Demesne 319 - Illumination and Water Reclamation (Patreon)

Once the mine was sealed, Lori would have liked to just seal off her alcove and sleep. They were secure behind her defenses, the lightningwisps should be sufficient to keep bugs or bug-like abominations out, they had air, and the mine and its intakes was sufficiently elevated that most deadly gasses that dragons would likely to produce—egg gas came to mind—would likely pass them by.

Unfortunately, besides someone trying to kill her, there were also other things she needed to do.

Unlike her Dungeon, she hadn't dug a large reservoir for the shelter as she had at home, partly because she hadn't wanted to ruin any buried copper ore, and partly because she hadn't wanted to invest the time away from her Dungeon. However, Rian and…uh… what was his—ah, Yllian! Rian and Yllian had made sure that the shelter had enough water for fifty people for a week. With the demesne's children in Lori's Demesne, there were less people than that—

Lori paused in her flow of thought, then sighed and sat up. "Erzebed," she called.

Riz stuck her head around the stone wall to look into the alcove. "Yes, Great Binder?"

"Is everyone accounted for?"

"Yes, Great Binder. Lord Yllian had everyone counted, then checked twice. Everyone that should be here is. I counted myself, as they were coming in, there are as many as there should be."

Lori nodded. "Good."

With the demesne's children in Lori's Demesne, there were less people than that amount needed to sustain, so they should be fine… as long as drinking and eating was allthey used that water for. And it likely wouldn't be. At the very least, they'd need to wash the utensils and cooking implements, because if anyone got sick…

In hindsight, perhaps Lori should have arrange some kind of signal with Shanalorre that would inform the other Dungeon Binder when someone in the shelter needed healing. Though even if anyone did get sick, it was unlikely to be serious enough that the ailment would kill them before the dragon finally left. They had never really managed to implement the idea of having Shanalorre heal anyone in a designated area because people had managed to avoid serious injury so far, and the Coldhold or Lori's Ice Boat had been in the other demesne often enough that if anyone was that seriously injured they could simply be brought to Shanalorre, or if they couldn't be moved Shanalorre could be brought to them.

Hopefully this state of affairs would hold, but if anyone did get sick, it would most likely be food poisoning or bowel disease, which would go through their water very quickly. Hence it was better to prevent it from happening at all with a little washing. She was fairly sure that soap was one of the emergency supplies in storage—

"Erzebed, do we have any soap?"

"It was stored near the water, Great Binder, as well as some clean sand for helping scour bowls and utensils," Riz said promptly.

They had soap for washing, and they had water. While that might be enough… she wasn't going to underestimate how wasteful people could be.

Grunting in annoyance, Lori got to her feet. "Come with me," she said, picking up her staff, "and have Deil and Tackir go back to watching this alcove." She glanced at the two receptacles, looking thought openings in the panels securing the beads letting her see their size. Both were still in place, and still looked the same size at the moment, the bead imbuing their active defenses not yet visibly getting smaller. A Horotract would have been able to tell, but she certainly couldn't. not yet, anyway. It should be fine for the next hour or so.

They walked back to the shelter area, the binding of lightwisps on her staff lighting their way. The shelter area hadn't been built the same as her Dungeon's second level. She'd had less space to work with, a reduced ability to do that work, and fraying patience while she had done so. As such, instead of alcoves, she'd simply made a large rectangular room with latrines next to the ramp that led up to it and the food preparation area. As shelters went, it was rather bare, without benches and tables to eat on, but—

"Did they remember to bring in the bowls and utensils?"

"Yes, Great Binder, they remembered to do that. We won't have to try eating with our hands."

—they'd have bowls and utensils, at least.

And if Lori managed to build what she had in mind before any water was wasted, they'd have the water to wash all that without significantly impacting their water reserves.

First things first, however: the main shelter area was too dark. She couldn't work in such conditions.

Lori held out her hand, slowly moving it back and forth through the air as she claimed lightwisps being given off by her staff and the two wisplights, anchoring them to her skin and imbuing them using Magic she'd drawn from her core. Once she felt it was sufficiently imbued, she anchored the binding to the butt of her staff so she could anchor the binding of lightwisps to the ceiling and activate it.

There rose a susurrus of low voices at the sudden radiance. The brighter light made it easy for Lori to claim more lightwisps from the air to bind and imbue. The next light she placed on the ceiling over the kitchen area, where food was in the middle of cooking, the pieces of meat being stirred to brown them, filling the air with a delicious smell.

It also reminded her that she needed to deal with the water issue, so she anchored the last binding of lightwisps onto the ceiling of the unoccupied corner furthest from the ramp up to the shelter area. The stone there was bare, with no shades of green or blue to indicate the presence of copper ore. Lori touched the stone, fingers curled so she was making contact with her fingernails as she channeled her magic outward through her bones and to her fingernails to claim and bind the stone.

She had to work quickly and efficiently, since she didn't have much time to build this. It needed to be done before they finished cooking lunch at the very least, because she was not working while other people ate! Lori softened the stone and slowly, carefully drew mass out from the stone wall. As stone moved laterally towards her, she hollowed out the wall above the thick shelf she was drawing out, creating a deeper niche.

