Weekly Digest 62 - (#197 - #199) (Patreon)

Planning For Recovery

“So…” Rian said casually at lunch as they started to eat, “was that scream we all heard coming from your room something that I should worry about, or…?”

Lori glowered at him as she put down the last of her stones into the bowls of the sunk board and finished her turn. She'd decided to bring it down today, something that Mikon seemed happy about. For herself, after what had happened this morning, she needed the satisfaction of an easy victory against the weaver. "Everything is fine. There is nothing to be concerned about."

"Ah. So you didn't break your leg or something?"

"Rian, I walked down here, how could I do that on a broken leg?"

"I don't pretend to know what a Dungeon Binder could be fully capable of," Rian said. "Most of what I know that didn't come from you comes from stories, which I have been told are not how Dungeons work. Loudly. Repeatedly. Several times."

Lori gave him a flat looked. "I had a realization. It was an irritating realization."

"Ah. Thatkind of scream." Rian nodded as if he actually understood. "Well, it could be worse. Think of what it would be like if you hadn't made the irritating realization."

"Don't give me trite and hollow platitudes, Rian."

"Yes, your Bindership," he chirped. "Anything you want to tell me so I can provide you with accurate and specific platitudes instead?" Next to him, Riz covered her mouth and started coughing. Ugh, be careful woman! That was how diseases got spread!

Lori glared at him. "No," she said.

"Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me," he said, as annoyingly cheerful as ever. "Now, on to other business: I'd like to discuss our recovery plan for after the storm blows over."

Ah. Yes, that was probably something they had to plan for properly, wasn't it? "What do you have in mind?"

"We'll probably need more of your tunnels," Rian said. "Because while we have more tools now, the bulk of our tools are outside in the toolshed. In future, they'll probably have to be moved closer to the dungeon to prevent exactly this sort from happening, but that's for future Rian and future Lori to talk about. For now, our first step after the storm breaks is to get there so we have more tools to clear with. All of our shovels, some of our buckets, and all of our wheeled carts are there."

Lori frowned. "Why aren't those things stored in the dungeon?"

"Shovels and carts mostly get used to latrine clearing."

Ah. No wonder. "Ah. No wonder. Yes, getting to those tools is a priority."

"After that, we clear the houses," Rian said. "Get the snow off their roofs and chimneys, and then clear out the latrines so they can be used. Even with what you're doing, the latrines are slowly getting full." He looked down at his food. "Though we can talk more about that after we finish eating."

Lori looked down at her meaty soup as well. "Agreed."

On either side of Rian, Riz, Umu and Mikon all sighed in relief.

"If this is the sort of weather we can expect for winter here, we might need to maintain the tunnels, even after the snow ends and people go back to living in their homes," Rian continued. "At the very least, keeping the tunnels will give us a measure of safety and mobility, especially if another unexpected storm hits."

"As long as no one tries to hit the walls with hammers, the ice should hold as long as it's cold enough for ice," Lori said.

Riz glanced at Rian and began to nudge him with her elbow.

"Yes, Riz? Do you have something to add?" Rian said.

"Packed snow would support the tunnels almost as well and would hold in heat better than ice, meaning the tunnels would be warmer," Riz told him. "The ice is probably packed enough by now that the tunnels wouldn't collapse if the ice is removed."

"Huh. That sounds useful…" Rian turned to Lori. "If we're going to be having people using the tunnels to get around, it would be nice if they were warmer. " He frowned. "And you don't really need to get rid of the ice. Just line the inside of the tunnels with snow as best as we can for insulation. If it starts melting, well, we're unlikely to run out of snow any time soon."

Lori waved dismissively. "I'll leave that to you."

"Uh, there's also a matter only you can take care of," Rian said. "The chimneys. Clearly no one expected the snow around here to be this deep. As soon as it's viable, the chimneys will have to be raised up higher so that they're less likely to be buried in snow."

Lori frowned, but reluctantly nodded in agreement. "And some sort of ventilation tube, I suppose," she said reluctantly. "So that no one suffocates if the snow overtops the roof before they can get out."

