Demesne 399 - Alloys Of Light And Dark (Patreon)

Iridescence in the crucible. As with the airwisps, the lightwisps seemed to occupy the same space as the firewisps of the molten metal. Also like the airwisps, once the slag was scooped out the copper was poured into the mold and allowed to slowly cool in the air, the lightwisps disappeared with the earthwisps.

Unlike the previous alloys however, the altered physical properties of the alloy were immediately evident under the soot covering the metal. Because of the altered properties, the alloy was gripped in tongs and dipped into the bucket of water instead of simply dropping it in. Once the sample had stopped causing the water to bubble, it was carefully pulled out and laid down on a nearby anvil, where Lori altered one of the bindings of lightwisps anchored to the ceiling to shine brighter and shine down on the sample.

“Suddenly, I want new windows,” Rian said as everyone stared at the perfectly transparent sample of copper. Well, not perfectly transparent. Like glass, its curves and angles and little textures from the cooling distorted the light passing through it, and some small amount of soot still clung to its surface, making discerning the sample’s shape easier. “Your Bindership, when you’re done with copper, maybe we can try seeing if this works with molten rock? Because if you had transparent rock to work with…”

“After we’ve seen to the copper,” Lori said, also staring at the now-transparent metal. She gestured towards it. “Begin the tests.”

That seemed to stir the staring smiths into action again, and the copper was hastily picked and gripped in tongs. The same test they’re run on the previous alloys were conducted: a hammer was used to start shaping and flattening the sample to test if it still had the same physical properties. At first the smiths move reticently as if they were actually were working on glass, but after the first few hammer strikes without the sample cracking or shattering into pieces they picked up the pace.

After some time working on the sample while other smiths temporarily put away the mold and crucible—people were going past the entrance of the smithy towards her Dungeon, likely because it was time for lunch—the redsmiths reported that except for its altered transparency, the sample had the normal physical properties of copper.

The sample of airwisp-anchored copper alloy had cooled, and they’d dropped it into the bucket just to be sure before setting it aside with the other sample’s they’d made this morning. Lori still needed to try to identify other altered properties of the metals later.

The lightwisp-anchored copper alloy was the most immediately interesting of the alloys they’re produced. They didn’t have enough copper stockpiled to put alloy windows on very building—and she had no desire to actually put such on every building—but a transparent metal would be able to act as a viewing port on the door of her Dungeon and on River’s Fork’s dragon shelter, allowing them to check outside during and after a dragon’s passing.

Rian’s suggesting to see if they could alloy stone also had merit—ugh, she hated it when he had a point—if only because it was a material they had available. The attempt had to be made, since it worked... well, having transparent stone would be very useful…

Lunch was relatively quiet at their table. With Rian busy most of the morning, he had nothing to report, and he himself seemed preoccupied. He stared down at his food, eating without thought—which was actually faster than how he usually ate, and Lori could recognize the joke that implied—not really paying any attention to Umu and Riz next to him.

“Rian? Is something wrong?” Riz asked.

He blinked, turning towards her. “Huh? No, nothing’s wrong. Why do you ask?”

“You were just… sitting there staring,” Riz said.

“I was? Oh. Sorry, it’s just… I was thinking about something.” He shook his head.

“What were you thinking about?” Mikon asked, leaning forward to look past Riz.

Rian glanced towards Lori. “Windows.”

“I’m not putting new windows on every house,” Lori said blandly. “We just did that.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Good.”

Lori went back to her food. Rian did as well, already looking preoccupied again.

As Riz opened her mouth, Rian suddenly said, “So… should I add ‘a lot of metal’ to the list of things to buy in Covehold Demesne?”

“Don’t get lead.”

“Well, obviously. Sorry, you were going to say something, Riz?”

After lunch, the two of them returned to the smithy. Rian had more slates in hand, in case he needed more space to write on. While the redsmiths took care of the samples they’d already made—someone seemed to be hammering lettering into them—the crucible was prepared again, slag scraped out from the inside before it was filled with copper shavings and finely ground white Iridescence. This time, however, the crucible was covered instead of left open, preventing light from entering. Once covered, Lori claimed the darkwisps that appeared inside the crucible, forming them into a binding that she then anchored to the white Iridescence. Then she activated the binding of firewisps, which needed some imbuing but that was easily remedied.

