Weekly Digest 57 - (#182 - #184) (Patreon)

Expansion

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.

––––––––––––––––––

"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.

––––––––––––––––––

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 felttired, 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.

––––––––––––––––––

The Rest Of Her Life

Rian stared at her. "Uh, forgive me if I sound stupid, but didn't we already go to the edge of the demesne yesterday?"

"Yes," Lori said. "Now I'm saying we're doing it again. I need to see the results of my test."

"What, already? Why didn't you tell me yesterday, then?" Rian said, then sighed. "Fine, fine, I'll have your boat—"

"Lori's Boat."

"That's what I said. Your boat," Rian said, voice and face flat. "I don't see why you have to talk in the third person."

For a moment, the two stared at each other.

"As your jokes go, it's even less funny than they usually are," she finally said.

"You're a very tough audience, your Bindership," Rian said. "Anyway, I'll have your boat ready after breakfast." He looked to the side. "Riz, are you busy?"

"I'll go see who else is free to grab a spear," Riz said.

"You're the best," Rian sighed, turning back to Lori and missing the expression on the northerner woman's face, as well as the expressions of the two weavers. "The new cookpots are progressing well, and it's not putting too much of a dent into our fuel reserves. Fortunately the forge is only needed for the gold and if the copper gets too hard. In fact, we should have the first pot ready soon. I suggest issuing it to the outside dining hall. It'll reduce the amount of fuel they need, since it's also using braziers to keep the inside warm enough to eat in comfortably. ."

Lori considered that. "How much fuel is that using? Is it significant?"

"I think it's manageable," Rian said. "Even with the outdoor lights, walking up the rise through the snow at night is a bit dangerous, especially for pregnant women. Getting to the outside dining hall is still a bit of a walk, but it's shorter, so many of them have been eating there, especially for dinner." Rian shrugged. "In hindsight, it's probably something we should have thought of before it got cold, maybe given it more efficient heating. At least the lights you installed mean they can keep the windows shuttered all the time."

Lori nodded. "Very well. Inform me when it becomes unmanageable."

Rian stared at her for a moment. "Yes, your Bindership."

"Anything else?"

Rian actually seemed to think about it. "If you'd be willing, the Coldhold needs better heating before I want to risk sending people out on it to get salt. And maybe a way to signal them to come back because a dragon is coming? Like, make the lights change color? At the very least, it'll give them a slightly better chance of surviving if they know to try to head back home."

Lori titled her head, considering that. "Perhaps tomorrow, if we have time. It's not all that urgent, after all. Bound ice should insulate the majority of the insides of the Coldhold. In those circumstances, a brazier would be sufficient, if you had a means of expelling the smoke."

"Yes, but people have to work outside to pour sea water into the evaporator," Rian said. "And using buckets in those circumstances invariably means spilled buckets."

Lori nodded. "Ah. A point. Though it seems to me the solution is not better heating but better means of getting water into the evaporator." She hums and tilts her head in thought for a moment. "Devise such a solution and get back to me." She continued eating her breakfast.

Across from her, Rian continued staring for a moment. "Yes, your Bindership," he said eventually. "Um, that's all I guess. Unless you want to hear about disciplinary issues?"

"Has anyone been hurting the children?" Lori asked, not looking up.

"No."

"Then I don't care. You seem to have it in hand, keep doing so."

Really, Rian should know better by now.

––––––––––––––––––

Lori knelt down, examining the stone marker that she had placed on the very edge of her demesne the day before. Cautiously, even though she could see the difference, she carefully extended her bare hand over the marker in the direction away from her core. The tip of her extended hand didn't start feeling cold until her elbow had gone past the edge-marker. Former edge-marker. The edge of her demesne had moved.

It had worked. Expanding her demesne had WORKED!

