Demesne

When Lori finally stopped laughing with, admittedly, a touch too much megalomania, it was to the revelation that as she'd been standing around, her socks had gotten wet.

She dried them. Then she had to blink, stare, and slowly go over in her head what had just happened.

No need to breathe in magic, no channeling it through the relevant parts of her body to prepare it to bind to any particular kind of wisp. Magic had simply come from the core straight to the waterwisps in her socks, and they'd removed the liquid from the woolens around her feet. It had been as simple as controlling her spit.

She nearly broke into maniacal laughter all over again.

It was exactly like the stories and memoirs and biographies said! Not needing to build up power, because the core would serve both as repository and collector! Having total control of wisps within the spherical area of the demesne! The area they had wasn't very large, but that was like saying a village wasn't very large. Even from just the vague feeling of the wisps she could perceive– she wasn't a Horotract with perfectly exact spatial awareness– she could tell the demesne she had claimed extended far beyond the water break, and a sizable area of the river. She could feel trees starting to shed Iridescence as the demesne started to break it down…

She took a deep breath, feeling the familiar sensation of pulling magic from the air into herself. She held it within her, not using it and observed in fascinated giddiness as it joined the mass of power in the core as easily as if she was touching it, like it was a part of her.

Which she supposed it was, now.

She stood up shakily, then blinked. She could see through both eyes again, could feel that the lightwisps she'd taken had been replaced. She raised her hands. Both moved.

She didn't laugh, but she did smile.

When she stepped out, it was still raining, but she stepped out with dry socks and dry boots. Truthfully, she half-expected to walk out into the sounds of some kind of scene of chaos and violence as wild beasts came for the settlers in the wake of her creating the dungeon. Water immediately started to drip down from the brim of her hat and down her rain coat.

Surprisingly, people weren't crowded around the entrance of the cave. In fact, the only one waiting to greet her was the annoying brat.

"Are you done?" the child said, the rain streaming around animal skin she was using as a makeshift rain cloak. "Lord Rian said to go tell him if you're done."

"Okay, obviously someone has to educate you for your own good," Lori said. "Rian is not a lord. Lords have a title, land, and lots of money. The fact he's out here with us says he has none of that. So he can't be a lord."

"He's got a sword," the child said as if that settled it. It probably did for her.

"Any idiot can have a sword. Doesn't mean he's a lord, it just means he might be an idiot," Lori said.

"You shouldn't call people names," the child said. "Bad girls who call people names don't get dessert when there's dessert."

"Just tell me where the idiot is," Lori said tiredly.

"You're setting a bad example," the child insisted, but started walking anyway.

Lori followed after her, trying to see ahead of them. She should have been able to. Everyone knew– that is, every wizard knew from historically and academically verifiable sources, not just old bedtime stories and rumor– that a Dungeon Binder could perceive everything that happened in their demesne. And all right, technically she was doing that, but there had to be something more refined than feeling the vaguely people-shaped conglomerations of matter and wisps that she hadn't bound.

It came to Lori she was a Dungeon Binder now. Her. She was a Dungeon Binder, able to turn corpses into armies, tame beasts to pull her wagons– an extravagance– or as food– an even larger extravagance– create new beasts by putting together parts from old ones, create rooms that could heal people simply by being in them, literally make all the money she wanted…

She didn't laugh, but she did smile widely at the thought. She was no longer just rich, she basically had infinite money!

Lori reached into her pocket, pulling out her money pouch. She'd been saving it for emergencies, in case she needed to do some bit of quick and nasty Whispering and didn't have the time to breathe in the magic for it. A lot of them had been spent in Covehold Demesne to buy supplies, and their prices had been predictably extortionate. Right now, her little purse mostly had a bunch of small think beads, the ones commonly used for the lowest denominations outside of rare places like Cathlis Demesne and Open Hand Demesne. She had a few talk beads of both small and large sizes and denominations, slightly less fall beads, and three large wisp beads. The beads of crystalized magic each had a number on them denoting their value in addition to their size.

And now she could make them. She could make as much of them as she wanted!

