Weekly Digest 146 - (#458 - #462) (Patreon)

It Will Always Be Waiting

"I'd like to apologize for what I said yesterday, and for being tardy with my apology. While I still believe my course of action was prudent at the time, despite later events, how I went about it was needlessly cruel and deliberately hurtful. While I don't expect you to forgive me, know that I deeply regret my words."

Lori looked blankly at her lord, then sideways at Shanalorre, whom he was facing. What?

The other Dungeon Binder regarded Rian coolly as her cousin looked between the two of them curiously. Lori was surprised the young girl was actually awake this morning. Most of her recent memories of the girl had her napping at the table.

"You need not apologize for your tardiness," Shanalorre said. "I was deliberately avoiding you. As to the rest of your apology… it is noted."

There was a moment of silence as the two simply stared at each other, while Lori, Mikon, Umu, Taeclas, and Taeclas's wife all looked back and forth between them. Only Riz seemed to have some idea what was going on, as she merely sat back and watched.

Eventually, Rian nodded. "I understand. I will not trouble you further than. Good morning to you, Binder Shanalorre."

Shanalorre merely inclined her head.

Lori sighed. "Rian, what are you talking about?"

"Just personal matters, your Bindership. Nothing for you to worry about. Oh look, the food's ready! I should probably—"

"No, you stay here and speak with her Bindership," Mikon said, her hand coming down on Rian's shoulder from the other side of Riz. "It's not your turn, remember? Honestly, Rian… Erzebed, keep him here, will you? Umu and I will get the food."

Rian sat there, looking uncharacteristically awkward as the two women left, accompanied by Taeclas and her wife. Lori glanced between him and Shanalorre again, then simply sighed and decided to leave the matter be. If it was important, she'd find out one way or another. With a shrug, tossed the matter aside and faced her lord. "Rian, what is the status of the demesne."

He took a deep breath, then let it out. "Right, right… except for the crops, we're pretty much recovered from the dragon now, and can get back to normal activities. The water wheel is operational, and we're going to start cutting down some of the dead trees. Kolinh and I discussed it, and we think it would be best to move towards making winter preparations for the village in case the snowfall is the same as last year. To that end, we intend to make more  snow shovels, more snow pads, more snow skids, and if Lidz is up to it a few sleds getting between the two demesnes in the winter. Larger ones this time."

"And how do you intend to move these large sleds?" Lori said dryly.

"We get on our knees and beg you for the favor of your power?"

"I will take it under consideration. Shouldn't you also be preparing for the next trading trip to Covehold?"

"Yes, but that's something I can leave to Kolinh and the others. They were the ones who did the original preparations, after all." He tilted his head. "Actually, wouldn't now be the best time to go? The dragon's just passed, so we shouldn't have to worry for a while…"

They stared at each other for a moment, then Rian sighed. "I'll get preparations to leave started after breakfast. Next week should do it, I think? How many beads will we be carrying?"

"We'll prepare three thousand beads. That should be more than enough."

Rian nodded. "I'll ask around for what everyone needs and present you with a list so you can decide what we should buy. Should we buy a new almanac? You know, in case there have been any recent useful discoveries?"

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They continued to speak on this topic until the women arrived with the food, at which point Taeclas brought up the subject of optimizing the arrangement of their fields so that they could fit in one further harvest before winter set in. With one or two exceptions, they were all mostly matters that didn't really need Lori's input, only her awareness and authorization.

Of course, there were the exceptions.

"So, while we have a gristmill in the mill building, I think it would be advisable to also improve the gristmill in the we currently have in the second level," Rian said. "In winter, the mill building will be inoperable most of the time, and it would remove the risk of the flour getting wet if we milled the beard in the second level in the winter. At the moment, it's currently our most labor-intensive chore that could be done far more efficiently with your assistance, especially since our flour consumption increases during the winter due to the need to ration meat. It will require having to temporarily dismantle the gristmill, so we might need to go without bread for a few days, but better now than in winter."

The words made Lori grimace, even as she looked down at the drafted plans before her. Whatsisname—she checked the rocks in her belt pouch—Kolinh and the carpenters had even sketched out not only a diagram for the water wheel but also a proposed pipe layout for the water that she would need to bind to power the wheel. It was a more compact design than the water wheel that the carpenters currently had to power their lathe and rotating saw, able to fit into the alcove that had more or less permanently become the milling room, with a wall that would separate the wheel and water from the rest of the room to keep the four from getting wet.

Another matter that would need her to act was Rian's proposal to resume the proper expansion of the third level, including full excavating plots for the dungeon farm.

"We're already storing a lot of things in the side tunnels, and two of them are already permanently for tubers and sweetgrass," Rian said. "Honestly, if we let it stand like that for much longer, that's going to become the permanent configuration of the third level. It's already going to be difficult for you to remove the excavated stone given all the plots already established between the far tunnels and the stairs. You could try completing it this winter, but that would only be the excavation. We'd still need to wait until spring for the ground to soften enough for us to be able to dig up dirt to fill the plots."

Lori grimaced, but had to agree that the third level had been delayed for far too long. Only a quarter of it had been properly dug up, though two-thirds had become farming plots. Or at least, that had been the size she'd intended. In hindsight, that was clearly far too big, but there was always a use to be found for dungeon space and excavated stone.

"Speaking of that, there's also the matter of the demesne's boats," Rian continued relentlessly. "Back when we only had your boat and your ice boat, storing them in the dungeon wasn't a problem. But since we've been having Lidzuga make more—he's almost finished working on the latest one, by the way—storing them has become an issue. I think it might be necessary to have a building specifically for storing all the boats during winter and when a dragon passes overhead, including the Coldhold—which you need to get out of the water for so we can inspect it for the trip to Covehold, by the way. Carrying so many boats down to the third level is no longer practical."

Lori frowned. "A storage facility for the boats can be built easily enough, but the Coldhold is far too big. There's a reason why I sink it in the river."

"And while effective, it’s a method that is clearly not practical in the long term," Rian said. "Actually securing the Coldhold is a relatively slow process, and requires you to both sink and unsink it. both phases are also something only you can do, forcing your attention away from other preparations. I think it might be time to consider a different, less Dunbeon binder-intensive solution."

"Which is?"

