Weekly Digest 64 - (#203 - #205) (Patreon)

The Sled Air Jet

After a night's thoughtful deliberation, the mechanism Lori came up with for the carpenters to make was a box. The shape had to be simple so it could be efficiently made from planks with a minimum of wood. While they could theoretically leave her Dungeon now to fell trees for wood wood again, in practice the snow made that difficult Best to work within the resources they had stockpiled that required a minimum of processing. Technically she could have designed something that could be made with the metal from their dragon scales, or even just their copper, but that wasn't as easily replaced as wood.

The box was an elongated cubic tube, with accelerated air meant to pass though one end and out the other. On one of the faces was a hinged flap that could drop down and block the tube at an angle, diverting the accelerated air out through the new opening that had just been uncovered. A lever mechanism would keep the flap pushed up and shut, as well as give the operator the leverage to overcome the force of the accelerated air to push the flap back up once it had dropped.

"I don't see a locking mechanism," Rian said as he perused her diagram. "How to we keep the flap from falling down?"

"The intention is that someone is holding the lever to keep the flap closed at all times," Lori said. "Otherwise the flap will drop down and the accelerated air will divert upwards, removing the sled's source of thrust and causing it to slow. This way, if there is no one on the sled to apply force to the lever, it will just stop."

"Ooh, clever!" Rian said. "I wish I'd thought of that! This is so simple! And here I was trying to think of how we'd put together sliding wooden blocks."

"Far too heavy and big," Lori said dismissively. "A simple design is a lighter design, and is more likely to be something an air jet can actually push to any appreciable speed. Give this to the smiths and carpenters and tell them to start planning on how to build it but not to begin construction yet."

"Eh? Why not?"

"We need to find out how much thrust is needed to move the sled," Lori said. "That will depend on how much air is being accelerated, and that will depend on how wide the tube anchoring the bindings accelerating them will be."

"Not necessarily," Rian said. "If you put something like a funnel at the end of the tube, you can collect more air, especially if the tube is already moving forward and meeting the oncoming air head-on."

Lori tilted her head thoughtfully. "Hmm… an interesting idea… yes, I can so how it could work."

"Might work for the water jet too," Rian said. "Something to consider in future."

Lori waved her hand, wiping the thought away. "Well, remember to bring it up when we're talking about water jets. We're discussing air jets at the moment."

"Right, sorry. So… does that mean you're going to try to ride the sled? It's really fun!"

"No, Landoor is going to ride the sled. I will be building the tube that will be mounted to the sled and the binding to accelerate it."

Rian blinked. "Why Landoor?"

"I don't care if anything happens to him in the course of testing the air jet."

"Wow. What a terribly harsh and very Lori thing to say. You know nobody actually needs to be riding it, right? It doesn't have a steering mechanism, it'll just go straight. We can just put snow or rocks on it to simulate the weight of a person."

"Ah. Then do that instead."

"… You know, Landoor is a very nice person once you get to know him."

"That sounds like a 'dealing with people' matter. I leave that nonsense to you."

Rian rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine, I'll drop it. Though try not to get the man killed, all right? He's a hard worker and has a naturally cheerful and pleasant disposition. Infinitely preferable to the inverse of either, don't you think?"

Lori waved a hand dismissively. "Eh, I suppose," she said.

Rian suddenly frowned. "Huh. Something just occurred to me. The mechanism will only redirect the air and stop the acceleration, right? It won't actually slow the sled down?"

"Yes…?"

"So… how do we actually slow it down if we want to stop?"

Lori gave him a bland look, and pointed significantly to one side. "I suggest consulting an expert."

Rian brightened. "Oh, right! Silly me." He turned to Riz, sitting next to him. "Hey Riz, how do you know how to get a moving sled to slow down?"

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For building the sled's air jet, she needed building material, and her options were very limited. Wood was in limited supply and would need the carpenters to shape. Stone was too heavy and while ice was plentiful, it was still weighty and unless reinforced would be easily damaged. While she knew that with reinforcement it would be adequate to the task, as the Coldhold had proven, reinforcing it would add more weight.

So, bone it was. Lori had already tunneled and excavated the snow from the bone pit before today, since she had needed it for material for making the original air jets. Getting the material was merely a matter of going there and picking it out, and months of eating seels and beasts had given them a healthy supply. Some of the bone was, according to Rian, ground down and used as fertilizer for the fields, but she still had her pick.

