Weekly Digest 61 - (#194 - #196) (Patreon)

Lori Officiates Marriages

"Rian, tell everyone we're doing the marriages after breakfast," Lori told him as she sat down for breakfast.

Outside, the snowstorm still howled, burying her demesne even more. From what she could discern from the wisps outside her Dungeon, the surface of the river had frozen, trapping the Coldhold, and the snow had gotten even deeper. Fortunately, the entryway into her Dungeon had been kept clear in the night, no doubt from Rian assigning people to the job, so air continued to circulate.

Rian stared at her, paused halfway in the act of getting seated. He looked like he hadn't taken a bath yet, which was probably where the three were. "What, now?"

Lori gave him a flat look. "Are people perhaps busy for some reason?"

"Well, no… It's just that…" Rian said hesitantly, before frowning.

"Just what? And sit down."

He sat. "Wait, I'm thinking…" His fingers tapped rapidly on the table, every extremity tapping seemingly at random, or at least to no tune Lori could recognize. Who taps their fingers like that? Well, Rian obviously but why? "Actually, this could be good," he said thoughtfully. "If we make it properly celebratory after you finish conducting the marriages—not a full holiday, but if we make honey-sweetened bread and stick some meat in the ovens so they cook differently than normal—then it would be a nice boost of morale from the storm and make it less likely for people to get into trouble."

"I thought I said no more holidays," Lori said sternly.

"It's not a holiday! We'd still be working, those of us who have something to work on. And speaking of work, I should tell you this before we have food in front of us."

That… was never a good sign. "What is it?"

"The latrines aren't full yet, but they might need to be desiccated," Rian said. "That should let it last longer. We've been dumping the latrine stuff into a pit, but given the storm outside, even if it stops right now we'd have to dig through a lot of snow before we hit dirt, and the dirt is likely frozen, so digging it to make a new waste pit might take two days, maybe more. The alternative is taking the desiccated waste down to the dungeon farm and using it as fertilizer directly, or start filling making new tuber planters and adding more to the ones that aren't very full."

Lori made a face at the subject matter, but sighed at the necessity. "I'll desiccate the latrines after breakfast, while you're getting the applicants organized."

"How do you want to do it?"

"Just have the applicants come up to me and sit there," she said, gesturing at Rian's side of the table. "You'll be next to me to explain anything they don't understand. I will explain to them their obligations and benefits under a marriage agreement, they sign on the tablet, I give them one as a receipt and keep on for the demesne records."

"The demesne has records?"

"It will soon."

"If we have records, I should probably put together a proper list of everyone's names, ages, relations and professions—"

"That sounds like a waste of time—"

"—for tax reasons. You know, so we can do the calculations for taxes properly when you get around to implementing it."

"… fine. Put it together." Didn't they used to have such a list? Written on the wall or something?

"Yes, your Bindership. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go and get everything ready for you after breakfast while I can, get the honey opened up so we can use it…"

Lori glared at him, but sighed and decided to allow it. it wasn't like she wouldn't enjoy having some meet cooked a different way. "Fine, fine…" she said, then frowned as she remembered something. "Rian, where are the sweetbugs?"

"In the second level," Rian said. "I talked to the sweetbugkeepers weeks ago, apparently Riz asked them for the dimensions of where the sweetbugs needed to be kept but I think one of you forgot because it never got built, so when it started getting cold I just had them move the things into some of the alcoves. They're there now, covered with tent cloths. We'll bring them out again when it gets warm, since we can't really keep them in the dungeon all year long. We don't have enough plants in the dungeon farm for them to feed on."

Lori felt the sudden panicked clenching in her chest relax. Stupid memory! Why hadn't it reminded her about the sweetbugs weeks ago, instead of now when there could have been nothing she could do about it? "I see," she said. "Excellent, then."

"You're welcome," Rian said dryly.

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After breakfast, Lori did as she said and desiccated the contents of the latrines, searating the waterwisps from… well, everything else, and using firewisps to heat what was left until she was reasonably certain it was dry. Then she bathed the waste and the latrine itself in unseen light for good measure. The latrines in the dungeons were regularly cleaned, the seats and floors scrubbed as well as emptied, but a childish part of her couldn't help but feel she needed to be sure.

By the time she finished, there was a nervous-looking couple sitting on Rian's side of her usual table. More people were seated at the table behind them, and Rian was speaking to them in a low voice, the couple on the table looking back at him to listen. Other people were seated in groups in nearby tables. While some were playing board games or talking in low voices, they looked like they were spectating, and Lori saw at least two older women who had an air of 'meddling parent' about them speaking sternly to different waiting pairs.

Lori didn't go straight the table, instead heading to her room. When she came back down, she was carrying a stack of thin wooden sheets about the size of her palm and fingers, a stylus made from a beast tooth and a slim branch, a bone from a beast that she'd retrieved from the bone pile before the storm had begun, and a more ordinary stone tablet on which she had written some notes for reference. Lori had gotten the sheets cut into squares by the carpenters, the edges worn smooth on the grounding wheel. One side of each wooden sheet had been covered with a layer of dark stone she had found, making a small tablet.

