Demesne 304 - A New Line Of Inquiry (Patreon)

Lori wanted to stare at the results of their experiment, to sit down and start seriously considering the implications of what had just happened. However, they had molten metal in a container, and more molten metal that was cooling in a mold. Both were significant safety hazards and needed to be dealt with appropriately first.

The mold with the thin layer of no-longer-molten but still very hot and glowing copper—filled with earthwisps and firewisps in her awareness—was set aside to slowly cool in the corner the smiths had designated for the purpose. Lori made a note to herself to set up something more enclosing that could be covered for added safety, but for now it would do.

The remaining molten copper was poured into a wide, tray-like mold made of bound ice to make a copper sheet for her mass production tray. Between the mold's insulating nature and another binding of firewisps to keep the copper molten, they were able to spread out the copper to cover the whole tray. Rian looked amused as she used the spoon the smith had used to scoop out the slag to scrape at the molten copper and check how thick the layer of copper was without having to bend down and see through the ice.

The redsmiths could probably have made the sheet by simply hammering the copper—it was soft and convenient like that—but since they were already melting some for this experiment, Rian had arranged they do this step to make sheet copper for her mass production tray. The resulting sheet of copper should be perfectly flat and even, but given this was her first time trying this, it probably wouldn't be. Lori took some satisfaction in being able to use earthwisps to extract the hot copper remaining in the crucible and adding it to the molten copper. Thankfully, it wasn’t all that different from manipulating stone or bone.

By the time they finished with the second pour, the first pour that was to have been the third bound tool prototype base had solidified. The copper lay at the bottom of its mold, radiating a dull heat—or so Lori would assume—and glowing a dull red through a layer of soot. At least, until they pried it up from mold and threw it into a bucket of water, where it sank to the bottom, steam bubbling up to the surface.

All that activity allowed Lori to calm down and put away her confusion at the result. It let her keep calm as they picked up the whole bucket to take back with them—she wasn't sure why but she was willing to allow that Rian probably had a good reason for doing so—to the alcove in the third level that stored the broken bead, where her equipment box remained after collection samples for this morning's experiments. She remained calm as the sample was extracted from the bucket and put in one of Lori's glass beakers from the equipment box. She stared at the sample, watching a small puddle of water gather around the foot of the sample as Rian left for a moment, trying to put her thoughts in order now that she didn't have procedure to distract her. She watched blankly as Rian came back some time later, holding a large metal pot, and let herself be diverted watching him pour the water from the bucket into it.

"Can you boil this without putting any bindings in the water?" Rian said, holding up the metal pot.

Lori looked up from staring at the sample and trying to get her thoughts in order. "What?"

"I said, can you boil this without putting any bindings in the water?" he repeated.

She stared at her lord. "Why?"

"In case it's full of dissolved white Iridescence leached out from the copper," Rian said. "The copper strip went from the mold to this bucket. If there's no white Iridescence in this, then that means it's still in the copper. Please?"

…

Huh. "Why do you think that the water might have leached out the white Iridescence from the copper?" she found herself asking. "It's not cloudy."

"Because I want to be sure about where the white Iridescence might be, and given how normal Iridescence is conducted through metal, and leached out through water, we need to check if the same happened to the sample we added to the copper."

…

"We'll need a tripod," Lori said. "Get the one in the box."

The metal tripod, meant to support her laboratory glassware, just barely managed to support the pot, and Lori placed a binding of firewisps under the pot, sending heat upwards to bring the water to a boil to evaporate the water.

They set the pot in one of the alcoves along the far wall, away from the cracked open bead so that the moisture from it wouldn't reach the insides of the bead and cause her complications. A binding of airwisps and waterwisps channeled the steam back into the now-empty bucket, where it congealed back into water.

The water in the pot bubbled gently as the two sat and stared at the strip of copper. The submersion in water had removed some of the dark soot that had formed around the cooling metal, revealing the dull colors of the metal. A bone tablet Lori had prepared was pulled out from under the equipment box and handed to Rian, as well as the stylus.

"Oh! This is new," her lord commented, looking at the stylus. On the opposite end from the beast tooth, she'd added a small spatula. It had been an annoyance to shape to her satisfaction. "Uh, what is it?"

"Use it to smooth out anything that needs correction," Lori said.

"Oh! Nice. Now if you'll just talk a little slower so I actually have time to make corrections…"

Lori rolled her eyes. "Just take notes."

"Yes, your Bindership." He settled the tablet and readied the stylus. "Right. So, unless I didn't see it properly…the white Iridescence dissolved into the copper. That's what happened, right? I wasn't seeing things."

"Yes Rian, that's what happened."

Rian nodded. "So… assuming that the white Iridescence is in the copper and not the water—"they both glanced at the pot, slowly boiling away, "—then would it be safe to say that this is a copper and white Iridescence alloy?"

"That implies that the properties of the copper have been altered by the white Iridescence," Lori pointed out.

They both glanced at the little strip of copper. In the illumination of the lightwisps Lori had anchored to the ceiling of the alcove, the strip shone with the familiar and distinctive reddish shade of the metal. Hesitantly, Rian reached for the strip pulling it from the beaker it had been dripping in. He looked around, shrugged, and wiped the remaining droplets on the copper strip on his trousers, then rubbed it some more to remove the soot from it.

"It doesn't look all that different," he muttered, slowly rotating it in his hands as he tried to see it from different angles. Rian held it out to her to examine.