Few of the bones were still whole. Some had been broken open to access the marrow, which was added to their stew. Others had come apart, and a few looked like they had been gnawed on by chokers. Still, some where set aside because they made for good material for her, such as skulls and jaws. Lori had long since stopped collecting all the teeth and claws, since she had a healthy stockpile, but that just meant other people got them to make buttons, small blades, arrowheads…

And just because the bones were broken didn't mean they weren't useful. After all, she could just make them whole again. It increased the overall weight, since some of the porousness was lost, but the material was still decently strong.

To shape it into a tube, however, she had to do so in several steps. First she got a plank from the carpenters that seemed the right dimensions for what she wanted. Then she went outside and gathered snow to create a block of ice, which she bound solid. The smithy was empty, so she took the block there and pressed her plank down into the ice, deforming it through the binding of waterwisps as she went. When she managed to pry out the plank, on the ice was left a plank-shaped mold.

After that, it was a simple matter of putting bones into the mold, then carefully filling in the gaps using bone made fluid by a binding of earthwisps to fill the mold. This allowed her to retain some of the porousness of the bone, allowing it to be both relatively strong and lightweight, until she had several planks of bone to use. They weren't completely uniform, but that was fine.

The material preparation took her most of the morning, and she had no intention of not expanding her demesne, so actually putting the tubes together had to wait until the following day. Putting the bone planks together was a simple matter, since they were all made of the same substance. Lori had considered making them in the shape of square tubes, after her design, but decided against it, option for a triangular tube shape instead. It would make fitting in the mechanism a bit more difficult, but having it be a triangle made the structure more resistant to deformation. Given the planks were all as wide as her hand was long, there would be plenty of space in the tube for air. She made two, both a pace and a half long.

After that, the two tubes for the air jet needed to secured to Lori's Boat. It needed to be mounted on the arms that usually connected to the boat's outriggers, where she used more softened bone to bond it to the wooden spars.

"Don't step on it or lift with it," Lori told Rian sternly as he directed the men who would be carrying the boat back out into the snow for her to test whether it could even be propelled by air. She stood on a plank that had been placed in the snow, mostly to keep herself from sinking in, because she wasn't sure her boots weren't leaking and she didn't want to have wet socks. "It's not made to be load bearing like that."

"Will it be able to provide thrust without breaking, then?" Rian asked as the boat was gently set down on the snow and slid back and forth a few time to make sure it would move.

"We shall see," Lori said. She stayed where she was as she bound airwisps, anchoring them to the earthwisps on the bone. That would transfer the force of the thrust to the bone tubes, and from there to the boat-turned-sled.

"Should we weight it?" Rian said as a rope was tied to one of the arms, with several men holding the other end, standing to one side. It would be their job to slow the sled down if it moved.

Lori shook her. "Not yet. We're still trying to find out how much force is needed to move the boat. We'll start with that as a minimum, and work upwards from there."

"Huh. Given the utter lack of testing the water jet underwent, I was afraid you'd just slap these things one the boat and then tell me to get going and figure it out as I went."

"I'd made a water jet before when I was a student," Lori shrugged. "I knew it would work."

"But not an air jet, presumably." Rian said.

"Not for the purposes of propelling something, in any case," Lori said. "It's known but considered impractically dangerous. To have enough expanding air for decent thrust, one usually needs to rely on some sort of alchemical combustible or steam, which leave residue that is burning hot, cloying, harmful, and the combustible itself is usually costly to make."

"Unless you happen to have the raw power of a bored Dungeon Binder, presumably," Rian said.

"Unless that," Lori agreed.

"You're reallybored with nothing to really do, aren't you?"

Lori ignored him and his stupid smile as she began to properly assemble the binding, giving it directionality to propel the air down the tube. She made sure that both bindings were formed the same way so that they would have the same output. It wouldn't do for one side to have greater output than the other and make it list to one side, after all. Then she simply had to heavily imbue both sides.

Once both sides were imbued, she activated both bindings simultaneously.

Snow was blasted into the air behind the sled as the tubes suddenly began to thrust air through them. It was surprisingly loud, something that Lori should have expected from the smaller air jet tubes they used for snow clearing, but hadn't really been prepared for. The tubes shook in their mountings as the bindings began to consume their imbuement.

The sled, annoyingly, didn't move.

Lori frowned. "Annoying, but not unexpected," she said, mostly to herself. She got ready to increase the air jets' output.