Ignoring the applicants, Lori sat down at her usual place and neatly stacked up the little tablets in front of her into two piles. Each had the words 'Certificate of Marriage' written on it, but one pile had the words 'recipient's copy' in one corner and the other pile 'records copy' on it. The shallow, careful lines she'd written had been filled in with bone to make stark white lines on the background of the dark stone.

"All right," she said, and the people all seated in front of her all stiffened and sat up straight, looking nervous. The onlookers—for that's what they were—quieted down. "Before we begin, how many of the applicants can write their own name? Raise your hand." She waited a moment. "Raise your hand overyour head," Lori clarified. The hands rose higher tentatively, and she did a quick count. Huh, that was better than she had expected. More than half could write their own name. "Very well, put those down. For those who can't write, would you be able to read your name written down if you saw it? Raise your hand if you can."

Lori watched as more hands were raised. To her relief, the numbers made up the difference. "Good. Those who can't write their name, your spouse-to-be will assist you." Two people in the back looked alarmed. "If they can't, Rian will."

At some point, Rian had moved to stand off to the side of her, and he gave them his theatrically big smile and waved at them for some reason. "Don't worry, I'll be right here if you need any help," he said. People actually did look relieved when he said that.

"Before we begin, I shall clarify some points of what marriage will entail in my demesne," she said. "You probably have some idea from where you came from. I don't care. This is my demesne. If what you think you know does not go against anything I am about to tell you now. Then it doesn't matter. If it does, cast it aside. If you wanted to be married according the however it's done in the demesne you came from, you should have stayed there." People began to look nervous again.

"On that note, I will recognize any marriages that were conducted outside of this demesne, provided the people involved follow the laws regarding marriage that I am going to set forth. All that is needed is for the people involved to proclaim that they are already married, and to bring out proofs of this marriage. I will accept the presence of existing children and the testimony of relatives and the children in question as proofs. Present and proclaim yourselves to Rian and he will make note of you for when we implement the collection of taxes."

There were more nervous looks.

"Which will not be implemented right now, but we will eventually. I did say that land distribution would only occur after taxation was implemented." Lori swept her gaze around, wondering if anyone was going to try and force the issue of land again. Surrpsingly, people stayed silent. "Very well. Applicants." She directed her gaze towards the people sitting opposite her, huddled together and from their stance were holding hands other the table. Her gaze passed them, going on towards the people behind them. "All of you. Before I register your marriages, I will require you to listen to the terms and conditions of marriage as defined in this demesne. If you have any complaints, direct then towards Rian, they were all his ideas."

Next to her, Rian's head snapped in her direction, a comically betrayed look on his face. "Me?" he protested. "They're your laws!"

"I asked for ideas, you gave them to me. Therefore, they're your ideas."

The look became betrayed and resigned. "I take no responsibility for how my ideas were interpreted and codified into law," he said to everyone in general. "Everyone knows you make up your own mind."

"Of course. I'm the Dungeon Binder." She turned back to the applicants. "Before we begin, I will inform you all that obligations you will be required to uphold once you are married, providing sexual gratification to your spouse is not one of them." There was a sound like Rian's hand had just forcefully slapped into his face. Lori didn't bother to look. "Under the terms of marriage in my demesne, being married does not require you to commit any such acts, nor does your spouse have the right to demand or force those acts upon you. If you say no and they persist, any subsequent actions will be legally interpreted as rape and will be dealt with accordingly. It can also be used as grounds for a divorce."

"How are they supposed to have children if they don't tumble?" someone at the very back called out.

"Rian, find out who that was and see if she is married, and whether they are in violation of the law," Lori said.

"No need your Bindership, that's just Riona," Rian said. "She's unmarried and unattached, for obvious reasons."

"She's ugly?" For some reason, people laughed at the perfectly reasonable question.

"No, she's crass, pushy and hard to live with for long periods of time. Which is a shame, because she's a pretty good hunter."

"Ah. Well, to answer the crass question, one would think the applicants would do so because they both want to do such things to each other," Lori said. "In relative privacy, if they know what's good for them."

"Just nod, all of you," Rian said, and the applicants all nodded hurriedly.

"To continue," Lori said, "marriage also does not immediately or obligatorily require that all current and future possessions and assets be jointly owned by both spouses. You may if you wish to, but it is not assumed or required."

"'Possessions and assets' means 'stuff you own'," Rian informed the applicants, who nodded in comprehension. "Why would that be something you bring up? I'm asking for both myself and for the benefit of everyone present, who are probably as confused as I am." There were a few more nods at this.

"In case of divorce, to reduce the ambiguity when it comes to division of assets."

"While I'm sure everyone's glad to have such a hardworking and thorough Binder, I don't think talk about divorce is what people really want to hear on their wedding day," Rian said, sounding tired for some reason.

"Marriage, not wedding."

"Given the circumstances, it's currently the same thing."

"A marriage is an agreement, a wedding is the pointlessly expensive festivities leading up to and after the officiation of that agreement."

"Again, given the current circumstances, it's the same thing."