…

Er, not that she ever doubted it, of course. But still, it was good she had some kind of baseline to compare this with. She took her staff with its rule marks and measured out the new gap. It… wasn't very far, admittedly. It was a bit difficult to make out exactly how large the growth was, since trying to measure her forearm and hand using her staff was a bit awkward, but… forty-three, forty-four yustri? Best be a bit on the generous side, call it forty-four. Not quite half a pace.

It was… well, it was growth. On the face of it, her demesne growing half a pace—not quite a full pace in overall diameter—was only a small fraction of its overall size. However, it was also an expansion of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands—she couldn't be bothered to try to do the exact math at the moment—of cubic paces in volume. Measuring the growth in three dimensions instead of just one…

Lori shook her head. She could calculate the numbers on the way back. She bound the earthwisps in her old marker, making the bottom where it touched the ground flow, and moved it to the new edge of her demesne, moving it until its outward face was was once more on the very edge just short of the taint of the Iridescence. The other marker she had made still stood outside her demesne, two and a half paces or so away.

"All right," she said. "We're done here. Let's head back."

As she sat down on Lori's Boat, taking care to prop her staff on her shoulder and keep one hand on it, Lori began to run the numbers. They weren't promising. She generally needed a slate and soapstone if she wanted to do large math, and a counting rack was highly preferred, but the numbers she was looking at were simple enough she didn't need them. her demesne had grown by less than half a pace yesterday… half a pace in radius, less than a pace in diameter. Her demesne was—had been—four taums wide. Covehold was ten taums wide. If she wanted to reach that size then at her current rate…

She'd need to expand the demesne every day by at least the same rate for somewhere between ten and twenty years. Trying to narrow down that number didn't matter, because the fact that she'd even need to calculate beyond 'ten years' was… was…

Ten years was just slightly under half of her life. Well over half of the part she could clearly remember. The thought that she'd have to… every day… for longer than that…

To expand her demesne to even just equal Covehold Demesne in size, she would need to commit every day of the rest of her life.

The rest of her life.

For a long time, Lori just stared at nothing, not really seeing anything. She gave was pointed straight ahead, past Riz and the random person she'd brought along, both sitting with spears at the front of the boat. No particular feature of the landscape really drew her eye, it was just that her head was pointed that way because of how she was sitting.

The restof her life.

While she had gone to school, both the basic education that taught her to read, write and count, and the more advanced education that where she had learned to wield her Whispering, it hadn't really been... voluntary. She could vividly remember her logic, reasoned and… and… and bratty tantrum as she refused to go to basic, her sullen attitude as she had been removed from the familiarity of basic to be placed in a different institution after the standard breathing exercise had revealed her affinity for magic, if not exactly what kind yet. It had taken… time… for her to learn to appreciate her ability, to seize it for the great and wonderful power it was, to embrace and actively seek out what her school was teaching her. It had taken more time to finish this education, to be acknowledged, certified, and registered as a Whisperer, one of the powerful, who shaped the very world with their breath and their soul, binding it to their will.

The restof her life.

And all that time, all that forced education, all that learning she had eventually sought out… was still far less than the time she would need to devote, freely and of her own will for there was no power in her demesne but herself that could force her to do so, to expanding her demesne every day for… for… for…

…the rest of her life.

Lori closed her eyes at the enormity, the utter finality of that statement.

All around her, she felt the wisps.

All of them.

She just sat there with her eyes closed, feeling the rocking, swaying movements of the boat she rode. She felt the water beneath then, felt what moisture had managed to seep into the immensely dense substance of the boat beneath her. The wind in the air, filling a massive half-sphere full of light and heat and little sparks of lightning. The earth beneath it all, another half sphere, pierced through with water and darkness. And inside her, that well of endless power through her connection to her core, as much power as her she needed…

… until the day she died.

Lori took a deep breath, feeling the magic fill her lungs, a drop compared to the deep, bottomless well within her. She opened her eyes, and found they were just moving past the cliff face of the hill her Dungeon was built beneath. Her Dungeon, inside of which lay her core, the physical thing that was her connection to her demesne, that thing that would someday connect the core to her…. her…

She closed her eyes again, took and other deep breath, let it out.

