Demesne

Ugh, Lori hated it when Rian had a point. However, it was a resigned hatred, and she would even grudgingly admit that it was useful… sometimes. While she had been justifying putting aside proper notation and testing for the more immediately urgent goal of having a lightning jig—and she hadn't even bothered to properly think of it like that until Rian asked what it was—Rian had rightly brought up questions about her jig's abilities that… well, that she'd simply not gotten to yet. But she had definitely been planning to do so!

Lori had been testing the effectiveness of putting the unseen piercing light binding much closer to the lightning ball binding while simultaneously trying out the crossbow stock. The latter was actually quite comfortable, especially since the stock had been shaped to conform to the contours of her hand and arm. She'd seen carpenters making such things before, and had even imbued the water cutter and other bound tools used to do it, but this was the first time she'd actually had something specifically custom made for her. A part of her considered it a needless waste of time, as the basic shape of the stock blank had seemed more than adequate for her needs… but Lori had to admit that putting her hand on a handle perfectly molded to her grip was very comfortable.

She continued examining the latest versions of the unseen piercing light and lightning ball bindings as Rian went to get the paper and pens. Now that she was actively looking, it was obvious there was a limit to the amount of lightningwisps that the lightning ball could contain. When the lightning caused the interior of the ball to get so hot that the very air ignited, there was a loss of lightningwisps as they became uncontainable to both airwisps and lightningwisps. The firewisps would sap the ignited air of heat, turning it back to air, and in so doing some lightningwisps would leak out. There were probably other losses as well, hidden by the ignition.

One thing was clear: the lightning ball had an upper limit as to its capacity, although it wasn't something she could easily quantify. She could if she had the right equipment, such as something actually intended to store lightningwisps, but since she didn't… well, she'd have to find other ways to measure it. The capacity would no doubt increase if the lightning ball were contained within a sealed vessel, or was even inside a solid medium of some sort—

Her flow of thought was interrupted as the sounds of footsteps announced Rian's return. "I have the papers," he said, holding up a bone tablet, on which several sheets of papers were secured with what looked like slightly altered wooden clothespins. The gap in the middle was wider, allowing him to pin the paper onto the tablet so they wouldn't be blown away by the breeze. A small jar of ink and a pen were in his other hand. "What do you want to do?"

"We will begin by testing the overall lightning capacity of the binding," Lori said as Rian sat down on the stone dock and balanced the tablet on one knee so he could start writing. "The binding is currently at maximum lightningwisp capacity. We will test this capacity by activating the binding and discharging it until there is nothing left to discharge and measuring how long it takes to deplete." She had taken to actively imbuing the bindings on her jig since she had anchored them onto the mount bone so that she didn't have to worry about them. The lightning ball binding losing imbuement would be… extremely catastrophic, especially so close to her face.

Rian nodded as he wrote. "Yeah, that's the best we can probably hope for at the moment. I assume that's at the current configuration of your jig?" She nodded, and he wrote something down, then carefully set down the pen and papers. He carefully put his finger to his wrist, moving it around until he was satisfied. "All right. Give me a signal before you start so I can count the beat."

Lori nodded and turned to point the jig down at the water—

"Uh, is that really safe?" Rian interrupted.

"Rian, I've been doing this for two days."

"Well, yes, but those were short bursts. A steady stream might be more dangerous for the seels in the water. You know, the things we rely on for meat and would like to keep coming back to us?"

She sighed. "Well, where do you suggest?" she said acerbically.

Rian shrugged and tilted his head back. "The sky? I mean, it's not likely to fall back down, and you're not likely to hit anything up there."

"… Rian, do you know how lightning works?" Lori said flatly.

He blinked. "Um, yes? It comes from the sky, hits tall places, more likely to travel along metal…"

Her voice remained flat. "That first is incorrect. The process for lightning begins with lightningwisps coming from the ground rising up and then lightning as it is commonly seen comes down from the sky, following the trail of lightningwisps downward."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Oh. Well, that's… very dangerous," he understated. "I suppose the river it is, then."

"As I said we would do in the first place," she said.

"Well… ready to note the heartbeat at your signal, your Bindership," he said, putting his finger back on his wrist. "Wait, wait, give me a moment, I lost my pulse."

Lori waited impatiently as Rian just sat there, moving his fingers around as he tried to find his heartbeat again. "All right, found it," he said." I'll just start counting so I don't lose track of it again. One, two, three…"

Hefting her jig in both hands and bracing it against her shoulder, Lori got comfortable and aimed the binding towards the middle of the river. Grudgingly, she checked if there were any seels in the area of where she was pointing at, and found no moving voids of wisps in the water, at least in the vicinity she was aiming at. Rian counted on.