Lori frowned, tilting her head thoughtfully. Huh. He was right. Well, regardless. "Well, regardless. One final point before we proceed, I am announcing the requirement of a mandatory apprenticeship for all applicants here, as well as those already married but do not yet have any children, and those pregnant and unmarried." She saw people exchanging confused looks and murmuring to each other. "The people in question are required to apprentice themselves to married individuals who already have children above five years of age, for the purpose of learning how to tend, raise, discipline, and properly care for children." The volume of the murmurs rose, though he heard on or two laughs for some reason. "This is mandatory and required. I can't stop you from breeding, but I don't have to tolerate people being stupid about it. You will learn, and you will do it sooner rather than later so you don't raise your children incorrectly."

There were actually nods and more laughs at that.

"If you have any objections to any of these requirements, you know where to go," Lori finished.

"Notme," Rian said. "I'm for when you have complaints. If you have objections, she means leave and try your luck at River's Fork. Just to be clear."

A hand was raised. "Uh, Lord Rian…" A young man Lori vaguely recognized for some reason. "What about for those that can't have children?" He waved to the other young man next to him.

Rian turned to her. "Your Bindership?"

"It's still required," Lori said sternly. "No exceptions. If you can't take this seriously, withdraw your application and stop wasting my time. Failure to comply will render your marriage null and void."

Surprisingly, that was met with an exchange of looks and a nod. Huh. A reasonable person. How rare.

"Anything else? No? Then we proceed. Rian, take note. First applicants." She directed her gaze towards the two in front to her, who straightened up on their bench again. "I will speak to you, you will answer. Understood?"

"Y-yes, your Bindership," they both said eventually.

Lori nodded. "Now, do either of you have a profession? A trade, a craft? Training in anything?"

They looked at each other in confusion, then glanced at Rian.

"It's all right, just answer her," he said, and she could hear his reassuring smile.

Nonetheless, it seemed to work as the applicant on the left, a young man with pale blue hair said, "Um, I was a beastherder, your Bindership," he said. "Was pretty good at it."

"What kinds of beasts?" Lori pressed.

"Short-tailed tsokows, your Bindership." While she'd never seen one she was vaguely familiar with the type from theater, novels and the occasional illustration, bringing to mind images of a short, stubby-legged, fat, and docile kind of beast, bred for food, eggs, leather, possibly other things that weren't coming to kind. "We bred long-tails too, but not very many." Why not? Tail meat was delicious.

"We don't have many beasts here," Lori said. "What have you been doing?"

"I've been trying to raise the chokers we have, your Bindership, if they managed to survive the snow." For a moment he looked worried, the face of a man concerned for his livelihood such, as it was. "And I've been helping at the tannery, getting the skins of what's caught. And I do my time on the cutting rota, of course."

Lori nodded, then turned to the one beside him. "And you?"

The woman with the long pink hair held in a braid running down her back swallowed and said, "I'm a weaver, y-your Bindership," she said, glancing sideways between the man next to her and Rian. "And I knit as well."

"Noted. And you want to marry?"

The two glanced at each other. "Yes, your Bindership," they both said eventually, though not at the same time.

"Is there anyone present who objects or has any reason to object?" Lori said in a loud, carrying voice. "Someone already married to one of them and was not consulted on this marriage, perhaps?" She looked around. "There seem to be no objections. Very well then. Your application is approved."

Lori reached for two of the small wood and stone tablets, one from each pile, and carefully bound the stone on top of both. Not too soft, the consistency of hard wax, and only on a thin layer… "You, sign your name here and here, and then you, sign your name here and here. Use this and don't press down too hard. Use your full name, this is a legal document." She handed them the stylus.

The two wrote their names where indicated, albeit a little clumsily in the beastherder's case. Still, it was legible. Lori put down both tablets in front of her, removing the binding. To her relief, the names were both legible. She nodded and consulted her tablet of notes, reading the theatrically worded thing Rian had given back to her. "Very well. Do you, Leiyanami, wish to marry this woman with you? To love her, to protect and succor her, to honor and adore her, to support her and her children with your love, your time and your efforts, until time and death parts you?"

For some reason, the man glanced towards Rian. "I do," he said.

Lori nodded, countersigning the man's signatures. She turned to the woman. "And do you, Astolp Weaver, wish to marry this man with you? To love him, to protect and succor him, to honor and adore him, to support him and his children with your love, your time and your efforts, until time and death parts you?"

The response was more immediate, the woman nodding decisively as she said, "I do."

Lori nodded, countersigned on the woman's signature, removed the bindings on the stone, then took the bone and, binding it soft, lightly rubbed it over the signatures. The pale white bone, soft as wax, scraped off and accumulated on the grooves left by the stylus, contrasting them against the dark stone. She set aside her copy and handed them theirs. "Your marriage has been recognized and recorded. Here is your copy of the record. Please find someone to apprentice yourselves to as soon as possible and check the list for the exact laws covering marriage obligations beyond those already discussed. If you find you cannot or do not wish to comply with any of them, inform Rian within the next week so that your marriage may be annulled. NEXT!"