"We should probably rebuild the roofs come spring so that snow slides off better," Rian added. "Make them steeper, like the roofs of the houses on the rise. It will use up more wood, but that way they're less likely to be buried. And speaking of wood, we should get the rest of the wood out of the curing sheds and bring them to the Dungeon. Just in case."

"I suppose we'll have to subsist on the food in the cold rooms from now on," Lori said. "Hunting is no longer likely to be as viable."

"Given how deep the snow is outside, it's probably just a form of suicide at this point," Rian agreed. "I'll do an inventory of the cold rooms and see how much food we have. Between all the meat in there, the tubers we're growing, and the grain not being saved for planting, we should be good to last."

"Do that," she said. "If people have been taking from the cold rooms, I'd rather know sooner rather than later. Eat."

"Eat?" Rian said.

Lori pointed at his bowl, untouched since he'd started speaking, in stark contrast to her now-empty bowl. "Eat."

"Oh! Right, right… " He went back to eating his lunch. After a couple of spoonfuls, he said, "We should probably send someone to check on River's Fork after the storm, see how they're doing?"

"Eat," Lori said sternly.

Rian went back to eating.

He was probably right. There was always a chance that this sudden storm had resulted in such difficulty and hardship that the demesne had collapsed such that Shanalorre had died. Lori doubted it, though. Their protective tree dome was far better suited to keeping snow off, and they had enough supplies. Still, it was best to check. Who knows, maybe they were all dead and Lori could just step in and claim their demesne's core like she had wanted.

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After lunch, once the bowls and utensils had been put away, Lori and Rian continued their discussion since they no longer had food to be turned off from.

"Dealing with latrine waste will be more problematic now," Rian said. "We had that pit dug up to dump all the waste in, but that's probably full and buried under snow by now. Heating and desiccating it will help, but eventually we're still going to need to deal with the solid waste that's left."

"Rian, just skip the exposition," Lori said irritably. "We both know what the problem is, stop wasting my time and get to the solution you want to propose."

"You sound even more like my sister than usual," Rian said, and what did thatmean? "But fine, fine. I suggest we turn the waste into charcoal, or close enough."

Lori stared at him. "Perhaps a little exposition," she allowed.

"I talked to Riz, Riz's friends, the smiths, the farmers and the charcoal burners," Rian said. "There are only a limited number of ways we can deal with our latrine problem since we don't really have any place to dump it, what with the pit we were using covered in snow and the ground frozen solid so we can't really dig another one with you using magic, which would ruin the soil. So our choices are limited."

He held up one finger. "We can just desiccate it as you've been doing and take it down to the Dungeon farm for fertilizer and for mixing new soil in the tuber planters. We can just throw it out in the snow, but that's going to thaw in the spring, so we're basically just delaying the problem in a very disgusting way. Or we can use it as fuel."

"Fuel," Lori said skeptically.

Rian nodded. "In the north, its prepared like charcoal, put into a kiln and heated with sawdust to create fuel. Since we already put sawdust in the latrines to sop up the waste, after you desiccate it all we have to do is put it into a kiln to cook it."

"A… kiln," Lori said slowly. "You realize you're saying we need to spend fuel to produce fuel."

"No, I'm saying we spend fuel to get rid of waste. The fact we get rid of it by turning it into fuel is simply a bonus. We can try the others as well, but eventually the farm is going to reach the point where we don't really need all that fertilizer because it would unbalance the mix of the soil or something, and the same for the tuber planters. "

Lori gave him a flat look. "You want me to build a kiln for the waste, don't you?"

Rian shrugged. "It's either that, or we build some sort of elaborate furnace were we use the fuel we have not to cook the waste into fuel, while also providing warmth to several houses." He frowned. "Or maybe you can just make a desiccating box, like the snow melt box. Just make something that will desiccate anything we put inside it, and I'll handle organizing people to get the waste there so you don't have to do it manually. Once it gets full of completely dried waste, we can decide on the next step. We can actually do it all in stages, using it for fertilizer, and then when that's no longer viable, turning it into fuel. I'm told that some amount of equipment will be needed to start making the waste into fuel, and… well, it's probably not something we want being done in the second level, since that's were people will sleep in an emergency. Maybe we can do it in the wood curing sheds after we move all the wood into the Dungeon?"

