SS3 (Complete Compilation) – "What If (nearly) EVERYONE In Lorian But Lori And Rian Was An Isekai?" (Patreon)

You… want me to be your lord?" Rian asked.

"Yes, that's what I just said."

"Uh… why me? I mean, there are other people…"

"I need a leader. Someone people listen to and can convince them to work."

"Again, there are other people," Rian argued. He seemed well aware that many of those people were likely listening in as they spoke. "There's Mary Sue over there—"

"It's Marissa!"

Rian ignored the interruption, though it made Lori twitch. "—Seraphine and her friends, Katherine over there is clearly the leader of her group, Mara is clearly respected… even Hatarine would be a good choice."

"Eh? Did someone say my name?"

"Go back to eating, Hatarine," Rian called out.

"Okay!"

"While that may be true," Lori said, "they are all clearly leaders of theirparticular group. That will skew their priorities." While she knew nepotism and factionalism were inevitable in any hierarchy, since there was a way to avoid such problems at the outset of her demesne, she'd intended to take it. "While I know nepotism and factionalism are inevitable in any hierarchy, since I have a way to avoid such problems at the outset of my demesne, I intend to take it."

"And that way is…?"

"Having you as my lord," Lori said. "You are clearly unaffiliated with the multiple groups that make up the settlement party, but have good relations with them… even that group who all speak that strange regional dialect that seems to have no relation at all to proper speech." She heard some isolated areas were like that, where the residents' colloquial idiosyncrasies had gone uncorrected for so long that what they spoke was nigh-unintelligible. Fortunately, education was wiping out such deviations, though clearly these edge-dwellers hadn't had that benefit.

"I'm sure they're all perfectly eloquent in their own dialect," Rian said. "But if you needed someone like that, why not ask Lee Fei?"

"Besides the fact she's clearly a Mentalist pretending not to be, and doing very badly at it?"

"Yes, besides that."

"She's a Mentalist," Lori said. "I can't trust her to not kill me and take my core to make this her own demesne."

"Why?"

Lori stared at him. "Why what?"

"Why can't you trust her to not kill you?" Rian said. "I mean, she hasn't struck me as particularly violent, hateful, or envious, so why would you think she'd want to kill you just to take this demesne away from you? I mean," he waved in his arm out in an arc, as if trying to gesture at the world, "it's not that far of a walk to find unclaimed land. If she wanted to, all she'd need to do is walk for maybe half a day and she could have her own demesne. And if she reallywanted to take this place from you, it would be smarter of her to do that first, so she could at least match you at an almost equal level. The fact she hasn't and has mostly been helping out dig pits for latrines and helped with excavating the dungeon should be a good indicator she's not out to murder you."

Those… were all very fair and reasonable arguments, and Lori didn't care. This was her life. "No. Be that as it may, I would feel safer if she wasn't constantly close to me."

"You realize she's sitting right there," Rian said, pointing diagonally over his left shoulder and towards where a young woman whose short hair straddled the line between light brown and pale red sat. "And can probably hear you."

Lori stared at him. "So?"

He stared back at her, then eventually sighed for some reason. "All right… say I agree to be your lord… what will the position entail?"

"You're capable and can get people to work. People listen to you. Your job will be to keep all of us from dying because we're out of food or out of wood or someone's son has slept with someone's daughter because there's nothing else to do around here and people are taking wood axes to heads."

"…yes, that last is looking disturbingly likely," he said, glancing towards the table where many of the black-haired young men who all spoke the same unintelligible dialect all sat, making faces at the food as they ate. One of them saw him and shouted something in a tone that was probably supposed to be dramatic, pointing at him with a frown.

"You are also not affiliated with any of the established groups, but seem to get along with them, and you were the one who organized excavating the cave for the Dungeon."

"Well, it needed to be done," he said. "The sooner we had a Dungeon protecting us, the safer everyone would have been. And if we helped, you'd be able to keep us safe with the water break while we worked."

"And the patrols keeping watch for wild beasts?"

"That's just common sense. There are dangerous beasts out there and we didn't have a Dungeon to protect us yet. Besides, it gave some of the hotheads something to focus on andkept us in meat."

"And the woodcutting parties?"

"Well, we needed wood, didn't we? Someone had to do it, and those guys weren't doing anything and didn't mind being asked."

"Well, Rian, I need more of that," Lori said. "I need to get people to work while I keep everyone safe. Everyone keeps looking at me like I'm going to set them on fire."

"Well, you do glare at people a lot," he said. "Especially when you're muttering about drowning people or setting them on fire."

Oh dear. Had she said those things out loud?

"Don't worry, I told them you were just cranky because you had wet socks," Rian said. "You're always cranky when your socks get wet."

The words were pulled out of her with rusty hooks. "Thank you," she managed to push out.

"You're welcome," he said cheerfully. "We're all in this together, after all."

"Which simply proves my point about why I chose you to be my lord," Lori said.

"Are you sure about this? I mean, for all you know, I might go mad with power and start declaring that all the women belong to me or something."

"Then I'm sure there's no shortage of people who would be willing to correct you by beating you soundly."

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Lori had felt so optimistic when she'd first made her core. In hindsight, she might have to admit the heady sensation of power had gone to her head. And she was willing to admit to herself—the only person such an admission mattered—that she might have assumed too much of the other settlers she'd joined with. She had thought that there would be some people who would know how to farm.

"Would you repeat that?" Lori said, trying to deny the evidence of her senses. Her ears, in particular.

"The number of people in the demesne who know how to farm are precisely two," Rian said. If he was troubled by the words coming out of his mouth, it wasn't obvious. "One if you discount purely theoretical knowledge."

Lori nodded. Yes, that was what she'd thought he'd said. A pity she'd been correct. "And these people are…?"

"The person with only theoretical knowledge is Lee Fei."

Of course the Mentalistwould know. And depending on where she had learned, it might actually be purely theoretical. "And the other one, who I gather must have practical knowledge as well?"

"Hatarine Weise."

Lori twitched. "The one who introduces herself 'hello, I'm Hatarine. I'm a perfectly ordinary girl and definitely not some kind of lady. That would be wrong. And very silly'? The addled idiot who's clearly some kind of lady in disguise, has a woman who is clearly some sort of servant with her, and accompanied by a whole group of clearly infatuated idiots who are also clearly lords and ladies of some sort, and are only slightly more successful at pretending?"

"Yup, that's the one," Rian said brightly. "I took the liberty of asking her to organize our farming, because she's literally the most qualified. She actually had farm tools with her. Well, she had a watering can and a hoe, but that's literally all the farm tools in this entire demesne."

Lori groaned. "We're going to starve to death."

"Not at the rate everyone's bringing in meat, no. If Hatarine proves to be even partly capable, then we'll hopefully have something to show for it later in the year, when we're all sick and tired of meat. Although some people are already sick and tired of meat already. They've started experimenting with some of the local plants, trying to find something that can be used as a spice of flavoring." He sighed. "I'm afraid they also managed to get their hands on many of the beast eggs that had been found in the territory of the demesne."

Lori grimaced. "Is that why I've been seeing so much yolkoil?"

"They call it mayonnaise."

"It's yolkoil, whatever it's called in that dialect of theirs."

"You don't like it?"

"It's a disgusting substance that shouldn't exist."

"What did she say?-!" someone at another table exclaimed.

"Go back to eating, Arashi! Not everyone likes mayo, don't antagonize her Bindership by insisting she like it!" Rian called out. He turned back to her. "Anyway, I've told them that if they find anything usable, they need to preserve it first so we can grow more."

"So they're probably going to strip every plant of it they find in the demesne bare and kill them."

"Most likely," Rian nodded.

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Despite everything, the farming was actually going well.

"Heave-ho! Heigh-ho! Heave-ho! Heigh-ho!"

Though she seemed to have the mind of someone half her age, Hatarine—her name was burned into Lori's mind, both because of her atrocious introduction and horror she had felt at learning the woman was their only farmer—actually seemed to be a capable farmer. And despite clearly being a bunch of lords—or at least their children—her entourage were actually a respectable labor force under her direction.

"Heave-ho! Heigh-ho! Heave-ho! Heigh-ho!"

Even now, they were laboring in the newly cleared ground that Hatarine had been working on. Said work had apparently included sowing the waste from the latrines onto the soil to fertilize it—Lori had assisted in that, desiccating the waste by removing all the waterwisps—after the area had been cleared of trees.

"Heave-ho! Heigh-ho! Heave-ho! Heigh-ho!"