"Wait a moment," Rian said thoughtfully.

Lori glanced at him as more snow was blown. Her lord had a thoughtful look on his face. "What?" she said.

"Let me try something first," he said.

She watched, curious and bemused as Rian moved behind the sled, raising one hand over his face to, probably futilely, keep the snow out of his face until he was standing directly behind the sled. Then he put two hands on the back of the sled and pushed. One step, two steps, and suddenly the sled was moving on its own, leaving Rian behind. It was moving barely faster than walking pace, but it was moving.

Rian was nodding in satisfaction as he walked back towards her, his nose not so much running as streaming and—ugh, yes, RIAN, STOP USING THE TOWEL OVER YOUR MOUTH TO WIPE YOUR NOSE, IT'S DISGUSTING! "Friction," he said in a self-satisfied tone. "We had to overcome the friction of the snow first before it would start moving. The snow's not wet, so the friction isn't reduced yet."

"So I see," Lori said, watching the sled slowly progressing away from them. Obvious, in hindsight. "Still, it would still need to be faster than this. This is without people weighing it down. As it is, when it is occupied it will move even slower."

"Can you get it going that fast?"

"Oh, undoubtedly," Lori said. "The question is whether a reasonable speed will be achieved with a reasonable amount of imbuement consumption. Air is a far less efficient propellant than water because of its lack of density…"

Lori paused, then looked down.

When she looked up again, she saw Rian had also been staring down at the snow.

Their eyes met.

"Ice is denser than water," he said, a slow smile growing on his mouth. It was a new smile, one of mounting delight and realization.

"It does not even need to be ice," she said. "Snow in any state is far denser than air."

"We'll have to mount the tubes lower down so that they're closer to the snow," Rian mused. "And need some sort of scoop to scrape up the snow… "

"That would add needless friction," Lori said, her tone also musing. "Besides, if there was a receptacle, that could just be filled up with snow and the receptacle opened to drop snow down into the binding…"

"Snow to water to steam… that would result in air far denser than just sucking it up…"

"Only one end would need to be opened, and since it's reliant on water, the air jet can technically be deactivated by cutting off the flow… and if I use vaporous waterwisps instead of airwisps, the binding wouldn't activate completely to common air, simplifying the control mechanism…"

The two of them stared at the sled, which was being pulled to a stop by its rope. Lori absently deactivate the bindings.

"I need to design a different mechanism and tube structure," she muttered. "And a new means of mounting it to the boat."

"I'll see if I can find something lightweight for the snow receptacle," Rian said. "Maybe some kind of sack, that will be lighter than a wooden box or anything like that."

Lori nodded absently, and they both looked towards the boat.

"We should probably figure out how to steer," Rian added. "Otherwise our magic-powered sled is going to be steered by someone in front with a stick pushing it left and right. Which is probably stupidly dangerous."

Yes, a method of steering would be needed…

…

But after this afternoon's demesne expansion!

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The Sled, Completed

"So, suggestion for a new plan," Rian said as they sat down to breakfast the next day. "On consideration, maybe using your boat is too much. We don't really need all the space on it, after all. What if we just put the air jets you made on a couple of boards? They'll be light enough for the air jets to move without any further modification, a smaller profile would reduce friction, and they can be steered by leaning left or right, which we couldn't do with the boat unless we built some sort of mechanism for it."

Lori gave Rian an exasperated look. "So after all that work, your idea is just do something else?"

He shrugged. "We've identified problems with the initial design before we devoted too much time or irrecoverable resources to it. Now is actually the best time to consider changing idea, since nothing has been wasted. The air jets clearly work, it's just the boat was too heavy for them to work efficiently without further changes that would require more building time. I'm simply suggesting we take the only part that works, your contribution, and put it on something lighter. And the rest of the work on it wasn't wasted, since now your boat's safe inside the dungeon."

"Hmm…" Lori mused. She sighed. "Ugh, fine. Don't be wasteful."

"Of course, your Bindership," Rian said cheerfully. "The point is to make something that doesn't weigh much, after all."

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After removing the air jets from the boat, and recovering the bone she'd used to attach it with, Lori took a walk around her dungeon to see how everything was doing. There were people scattered about the dining tables, talking, playing board games, sewing clothes, cleaning tools, sweeping the floor, and coming and going from outside the dungeon. She quickly physically checked the reservoir and found nothing floating on it. It was also reasonably full, and she knew people had been assigned to put snow in the melting box, so it would be renewed soon.