"A boat house, basically," Rian said. "A covered and reinforced building along the river itself that we can use to store the boats in all weather. I don’t know if you noticed, but when it rained back in the spring, we had to bring your boat under cover in the entryway since all that moisture wasn't good for the wood. Part of the reason we had to do such extensive checks on the Coldhol before we set out was to make sure there was no rain damage that had developed into something worse in the interim. While we have Taeclas and Liddzuga now to make repairs to any such damage easier, preventing such damage would significant extend the time between repairs." He shrugged. "And if you're going to be finishing the third level, then there'd be a sufficient amount of building material for such a reinforced building. We could also make it out of wood, but then it wouldn't be possible to reinforce it Whispering. Having such a large reinforced building would also give somewhere we can store other tools in the future without having to bring them into the dungeon. "

Lori frowned. "What tools?"

"Well, nothing right now, but if we expand our fields out because of all the trees we're clearing, it would probably be prudent for us to invest in a plow," Rian said. "Without undead or domesticated beasts, it would have to be pulled manually, but that would still be more efficient than trying to till the land with hand tools. And… well, so far the hunters have been building their own tannery buildings, which have been doing well in providing us with leather, but it's probably about time they get something better. With your permission, I'll have Kolinh get started on building them more sturdy facilities. I was hoping you'd be willing to build a side extension to the entryway where can keep any chokers and any other beasts we're trying to domesticate. Ralii and the rest put so much effort into trying to tame them, but they keep dying because it's not safe to bring them into the dungeon…"

"A side extension?" Lori said. Already this long list of things was making her weary. 

Rian sighed. "Yes. It… well, it will probably have to entail a second entrance into the dungeon that will need to be sealed completely during a dragon, so we don't have to bring the chokers in through the entryway and risk them getting loose in the dungeon. After all, we can't just throw them into a room. Any domesticated beasts will need to be fed and watered, their waste dealt with to keep dustlife from breeding and infecting the rest of the dungeon, if they lay eggs we'll need a way to collect those eggs…" He trailed off and shrugged, giving her apologetic look for some reason. "Sorry. It's a lot of work, I know. Some of it we don't actually need, but I thought I should bring them to your attention."

"As you should.  You're my lord, after all." It was frustrating, but she could see the need for all of it. Even the tannery. She actually felt a twinge of guilt at the reminder that the tanners built most of their infrastructures themselves. Yes, there were the evaporator jars for collecting goldwater and distilling it to alchemical concentrations, but beyond that… well, she'd been providing a shameful lack of support towards important workers. "Prioritize constructing the tannery facilities. I'll… see about constructing a placed that any domesticated beasts can be placed for next time." She frowned. "Are they even willing to attempt doing so again?"

"They managed to be a bit more successful this time. The hunters have always been trying to get the chokers to the point they'd lay eggs. Tae confirmed that three of them are fertilized, so now those are being incubated as best as we can. I'm told it's preferred, since they can raise the beastlets without the influence of parents. They'll still be trying to catch and domesticate more for bloodline variety, though."

"… what was that about eggs?" Lori said.

"The chokers didn't produce nearly enough eggs to be worth adding to the food stores," Rian said. "The hunters hardboiled the ones that weren't fertilized and that's what they ate when they had to go hunting and miss lunch."

Lori twitched. That… sounded logical but… eggs! How long has it been since she'd eaten eggs?-!

Well, another reason to finally build that beast pen extension for her Dungeon. Eggs…!

Lori shook her head to rid herself of those distracting thoughts.  "I'll add it to the list of things to be done." Meaning she actually had to go upstairs and list these matters down so she wouldn't forget them. "Is there anything else?"

Rian considered the tablet next to his now-empty bowl. "Well, we really need to finally get around to teaching the children how to read and write, but that's nothing you have to worry about directly. I think that should be all for now, your Bindership."

Lori nodded in acknowledgement and made to rise.

"Um, your Bindership?"

Sighing, Lori let herself drop into her chair. "What else now?"

"Nothing, nothing! It's just… there's no reason to get started now. They'll keep for a few more days. Why don't you rest for a bit? Relax, do some reading…"

"Rian…" Lori said slowly. It had finally happened. Her lord had lost what little sense he'd had and become a true idiot. "We have just spent all of breakfast talking about all the work that needs to be done."

"And I'm saying they can wait for a day as you rest. When was the last time you had a rest? Real doing nothing but enjoying yourself, not doing any work rest? As your lord, I am strongly recommending you take a day or two to do just that. The work will still be there." He tilted his head. "Don't you have notes to go over?"

Lori twitched at the reminder. The stack of notes were upstairs on her table, still bound tight after she'd done her laundry…

"Go and read," Rian said gently. "Lock yourself up and lose yourself if you want to. The work will still be there. I'll be sure to remind you of that."

She glanced up her room, then nodded. "All right. I suppose I could use a rest." Staying up to make all those bindings and only three had been used for their intended purpose. It had been so frustrating… "Yes, I think I will rest."

Nodding to herself once more, Lori stood up and headed upstairs.

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Places To Study

After literally days of being pressed, Lori's notes were finally mostly flat, although little lines from where they'd been curled or folded had become weak points on the sheets. She carefully separated the sheets from between the blank papers Rian had placed between them to keep the ink from transferring between pages. Clearly that hadn't been necessary, since if her notes hadn't rubbed off on each other when she'd been keeping them together in a sheaf, but she supposed it was good that Rian had treated her notes so carefully.

Now, if he'd just remembered to put it in her pack.

It took her a while to sort them in order. Lori vividly remembered the very first page of the notes, as well as the next page, but as she progressed through the pages, it became harder and harder to be sure the next one was where it was supposed to be. She didn't know what to make of the last pages at all, her strongest memory being of them being how she'd stopped writing—she didn't even remember what she'd been writing—when she'd heard Rian declare that someone had pissed in the water.

She'd have to remember to clear out all the water, and have the walls of the basin scoured.

Adjusting the stool she was sitting on, Lori leaned back so she was resting on the stone wall behind her at a more comfortable angle and resumed her reading, the familiar sounds around her making a comfortable din to ignore as continued going over her notes. The pages at the end had a lot of terrible handwriting. She could still read it—it was her handwriting, after all—but a few times she had to actually think about it. Some of the flow diagrams were confusing, and if taken as they were would result in bindings that would have no useful function besides inefficiently setting things on fire—there were better ways to do it—but knowing that they were supposed to do something and reading her handwriting, she could mentally correct the diagrams, properly straightening other and in some instances filling in missing parts that she actually forgot to write down.