"Put together a plan and get back to me," Lori told him. She sighed. "I will consider building a dedicated desiccator for the waste." She'll probably have to soon. Even with her desiccating the waste, she could see the amount in the latrines building up.

"Yes, your Bindership," Rian said. "I'll let you get back to your afternoon plans then… Ugh."

Lori sighed again. "What now?"

"It just occurred to me. How are we going to measure the growth after this? The river's probably frozen, so we can't take any of the boats upriver, and with the snow so thick, the markers I used are probably buried so deep I won't find them until the spring thaw."

Ah. That would be something of a problem, wouldn't it? Just because she didn't obsess about the numbers and rates didn't mean she didn't need to know how much her demesne was growing with her expansion attempts. "I trust your ingenuity to devise a means of travel for us," she said.

It was Rian's turn to sigh. "Yes, your Bindership. I'll get to it after I put together a plan for dealing with our increasing amounts of human waste."

She nodded, picking up her sunk board, all the stones in the bowls. "Good. We'll talk again at dinner. I have work to do. No need to set the clocks."

"Well, good luck."

Lori headed upstairs, carrying her game board. After this morning's preparation and frustration, she still had a demesne she needed to expand. Hopefully, her altered methods would work. Because if she didn't…

Well, she could easily imagine the next scream that would rip itself from her lungs if that were the case.

Within her awareness, the spherical binding surrounding her demesne, stood, heavily imbued and waiting to be used…

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Unexpected Unexpected

Lori was not one of those foolish people who refused to admit she was wrong. She was very willing to admit she was wrong, once presented with sufficient empirical evidence. She wouldn't admit it out loud, because that would be pointless and silly and unnecessary, but she would admit it to herself, and that was really the only person such an admission mattered.

It was still incredibly irritating, those wasted days, but she had a superior method now. At least, it should be superior. With all the wisps at her demesnes border now all part of being a prepared binding instead of simply being bound and willed, she'd been able to heavily align and imbue it. The alignment phase was still important, since she was going to technically be claiming something outside of her 'body'.

And if the idea didn't work, she had a binding so wide and heavily imbued that she might actually be able to substantially divert the weather. That would actually be fun to try, she'd never done it before. Weather tended to be a little higher than what she could affect with the size of her demesne.

Still, Lori prepared her corner nook, lined it with her bedroll and put her pillow behind her head. She made herself comfortable, leaning back and clasping her hands together. Then she closed her eyes and focused on her awareness of her wisps.

She could feel it, the massive binding across her demesne's entire border, heavily imbued from this morning. Carefully, she made sure the bindings weren't anchored to anything material. She did not want the stone at her borders to suddenly convulse outwards. For one thing, that would needlessly consume a lot of imbuement. And it would probably also be very messy.

Well, there was no use delaying. Lori reached out and took control of the binding and all the wisps that were part of it. A part of her winced as she did so. The binding was a disorganized mess, wisps of all kind bound together without any sort of organization, purpose or division, all of them merely claimed and bound as they had passed. Lightwisps, darkwisps, a preponderance of waterwisps and earthwisps, lightningwisps, airwisps. There were probably even firewisps there she couldn't perceive because they were too cold.

She took a deep breath and braced herself, despite the effort being completely of the will. Then she reached outside of her demesne and claimed. Doing so in all directions at once hadn't become any easier, but she managed to make her wisps surge out, into cold, snow covered lands beyond. Beneath the snow, in the ground away from the water, in the little pockets of air in the snow, delicate crystals of Iridescence grew, carefully growing with the chains of ice. They trapped her wisps, and drew out the imbuement from them, growing and crystallizing. She could perceive some delicate interplay as the Iridescence grew, bonding to each other, displacing the small flakes of snow and ice…

Lori could feel the Iridescence beginning to draw more and more imbuement, trapping more and more wisps… but something was different. She could feel it distinctly. Carefully, the Dungeon Binder released her direct control of the binding, letting it revert to an inactive state as she took a moment so sit back and make sense of what she was perceiving.

