Demesne 218 - A Clear Hazard (Patreon)

After lunch, and binding the warming stones for Rian, Riz and whichever friend Riz had invited to join them for protection to put on, Lori went out to the edge, her test bowl in hand. She'd started carrying a kit with her whenever she went to make beads at the edge. The jar for carrying beads, a wooden spoon, her belt knife, and a new pair of copper tweezers. The smiths hadn't needed her assistance, but she'd found herself watching anyway as they tempered it to be able to snap back into shape. So simple-seeming, yet she knew if she tried doing it, all she'd end up with was a waste of good copper…

By now, everyone knew the routine. Even Riz's friend, despite the fact it was seldom the same one in a row. They reached the edge, and two would keep an eye out for beasts while Lori retrieved the jar she had left well beyond the edge of the demesne, its location marked by a stick. Inside, the binding of firewisps she'd left the day before would be gone, the wisps entrapped by the Iridescence that had crystallized inside, fueled by imbuement and heat.

Being so close to the Iridescence, much less actively breaking off pieces—which wasn't that hard—to use to amalgamate beads still made Lori's spine shiver, and made full use of her authority as Dungeon Binder to have Rian do it most of the time. If he felt the same reticence and disgust, he hid it well, acting like he was simply getting salt from the jar. The only potential sign of discomfort he showed was washing his hand on the snow every so often.

"If you want to get rid of it, just go back to the demesne and step back out again," Lori said as she nudged as small, glittering measure of Iridescence into a packed mass in the upper part of her new bowl, holding it such that any potential moisture rolled downward, away from the colors. At least it wasn't actively snowing today. Less chance of some snow melting and dissolving the Iridescence, and she'd never thought that would actually be a problem.

"I'm fine," Rian said as he stood over her, holding his note plank as an impromptu roof in case anything did fall into the bowl. "We're never out here long enough for it to be a problem, anyway. Come on, I want to see if this works!"

Lori rolled her eyes, and she distinctly heard Riz and her friend chuckling.

"What? There's not a lot to do when we're all cooped up in the Dungeon. Seeing how this works out is the most interesting thing to happen today!"

"Sleeping with me isn't interesting?" Riz said as Lori reached her hand into her demesne and started gathering wisps there. She didn't need everything, which was good since there were no convenient source of earthwisps about.

"We shouldn't talk about that at work," Rian said hastily as Lori carefully anchored the binding to the stone on the edge of the bowl, making sure it intersected the Iridescence. All right, first test, imbue the biding through the metal contact…

"Oh? Riz, are you so boring the other two are more interesting?" All right, imbuing through the contact was successful. Now, to imbue the binding enough so that it wouldn't be completely amalgamated immediately and make a bead the size of a pebble. Well, not that small. She had a good volume of iridescence on the bowl. Normally she did this inside the crystallizing jar, but... well.

"Move those eyes, we don't want the Great Binder getting eaten by some beast! Save the chatter for later, you know how the Great Binder feels about noise!" Oh, now Riz remembered. Grumbling to herself, Lori continued imbuing the binding, drawing power from her connection to her core and sending it out through her limbs, down her fingers, into the ingot of metal at the bottom of the bowl and to its final destination.

Lori imbued until the binding contained enough to form at least a low-denomination bead. Even in the event of failure—which was likely if she got the timing wrong, since this was her first attempt—at least some kind of useful bead would result. Once more ,she wished she could do this in some kind of permanent structure, but with how she expanded the demesne every day, unless she built very far beyond the edge, anything she built would be within her demesne in a week. At least she got to sit on the sled while she did this.

Breathing in and out, calming herself with the familiar ritual even if she didn’t really need it to do magic anymore, Lori took control of the binding she had imbued, detaching it from the earthwisps it had been anchored to. The Iridescence had started to crystallize again, trapping wisps and drawing imbuement from the binding, and Lori carefully observed it until she was sure the spoonful of glittering powder had come together into a single mass. Carefully holding the rectangular bowl, adjusting her grip to something more comfortable and making sure her fingers were touching metal, she began the familiar process of making a bead.

She failed immediately.

Well, technically, the process was a success, as the Iridescence and the binding amalgamated into a wisp bead—it immediately went into the jar so she wouldn't lose it—but the test she was running failed. Her fault. She had thought she'd have time to resume imbuing once the amalgamation began, but no sooner had she started when there had been a bead rolling around in her bowl and no binding for her to imbue. Stupid. She should have remembered how fast the process was, and she should have realized that initiating it might move the binding such that she could no longer imbue it!

After getting Rian to put more Iridescence into her bowl and packing the powdered rainbow tightly once more, she tried again. Bind wisps, move to bowl, imbue…

When she began the test again, this time she made sure she was actively imbuing the binding beforeshe began amalgamating it into a bead. For a moment, she thought it had failed as a bead quickly formed, only to realize that no, she was continuing to imbue, even as the bead rattled around in the bowl and—

The connection cut off abruptly. "Rainbows," Lori snapped.

"What?" Rian asked.

"It bounced when it rolled down the bowl and lost contact with the copper," Lori muttered as she took out the second bead and put it in the jar with the first. .

"Ah. Guess you need to be careful then. Why not put it in the bottom? No snow's falling right now, take the risk."

Lori nodded irritably, holding the bowl out to him. "Put more on."