In the second level, the weavers were weaving but there were no spinners spinning, so they'd probably run out of rope weed. She also found many alcoves occupied, with some people napping in the sleeping spaces. At one of the corners of the level, far from the work, some children played some kind of game that seemed to involved standing in seemingly arbitrary spots, holding their arms out to either side, and either trying to tag one another or running from each other. Lori wasn't familiar with the game. It seemed like the sort of thing she'd avoided when she was younger. Among the carpenters, something was being made, while Rian sat on the floor nearby, watching with interest. Ugh, her lord could be so childish sometimes.

Lori glanced at her lord in passing, and he looked up at her, getting ready to stand, but she moved on down to the third level. A quick inspection showed there were no temperatures to correct and everything seemed to be tended and watered. The plots of vigas had sprouted long, bright blades of grass, and the planters of tubers all had green stalks sprouting from the only slightly odoriferous soil. Hopefully in spring they'd be able to fill more plots with grass so they could have a good crop in the dungeon itself…

After that, she went out and checked that all the ice tunnels were both holding as well as properly ventilated, and that the ladder access holes to reach the roofs so they could be cleaned wasn't clogged with snow. She also made sure that the opening in the tunnel that led out to the trees so that people could gather firewood hadn't gathered any snow. Lori didn't go beyond the tunnel, but she saw that the path leading to the trees had been shoveled clear. Good.

Her inspection done, she went to her room to make preparations to expand her demesne later that afternoon.

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Two days later, after breakfast, Lori looked down at the sled lying on the snow. The main body of the sled was paces long and perhaps three-fourths of a pace wide, and looked more gaps than wood. It lay on three pairs of wooden boards that Rian said were called runners, two pairs at the back and a pair at the front. The one of the rear pair of runners was directly under the main body of the sled, while the other pair were on extensions spaced apart very widely, giving the sled a vaguely triangular shape. They reminded Lori of the outriggers on their boats. Supported above the runners beneath the main body was a ladder-like wooden frame, where parallel planks were arranged like rungs, and had gaps between them. At one end was an upright frame that made the whole thing seem like a bed with a head board. Raised planks on the sides added to the impression of a box.

"Why are there so many gaps?"

"It's to reduce weight," Rian said. "After all, it doesn't need to be a solid platform when you're sitting on it. Besides, it makes it easier to mount the air jets."

"Mount the air jets where?"

"Anywhere," Rian said, pointing. "You could mount both on either side of the frame, underneath the frame, on the stabilizing arms for the outer runners, on top of the main frame … though that last will be a bit awkward to ride. The front runners turn on this pivot here—" he demonstrated the pivot "—letting you steer. It will fit… maybe three or four people if they're all friendly and one stands at the back here." He demonstrated what he meant, putting his feet on the ends of the runners under the box-like frame and holding on to the head board-like frame. "The stabilizing arms aren't really made to bear much weight."

"The turning mechanism seems inconvenient," Lori pointed out. While it could turn, there didn't seem to be any actual way to control it.

"We're putting a rope on it, the ropers are just looking for a short length that they've already made so that we don't have to cut any of the long coils," Rian said. He put a hand one the head board-like frame and began to push the sled back and forth. "As you can see, it's far lighter than the boat was, meaning so it will definitely be easier for the air jet to push."

Lori shrugged. "We'll see."

Mounting the triangular bone tubes onto the planks on the sides was simple enough, though Rian suggested lashing them on with ropes as well for added security. The steering rope arrived, and was secured to the runners, with Rian testing if they would turn as intended. Lori allowed herself to be talked into sitting on the sled and grabbing hold of the steering rope while Rian pushed the sled, and she tested pulling at the ends of the ropes to make the sled turn left and right.

…

All right, it was a little fun.

Once more a long rope was tied to the sled so they could slow it down, and Lori again anchored airwisps inside the bone tube into a binding. When the bindings were imbued and activated, the air jets began to move the sled immediately. They pushed it slowly at first, but it began to accelerate, building up speed. It soon exceeded the slow walking pace the boat had attained the day before, reaching a fast walking pace before Lori deactivated the bindings and the sled was pulled to a stop by the men holding the rope.

"Were the air jets set at the fastest they would go?" Rian asked as the men went to retrieve the sled and start pushing it back towards them.