Lori was still wondering how it had been cleared. She'd been in her dungeon when it had happened, excavating stone for building material and to expand the dungeon into a proper shelter in the event of a dragon, so she hadn't actually seen it, but the trunks had clearly been cut by a water cutter, or perhaps a Mentalist's thought force had been used as a cutting edge. The trees—and their stumps—had also been stacked haphazardly next to the hill her core was in—right over the corpses she had on ice for when she had Deadspeaking, as it happened— without even being stripped of branches and leaves. The rocks and other obstructions that had littered the ground had been put in a much smaller pile, a convenient building material for Lori or anyone else. People had already started using it to make firepits for semi-permanent bonfires.

"Heave-ho! Heigh-ho! Heave-ho! Heigh-ho!"

Getting the tree trunks from the pile, stripping them of branches and leaves, and then cutting them into logs had become the punishment duty for those who had kept bothering her about insisting on the features they wanted on the houses she'd been building. Everyone was getting a single large room with a stone floor and sun-facing doors and windows and liking it! She wasn't going to hear about packed dirt floors in front of the door or raised wooden floors, and if they wanted sliding paper doors, then they could figure out how to make paper themselves! Perhaps all the work they'll be doing with the branches, leaves and trunks will inspire them. Not everyone doing it was on punishment duty, of course, but it was conveniently endless, needful work that would keep such bugs occupied.

"Heave-ho! Heigh-ho! Heave-ho! Heigh-ho!"

As Lori watched Hatarine leading her besotted idiots and a few volunteers in turning over the earth, she finally realized what had been disturbing her about the scene she was watching.

"Rian," she called out, and he looked up from where was speaking with one of the demesne's few medics. "I need to talk to you."

He sighed, then turned back to the medic. "We'll talk later, all right Anna? Keep up the good work though. Hopefully we can keep people from getting sick."

The woman nodded cheerfully. "Sure, Rian! Later!" She walked away, a literal bounce in her step as Rian turned towards Lori.

"Yes?" he asked, and Lori twitched a little at the patient look on his face.

She let some of her irritation enter her voice as she pointed out at the scene sight before her. "Rian, where did all those farm tools come from?" Now that she was looking, in addition to the hoe Hatarina had, there were also several shovels, some people at the edges of the fields were using picks to soften the soil in preparation for further expansion, and there appeared to be several metal buckets being used to carry desiccated waste. "You said Hatarine had literally all the farm tools in the demesne on her, and they amount to a hoe and a watering can!"

"Oh, those tools!" Rian said brightly. "Some people made them."

"With what?"

He blinked. "Uh, pardon?"

"Some people made them, you said. Made them with what? The sound of metalworking is quite distinctive and carries, and I heard none of it. There was no smoke to signify attempts at forging using all this wet green wood, and I don't remember assisting in any forging by creating firewisps of sufficient heat to make iron workable. I saw no one with proper forging tools, and I definitely saw no anvils among the carts on the way here. And judging from what I can see of the tools even from this distance, they appear to be made of steel, which requires even higher temperatures to achieve. Untarnishing steel, at that, which requires not just iron and coal, but croco as well."

Rian was silent for a moment.

She rounded on him angrily. "Where did it come from, Rian?"

"I told you, it was made in the demesne," he said, then sighed. "The maker just… didn't want you to know they were making it in case you might be inclined to over-react. It was their condition for making the tools in the first place."

Lori's hands shook, and she clutched at her staff tightly. "Rian," she said, and she didn't know if she was angry or afraid, "is there another Whisperer in the demesne, hiding in all those groups?"

"No… I can definitely say that there isn't another Whisperer in the demesne," Rian said. "I should probably just show you. Just… please be reasonable? They don't want to hurt anyone, they just want to be left alone. You of all people can appreciate that, right?"

"Rian, explain this to me properly. Now!"

"A bunch of people have set up a little facility on the edge of the demesne," Rian said quickly. "It's where beasts and such get taken to be butchered now before they're carted here for you to put on ice. That's where some people have set up… shall we say premises… to do some things where they're less likely to be bothered. And not by you. You're not the one they're trying to keep things secret from, though they did it anyway because it was convenient."

"And who, exactly, are these people trying to hide from?" she asked, her voice filled with vitriol.

"The Japanese."

Lori stared at him. "Who?"

"Ah, right. The ones with the unintelligible dialect who keep making yolkoil and—"

"Oh. Them," Lori said flatly. A bit of the tension inside her eased. "Well, I can almost understand that." Their obsession with yolkoil was enough for her to not want to be near many of them. "But what does this have to do with farm tools?"

"The person who made the tools are afraid that if it gets out who's making them, that they'll start pestering her to make them swords and armor and crossbows and a table with a brazier on the underside…"

The tension lessened even more. Yes, that certainly sounded like some of them. Not all, probably, but as Lori couldn't tell them apart because they all looked alike from having the same hair color…

"Anyway, they don't go out there, since they don't participate in hunting anymore and most are a bit squeamish at the butchering part. Once the other groups figured that out, some of them started setting up there so they wouldn't be bothered while they worked."

"Which includes this smith."

Rian nodded.

Lori nodded. That all sounded… almost reasonable. However, her gaze was still piercing as she glared at Rian. "Why didn't you tell me we actually had a smith in the demesne?"

"You hadn't asked, and weren't working on anything that might need one."

"And the fact they have the resources to make untarnishing steel?"

"Uh… that's something I think you need to discuss with them, since I don't know the specifics myself."

"Take me to them, then," Lori said. "I want to meet this smith."

Rian might have hoped she hadn't noticed it, but he had made no mention of what the person in question was using for heat in their smithing. Even if she was inclined to believe Rian—which she wasn't at the moment—about there not being another Whisperer in the demesne, there was clearly some sort of resource being hidden from her. One that could provide enough heat to work steel.

She was notgoing to let something like that be hidden from her!

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Lori had a specific image of what life on the edges of a demesne was like. It involved flimsy buildings in some degree of disrepair, uneducated masses, poverty, and lords or ladies who were either lazy, corrupt, or incompetent. There'd be a militia base nearby, to give the edgeward settlement a reason to exist, as they'd provide the militia with goods or the services of bell-ringers. Beyond the edge, among the colors itself, would grow fields of crops that were technically illegal as they'd be against international treaty, though people were reportedly lax about that. Most people worked outside the demesne, tending to crops beyond the edge, hunting beasts and possibly making things without official oversight of the local lord or lady.

For good reason, she didn't want such a place in her demesne. After all, a properly run demesne wouldn't have such a place—except perhaps the militia to defend against external attack or banditry—and she intended hers to be properly run. However, it seemed that without her knowledge—but with her lord's tacit approval, since he knew about it—such a place had manifested in her demesne. She'd probably have to deal with that, once she was clear as to what exactly was going on and whether or not they had a Whisperer hidden among them.

After a long walk—more than two taums through the woods, with its changes in elevation, uneven ground, and obstructing undergrowth were not easy to traverse, or quick—they reached their destination. It was, strangely, not unlike the rising settlement near her core, with its two shelters, two bath houses—that were nothot springs despite some people pestering Rian, and even her, to make it so—and a growing number of box-like stone walls that just needed doors and roofs to become houses. Thankfully, there had been some people among them who were familiar enough with wood working to make doors, and simple tables and benches, even if the quality was a little crude.

The buildings at the edge appeared to be simple mounds, their outsides covered with dirt, possibly as insulation. While they seemed cruder than her own stone buildings, she was immediately disabused once she got a closer look at all the doors and windows. What she had thought was well-crafted wood—better, even, than the doors their shelters currently had—on closer examination turned out to be dark-brown metal, with perfectly flat surfaces, sharp lines, and perfect corners, as if they'd been built by a professional metal workshop at a demesne's capital, with their heavy metal rollers and experienced Whisperers.

Instead of merely being simple shutters, the windows themselves had transparent planes of glass on them, letting in what light there was. Or rather, letting lightout, since several of the mound-like buildings seemed illuminated from within. Lori twitched when she saw those, and grudgingly reminded herself to put some kind of light in the houses… eventually.

The plain, dull colors of the buildings stood in sharp contrast to the ever-shifting, almost twinkling colors of the Iridescence, though they blended in the ground inside the demesne at a distance. The discrepancy between the crude-looking structures and the clearly valuable materials used to make them gave the buildings a strange set of unreality, like the backdrop sets of a play, but in reverse.

The air was filled with the smell of blood and offal, which seemed to be coming from a tall, lean-to-like structure also covered with dirt, but was almost five paces high at its tallest point. Lori couldn't see what was going on there from where she stood, but she could see that one of the thick vertical posts holding up the high roof also seemed to be made of the same brown-colored metal, and it sounded like there was a lot of activity there. No one was visible, though from the movement she could see in the windows, there seemed to be people in the mound-like buidlings.

