Weekly Digest 96 - (#303 - #305) (Patreon)

Making The Third Prototype

The following day, Lori found herself sitting alone at her table, staring at an empty bench opposite her. A part of her had expected this happening, and that part was nodding in satisfaction at being right. The rest wondered if she'd have to get her own food, which… uh, actually, where would she get her food? Except for holidays, she'd never really gotten her own food, so she wasn't sure how it was done…

Her bench shifted, and she glanced sideways to find Shanalorre helping her cousin sit down. Once she was properly seated, the little girl promptly folded her arms on the table, lay down her head, and went back to sleep.

"Is something wrong with your cousin?" Lori said.

"She's just hard to wake up in the morning sometimes," Shanalorre said as she glanced towards the other table. Lori didn't know what she was looking at, but whatever it was, it seemed to satisfy the other Dungeon Binder. She sat down next to her cousin instead of joining the children. "Thank you for allowing the children to visit their parents, Great Binder. I'm sure everyone will appreciate it."

"I don't see why," Lori said, "but I leave that matter to you and Rian."

Shanalorre nodded solemnly. "Should Lord Rian not arrive in a timely manner, do you wish me to get the food for us?"

"…"

"I'll take that as a yes, just in case."

Thankfully, Rian arrived before breakfast started, his plank in hand, but from the way some people were standing up and heading towards the kitchen it seemed about to. He seemed to be more cheerful than usual, his gait was more energetic, his smile wider as he sat down on the bench in front of Lori. "Mornin', your Bindership. Looks like a nice day today."

Lori leaned forward and sniffed the air suspiciously.

"I took a bath! And washed my hands. From now on, can we assume I've done both when necessary?"

"In my experience… no."

"Well, how long before your experiences change?"

"We'll see."

Rian sighed. "Here's hoping it's sometime soon." He shook his head, then glanced towards the kitchen. "I'll get breakfast then. What fruits do you want?"

"Pink lady and golden bud," Lori said.

"Mican and hairy blueball," Shanalorre said. "And Yoshka will have the same."

"Got it, your Binderships."

By the time he came back, the three women had arrived, their hair still mildly damp from the baths. Umu sat down gingerly, her faced tinged pink, a silly smile on her face. Riz's smile was somewhere between serene and self-satisfied, while Mikon was humming happily to herself as she sat next to Umu and put an arm around the other weaver's shoulders. The blonde tried to shrug off the arm, but Mikon put it back, and Umu seemed to just give up and let it stay there.

The three of them seemed satisfied to just sit there, the quiet punctuated by a little girl's not-quite snoring as Rian came back with four bowls of food, a platter of bread, and another bowl full of fruits. "Good morning Umu, Mikon, Riz," he greeted as Lori picked a bowl of stew, took some bread for herself, and got her fruit. "You three stay here, I'll get your breakfast."

"Rian… wait, isn't it…" Umu began as Shanalorre started waking her cousin for breakfast.

"No, no, let him go," Mikon said quietly. "He obviously wants to. Auntie says sometimes you just have to let your man have his way with silly little things."

The blonde's interjection died as Rian hurried off to get more food for them. As Shanalorre grabbed two of the bowls and some bread for herself and her cousin, who was rubbing her eyes and starting to smile blearily, Riz casually took the last bowl of stew, bread and fruit and started eating. Umu didn't seem to notice, but Mikon looked amused at the boldness.

Lori was halfway done with her bowl of stew when Rian came back with food for himself and the other two women. He also looked amused at seeing Riz eating but said nothing, simply putting down the second batch of food down with a cheerful, "Breakfast is here."

He sat down between Riz and Umu—who had moved apart when he'd arrived—and took the last bowl, remaining bread and fruit for himself with a smile. There was a rather pleasant lull—not silence, not with the rest of the dining hall around them—as they all ate.

"So," Rian said, "ready to go to the smithy after breakfast?"

"I don't see if it's really needed anymore," Lori said. "The first two prototypes have been quite satisfactory."

"I'll take your word for it on the second prototype, but shouldn't we at least explore an option that's easier to mass produce? The two prototypes needed skilled workers to make, and took two, three days to make. Sure, the process of making them will likely go faster with proper tools and experience, but if this works, it'll be as simple as melting the metal and sprinkling the samples on it to embed them until the metal cools solid. That could potentially let us make several at a time with minimal skill, and mass production reduces costs through economies of scale."