As the pair hurriedly vacated Rian's bench and the next applicants moved to take their place, Lori hoped that this all finished before lunch so that she'd be able to expand her demesne in the afternoon. One set of applicants down, eleven more to go…

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Application Complications

Some applicants were rejected, which annoyed Lori, because it took more time to establish they were being coerced by their parents because one had gotten the other pregnant.

"Your application is denied," Lori said. "Come back when you actually want to do this and not just because your parents say you should. You—" this to the nervous-looking young woman, "—are required to apprentice yourself in preparation for the birth of your child. Next!"

Not everyone took her decisions well. However, Rian was there and by implication so was Riz, and Riz had friends that were willing to help her. In this instance, it was to keep back some angry parents.

"So he just gets her pregnant and that's it?-!" one such parent demanded angrily. "He has to do right by her!"

"If he wanted to do right by her, then he would have asked to marry her without any of you forcing him," Lori said irritably. She glanced at the young man in question. He looked lost and overwhelmed, meaning he was feeling very lost and overwhelmed if Lori could tell. "If they want to get married, they can re-apply provided they can prove no coercion on anyone's parts."

"He should at least have to help take care of the child!" another parent said.

"If he were inclined to do so, he would probably volunteer to do that anyway," Lori said. "If he wasn't, would you really want such a useless, bloodsucking slug married to your daughter? If you just want to satisfy your own anger, just drag him into a corner and beat him. As long as you don't kill him, it's fine. However, I will regard that as grounds for coercion should he be party to another application in future. And what are you two still doing sitting there? I said 'next'!"

Eventually the combative older people were made to sit down and the applicants moved on, though Lori noticed Rian seated them away from their still-irate parents.

Then there were the two applicants who were clearly too young. The two children looked about the brat's age, and clearly infatuated with each other, holding hands earnestly in a way that Lori would have thought overdone if they didn't seem absolutely genuine about it. Thankfully it didn't seem like the issue of pregnancy or anything of the sort. They had simply spotted the lack of any sort of listed age restriction in Lori's marriage laws—something she was now actually reconsidering— and had applied to Rian.

They actually did reasonably well in their interview, with the young boy proudly informing her he was a seel hunter, a farmer, a woodcutter and a sweeper. The girl was the same, but had exchanged woodcutter and sweeper for spinster and apprentice weaver and knitter.

That had thankfully given Lori an excuse. "I'm afraid that as you are still on your apprenticeship, I cannot yet grant your application," Lori said, and actually winced at their crestfallen looks. "However, I am willing to keep your application prepared and ready to be officially granted. You can sign it here and now, and in— that is, when you're both sixteen or one of you have officially finished your apprenticeship in your trade, whichever comes first, you can come back to me and I will officially declare you married. And if you change your mind before then, then that's fine."

The two children brightened at that. "Do we say the marriage oath too?" the girl asked excitedly.

"You can say it, but it doesn't mean you're married," Lori said. "If you want, we can make it a promise that you'll one day be married."

"Really, Wiz Lori?" the boy asked, equally excited.

"Yes, really."

Only one of them knew how to write, and not very well, so some time was taken up with the girl helping the boy write his name in awkward, jagged script that barely fit on the tablet, the girl standing behind the boy and holding the stylus with him as they both tried to remember how his name was spelled. Then Lori asked them if they 'someday wish to marry' and so one so forth, with both children answering earnestly, making them probably the third most excited applicants of that day when Lori told them that their promise to get married had been recorded and would be revisited in the future when it was due.

The two happily walked away hand in hand, their peers teasing and congratulating them equally, pronouncing them 'almost married'.

"If they don't grow out of it, they are going to be a very happy couple," Rian muttered.

Lori had to agree as she set the paired tablets aside to be stored for the future. If it was not simply childish infatuation that would fade away as they go older… well, it was an official, after all. "I wish them luck. Next!"

It was very fortunate that they had started almost immediately after breakfast, save for the brief time it took her to desiccate the latrines. Still, with only twelve sets of applicants, even with the people who had difficulty writing their names, they managed to finish before lunch. Thankfully, the parents who had been pressuring their children to marry kept their dissatisfaction to themselves. By the time Lori came back from putting her copies of the records aside—and wondering where she would be putting them and any like them in the future—the food was ready, and her usual table seated only those it usually did.

The dining hall had a celebratory air, which Lori supposed was only natural since the kitchen had made roasted meat and honey bread. The honey bread had a lightly green tinge to it, and was sticky to the touch, but absolutely delicious. She wished there was more funny, but she sternly reminded herself it was being saved as an emergency supply.

"Don't you know you're supposed to eat that last?" Rian said, sounding amused as she devoured the three sticks of honey bread that was her ration.

"I know I'm 'supposed' to," she said disdainfully, "I just don't care."

Rian nodded. "Fair enough," he said, holding his utensils in one hand and… Lori blinked and watched with some bemusement as he somehow used the utensils like tongs and picked up one of his own honey bread, biting into it. "No, no too sweet, it's going to stick on my tongue if I eat it all before my soup." He putdown the bread and drank from his cup, rinsing his mouth before swallowing.

Lori rolled her eyes at him as she picked up her own cup. "You could have just done that after you finished eating."