"Yes, I know it's a lot of metal," Rian said as she turned to him with a frown. "No, we haven't been keeping a mine secret from you. It's… look, it's better if you find out from the source, all right? Vanessa's workshop is over there." He pointed at one of the mound-like structures. "And yes, I know you don't like remembering names, but you'll probably want to remember this one."

"Don't tell me what to do," Lori said, her grip tight on her staff. Belated, she focused on her awareness of the demesne's wisps, trying to watch behind her, and stiffened as she suddenly became aware of more about the area she was approaching. Each of the mound-like building was filled with lightwisps to a degree that implied they were brightly lit, but that simply confirmed what her eyes could already see. What had her paying attention was how the triangular, lean-to structure was surrounded by lightningwisps, all of them flowing as if bound and imbued… except they were neither. To her senses, the lightningwisps had not been filled with magic or organized into some kind of binding, even as they acted like they were both, flowing through the air around the structure, likely making the hairs of anyone who passed through them rise up and tingle.

That… that was wrong. What was… that shouldn't…

She realized she'd continued to follow Rian as he approached one of the mounds. While it had looked like a solid structure that had lacked the windows of the other mounds when they'd approached from behind, from the other side Lori saw that it was open on the end that faced the Iridescence.

Inside the open structure, a young woman was standing next to a pace-high table that seemed to be made from a single piece of metal, the legs and tabletop all one fused piece. A shovel lay on the table, its shaft clearly a tree branch—it was still covered in bark, though someone had made the effort to trim it—with a metal shovelhead. As they entered, Lori saw the woman adjusting the shape of the shovel with her bare hands as she muttered to herself. The seemingly-metal shovelhead moved like it was made of something far softer as the woman used both hands to make the sides of the shovel curl up.

Rian stopped and seemed content to wait as the woman continued on with her work, and out of habit learned working in several metal workshops Lori did the same. The woman was wearing very clean clothes, Lori noted. A pair of trousers of what looked like blue-dyed cloudbloom, and a dark red shirt that didn't seem to have any buttons at the neck, implying it was a knitted fabric instead of a woven one. What was someone wearing such an expensive shirt doing—?

And then all such thoughts vanished from Lori's mind as the woman put one hand on the butt end of the shovel's shaft and, with a shimmering in the air like a heat haze, metal suddenly wrapped around the end of the wood, flowing down the shaft for a hand's length even as a crossbar suddenly formed under the woman's hand, forming a handle for the shovel. As Lori stared, speechless, the woman put the shovel back on the metal tabletop—which looked to be made of the same metal as the handle, a small part of her noted—and tapped three points on the metal handle, causing the metal to recede and reveal the wood underneath.

In another shimmer, a shining steel nail suddenly appeared gripped in the woman's left hand, which she casually placed point-first over one of the holes, adjusting it so it would go straight through the shaft. She leaned down, raising up her empty right hand as if she was lifting a hammer, and suddenly there was a hammer there, seemingly growing from under her fingers, the shaft end of the shaft shimmering as it extended up and formed a striking head. Lori watched as she hammered in the nail until it was deep into the shaft, then ran a finger over the remainder that protruded up. The nail shortened, seemingly—no, clearlyfusing with the rest of the metal of the handle. The young woman moved with a practiced casualness and confidence that spoke of experience and familiarity.

Rian coughed. "Hey, Vanessa."

The woman raised a hand. "Hold on Rian, just let me finish this." Moving with slightly more haste—an experienced apprentice or early journeywoman, then. No master would rush even a little because of an interruption—she hammered two more nails into the holes of the handle, securing it to the shaft. "Ah, done." She picked up the shovel. "I've got another shovel done for Hatari—oh shit."

"Vanessa, you know Binder Lori," Rian said bright cheerfulness. "She had some very intelligent questions about the tools people have been using, and I decided she deserved answers. Can you help her out?"

The woman's eyes flicked between Rian and Lori as her grip shifted on the shovel in her hands. Noticing the change, Lori deliberately raised up her staff, holding it metal-capped butt-end up—

And then Rian was standing between them. "Now, now, no need for that," he said hastily. "There are no enemies here. We're all in this together if we want to survive in the middle of nowhere. Vanessa, put that down. Please?"

The woman glared at him, but sighed and lowered the shovel, grounding the tip down on the ground that, now that Lori glanced at him, seemed to be a sort of sturdy metal mesh raised over bare dirt. "Well, I suppose this was going to happen eventually. Um, hi… Lori, right? I mean, your Bindership." She said the title awkwardly, as if she didn't quite believe it. "I come in peace?"

"I was told that I would be given explanations as to where the tools being used to farm were coming from. I thought I would be learning of a previously unknown Whisperer providing heat for whatever forge was smithing them." Lori gave the woman a flat look. "Explain. Now."

The woman twitched, her face changing into a frown, but she glanced at Rian, and altered her expression with clear reluctance. "I can… make metal."

"Clearly. How?" Such creation of matter… it was impossible. Matter could be altered, changed in state, but not simply just created. At least, not by anything known to humanity. Such things were, perhaps, the domain of dragons, who did strange things to magic and… and…

And wouldn't have Dungeon Binders had the opportunity to observe them when within their demes—?

No, no, focus!

"It's… just something I can do," the woman said, her eyes darting between Lori, Rian, and the opening leading out to the Iridescence. "I convert magic into steel "

"Rainbows," Lori snapped.

The woman shrugged, seemingly unphased by Lori's disbelief. "Believe me or not, that's what's happening." She held out one hand, palm up and slightly cupped, and as Lori watched a small metal bearing appeared in another heat haze-like shimmer, visibly growing larger until it was the size of a bead. "See? It clearly happened, so it's not impossible." She raised her hand and dropped the metal bead onto the tabletop, where it made a resonant sound of impact.

"As you can see, this isn't just something I can tell you to explain where the tools came from," Rian said. He'd moved aside once he thought they weren't going to attack one another, forming a triangle with each of them as a point. "I mean, you saw it happen, and you're still questioning it."

Lori stared at the metal bead, which had begun to roll along the table until the woman's hand scooped it up again.

"I know what you're thinking," the woman said. "You can't use me to corner the metal market. The steel is temporary." She held up the bead between two finger, and as Lori watched, the metal shimmered again and disappeared. "That's the quick way. The other way is that it slowly turns to dust once it runs out of… imbuement? Imbuement. Once it runs out, the metal will cease to exist. Useful for a quick scam, but not something that can be sold ethically. The only reason our tools are lasting is because I keep them imbued."

…

Well, there went that idea.

"And is that all you can do?" Lori said, focusing on the woman again.

The woman licked her lips, then coughed, covering her mouth. "S-sorry," she ground out. "Spit went down the wrong way."

"Just tell her the truth, Vanessa," Rian sighed. "She's smart, she's educated, and do you really want her to have a reason to be perpetually suspicious of you? My life is going to be hard enough after this, and this was basically just omission. If you straight up tell her an untruth, she might actually set you on fire like she keeps muttering about."

"She can try," the woman said, voice confident, even as she looked at Lori contemplatively. She sighed. "What the hell. There's not much point in lying anyway. I can do fibers and fabrics too, for a given value of 'fabric'." She touched the thumbs and forefingers of her hands together as if pinching something with all of them, and then pulled her two hands apart. A string appeared as she did, each end seemingly held between her pinched fingers, growing longer as her hands grew further apart. Then she flicked her hands downward, and from the single thread fell a white square of thin fabric. "I'm not very good at it though. The clothes I'm wearing took a while to make, and since it's not my efficiency my fabric dissolves a lot faster than my metal. And I can control temperature."

"Temperature," Lori said blandly. "Only temperature?"

"Hot and cold," the woman nodded.

"So you aren't the one who caused the lightningwisps around the structure over there," Lori said, pointing in the direction of the large lean-to-like building.

Rian made a strange gesture towards her with both hands, raising his eyebrows at the woman.

"No…" the woman said, suddenly slow and reluctant again.

"So there's someone else," Lori said, turning her glare at Rian. "Would theybe the Whisperer?"

Rian sighed. He looked at the woman. "Perhaps it's time we got the others for this?" he said.

The woman sighed. "Yeah, probably for the best. This is above my paygrade."

"Others?" Lori said sharply. "What others?"

Rian smiled. It was a sickly thing. "Remember when you said you picked me to be your lord because the other candidates were clearly leaders of their own groups?"

