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Demesne 496 - Insufficient Profit To Be Had
🕑 Added 2025-06-18 16:00:18 +0000 UTCHer first instinct was to deny it, to just snap out “I am not afraid”.
“I am not afraid,” Lori said, and immediately realized it was a lie.
Rian tilted his head. “You’re not?”
Yes, she was. “No, I’m not,” Lori lied insistently.
Her lord looked at her skeptically, and she matched his gaze, doing her best to look stern and imposing. He sighed, then shrugged. “Well… if you say, so, your Bindership. But this doesn’t change the fact that you need to address your new subjects as soon as possible, to make it clear you’re the Dungeon Binder over them now. Having dealt with some of them over the past few days, I feel I can safely say that some of them might need to be sunk into the ground to get that lesson into their head.” He paused for a moment, then added, “It would actually be best to give them their orders yourself, as a means of immediately asserting your authority. At the moment, there are people among them inclined to see Shanalorre as a Dungeon Binder that they will follow. You need to make it clear that you are the Dungeon Binder she follows, and the best way for you to do that is to have her publicly defer to you.”
Lori grunted, looking away and waving a hand dismissively. “We’ll see.”
Rian frowned for some reason. “Lo—” He cut off, shaking his head, looking frustrated for some reason. Finally, he sighed. “Uh… I think that’s it. Unless there’s anything else?”
She responded by pushing her chair back from the table and getting to her feet. Turning, Lori began walking towards the stairs up to her room. Behind her, she heard Rian getting up and picking up the papers on the table. Walking a little stiffly, she climbed up into the passageway leading to her room, opening the door and stepping inside before closing it behind her. Glancing around her room, positioned above where the core of her dungeon was hidden, Lori made a note to sweep the floor. And to perhaps actually get her own broom she could sweep with. And from the pile of her clothes in one of the niches in the wall, she should probably do her laundry soon…
The lightning jig, its bindings now deactivated and the burning air within it dealt with, lay on her stone table. As Lori stared at it, the thought came that it was still imperfect. Deactivating it was an involved and careful process, lest the ignited air explode outwards in all directions once it was no longer contained by the lightningwisps, airwisps and firewisps of the modified lightning ball binding. It needed to be adjusted, perhaps by adding a vent to the bone container to safely release the fire in a controlled manner after deactivation. Of course, that would require another binding to contain and direct the fire—
Lori had to forcefully pull herself back from the familiar, comforting thoughts of problems that could be solved as she got ready for bed, Rian’s words treacherously still stabbing at her as she sat down to remove her boots—
She paused, staring down at the footwear. The leather seemed more worn and cracked then she had last seen it… but that had been just this morning! Surely it had been in a better state when she put it on then? She couldn’t really remember. Lori ran her finger over one side of the boot’s uppers, feeling the cracks and wincing. Could anything be done to repair it? She should probably have oiled it more, but she’d always been so busy…
Perhaps she could get Ta… Tea… the Deadspeaker who lived here—Lori couldn’t be bothered to check her rocks—to fix it. Or she could have the lazy one who wanted time off could do it, have him earn his time. Actually, he could do the boots of everyone in the demesne, it would give him something to do.
Removing the boots more carefully, she set them aside. While she had the spare pair of boots that Rian had gotten her, there was something about those boots degrading that was… no, there was nothing significant about it! It was just boots. She’d worn through and replaced dozens of boots in her lifetime. This was just the latest in a long line of them, nothing more. So what if they were the boots she’d been wearing all through her tenure as a Dungeon Binder? They were just boots. They’d get worn down as she used them and she’d eventually need to replace them, already had replacements for them.
The very thought annoyed her, for some reason.
The socks beneath it were studded with darning and other repairs, but a cursory inspection indicated no other holes. There was a spot that seemed to be getting thin, but nothing further darning wouldn’t fix once there was a hole… though she should make this part of her laundry next…
Ah, laundry. Yes, she needed to do her laundry! As soon as possible! Which would mean she wouldn’t be able to got to River’s Fork tomorrow! Or the next day either, as her clothes would be dry by then and she’d need to fold them and put them away!
…
This was pathetic. This was pathetic, and Rian was once more—
…
Interesting. It seems she had reached the point that hating him had become tiring. She hadn’t thought that was possible.
…
Moving by habit more than anything else, she stripped off her other sock and stuffed both into their respective boots. That done, Lori got changed into her sleeping clothes, the thinner and softer fabric more comfortable on her skin and less abrasive on her bedroll. The blanket she pulled over herself was more for the familiar feeling and comfort than because she actually needed the insulation. Within the confines of her demesne, her person was always either comfortably warm, comfortably cool, or somewhere in-between, so the blanket was less for keeping her warm and more to enjoy the feeling of being covered.