Lori took it carefully. The surface of the strip had a strange texture, but there were no edges or sharp points. She frowned at it, but in her hands it looked no different from the unpolished copper ingots they had stored. Holding it between thumb and finger, her nails pressing on the metal, she tapped the strip against the stone of the alcove. She easily claimed and bound the earthwisps in the stone, without using her connection to her core. There was nothing unusual about the metal in that sense, no strange feeling of resistance or ease or anything else.

If she didn't know there was anything unusual about it, she'd have thought it was a perfectly ordinary piece of copper.

"There's nothing unusual about this strip in the context of using it to channel magic," Lori said. "If I didn't know there was anything unusual about it, I would have thought it was a perfectly ordinary piece of copper."

Rian nodded and wrote something on his tablet. "Can you anchor wisps to it? Or… can you do that thing where you make a binding inside it and the white Iridescence inside it imbues the binding?"

Lori titled her head. Good questions. "Good questions. Let me see…" Claiming and binding some airwisps, she tried to anchor the binding to the metal the way she would anchor onto the white Iridescence, but the attempt, and subsequent ones with lightwisps and darkwisps, failed. She rubbed her hands for friction, claiming and binding the firewisps that resulted but not imbuing them, then passed the binding through the metal. There was no sudden imbuing from this action.

"Nothing," Lori said. "I can't anchor to the metal as is, and passing a binding through it does not result in the binding being imbued. I could, I suppose, heat the metal until I can bind and claim its earthwisps…"

"Please no," Rian said. "At least, not in here. Let's save it for next time that we try this again."

Lori nodded absently.  "Yes, we need to see if it's consistent and repeatable, whatever it is. Your idea of embedding white Iridescence into metal has been shown to be unusable, but it's given us a new line of inquiry."

"Lori…" Rian said thoughtfully, "it occurs to me that we can't be the first people to do this."

Lori's glanced towards him. "Oh?"

"We've already found out that white Iridescence is a very likely, probably even even vital, component in Whispering-based bound tools," he said slowly. "Bound tools have been around for a very, very long time, which means that white Iridescence as a component has been around for that long. Dungeon Binders—or at least their research staff—have had that long to try and mix white Iridescence with metal together. Or with anything else, for that matter. How much of the metal used… well, anywhere… are some kind of white Iridescence alloy?" He gestured towards the broken open bead. "I mean… it's unlikely that copper is the only metal that it mixes with."

Lori tilted her head thoughtfully. "That depends on what properties the alloys have."

"And… well, that's just white Iridescence, from wisp beads. What about alloys made from the contents of other bead types? What about alloys made from combinationsof different bead types?"

She stilled, her eyes widening slightly in realization. Yes, that was right. She'd been so focused on the wisp beads she could produce, and the white Iridescence she had access to, that this had slipped her mind.

Rian was still speaking, seemingly lost in his own thoughts and conclusions. "This also makes me wonder: how much of the metal used in bound tools might be bead Iridescence alloys? Are they necessary?"

"Hopefully not," Lori said fervently, more wish than observation. "If nothing else, my tests so far with the two prototypes have allowed me to recreate some basic bound tool functions. Combined with the proper mechanical parts, I can see how we can make the bound tools I'm familiar with."

"Does that mean you won't have time to research white Iridescence alloys?"

"We have still not ascertained that it is an alloy of copper and white Iridescence," she pointed out. "As I said, it does not function any differently from any other piece of metal when it comes to channeling magic."

"Can you hand it here?" Rian asked, and Lori passed the sample towards him. She glanced towards the pot, which was still boiling away, while the bucket next to it continued to slowly fill. "Right, so… if it's an alloy, then the easiest way to tell would be if its physical properties are different from normal copper. So…"

Lori watched as Rian took the strip of metal in both hands, placing his thumbs together underneath it. He took and deep breath, and suddenly the copper strip began to bend in his hands. The short strip curved as he pushed upwards with his thumbs, only to straighten as Rian released the pressure.

The two of them stared at the innocuous-seeming strip of metal.

"Pure copper doesn't do that, does it?" Lori said. She's seen the redsmiths working raw copper, and the metal had folded under the pressure of their tools. There had been no snapping back, and very little—relatively—in the way of resistance.

Rian shook his head. "No. Spring copper is an alloy of copper mixed with… uh, I forget what the smiths said, but it's something we don't have. And even then, I think it has to be hardened to get that kind of elasticity normally. "

Lori frowned at the strip. "We'll have to see if it can be shaped," she said. "The alloying has made it no longer possible to work it cold the way copper can normally be."

"I think that's what smithing is for? Other metals are general heated in the forge to soften it enough to work, remember. We'll just have to treat this alloy like a harder metal." Rian suddenly grinned. "Look at it this way. If we can do this consistently, we might be able to use the copper we have stored to make tools that would normally need harder metals like iron. We could have more saws, more scissors… We might even be able to put plates of copper on the front door of the Dungeon to secure it better against dragonborn things."

Lori blinked, her head tilting thoughtfully. They could, couldn't they? So far, the copper had been mostly unused because there was little they could use it for like the pots, which was why it was available for Lori to use in her experiments.

"We need to make more," she said. "What is the ratio needed for an optimal alloy? Would different ratios result in different physical properties?"

"Can we use it to make an alloy without melting?" Rian added thoughtfully. "Because steel isn't really made by melting iron and adding charcoal, it's made by letting it sit in the coals of the furnace to absorb the charcoal. If we can include white Iridescence into steel to make it an alloy… "

"Rian!" Mikon's voice called from outside the alcove. "Could you please tell her Bindership it's time for lunch?"

In the niche on the far wall, the pot stopped boiling, the water inside it completely gone, leaving nothing behind.