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The woman—Lori checked her hand, where she'd written a name in lightwisps—Vanessa had been amenable, at Rian's prompting, to enclose her… well, it was technically a smithy, since it was used for working and shaping metal, but the lack of furnace and forge made Lori not want to call it that. Workshop, perhaps? Whatever it was called, she was amenable to raising up metal panels in front of the open wall to enclose the room, using that strangely thin fabric as a curtain to cover the remaining opening as a door.

"After all, we wouldn't want the others to see Lori here and panic," Rian said, "or worse, talk to her."

"Yeah, that… would probably be bad," Vanessa agreed.

Lori said nothing, merely standing up against the far wall—the one covered by dirt on the outside—to protect her back and absently binding some lightwisps to illuminate the now darker room. The metal walls provided nothing to anchor the wisps to, so she warmed a spot with firewisps, and anchored the lightwisps there. She and Vanessa were left alone in silence as Rian went out to collect the ones he thought Lori needed to speak with. Fortunately, she didn't bother making small talk. Instead, after one last glance at Lori, the woman had gone back to making shovels. Naturally, Lori had watched.

The woman had started with a sheet of metal, which had appeared after she had traced her fingers over the metal table. Lori had been amused to see her take a stencil made of leather and use a metal stylus to trace out an outline on the metal. She had run her finger over the outline, and the metal had simply separated at the outline. Vanessa had then simply tossed the excess metal to the side, letting it clatter to the floor in a way that made Lori wince. She was about to pick up the metal—if the woman didn't want it, she was taking it—only to see that it was starting to dissolve. The solid-seeming metal was breaking apart, reducing into a silvery dust that eventually started to shimmer and fade away. In moment, the cast-off metal was gone, leaving nothing behind.

…

Ah. That was what was meant by the metal ceasing to exist. Yes, not really something they could sell without it being a fraudulent product.

The woman—Lori checked her hand—Vanessa began to shape the shovel-head-to-be, working it in her hands. It acted like stiff paper, flexing in her hands, yet holding its shape when she let go. Every change was accompanied by that strange heat haze shimmer, which was probably a result of her actively using whatever strange, deviated magic she possessed. Lori remembered the old aphorism, of how magic was means through which the soul affected the world beyond without the intervention of the body. Of course, by that criteria there were people who argued that meant art, music, and discourse was a form of magic, which was simply absurd…

The shovelhead was being attached to a branch—there some lengths stacked next to one wall—when Rian entered the workshop. He had regained his usual annoying cheerfulness, because he announced himself with a jovial "We're here!" as people followed behind him.

"Oh, shit," the first person entering after Rian said upon seeing Lori.

Vanessa nodded, her smile a bit sickly. "Yup, that's what I said."

The dark-haired newcomer—she had the same dark hair as the metal-creating woman, face as sun-tanned but arms slightly paler—frowned, glancing towards Lori. She mouth opened slightly, visibly changing what she was planning to say. Finally, she turned towards Rian, and her frown deepened. "I thought we had an agreement, Rian?"

"I agreed not to tell her about you, and I didn't," Rian said. "But I never agreed to lie for you, Katherine. Keeping yourselves secret was on you, and unfortunately for you, Binder Lori asked where all the tools were coming from. If it helps, she didn't try to kill Vanessa on sight, but she'd like answers now."

The next person to come stepped inside, took one look at Lori, then abruptly turned on his heel and started to walk out again.

"No, you get back here," the new woman said, raising her hand towards him, her fist clenched as if she was holding something. There was a shimmer, and for the first time Lori saw the shimmer had a slight tinge of a vivid yellowish green before it formed into a long metal rod with a hooked end. The hook caught his bicep, there was another green-tinged shimmer, and now there was a loop on the end of the rod, shackling the arm loosely. Slipping out of the loop would have been easy, but the way the new woman was holding the rod, it would be difficult for them do that. "If we have to deal with this, so do you."

"I didn't agree to that," the man said dourly. Still, he turned away from the door, leaning against one of the metal walls with his arms crossed, pointedly looking at the metal ring around his arm. Ring and rod shimmered and vanished as the new woman turned to face Lori again, her arms also crossed over her chest.

"The others should be here soon," Rian said. "Yoctoha is helping with the butchering, so Seraphine has agreed to attend on their group's behalf."

Even as they spoke, the fabric sheet that functioned as the door was pushed aside, and Lori tensed. She claimed the darkwisps within her clothes, under everyone's clothes, under the table, and hidden in the spaces among the little pile of branches, imbuing them and getting ready to put them between her and the Mentalist who had just entered. Though Lori didn't move save to tighten her hold on her staff, Lee Fei—of course she'd remember the name of a potential threat!—slowed, looking wary. "I have no quarrel with you, Binder Lori, nor do I seek your power. You need not fear me." She directed an annoyed and accusing look towards Rian, however, one that Lori found herself mirroring.

"Rian, why is she here?" She'd already known about the Mentalist.

Instead of answering, Rian turned to Lee Fei as some more people entered the workshop, pausing slightly as they saw Lori was there. "It's now or never. Well, now or later, but I don't think choosing later will make her any better disposed towards you."

The Mentalist's face remained completely impassive, but she became unnaturally still, in that way only Mentalists—and, Lori supposed, Dungeon Binders using Mentalism—could achieve. Eventually, she said, "To cultivate knowledge, let us be rid of lies." It had the sound of a quote.

"Wonderful," Rian said. "Then let's just wait for the others."

Lori didn't relax, even as Lee Fei visibly made a point of moving to stand at the point of the room farthest from Lori, and closed her eyes, her hands folded over her stomach. However, she didn't have the luxury of concentrating only on one person. Lori claimed the airwisps within the room, the earthwisp beneath and around the metal, the loose lightwisps in the air, and the firewisps around—

"Are you well?" Lori found herself saying, glaring intently at the man leaning against the wall.

The man raised a single eyebrow. "I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

"The air around you is far too hot. You must be feverish."

"Huh, you can tell that from all the way there? No, I'm fine. This is a normal body temperature for me. I naturally run a little hot."

"That sounds dangerously unhealthy. Have yourself examined by a medic as soon as possible. We cannot afford anyone being sick." They had medics, she distinctly remembered that…

He rolled his eyes at her. "As one of those medics, I examine myself and declare I'm in good health. Thank you for your concern."

"Get a second examination from someone else," Lori said flatly.

"See? I told you she was nice," Rian said cheerfully.

"You have low standards of nice, Rian," the new woman said. "Vanessa, it looks like we'll be meeting in your space, so…"

"Chairs coming up, boss," Vanessa said, setting her unfinished shovel aside for a moment. Lori watched with interest as she began producing metal chairs out of thin air in a shimmer of—Lori saw now—red heat haze. Unlike the shovel, she didn't need to bend and shape these. Instead, they seemed to grow from her hand instantly, tubes of metal seemed to grow from her hand to form the familiar shape of a chair's legs, back, backrest, and seat. Instead of being flat metal panels, the seat and back had a slight curve, and for some reason were perforated with little decorative holes. Vanessa made the new chairs quickly, clearly having far more practice with these than with the shovel heads. Soon, there were chairs all around the metal table, which also received extensions to make it a bit larger.

As she finished, four other people arrived, prompting one more exclamation of 'Oh, shit'. One immediately drew Lori's attention.

"What is hedoing here?" she said, pointing at the dark-haired young man who she recognized as one of the annoying ones who primarily spoke the same unintelligible dialect.

"He's been invaluable in keeping his fellows from finding out about this place," Rian said, nodding towards the other man, who nodded back, even though he looked uncomfortable and out of place. "How about everyone sit down so I can facilitate instructions?"

"Why bother?" the feverish man said as he pushed off from the wall and grabbed one of the chairs. It scrapped across the strange metal floor in a way that made Lori wince and had some people glaring at him. He ignored it, sitting down on the hair and slouching so far the back of his head was resting on the backrest of the chair, and it was not a high back. "She'll just forget all of them."

"Well, we can write your names down on the table in front of you so she'll be able to tell you apart," Rian said, rolling his eyes.

"Vanessa, if you'd make us some name plates, please?" the other metal-creating woman that—Lori checked her hand—Vanessa had acknowledged as her boss said.

Vanessa sighed, even as she started making lengths of triangular tube. "Vanessa do this, Vanessa do that…" she started to mutter.

"Vanessa, stop complaining," was the response as the tubes were set down on the table in front of the chairs.

"Hostile work environment! I'm complaining to HR."

Rian pulled back the chair that had been placed at one end of the table. "Binder Lori?" he said, a clear invitation.