"Lori, the point of sweet stuff is to be eaten last so the sweetness lingers in your mouth afterwards. You can enjoy the lingering. If you eat it first, everything else you eat afterwards washes it out. Unless you prefer the lingering taste of the soup, in which case I withdraw what I just said."

Why would she want the aftertaste when she could have the taste? "Why would I want the aftertaste when I could have the taste?" she said as she started eating her soup, stirring in some of her small cuts of roasted meat.

"That makes sense, I suppose," Rian said, getting started on his own soup.

Next to him, Umu, Mikon and Riz were doing the same, though for some bizarre reason the northerner woman had taken one of her stick of honeybread and was using it to stir her soup, he green coating of honey melting away as the bread became soaked. Before it became soggy and limp, however, Riz drew it out and bit into the soup-soaked bread enthusiastically. Lori vaguely recalled her doing the same with her bread yesterday, but why with the honey bread.

"Did you just add honey to your soup?" Umu said, seemingly sharing Lori's disbelief.

"Putting honey in your soup is something you do in winter," Riz replied, looking past Rian at the weaver. "The honey gives you more energy to stay warm."

"I thought you said that's for children too young for mead?" Mikon said.

"So? No reason why they're the only ones who get to enjoy it? Besides, we don't have any mead. Not enough honey to spare to make it," Riz sighed.

"And it had better stay that way," Lori said, staring at Rian.

"It probably won't last," Rian said, "but right now everyone's morale is high enough that we shouldn't have anyone inclined to try stealing some of the grain to ferment into booze."

Lori nodded. "Good. Rian, come see me after lunch, I need you to set the water clocks."

Rian straightened, smiling. "Yes, your Bindership," he said. "I'll just have to average out the growth when the storm ends. That is, if you're going to continue with the variable?"

"Yes, though I will be increasing the intensity of the variable to see if it substantially affects the result."

"That's… not exactly correct experimental protocol."

"I'm aware, but as it is I don't have time to establish a consistent average. I need results."

"That's what they say, and then something horrible happens and someone ends up dead or disfigured or some sort of abomination from experimental and untested random Deadspeaking."

Lori rolled her eyes. "You've seen too many plays," she said, uncomfortably aware that, yes, 'I need results' was usually when the horrible things started happening. "No Deadspeaking is involved."

"No, just Whispering, which can make things explode." Rian sighed. "At least wait for the storm to finish before you start increasing the variable. Until I can measure exactly how much altering the variable increases the result, this won't result in any experimental data. The previous results were a good increase, so why not stick to it, at least for the duration? Instead of growth, try for consistency? Before the variable, the results could be relatively far from the calculated average in either direction, even if the average tended to keep growing. If this variable shows consistent results, that is already a marked improvement from how you were doing it before."

Lori considered that. Well, she supposed he had a point about altering the experimental variable again being useless if they couldn't immediately measure the changes that resulted from it. "Fine, fine," she said, waving her hand. "I suppose you have a point. Though I'm surprised. I thought you would want your precious numbers to get bigger."

"Consistent growth is guaranteed gain," Rian said. "No matter what, the numbers are going up!"

Ah. Of course. Somehow, it was still a number getting bigger.

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When Lori left her room for dinner, she was tired, though thankfully this time her head didn't throb. As per her discussion with Rian, she had claimed outward, and the concentration of wisps she had placed where the river entered her demesne had remained as it had the previous time she had done so. As for the lack of a headache, she hoped it was a sign she was getting better at expanding her demesne, developing a rhythm that let her work more efficiently. Even with the variable of strongly concentrating the wisps in a particular spot, the rest wasn't any different. She supposed it had only been a matter of time before it became sufficiently routine.

In fact, she even decided to bring down the chatrang board, which made Mikon happy at least.

"So…" Rian said in a low voice as the weaver put the pieces on the board and the other two got dinner, "while you were in your room, a matter came to my attention. You remember the two who were being pressured into getting married by their parents?"

"It hasn't been a day yet, I don't forget that fast," Lori said. "And why are you talking like that?"

"I don't want people to hear," he said. Lori looked significantly at Mikon. "She doesn't count."

"Mikon doesn't count as people?" Lori smirked.

"You know what I mean!"

Lori rolled her eyes. "What about them?" she said, lowering his voice slightly. She was not going to lean towards Rian like this was a 'conspiring in a pub' scene in a play.

"Salenhalt spoke to me earlier this afternoon—"

"Who?"

Rian rolled his eyes. "The boy we're discussing."

Well, he should have just said that. "You should have just said that."

Sigh. "Anyway, he spoke to me and asked if the two of them could still apply. They talked about it and they've decided they still want to get married, even with their parents pressuring them. Apparently being called a useless, bloodsucking slug by his own Dungeon Binder is the sort of thing that makes a man think." Rian hesitated. "They also asked if they could move back into the shelter after the storm has passed, so they don't have to live with either of their parents. Since we don't really have any official rules about that, I took the liberty of authorizing that particular request."

Lori's eyebrow rose at the requests. "And what is your assessment? Do you think they're being coerced still?"

