter how easily binding still came to her, no matter how her body felt, she felt tired, felt like she could just curl up and sleep the afternoon away. The thought was… very appealing, actually.

…

With a sigh, Lori reluctantly got up and walked out of her room, only just remembering to seal it shut in her wake, as she headed to her Dungeon's water reservoir to begin planning how to finally improve it. she wouldn't do any building today, but… well, she needed to see what she was working with, that was all.

Tired as her mind felt, it was still awake and functioning. That meant it could still think, so it should think about how she'd go about doing this chore in the future.

She'd rest later tonight, while she slept. Then tomorrow…

Tomorrow she'd go see if her demesne had expanded after all.