Demesne 185 - Schedule Optimization (Patreon)

After her carefully considered and needful afternoon's mental recuperation session—she most definitely didn’t fall asleep!—Lori was feeling refreshed enough to go down to dinner and eat instead of just trying to force food down her throat in defiance of her lethargy so that she wouldn't be weak from hunger and become even MORE lethargic. Down that way was a vicious cycle after all.

"You're looking better," Rian commented, sniffling. Lori hoped he didn't come down with anything. Replacing him would be difficult. "Back to eating normally, I see."

"And you look sick," Lori said, resisting the urge to lean back as they ate. On either side of him, Umu and Mikon both had the closest to looks of disgust she'd ever seen on their faces as Rian wiped his nose with the towel around his shoulders. Lori had to wonder if he had washed that towel this morning, since—no, he probably hadn't washed it had he? And he was still using it as a scarf AND using it to wipe his nose, oh gross, gross, gross, GROSS!

"I'm fine," Rian said as Lori tried not to stare at the abominable towel. "It's perfectly normal for a nose to start dripping uncontrollably when it gets cold. It's your body telling you it hates you and will be trying to kill you by drowning until the situation improves. It'll be gone as soon as I warm up."

Lori stared at Rian, trying to figure out if he actually genuinely believed that, then averted her gaze because even that brought her eyes too close to the towel.

"Anyway, I've talked to the carpenters, who are making a spigot for you," he said. "For the third level. I figured people accidentally leaving it open and flooding the third level was a concern, so I asked the carpenters to make a spigot that would by default be shut if left alone."

That… would actually be useful. "If there's time, tell them to make a bulge at the intake end so I can more securely anchor it to the stone wall. If it's too late, threads of some sort of the surface that will let me anchor it will do."

"I'll tell them. Hopefully it won't be too late."

It was probably too late. "Also, tell them I need four more," Lori said. "I will be installing spigots for drinking water in the baths for ease of access. The water will have passed through the same purification process as the bath water. I assume the taste is gone?" Why had people been tasting bath water in the first place? "Why had people been tasting bath water in the first place?"

"Yes, it's faded. And I think it's because they were trying to see if they could drink it, because the drinking water in the basin was turning to slush and ice? Water's still flowing down to the laundry area, but in the basins it's been kind of freezing solid."

Lori nodded tiredly. "Well, either way, people will have a new source of drinking water that they can get somewhere warm."

"And the people, myself included, appreciate it," Rian said, nodding. "Shall I tell people to not go into a particular bath house tomorrow so you're not bothered?"

"After the spigots are ready," Lori said. "Tomorrow I'll continue working on the reservoir. Take the measurement as you said you would."

"Yes, your Bindership."

"Umu."

The weaver jerked up in surprise at being addressed. "Yes, your Bindership?"

"You have a choice: either teach Rian how to launder that towel around his face so he can do so every day, or do it for him. Either way, that towel is getting cleaned."

"Yes, your Bindership!"

"What's wrong with my towel?" Rian actually had the gall to say.

"It's disgusting," Lori said. Around him, Mikon and Umu both nodded. "How you can endure using that to dry yourself after a bath when you've dripped all over it, I have no idea."

"Well, it's not like I have anything else to use," Rian said, exasperated. "Would you rather I wipe my nose on my sleeve?"

"Yes. You don't have your sleeve wrapped around your face and breathe in through it."

"You know, when I started this job, you wouldn't have cared."

"Yes, well, you're too useful to lose now, and I refuse to let it be from easily avoidable sickness."

Really, he should take better care of himself. Didn't he realize how inconvenient it would be for her if anything happened to him?

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The next day, after breakfast and being assured by Umu that she'd brought Rian to the laundry area and taught him how to wash his own towel, Lori got to work. A part of her felt mildly uncomfortable at delaying expanding her demesne, but Rian had a point. If she was going to be useless for the rest of the day after doing so, best to make it the last thing she did before going to sleep. It would allow her to optimize her schedule by still managing to do substantive work before being rendered all but useless when she expanded her demesne.

The spigot presented to her by the carpenters had been surprisingly large. The thick wooden tube had clearly been shaped in the lathe, and unlike most spigots Lori was familiar with, it had no lever to turn, though it did have a hole on one side of the tube for the water to exit through. As Lori examined it, she realized its function. Inside the tube there was a round plug connected to a rod. When the rod was pushed, the plug would move, allowing water to flow around it and out through the hole of the spigot. When released, the pressure of the water would push the plug back into place, blocking off the water. A wide knob prevented the rod from being depressed too far, as well as giving a convenient surface to press on.

With the spigot in hand, Lori was able to get to work on providing water to the Dungeon farm. First she restored the bindings she deactivated the day before, allowing water to flow once more into the reservoir, where the water level had lowered noticeably. For her peace of mind, she would definitely need some kind of overflow control system for this if she wanted to leave the water running.