That wasn't the result of her affected thinking, she had a tendency to sometimes not write down things even if she was actively thinking about them when she wrote. It was an embarrassing problem, but she fortunately she was aware enough to correct it… most of the time. That meant she was well-accustomed to having to correct her flow diagrams later, hopefully before she submitted it for grading.

Given all that, she might actually need to rewrite some of the later pages to fill in the blanks, but at least between the diagrams and the actual notes she knows what needs what blanks filling in. Well, she could do that later. For the moment, she decided that it would be a better use of her time to concentrate on the notes that were the most complete, which meant starting from the first.

Crossing her legs, right ankle resting just above her left knee, a tablet and paper on her lap and a pen and ink bottle sitting on another stool next to her, Lori began reading the first page.

The lightning ball binding she'd made had been mostly based on the binding on the first page. The dragon had released what had seemed like hundreds of these lightning ball bindings, and she had taken note of them. Her arrangement of a central binding of lightningwisps, a buffer of airwisps, and a shell of both had been an extremely simplified, over-imbued and incomplete version of these. The original had other components that she hadn't recalled or included because they had been too complicated, and she genuinely had no idea what they were for.

"Uh, your Bindership?"

According to both her notes and her memory, the binding had produced an intense amount of heat and light, strongly implying it was something destructive… ah, she probably shouldn't test the binding in her dungeon, then. Still, she couldn't help but form the binding as she had noted it, giving the both the lightningwisps and airwisps in the 'shell' directionality and… huh, actually, wouldn't this compress the air within the shell? Lori checked her notes, and yes, she had noted that. Directly after that was a note that… ah, now she remembered why this was interesting. The binding had produced an intense amount of heat and lights, the firewisps more than filling the shell before quickly consuming all imbuement and vanishing, leaving only heat that had quickly dissipated…

"Your Bindership? Hello?"

It didn't seem to have been an explosion from the lightningwisps causing the air to explode. The heat and light had been steady for far longer than an explosion would have entailed…

"Your Bindership, are you mad at me too?"

She sighed and finally looked up from her notes. "I'm starting to be," she said, annoyed. "What's so urgent? You were the one who recommended that I peruse my notes."

"Yes, and I stand by that," Rian said. With him standing and her sitting, she had to look up at him, which… well, she didn't like it, but she also wasn’t going to stand up just because he was here. Lori was pretty sure it was supposed to be the other way around. "I have to ask, though… why are you perusing your notes here?"

"It's my dungeon, I can who wherever I want, " Lori pointed out sternly.

"Of course, I didn't mean to imply otherwise," Rian said smoothly. "And what a wonderful dungeon it is, too. It's just… is there any specific reason you're doing it here in the carpenters' alcove? Because you're making people nervous and affecting their productivity."

"Because I wanted to read here, of course," Lori said, her face now set in an annoyed frown. The sounds of woodworking occurring—

"While I am, of course, in no way, shape or form demanding that you leave… don't you have your own room for this sort of thing? An actual room, with walls and a very nice place to sit and… well, not people bothering you? You know, people? Those whom you can't stand to be around?"

"No one was bothering me but you," she pointed out. Really, everyone had been so thoughtful, ignoring her completely and not bothering her.

"Yes, because it's my job to bother you on behalf of everyone." He sighed. "So, you're just going to read, right? Not actually going to try any bindings?"

"Again, it is my Dungeon, I merely tolerate everyone in it." She had half a mind to activate the lightning ball simply out of spite.

"It's just… you told me that in your notes were interesting ways to use lightningwisps, right? I'm just concerned about having light,  which can cause sparks, being around all this sawdust. This very flammable sawdust."

…

Colors.

Lori sighed, as she carefully put her notes together, capped her pen, stoppered her ink bottle, and anchored her binding to her bone table—not a good idea to just disperse imbued lightingwisps, they might spark—and got to her feet, glaring at Rian. Grabbing her stool, she stomped off to find somewhere else to sit. She'd been enjoying herself, just as Rian had suggested, reading while she listened to the sounds of carpentry and woodworking while—and this was very important—not contributing or doing any of the work at all. She had always felt that the familiar workshop sounds were relaxing, as long as she wasn't actually working. It was either here or the smithy, and metal sounds would have been far too loud.

She'd have to find somewhere else. Maybe she could go to the sawmill—no, there was sawdust there too. Colors. Where else could she go where there were sounds she was familiar with that she could ignore while she worked so she could study better.?

…

Hmm… actually…

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Lori hummed to herself as she leaned back against stone wall behind her at a comfortable angle, the familiar sounds around her making an uncomfortable din to ignore, as continued going over her notes. Annoying and distasteful as the sounds were, it reminded her of studying late into the night back in her student days, giving her a degree of comfort and let her slip back into her old study habits.

With the wisps of the shell of the lightning ball formed with additional inwarddirectionality—the lightningwisps' to keep all the loose lightningwisps within the shell, and the airwisps' to created a spherical are of compressed, pressurized air—when activated very carefully, the binding had resulted in a… well, a ball of bright, burning fire as the lightning had casued the air itself to ignite. The directionality meant that the flame remained contained, even as it released copious amounts of heat and light.

The light had actually been near-blinding, and the heat expelled from the by the binding in the few moments that it had before Lori hastily deactivated it has been searing, as if Lori had actually thrust herself as far into a forge as she could without touching the coals. After she finished blinking and recovering her vision—or at least enough vision to see around the sudden white spot now seemingly burned into the middle of her gaze—Lori had actually touched her face to check if she was missing her facial hair. Thankfully, that wasn't the case, but the very fact she actually felt heat rather than simply being comfortably warm meant that the binding's heat had been significant that.

…

Perhaps she'd conduct any further testing on that one over the river, far away from her.

Reading her notes had been difficult until her vision had finally returned to normal, but she had managed. In hindsight, given the confines of where she was it would have been prudent to place the binding inside of a shell of lightningwisps to contain any lightning the binding might have released at random, as well a firewisps to contain the heat—

The sounds coming from the next room peaked beyond her ability to relegate to background noise, and Lori cringed in response, instinctively raising her hands over her ears. The binding to block all sound from reaching her ears before she recalled she was the Dungeon Binder now and didn't have to simply endure such things. "Keep it down!" she called out, and was gratified as the sounds reduced. Nodding in satisfaction, Lori turned back to her notes. Let's see, what next…

Lori was in the middle of preparing a both a lightwisp binding—from both the notes, the diagram, and her own hazy memories, she was fairly sure this would producing piercing light—as well as a target of darkwisps—so that if the binding did produce piercing light it wouldn't melt through the stone walls—there was a knock on the door.

