Demesne 285 - Warm Weather Bead Experiments (Patreon)

"It's always fun seeing you do that," Rian said, a wide smile on his face as he watched the river water wash over the Iridescence beyond her demesne's borders. "A pity you don't have much reason to do it more often."

Lori allowed herself a smug smile at the compliment. The binding had been simple, a basic redirection of the force of the flowing river using waterwisps. The scale wasn't even all that big, something she could have done back when she's simply been a Whisperer, if a bit more time-consuming. And it had resulted in a substantial amount of water seemingly throwing itself out of the river and dousing the area beyond the edge of her demesne.

The colors were all washed away, revealing the true colors of the surfaces beneath them as the water receded. A lingering layer of shimmering colors, like a thing scum of oil, glinted briefly on the water before fading away. Sooner if the water somehow flowed back across the border to her demesne.

It also made the ground muddy, but she could deal with that, claiming the waterwisps in the ground and forcing the water to turn the vapor. The ground turned very chill as a result, but it wasn't anything the sunny day couldn't quickly fix. Thankfully, the sudden flood didn't disturb a beast hiding near the edge. The one that had been drinking had wandered off, and while Lori would have really liked to know where it was, they simply didn't have enough people.

"So… shouldn't we be setting up something?" Rian said.

Lori hesitated. A part of her said that with the ground cleared, it was safe to go out. There weren't any beasts hiding nearby, so she was free to start experimenting.

A part of her that still screamed at the thought of being alone in the dark near high grass told her to douse everything with water just to be sure.

Unfortunately, as much as she wanted to listen to the latter, she couldn't. Not in this instance. They needed Iridescence crystals for making beads, and if she doused everything, they'd need to walk out to where the Iridescence was still growing to scrape some off, which might put them near any hiding beasts anyway.

Taking a deep breath, Lori help up the box with her tools and glassware. "Hold this so I can get something."

Rian held up his plank to serve as a tray, and Lori set the box down. She undid the clasps, half-ready to grab hold of the box in case Rian's hands faltered in their hold. From the box, she pulled out a clear glass specimen bowl, and some metal tweezers. A rectangular bowl made from bone, with a bottom made from an ingot of copper.

Lori looked around, then held out the bowls to Riz, who let go of her spear, letting it drop down to be cradled in the crook of one arm with a practiced movement. The militiawoman carefully took the bowls in hand, and Lori put the tweezers in the bone bowl. Then she closed the box and clasped it shut again, then carefully put the box back in the boat next to her wand. She wasn't sure if she'd need her wand for anything, but if they did anything with open flame, she would be more comfortable sticking that into the fire than her staff.

She took the bowls from Riz and handed them to Rian. "All right," Lori said, pointing to where the colors still clung on past the area she had washed. "Go out there and check for beasts for about five paces. I'll be right here to kill if you find any. "

"Yes, Great Binder," Riz said. Then she bent over, pickup up some rocks off the ground, and stared throwing them into the still-glittering brush.

… well, that was a way to do it, she supposed.

Still, Lori gathered the water she needed for a water cutter. It occurred to her that while she'd used water cutters after she'd made her core, she hadn't really practiced putting the power of a Dungeon Binder behind them. Normally, water cutters were constrained by factors like air resistance and gravity. It was a projectile on a predictable parabolic arc, after all. Waterwisps were used to keep the stream from coming apart, but there were always tradeoffs, especially if one was doing it quickly. Put too much imbuement into the waterwisps that would squeeze and send the stream flying, and there wouldn't be enough to keep the stream coherent, causing it to break apart into uselessness mid-flight. Make it too coherent, and range could suffer. But as a Dungeon Binder, she had the power for both…

Well, something to experiment with later. Right now, she used the water utter she was familiar with, since it was a binding she was reliable.

She held her staff up to aim, an unnaturally viscous glob of water on one end ready to send out and cut as Riz and her friend threw rocks. They listened as they did so, and Lori realized it was to hear what their rocks landed on. She tried to listen as well, but it was hard for her to distinguish anything with the river flowing nearby. Riz and her friend seemed to not have that problem, however. When they stopped throwing rocks, they walked boldly into the grass, their spears before them as they double checked.

"It's clear, Great Binder!" Riz called out. "You can come out now."

Lori didn't lower her staff as she hesitantly stepped up to where she knew the edge ot be, even though the line had been washed away. Taking a deep breath, she stepped through. Cold slammed into her, and Lori shivered as the pleasant, comfortable warmth that had been surrounding her was pushed away by the cool spring weather. It took her a few moments to adjust. It wasn't really that cold, but the sudden change was uncomfortable. Why did she keep forgetting this happened?

"You forgot it would be cold again, didn't you?" Rian said, his face innocent.

"Of course not," Lori said. "Come on, we have work to do." She handed him the glass bowl. "Go collect Iridescence."

"Yes, your Bindership. Going to get the disturbing colorful substance!"