It took several moments to be sure of what she was feeling, moments where she had to open her eyes half way to metaphorically rub her eyes to clear them and look again. However, what she was perceiving didn't change.

The Iridescence was trapping wisps and drawing imbuement at a greatly reduced rate. It was, in fact, the same rate of decay her bindings experienced normally when she created them outside of her demesne. It was a feeling she wasn't going to ever forget. It was also far less than the seemingly voracious rate of consumption she had perceived over the past two weeks when she had been expanding her demesne. What?

She looked closer, and realized that wasn't exactly true. There was almost no such consumption above the ground, out in the open sky… why made sense. No Iridescence there. The storm was too cold and blowing too energetically to for there to probably be too much in the way of small Iridescence crystals on the wind. And as she had perceived, there were some Iridescence in the snow, nestled in the gaps of the frozen water. And underground…

Lori observed her earthwisps on the underground part of her demesne. There, at least, was imbuement was being drawn and consumed. But while it was at a greater rate than the above-ground decay, it wasn't exactly the voracious consumption she'd become used to when she'd expanded…

Slowly, carefully, Lori made a hole in her spherical binding at the river's entry point that she was beginning to think of as her reference. She aligned and channeled magic, then made it flow to that spot, binding wisps and heavily imbuing them. Through the hole in her demesne-sized binding, she reached outside of her demesne as she had done before, and used the wisps she had just bound and imbued to claim wisps outside of her demesne…

Nothing. Well, no difference from how her binding was currently being consumed. What…?

Oh, right. She was claiming outwards on the river. The ice and water wouldn't have any Iridescence, after all.

Lori opened another hole, this time underground amidst solid stone and trapped water, and repeated what she had done—

Ah, therewas the voraciousness with which she had become familiar! Her wisps becoming trapped, the consumption slowly escalating, as if the more imbuement the Iridescence devoured, the more they could devour. Lori observed the process with interested detachment, imbuing more and more magic to the wisps she had claimed as they became trapped but still hers. She watched and waited, like a child throwing things into the fire to watch them burn in the flames. Without the distraction and strain of trying to reach out and claim in all directions at once, Lori calmly watched as more and more of the wisps she had reached out beyond the borders of her demesne with were entrapped.

As the last of the wisps she had reached out with were about to be consumed, Lori calmly bound the Iridescence to her will. Her wisps became part of the Iridescence, and the Iridescence became part of her wisps, their increasingly familiar sensation seeming to melt away.

Lori opened her eyes and sat up straight, frowning down at her floor. Had it been open so she could see into the room where her core was, would she have seen its surface ripple? Probably. The increase to her demesne's size was likely infinitesimal, though. It had required claiming outwards from every part of the border of her demesne to expand forty-four and a half yustri. One probably needed to be a Horotract with a parvusight to be able to tell how much her demesne had expanded from that little exercise.

She sat back again and considered what she had discovered. So, in addition to greatly reducing imbuement loss, forming her wisps into an active binding also reduced the rate that the colors devoured imbuement… which made sense. She'd made bindings outside of her demesne before, after all. It's just she hadn't realized the full repercussions of the effect on the steps needed to expand her demesne.

Did this affect expansion? Lori closed her eyes and regarded the binding around her demesne, which now had two holes in it. It was still heavily imbued, even as the underground portion was having that imbuement drawn on by Iridescence. She tried to judge how long it would take for the binding to collapse from the draw rate. So far, it looked like it would last all through the afternoon and a short ways into the evening, but that didn't account for the slow increase in the rate at of consumption…

So she had plenty of time… if this method worked. She still hadn't successfully expanded with it, after all.

Lori nodded to herself. All right, test that first, worry about the repercussions later. The repercussions would only be worth worrying about if this actually worked. Taking a several deep, even breaths to steady herself out of habit, Lori reached out and took direct control of the binding around her demesne once more, then began the process of binding the iridescence to her will—

It started going wrong immediately.