Lori's Boat began to slide into place next to the stone dock. She sat, waiting for the boat to settle as Riz leapt onto the dock, taking the anchor and tossing it into water on the other side. She waited until the other militia followed suit, until Rian adjusted the water jet and set the stream of water to loop so that the boat would stay in place. Only when Rian was off the boat did she stand, a little uncertainly, and stepped over the side as Rian knelt down to hold the sides of the boat so that it would drift away from the dock when she moved.

"Did you get what you need?" Rian asked as he stood up, letting go of the boat.

Lori blinked and glanced at him, then nodded. "Yes," she said simply.

"You… don't seem happy. Were the results bad?"

Lori fell silent again, pressing her lips tightly together. Eventually, she said, "Yes. They were substandard. Improvements and efficiencies need to be made and implemented."

Rian chuckled. "Don't they always. What do you need me to do?"

Lori frowned and turned to Rian. "Tomorrow," she said, "I need to go back to the edge of the demesne."

Rian tilted his head and nodded. "I'll make arrangements. Will this be a regular thing from now on?"

"We'll see."

Rian nodded. "I'll make a lot of arrangements then."

Lori nodded. Then she turned and headed towards her dungeon.

She had a demesne to expand again, and she needed to do so more efficiently than she did yesterday. Had her biographies and histories mentioned anything about demesne growth rates? She tried to recall, but nothing came to mind, no vague half-remembered numbers of how many taums an ancient demesne grew over how long. That was… somewhat mixed. With nothing to compare her growth to, she had no idea how optimally her demesne was growing. On the other hand, with no other demesne to really compete against, only the possible demesne of the future… any growth at all was only beneficial.

After all, to be a Dungeon Binder was to be one for life. There was no way to remove a person from the role without killing them, and some well-prepared Binders who dabbled in self-Deadspeaking had managed to go beyond that. If she was going to be like this for all of her days from now on… then what was another thing she had to do for the same length of time because of it? She had to eat for the rest of her life, breathe for the rest of her life, and now expand her demesne for the rest of her life.

She had chosen this for herself. She would do it. And once she learned to do it better…

Lori walked towards her room, plowing through the snow before she entered the entryway leading into her dungeon. To either side, the illustrations copied from the almanac shone on the walls, and would have provided subtle illumination if she hadn't bound more lightwisps to the ceiling. Past the illustrations, past the side corridor leading to the smithy, past the open doors that could be barricaded in the event of a dragon. She rounded past the stone wall that separated her core from the rest of the dungeon, and walked up the stairs, moving aside the rock that barred the way to her room and putting it back behind.

Entering her chambers, she closed the door behind her and sat down heavily on her bed, staring at the floor. Then she took a deep breath and spread out her bedroll. Lori put her pillow at her back so she could lean back against the wall her bed abutted against, and tested if she could comfortably just collapse back against it if she suddenly collapsed. Fairly comfortable, but her pillow was too short to support her back and her head at the same time, else she'd strike her head on the stone, and keeping the pillow pressed to the stone with her head without some kind of back support was… uncomfortable.

Actually… there was no reason to do this sitting up, was there? Lori tried lying down, then shook her head. No, no, if she lay down, especially with her eyes closed to concentrate and block off sensory distractions, there was a good chance she might accidentally fall asleep in the middle of what she was doing. As long as the wisps she was handling didn't have a binding that had to be actively controlled to be safe, like having rock roll and flow, there was no danger, but it would be annoying if she fell asleep in the middle of this…

In the end, Lori wedged herself into the corner where two walls met, her bedroll folded under her, her blanket and winter robe stuffed in to the space behind her back for support and her pillow behind her head. She leaned back, letting her legs splay gracelessly in front of her so that they were less likely to go number from being bent, and closed her eyes.