Well, within reason. Something fun she could do later!

She put away her money as they neared other people. After all, just because she'd been traveling with these people and sleeping near them was no reason to trust them. Actually, now that the core was up and running, she intended to sleep next to it and close up the cave behind her, in case some of them believed the stories of how if you killed a Dungeon Binder, you inherited their Dungeon. There are always ignorant idiots everywhere, after all.

Their little settlement actually had little in the way of proper buildings. The first batch of wood they'd cut down was still in the river, getting the last of the Iridescence out of it, and until they'd made the Dungeon, any building made of any material that wasn't glass or ice would start getting iridiated unless regularly washed or, more extremely, burned. Most shelters they had were tents made from canvas that could be stored in water when it wasn't raining.

The kitchen was their largest tent, made from several canvas sheets tied together. They had to bring it down after they'd eaten and drag it to the river, then set it up again in the morning. When it was up, it was where everyone who didn't have anything to do stayed, by virtue of being the largest roofed space. It was often tight, since the canvass wasn't all that big, but after weeks of being stuck together on a ship making the journey to this new continent, they could take a little proximity, especially when space was only a few steps away.

When they got there, the place was full of the usual bustle of people preparing the settlement's communal midday meal. It was the biggest meal of the day, since most people wouldn't have been able to eat breakfast unless they'd stashed a fruit of some sort in water to keep. Though there seemed a lot more people then there usually were. Lori was pretty sure that group of people were supposed to be cutting trees and dragging them to the river, and those men should have been on watch for beasts.

The corpse of the beast she'd killed was being butchered for meat with great enthusiasm. Lori was surprised. Shouldn't that thing be in the river, getting the iridiation washed off? Why were they risking almost-certain iridiation by cutting it up while it was so fresh? They weren't inside a demesne, they couldn't–

Lori paused. Oh, right.

"Lord Rian! Lord Rian!" the brat called. "Wiz Lori's here! I brought her, just like you asked!"

"He's not a lord," Lori muttered one last time before the probably-a-lord heard the brat and turned towards them.

Others had heard of course, and the murmurs of conversation died a little as people's heads turned.

Rian turned at his name, his dark hair whipping around wetly at the movement. He stepped forward as if representing the others in the settlement. He had his usual easygoing smile on, despite the wet dirt still clinging to him from his previous pratfall. He nodded at the brat. "Thank you," he said, and the brat smiled widely before scrambling to join her parents, her animal skin dripping. Lori almost reconsidered her 'actually a lord' theory. Lords never thanked you. "Well?" he said to Lori. Just that.

For a moment, Lori considered proclaiming herself their absolute ruler, owner of all she surveyed, and threatening all annoying brats with death.

"It worked," was what she said instead.

"Yeah, we figured when the Iridescence started coming off the meat. And everything else," Rian said, nodding with such assurance you'd think he'd done it himself. "Good to be sure. Does that mean we can start building actual roofs now and stop sleeping in tents?"

"Yes," Lori said. There were sighs of relief, mixed in with several coughs and sneezes. The past few days of rain, while wonderful for keeping beasts away and Iridescence down, hadn't been kind to people's health, and without a Deadspeaker to heal people anymore, ailments were becoming a problem. The two doctors left had been doing what they could, but they were running low on supplies.

"Civilization at last," Rian said, which prompted some laughs. Apparently some people would laugh at anything now. "Looks like we're celebrating with meat everyone! Another thing we have to thank Whisperer Lori for!"

There were more cheers, and the enthusiasm of the butchering redoubled.

It was only when everyone had happily gone back to preparing food or resting while waiting for food to be prepared did Rian subtly stand next to her and say, in a low voice, "Now what?"

"Hmm?" she said. She'd been busy looking for a place to sit down. Dungeon Binder or not, apparently no one was going to relinquish any of the rocks or wet stumps they used as chairs.

"Now what do we do?" Rian asked again. "In case you haven't noticed, we're low on supplies, we're out of the food we'd brought, and we still don't have proper shelter because until just a little while ago any building we put up would kill us unless we washed it down inside and out every day. Even if we started right after lunch, everyone here would be too tired to finish anything."