As soon as she reached through her binding and bound the Iridescence, she felt her binding, her entire sky-wide binding, suddenly heave violently as the wisps trapped in colors became part of each other… and then began dragging the entire binding with it, drawing the whole binding towards the first point that she had claimed the Iridescence in like water into a drain.

The shock caused her simultaneous other attempts to collapse, which in hindsight was probably for the best as she instinctively tried to reassert control of the binding. It was nothing like trying to fight someone who was trying to claim wisps already under her control. Her claim was still in place, it was just that the entire binding was moving anyway!

Frantically, Lori reached out and severed the wisps fused with the Iridescence from the rest of the binding, forcibly dissipating the wisps closest to the voracious amalgamation as she cried out in a frantic panic. She nearly collapsed in relief as this worked, the binding suddenly falling still again as the amalgamation was severed from it, the latter vanishing from her awareness as soon as it was no longer part of the binding.

Lori stared at the stone ceiling above her, panting as if she had actually physically exerted herself. That… that had never happened before. Nothinglike it had ever happened before! That was… that was…! Well, she would have said it was impossible, but it had clearly just happened and—

There was a frantic knocking on her door. "Lori!" Rian voice cried though the wood. "Are you all right?-! Are you hurt?-! Lori! Say something!"

Lori blinked in surprised, sitting up. "Rian?" she said. What…? Oh. She had cried out involuntarily, and someone must have heard her. "I'm fine! Just… I'm fine."

The knocking had ceased as soon as she'd spoken, for which she was glad. It had been quite strident. "Can I come in?" her lord called through the door?

Lori hesitated, then nodded. Then realized he couldn't see the nod. "Fine, come in," she said.

The door opened, and while she'd been expecting Rian, she was surprised to see other people crowding around him in her hallway. Thankfully, none of them tried to come inside as Rian stepped in and closed the door behind him. "Are you all right?" he said immediately, as if she hadn't already answered his question.

"I already told you, I'm fine," she said, irritation coming forward.

"People who scream like that are seldom fine," Rian retorted. He turned and open the door, stick his head outside. “She’s all right! Nothing to worry about, she’s not dying! Everyone relax, I’ll take care of whatever it is!” Lori glared at the back of Rian’s head as he made people stop crowding outside in her hallway. Eventually, he pulled his head back in, closing the door behind him once again. "What happened, then? You went 'Ta-wa-wa-wa-wa' so loudly I heard you from the bottom of the stairs." He looked around. "Nothing seems damaged, so… did something happen while you were trying to expand the demesne?"

"I…" Ugh, why did he have to be so perceptive? She let out an annoyed huff. "Something unexpected happened," she finally admitted.

Rian raised an eyebrow. "Good unexpected or bad unexpected?"

"Unexpected unexpected," she flatly. "Something completely outside of my experience or education."

Rian frowned, looking around again as if he expected to see something. "Is it dangerous?" he asked. "Do we need to get everyone inside and seal up the dungeon? Or get everyone out of the dungeon?"

Lori shook her head. "No, no, nothing like that. The unexpected occurrence occurred just outside the demesne. I managed to stop it before… well, I managed to stop it."

"You paused. I heard that pause. That sounds like a very disturbing pause I should be very concerned about."

She glared at him, but her heart wasn't in it.

For some reason, Rian walked towards her and knelt down meeting her eyes. "Lori…" he said. "If there's been some sort of unexpected magical accident or something, maybe you should tell me what it was? Because this is sounding disturbingly like the part in a story where one character doesn't tell the other characters what they know, and vital information that should have been passed isn't, and the whole story ends tragically with everyone dead."

Lori snorted. "You read far too many stories," she said.

"Play, actually. It's a surprisingly common bit of plot-mandated stupidity in tragedies." Rian shrugged, spreading his hands. "Come on Lori, tell me. The worst that could happen is I don't understand a thing because I'm not a wizard. Who knows, maybe if you explain it, hearing what you're saying out loud will lead to some sudden epiphany enlightening you to what happened."

That… wassomething that happened in stories, wasn't it? "You realize that's just a plot contrivance to exposit to the audience so they can be fed all the relevant information leading to the sudden twist, don't you?" she said flatly.