For the second time, Lori began expanding her demesne.

––––––––––––––––––

When It Rians It Floods

Her second time expanding her demesne went much like her first. In fact, it went as exactly like her first as she could manage it. After all, if she was going to experiment with ways to improve on the methods of expanding her demesne, then she had to be sure that consistent methods yielded consistent results.

Yes, that was absolutely why she did it that way, pushing herself for who-knows-how-long until she was mentally exhausted and collapsed on her bedroll. Perfectly planned to confirm a consistent, repeatable baseline.

Doing so predictably left her in the strange state of being mentally fatigued and exhausted while still being physically well-rested. She was much better prepared for it this time, knowing what to expect, and so she was able to force herself to move. That seemed to help, at least, her body rousing her mind. Her eyes wanted to droop and felt sleepy, and she splashed water over her face to try to wake herself up.

By the time Rian came up to call her for lunch, Lori was… well, not exactly back to normal, but at least functional. Mostly functional. Reasonably functional. She forced herself to eat lunch, concentrating on getting food and soup into her mouth, chewing and swallowing. Thankfully, there didn't seem to be anything of import that needed her attention, and so she was able to just focus on eating her food in peace.

After eating, Lori very much wanted to go up to her room and sleep the afternoon away. However, she still had work to do, so forced herself to her feet and trudged towards the reservoir. She moved the stone blocking the way to it, looking at the thing with annoyance. Despite having resigned herself to it being permanent, she couldn't make herself come to like it. Even with the waist-high stone wall all around it to keep things from falling in, she still half-expected to find something inside the reservoir when she looked, but no, the watery pit was clean as far as she could see. Though admittedly, she wouldn't be able to visually tell if something had been mixed into it unless it was a corpse, or was something easy to identify like floating excrement.

Lori walked up to the stone wall around the reservoir and looked inside. The interior of the reservoir was brightly lit by lightwisps studded along its sides, illuminating the churning water that flowed in from the water hub, keeping it constantly filled. Pipes leading to the baths also drew their water from it, though Lori was alarmed to see how high the water was. It was still four paces below the top of the wall, but it was far higher that it had been the last time she'd come here to get water for blasting apart the stone for the Dungeon farm! Lori groaned and hastily reached towards the water hub shed, deactivating the bindings there.

Idiot! She was an idiot! She'd left water running without checking on it to keep it from overflowing! The bindings she'd placed had kept pushing water into the reservoir even when the water level had risen above the discharge pipe, and if she hadn't checked up on it. The only thing keeping her from screaming in frustration at the fact was that she'd actually manage to catch it before it had started flooding her Dungeon.

She'd… have to devise some kind of system to stop the water from overflowing, wouldn't she? Either stop the flow of water into the reservoir, or build some sort of runoff pipe that would send water somewhere else once it reached a certain level. Ugh… well, she was here to modify the reservoir to provide water for the Dungeon farm anyway… what was one more thing she needed to make?

Come to think of it, she needed to be ready to use this reservoir to provide drinking water again in the event of a dragon, so she might as well prepare for that too. That meant pipes and basins to put the water, and more dealing with overflows and runoffs… and people will probably still get water from there even if there wasn't a dragon passing, wouldn't they? It would be just like them… though she supposed with winter having arrived, people would naturally want to get in out of the cold. She'd have to add drinking water basins to the bath houses, so it would be closer than her Dungeon…

She didn't want to. Even though her tiredness didn't really affect her ability to bind wisps… she didn't want to. All that work, feeling the way she did… but she'd have to, wouldn't she? After all, it wasn't like there was anyone else who could do it. And it was needed. If she didn't do it, people would keep spilling water inside her Dungeon… and her Dungeon would flood, of course. And the flooding would negatively impact their farm, which was at the Dungeon's lowest point…

"Lori?"