"Inay, I'm studying," she said reflexively, realized what the words that had come out of her mouth were, and hastily corrected, "I mean, go away, I'm busy!" Far too late, Lori realized that statement wasn't an improvement either.

"Your Bindership, could you please open the door so we can talk?" Rian's muffled voice said, coming in through the hole high on one wall that both let in both light and air. "Please?"

Lori glared at the door, then grudgingly got to her feet and took the two steps to reach the door, pulling back the latch, swinging the door open. "What?" she demanded.

On the other side, a blank-faced Rian held up a waterclock. "I've been asked to inform you your time is up, your Bindership. Also, there have been reports of some rude person yelling at people and weird smells. Would you happen to know anything about that, your Bindership?"

"It's the Um, Rian. Weird smells are its default state." She'd swept the entire room with unseen light when she had entered, and even then she had been reluctant to sit on the bare wooden bed, opting to sit on her stool instead.

"As you say, your Bindership. In any case, your turn is done, so I'll have to ask you to make room for the next people who want to use this room."

Lori frowned, then reluctantly actually paid attention to the sounds coming from the other rooms. There were more muted now, but… Oh, right. She checked her awareness of the demesne's wisps, noting which rooms had voids in them. "There are still other empty rooms, Rian."

"Ah, you'll be taking another turn? Then I should note that by doing so I'll have to include your name with the list of people who have to clean the interior at the end of the—why is this room so hot?"

Oh. She'd thought the room had cooled down since it was comfortably warm…

Rian was waving his hand over Lori's head, feeling the air. "And that smell… have you been making lightning bindings in here? No, of course you were, the smell if obvious. Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

"I know what I'm doing, Rian," Lori said defensively.

"Lori, I distinctly remember what your lightning has been looking like recently. Bright, hot, and deadly. Why would you possibly think it was a good idea to make bindings like that in an enclosed room that has you in it!-? What if your lightning had gotten so hot you set the air on—" Rian paused and waved his hands over Lori's head again. He sighed, closing his eyes. When they opened again, he glared at her. "You set the air on fire?!"

Lori averted her eyes.

Rian groaned. "You set the air on fire in the same room you were in and you still thought it was a good idea to keep making more bindings?"

"I deactivated it right away," she said defensively.

"You already had a perfectly good and safe idea to do your lightning tests in the middle of the river where no one could get hurt, why did you think it was a good idea to do it in an enclosed room instead?" A look of horror came over Rian. "Oh—gah! You were going to do this in the carpenters' alcove, weren't you? You would have done this practically on top of sawdust!"

"No, I wouldn't." She honestly hadn't considered the sawdust, which was why she had left.

Rian just stared at her and sighed. "Could you… please step out? Please? As your lord, I need to insist that you don't do your 'setting the air on fire' bindings in an enclosed room, never mind the fact there are other people around. "

Well, listening to people had been getting annoying, anyway. "Fine," she said, turning to pick up her notes, both old and new.

She should probably try this next binding outdoors in any case. Yes, that's definitely why she was leaving and not for any other reason…

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Better Ways To Use Lightningwisps

"Don't you have something you need to be doing?" Lori said as she imbued the binding of lightwisps she'd formed. Technically, she already knew how to make piercing light. However, the one she'd learned only made a little red dot on walls, didn't go very far, and wasn't really useful for anything besides making petbugs chase it wound the floor.

"At the moment, that's making sure you don't go into an enclosed room and make a binding that gets hot enough to set the air on fire," Rian said flatly. "Have to keep the Dungeon Binder alive, after all. Very important job. Second most important job in the demesne, keeping the dungeon binder alive, second only to the Dungeon Binder herself. We wouldn't want the most important person to lock herself in a room and then set the air on fire, would we? That would be very dangerous and might kill her."

She gave him a flat unamused look that he returned. "Well, make yourself useful and take notes," she said, handing him the pen, ink, and the sheaf of blank papers. Rian took them, but he looked significantly less enthused that in previous instances when she'd had him taking notes.

"Of course, your bindership. What dangerous thing you shouldn't do in an enclosed room are we doing now?" His words aside, Rian immediately sat down and put his back to one of the posts on the dock used for tying up the boats—which was in fact currently being used to tie up some of their boats—setting the sheaf of blank papers on one knee before weighing it down with the tablet to keep it from being caught in the wind. There wasn't any at the moment, the air still cool and still, but it was a sensible precaution. The ink bottle was opened and placed to one side, where he wouldn't accidentally kick it, while the pen was tested on the corner of a page before Rian visibly got ready to take notes, the test sheet on top of the tablet.

Lori contemplated kicking him in the shin, but that might send the papers flying. She'd do it later. "One of the notes I wrote of observations during the dragon was a phenomenon that involved intense and concentrated lightwisps. I'm replicating the binding in an attempt to reproduce the phenomenon in question."

The binding had been strange. While it was little like what she had learned, a look at all the directionality and the fact there was only one direction exactly had been enough for her to identify it as a binding that produced piercing light. What was strange was the fact the light being used was unseen light, similar to the kind that she used to cleanse dustlife from their water facilities. She'd never considered using unseen light so, but in hindsight it made sense. Unseen light was still light, and so could be used for piercing light.

"This is the first test to ascertain the effectiveness and accuracy of replication of flow diagram…" Lori paused. "Leave that part blank, I'll fill it in later. But in summary, we will be testing a binding that from analysis and observation will produce piercing light using unseen light."

"If the light is unseen, how will you know it worked?" Rian askedas he wrote. "Are you perhaps going to stick your hand in to see if it's working?"

Both shins.

"The desired effect with be obvious to me," Lori said instead, and Rian actually wrote that down. Huh. Well, she supposed that it had been a valid question. Maybe a kick and a half, then.

Lori anchored the binding to one of the stone posts and angled it down so that the piercing light would strike the water. Well, eventually. She'd aimed it at a point in the middle of the river.

"First test, with the binding exactly as diagrammed in my notes," Lori said. "Activating the binding now."