"No."

"Huh. And I'm pretty sure that slow start was because it was at a dead stop. If we'd pushed it, it would have started accelerating a lot faster."

"Undoubtedly." Really, did he have to state the obvious?

"I wonder how fast it can go?" Rian mused.

"Youare not finding out," she said sternly. "While I will concede it's a viable vehicle, it does not have nearly as stable a seat as a boat. Turns are likely to result in you falling off."

"Probably not, the pivot doesn't turn very far by design," Rian said.

"Well, you're still not going fast on it. You're too useful to risk."

"It's nice to be appreciated. Well then, mother, how fast am I allowed to go?"

Lori glared at him for the uncalled for remark.

"Oh, don't look at me like that. I like my mother, so it's a compliment."

She rolled her eyes. "It's still uncalled for. I'm far too sensible to be a mother."

"If you say so, your Bindership… Huh. I just thought of something."

Lori sighed. "What now?"

"That mechanism you designed, the one for redirecting the air jet to make it stop accelerating… How are we going to operate it like this? I mean, didn't you say it's meant to be held open at all times so that it would stop by itself if it didn't have any passengers?"

She considered that. "Rian?"

"Yes, your Bindership?"

"Solve that problem."

A sigh. "Yes, your Bindership."

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It took a day to make the flap mechanism and secure it to the ends of the air jet tubes. Rian's solution was simple, and surprisingly didn't require her initial design be altered greatly altered. Instead of controlling the flaps with levers, a rope was tied to the end of each flap. Pulling the rope with serve the same purpose as the lever, closing the flap and letting air pass straight through the tube, which would provide propulsion. Slack on the rope would cause the flap to drop, diverting the air upwards. The ropes were then tied together to a bar at the front of the sled, where they were supposed to be pushed forward by the feet of the person steering the sled.

It was actually much simpler to build than her lever mechanism, and Lori was annoyed she hadn't thought of it.

Still, after fitting the flap mechanism to the air jet tubes and calibrating what she considered a safe, stable speed, the sled was finally functional. While it blasted a long cloud of snow behind it, it moved far faster than a person trying to wade through the snow. However, its limitations in practice required it to be a vehicle that always had two people on it at all times. Open person to steer and operate the flaps… and another person to throw out the bundle of wooden hooks on a rope that acted to slow the sled down.

Which was fine, since someone would need to accompany Rian when he went out on it anyway.

"It's going to need to be a lot faster if we're going to use it to get to River's Fork," Rian told her over dinner that night. "Fast like the boats were, or else we won't be able to make the trip to there and back in a day."

Lori grunted in unwanted acknowledgement of a practical problem as she waited for Mikon to make her move on the chatrang board. "I'll consider it after Riz tells me her impression of the conveyance tomorrow."

The woman in question paused in her eating. "Uh, me, Great Binder?"

"Yes, you," Lori said. "Or are you really going to let someone else go with Rian when he goes to the edge of the demesne tomorrow?" Technically, the location wasn't the edge any more. She supposed it was good Rian was going to investigate it now, since she barely remembered where it had been. Thankfully, the river was a decent landmark, and she'd marked the general area with some deactivated wisps so it would stand out to her awareness.

"I wouldn't mind bringing someone along to help, Great Binder," Riz said.

"Well, go and see if they'll fit on the sled,"

"We'll need to pack spears and shovels to, in case we need to move the snow around," Rian muttered. "By the way, where exactly on the edge am I investigating?"

"I'll mark the location for you," Lori said as she scooped up some meat with her soup and popped it into her mouth.

"Uh, mark how?"

"Lightwisps and darkwisps. I'll make it tall so you can see it over the trees."

"So, tomorrow we're going out on a magic-propelled sled to look for a tall pillar of light and darkness on a quest for our Dungeon Binder," Rian said blandly. "Sounds like a bad fantasy story."

"If it were a bad fantasy story, you'd find a dungeon's core buried in the snow, accidentally bleed on it and somehow become a Dungeon Binder," Lori pointed out.

"True, true," Rian said.

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Rian, Riz and one of Riz's friends set off on the sled after breakfast the next day. Lori wondered if it had been intentional on Rian's part that any passengers on the sled had to sit behind the operator, pressed against their back, arms around their waist. Riz certainly seemed to be enjoying the position. Her friend, sitting behind her, just seemed exasperated.