Rian obliged, sticking the wooden spoon into the crystallization jar and coming out with a slightly bigger spoon of Irridescence than before. "In case it snows," he said cheerfully. Lori rolled her eyes as he carefully dumping the glittering colors into the bowl for the third attempt. If this didn't work, she was going to cut her loses, push back the test until tomorrow, and just make beads normally.

This time Lori packed the Iridescence in the bottom corner of the bowl as she held it tilted. That way it would be nestled and not roll around. Bind wisps, move to bowl, imbue…

This time the bead didn’t roll or bounce and break contact with the copper. The bead formed quickly, as it would, but didn't form all the way. Or at least, whatever… curing? It was called curing in workshops when they waited for alchemical coatings to dry and set… whatever curing needed to occur so that she could no longer imbue that bead hadn't happened yet. It was strange, as if her claim on the wisps had been challenged and she was almost, but not quite, overwhelmed, as if she was just on the edge of the binding falling out of her control.

"Ooh, is it working now?" Rian said eagerly.

"Yes", Lori said tersely, "It's formed but I'm still imbuing it."

"Success, then," came the cheerful reply. "Alright, notes then. Would you say you're imbuing it at your maximum possible rate?"

"No," Lori said. "Definitely not." The rate she was imbuing it was a slow, steady pace, one she had defaulted to because it was what she had used for years when she had been working as a student.

Rian nodded, writing that down, then peering down at the bead. "Its width is… call it sixteen, seventeen chiyustri wide or so?" He glanced at his smallest finger, holding it up as if comparing. "I can't say I can tell if it's growing."

Neither could Lori. "I'll increase the rate of imbuement," she said. "Perhaps that will cause a change."

"You just don't want to wait in the snow for it to get bigger."

"Of course."

"Yeah, me neither. All this impatience on our parts is bad scholarship."

"I'd rather be a bad scholar than a cold one. If we have suspect results, we can repeat the tests when it's warmer."

Lori increased the rate at which she drew magic from her dungeon's core and passed it through the metal contact of the ingot. Immediately, the bead began to grow. It was still slow, but readily visible to the naked eye now.

"Well, that's a result, then," Rian said. "Shall we call the test successful, then?"

"It was already successful when I was still able to provide imbuement to the bead despite it having amalgamated," Lori said.

"True, I suppose." Rian hesitated. "Uh, before you stop imbuing the bead—are you still imbuing the bead?"

"Yes," Lori said, frowning slightly as she tried to reduce the imbuement rate.

"Ah, good. Well, before you stop, there's one thing I want to try doing, with your permission?"

If Lori wasn't worried taking her eyes off the bead would impact her concentration, she'd have given her lord a look. "What now?"

"This is purely for the sake of knowledge, I swear," Rian said. "Can I touch it?"

Lori couldn't help it. She looked up and gave her Lord a confused look. Thankfully, she managed to keep imbuing. "What."

"The bead. Can I touch it?"

"Rian, you've touched beads before."

"Not when it's in the middle of being formed I haven't! Come on, please?"

Ugh, fine. "Ugh, fine. Press down only so it doesn't stop making contact with the metal."

"Yes, your Bindership!" Rian said cheerfully. Carefully, he reached out and touched his finger to the bead, pressing down on it. Lori felt the pressure in her hands as he did.

Rian frowned. "Did you feel that?"

"Feel what? You pressing down? Yes, obviously, I did."

"No, not that! The bead! It deformed when I pressed down on it!"

Lori blinked, looking down at the bead, which had increased in width past twenty chiyustri. It looked perfectly spherical. "It looks perfectly spherical."

"I know what I felt! You press down on it, see what happens!"

Lori gave her lord a flat look, but carefully adjusted her grip on the bowl such that she held it in one hand, then pressed down on the bead with the other.

It was firm and solid under her finger, but ever so slightly it gave, as if she was pressing down on her thumbnail, only firmer. Eyes widening, Lori pressed down firmly, and she was rewarded with the sight of the bead squashing, deforming as if it was trying to maintain its round shape even as it was crushed down, matching the contours of the corner of the bowl…

Lori stopped imbuing the bead in progress.

The feeling under her pressing finger suddenly hardened, becoming as stiff as stone or glass. Cautiously, Lori removed her finger, and both she and Rian peered at the bead.

Or at least, what should have been a bead.

It remained pressed into the corner of the bowl. Carefully, Lori tilted the bowl the other way, and the bead came off easily. It had a  three-sided triangular corner, two of them textured like stone, as if someone had taken a ball of warm wax and… well, pressed it into the corner of the bowl. Rian gently picked it up and ran his thumb over the surface. "I can feel the marks your finger probably made when you were pressing down on it," he noted. "Well, I think we know how they get denomination marks onto beads now. They must use some variant of what you just did and have the beads grow in molds with the markings. Though it makes me wonder why they let it be spherical. If they can press it into a shape, why not a cube? You know, so it doesn't roll around on a table. Literally any shape with a flat surface would be an improvement! Make little discs or something."

"Wide shapes and shapes with edges would probably be difficult and dangerous to swallow," Lori pointed out.

Rian stared at her for a moment before an expression of realization came on his face. "Oh! Right, I forgot, you swallow these too. I suppose that's an important consideration, and round spheres make it easy. Do it for long enough, it becomes a tradition, and you don't just change tradition, not matter how sensible it would be."

"You've never needed to swallow three beads a day. You don't get an opinion on their shape." Looking at the non-spherical bead they had made, Lori winced at the thought of putting it in her mouth, much less swallowing it. That three-sided point was a clear hazard. Still, she dropped it into the jar with the other two.