Lying back on her bed, her thick bed roll comfortably nestled atop a net of cords rather than flat planks, Lori stared up at the ceiling above her. The names written there were just part of the markings now, and she’d given up trying to remember who they were. The lightwisps anchored to the corners of the room cast shadows from the imperfections on the ceiling, remnants of her old excavation, making a small part of her itch to try and smooth it out. She ignored that part, because she’d learned her lesson about trying to smooth ceilings completely smooth.
…
So, she was afraid. However, with a little consideration it was perfectly clear that she had more than reasonable cause to be afraid. While Rian had helped to properly recontextualize the likelihood of the new wizards targeting her over each other, the fact was that going to River’s Fork would give them an opportunity to try and attack her. She’d be close enough that it would likely be possible for one of the wizards to attack her from outside the dome, with the right line of sight and binding or formation.
However, another thought stabbed at her, and unlike previously she couldn’t really blame it on Rian… well, beyond the fact he had pointed it out…—wait, that meant she could blame it on him. Being afraid was actively interfering with both her ability to keep her word, and to see to her responsibilities. That was… unacceptable. She wasn’t going to break her word for something as minor as this. There was simply not enough return to justify the damage to her reputation. If she was going to break her word, it would be for something that would make her so feared it she would no longer need her reputation, for it would be surpassed by one of greater import.
She didn’t know what that trade would be. Killing several Dungeon Binders at once so she could take all their cores? That might be worth it. Yes, that would certainly be. However, these weren’t Dungeon Binders, so there was insufficient profit to be had.
In novels, such opposing impulses were always portrayed as clashing and fighting each other for dominance, with the hero or heroine not so much struggling as filling up pages of boring nonsense about feelings and determination and how thinking about their loved ones somehow gave them the strength to come to the ‘right’ course of action, where the character would be brave and heroic and strong and whatever.
It was all really boring stuff, and she usually just skimmed it when she was reading unless it was expositing something she didn’t know yet.
Lori considered that this was probably the closest she would ever get to such a situation. Unsurprisingly, the novels were wrong. Rather than opposing or anything else of the sort, her fear and natural inclinations roiled within her like gas in her stomach, somehow both wrapping around her heart and squeezing while simultaneously pulling at all of her insides to try and cause them to collapse somewhere between her lungs. For some reason, her legs felt somehow drained while she simultaneously wanted to move and kick them.
The symptoms remained even as she came to the conclusion that putting any stock in fear was an unacceptable losing prospect. She wiggled her toes and extended her feet in an attempt to relieve the pressure as she considered what she would do now. Clearly, she couldn’t act on her fear. Or at least, couldn’t act only on her fear. And her fear was compelling her to not go to River’s Fork, despite the fact she had measures in place and that Shanalorre had apparently made her own safety preparations.
That meant that tomorrow, she had to inform Rian that she was going to River’s Fork to begin overseeing the planning and preparation for new preliminary shelters. And while she was there, she might as well make herself known to the new arrivals—her new idiots, as it were. She would probably have to re-emphasize the fact no one was going to be owning land. She would probably need to re-emphasize several things.
…
She wished that these people had never arrived. Her demesnes had been functioning very well without them, everything had been had been ready for winter—at least, she assumed so, since Rian would have told her if they needed more food, wouldn’t he?—and then they had to show up to force her to work and hurry to accommodate them! And food… they would need to ensure that the demesne had enough supplies for winter and spring again.
It all sounded annoyingly familiar. Hadn’t they just spent most of this year working to not have to worry about these issues? And while they had far more time to deal with the matter, they also had far more people who needed to be accounted for. That required gathering more food, more storage to keep it, more ice or bindings to keep the food cold to preserve it…
…
Stupid responsibilities.
Still, she gave her word. Aggravating idiots they may be, but by choosing to settle in River’s Fork, they were her idiots now.
Lori nodded, satisfied with her course of action, then rose from her bed, getting up and moving to sit at her desk.
If she was going to not be afraid, she needed more bindings to keep herself safe and secure! She wasn’t all that sleepy yet, so perhaps developing some new combinations and applications of bindings to supplement her lightning jig would be an excellent way of passing the time until she felt sleepy enough to retire!
She knew just the idea to develop! Her notes had some interesting notes of lode effects, lightningwisps, and how the former could affect the latter. At the moment, the only means she had of propelling standard lightning ball bindings was to anchor them to rocks, but if she could propel the lightning ball itself…
Well, if she could find a way to make it work, then she could just make a lot of lightning balls and propel them against any wizard threatening her until they stopped being a problem!
Humming to herself, Lori claimed some lightningwisps in the air—she had a lot in her vicinity recently due to her work on the lightning jig—and formed it into a binding that would create more so she’d have the wisps she needed to start prototyping…
Comments
Sparifankerl
Reminds me of this cartoon: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ff/d2/b3/ffd2b3d40cbfb9c7d1700c11dda41b80.jpg
prentice barry
Gets told not to play around with dangerous bindings inside and then immediately sets to doing that once alone n her room