Rian shook his head. "Despite your stance on people beating other people as long as it wasn't to death, that sort of thing leads to disciplinary problems. I asked some of the boys to stay with him to keep that from happening, and they've been mostly celebrating the fact their other friends got married. At worse, he's being coerced by exposure to what happy newly married people look like." Rian shrugged. "Maybe he just decided he wants that for himself."

"And the other applicant?"

"Arranging her apprenticeship with her mother," Rian said, "who at least agrees with you that Bliss should be trained to take care of a child before she actually has one."

"So she could still be coerced," Lori pointed out.

"As I understand it, the pressure was coming from her father. Her mother agreed by not opposing it, but doesn't exactly seem to be an aggressive proponent, merely an agreeable one. She actually seems to like the boy. She let the two of them talk, after all."

Lori frowned, then sighed. Well, a quick interview and countersigning wouldn't hurt. "Very well. But only this. Any other applicants are to wait until convenient for me in the spring, or we have another ten applications, whichever comes first. Tell them to come here after dinner."

"Ah, about that," Rian said. "I'd suggest a more private venue. If nothing else, if their parents see them together with you, they might get coercive again and go against the spirit of this decision. And I think it would be better for them. They're both shy and quiet people."

"The girl is with child," Lori pointed out.

Rian shrugged. "They were shy and quiet together. The tunnel's still open, so how about my house? I think I still have some wood for the fire…"

Lori considered it and nodded. "Your house will do. And don't bother. I'll provide the heat." There was a good chance the end of his chimney was under snow by now.

Rian sighed in relief. "Thanks. My chimney's probably buried in snow at this point. Okay, that's it. Enjoy your game."

Mikon, who had been waiting patiently as they talked, smiled brightly and kissed Rian on the cheek before turning to Lori and pushing the game board between the two of them. The weaver made the first move…

In hindsight, perhaps Lori had still been too tired after expanding her demesne to play such a mentally intensive game. Mikon actually managed to beat her.

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Still, she didn't consider herself too tired to conduct the marriage application interview again, though she did splash cold water on her face to chase off what little drowsiness was there. In Rian's room, sitting on his only chair while the two applicants sat on his bed, Lori spoke to them again as Rian stood behind them. She was forced to conclude that Rian had been right. They were shy, quiet people, and absent the crowds of the dining hall and their parents no doubt glaring a hole into the back of their heads, they were much more relaxed and willing to answer her questions with some degree of confidence.

They also held hands, which they had been too nervous to do earlier. Lori did not consider that conclusive to the sincerity of their application, but it was a point nonetheless.

Eventually she came to a conclusion, and the application was accepted. When they indicated of their acceptance to the conditions for marriage, what other people had erroneously begun referring to as the 'marriage oath', for some reason Lori was reminded of the two children earlier that day who had promised themselves to each other.

Though that could just have been the tiredness. Mikon did beat her, after all.

Then Lori went back to her room to sleep, waiting for tomorrow to come.

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Smarter, Not Harder

The storm continued into the next day. Lori could feel her demesne getting buried in more and more water, solidified as it was. She had thought she could need to be the one to clear the entryway of snow so that they'd continue to get air into the Dungeon, and was pleasantly surprised that wasn't the case. With literally nothing else for them to do, Rian had organized people into a clearing detail, keeping the entryway open with ladders, newly made snow shovels that bore some resemblance to her stone shaping tool—which she managed to get back—and lots of people.

“We’ve got this under control,” Rian said to her. “Plenty of people willing to work, we’ve finally got the tools, and we don’t even need to worry about the reservoir overfilling, since right after this I think most of us are going to the baths to warm up. Go stay inside where it’s warm and relax. Or maybe do what you were planning to do this afternoon.”

All Lori had to do was to create a source of warmth in the entryway the morning after all the marriages so that no one would be tempted to start a fire, something easily done by putting adding firewisps to the lightwisps on the entryway ceiling. She set it to replicate sunlight, the unseen light more efficiently carrying the warmth. Beyond desiccating the latrines again after breakfast, her mornings were mostly free, with little in the way of further work for her to do.

She spent the morning rethinking how she was expanding her demesne.

Normally, she would have just gone straight to her room and begun expanding her demesne as she had been doing before, while continuing her experiments on the effects of the variables she had isolated. With the coming of the snow, however, and with literally everyone in her demesne who wasn’t doing some work—which was a lot of them—just sitting around playing, talking, singing, relaxing or sleeping, she couldn’t help but be influenced. Because she was not going to work her hardest when everyone else in her demesne decided they were on a rest break! That was just backwards! If she was working, everyone else should be working as well! And if she wasn’t working, they should still be working!

She wanted to be just as lazy and unproductive! After all, there really wasn’t much work to do and she had already done them. The farm was well within the parameters of a good growing environment, there was water if they needed to be watered and the drainage ensured the roots didn’t get sodden and rotted. Rian had keeping the entryway clear well in hand, and there was really nothing left for her to do inside the dungeon. Even the cold rooms didn’t need more solidified air.

But her demesne had to expand, and she was the only one who could do it. So she told Rian she’d be in her room and didn’t need the clocks set, went up, closed the door but didn’t seal it so he could come up and get her, and readied her bedroll in her little corner. It was as she was sitting down and getting ready to expand while thinking mournfully about how no one else needed to work as hard as this when the thought came to her.