As Rian had pointed out, there was no visible sign that the binding was working. The spot in the river she was aiming at didn't change as far as Lori could see, and as stated, there was no visible sign that the binding was even activated at all.

However, through her awareness of the wisps in her demesne, Lori was quickly able to perceive that the test had been successful, as the same phenomenon that she had observed during the dragon's passing had occurred.

Almost as soon as the binding had activated, the air in the path of the piercing light had filled with lightningwisps. Even when she deactivated the binding, the lightningwisps had remained in a mostly straight line, though that line was beginning to be affected by what little winds there were.

"Test successful," Lori declared. "The reproduced binding is working as intended, reproducing the results that were originally observed."

"And those results are?" Rian prompted as he wrote.

"The piercing light consisting of unseen light generated lightningwisps along its path."

The pen Rian was holding stilled as he looked up sharply. "It does?"

Lori nodded. "Yes. I noticed it by chance when I was observing the dragon's working, and fortunately I was able to note how the binding had been formed before it ran out of imbuement and dissolved."

Rian tilted his head. "Would you have been able to use the path of lightningwisps to—"

"Throw around lightning like character in a bad theater play?" Lori said. "Yes. I believe that when paired with the right binding, this binding in conjunction with another will allow me to send lightning flowing through the path of lightningwisps."

He looked down at the notes on his lap, under the tablet. "Are you telling me that if I'd given you these notes sooner, you'd have had a perfect binding to use that would have let you just throw lightning at the typhon from a safe distance?"

The two of them were silent of a moment as Lori turned to glare at Rian.

"Why are you looking at me like that? You were the one who gave me your notes and gave me specific orders about when to give them back to you," Rian said. "And I didn't know what was in the notes, so there's no way I would have known this binding existed."

As much as she wanted to make it three shin kicks, he—ugh—had a point.

She still wanted to kick him, though.

"All right, preparing for the next test," Lori said, "reconfiguring the binding to consume half as much imbuement…"

After all, while she knew the binding worked, it could stand to be more efficient.

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Lori managed to make a lot of progress with deciphering her notes over the next two days. With some adjustments and tests, she had been able to configure the unseen piercing light binding—as Rian had dubbed it in the notes—to be far less imbuement intensive, though the reduced consumption came at the cost of reducing the distance which the piercing unseen light travelled.

With the path of lightningwisps created by the unseen piercing light, sending lightning down the path was relatively simple, though it took Lori some time to create a proper binding for it. The binding she already knew for creating lightning consumed all of its imbuement and dissolved once activated, jumping from her and following the path of lightningwisps to whatever she'd pointed the unseen piercing light towards. While sufficient for throwing lightning at something, the fact that the binding was consumed after the lightning was created was annoying, since it meant she'd need to remake the binding every time.

Fortunately, she already had another binding that would make lightning, and it was simple to modify the lightningball binding that she had developed to use against the typhon abomination. The lightning that the binding created easily followed the trail of lightningwisps, although the binding needed to be heavily imbued. The way that her hand became comfortably warm and the number of firewisps emanating from the binding moved her to add a layer of firewisps around the shell of the lightningball to contain the heat.

Lori was able to take a second try at observing the lightning ball binding she had observed from the dragon, and as before the lighting very quickly caused the air that had been compressed together to ignite. This time she had the presence of mind to be looking away when she activated the binding over the middle of the river. It was really more of a fire ball than a lightningball, and when allowed to burn for more than a few moments quickly began spreading firewisps.

While wonderful and something Lori wished she'd known about when she'd had to set the corpse on fire, at the moment it was useless to her. The heat that the binding generated was so great it wasn't safe for her to use it outside of her demesne, so unless she anchored the binding to a rock, she had no other way to use it at the moment. But then, her own rendition of the lightning ball she had made based on memories of this one also wasn't something she could simply activate in her hand and had still proven very useful.

Once the test was completed, Lori took hold of the notes again and continued perusing and deciphering her own writings, this time occupying Rian's alcove—that is, the alcove she knew Rian and the other three occupied when a dragon was passing overhead—while using a binding of airwisps to bring the sounds of the carpenters' alcove to her. The latter wasn't a perfect solution—she'd needed to shape the binding to go over the children playing among the support pillars in the middle of the open space of the second level because they had kept running back and forth through her binding because their yells would overwhelm the sounds of the carpenters—but it worked well enough, and people knew better than to bother her.

Some of the notes she'd read, while interesting, didn't lead to anything immediately helpful. For example, one of the notes had been about her observations on a wispling, which had gone on at length about how the binding it consisted of kept reforming without any sort of external claim, as well as how it seemed to be inhaling imbuement out of the very air. The various flow diagrams she had made, once carefully recreated, had all simply emitted light—just light, not even any form of unseen light—in various patterns, with no indication as to how to reproduce the wispling at all.

There were also notes for spiraling bindings of lightningwisps that according to her notes repelled each other, when they hadn't attracted each other. From the state of the handwriting, the notes had been written well into the dragon's passing, when Lori was now willing to admit she hadn't been thinking clearly, and she had noted down the strange behavior of what she now realized had been a lode presence. She vaguely recalled that it was possible to make a lode presence by creating a lightningwisp binding that functioned in a closed loop. It had been more of a party trick than anything else, letting you pull certain kinds of metal like iron towards the binding, but she didn't really know more than that. She'd never taken the classes on lode studies since they had been for more advanced studies. Not very useful unless they somehow dropped several nails in the water.

…

Lori tested the binding after borrowing an iron bar from the treasure room, and sure enough the binding caused the iron to move towards it, with subsequent tests showing that the stronger she made the lightning, the more strongly metal would be drawn.

Huh, was this how her professor had made a ball of iron float? Something this simple? Huh. If she'd known, she might have applied for those classes in lode studies.

Well, as amusing as it was, the binding was of limited utility. Maybe she'd try to make something float if she ever got very bored.

At least, that was what she had thought until she had encountered another note a little further on that had indicated that the flames generated by her lightningwisp fire ball could somehow be contained and channeled through spiraling loops of lightningwisps. The notes had been partially incoherent—in the middle had been the words 'remember to imbue the ice'—and the flow diagram had been… well, it might have been a spiral, if she squinted. Still, it was fortunate that she had a much more coherent diagram to follow.