Lori gave him one last annoyed glare—she would definitely be having words with him after all this was done, but for the moment she still needed him—before she took the seat at implied the head of the table. Tellingly there was no other seat at the opposite end of her, even though there were nine other people. She gave Rian another look and pointed at seats to her left. He took the hint, sitting where indicated. A still-muttering Vanessa deliberately took one of the triangular tubes, scribbling on it with the metal stylus.

The tip of the stylus shaved off metal like it was soft wax—didn't she say the metal was supposed to be steel?—and when the triangular tube was set down, it had Rian's name in all capitals, lopsided handwriting like that of a child just learning. Or an adult who couldn't be bothered to do better, which was in fact the case. Fortunately, it was still perfectly readable, though a part of Lori twitched to look at the sloppy writing.

One by one, everyone sat down. Lee Fei sat furthest from Lori at the right of the table, an empty space opposite her, her hands flat on the tabletop. The feverish one sat down next to her, still slouched. Next to him was yet anotherdark-haired woman, her hair showing brown at the edges where light managed to pass through it, who's smile was wide and reminded Lori far too much of Rian's. The next seat closer to Lori was occupied by the second metal-creating woman, whose face was smooth and composed, her hands on the table with the fingers interlaced together. Between her and Lori sat a dark-haired young man who looked suspiciously like one of those idiots with the unintelligible dialect.

On the other side of the table, opposite the feverish man, sat a woman about Lori's height, with pale blonde hair that had been pulled back in a tail with a strip of leather cord. Lori vaguely recognized her as one of three people close to Hatarine who didn't obviously obsess about her. Disturbingly, she had a curved sword hanging from a belt at her waist. Next to the blonde was either a child or a very small woman. Notably, unlike the others who were wearing simple shirts or blouses, and cloudbloom trousers, this woman was wearing a dress. It was a well-made, hardy dress, but clearly a dress, of the sort worn by more well-off women when they were being idle in public at cafes. Her impractically long, more brilliantly bright blonde hair was held in place away from her face with metal hair clips, and Lori suspected that, seated as she was, her hair was touching the floor. On the table in front of her, her hands resting on it possessively, was a thick book that had actual metal hinges and fittings, with what looked like a locking mechanism of all things keeping the book shut. Vanessa and Rian sat in the remaining places, the table in front of the former full of metal shavings that were slowly dissolving into non-existence.

"All right, then," Rian began. "You've already met Vanessa, and you actually remember Lee Fei. Next to Lee Fei is Stephen, one of our technically-medics, cooks, and alchemist. He's keeping himself secret because if they knew about him, some people would pester him to make black powder for them. He only really represents himself and his friend Anna, but since they're the most experienced medics we have, I thought you should meet."

"Damned eehsecays," he sighed.

"You're a 'damned eehsecay' too, Steve," the woman next to him said cheerfully as Vanessa moved one of the triangular tubes in front of him, angled so that the crudely written name on it face Lori.

She was met with an annoyed elbow for her trouble. "Don't call me 'Steve', Mary Sue."

"And on that convenient transition, the woman next to him is Marissa," Rian said smoothly as the two started to elbow at each other like children. "She's one of our hunters who goes out to kill beasts and bring them back for butchering. She's here to represent the simbohls." The what?

"Hi!" The woman waved at Lori for some reason as Vanessa push one of the name triangles towards them.

"Vanessa's boss there is Katherine dela Rosa, Katherine for short. She's the leader of the gising." He said the last word strangely, stressing the two separate syllables. It was either some dialect term, or a completely made up word.

"Which means what, exactly?" Lori demanded.

"I am told it means something like 'Awake'," Lee Fei said from the end of the table. "Fascinating word. Meaning and usage is completely contextual, with no change in form or structure to denote alteration of meaning…"

"Oh, the stories I can tell you…" Marissa said.

"Moving on," Rian interrupted. "This is Senou Kaede-san—"

"Hai hai, Kaede desu."

"—who, yes, is one of the Japanese eehsecay. He's one of the more level-headed of them. Well, there are a lot who are pretty level-headed and just want to get along, get by and survive, but unfortunately the loud, disruptive idiots are the ones who stand out. He's been a big help in helping us keep the Industry Complex secret from his fellows."

"Don't want baka get sword," he said, shaking his head fiercely. "Worse, gun."

"We won't give them any anyway, but having them bothering us about it will be a pain in the ass," Katherine said.

"Also, Kaede-san got lucky and saw someone doing magic that they shouldn't have been able to," Rian said.

Kaede—Kaede-san? His name triangle read 'Seno Kaideh'— shrug. "Luck stat, es-es-ar-eeh-ecks."

"Back at the end, we have Mara Clara, or simply Mara. She's also one of our medics, and is the one who accompanies hunters out into the Iridescence in case anyone gets injured."

"Not that it is often need," Mara said. "Those who venture for have learned to git gud and are not unskilled."

Lori frowned. "What was that?"

"Git gud," Lee Fei said. "It is difficult but the meaning can be roughly translated as 'attain excellence'. It denotes one who has honed their skills to sharpness, cultivating their technique to ascend to the heavens."

For some reason, the feverish one—Lori checked his name plate—Stephen started coughing.

"Are you sureyou're not sick?" she said sharply.

"Sorry," he said, his voice deep and strained for a moment. "Spit went down the wrong way. I'm fine."

"While Mara isn't the leader of her group—that's pretty much Hatarine, at least in essence—she's the most level-headed person among them, and they trust her to represent them properly."

"And they don't trust any of the others to use their absence to not get some sort of advantage with Hatarine," Stephen said dryly.

"That as well," Mara confirmed, even though the statement made no sense to Lori.

"Haremu skeellu es-es-ar-eeh-ecks," Kaede said, whatever that meant.

"And finally, we have Seraphine," Rian said, which by the process of elimination was likely the hopefully small woman with the impractical hair. The alternative was that she was a child. "She represents the other shardessi, who can't be here because they're busy butchering our meat for storage or are still out on the hunt."

"Binder Lori," the small woman nodded, her voice too deep to be a child's, confirming Lori supposition as Vanessa put the last name triangle in front of her. "I give you my word that none in our group wishes you any harm, or desire any sort of position or influence in your government. If we could live out… there—" she waved in the direction of the Iridescence, "—without being in any danger of Iridiation, we would do so. None of us wish to usurp your position of power and leadership. We just want to live quietly and do our research. "

"Join the club," Stephen said just loudly enough to be audible.

"Your words are noted," Lori said, glancing one last time at Rian. "We shall see the truth of them. Answer me this: who is the Whisperer in hiding?"

Whatever they were all expecting, it wasn't that. There were confused expressions, and some exchanged looks.

"To my knowledge, there are no other Whisperers in the… the demesne," Katherine said slowly.

"Then explain the lightningwisps around the long building," Lori said, pointing towards one of the walls, on the other side of which would have been the large lean-to-like building.

"Lightni—oh!" Katherine said, snapping her fingers for some reason. "The bug repellant field." Was that what that was? "That's Trini's work. She set it up to keep away bugs being drawn in from all the smells. She's not a Whisperer. She's a gising, like Vanessa and me."

Lori suppressed the, admittedly facetious, urge to correct her grammar. "Not a Whisperer," she said flatly. "She controls lightningwisps, but she's somehownot a Whisperer. Do you take me for a fool?"

"She's not a Whisperer because she's like us," Vanessa interrupted. "Because she's gising. I told you I can control temperature, right? Well, Trini can control ele—lightning. Like me, her magic has nothing to do with Whispering."

"Your magic," Lori said, voice still flat. "Your magic that involves creating metal and fabric, and controlling temperature."

"Or lightning," Katherine said, and Lori turned to face her. "Or weight. Or light and sound. Or time. Or force. Or magic itself."

"Huh. That explains a lot," the woman next to her—Lori couldn't be bothered to check the name—said, sounding thoughtful. She seemed to be counting on her fingers. "Just those?"

Katherine glanced sideways at her. "Yes, just those. As I understand it, Whispering controls heat, light, shadows, mineral solids, water, and air. And you can'tmake metal. Not out of the air, at least. The very fact that we can create dreamsteel should already be a big sign we're not Whisperers, even if there's some overlap. From what I have heard, both Whispering and Deadspeaking can change the shape of teeth and bones, and Mentalists can perceive lightningwisps to a degree."

That… was true…

…

There was a logical conclusion to be reached from this. One that Lori had been avoiding. One that was the obvious conclusion to reach when she first saw Vanessa making metal out of nothing.

"You possess a new type of magic," Lori said slowly. "One that is neither Whispering, Deadspeaking, Mentalism, nor Horotracting." Or an old one. One that predated memory. "How?"

"We don't know," Vanessa said. "We just… woke up able to do this."