Lori had nothing in the way of expectations about what Rian would find at the place that used to be the edge of her demesne. The wisps of the binding hadn't been anchored to anything, after all, so there shouldn't be any sort of physical deformation to anything. From the times she had visited the edge after expanding her demesne, the expansion also didn't alter the ground or even seem to move the snow.

So having someone pound on her door late in the morning while she was imbuing the binding for expanding her demesne later was unexpected. Despite her annoyance, she quickly rose to see what it was about, because if they dared disturb her like this, it had to be important.

And if it wasn't, she'd bury them in the snow over lunch.

"What?" Lori said as she opened the door to find Rian. He had a strange expression on his face, and the towel he wrapped around his head like a scarf to keep him warm was in his hands, held like a sack. The improvised sack clearly contained something large and heavy.

"We found something," Rian said, his voice odd. He opened the towel and showed her.

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Not a Dungeon Core

Lori stared. "Where did you get that?" she demanded, voice starting to tremble.

"We found it buried in the snow," Rian said, voice low and glancing over his shoulder as if he expected someone there to be trying to listen. "It was near the marker you put down. Had to dig up the snow to find it, since I figured anything interesting would have gotten covered up since then. Dragged the sled, pointed the air jets towards the marker, had everyone stand in front of the sled to keep it from moving and pulled up the flaps."

"Bring it in here," Lori hissed, stepping back to give him room to come in. "Put it on the table."

Rian did as ordered, shuffling in and hurrying to the table. The sound of the towel striking the stone surface made her wince as she shut the door, sealed it, then sealed the rest of the passageway in for good measure. The urge to chastise him fell away with the towel, however, as the fabric pooled around the object it had been carrying.

"At first I thought it was an unclaimed dungeon core," Rian said, sounding a bit breathless. "Obviously it's not, because you've made it perfectly clear enough times that's not how dungeons work, and this was inside our demesne, so if it was a core, it couldn't exist. That left the obvious answer, which is also insane. Completely, utterly insane."

Lori found herself nodding in agreement, staring at the object on her table. Entire surface was perfectly smooth, with a sheen to it like clean glass, it was about the size of the beast skulls Lori had turned into shovels, about forty-one yustri. It was a familiar cloudy white, is if it should be transparent if not for immunities suspended upon it. "Yes. The obvious answer is completely, utterly insane."

"Just to be clear, we're both coming to the same completely, utterly insane answer, right?" Rian said. "Because I can't think of anything else it could be except glass, making it a stupidly expensive prank by persons unknown who actually took the time to make a ball of solid glass this big!"

"It's not glass," Lori confirmed, still staring. "It's a bead. A large wisp bead."

For a moment, they both stared at it. Beads, as a rule, were small, lest they not fit in one's bead pouch. The smallest, regardless of what type, was about ten chiyustri in diameter, with the next one five chiyustri bgiger, all the way to the largest denominations at twenty-five chiyustri. If one needed to carry more money than that, one just resorted to a monetary certificate.

"Are we… rich?" Rian asked tentatively, clearly trying to put this find into a context he could understand.

"No," Lori said, her mouth seeming to speak on its own as she tried to claim and bind the very concept of the thing in front of her. "The intrinsic material value of a bead comes from how much magic it provides, either to a wizard or a bound tool. It has financial value because of a collective agreement to let it stand as a placeholder for the value of other goods and services. Unless it can be used to power a bound tool, provide a Whisperer with magic, or someone agrees to exchange goods and services to possess it, it's literally worthless."

"You can say the same about literally anything," Rian argued, distractedly. "Beast teeth, shiny rocks, bits of glass."

"Yes." she agreed. "However, those things you mentioned are raw resources with immediate use. Beast teeth and bits of glass are a simply cutting implement useable for making more complex tools to produce more refined resources. Shiny rocks like copper can be made are easier to work than dull rock, with desirable material properties. They have worth independently of the structures of civilization. Beads require those structures to be valuable."

"So… we're not rich."

"No, we are not rich. As it currently is, it's useless to me. We have no bound tools to consume it, and even if I were so inclined for some reason, I wouldn't be able to fit it in my mouth."

"So it's essentially worthless."

"Yes. Utterly worthless."

They both nodded, as if coming to an agreement, letting out a mutual sigh.

"Where in glittering rainbowed shadow of colored Skykeep did you find this?-!" Lori all but cried.