The claim had been so strange that she'd actually gone outside and tested it above the middle of the river, creating a fire ball and then pricking a hole in the shell of airwisps to release the fire being compressed. That had resulted in a rather spectacular plume of fire—and had caused Lori to alter her thoughts on the usefulness and utility of the fire ball binding—but when she had surrounded the breach in shell with a spiraling tube of lightningwisps, she'd been surprised to find that the note had been correct.

It had been a good note to end on, and Lori went to sleep feeling satisfied.

The next day, instead of trying to decipher her notes, Lori had decided to do something more productive and try to find a way to combine the unseen piercing light binding with her lightning ball binding so that both effects could be utilized more efficiently instead of requiring the use of two separate bindings. It had taken several iterations, and one of the very first things she had learned was that unfortunately, the binding couldn't simply be anchored to her skin so that she could just point and activate it to direct lightning at something. The lightning simply became too hot, resulting in burns on her hands that had required treatment from both Taeclas—thankfully the woman had been wearing a head cloth with her name on it, because trying to check her belt pouch for the rock with the right name would have been painful—and Shanalorre to deal with her injuries.

Rian had been very annoying about it. He completely deserved those kicks to the shin!

Really, it was simply an insulation problem. Her final, completed binding could be anchored to the skin and used without burning herself!

She had also experimented with the phenomenon of lightning fire being possible to channel with spiraling lightningwisps. it… wasn't quite like trying to get water to flow through a tube. The spacing of the loops of the spiral had to be just so, or the fire would escape between them, and unlike water the fire would try to escape upwards. Still, with practice trial and error Lori had been able find a way to gather and channel the original plume—which had tried to go everywhere—into a more coherent stream. When contained like that, it had almost been like manipulating a water cutter.

Lori was very good at using a water cutter.

And this time she didn't get any burns!

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Satisfying To Build

Two days proved sufficient to relieve Lori of the urge to check her notes. The act of having to decipher and in some cases correct her own notes had made her stop wanting to do so, and while her hands were no longer injured, she didn't want to possibly burn them again. Perhaps in a few days. A week at most. Maybe two weeks…

…

Probably when she'd forgotten she'd burned her hands.

So she set aside her notes for the moment, keeping them pressed with a tablet on one corner of her stone table, and went back to work. After all, there was always something she needed to attend to in her demesne.

The first order of business had finally getting the Coldhold out of the river. Almost against her will, Lori found herself unfortunately agreeing that the process to safely extract their largest boat out of the water was time consuming and, on her part, attention intensive. It took most of a morning's careful maneuving to get the stone cube containing the boat from the middle of the river back towards the docks, where she slowly raised it up before opening the cube to finally float up the boat.

By the time the boat was released once more and floating on the water, Lori was already trying to think of where she'd put whatever boat storage structure she was going to be building.

However, that was for later. If she was going to be building a new structure, she'd need raw material. And while she still had a large surplus from when she had excavated the grain storage room in the third level, she wasn't sure that would be enough.

Besides, she still had to expand her dungeon's baths, which would probably require drawing from the surplus, and were something simple she could start with. Lori had dug them up after the first time that a dragon had passed over her demesne and she had needed to shelter her idiots inside of her dungeon, and ever since had essentially just left it be. Aside from putting in lightwisps that were directly imbued by her core once she had the wire for it—which on consideration were no longer really needed since she could just connect everything with lines of lightwisps, ugh, she needed to find time to do that…—Lori really hadn't done any further work on it.

She supposed it was about time to change that.

Excavating the space to expand it was slight problematic, since she could just make it deeper. Her dungeon's water reservoir was behind the baths, and while there was a little more space for her to dig out, it was only about a pace or two before the back of the baths broke. Given that one of the walls of the baths was up against the passageway leading towards the reservoir and the other faced the baths, there was only one other direction to expand, but that direction was concerningly close to the surface, and Lori didn’t want to accidentally break through the side of the hill they were under. Those paces of stone surrounding her dungeon was protection in case another islandshell was dropped on top of them.

That meant there were four possible ways to expanding the dungeon's baths: building a second bathing area somewhere else such as the second or third level, digging downwards from the currently established baths, simply reconfiguring the current baths so that more people could bathe in the available area, or bringing in stone to extend the baths into the area that was the dining hall and expanding it that way.

The first option was violently rejected. She was not going to lay out more pipes through the stones of her demesne, and she didn't want to have to dig out another bathing area. No, not, not happening! The population of her demesne would need to at least double for her to even consider such a thing!

The second option was… doable, but in the long run would probably be extremely dangerous. Combining wet stone floors and stairs seemed and accident waiting to happen, not to mention she couldn't think of how she would organize everything. If she simply dug downwards, that wouldn't really expand the bath's area unless she excavated under the dining hall, and she wasn't confident enough in her skills to be certain that doing that wouldn't cause the dining hall to collapse down into the expanded bathing area.

The third seemed more immediately doable. Remove the water basin in the middle, put in water spouts along the walls above head height, and they would have showers. It would naturally predispose people to be quick and not linger, while also allowing more people to use the baths simultaneously. However, she knew from experience that people had also used the dungeon's baths to do their laundry during the winter. And as she did not want to have to make a second laundry area in her dungeon for the winter—if there was going to be a laundry area, she was going to keep it for herself!—the showers stalls would not be viable, as laundry would probably need more open spaces and surfaces.

That meant the most viable option was the fourth one, using stone to expand the bathing area into the dining hall. As much it was the most logical course of action, a part of Lori felt annoyed at the need to encroach into the space. There was plenty of room—the dining hall was much larger than they needed, with plenty of room between tables and an open space at the far end from the entrance of the dungeon… which was where the bathing area was—but still, the perfectionist in her was annoyed that the dining hall would no longer be perfectly regular. And she couldn't even build a second bathing area on the opposite side, since there were entrances to cold storage rooms for their winter meat along those walls. Unfortunately, the baths were needed infrastructure, especially with them leaving summer behind and coming another season closer to winter. Well, probably leaving summer behind, it was hard to tell since the dragon was still trailing its threads across the sky.

Ugh, the perfect symmetry of her excavated spaces…

Well, if she was being honest, it was unlikely to be perfectly symmetrical. The dining hall had been her earliest mass-excavation project, and the pillars and supporting arches had been shaped piecemeal. The same with the walls. A horotract—or anyone at all, really—examining the chamber's dimensions would probably be able to see it was distended and distorted and not even close to being straight at all. Lori had managed to studiously ignore this by not looking too closely at it all and assuring herself that the work she had done last year was sufficient…

…

Anyway!