Despite some mild concern that the darkwisps would start disappearing when the copper started glowing from the heat, being anchored to the white Iridescence allowed the wisps to persist despite not being imbued. The copper liquefied without issue, the darkwisps ‘dissolving’ into the metal and being carried along as the airwisps had been.

The cover was removed, and slag was scooped out before the copper alloy was poured into the mold. Once it had cooled sufficiently—and they were sure it wasn’t also transparent, just in case—the sample was picked up and dropped into the bucket of water, the contents of which had been replaced.

Once it was cooled, the alloy was retrieved from the bucket and laid out onto the anvil for everyone to see.

“I’ll be honest, I was sort of expecting it to be completely black for some reason,” Rian said. “Silly, I know. Only the one before this one actually looked different.”

“Well, you were half-right, at least,” Lori said. Despite being washed and wiped as well as the cloths they had could manage, the copper still looked blackened.

“I wonder… if you put lightwisps and darkwisps in the same alloy, will it come out transparent andtinted?”

“We can attempt to try multiple-wisp alloys later. For now, we need to test this sample.”

The sample was taken and tested. Hammering, bending, shaping… despite the color, none of its other physical property seemed to have changed. Was a slight darkening all there was?

Rian didn’t seem to think so. That, or he was simply in denial as he pick up the thinner, wider ingot. They didn’t have time to flatten it out completely into a sheet, after all. “Hmm…”

“Set it aside to test further later, Rian,” she said. “We need to move on to the next test.” Already, more copper shavings were being poured into the crucible. The smiths had been a little overenthusiastic in their shaving, but Rian had argued this made it easier to melt them, since heat didn’t have to penetrate so deep. Since they were heating the copper with radiant heat instead of direct heat so as not to potentially affect the alloying metal, she’d decided to just go along with it.

Rian held the sample out to her. “Can you pass magic through this?”

She blinked. What? “What?”

“Can you pass magic through this?” he repeated. “Do that thing you do where you claim and imbue wisps through metal?”

She took the metal with a sigh, holding it in her hand as she reached down to use it to imbue the binding of firewisps again. “Why?” she said, moving one end of the darkwisp-anchored alloy into the binding.

“Because you told me that darkwisps can block magic.”

Lori blinked, then stared at the flattened ingot. That…!

She reached through the metal towards the binding of firewisps, being careful to ensure that it was through her hand that was holding the metal that she bound the wisps through and not her connection to her core. Lori felt the familiar distant-yet-near sensation of using a metal contact, and began to imbue the bin—what the colors?-!

“What the colors?” she exclaimed.

Rian straightened. “So it does affect magic?” he said eagerly.

Lori ignored him as she continued to try to imbue the binding of firewisps, even as she struggled—and it was a struggle—to imbue the binding. She had never had to struggle with imbuing, hadn’t even known it was possible. In all of her time as a wizard, and now a Dungeon Binder, nothing had ever actually impeded her ability to imbue something. Lay claim to something, yes. She had practiced trying to claim wisps that another Whisperer was also trying to claim, but that had never made imbuing difficult. This, though…

It was like trying to blow through folded cloths pressed against your mouth to move a sheet of paper, or like trying to walk through waist-high water flowing towards you. Try as she might, she could feel only a small amount of the magic she was trying to pass through the wire making its way to the binding at a rate that was a trickle compared to what it usually was.

With a shiver, Lori stopped using the alloy as a conduit and hastily put the sample down as she began to imbue the binding of firewisps though her connection to her core.

“Your Bindership? Is something wrong?”

Lori shook her head roughly. “Rian, write this down,” she said. “The flow of magic is impeded through the darkwisp-anchored copper alloy.”

Rian made a show of writing that down. “We should ask Taeclas if it’s the same for her,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe check the other alloys if their ability to channel magic has been affected too? In hindsight, this should have been a physical property we were testing for.”

“If that’s the case, we should perhaps test how well lightning passes through the alloys as well,” Lori said. “Especially when we make the lightningwisp alloy.”

“Oh, you know bindings to test that? That’s a relief, here I was wondering how we were going to do that…”

“…” Lori ‘…’-ed. Maybe there’s something in the almanac that could help her. “Is the crucible ready yet?”