…

She'll have to remember to tell Rian to have the carpenters—and probably the smiths as well, in case this required parts better made by metal work—to make one for her.

Now, where was she? Ah, yes, water for the third level. It was relatively easy to form a pipe from the reservoir heading down to the Dungeon farm. Despite how deep the pit looked, when she used her awareness of her demesne's wisps to try to gain a better understanding of where it's bottom lay in comparison to the third level, she found that the reservoir's bottom was, by her estimate, about a pace or two above the floor of the third level. She hadn't really realized how deep she'd been digging. The floor of the second level was seven paces lower than the floor of the first level, and the floor of the third level was a further ten paces below that, or so she estimated.

No wonder her legs had started to ache from climbing the stairs.

Still, that wasn't a detriment. On the contrary, that depth meant there would be sufficient water pressure to force the water down without her having to make and bindings. All that was needed was for her to form the pipes. That was barely an effort. The process of using earthwisps to compact the stone and seal any gaps while forming a hollow tube through which water could flow was simple. The only real difficulty was the choice of starting the pipe from the reservoir and making its way down to the third level or the inverse. One couldn't simply make the pipes inside the stone without an opening to somewhere.

Lori decided to start at the third level so she could start with installing the new spigot and making sure the diameter of the pipe she made was about equal to the spigots opening. Too small, and there wouldn't be enough water, too big and the spigot would under a lot of pressure when closed, leading to leaks or even the spigot itself being pushed out of its mounting, which would lead to flooding as the reservoir drained into the third level.

…

On second thought, perhaps she should position the pipe's intake a little higher in the reservoir than she had initially planned, so the even in the event of such a failure, she wouldn't end up with a flooded farm.

Even with this modification to her intentions, the installation went off with no problems. Lori positioned the spigot in the wall next to the drainage cistern for the plots—she had, of course, been planning installing something like this from the very start! Of course. Of course…—and made a deep catch basin under it so that the runoff would be collected. One end of the basin was positioned so that the overly would be deposited into the drainage cistern.

She'd need to have Rian inform everyone that the spigot was NOT to be used to fill the drainage cistern. It was for drainage, after all. It probably should have been obvious, but unless it was made explicit some idiot would probably feel safe making excuses for whatever stupidity they did.

That done, she spent the rest of the morning making another boiling station, digging an alcove next to the reservoir, and forming the piping and bindings that would let the water be heated to above the temperature water boiled, yet be prevented for actually turning into steam. That way, the water didn't become distilled and develop a terrible base taste. A binding of firewisps would draw the heat out of the water as it was moved to another tank, and from there the water flowed to the bathhouses. There was no reason to separate the drinking water and the bath water, after all, and this way she didn't have to create a new set of piping to carry the drinking water.

It was the second tank that made the difference, since the water all already boiled in the water hub before being sent to the reservoir. Within that second tank, she bound lightwisps that were meant to shine brightly with unseen light.

While there were several kinds of unseen light in existence, not all of them had been taught with any relevancy in her classes, and thus she only learned of some of the most basic, the kinds emitted by the sun in addition to visible light. This unseen light was part of why her demesne's drink water was delivered by aqueduct instead of through pipes, allowing it to be exposed to the sun to cleanse it of dustlife contaminating it. However, with water from the reservoir, she had to provide that light herself with a binding.

Lori did so carefully, first binding the lightwisps in her eyes to allow her to see the unseen light, then carefully binding the lightwisps she had bound in the second tank to alter the light that shone from them, not looking directly at the lightwisps in question but on the stone around her, watching the reflections. To her eyes, the unseen she sought to produce shone light in and impossible shade of purple. Once she thought she had achieved the correct color, she briefly deactivated the bindings on her eyes. The world in her view flickered for a moment as it returned to being in only the colors she knew.

Satisfied, Lori immediately deactivated the binding of lightwisps. Exposure to unseen light could be dangerous on a body, causing abnormal and dangerous growths that only Deadspeaking could reliably deal with. Lori sealed the second tank first, and the first tank for that matter, before she activated the binding of lightwisps again, filling the inside of the tank with the invisible radiance. She activated the binding on her eyes once more, this time altering it to emphasize the dark unseen light in favor of the more normally visible light. Her vision darkened, and she carefully walked around the tank she had made, looking of any unseen light leaking out.

She patched a few spots where the material was apparently too thin, until there was no more to be seen. Only then did Lori breathe a sigh of relief and undo the binding on her eyes, letting her see clearly again. Ugh, she'd forgotten how nerve wracking and eye-water working with unseen light could be. Human eyes weren't meant to see unseen light, unless one had allowed a particularly adventurous Deadspeaker to have their way with you, and altering the lightwisps in her eyes to allow her to do so, instead of just amplifying visible light or magnifying it… well, it made her eyes itch. There was also the distinct possibility that unseen light could damage her eyes, which was why she hadn't looked directly at it and had kept the binding's intensity low until she had sealed it off from her.