Another shrug. "It might work," Rian said. "I know it's sometimes happened to me."

Lori rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine," she said. She supposed she did need to figure out what had happened. Absently, she checked the large binding around her demesne. It was still intact and imbued, although it had a third hole in it now at ground level, and the binding had grown thin at the opposite end of the demesne from whatever that amalgamation had done. "Sit, I'll only explain this once." Rian sat at the foot of her bed, looking expectant as she was forced to organize her thoughts. How to relate what had happened… "To begin with, as I was making preparations for expanding the demesne this morning, I came to a realization… "

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A Success By Any Standard

"We'll have to go to the spot at the edge of the demesne where it happened," Rian said thoughtfully after she finished relating matters to him. "If nothing else, if this somehow deformed the terrain, it might be a good idea to see how."

"Unlikely," Lori said. "The wisps weren't anchored to anything except to hold them in place, otherwise I would be distending the ground at the borders of the demesne at every expansion."

"I should probably go check, just in case," Rian insisted. "Dismissing something and not going to check it out is also a form of plot-contrivance that leads to horrible consequences."

Lori rolled her eyes. All right, even if she hated the obvious utter stupidity of that particular plot contrivance herself… Ugh. "Fine. We'll go check it out as soon as it's feasible."

"Absolutely not!" Rian said. "'We' are not going anywhere! I'm checking it out, you stay here in case it's something horrible and deadly!"

"Rian, it wasn't Deadspeaking, you're unlikely to find some twisted abomination that cannot survive without magic."

"And that's exactly the sort of dismissive attitude that gets the annoying scholar or lord or so-called expert killed early in the story as comeuppance for their arrogance," he pointed out. "No, no, we don't send the vitally irreplaceable person into this strange, potentially dangerous situation. You've injured yourself and gotten assaulted going to latrine, let's not add a third thing. I'll go, you can lead me from here."

"And how am I supposed to lead you from here?" Lori snapped irritably. While he made several good points, especially about her safety… Ugh. She hated it when Rian was right.

"You can track me with my glow rock, so when I'm close, just put some kind of glowing signal over where I'm supposed to go," Rian said. "It'll be another thing we'll have to remember to do once the storm is over. I'll have to remember to write it down. Now, about your new expansion technique…"

"It's not a new technique. Using it resulted in an unforeseen effect. I have no idea what the result was, but it clearly wasn't expansion," Lori said.

"Not necessarily," Rian said. "You said yourself that having the big binding made putting magic into everything easier, and it was faster and less tiring than what you had to do before. If nothing else, integrating it into at least the preparatory step of your expansion procedure will save you on time, effort and literal headaches."

Obviously. "Obviously," Lori said. "That much is blatantly obvious. I was already planning to do that." Really, her biggest regret was the utter waste of imbuement that would result from it. If she should lose her control of the wisps after expansion as she had done previously, all that imbuement would once more go to waste. "I'll have to experiment on how quickly I can bind everything again after the expansion stage to keep the imbuement from dissipating…" If she worked quickly and systematically—and if her head didn't hurt too much when she did it—she should be able to claim a significant portion of the wisps into a binding again before the imbuement substantially dissipated.

"Ifthere's any imbuement to dissipate," Rian pointed out.

Lori paused, frowning. Ugh! "You're right," she hissed in frustration. "It was right in front of my face! I even did a standard expansion before the phenomenon and saw it happen." There had been no leftover imbued wisps when she had bound the Iridescence as everything came together. "Stupid! I could have realized how unnecessary this was earlier!"

Rian's voice was annoyingly reasonable. "Well, like you said, a better preparatory step that doesn't wear you out is already a significant improvement, and it means you still don't have to worry about a post-expansion clean and reset stage. That's all improvement as far as I can understand."

Lori grimaced but had to reluctantly agree. "Yes, yes, I suppose. Still, I was hoping that the procedure would allow me to immediately reset to the pre-expansion phase with already imbued wisps so I could perform multiple expansions per day."

Rian tilted his head thoughtfully. "Maybe you still can?"