Why did she need to hurry?

The question made her stop and think. During the past two weeks since she'd started expanding her demesne, she had been doing so with a certain haste, trying to get as much growth as possible as quickly as possible. This was mostly because her attention was a limited resource, and magic needed to be directed to circulate and imbue. If she stopped paying attention, the flow of magic would stop. And if she needed to pay attention anyway, then she might as well cause the magic to flow as quickly as possible. The problem was she needed to pay attention to the entire border of her demesne, a massive sphere four taums wide, since that was what she needed to imbue to expand.

Well, four taums and about twenty-two paces more now, she wasn't sure, she left obsessing over the exact numbers to Rian.

Most of her difficulty, and subsequently the cause of her headaches and tiredness, had been in adapting to the change in methodology needed when it came to where the magic needed to be directed. She had been taught to move magic in terms of flows, moving it from where it was gathered in her lungs and through the parts of her body filled with the relevant wisps that aligned it, before it progressed out to where the aligned magic could be channeled to the wisps she was going to claim and bind, usually through the wire on her staff.

She did not disperse magic to every square yustri of her skin at once, in equal measure, and she did not use all that skin to claim and bind simultaneously. Since that was almost exactly what she needed to do to expand her, it was understandably causing her difficulties. It was an entirely different concept of magic direction, since there was no one point to send all the magic. All points possible had to be imbued equally.

Now however, with the relaxed, lazy atmosphere of the demesne filling her with an envy and desire to be lazy as well, her mind stepped back to examine what she had been doing. Yes, obviously she had to grow her demesne as quickly as possible, but she didn’t need to hurry the process, did she? The more of her magic she aligned and imbued to the wisps at her border, the more she could claim beyond it, and the more time she had to expand before the Iridescence consumed all the imbuement in the wisps in question. That part undoubtedly had to be done as quickly as possible. But the rest…

Theoretically, magic moved at the speed of thought… which was part of what made Mentalists so dangerous, because they could make their speed of thought, already so fast it couldn't reasonably be measured, even faster. In practice however, this speed didn't matter if the amount of magic being transferred was limited to small amounts, which was primarily restricted by how much magic a wizard could draw in when they breathed. Deeper breaths drew in more magic, but also had to be done slower, lest one start panting and hyperventilating.

Taking in a bead could mitigate this, but not completely, since it simply altered the problem into how to efficiently utilize all the power the bead provided, since beads had to be swallowed to extract their magic for use. While you could theoretically retrieve the bead… no. Just… no. Besides, such beads are no longer considered legal tender since being partially used reduced their size from what it was supposed to be, as well scoured off the markings on it, so the only other use for them was to put them in a bound tool or swallowing them again…

No. Just… no.

One learned to either take controlled breaths while channeling magic at a very slow and even rate, or drew in several rapid breaths over a period before imbuing in a single, massive burst. The latter technique resulted in a net loss from inefficiency, as an amount of magic also exited with one's breath unless one was actively channeling, ultimately resulting in more effort for less gain, or at least that's how Lori's teachers had taught.

Her own research, and some of her favorite novels, had taught her that such bursts were useful if one needed a large imbuement of magic quickly, such as if one got caught in a violent altercation and needed a sudden work of magic to dramatically turn the tide in your favor. Perhaps this was something officially taught to wizards who became part of the militia. Regardless, it wasn't what Lori had learned, though she knew of it.

It was also considered wasteful, since magic, once imbued into wisps (or vertices, or thoughts, or life), could not be retrieved. Better not quite enough than too much, they had been taught, because the former could be corrected, the latter could not. While it didn't really affect the end result, since a binding (or a vista, or a formation, or a meaning) could be altered and utilized for something else, or simply dissolved even when it still retained imbuement, such over-imbuement was considered sloppy work unless you were binding (or defining, or arranging, or taming) something that was meant to last for a long time and therefore be constantly imbued.

With her core, however, she had no such restriction. And while the steps leading to expansion needed her attention, the consequences of her attention lapsing, now that she considered it, weren’t actually serious. The flow of magic would stop, but most of what she had prepared would still be in place. The wisps would remain claimed, bound and imbued, but with no binding in place to consume magic, and with the wisps still being withing her demesne, imbuement loss from dissipation would be slow and almost negligible provided she didn’t decide to go off to have a lunch and a nap. Loss would be even further reduced if the wisps were organized into a deactivated binding, the imposed order rendering loss from dissipation almost negligible.

But… she hadn’t done any of that. She simply had taken the procedure she had used to create her core and scaled it upwards while directing it outward in all directions. And it had worked… but that had been all she had done to change it.