"It told you, it was buried under the snow where you said!" Rian replied in the same tone and volume. "Just there! We thought it was a rock or a piece of ice at first!"

"How could you find it?-! Beads don't just fall out of the sky!"

"Like I'd know that! No one's ever given me a straight answer on how beads are made except 'the Dungeon Binder makes them'! What did you do!-?"

"Me?-!"

"You're the Dungeon Binder! Dungeon Binders make beads, right?-! So it must have been something you did!"

"If I knew how to make beads, I would have already!"

"Then… then maybe it's not a bead!" Rian suggested. "Maybe… maybe it's something else that's not made of glass that just looks like a ridiculously large bead, but isn't."

"Like what?"

"I have no idea! Maybe it's just something that happens naturally in winter around here, and when spring comes we'll find big balls of stuff that look like beads but aren't! Is there any way to test if it is a bead?"

"W-well, if it were a bead, if we touched it to metal that was also touching a binding, the binding would become imbued."

"What, that simple?"

"Of course. Why do you think beads are never put into metal containers?"

"Huh… I thought that was so they don't get scratched and have their denominations rubbed off…"

"Well, it isn't, it's so that no magic seeps from the beads," Lori said, feeling herself calming slightly as she corrected Rian's ignorance. Having his question answered also seemed to settle him down. Lori forced herself to look at this objectively. It was a question to be answered, a problem to be solved.

"Well, can we test it, then?" Rian suggested. "Maybe it's not a bead and we're getting excited over nothing."

"Yes," she agreed, turning away. "Yes, we should test it properly."

She reached into a storage niche near her table, where she put some of her more recently collected materials. On a pile of beast teeth and claws was a small coil of the her drawn gold wire, next to a larger and still secured coil of the same that the smiths had made for her using the more of their gold that hadn't been used to line the pots. If she needed any more wire, they'd need to make it from copper or one of their other metals.

Walking back to the large allegedly-a-bead, she claimed some of the lightwisps streaming down from the bindings she used to illuminate her room, binding them but not imbuing. Taking one end of her coil of wire, she stuck it through the air where she knew that her binding was. "All right," she said, mostly to keep Rian from bothering her with obvious questions. "If this is really a bead, then contact with this wire will cause magic to seep out and be drawn to the binding at the other end." She set the binding to make it glow, but still held it together with her will rather than imbue it.

"And if it isn't a bead, presumably nothing happens," Rian said.

She nodded. "Yes. Nothing happens. The binding of lightwisps will not start producing light when I touch the other end of this wire to the supposed bead." She slapped down the coiled other end of the wire onto the large sphere.

The binding of lightwisps immediately started producing light when she touch the other end of the wire to the supposed bead, shining on them with a pure white radiance.

For a moment, the two of them stared at it. But only a moment, as it was a bright light. Lori dropped her coil of wire as if burned, and it hit the stone floor with an anti-climactic lack of distinctive noise as the binding stone shining.

"Um…" Rian said hesitantly as he blinked and rubbed at his eyes. "So… it lit up. That… that means it's a bead, right? Really a bead."

"Yes…" Lori said quietly.

They both stared at the confirmed bead.

"We have a bead," Rian said, sounding strangely numb. "We have a bead bigger than a human head."

"Mine," Lori said reflexively.

For some reason, Rian rolled his eyes. "Yes, your Bindership," he said. "Well, we found it near your marker, so this could be the result of whatever it was that you did two weeks ago."

"That… would appear to be the case, yes," Lori said, still staring at the large sphere. Two weeks ago. When she'd had something unexpected unexpectedly happen… "We need to test this," Lori said decisively. "We need to see if it can be replicated. Or at least, confirm that the suspected cause is in fact the cause."

Rian began to nod. "Yeah, I… I suppose you're right."

A thought occurred to Lori. "Who else knows about this?" she demanded.

Rian winced. "Um, well, there's you and me, of course. There's Riz, who was with me. And there's her friend Navia, who was also there. I asked them not to tell anyone and guard the stairs up so no one can listen in."

"You did?" Lori said, feeling hopeful.

"I did," Rian said. "So either only they know or everyone knows by now."

Lori stared at him. "Well, no matter. We need to go to the edge and test this. Come on, and tell the two to come along as well." She grabbed her staff and headed for the door.

"If we're going outside the demesne, you'll need your winter robe," Rian reminded her.

Lori spun around. "I know that," she said, grabbing her winter robe from where it was folded among her other clothes.