"We had to teach ourselves," Katherine said. "We didn't trust the government not to just lock us up for study. Or use us. Or try to breed us."

"Yup, that sounds like the government, all right," Stephen said, nodding amiably. "Assholes."

"Present company exempted, I'm sure," Rian said cheerfully.

"Oh, like being set on fire is any better for most people." He looked at Lori as he said that.

"I currently lack the facilities to contain anyone for study," Lori said. "And you have made yourself of use of your own volition. And breeding is disgusting." Slowly, she looked towards the others. "I know why the… the gising—" for some reason, people winced. Ugh, well, it was her first time trying to pronounce it! "—are in hiding. The draw of unlimited metal tools… unlimited metal and fabric… However, by the fact you identify as separate groups, you are not all gising." Was that closer? Ugh, she hated pronouncing terms wrong! It made her look uneducated! "Why do you hide?" She looked at Stephen. "Surely it can't be simply to hide your skill with alchemy."

He nodded towards her. "To clarify, even though you call it firewisps, you can't actually control fire, right? Not the actual, burning fire."

A pointedly leading question, so Lori simply nodded, even as she concentrated on her connection to her core, her awareness of her demesne's wisps…

He raised his finger, and suddenly there was a flame dancing there. It was a clear, yellow flame like a candle flame, but…

"Wait, what are you burning?" Vanessa exclaimed. "An open flame needs fuel! You can't be burning the air, it's the wrong color!"

"Oh, right, you haven't seen this before," Katherine muttered.

"Is it your finger? Are you burning fat from your pores? That's it, isn't it!"

"You know the answer is 'magic', right," Stephen said with a smirk.

"Bullshit!" What? "There are rules! For there to be flame, something needs to be burning, even if it's just the molecules in the air!"

"Magic. It's burning my magic as fuel."

"So, what, you can convert your magic into a flammable substance?"

"Magic is fire. Fire is magic." The feverish man shrugged, and the flame disappeared. "The magic itself is what's burning, with no need for intermediaries like fuel. Although I'll admit, they do help."

Firewisps. Lightwisps. Heat and light, as would have been natural for an open flame… and yet, it was like the wisps had simply spontaneously appeared. No source. No bindings.

Slowly, Lori turned her attention to Lee Fei.

"I am not a Mentalist," the woman said immediately, "though it was a convenient, if dangerous, ruse and obfuscation for this one to allow you to believe so. While there are curious commonalities that I wish to study further should I ever meet a true Mentalist and risk revealing myself in this manner, in mechanism we differ greatly and our similarities are superficial. I am in truth a zian, one who seeks the ascend on the path of immortality by cultivating my mind and skill through effort and study. To that end, I study and learn from the world to be better study and learn myself."

Oh. Someone from the Mysteries of alknowledge. Well, she supposed a particularly driven one could be mistaken for a Mentalist. In fact, this one had been. She supposed zian was some kind of rank or position within the Mysteries, probably from some distant demesne she'd never heard of.

Lori simply nodded, and turned towards—she checked the name on the triangular tube—Marissa. "And you? You represent the… simbohls, correct? What are you, exactly?"

Marissa grinned. "Simbohls are the pretty guardians, the warriors of truth, love and justice! With the powers love, hope, faith, righteousness, fear, anger, and despair, we—"

"They're Magical Girls," Stephen said blandly.

"Hey! Did I interrupt your little show? And that's reductive! We've got guys too!"

"Oh. Faceless. That explains much," Lee Fei said.

"You have despairpowers?" Vanessa said, sounding incredulous. "Did anyone happen to make a contract with—"

"Enough!" Lori snapped. Fortunately, everyone quieted. That didn't always works with her. "Spare me the theatrics and give me the explanation."

"Simbohlscan use powerful magic, but only when they're in a state of emotional extreme," someone said. "Those emotions are love, hope, intense belief in an external force, intense personal certainty, fear, anger or despair. Each person has a specific emotion they must feel intensely to manifest their power. In practice, many potential simbohlsnever realize their power, as the probability of attaining the correct emotional extreme is highly improbable. This is not helped by the fact that until they simbohlays, usually by facing possibly death, there is no way to know for certain if someone is a sihmbol or not."

Slowly, everyone turned to look at the diminutive—Lori checked her name—Seraphine. The book in front of her was open, and she was perusing a page near the front of the book. At their looks, she shrugged, closing her tome. There was a click as the lock sealed shut again. "Simbohls are not unknown to us. Neither are payrotergists." What?

For some reason, the dark-hair—Lori checked. Seno Kaideh—sighed. "Riajuu…" He sounded both bitter and exasperated.

––––––––––––––––––

Lori's hand made a satisfying impact as she slammed it palm-down onto the metal table, which reverberated after the initial strike. The one sitting next to her, opposite Rian, actually jumped in surprise at the sound. It certainly made everyone turn to look back towards her, cutting off the budding comments from the others arrayed around the table.

"I find it very doubtful that," Lori began, "that my demesne is populated by those with deviant magics simply by chance."

"Deviant?" the feverish one—Lori checked—Stephen said indignantly.

"It's not Whispering, Mentalism, Deadspeaking or Horotracting. Hence, it deviates from the known magics. Though given that it seems at least one group managed to research and quantify it, perhaps it's simply rare." Lori looked towards the small blonde—Seraphine, according the name in front of her—wondering what else was written in her book. Given the fittings on it, it was probably a personal notebook of some sort. Most books did not usually come with metal hinges and a built-in locking mechanism.

"It wasn't," Katherine nodded. "The plan was to try and set up a little settlement of our own, some place where we…" She chuckled for some reason, "where we wouldn't have to hide what we could do, were we could conduct our studies without having to worry about being seen as test subjects and confined, or worse forced to use our abilities in ways we objected to."

"Unfortunately," Lee Fei said, "we found that none of our abilities could create a protective field against the Iridescence. Despite much experimentation, none of our… deviant magics could protect against it. At best, we were only able to slow its growth in the experiments conducted, but in comparison, cleansing with water proved to be far safer and more efficacious, and so the methodology was deemed inefficient and impractical."

Next to him, Stephen made an inarticulate sound of complaint, disagreeing for some reason.

"So we decided to try and join a small settlement, hopefully with a wizard who might be understanding of our plight," Seraphine said, her fingers stroking the cover of the book under her hands.

"But thinks happened, the two nice ones had that terrible accident, and instead we got you," Stephen said dryly.

"They died, I didn't," Lori said. "Any promises they made with you died with them."

"Oh, don't worry, we never got around to approaching them," the feverish man said, before closing his eyes and yawning. "They just made the same promises to us as they did everyone else: owning our own land, making our own future, being part of a glorious new beginning as we make a great new demesne that will last forever… that Elceena was really full of herself."

Lori frowned. "Who?"

"The dead Whisperer."

Lori waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, her." Well, she was dead, so she didn’t matter now.

"If I may ask, Binder Lori," Rian said. "What happens now?"

And that was the question, wasn't it? Her concern had been if there had been a Whisperer hiding among her population, a secret threat to her life that she needed to deal with. Instead, she had found…

…

Huh.

"This has to end," she found herself saying. "This arrangement is inefficient, adversely impacts productivity, and in the long run is detrimental to my demesne as a whole. While the butchering can remain here, provided it doesn't adversely affect the quality of the meat, all the other operations are best transferred back to the center of the demesne, near my Dungeon."

Everyone stared at her.

"Could you please say that again, Binder Lori?" Rian said. "I'm not sure we understood."

Lori sighed, but repeated herself. "This arrangement is inefficient, adversely impacts productivity, and in the long run is detrimental to my demesne as a whole. While the butchering can remain here, provided it doesn't adversely affect the quality of the meat, all the other operations are best transferred back to the center of the demesne, near my Dungeon."

"She literally repeated herself," Lee Fei said. She seemed bemused.

"You… want us to set up near the core? In front of everyone?"

"What part of 'hiding from the annoying eehsecays' wasn't clear? No offense, Kaede-san," Vanessa said.

"Offense, but understand."

"So?" Lori said. "You have fists, don't you? If they annoy you, make your displeasure known."

They stared at her.

"Are you telling us," one of the woman who could create metal—Lori checked her name. Katherine—said slowly, "that you're fine with us attacking other people?" For some reason, her tone was disapproving.

"If they make a nuisance of themselves, I see no reason why you shouldn't strike them to inform them of this fact. Of course, they might choose to strike you in return, not comprehending how annoying they are, but that will be for you to deal with." She paused as a thought for a moment. "Just don't kill anyone. Until I learn Deadspeaking, our labor force is limited."