Lori wondered what time it was. That was the problem with working inside her dungeon, she couldn't tell what time it was. She walked towards the dining hall, closing the passageway to the reservoir behind her.

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"Here's the measurement you want, Binder Lori," Rian said as he arrived at her table, handing her his plank of wood. It looked recently washed. "I'll report the rest to you later, it's my turn to get the food." He sounded far too cheerful for a man off to do a menial chore as he walked towards where they were handing out the bowls of food with Umu.

"That man is far too cheerful for someone off to do a menial chore," Lori muttered as she read over the measurement, ignoring the way Mikon was flirting with Riz and the latter seemed to be playing coy and hard to get. She frowned when she saw the plank read 'thirty-nine yustri'. Wait, thirty-nine? That couldn't be right! Had he measured that properly?

Grumbling, Lori decided to accept that for now, though she'd have to arrange a more accurate means of measuring the edge to Rian, in case the method he used was flawed. Shaking her head, Lori set the plank aside. She should probably write this all down, so she'd have a daily record. And maybe write down how she approached expanding the demesne that got those results. Ugh, that means either isolating a new stretch of wall to write on or trying to keep track of stone tablets. Maybe she should start writing on the floor, that was free space…

"Rian," Lori said when he finally appeared with the food, taking her bowl of soup from him, "I need a mechanism."

"You'll have to be more specific, that covers a lot of things," he said as he made the sure women had their own bowls first before he started eating. "What do you want it to do in particular? I'm assuming it's something that you can't magic for yourself? Or at least, don't want to magic for yourself?"

Lori waved a hand dismissively. "I need a mechanism to block the pipe that brings in water from the river one water reaches a certain point so that the reservoir doesn't overflow."

"Ah. That does sound serious," Rian nodded, taking a sip of soup. "How much water are we talking about here? Or did you just build it and don't know because you didn't feel like that sort of detail was important?"

"That detail wasn't important," Lori said. She supped her soup as well. Ah, nice and warm and tasty…

Rian sighed. "Well, no matter how much water it is, it will have to be some kind of float system. And it should be relatively easy for you to adjust the output after the fact, right?"

"Of course."

Rian nodded. "Can we use some of the copper and dragon scale, or would you prefer it be made of wood to preserve materials?"

"I'd prefer it be mostly made from wood, but if there is a component that is best made with metal, do so," Lori said.

"For the hinges maybe, since it means we can make it smaller," Rian muttered, the shook his head. "I'll tell them, though it won't be done as quickly as the spigots. We'll have to think about this one."

Lori nodded. "It's not completely pressing, but given how long we leave the reservoir unsupervised, I want something in place to prevent potential flooding. The alternative is an overflow runoff that that takes the excess water away, and I'd prefer not to add another pipe just for that."

"Yeah, the more pipes there are, the more likely they'll get forgotten in the event of a dragon," Rian agreed. "Don't worry, we'll get it done. Are you still on going through with your plans for the afternoon?"

Lori nodded. Given how paltry yesterday's growth had been, she needed to expand today. "I will begin after lunch." Once her stomach settled and she emptied herself, so that she wouldn't be distracted in the midst of expansion…

Rian nodded. "Can you… leave the hallway open, even if you lock the door? That way I don't have to worry that you can't hear me when I come get you for dinner?

Lori considered that, then sighed. "Fine," she said. Hearing him had been problematic, especially since she wasn't sure if he could hear her in turn.

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After lunch, she went up to her room and, after writing down how much the demesne had grown the last two times she expanded it, preparing herself, and setting up her corner again so she could nestle there, Lori began expanding her demesne a third time. It was as tiring as it had been before, but this time she could look forward to just going straight to sleep after dinner, which helped her persist in channeling, aligning and gathering wisps on the borders of her demesne for much longer as she sat with her eyes fixed on the palm of her hands, since closing her eyes soon became too tempting as her mind slowly tired.

After reaching to claim and expand her demesne, Lori barely managed to stay awake during dinner to force food down her throat, eating slowly in what she was able to recognize as a tired haze. When she was finished eating, she almost stumbled getting up and had to be assisted to get up to her room where she collapsed onto her bed and fell asleep.

When she woke up in the middle of the night, gagging as she almost vomited from the food in her stomach, Rian barely managed to help her sit up and get everything to flow back down to her stomach again. As she fell asleep sitting up with her pillow at her back while she leaned against her corner, a cup of water having cleansed her mouth of the burning acid taste of her stomach, Lori felt there was something strange about her room. Watching Rian sit on the floor on top of his bedroll, back against a wall and reading her almanac, she tried to figure out what it was.

She was still trying to understand what was so strange as sleep took her again.