"Oh, undoubtedly," Lori said. "With the improved preparatory phase I might be able to perform two, perhaps three expansions a day." She allowed herself a chuckle. "That would triple your precious numbers."

"Why stop at three?" Rian said, still sounding more thoughtful than excited, the fingers of one hand moving, either counting something or drawing a sketch only he could see.

Lori considered the question. Actually… "I could perhaps experiment to see how far I can push it," Lori said, voice becoming equally thoughtful. "With sufficient practice and habit, I could become faster at the preparatory stage." She'd never seemed to get better at in with the method she'd previously used, but with what she had done to set up the binding today… well, such a simple, rote procedure's only possible problems was her mind wandering from boredom. She could easily start increasing the relative area she claimed as she spiraled around her demesne, over time. In a few months, she might even be able to claim the entire border of her demesne in one move out of sheer habit… "I'd need a brief rest after every expansion before setting it up again, but since the new method isn't as strenuous… "

"What if you ready several preparatory stages at once?" Rian said.

Lori blinked, staring at her lord. "What?"

"You said the big binding for the preparation stage is like a shell around the demesne, right?" he said. "What if after you set it up, you put up another shell just inside it instead of waiting until after you've expanded to make a new one? Several separate, already prepared stages that you can use immediately after your first expansion of the day. Well, after you let your head rest, anyway. Expand the demesne, rest for a bit, grab the next prepared shell and expand again. Or is there some reason why that won't work?"

Lori paused, thinking about. Multiple prepared bindings, all layered one within another… "I see no reason why not," she said mused. "As long as each successive layer isn't anchored or bound to the next..." She could already see it. Multiple nested layers of bindings… Ah, and running though all of them, a single point of connection that she could easily dissolve, but while it was in place, she could imbue all the layers simultaneous!

Actually… if the layers would need to be connected to be imbued…

"I might not even need multiple bindings…" Lori mused to herself

Rian blinked. "You don't?"

Lori nodded slowly, still thoughtful. "Another possibility is I simply create one binding that I divide into multiple layers…" It was… theoretically possible, though already her mind cringed at trying to conceptualize how she would do it. Impulsively, she claimed some airwisps, and then formed them into a ball around some other airwisps that she didn't claim. Then she tried to separate the ball into two layers, but forming the proper mental image was difficult…

Rian was completely unaware about any of this. "Like a spiral!" he said. "Instead of making ends meet into a sphere, you make one end go under the other and loop it around as many times as you need! Then you break it up and fuse pieces together to form layers!"

Lori paused, blinking as the description translated itself into her mind. A spiral… "Yes, I suppose that's one way to do it," she said thoughtfully. She'd been thinking in terms of height, length and width, but Rian rendering it in terms of a spiral let her let her simplify the concepts involved. "A spiral with height, length and width…"

"Like a slug shell," Rian suggested.

Oh. That was an easy image to remember. While not perfect spheres, the image of the spiraling shell some kinds of slugs had was far simpler to visualize!

"I shall have to test the idea," Lori said, mostly to remind herself. "While theoretically possible, it might be difficult to actually form the binding in the shape in question. While time consuming, forming individual shells is simpler and does not require esoteric visualizations." And given how her mind already flinched from expected pain from just thinking of how to form a binding in a massive spiraling shell…

"Hmm… very true, very true," Rian mused. "Actually, this is a multi-step process, right? Then it's probably best to keep the steps as simple as possible. The fewer details to worry about going wrong, the better."

Oh. Yes, he was correct. Even though a waterjet cutter was capable of complex shapes and cuts, most of the time the cuts done were straight lines, or at best circles that could be achieved by slowly and carefully spinning a piece of wood on a secured axis point. Complex curves were the domain of hand saws, and were slow, taxing work.

Lori glanced up and through her awareness of wisps, she saw her shell around her demesne, slightly distended and with holes in it. "Of course, these improvements rely on the fact that the preparatory binding can be used for the expansion process."

"Easy enough to test, right?" Rian said. "Just get rid of the binding and expand as you normally would."

"Yes," Lori agreed, then sat back, making herself comfortable. "Easy enough to test…"

"Wait, you're doing it now?"