"You don't even know if it will work yet," Lori pointed out as she started peeling the yellow skin off her golden bud.

Rian shrugged, chewing and swallow his mouthful of food before replaying. "I'm optimistic, and what data we've gathered says it should work. Besides, that's why we're testing it first. If it doesn't work… well, back to the drawing plank." He dipped a piece of bread into his stew and put that in his mouth.

Lori sighed. "Well, I suppose a method that's easier to mass produce has merit… but I don't intend to continue on with this line of inquiry beyond this testing phase. Once I finish my experiments with glass—"

"Don't you mean start your experiments with glass?"

"Once I finish my experiments with glass, I'll be discontinuing the current line of inquiry utilizing metal."

"Given we don't know how long that will take, and given we'll need a way to keep warm next winter, I still think this will be useful. Besides, the information might still be useful, even if not immediately."

Lori waved a hand dismissively. "Yes, yes. We're doing it, aren't we?" She frowned at him.

"What?"

"I'm surprised that you're actually managing to keep eating."

Rian glanced down at his food, then shrugged. "Don't tell Yllian, but conversation with him isn't exactly interesting enough to distract me from my food."

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After breakfast, they met with the smiths.

Well, they met with the smiths after Lori went to get a glass bowl of white Iridescence samples. She needed fresh samples that weren't too finely ground, so that they'd be a little visible against the copper. The samples she came back with were about the dimensions of the rough grains of salt they had in storage, with a few larger pieces, just in case. Then they had met with the smiths.

Normally, the crucible with the copper to be melted would be placed in a small, sealed furnace designed to hold in heat. While the furnace in the forge could get veryhot, it was meant to get metal red-hot so it could be worked and shaped, not to melt metal on a regular basis.

Fortunately, Lori was there. The ingot of copper that they would be melting only needed to be warmed in the furnace before being placed in the crucible. Normally, a Whisperer would need a wand to claim and bind the firewisps in the hot metal, but Lori had her connection to her core for such things.

Despite this, she had to increase the heat of the ingot slowly. The crucible was ceramic and the ingot was already very hot, and while the crucible had survived being used to hold molten copper before, a sudden increase in temperature might cause it to break from the sudden extreme temperature change. A gradual rise in heat for the ingot was needed. As the ingot's temperature rose higher and higher, Lori felt a change in the copper's wisps. Among the firewisps, earthwisps began to appear. From what she'd read, that meant that the metal was close to—

The earthwisps disappeared as the ingot of copper melted into molten metal. It wasn't something she'd been able to observe when she had first smelted the ore into copper back in River's Fork. Here in her own demesne however, she'd been able to perceive the moment when the metal could be manipulated by earthwisps. Supposedly, the same would happen with glass once an appropriately high temperature was reached.

The crucible now contained molten copper with some slag floating on the copper's surface. The presence of slag always offended her sensibilities. The ingot had been pure copper, the crucible had been cleaned, so why was there slag?

Unfortunately, it was an unavoidable part of the process. The smith who was handling the crucible used tools like a large metal spoon—it might very well have been just a spoon—to scoop up the slag from the surface of the molten copper, dumping them to the side. Slag contained substances that could be recovered, and with enough slag they'd be able to recover some of the copper that had gotten scooped up. There was already a little jar labeled 'copper slag' waiting for the slag to cool down enough to be moved into it.

For all his enthusiasm, Rian was standing well back, perhaps from a healthy respect of the delicacy of dealing molten metal, but more likely because he found it extremely hot. His face was certainly sweating. Lori wasn't as far back as he was, but she stayed out of the blacksmith's way, keeping the copper molten at a distance as the smith picked up the crucible. Carefully, the smith poured some of the molten copper into a ceramic mold, which had been warmed on the forge to ensure there was no moisture in it that could cause a steam explosion, no matter how small. No one wanted molten metal droplets in the air.

Lori watched as a thin layer of molten copper spread across the bottom of the mold, making a second binding of firewisps to keep the copper in the mold hot as the smith set aside the crucible and put it back inside the furnace, sealing it back with a stone wheel as a lid. It was less to keep the copper warm and more to keep it out of the way. Despite the radiance from the bindings anchored to the ceiling, which gave the smithy a bright illumination, the molten copper clearly glowed a bright orange.