It took her a moment to realize someone was calling her. She shook her head, turning around to find Rian standing at the mouth of the passageway leading to the reservoir. "Rian?" she said, sighing. What now? "What now?"

"Are you all right?" Rian asked. "You seem… not yourself."

"I'm perfectly well," Lori said, waving a hand dismissively.

"Probably… but that perfectly well self doesn't seem to be your usual perfectly well self. Have you been having trouble sleeping lately? I'm your lord, if there's something you need me to do for you—"

"Then I'd tell you," Lori snapped.

Rian nodded. "You'd tell me. I'm more worried about what you wouldn't tell me. Because you don't tell me, so I don't know whether I should worry about it, so I default to worrying." He spread out his hands. "At lunch today and the day before, you looked like you'd been up all night and hadn't slept. Except I saw you at breakfast, and you were your usual, well-rested perfectly fine self. So you clearly did something between the time we got back from the edge of the demesne and lunch." Rian leaned back against the passageway. "Maybe you should go rest today? You've been working hard all year, a rest won't hurt."

Lori glared at him. "I thought you said we needed water for the dungeon farm?"

"We do, but not at the expense of our Dungeon Binder's health." He gestured towards her. "This isn’t a per-day student work contract where you'll be summarily dismissed without pay if you don't do every little thing you're told to do instantly." He paused. "Can we make so those kinds of practices are illegal here? At least force them to have to pay for time already worked?"

"It's far too early to be considering such things. We don't even have beads yet." Ugh, they didn't even have beads! How was she supposed to find time to make those when expanding her demesne already let her so exhausted?

"So you're not doing it?"

"Of course I'm doing it, I hate those people." She'd been working for almost the whole contract, and all of a sudden just because she told the man she wasn't properly certified to lightning-weld metal suddenly she was dismissed without pay? ARGH! He knew she wasn't certified, she'd had to specify it in her application, which he'd been holding, the cheap, cheating—

"Uh, I'm not saying we have them executed for it…"

She glared at him again. "Did I say it would be an execution offence?"

"It was implied by your clenched fists, enraged eyes, gritted teeth and borderline animalistic growls of fury," Rian said. "How about just flogging? It would make the people they cheat feel so much better, especially if we have them do it."

Lori thought about flogging the man who had dismissed AND forcing him to pay her for the work she had already done. "I'll consider it."

Rian nodded. "So… do you want to tell me why you've been so tired in the afternoons?"

"It's none of your concern," Lori said.

"Given that it seems like something I'll need to schedule around for both your sake and mind, I think it falls under my concern," Rian said. "It seems to occupy your mornings and makes you all but dead on your feet for the afternoons. Not impossible to compensate for, but I need to know about it." He shrugged. "If it goes on for three more days, I was planning to call the doctors to examine you. I'd already set aside a whole bunch of salt to have you treated in River's Fork if it was necessary. This kind of sudden onset exhaustion isn't something you used to go through, after all. As lord, it's my job to keep you alive, and I'm doing it."

Lori glared a third time, but this time her heart wasn't in it. Scheduling. Resource allocation. Keeping her alive. Those weren't concerns she could really dismiss and tell him to stop doing. Keeping her alive was vitally important. The most important thing in the world, really. Sighing with bad grace, she crossed her arms over her chest, not looking at him. "I'm fine. The tiredness is just a side effect of my ongoing efforts to expand the borders of my demesne."

"Ah. I figured it was something like that when you started measuring this morning." Her eyes snapped up towards him, and he was just finishing nodding, looking self-satisfied. "What? I need to be a little smart to be able to keep up with you, and there aren't many reasons you'd suddenly be using the measuring stick function of your staff." He nodded again. "Ah, that's why you want to go out again tomorrow and for the foreseeable future. I assume that marker you put down is currently on the demesne's current edge, so you're measuring the demesne's growth every time you expand? Trying to figure out a baseline so you can optimize the procedure?"

"… yes," she managed to get out.