Part of the reason why she’d been wasting so much time and effort with quickly imbuing was because, now that she thought about it, she had never properly anchored the airwisps and waterwisps so that they wouldn’t be blown away by the weather, holding on to them by active concentration as she had done when she had originally formed her core. This had resulted in more of her attention being taken up with holding the wisps in place while imbuing them. As they werebeing imbued, she had felt the effort was necessary, but now…

As Lori lay there, she realized she had made the most stupid beginner mistake possible when it came to an extended undertaking: she had worked harder instead of smarter. She had taken what she had known and had simply done more of it, expending greater effort in expectation of greater results. She had used a massive, inefficient burst when she should have acted in a slow, steady and methodical fashion. Lori had, because of her own efforts, been utterly mentally spent once she had expanded her entire demesne in one large burst, pushing back the awareness of her wisps soon afterwards as she lay back and let exhaustion take her.

How much imbuement had been left in the wisps she had used that had simply dissipated natural overnight since they hadn’t been formed into an organized binding? How much of her efforts had she simply wasted?

Lori felt a self-directed rage rising as she realized how much less work she could have been putting into expanding at the rate she had been… and how much more growth she could have had for the same effort. Even something as simple as binding the wisps she had used to expand such that their imbuement wouldn’t deteriorate completely overnight would have let her realize she’d been doing something wrong, would have given her wisps that were already heavily imbued. She could have skipped the intermediate step of directing magic towards them before she could expand. She could have imbued and expanded one day, then immediately expanded again the following day after a night’s rest with the remaining imbuement before sitting down and channeling magic to the edge again for another attempt! She could have been twice as efficient!

She spent that morning carefully creating a massive binding over the skyward half of her demesne. The binding was not meant to do anything but be a means of correcting her mistake of inefficiency when imbued, reducing imbuement dissipation so that any remaining could be utilized the next day.  While she had technically already done this before, had done this every time she had expanded her demesne by having all of her wisps reach beyond her demesne’s border, that had been freeform control, actively controlling the wisps with her will. It had been the same way she made stone flow to move it around or made water move uphill when she needed to carry it up from the river, requiring active attention, thought and control on her part.

This sort of binding, holding wisps in place and having them do a single, specific thing was more akin to filling a water clock. It would do what it was supposed to as long as it had imbuement, and since what it was supposed to do was nothing but keep its shape and therefore not lose any imbuement…

It was almost annoyingly easy. She picked a spot to start at—where the river entered her demesne, and she had experimented on whether increasing the concentration of wisps affected expansion, and did those results actually mean what she thought they did now?—and simply bound the wisps there, from the border of the demesne to perhaps a pace inwards. She couldn’t be sure about the exact volume without being there. Then she had simply… continued. Her attention had moved turnwise along her border, continually extending that one binding, until her attention was right back where she had started. It had taken… how long?

Lori opened her eyes and grabbed one of the water clocks, filling it with water from her bathroom. Putting it back on its shelf with the catch bucket underneath it, she let it flow, then closed her eyes and repeated her previous exercise. The area she was binding was about… well, it was smaller than the width of the river, and the river wasn’t any narrower here than in front of her dungeon… call the width of what she was binding perhaps twenty paces wide? She started at the same place, and then proceeded turnwise as she had before, binding the wisps directly above her previous binding, imbuing with just enough magic to keep the binding from collapsing.

When she completed the second revolution along her demesne’s border, the contents of the water clock had only dropped a miniscule amount. Less than three minutes had passed, probably. The water clock didn’t have markings that fine, so she had to estimate, and refraction might have made her estimate incorrect.

Lori stared as the waterclock again, then closed her eyes for a third time, leaned back, and continued forming a binding that would encompass the border of the entire skyward half of her demesne. When she had opened her eyes again, the water clocks was just dripping itself empty, the last of the drops falling into the catch bucket below. Possibly a little over an hour to finish the whole procedure.

It only occurred to her afterwards that besides protecting her demesne from dragons, this was probably the largest, most Dungeon Binder-worthy accomplishment she had ever done. Nearly everything else she had built so far, she could have done with sufficient beads. But this? Almost literally claiming the sky above? It was truly something a Dungeon Binder could have done. For a single person to equal it would have taken a truly absurd number of beads just to provide the magic needed to keep the whole binding sufficiently imbued to prevent it from collapsing naturally, never mind having to actually form the binding in question.

Repeating the exercise underground didn’t take much longer. If anything, it actually went faster, because earthwisps weren’t inclined to move, and what little water there remained relatively still. At the end of a little under two hours, probably, she had managed to place a binding that encompassed the entire border of her demesne, from sky to depths.

Lori lay back against her bedroll, satisfied. That had gone much faster than she had thought. She supposed it had been concentrating her attention at a relatively single spot instead of trying to reach all points of her demesne’s border at once. The massive binding was imbued but inactive, and would last long enough for her to take a short rest so she could relax her mind and not get a headache. Then she would just have to sit down and put herself through the headache-inducing experience of imbuing every spot on the border or her demesne simultaneously and…

…and…

…

In her mind’s eye, Lori stared at the massive, spherical binding she had created. Slowly, with the air of someone who’d realized something that should have been extremely obvious, she picked the same spot as before, where the river entered her demesne, and began imbuing the wisps there with magic from her core.

Through the binding, the magic spread out to every wisp upon the borders of her demesne at once.

…

Like Skykeep Demesne tearing itself out of the ground in story and legend, the hateful, rage-filled scream of utterly furious, incandescently burning frustration ripped itself out of her chest and kept on rising.