"Samples," Rian said quietly, handing her the glass bowl of white Iridescence and a wooden spoon.

Lori nodded in acknowledgement as she took the bowl from him. Using the wooden spoon, she scooped up the white Iridescence, careful to take pieces that weren't too large. The copper in the mold wasn't all that thick—about two chiyustri or so, from whatshe could tell through her awareness of wisps—so the samples should be much thicker. The idea was to have them float slightly on the molten metal, after all.

She dissolved the binding of firewisps so they wouldn't accidentally interact with the samples. Carefully, Lori gently tapped the white Iridescence onto the metal, watching as the grains—

—sank beneath the surface of the metal and disappeared?

"Huh?" Rian said, squinting down at the glowing liquid. "What happened? I can't see very well."

Lori frowned as well. "Perhaps the samples were too small. Let me try again." She carefully scooped up some bigger pieces of white Iridescence, aware that the copper was slowly cooling. Moving slowly, she sprinkled the sample onto the molten copper.

She, Rian and now the smith looked down into the mold with its thin layer of molten copper. The surface was bright glowing orange and unmarred with anything floating on top of it like slag.

"Lori," Rian said slowly. "Do you have a really big piece in the bowl?"

Wordlessly, Lori used her fingers to pluck a particularly piece of white Iridescence that she had included because she had thought the copper pour would be thicker. It was a triangular fragment at least a yustri thick and half that wide.

"Could you drop that in?"

Lori put the sample on the spoon and carefully used the spoon to drop the sample into the still-molten metal.

The sample sank beneath the surface and disappeared.

"Well… shit," Rian said blandly. "There goes that idea."

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A New Line Of Inquiry

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.

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Needing More

"We'll need to work closer with the smiths," Rian said as they ate lunch. "Unless we learn more that says otherwise, after its alloyed working it will probably be more normal metalwork than anything else."

Lori frowned, but nodded as she had a spoonful of stew. She chewed and swallowed thoughtfully. "How long before my tray is finished? If we're going to be utilizing it like this, we'll need to produce more."

"A few more days? The carpenters are doing their best, but it's involving a lot of precisely shaped parts, not to mention they have to integrate the copper sheet, which you only made today. I'll ask them for a more exact timeline after lunch, but you would know better than me that trying to hurry skilled workers never ends well. If you actually do manage to get them to work faster, what you get is never as good as if you'd given them the time to do it properly."

"Yes, Rian, and the sky is blue."

"What about at sunset? It's more like a purple pink, when it's not a nice—"

She pulled back her foot to kick him under the table, paused, looked underneath, adjusted so she wouldn't accidentally hit Umu, and kicked.

"—orange with tones of yellow, and— OW."

"Don't be annoying, Rian," Lori said. "I might kick Umu by accident."

"Noted, your unamused Bindership."

Umu blinked and glanced down at the table, looking concerned. She visibly debated moving away from Rian. She didn't, but the thought clearly entered her mind.

"So," Rian said as Lori ate, "what next?"

She swallowed. "We need to test what the rest of the capabilities of the alloy are. While its new elasticity is useful, the full extent of its properties needs to be recorded."

"Just give it to the smiths. They'd know better than us what properties pure copper is supposed to have, so they'll be better suited to comparing the two." Then Rian blinked. "Huh. I just had a thought."

"And the sky is still blue. What now?"

"Does it only work with metal, or can you use it to alloy stone?"

Lori gave him a bemused looked. "Why would you think that?"

"Because if we could alloy it with stone… well, we'd end up with rock that would have increased elasticity, and maybe less prone to shattering on impact. That might let us make boats with stone hulls. Less maintenance heavy than ice boats."

An urge to sigh rose up within her, and Lori gave in to it, letting a tired breath leave her. "Rian… why do you keep trying to make boats out of anything but wood?"

"Because we still don't have enough material to waterproof the hull of a wooden boat bigger than a rowboat for crossing the river," Rian said. "Just something to think about."

"Noted." Internally, she signed and shook her head at her lord's strange thoughts, then resigned herself to doing that later. Ugh, would the crucible they had even manage to hold something that hot?

"Where's your curiosity? Anyway, consider this: can we make alloyed glass?"