For some reason, the feverish one—Lori checked his name: Stephen—laughed. "That's where you draw the line? Don't kill anyone, we need them to do things?"

"Of course. Usefulness to the Dungeon Binder is why all demesne have laws against murder. The dead cannot pay taxes or perform skilled labor. It is also why criminals are executed. The useless cannot be allowed to continue to impair the demesne."

"Oh, I likethis one…"

"You would," the woman next to him—Lori checked her name: Marissa—sighed.

"I disagree," Lee Fei said. She had straightened in her chair, her hands flat on the table, and was looking disapproving. "While violence has its place, using it simply because one is… irritated at another is not conducive to peace, order, and the greater good. It merely creates oppressors and oppressed, violence breeding violence. As a zian of the Singing Steel Academy, it is my duty to oppose this."

"Doesn't that make you an oppressor by definition?" Stephen said with a smirk.

"I am aware of the hypocrisy, but my path is clear. Admittedly, this dichotomy is something I must meditate upon later…"

"For someone who claims not to be a Mentalist, you certainly behave like one," Lori noted. She began to bind the firewisps around the feverish man next to the supposedly-not-a-Mentalist in preparation for violence, bound airwisps to erupt in sound to disorient her, bound lightwisps and darkwisps to rid her of sight. Had they not been standing on metal, she'd have bound the earthwisps in the ground to sink the woman down, but alas, she would have to make do. Lori claimed what lightningwisps were still stored in the quarts embedded in her staff, preparing to conduct them down her staff's wire and across the metal floor towards the woman's feet as she stood, her chair being pushed back and skidding along the floor. "Do you intend to challenge me? Despite claiming you have no quarrel with me nor seek my power over this demesne?"

"What worth are ideas that cannot withstand challenge?" Lee Fei said, standing as well, and Lori prepared to unleash her bindings. "Binder Lori, face me in reasoned argument! I will show you your reasoning is flawed!"

…

Lori stared at the woman.

"Huh," Rian said. "That certainly didn't go where I thought it would. However, I feel compelled to point out that as the Dungeon Binder, Binder Lori has the literal and figurative power to make such a declaration, as the traditionally accepted government and hence the sole lawmaker of this demesne. And personally, while I like the thought of just being able to punch someone who annoys me in the face, I feel there should be some sort of restriction to prevent someone just, say, punching some random person simply because they feel like it."

"The random person would be well within their rights to strike back," Lori said, not looking away from Lee Fei, though she did risk sitting down again.

"And if the odds are two to one against them? Or five to one? What if five people just decided to start beating the next person that walks by because they happen to be bored? I believe that is the scenario that Lee Fei wishes to avoid."

"Lord Rian is broadly correct," Lee Fei said, sitting down as well. She leaned forward, elbows on the table and hands folded. "While such a rule benefits the strong, the weak will suffer. In a place were all are equals, perhaps such a rule, to strike one who offends you, and thus inviting them to strike back, may take the form of some justice." By her expressions, she was merely being rhetorical. "But where the weak and strong mingle, is it not more just to stay the hand of all, that the weak need not fear, and the strong not abuse their might?"

Lori tilted her head. "Is this the 'reasoned argument' you wish to have?"

"It is, Binder Lori."

"Then I will say that your reasoning is flawed, for you are concerning yourself with hypotheticals, while I must face reality," Lori said. "And the reality is that because there is a group in my demesne considered so annoying that several skilled workers with irreplaceable skills have prioritized hiding from them for their own comfort over productivity, efficiency and contributing to the work that needs to be done, the demesne has been severely and negatively impacted as a whole. Because they need to hide, they have not contributed to the work of making houses for the other citizens of the demesne. They have allowed the… the…" She paused. "Rian, what are they called, again?"

"The Japanese, Binder Lori."

Lori nodded. "All those in hiding here have allowed the Japanese to dictate their movements, causing suffering for those that could have otherwise benefited from their overt presence." She gestured angrily at the building around them. "Since the founding of the demesne, they have managed to raise several of these buildings. Setting aside the issue of quality, in the same amount of time, the houses I have been building do not even have roofs yet."

"Ano, not fair blamed for this," the sole Japanese at the table—Lori reflexively checked in front of him for his name. Seno Kaideh—said, looking indignant as he spoke brokenly. "Accurate, not fair! Hai, some annoying. but more contributing people, work hard. Discrimination! Racist! Shame you!"

"None of us are muricans, Kaede," Stephen said. "That's their weird societal psychological hang-up, not ours."

The indignation deflated in a tired-sounding sigh. "Shit."

"No, you make a good point, Kaede-san," Rian said, giving the younger man across from him a smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. "All eccentricities aside, you and your fellows are valuable contributing members of the demesne, and should be treated as such. So I ask you: if everyone here were to come out of hiding and start utilizing their abilities to more publically contribute to the demesne, how would your fellows react?"

The young man winced at the question, but sighed and said, "Many… will be annoying. But… after many days…" he sighed. "Will asking be taught magic."

"And that'snot happening," Katherine said. "Being gising is rare and restricted to people from a certain area."

"Simbohlisimis pretty rare too, and needs specific conditions to unlock," Marissa said. "Even if they have it, getting to unlock it is, as the phrase goes, 'courting death'."

"Even if they could learn… No. Just… no," Stephen grimaced emphatically.

"I'm not a teacher," Seraphine said. "I can barely teach someone who alreadyknows how to do magic. And as Katherine said, they are unlikely to have the gift."

"I would be willing to teach them what I know, if they are open to receiving instruction," Lee Fei said.

Everyone blinked, including Lori, and turned to stare at the woman.

"Honto ni?" Kaede said, sounding breathless. "R-really?"

"Of course. I would welcome more companions along the path of cultivation. Let us defy the heavens together."

"I have to ask," Rian said, "why didn't you say so sooner?"

"The subject did not arise."

"If I may interrupt your reasoned argument, I have a proposal."

It took Lori a moment to place the voice. The woman had been sitting so still and so quietly she had completely slipped Lori's mind… and, it seemed, the others as well. Everyone turned in surprise to the pale-haired woman at one end of the table, who had simply sat there after she had been introduced.

"Of course, Mara," Rian said. His bright smile implied he hadn't forgotten about her at all. "What do you have in mind?"

"Merely that the matter of abuse of force between citizens has a long-established solution," the pale-haired woman said. "Binder Lori need only empower a small group of trusted individuals to act as peacekeepers. They would then use their judgement to determine whether any altercation is an oppressive abuse of power, or an exchange of violence between equals both willing and able to face the consequences of their actions. If it is the former, they can intercede, and administer chastisement as needed. If the latter, then they can ensure the duel reaches its end, and is not interrupted by griefers."

"Sorry, what was that last?" Rian said. For some reason, Stephen had started snickering.

"Griefers. It is an ancient word that does not translate well. Considered more heinous than those who spread misfortune through the ancient practice of gravelording, griefers are vile miscreants who inflict pain and hardship on others, disrupting the proper order of society not for personal gain, but simply because it gives them pleasure to do so. They are twisted souls, known to be willing give away great sums freely as long as doing so causes others misery and unhappiness."

"Ah. They sound like terrible people."

"H-how would that even work?" Vanessa asked, confused.

"Tax laws," Mara said.

Lori and many of the others nodded in understanding, clearly familiar with the twisted logic of taxation.

"Ah. Like relative leaves you house, but also fifty years taxes?" Apparently, so was Kaede, in his own fashion.

Mara nodded solemnly. "Would this be an acceptable compromise, Binder Lori?"

Lori considered it. "I will have to write down some laws first."

Lee Fei frowned. "The idea itself has merit, but it can still be implemented without the allowance for violence upon others."

"Violence is inevitable," Mara said, her voice firm and certain. "Given so, it might as well be bound by conventions that work for most involved. When two or more people mutually wish to inflict violence upon each other, inflicting your own belief that they shouldn't is arrogant in the extreme, and merely allows grudges to fester into hatred."

"Violence for the sake of violence is barbaric," Lee Fei said, looking very disapproving. "Still, I acknowledge that the proposed compromise has merit and addresses my most urgent concern. I withdraw my argument for now, Binder Lori, and wait to see how this unfolds."

Lori didn't actually care. "I don't actually care," she said. "The notion of deputized peacekeepers shall be taken under advisement, once I have laws for them to enforce. However, you all must stop limiting yourself purely to hide from these annoying people. With only a single farmer directing what needs to be done, food production has slowed and requires considerable labor to compensate, which has limited our ability to put roofs on houses. Something that created metal will be able to do quickly."

The metal creator Vanessa winced, looking guilty.