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It didn't take long for Rian to find some large growths of Iridescence growing not far away. As long as they were undisturbed, the colors would keep growing indefinitely, and Rian had apparently found some places sufficiently sheltered from wind and rain for that to happen. There were several shards on the bowl, each about half the size of her smallest finger.

"Iridescence specimen is two and a hand yustri long, and about a yustri wide," she dictated to Rian. "Exact dimensions are difficult to quantify due to nature of Iridescence growth. Moving sample to container to begin process."

Lori carefully picked up one specimen and placed it on the bone bowl with the copper bottom. After today, she'd probably finally get around to making something specifically designed for bead making. For now…

Keeping the bowl well away from the border of her demesne, and telling herself she was only imaging the feeling or Iridescence starting to grow all over her, Lori reached into her demesne with her other hand. The heavily imbued binding composed of multiple types of wisps that she'd prepared beforehand anchored to the earthwisps in her nails, and she reached through her bones to claim the binding properly, not simply though her connection to her core. Only then did she pull the binding out, and carefully moved it towards the bone bowl.

Tilting the bowl to cause the Iridescence to slide down to one end, she anchored the binding to the bone at the opposite end. Then she took the metal tweezers and used that as a conduit to keep in contact with the binding. Taking a deep breath, Lori tilted the bowl the other way, causing the Iridescence to slide down and touch the binding. Well, touch it after Lori budged it into place with the tweezers.

She claimed the binding again—the contact with the Iridescence was already slowly pulling the wisps and imbuement towards the shard—taking direct control of it and bound the shard of Iridesence. As she expected, her whole binding was violently drawn into the shard, which began to grow. In a few moments, there was a cloudy white bead rattling in the bowl.

"Growth rate is noticeably faster," Lori dictated. "Likely from the increase in temperature. Iridescence growth known to accelerate with heat. Phenomenon is likely related."

"We can test that," Rian said. "You can make a block of ice, chill one of the Iridescence crystals, then do… whatever the thing you do is. Possibly do it in cold air too, to remove environmental temperature as a factor. "

Lori tilted her head, then nodded. She put the bead into her belt pouch, then reached through her connection to her core. Next to the boat, a block of ice formed as she used waterwisps to solidify water, decreasing the heat from the expunged firewisps so there weren't any unfortunate explosions.

Rian looked towards the block of ice. "You'll have to reshape that," he said. "And I'll find some branches we can sue as handles. If it's as cold as you like to make your ice, our fingertips are going to peel off."

"…yes, go do that."

Lori shaped the block of ice while Rian went to find some suitable branches. She'd need space to stick her hand in, after all. When her lord came with some long branches, she directed him to put it to the sides of the block, altering the solidified water's shape to surround the branches so they could be used to lift the block up. Which they did, lifting the block of ice beyond her demesne's borders. She got another glass bowl from her box and placed several Iridescence crystals in it to chill.

The glass bowl was being place in the space she had made to chill it when Rian suddenly said, "Wait! Is there water in that?"

Lori looked up at him. "Of course there's no water, Rian. If there was the colors would be dissolving."

"No, not that," Rian said, waving a hand dismissively. "I mean inside that space. When it gets cold, the water vapor in the air is going to congeal, and that might dissolve the crystals if a puff of warm air blows over it."

Rainbows.

The experiment was delayed as she made sure to isolate the experimental space, which involved carrying the block of solidified water back into her demesne so she could put a binding of waterwisps in place to block off vaporous water from entering the cooling space. Then she had to remove the Iridescence from the bowl so she could bring that back into her demesne too so she could surround that with the same binding, which she had to anchor to a rock that she put in the bowl since she couldn't anchor wisps onto the glass.

The binding in question started deteriorating since the Iridescence had to go right up against the rock that was the anchor, but that was fine. She'd be removing the crystal she'd use in her test anyway, so a little miniscule growth shouldn't be a problem. They'd probably have to make a note of it though.

While they waited for the iridescence to cool, they made more beads with warm Iridescence. This time they actually counted how long it took. They didn't have a time piece, but Rian put fingers to his wrist and counted his heartbeat. It wasn't a perfect replacement, but he took several deep breaths to calm down to keep his heartbeat from increasing erratically in the middle of the process. For Lori, it still seemed like the beads grew faster than they had in winter.

This was confirmed when they pulled out the Iridescence they had cooled—Lori had to use the wire tongs in her box—and used those to make beads. According to Rian's heartbeats, it took a four times as many more heartbeats for the beads to form to a similar size, which was far longer than it had taken during the winter.

"So temperature definitely has an effect," Rian said, writing it down. "Interesting. Should we try warming the Iridescence and seeing how quickly it forms, then?"

Lori twitched. While it was a perfectly logical suggestion… she couldn't think of a way of doing it that wouldn't result in disaster. Usually the method of warming something slowly was to immerse it in water and start warming that water. That wasn't possible with the colors, and putting it to open flame… No. At best, they could lay it on a metal pan over a small flame, but that still felt extremely dangerous.

"Let us set that aside for later," she said. "For now, go and gather more Iridescence. Let's make beads…"