Lori blinked, tilting her head.

"Oh, nowyou're interested. See, if we can make alloyed glass, it might make the bound tools you want to make more sturdy."

"We need to test it," Lori said firmly, her eyes slightly unfocused as she considered the image Rian had given her. All this time, she'd had an image of white Iridescence embedded, suspended in glass, with a metal wire touching it to channel magic from a bead, a binding anchored to the white iridescence somehow. Now…

Lori closed her eyes. There was so much she still didn't know. She'd made progress, made prototypes that were almost passable bound tools, but… for all the sophistication of their components, what she'd made were still barely more than classroom demonstrations. Any Whisperer could alter the bindings she'd made anchored to the white Iridescence of each prototype. That, really, was part of why she really couldn't consider what she'd made proper bound tools. In all the bound tools she'd ever used—when she'd been hired to imbue one because someone didn't want to use a bead for one reason or another—all she could do was imbue and operate it. The wisps, the binding on the other end of the contact, had always felt like they'd been claimed by someone else, unalterable.

She needed more information. She needed to do more research.

She finished her food, and started peeling the golden bud next to her bowl. So much she needed to do. Not expansion, no matter how much she wanted to. Expanding would require her to keep moving her shed and workspace for mass producing beads after each one, which would make bead mass production more difficult. She needed to make somebound tools to install in River's Fork's dragon shelter, to make them more likely to survive. As convenient as it would be for her for all of them to simply die, she was responsible for them now… unfortunately…

"Lori?"

Lori blinked, realizing her hands had stilled in the middle of peeling. Fingers moved as she continued pulling the rind off the fruit. "Yes?"

"Are you all right?"

She waved a juice-covered hand dismissively. "A momentary distraction. What is it?"

"Will you be needing me for more notes this afternoon? I didn't think this morning would be so interesting, so I had planned to go around the demesne to check up on everything, but if you still need me…"

Lori opened her mouth. Paused. Closed her mouth. Frowned thoughtfully. Shook her head. "No, you can go," she said. Keeping her demesne functioning should be her priority. "But give the smiths the sample and tell them to test it."

Rian looked around. "Huh, none of them are close enough to hear. After lunch, then. Is that all?"

She waved a hand dismissively, then went back to separating her golden bud into wedges. "Yes, I probably won't need you for the rest of the day."

Her lord nodded, then suddenly slapped a hand onto his forehead. "Oh, I forgot! I got that piece of copper ore you asked me to get. Well, not on me right now, but I can get it to you later."

Lori frowned, trying to remember… Ah, yes, Rian had suggested surrounding a setting like the first prototype with unrefined metal ore that could be manipulated by earthwisps. She'd have to test that… but she'd need a set piece of white iridescence without a shell first.

And then there was still the thing she had to do.

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After lunch, Lori retreated to her room and began transcribing the notes on their white Iridescence experiments to bone. It was a way of refreshing herself about what they had learned, some of which had slipped her mind. All right, many of which had slipped her mind, but that was what notes were for! Like the detail that bindings anchored to white Iridescence somehow remained boundeven when the sample they were anchored to had been dissolved in water.

Lori wondered if that would work when the white Iridescence was used to alloy metal or glass. Could that be a way of permanently anchoring a binding inside metal, anchoring a binding to white Iridescence before using it to alloy metal? She'd have to explore it when she tried alloying white Iridescence and copper again…

As she worked, rereading their notes and transcribing them from the stone tablets to bone, she took notes of other ideas like that. They were few and far between, but she didn't want to forget them, even if she was unlikely to be able to test them any time soon.

The stone tablets whose contents had been transcribed, she set aside. They were no longer important.

By the time she finished with all the notes about their white iridescence experiments, her hand was aching from having to carve so many words onto bone. Lori flapped her hand back and forth in a futile attempt to deal with the pain, wincing as she did so. While it would stop hurting in a little while, the pain would come back once she started using her arm again. She wished she could have a Deadspeaker just heal the pain away, but those were expensi—

…

Oh, right.