Rian nodded. "Would it be more efficient if I went out and measured the growth in the mornings? That way we don’t have to worry about exposing our very important Dungeon Binder to potentially being attacked by a hungry beast at the border of the demesne, and you don't have to waste your time doing it."

"How would you be able to identify the new border?" Lori said. "The snow is hiding the Iridescence."

"If I go out there now and leave some bowls or something in a line, they should be coated by enough Iridescence tomorrow I can make it out, even if they get buried in more snow," Rian said, waving a hand dismissively. "Or some kind of board propped up with rocks, in case I'm incorrect about where I think the edge is from the marker. I could get one now, leave it out there, go back in the morning, reset for the new border, and keep doing that every day. That way you don't have to go."

The suggestion was… very tempting actually, especially for her tired mind. She tried to think of a way to justify why she needed to be the one to do it and found none. After all, she'd only gone because she'd felt she was the only one who could discern the demesne's border, but Rian's suggestion had merit.

"Do you want to keep this secret for some reason?" Rian said. "Because Riz's friends talked and people know you've been doing something up there."

She waved a hand dismissively. "You deal with it."

Rian nodded. "So, will you be expanding the demesne again this afternoon…?"

She gave him a withering look. "Do I look like I'm in any condition to do that?" she said.

"I wouldn't know, I can't do magic," Rian shrugged.

"No, I won't," Lori said. "I'll be working on expanding the capabilities of our reservoir. I'll expand the demesne tomorrow."

"Of course," Rian nodded. "Well, I'll leave you to it. I'm sure you have many things you need to plan first before you actually start building, so that your new improvement don't cause any unintended flooding problems. You probably need to plan the layout, figure out how to prevent flooding from too much water, how to keep the reservoir from running out of water too fast, things like that which have to be planned out before you even start building."

"…obviously," Lori said. "After all, it would be foolish to start building without some kind of plan." Yes, she should probably plan this out first, shouldn't she? After all, she had to make irrigation water accessible to the third level, add drinking water access to the baths for the winter, and add a means of stopping the water's flow to prevent the reservoir from overflowing, which was the most important part…

And actually, she should probably have a way to make irrigation water shut off by itself, shouldn’t she? She could easily imagine some lazy idiot leaving the water running, not realizing that the water wouldn't just drain into the earth if it overflowed, and resulting in the third level flooding…

And actually, she'd need the same for the drinking water access, wouldn't see? Else the water would just keep overflowing, possibly overwhelming the drains and causing the bath houses to flood…

"Well, I'll leave you to that then," Rian nodded. "Tell me if you need anything commission from the smiths and carpenters, like more spigots and things."

Spigots would be helpful actually, especially if they could have some sort of mechanism to automatically close them…

"Huh?" Lori shook her head, looking up at Rian. "Ah, yes, yes, I'll tell you if I need anything. "

Rian nodded, and turned to leave, then paused. He turned back towards her. "Um, I have to ask, is there any particular reason why you have to expand the demesne in the mornings? Couldn't you do it in the afternoons instead? That way you could have dinner and just go straight to bed and not force yourself to work when you're clearly tired."

Lori stared at him.

Rian just stared right back.

"Get to work, Rian," Lori finally said.

"Yes, your Bindership," he said, turning away obediently. "I'll see you at dinner, then."

After Rian left, Lori just stood, there, feeling… tired. Then she shook her head, looked around the reservoir one last time, and headed down the passage back towards her room, barely remembering to close the way behind her to block access to the reservoir. Without anywhere else to work, she headed towards her room to plan out her approach to improving the reservoir.

Lori sat down on her bed with its nicely stuffed bedroll because there was nowhere else more comfortable to sit, one of the stone tablets she kept prepared in hand, a stylus made of bone with in the other for writing, and began to plan out how she was going to improve the reservoir.

She most definitely didn't fall asleep in the middle of planning. That would be wrong.