So as much as it annoyed Lori to have to alter the shape of her dungeons dining hall, her dungeon's baths would need to be expanded.

The first order of business was sealing off all the pipes leading to the bathing area and draining them all of water. Fortunately, as a Dungeon Binder, all she needed to do was turn the water into ice and set it aside to throw into the river later.

Then she started excavating.

While she had no intention of putting the expanded bathing area beneath the dining area, on consideration Lori decided it would be prudent to further minimize the possibility of water flooding out from the baths and outside to the dining hall and down the nearby stairs leading down to the third level. Thus, she was excavating half a pace downward, both so that the bathing area would be lower than the floor outside it and so the she could minimize the amount of stone she'd have to bring back inside or move up from the third level—she might as well excavate that for building material too, and get a start on finally completing it.

In the back of her mind, Lori had vague plans beyond simply making the baths bigger so that more people could use it at a time. Since the water to be used for bathing was pure for external washing and not for consumption—at least, it better not be—then it didn't have to be as completely clean as their drinking water. Combined with the fact that a lot of the water that had been dumped into the third level's drainage cistern had been used bath water, and clearly the baths needed a way to minimize waste water that would be deposited into the third level, both to consider their stores for drinking water and so that all the bath water didn't end up causing the cistern to overflow and potentially flood the dungeon farm.

She'd need to recover the water the way she'd been doing in River's Fork, removing most of the dissolvd impurities so that the water could be used again for bathing. That would mean having to make a reservoir to hold the recovered water, and since there was always some kind of loss in any sort of system, at the very least the reservoir would need some way of prioritizing the recovered water over the water from the reservoir…

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Despite it being work and ruining the shape of her dungeon's dining hall, the familiar rhythm of excavating and then building was comforting to Lori. There was something simply satisfying about building something, with no unexpected complications, not needing to worry if some abomination would appear or not, no having to work late into the night or waking up early, just making something she'd already made before. It was actually the easiest bathing area she'd built to date, as the walls went straight up and she didn't have to worry about hitting her head on a low, curving roof when she was working on something up against the walls.

The walls she did raised were vertical, the curving arches that helped support the stone ceiling well above peoples' heads. She was having the carpenters make the short flight of stairs that would lead down into the baths, since wet feet on wet stone was an accident waiting to happen, and the carpenters told her they'd be able to cut a texture into the steps to help people keep their feet. It was also one less thing she'd need to do, which Lori was coming to appreciate. Having the masons and plasterers to take care of making the floors and walls level and plumb respectively was very helpful.

While she wasn't able to double the length of the baths—there wasn't that much room to build—Lori had been able to extend the size of the baths by about a third. She put in spouts for showers near the doors for people who would be quick, while past that was the long basin filled with water for less quick baths and doing laundry in the winter.

As the craftsmen worked and the wall and floors, Lori worked on the basin and drains. The basin was a bit wider and deeper than the basins in the other baths, since she needed it to have a large capacity. Around the basin, she had scooped out gutters to watch water and allow it to drain to the far end of the baths, where she had excavated out a shallow cistern for all the waste water to drain into. Wooden panels would be used to cover up the cistern, allowing for the people to still bathe on that end, as well as letting them recover the bars of soap that would inevitably fall in.

A pipe and a binding of waterwisps would draw in the water and pull it up and along a length of pipe. In the middle of pipe was a hole leading down into a large bucket—which the carpenters also made—and a binding that would turn the water into vapor. The vapor would continue along the pipe, pulled along by another binding of waterwisps, while the debris that the water had originally carried would drop down into the bucket. The vapor was condensed back into water and deposited back into the bathing area's basin.

When in use, the bucket would need to be emptied every day—after stoppering the pipe so that no water was entering while it was being done—to keep it from overflowing. The waste debris was relative dry, so it would be no trouble to handle. If the basin ran low on water, another spigot directly connected to her dungeon's water reservoir could be opened to add more, but that was only if the water ran low. Lori was confident the bath could function for several days before water lost to the air was noticeable enough for the basin to require filling.

 Building the baths took a few days, with the last pieces being the wooden stairs leading down, the panels that would go over the cistern, walls to keep anyone outside of the baths from being able to peek inside, and the little shelves for people to place their clothes while they took a bath. The carpenters were delayed because they were also inspecting the Coldhold's wooden parts for damage. Even then, they could do little for the wooden parts that encased in ice. And while they had Deadspeakers now, the crazy one who named her sweetgrass—Lori checked the rock in her belt pouch—Taeclas was by her own admission was not very skilled with working on dead wood in general and carpentry in particular, while the more capable but lazy one—she checked another rock—Lidzuga was a resident of River's Fork.

Fortunately, they already had a procedure of checking the internal components of the Coldhold once the external woodwork was deemed not damaged.

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Oh, NOW They're Here

While Shanalorre knew practically nothing about Deadspeaking, becoming the Dungeon Binder of River's Fork had given her the ability to perceive all life in her demesne, in the same way that Lori was able to perceive as wisps in hers. Perception, memory, and a functional mind had allowed Shannalorre to be able to differentiate the differences between the life of the living and the dead. And while she had never been taught, This enabled Shanalore to be able to tell if the Coldhold's wooden components have been affected by mold or rot by finding 'living' life beneath the surface of 'dead' wood.

Thus, as part of the Coldhold's inspection and repairs, Rian took the boat in question, a couple of the demesne's carpenters, the crazy sweetgrass-naming woman, and Shanalorre downriver to River's Fork so that the Dungeon Binder could examine the boat's components through her awareness. Should any be found, she'd be able to claim the wooden components in questions more quickly than crazy sweetgrass—Lori sighed, and checked the rocks in her belt pouch—Taeclas and Lidzuga could, so that the two Deadspeakers could deal with the problem and repair what they could of the damage.

Lori left them to it, as she had other matters to deal with.

"No, you can't have it," Lori said sternly. "It's a useful stockpile of resources, and the teeth especially are invaluable. Why would I want to keep them in when they'd be far more useful being used to make knives?" She didn't even need to reshape many of them, most of them were already knife-sized!

"Oh, come on, just think about it!" Rian said. "Imagine how intimidated people will be when we sail into Covehold Demesne's harbor and people see we have a typhon beast skull mounted to the front of our ship!" He gesture at the admittedly large skull, which had a length of wood that ended in a stump fused to one side of its jaw. "Just think of the fear and awe when I tell people of how you killed a typhon abomination!"