Lori left her room to find it was mid-afternoon outside, hoping Shanalorre had kept her rock with the binding of lightwisps on it on her person. Fortunately, she had, and Lori found the other Dungeon Binder working among some tuber plants in a large plot behind her house. She wore a hat on her head that seemed woven from strips of ropeweed, shading her from the sun above that was still bright and probably hot. With a stick in hand, Shanalorre was poking at the soil at the bases of the plants. Occasionally, doing so would disturb a bug, and by a criteria Lori didn't know, the other Dungeon Binder left some of the bugs unmolested after that and ruthlessly crushed and killed other with the stick she was holding.

The other Dungeon Binder glanced towards her and bowed shallowly. "Great Binder," Shanalorre said. "May I help you with something?"

Lori glanced over her, but there was no knife hanging from the other Dungeon Binder's belt. The stick had been shaved smooth, and the ended had been given blunt, curling ends, lacking the ragged edges of a cut. It didn't look like it could be used for self-harm. "I need you to heal me," she said holding out her writing hand.

"Ah, certainly, Great Binder." Shanalorre hurried towards Lori has as much as she could while stepping carefully between the tuber plants. "How were you injured?"

"Transcribing notes."

Shanalorre paused, looking at Lori curiously.. "Ah. Your hand aches from writing too much."

"Yes."

A strange expression came over the other Dungeon Binder's face. "And… you want that healed."

"Yes. I still have more things to do, and putting up with it would be inconvenient."

The strange expression persisted. "… At this point, I would usually tell someone to go to the doctors and medics so it can be assessed whether healing is actually warranted."

"Shanalorre."

"Yes, Great Binder."

"Heal my aching hand. Now."

"Yes, Great Binder."

When Shanalorre was done, Lori mimed holding a stylus and writing a few words. The muscle aches that had built up from those movements were gone, and she nodded in satisfaction. "Thank you. You should get inside. It's far too hot to be watering the plants at this time of day."

"I… should make sure there are no more bugs molesting my crops…"

Lori gave her a flat look. "Fine. But don't get yourself sun-addled by staying in this heat. Come with me and drink something."

Shanalorre hesitated, but nodded. "Yes, Great Binder."

The two walked away from the farm plot, and Shanalorre turned to where water poured down from the aqueduct onto a stone basin, washing her hands first under the basin's overflow before scooping water up to her mouth to drink.

Lori turned and headed back to her Dungeon. Shanalorre might die, but it wouldn't be now. They needed her healing.

At her table, Lori took the stone tablets whose contents she had transcribed to bone. The tablets were unnecessary now, simply raw materials that could finally be used again.

She used them for just that, fusing tablets together to form sheets, and the shaping those sheets to form bowls…

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It was almost dinner time when she came down stairs, carrying her basket made from bone. It was… well, it was four beast skulls fused together and thinned out to make a larger—and relatively lighter—container, with a curving handle also made from bone. She hadn't had an opportunity to use it yet for its intended purpose, but hanging from the crook of her arm, it was relatively comfortable to carry, though on consideration, it was more like a bucket than a basket, since it was whole and without openings.

The basket also banged against the side of her leg, but try as she might, no matter what the configuration of the handle, that just kept happening.

The fruits had been stored in the cold rooms… right in front of the doors, technically the warmest spot it in the cold room. Ah. Hmm… yes, the fruits wouldn't keep well in the freezing temperatures their meat was stored, would they? She supposed she'd have to make a cold room that… well, wasn't as cold, to store the fruits if they wanted them merely fresh and not frozen…

Something she'd have to fix later.

Fruits had already been brought out to warm so they could be eaten with dinner, but Lori ignored those. Instead, she went to the ones still in the cold room, ignoring the looks of the men and women cooking at the kitchen. Carefully, she began filling her bone basket with fruits, making sure there was an even mix of all of the ones available. The fruits were chilly in her hands,but not uncomfortable, the frost on them melting into water at her touch. Once her basket was full, she headed back to her room.

She had to come down and get more fruits since the amount in her basket wasn't enough, and by then people were coming in to sit at the tables and wait for dinner.

When Lori came back down again her table was full. Shanalorre and her younger cousin sat at her bench, the latter talking excitedly to the former about… something, who listened attentively and nodded every so often. Umu, Mikon and Riz sat to either side of Rian, looking eager and impatient and trying to control it, which just made Lori sigh. Well, she supposed some self-control was laudable.

The din of the dining hall around her was the noise of the familiar as she passed through it, walked between the tables to her customary place. At the table behind where she sat, the children Shanalorre was in charge of sat, talking to each other in excited tones as two Mikon-faced women sat with them, both looking tired for some reason.