"Quiet."

"Shutting up, your Bindership."

Leaning back and closing her eyes, Lori took control of the massive binding once more…

…

The result was almost anticlimactic. After making the binding expand beyond the borders of the demesne to claim the wisps immediately adjacent to them, she dissolved the massive binding, bracing herself for the sudden voracious increase in the rate that imbuement was being devoured by the Iridescence. Once she was actively controlling all the imbued wisps with her will alone, she simply expanded as she normally did, binding the glittering rainbows beyond the edge of her demesne to her will.

And that was that. Her dimensions of her demesne expanded, and now she that was properly paying attention, she saw how none of the imbued wisps remained from her expansion. A part of her felt strange, expecting the usual headache and tiredness, but there was none of the extreme mental fatigue she had come to expect after the process. Far from it, in fact…

Lori opened her eyes. "The expansion was successful," she told her lord succinctly.

Rian nodded and—where had he gotten that wooden tablet? Oh, it was the one on her table with his 'encouraging numbers' on it—wrote something on the tablet he held with his charred wooden stick. "Wonderful," he said. "Do you feel like you're capable of performing the steps again? Preparation binding, imbuement, expansion? I wouldn't suggest doing it right this second, but if you had a short rest, do you think you could do it again today?"

Lori considered the question. She felt a minor throb in her head, but beyond that… "I might need a nap," she assessed, "but that was because I had pushed myself earlier to counter the phenomenon, and I've just finished claiming. With a nap, I'm certain I can do it again at least once more today."

Rian nodded, writing this down. "If you had a binding for another expansion you'd prepared earlier, do you think you'd need the nap?"

Lori titled her head. "A nap would be nice, but I think I can manage another expansion at this moment, provided the binding had already been imbued," she mused.

More writing. "How about I set the water clock for an hour and you take a nap. Once you're done, I'll time how long it takes you from the start of preparation until you finish expansion. We can work out an improved schedule for you then."

Lori's head throbbed. "Make it an hour and a half," she said.

After all, she'd already expanded he demesne twice today, even if the first instance had been negligible. A third instance could wait.

Rian nodded. "Do you want anything for your head? I can probably get you a spoonful of honey, tell them it's for emergency medical reasons."

The thought of the thick, green, sweet syrup was terribly tempting… "Just me something to drink," Lori said as she arranged her bedding bad pillow for a nap. "And be sure to wake up on time."

Later that day, the third expansion of her demesne was, if anything, even more anti-climactic. There were no more unplanned surprises, no supreme efforts of will or quick reactions. To an outside observer, she simply lay back with her eyes closed as Rian watched the both her and the water clocks. A close observer would have seen her head moving side to side in small motions, seen her eyes tracking beneath her eyelids.

After a little over an hour and a half, just as dinner was being served, Lori opened her eyes. "Done," she said. "Expansion complete."

Rian hummed. "You said making the preparatory binding took you an hour this morning, not counting fully imbuing it. Do you think you managed it faster this time?"

"I do not know," Lori said thoughtfully.

"Hmm… We might need to time that as a separate step," Rian said. "It seems like it's the step in the process that will take up the most time in the process."

"I'll be able to shorten it," Lori said, waving a hand dismissively.

"Hm… well, if you say so. How are you feeling? Tired? Headache? Need more sleep? Spoon of honey?"

The honey was tempting…

"I'm well," Lori said as she pushed herself up from her reclining position, moving her back to to bring feeling back to the parts that had gone a little numb.

Rian rolled his eyes. "Are you at least feeling better than how you usually would after the old expansion process?"

Well, that was easy to answer. "Far better," she admitted.

Nod, note. "All right, excellent! You did it twice and it didn't exhaust you. A success by any standard.  You'd never have even tried doing it twice in one day with the old one."

"We still need to see how much the demesne expanded," she pointed out.

"Until this storm blows over, I don't think we should worry about those numbers too much," Rian said, though he looked frustrated as he said it. "Better to think about the results we can measure, for now."

She supposed he was right. "I suppose you're right," she allowed. "Now help me up, I'm hungry."