For a moment, Lori tilted her head, unable to keep herself from imagining it. She did like being feared…

…

"Leave the skull alone, Rian,"

Rian sighed. "But it would look so intimidating…"

"Rian, stop obsessing about my building materials and go do something useful."

"Yes, your Bindership. Remember, you need to check on the driver components later."

She waved a hand dismissively. "Yes, yes. Now go and leave me be."

The bound tools were the very last thing to be restored to functionality in River's Fork, admittedly because Lori had forgotten and only recalled when she'd seen all the bound tool cores that she had removed and wondered why she had a pile of them on her table.

Fortunately the relative cool had been beneficial to their various trees, and Lidzuga had been alternating between activating and deactivating the various trees to give them time to recover. As the weather cooled more and the winds started to return—they actually have a breeze yesterday—the bound tools keeping the trees could be deactivated as they became unnecessary.

Huh, Lori would have to ask the two Deadspeakers if they would somehow keep the fruit trees active through the winter. Actually, had they been active through the winter last year? She'd ask the two later once the bound tools were in place.

Humming to herself now that Rian had left, Lori went back to what she had gone to the bone pile to do: finding a nicely-shaped bone that she could use as an anchor for her bindings. Anchoring bindings on her nails and staff were all well and good, but as the fire ball and its modification the fire sprayer had shown her, that was sometimes a terrible idea. Especially the fireball and fire sprayer.

As stone was too heavy and brittle, bone was the best material to make some kind of accessory to keep on her person that could be used as an anchor point. They had a supply of bone back home in her demesne, but it had mostly been smaller pieces that she would need to reshape herself. While that was certainly an option that she was prepared to do, Lori had decided to check on the typhon abomination's bones to see if there was anything that appeared usable.

Unfortunately, nothing called to her at the moment. Many of the parts were simply just too big to use. Some of the bones had been opened to extract the marrow, showing the cavities within, and she had considered have a section of hollow bone cut to make some sort of armlet, but the bone had been too thick. She might have to try with one of the smaller bones…

Setting the bone that seemed most promising a bit to the side so she could come back for it, Lori headed off to get on with putting all the bound tools—technically the bound tool cores, but once she finished she'd have bound tools—back to where they were. She hummed to herself as she made a note to replenish the large beads in the dragon shelter. They'd used up one when the dragon had passed, and had come close to consuming the second, which had been the size of a clenched fist when she had checked. It had no doubt gotten even smaller as they had needed to keep using the dragon shelter to house people while the houses were being cleared of bugs.

She'd have to take Lori's Shed Boat out to make more beads to replace the make some large beads soon, as well as more of the beads they use for the bound tools… which were also called large beads, so… she might have to rethink how she referred to the beads that imbued the dragon shelter's defenses. Big beads? Over-sized beads? Large-large beads?

Hmm… she'd think about it while she worked. If she let Rian contribute, he'd probably think of something overly dramatic.

…

She should ask Rian. But later. Right now, she had bound tool to put back in place.

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"Great Binder," Shanalorre said from behind Lori.

Lori glanced up from the bound tool she was embedding into the outside of River's Fork's bathing area. With the cooling of the weather, she had finally  added a binding of firewisps so that the little prototype bound tool would heat the water that was being drawn from the river. A part of her wondered whether she should redesign the bath's drainage, since with the coming cold people would probably  start overusing the bathing area and taxing arrangement she had already made. Nah, she'll wait until they started flooding their own baths due to their own thoughtlessness. "What is it?" she asked, then frowned. She felt like she'd said that before…

"I believe I have a large number of people entering the confines of River's Fork demesne from downriver," Shanalorre said. "It is difficult to estimate an exact numbers, as more and more individuals are entering, but there are at least fifty already inside the demesnes' boundaries, and the number is still increasing."

It took Lori a few moments to understand what Shanalorre was telling her. "What?" she said, hoping she had misheard.

Shanalorre opened her mouth and paused, visibly amending what she was going to say. "People are entering this demesne," she said. "I cannot be absolutely certain, but based on their increasing numbers, the direction they are entering the demesne from—" she paused, frowning, then nodded, "—and the fact they appear to be accompanied by more than one Deadspeaker, I believe I can safely conclude that the Golden Sweetwood Company's second wave of settlers have arrive."

For some reason, Shanalorre knelt down, bowing her head. "What are your orders, my Dungeon Binder?"

Lori stared blankly at her, wondering why she was being so strangely theatrical. Then she shook her head and turned back towards the bound tool core she had been embedding into the stone pipe. She softened the stone around it and extracted out the shell of copper fill with white Iridescence. "Find Rian. Tell him to gather every single wisplight and bound tool in the demesne and bring it to the Coldhold. I'll deal with the ones that are embedded. Once you have, go to my bone stockpile and fetch me a bone from the claws or feet. A large one." Lori held out her hands about twenty yustri apart to demonstrate. She would have wanted a more optimal bone to act as her anchoring tool, but since she was pressed for time at the moment, she'd just have to make something and be done with it.

Shanalorre nodded. "At once, Great Binder," she said, and Lori was pleasantly surprised when the other Dungeon Binder did, in fact, stand and immediately began to hurry towards where Rian presumably was instead of lingering to ask silly questions.

For a moment, Lori stared after her subordinate. Shanalorre had recovered from the deaths of her parents admirably. No longer a crying, lost little girl, she had left them behind just as Lori had shed her own parents. Calm and composed at all times—except when she was with her young cousin, which was like having a little brother or sister, so that was understandable—she was no longer sad, no longer in pain.

Shanalorre had become a Dungeon Binder.

She needed to be watched.

But later. Right now, Lori needed to collect and remove all the bound tools she had already imbedded into the stones of the dragon shelter, as well as the large beads that were being stored in the alcove of the dragon shelter. And all the wire she had used while she was at it. She debated removing the dragon shelter's doors, but decided the copper amalgam wasn't a priority. There was no obvious way to reproduce it merely from examination. A part of her debated simply taking off the doors in any case, but she decided that while it would be petty, spiteful and satisfying, this was still her demesne, and she needed to be able to protect it in case there was an unexpected dragon. So she supposed that the wire she'd embedded into the mine would remain, but she was still taking the bound tool cores.

Her discoveries could not be allowed to fall into the hands of someone other than herself!