As Lori stood behind her customary positon at the table, Rian glanced at her and nodded, but he continued listening attentively to Shanalorre's cousin, who seemed to be talking about how she had seen a choker catch and eat a bug earlier that day.

"—and then it swallowed the whole thing, but a little piece of wing got caught in its mouth, so it was standing there with the little wing sticking out," the younger girl narrated, using her hands to mime where the wing had been hanging from. "And then it started panting, and its mouth was hanging open, and you could see its tongue get fat and red! But then it ran away."

"It's good that you weren't hurt," Shanalorre said. "You were far too close to be safe."

"Don't worry Shasha, I wouldn't have gotten hurt. I know not to eat big bugs!"

Rian let out a small chortle, seemingly amused at the reasoning.

Lori just sighed. "Rian."

"Ah, I have that ore, your Bindership. Do you want me to give it to you now or after dinner?"

"Later. I need you to gather the four smiths who worked on the first two prototypes, as well as the smith we worked with this morning."

"Oh, sure. When?"

"Now."

Rian blinked. "Uh, all right. Where?"

"Here."

He stared at her for a moment and sighed as he got to his feet. "Yes, your Bindership."

Lori nodded in satisfaction. "Erzebed, come with me."

The woman glanced at Lori at the mention of her name but nodded, standing up as well. She followed behind Lori as they headed back to Lori's room.

At her table were five stone bowls. They were plain-looking and uneven, no two of the same exact size or dimensions despite Lori's best efforts. Each of them was filled with fruits.

Lori put one of them in her bone basket and held that out to Riz. "Carry this and two other bowls, and bring it back to the table."

"Yes, Great Binder," was the ready reply. The basket on the crook of one arm and a bowl in each hand, Riz made carrying them look easy.

Lori, for her part, struggled to get a hand under each bowl to be able to support them, holding them against her body to have something to stabilize them with. She walked cautiously as she traversed the stairs so that none of the fruits would fall off the bowls, something that Riz didn't even seem to need to bother with. By the time Lori managed to reach her table, Riz had already divested herself of her load and was sitting down again.

Around the table, five vaguely familiar men stood, and Lori was glad to recognize the smith from this morning. She didn't know his name, but at least she knew his face.

"Ah, the smiths you asked for, your Bindership," Rian said by way of confirmation.

Lori nodded, then put down the stone bowls she was holding next to the other three on the table, removing one from her bone basket. A mican and a pink lady had fallen into the bottom of the basket, which she ignored for the moment. "Good." she said. "Each of you, please pick a bowl, with my compliments. Your work was very fine, even if some things were unplanned. Not a word, Rian."

Rian closed his mouth, probably about to say something about a fruit-based economy again.

Mildly bemused, each of the smiths picked up a bowl and the fruits therein.

"I realize it's strange compensation for your work," Lori said, "but at the moment, paying you in beads would be a worthless gesture. Better something you can enjoy. Keep the bowls. I'm sure they'll be of some use." Perhaps they'll need someplace to put more slag in the future.

"Thank you, Great Binder."/"Thank you, your Bindership," the men said in a staggered chorus, bowing towards her with the bowls in their hands. The bemusement had turned to smiles and considering looks at the bowls in their hands.

Lori nodded. "Now, go and eat dinner."

As the men left, making their way back to wherever they'd previously been seated, Lori finally sat down on her bench. She reached into her basket, pulling out one of the two fruits that had fallen there, the pink lady, and held it out past Shanalorre to the other Dungeon Binder's cousin.

"What do you say?" Shanalorre said as the fruit was snatched from Lori's hand.

"Thank you very much, Great Binder!"

As Lori put the basket on the bench next to her, pulling out the mican that was had been left in it and starting to peel it open with her fingers, she saw Rian smile.

"You know, someday soon you're not going to need me anymore," he said. "Even if you don't think so, you actually handle 'dealing with people' matters pretty well."

Lori snorted. "I don't want to. You're still doing it."

Rian just kept smiling. "Yes, your Bindership."

Why was she annoyed even when it wasn't his 'to be annoying' smile?

Shaking her head, Lori continued peeling her mican as they waited for dinner.

Around her, her demesne lived on.