Lori pushed on. "At the moment, my demesne is also lacking in the proper infrastructure to protect against dragons. Something I cannot focus on building because my attention is divided between making homes and infrastructure. Infrastructure of the sort that require buildings such as what you have already constructed."

"You wish us to work for you," Seraphine said.

"You are already working. I wish you to do so with your full ability instead of a limited fraction that keeps you from being discovered and harassed. Or do you actually likemaking this trek every day?"

"What is so difficult about it?" Lee Fei said. "A short, pleasant walk is quite refreshing."

"Not all of us have unlimited stamina like you, Fei," Stephen said. "Personally, I'd be quite happy to work out of my house like a civilized person."

"In that case, speaking only for myself and the people under me, we will be more willing to work openly once we have seen those laws and judged that they align with our interests," Katherine said. "And while I agree in spirit that people shouldn't just be able to be violent on each other for no reason… being able to punch some annoying asshole in the face to make him stop bothering me is an appealing thought."

"I'm fine to come out right now so long as you guarantee I can punch anyone who keeps annoying me and doesn't go away when I tell them to," Stephen said with a bright, almost Rian-like smile. "Also, I'll need an indoor workshop. Not good to do alchemy out in the rain, after all. Bad for the quality of the finished product."

"Can you make soap in large quantities?" Lori asked.

"As long as I have some kind of oil or fat. I'll need to have dibs on all the fat being removed by the butchering. No promises about how good it smells, though."

Lori nodded. "You will have your workshop."

"I'll have to discuss this with the others," Seraphine said. "I'm a representative, so I can't make a definite decision on something like this."

"Most of us are private by nature," Marissa said thoughtfully. "But if we're allowed to hide what we are during the day, we're willing to make full use of our abilities working at night."

Lori had to blink at that one. "Why?"

"We work better when there's no one to judge us. Shy boys and girls are we," Marissa said, also smiling brightly. "It's how we cleared the fields for planting."

The urge to stare at the woman's claim arose, but Lori pushed it down.

"I do not feel that my friends and I need to change anything in how we currently comport ourselves," Mara said. "We already work to better the demesne. However, I'm sure they will enjoy such a change. Hatarine has made comments about wishing better tools. A seed drill and plow, I believe were what she wanted, to increase her efficiency in planting more fields."

"I'll get the design from her," Rian said. "Vanessa, would you be willing?"

"Sure. I think I have a rough idea of what a plow looks like, but I've never heard of a seed drill…"

"Want no one punch no reason," Kaede said. "Punch with reason, fine."

Lori nodded. "Those are acceptable terms. I will take them under advisement." She rose to her feet, adjusting her grip on her staff.

"Wait, you're leaving already?" Marissa said.

"Yes. I have more things to build, and now laws to write down," Lori said. "Including a workshop. I expect you to get to work on that soap." That last was to the feverish man.

"How much am I going to be paid per batch?"

"Consider it a requirement of your residency in my demesne. Unless you wish to leave?"

For some reason, he smirked. "Your house, your rules?"

"My everything, my rules."

"Fine. I was getting bored of making charcoal anyway."

"Please continue making charcoal, we need the heat," Rian sighed.

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"I'm surprised," Rian said as they walked away from the converted workshop and back to the center of the demesne. "I thought you'd be more… well, less compromising."

"They have magic," Lori stated the obvious. "Self-taught magic, but functional nonetheless. Given that I am trying to accomplish what they have, that they were able to teach themselves to use their own deviant magic without having any point of reference of what could be done is a notable achievement."

She also wasn't stupid. Given the depth of their capabilities were unknown, it would be foolish to rouse their ire. Though at least she'd been able to learn Lee Fei was merely an academic and not a Mentalist. With that confirmation, she might be able to recruit the woman. Even with only theoretical knowledge and an imperfect memory, it was likely she knew something useful. Academics, especially of the mysteries of alknowledge, tended to know all sort so disconnected things, even if they usually had a specific field of interest.

As to the others…

Dungeon Binders could do all four kinds of magic. The only reason she was currently incapable of anything beyond Whispering was because she had no one to teach her Deadspeaking, Horotracting and Mentalism.

What if the abilities of a Dungeon Binder wasn't limited to simply these four magics? If no one knew these deviant magics were possible…

Lori imagined herself being able to create metal out of nothing using magic, and smiled.

Though now she was going to have to come up with a list of laws…

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Epilogue

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Fei stayed seated with the others after Dungeon Binder Lolilyuri had left. As always, the Xian took the opportunity to circulate the essence in her core. It was familiar at this point, like casually pushing an already-spinning wheel. The weeks in the Iridescence had slowly degraded her core's circulation, and she had found that the corrupted spirit crystals grew even faster upon her person than it did for anyone else. While her core's circulation had not slowed so much that she had been sent back to the core acceleration stage, it had seemed like a real possibility as thoughts had slowed, her reflexes had dulled, and her body had weakened.

Finally, something struck the metal panel next to the opening that served as a door, followed quickly by another.

"All right, she's gone," Katherine declared, and everyone sighed in relief.

Stephen immediately ruined the mood. "See?" he said with a smirk, "no one had to say the words 'we come from another world' at all."

"Well, it might have been necessary," Marissa said, an exaggerated pout on her face. "She could have asked how we have the abilities we do that have never been seen on her world, and we'd—"

"Be able to use at least a dozen other misleading lies of omission before we even had to consider being in the same ballpark as the truth," he interrupted the Symbol as a flame appeared, dancing over the Pyroturgist's finger. "But the point is moot, because we didn't have to tell, which means Iwas right, so there."

"As obnoxiously as he puts it, Stephen is right," Katherine said. The Awakened was in what Marissa had told Fei was called the Pose of Gendo, a stance that in their world was apparently meant to be powerful and intimidating. From her body language, however, she had done so simply because she found it comfortable. "As long as she doesn't start asking personal questions—"

"And she won't, because she literally doesn't care," Vanessa said across from her.

"—yes, that, than we should pretty much be in the clear. At least with her. I'm still not crazy about the idea of coming out to all the normies. Again."

"Oh no, getting to be able to use your cheat powers in public in front of everyone. Woe is you," Senou Kaede said, and Fei had to deliberately ignore the dissonance between what he actually said and what she thought she heard. Her ears heard and remembered both, and it was a disquieting experience, for all that it was convenient in allowing them to speak to the mortal. Even without the strange understanding granted by Stephen's deceptively small flame, the sarcasm in his voice was clear, though. "I'm sure you'll adjust somehow."

"I still won't be fun. Though at least this time the government is less obnoxious about getting us to work for them."

Mara rose smoothly. "If you'll excuse me," the knight demurred, "I must go and inform the others as to what transpired here." Bowing towards them in a gesture from her homeland, she exited the workshop.

Stephen sighed as he pushed himself up. The heat that Fei had felt radiating from him all this time finally moved. "Well, I've got to go to. Busy day, got to get rid of the bacteria from the meat, then have to start figuring out a recipe of soap that stays solid…"

"I would be glad to assist you in your endeavor," Fei volunteered as other began to get to their feet as well. "I have such a recipe memorized, thought it will probably need to be adapted to the materials we have available on hand."

"Thanks WikiFei, that will be a help. I'll let you know when I'm about to get started."

They all began to move their separate ways, each returning to whatever had been interrupted by the call that Binder Lori had discovered them, that Rian had given them up…

As Fei headed back to continue gathering wild plants for food, glad that it wasn't her turn to go out into the cursed, ravenous spirit crystals of this world to hunt the beasts that roamed the wilds, she found her thoughts turning to consider the man. She remembered how he had acted when he had discovered how the Gisingcould create metal, because he had seen Vanessa creating utensils to eat her food. He had simply stared as the fork and knife had appeared in a shimmer of color and a sense of essence being displaced… and then shrugged and turned away as he continued eating.

Not for the first time, she wondered… could Rian be like them? Could he be someone had who also washed upon the shores of another world?

As always, Fei shook her head. No, he acted nothing at all like the Nihonjin, who had not hesitated to proclaim themselves once they had met others from their land—or at least, lands similar to theirs—declaring their were 'isekai' loudly, almost proudly. Rian had never acted anything other than one who was from this world. Open-minded and thoughtful to be sure… but one did not need to be from another world to be such.

No, to assume he was like them simply because he was accepting of them was to belittle his character. It was wrong… and a little bit silly.

Dismissing the thought, Lee Fei went back to work. The mortals and faceless from other worlds all needed to eat, after all, and the meat by itself was horribly bland. Meditating to circulate her core as she walked, Fei went back to her search for plants they could use as spices.

She was getting very tired of mayonnaise.