Demesne

"Well… that could have gone better," Rian said quietly as he followed Lori, who was walking away to get back to work.

She frowned as she glanced sideways at her lord, absently continuing to trail a line of lightwisps behind her. Had the thread been material, it would certainly be some kind of hazard, but it wasn't, so it wasn't. "I do not see how," she said. "Though I suppose you will be informing me."

"As your lord of 'dealing with people' matters, that is my job. Literally the second most-important of my duties," Rian confirmed. "I won't belabor what the first is."

"Obeying me, of course."

"…no, that's about sixth on the list."

Lori turned to give him an indignant glare. "What."

"It's outranked by 'keeping the demesne's children safe', among other things. You mean well, but sometimes you forget, so I have to remember it for you." Rian frowned. "Actually, if I add 'remembering things you might forget', 'obeying you' gets bumped down to seventh."

The glare intensified.

"Look, which is more important, obeying you or remembering to give you your soap ration on time, remembering to send people to get salt, remembering who everyone else is so you don't have to…"

Ugh, she hated it when he was right. "I hate it when you're right," she said.

"I know, I know," he said. "But what would you rather have, a lord who's right and acts on it, or a lord who's wrong and acts on it?"

"Just because you're right doesn't mean you need to keep being right."

"Yes, your Bindership."

Lori gave him one last glare, then turned her attention back to what she'd been—

"As I was saying, that could have gone better," Rian said.

The Dungeon Binder let out a sigh. "I informed them of my authority and quashed their nonsense. How could that have possibly gone better?"

"You scared the children," her lord said. "You probably didn't mean to, since they were being very well-behaved, but loudly yelling like that probably didn't make you not seem like the sort of Dungeon Binder that parents threaten children with."

The Dungeon Binder didn't stumble or miss a step as she dramatically looked at Rian. This wasn't some play full of physical comedy that mugged to the audience, after all. Still, it took her a moment or two to formulate a reply. "…you realize that the Dungeon Binder coming to punish misbehaving children is utter nonsense, don't you?" she said.

"I know that and you know that. Do all those children you just put the fear of you into know that?"

…

"Irrelevant," Lori said. "What's done is done."

Rian nodded. "What's done is done. Incidentally, I need your permission to break out some of the honey. I thought maybe the children would enjoy receiving some honey buns to commemorate their joining the demesne. And for all the children already here, of course. If it's all right with you, that is. With Shana and all the Deadspeakers, not to mention the alchemical antiseptics we bought from Covehold Demesne, we can use the honey as a food stuff more regularly instead of keeping it as an emergency medical supply. I'm sure the children would appreciate it."

"…your intentions are blatantly transparent."

Her lord shrugged. "Is that a no?"

"…do we even have that much honey in this demesne?"

"I had them put some in the Coldhold because I was planning to suggest we give the children some honey buns."

She gave him a level stare, and he shrugged. "I was going to ask you first before we actually used it. I didn't think I'd be asking to use them for this." He paused. "All right, I was hoping I wouldn't need to ask to use them for this."

Lori did not roll her eyes. She just felt like she should. "Fine, I'm authorizing it. See it done, while I'm finishing the rest of the bindings." She'd been heading for the mine and dragon shelter to see to putting lights and converting the food storage's cold room back into a binding before Rian had intercepted her.

"As you command, your Bindership," Rian said. He turned to leave and paused, facing her again. "Oh, right, I almost forgot. That trail of light you've been leaving… "

"Yes…?" Lori said warily.

"Could you use it to mark out streets?"

––––––––––––––––––

A part of Lori had the vaguely feeling that what she was doing was vandalism. One didn't just write on public roads and buildings, after all. That was the purview of the owner and the government. Of course, as the reigning Dungeon Binder she was the government so she had every right to do this, but it still felt slightly strange to be doing so.

Unlike the houses she'd built in her demesne, which were mostly made of stone—technically she could have made the roofs out of stone as well, but that required far more effort than she was willing to invest in any one house, and her idiots needed to do some of the work as well—Lori couldn't just anchor bindings directly to their walls, at least not as they were. There were tricks she could do, like having water soak into the wood so she could anchor things to the waterwisps, or making it hot so she could use firewisps, but those tended to damage the wood. It was part of why she'd never considered anchoring lightwisps to the outsides of River's Fork's buildings, unless she wanted to try adhering bone or rock to the outsides of the houses.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

…

She made a note to have Shanalorre order the Deadspeakers to fuse bone to some spots on the outside of the houses so there'd be somewhere to anchor lightwisps to.

At the moment, the only place she could anchor lightwisps to was the ground, which wasn't a very good idea. Most of the ground was loose dirt—and occasionally mud—and one quickly learned to not simply anchor bindings to loose objects—whether that was dirt, water or air—unless one was willing to let that binding simply go wherever that loose object was sent flying to. Which was fine if you intended for your binding of lightwisps to just float off with whatever airwisps you'd anchored it to or be torn apart as the individual grains of dust was kicked around until they were too far away from each other for the binding to maintain cohesion, but terrible if you wanted your binding to stay in one place and one piece.

Fortunately, she had her staff, and so Lori didn't have to kneel down and actually touch the ground for her to claim and bind little cylinders of dirt—well, approximately cylinders, she made them long and thick so that they stuck in the ground and wouldn't be moved from getting too dry or too wet—that she compressed solid. Once she had forcibly dissipated the binding she used so that the earthwisps wouldn't draw from theimbuement, Lori anchored the line of lightwisps she was trailing to those spots so that the binding would stay immobile.