"Of course, your Bindership."

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Riding the sled had been annoyingly cramped. Rian had insisted that she hold on to Riz from behind. Lori had been disinclined, simply sitting back with her legs crossed and leaning on the headboard at the back. Riz's friend stood on the runners and held on to the headboard's handles, a large bundle on her back and a hook handing from her belt.

After the second time Lori had almost fallen off because of an unexpected change in elevation—the snow was not as flat as it seemed—she'd reluctantly laid hands on the woman in front of her, glaring at the dark pink hair so close to her face. The spears, bow, quiver, and her staff that had been laid and lashed securely to the bed of the sled underneath them were uncomfortable bumps on her posterior.

They followed the path of the river, whose surface had frozen over and been covered by more than a pace of snow. It reminded Lori of going down one of the wide main roads of Taniar, except it was completely bereft of people, wagons, steam drivers, and riding beasts…

Actually, that meant it was absolutely nothing like going down the wide roads of Taniar.

They moved quickly, especially after Lori found their pace too slow and greatly increased the output of the air jets. The trees on either side of the river whipped past them at speed, many of them leafless, although there were occasional stretches of tall pointy trees that still seemed to have their foliage.

When they neared the edge of the demesne, Rian let go of Riz with one hand and pointedly poked at Rian's back with two fingers. "Slow down, we're almost there," she said. The sounds of the air jets had long been muffled by a binding she'd placed on them, since she was not going to endure that din when it was occurring within arms-length of her.

"Got it!" Rian acknowledged. He did something, and the muffled sounds of the air jet grew noticeably louder as Lori suddenly felt a strong, almost physical wind blowing up on her side. She glanced sideways and saw that the air jet flaps had dropped, all the air now directed upwards. At first, nothing seemed to happen, but it eventually became apparent that the sled was slowing down.

"Stop the sled!" Lori ordered as they approached where she could feel her awareness of the wisps ending. "We're here!"

"Navia, drop the anchor!" Rian called.

"Yes, Lord Rian!" the woman standing behind Lori said. A few moments later, the sled shuddered and began to slow greatly. Thankfully, they didn't actually go over the edge of the demesne, coming to a stop a few steps away from it.

"Careful," Rian warned her as Lori let go of Riz and shuffled back so she'd have enough space to get off the sled. "The snow's pretty deep here. We'll need the snow pads if we're going to be walking on it."

Lori frowned at him. "Snow pads?" she said as she swung one leg out over the side of the sled. It started to skink down into the snow and kept sinking. Lori pulled it back out.

"Yes, the snow pads," Rian said patiently. "I take it you don't have snow where you used to live?"

"We had snow," Lori said, "It was just never this deep."

"Then please believe me, you're going to need the snow pads."

After a struggle putting on the snow pads—large hoops covered in leather with thongs to secure them to your feet—Lori awkwardly walked out to the edge of the demesne, already forming the binding of firewisps and airwisps to keep her warm when she went beyond the borders. Her staff dragged over the snow next to her, since it was too deep for the butt to make contact with solid ground as she carried a wooden bowl taken from the kitchens in her other hand. There was a burning coal in the coalcharm, and the quartz embedded in the staff vibrated slightly from the lightningwisps bound and stored within them.

On either side ahead of her walked Riz and her friend, both holding spears in case of beasts the two scanned the trees on either side watchfully. Behind them, just in front of Lori, Rian followed after them holding the bow and looking like he actually knew how to use it.

Crossing the threshold was a terrible surprise, as it was far, far colder than it had been before when she'd gone down to River's Fork, even through the binding meant to keep her warm. She increased the output until she was comfortable, as she stood outside of her demesne. The snow shimmered in the noonday sun, almost like…

"Stop," Lori called as she frowned and crouched awkwardly on the snow pads to get a better look at the snow. No, it hadn't been her imagination. The snow outside her demesne had the multicolored tinge of Iridescence, like a fine powder that had been mixed in with the snow.

Well, at least she wouldn't have to look for any…

She carefully scooped up some of the colorful snow into bowl as the other three maintained their positions. Rian head was twitching like he wanted to watch what he was doing, only to stop himself and go back to watching out for beasts for a few moment before being tempted to look again. Carefully, Lori walked back until she was once more mostly inside her demesne, careful to keep the bowl from crossing the unseen border. Standing inside her demesne, Lori began to claim, bind and imbue wisps…