When his count reached twenty, she activated the binding. Lightning erupted from the emission end of the binding, drawn from the lightning ball. The water exploded at the impact, but beyond that the water seemed to soak in the lightning as it continued to stream along the path that the unseen piercing light created.

For the first time since she'd created this binding, Lori focused her attention on the lightningwisps within the lightning ball. This wasn't something she'd have been able to do back when she had been a mere Whisperer rather than a Dungeon Binder. Well, not as easily, anyway. She'd have only been able to perceive the loose lightningwisps if all of the air inside the lightning ball had been claimed and bound to her will, though not necessarily as part of the binding, but simply to allow her awareness within the volume. Unfortunately, with the inside of the binding getting hot enough to actually ignite the air… well, no air, no claim.

Through her connection to her core, she could feel the lightningwisps flowing from the lightning ball, through the now short conduit and finally down the stream of lightingwisps in the air created by the unseen piercing light. It would have all come through at once if it weren't for the fact the conduit acted to limit the flow of lightning. Lori wasn't really sure as to how much lightning was passing through the conduit—she didn't have the tools to quantify—but she was making the water explode on contact, so she must have been doing something right.

Especially since water didn't normally explode when you direct lightning at it.

The binding of the lightning ball itself was creating more lightningwisps as the ones inside it was siphoned off, but the rate they were being produced was clearly outstripped by the how quickly the lightning was pouring out. Still, the lightingwisps eventually depleted, which she announced accordingly. "Capacity is depleted," she said as she deactivated the binding. The lighting stopped a moment later.

"Sixty-three heart beats," Rian said immediately, and she heard him start to write. "I'm not sure how many second that corresponds to, but it definitely wasn't one to one. Might be closer to three to one"

"About there," Lori agreed, her awareness on the binding as the lightningwisps began to accumulate again now that she had stopped discharging. "Are you still counting?"

"…no?"

Lori sighed. "Get back to counting. I will deplete the capacity again so that we can measure how quickly it replenishes from nothing."

"Yes, your Bindership! Sorry, your Bindership." There was a pause. "Ready! One, two three…"

Lori grunted in acknowledgement and activated the binding again. It depleted quickly, but she waited for Rian to reach 'thirty' before deactivating the binding again and watch the lightningwisps replenish once more.

Rian had reached a hundred and forty-seven before Lori was certain the binding wasn't replenishing any more. "Replenished," she called out. "A hundred and seventeen heartbeats to completely replenish." It was full of lightning and igniting the air well before that, but that wasn't what they were measuring.

Her lord dutifully wrote that down. "Is that good or bad?" he asked.

Lori considered the question, and found she couldn't say definitively. "I couldn't say definitively, although I doubt it would require the full capacity of the binding to kill someone."

"Are you sure? I mean, have you even tested it on a seel? Or a beast?" He paused. "Also, the hunters are wondering how long the walls of darkness around the demesne are going to last? They're afraid of trying to walk through them, but they need to so they can do some hunting before the beasts start making dens for the winter."

"… I will see about making a passage through."

"Could you give me a rock or something to give them so they can put it on the path they want cleared so they know where the opening will be?"

"… remind me at dinner. Get back to taking notes."

"Yes, your Bindership. What next?"

Lori considered the question. "I'll need to catch a seel," she said eventually. Ugh, she hated it when he was right.

"Ah. In that case, I need to call people and have them start making preparations."

She blinked. "What preparations?"

"Well, we'll need to start cooking this seel as soon as it's dead, otherwise it's a waste of food," Rian said. "We can't exactly butcher it and stick it in the cold room after you hit it with lightning, since we can't be sure in what state it will be in when you're done… well, besides 'dead', that is. So after you kill it, we'll need to immediately clean, skin and start cooking it because I'm not sure if lightning-burned parts can be safely stored, cold or not. We can have it as a special treat to go with dinner."

She sighed. Ugh… "Well, be quick about it," she said irritably. With winter coming… well, even if they were going to eat it right away, at least food wasn't being wasted.

"I'll get on it, then," he said. "A pity Karina isn't here. She always gets really motivated to catch large seels when she sees you do it."

Still, he waited until Lori rolled her eyes and waved her hand dismissively before heading off, taking the paper, pen and ink with him. Sighing, Lori turned back to the river and began to check it with her connection to her core, looking for a seel in the water close enough for her to drag it near her.