Without any tools or her connection to her core, she had to use her bare hands, which made shaping a waist-high sink a bit difficult. While the stone was softened like wet clay, it still had the mass and density of stone, and so it was heavy in her hands as she gathered excess stone into a ball that she—and thankfully, Riz—had to pick up with their bare hands to place on the floor. They had to do this several times to be able to excavate enough stone, resulting in a sufficiently deep recessed sink wide enough for two people to use side by side.

Lori took a hand full of the stone she'd excavated and removed and formed it into a palm-sized blob, then used that to smooth out the surfaces and edges of the sink so that there wouldn't be any sharp edges that might cut fingers. As she made a hole at the end of the sink—the end not face a wall—for water to drain through, the resulting roughness of the whole thing made her perfectionist soul ache. However, she couldn't spend much more time on the matter, since she could see that the kitchen seemed to be close to finishing cooking.

"Erzebed, do you happen to know if we have any buckets that didn't get used to as planters for crops?" Lori ask as she took some stone she'd set aside and began forming it into a crude tube.

"I know we have some for carrying water from the barrels, Great Binder. Do you want me to get you one?"

"No, you stay with me. But I need one of those clean buckets with some water in it—it doesn’t need to be full—and one of the buckets being used for planters. Have someone get them for me. Put the crops in another bucket and have them bring the bucket to me. There's always at least one that hasn't been filled as much as the others." She could build a crude container later, but she needed something to catch debris in the meantime.

Lori continued working on the tube as Riz waved to Yllian and the two spoke for a moment. The pipe was… well, unsightly and heavy. However, it didn't need to be all that good looking. She made a hole in the tube at a third of the way of its length, then began to fuse the tube horizontally to the hole in the sink. She fuse the stone carefully, since it would need to support its own wait for the moment. She might come back to put stone supports on it, but she'd have to do that well after lunch.

She was tempted to put a bend in the tube, but that might weaken the tube too much. So instead she stuck her finger into the hole on the tube—she had oriented the hole so that it was on the bottom—and softened the stone slightly so she could form a groove to help guide debris where she wanted it to go.

"Uh, Great Binder? I have the buckets."

Lori turned towards the voice, then forced her knees to straightened with a wince. "Ah, good. Give them here." Riz handed her the buckets, and she cringed at the feeling of mud and dirt on the rope of one of the buckets. Well, she hadasked for one of the dirty buckets.

She took the dirty bucket and positioned it under the hole on the tube. Then she dipped one hand into the bucket of water—as requested, it had only a little water in it—and claimed the waterwisps around her handing, binding and imbuing it to unnaturally viscosity. When she drew out her hand, it was covered with a slime-like layer of water. She used her other hand to scrape the water together into a glob in her hands, then knelt down and carefully raised the glob up into the hole in the tube.

Lori anchored some of the water and waterwisps to the stone. Drawing her belt knife with her free hand, she laid her finger on the blade and used it to act as a channel to the waterwisps so she could remove her other hand. Then she had the water change into vapor.

The blade went cold under her finger as the waterwisp drew heat from the air around it to change state. She pulled back her blade, putting it back in its sheath as she took the blob in her other hand and raised it to the end of the tube, anchoring the water wisps to the stone opening there. She took her stuck her finger into the binding of waterwisps, making the whole thing spread to fill the entire tube, anchoring it to the tube's opening. She then divided it into four distinct bindings: one at the opening at the drain hole of the sink all the way to before the hole in the tube, one over the hole in the tube, one extending through the rest of the tube, and the last at the opening at the end of the tube.

She rubbed her hands together now that she didn't have water on them—grimacing at the feeling of grit from handling the dirty bucket—and used the friction of the movement to create firewisps, which she claimed and bound. She added the binding of firewisps to the binding of waterwisps.

With all the pieces done, she was finally able to properly form the binding to distill water so they could reuse the dirty wash water.

While all the wisps were interconnected, that was mostly so she only had to imbue one thing. Each binding was simple in purpose. The first binding of waterwisps in the tube, positioned between the tube's hole and the sink, would move any water from the sink down the tube. This was mostly so that there would be no backflow, especially from the second binding over the hole, which would have any water change state to vapor, leaving any debris such as dirt, oil and soap behind. Any debris left in the tube would hopefully be pushed by the water propelled by the first binding so that it would fall out the hole.

The gritty bucket was placed under the hole to catch debris, which they'd just get rid off by dumping it into one of the latrines to be cleaned out after the dragon left.

The third binding of water wisps would continue drawing the vapor down the tube, where it would reach the last binding of waterwisps, which would condense the vapor back to water and let it drip down to the clean bucket she'd asked Riz for. The firewisps would act to transfer the heat needed for the water to change state, as well as to keep the tube from getting so cold ice formed in the tube. She'd check later if she needed to modify it to add heat, but for now it was probably all that the system needed for a rough equilibrium.

Lori tested the new sink by washing her hands and letting the water flow down the sink. The water flowed down into the hole, meaning she'd made the sink properly and there were no spots lower than the drain.

She sighed as the condensed water flowed out of the tube and onto the floor, because she was still holding the bucket to pour water into the sink.

"Erzebed…"

"I'll have someone get another bucket, Great Binder."

"You do that," Lori said as she grabbed her staff to start gathering the water on the floor into a viscous blob. Water was a limited resource to them, after all.