Lori stared at him.

"What?" he said. "I'm just stating the obvious."

"I know," Lori said, who hadn't. Not really. Huh, no wonder the brat had been so thin. "I was just wondering why you brought it up now instead of after lunch."

"Neither of us are doing anything right now," he said. "We might be busy after lunch. I know I will be. At the very least we need to put up walls for the kitchen so the children and the sick will have somewhere warmer to sleep."

She supposed he was right. Lori had been planning to start fixing up the cave with the core into a proper bedroom.

"I suppose I could get started on healing people, then," Lori said.

Rian gave her a skeptical look.

"What's that for?" she said, annoyed. "I'm a Dungeon Binder now. I can do every kind of magic. That means healing."

"Well, yeah, but…" Rian looked troubled. "The… what's the name… Deadspeakers are the ones who can do healing, right?"

"Yes, them and Dungeon Binders," Lori said patiently. Maybe he wasn't rebelling so much as disowned for being slow?

"But to be a wizard, you need to study for years at a school, right?" Rian said.

"Yes, that's one way to do it," Lori said patiently.

"But you're a Whisperer," Rian said.

"Yes, we've established that," Lori said, patience twitching. She considered downgrading him to 'brat'.

"So… you probably studied Whispering at school," Rian said.

Now Lori was annoyed. "Yes," she said, patience no longer twitching but straining. Why was he talking like he was explaining something obvious to a child?

"Not Deadspeaking," Rian said.

"No, of course not," Lori said. "My magic was Whispering, why would I study Deadspeaki–!"

And suddenly she realized.

Oh, rainbows.

Those born with magic could use one of its four forms. They couldn't choose their magic, only hone it. Dungeon Binders were different, however. The act of becoming a Dungeon Binder made one capable of all four forms of magic. It was why every wizard dreamed of becoming one.

Lolilyuri was a Whisperer. She'd been born with the power to bind the wisps that existed in the world to her will, and through them manipulate the world. Though born with the ability, she'd needed to study so she could use it. She'd learned of the structures of materials, of the states of matter, of the composition of materials. She'd learned how the world around her was put together, how the elements that built it affected one another, so that she could understand how she needed to control the wisps to get what she wanted to happen.

"So, you didn't study Deadspeaking," Rian was still saying. "The kind of magic that heals. So even if you–"

"Yes, please stop talking. Please," Lori said, trying to sound calm.

Mercifully, he did. She could have done without the look of pity though.

Deadspeaking. It was the magic of wielding power over the bodies of the living and the dead. It healed and it killed, it could change the forms of the living and move the dead. They, supposedly, studied the bodies of plants and animals, and used the knowledge of the commonalities between all living things to manipulate them.

Lori knew a lot about the human body. The squishy parts were mostly water mixed with dirt. The bones had earthwisps, the brain and nerves lightningwisps, and every muscle had firewisps. Most darkwisps were in the torso and skull, in the cavities. Everything is supposed to stay on the inside.

She was pretty sure that wasn't enough knowledge to start Deadspeaking.

Someone coughed, a pained, wet-lunged sound that felt like a hand squeezing her heart. Then there was only the murmur of happy conversation and the sound of the rain outside.

Lori sighed, then turned and stepped out into the rain.

"Where are you going?" Rian asked from behind her.

"I'm a Dungeon Binder now," Lori said striding forward through the wet, muddy ground. "I've dreamed of becoming one since I learned I could do magic. I figure I'd try it out properly."

She could feel the earth- and waterwisps beneath her. She channeled her will through the wire around her staff, into the ground. Water and earth separated, and dirt compressed, forming solid ground under her feet. She could feel the waterwisps in the rain, claimed as they fell into the sphere of her influence. She didn't even need to raise her staff, just sent her will upward. After a moment's pause, water began to fall thickly on either side of her. Directly over her head was empty air. The wind sent drops of water into her face. She willed it and the wind died like a man with his throat cut.

Lori smiled and went to find some bare ground.