By the time she was finished, the main thoroughfares of the demesne—such as they were—had long lines of weakly glowing light on either side, and she'd removed redundant connections to some of her bindings. The lines defined the most heavily-treaded paths from the central tree supporting the bulk of the dome to the dining hall, the baths, the dock, the fruit and firewood trees, and the dragon shelter. They were just about visible during the day against the dark backdrop of the ground, and while the lines wouldn't be very bright at night, it should be sufficient for people to find their way. She could worry about bright street lighting later once the Deadspeakers had managed to fuse bone to the wood.

Once Lori finished with marking the streets—well, thoroughfares, she had the vague thought that you needed something more substantial to really call something a street—and a few other things that she felt needed demarcation, the Dungeon Binder continued onwards to the dragon shelter, Riz and one of the woman's friends following after her. The Dungeon Binder anchored a new binding of airwisps at the opening of the ventilation pipe that fed fresh air into the mine, anchored lights that glowed brighter than the threads to the passageway's walls, and formed a firewisp binding to destroy heat in the food storage's cold box.

She should probably include 'expanding the food stores' to the list of things to make the new wizards do…no, no, that was a bad idea. Given what Rian related about how recalcitrant they were about sharing their supplies with the rest of the demesne, there was a real risk they would steal from the food stores. Ugh, did that mean she'd need to do that herself?

…

It probably meant she'd need to do that herself. At least when she got around to it, she'd be able to leave the stone out in the hallway and the newcomers would be the ones to drag it out. The thought brightened her mood as she continued her work, finishing with the binding in the food storage vault and continuing to anchor lights until she reached the main dragon shelter, where she anchored lightwisps along the ceiling, using her staff so she could reach high enough to anchor the binding to the stone. The resulting illumination wasn't very bright—Lori was fairly certain a Whisperer would still be able to imbue this binding such that each breath would have some magic retained as imbuement instead of all of it being consumed at once—but it was sufficient to not trip over things, and one's eyes would be able to adjust eventually.

Briefly, Lori contemplated going deeper into the mine, down to where the mining had actively been occurring, but decided against it. Given all the work that would be required to house everyone, more mining was unlikely to occur this season. At best, it would occur in the winter when there was literally nothing else for anyone to do, which was unlikely.

With the thread of lightwisps anchored to her skin so she could imbue the very extensive technically-now-singular binding, Lori went to find a pen and papers.

––––––––––––––––––

Unsurprisingly, Shanalorre had the writing implements in her office, which appeared to be where she and the brat were sleeping given the bedroll that had been shoved against the wall behind the desk. She'd spent the next… hour? Two? Eh, whatever, she'd spent that time carefully drafting instructions on how to efficiently excavate the mine passageway to the dragon shelter, while leaving sufficient supporting pillars to keep the ceiling from collapsing and causing a cave-in.

Strangely, the exercise reminded her of when she was learning mathematics in school. Solve the problem, write everything following the format, show your work, the answer isn't what's important, it's how well you can show the process, the answer is correct but the work is wrong, failing mark…

Lori deliberately let a long breath, willing the violent rage that she'd unintentionally roused herself into to pass. Then did it three more times when it didn't work very well, before finally getting back to work. Excavate a raised half-oval that paralleled the mine passage which had this cross-section and offset the excavation that much from the original passage. Excavate openings into the original passage, also with this cross-section, and be sure that there is that much space between openings into the original passage so that the remaining stone will act as a load-bearing pillar that can support the ceiling of the passage without collapsing.

She made a sidebar and emphasized that the pillar must be remaining stone and not simply stone that had been raised on the spot after the space had been excavated, as that stone would not already be compressed and able to support the ceiling's weight. Yes, it could be reinforced with an earthwisp binding, but that was subject to human error and forgetting, and anyone who tried to do this will be made to sleep next to the construction until it inevitably failed and the mine passage caved in. They will either be constantly reminded to imbue the binding to reinforce the stone or forget and die. Either way, an object lesson to not do it.

There was a knock on the door, causing Lori to glance up, but surprisingly the person on the other side didn't just open it and step inside. What rare manners. "Come in," she said.

The door opened, revealing Rian. He blinked and look around for a moment before he saw her. "Your Bindership," he said. "Time for lunch. Actually, a little past time, we thought you'd be coming on your own so we waited a little. The food's already at the table."

Lori glanced out the window out of habit. Ugh, stupid dome making it hard to judge the angle of the sun. "I'll be with you in a moment," she said, looking down at the instructions she was writing. "I simply need to finish this."

Rian nodded, looking at the papers she was focused on. "Ah, I see we've progressed to the sort of paperwork other people actually need to read, or else. One small step for bureaucracy, one giant leap for more people fearing you."

Lori blinked, looking down at the instructions she was writing. Now that he mentioned… "I will need to include a receipt that requires them to sign and confirm that they've thoroughly read and comprehended all the instructions and therefore any mistakes are a result of their own incompetence and not because of insufficient directions."

"May I recommend inserting a sentence in the middle of the instructions that they need to write a specific word instead of their name so that you have a means of ensuring if someone actually did read everything?" Rian said.

Slowly, Lori's gaze rose to meet her lord's, seeing only an innocent smile on his face. "I will take that into consideration," she said.

Rian nodded. "Have fun. If you don't show up by the time I'm finished eating, I'm bringing your food to you, all right?"

Lori frowned at him, but gave a grudging nod. "Fine," she said. He wouldn't need to, but if she wasn't done… well.

"Though I have to ask, your Bindership… why are you sitting on the bench and writing on a chair? Why not use the table?"

"Shanalorre's chair is too tall."

"Ah."