Lori soon developed a rhythm to breaking rocks. Taking a bit more time between explosions to allow Riz and the people with her—one of whom, to Lori's disgust, was Landoor and ARGH, why did she have to remember that idiot's name so clearly?—to gather the fragments and put them into a pile wasn't difficult, and with hands besides her own, she was soon able to come to a method of breaking apart stone into rocks that was faster, resulted in the size of rocks she wanted and, most importantly, still allowed her to use explosions.

First, the area she was using for explosions—three paces long and wide, and a pace deep—was cleared, all the rocks in and around it gathered in buckets or picked up by hand and put on the cart that thankfully hadn't been one previously used to move latrine waste. Once that was cleared, they went to pick up the rocks that had been launched some distance away while Lori reset for the next explosion.

A layer of ice was spread on the bottom of the explosion box. A layer of stone directly on top of the ice, on which Riz used a stone blade on a stick that Lori had made for the purpose of carving out lines on the softened stone, making a rough grid where each square was approximately the size of the rocks they wanted to produce. The woman used the crude tool with deft, experienced movements, as if essentially writing with a big stick was something she was used to, though her face occasionally had a vaguely amused, disbelieving look to it. The lines weren't perfect, as much as Lori would have wanted them to be, but they were relatively wide and fairly deep, even if they didn't reach down to the ice below. Speed was more important.

Once the lines had been made, the binding softening the stone was removed, and Lori poured in more water, letting them fill in the cracks and form a layer over the stone before solidifying the water into ice. Then another layer of stone, Riz drawing lines on them, then more water, repeating the process until all the stones from the previous explosion had been gathered, which was usually enough to let Lori and Riz make three layers. In each layer of stone was a binding of firewisps, deactivated but imbued, to provide the heat for the reaction.

Then everyone—and the cart—evacuated to the third level, at which point Lori activated the bound firewisps to heat the stone while binding the waterwisps to not change their state. Once she felt enough heat had been made, she altered the binding on the waterwisps, turning them all into steam.

At which point, there was a happy little explosion.

After that Lori condensed all the steam, gathered back all the firewisps and reduced them down to her body's temperature so that the level wasn't scalding hot, and the rocks were gathered while Lori repaired any unwanted damage—no matter how she reinforced the stone, there was always some—and reset for the next explosion.

Three paces by three paces was admittedly a small area, but Lori couldn't make the area wider without becoming nervous as to the number of support pillars she'd need to remove and increasing the risk of a collapse. It also let her control the size and location of the explosion, letting her keep the eruption manageable.

"Uh, Great Binder?" Riz asked tentatively after the first day.

"What, Erzebed?" Lori said, focusing on getting the ice back in place. Every few explosions she had to send for more water, since try as she might, she wasn't able to recover all the water after an explosion.

"Um, Great Binder, I'm not complaining, but can't you put up some walls so that the rocks don't fly so far?" Riz said. "We'd be done a lot faster if that was the case."

Lori gave her current temporary assistant a fat look. "Erzebed, do you know how explosions work?"

"They go 'bang' and things break?" Erzebed shrugged. "I never had much to do with militia alchemists except for buying their booze."

"That's a 'no'," Lori said. "Erzebed, you never want to put a wall around an explosion. All you will do is make a bigger explosion. One that could damage the pillars and make the ceiling come down. And you'd still have to get all the rocks that went far anyway."

"Oh," Riz said in a small voice.

"Not having a big explosion is also why we only blast this much at a time," Lori said. "If we were in the open air, then it would be safe to risk blasting long rows open. In here, however, the force of something that big could break the walls, cause the ceiling to collapse and make me have to excavate the whole level all over again."

"Understood, Great Binder," Riz said meekly as she hefted the stone-tipped spear. "I'll be quiet and work now."

All right, some of that might have been exaggerations, but not by much, and the risks and possibilities were real.

––––––––––––––––––

The explosions eventually became part of her schedule, and after a point stopped being a daily occurrence. After all, she had other things to do, like curing the wood that was still being cut—though she could mostly just leave that alone since what was being cured was for firewood, so there was no need to worry about warping—assisting the smiths and the potter with providing heat to repair tools and fire the kiln—no reason to waste fuel that could be better used for heating in winter, and when she was providing heat the smiths didn't need to use flux, or so she was told—and preparing the third level for farming.

When she had initially conceived of 'farming' in her Dungeon, Lori had imagined the city farms she was so familiar with. Long rows of grain stalks, bound lightwisps in place of sunlight, all inside a vista for space… while she hadn't worked out Horotracting yet—she was working on it!—she was working towards the other two, and had thought that was when she could say that the third level had become a farm.

She hadn't been expecting stone boxes filled with mixed dirt and latrine waste.

But… well, as it was, it was far easier to set up than the vigas and other grains, which would need more drainage. Just a box filled with soil that the tubers could be buried in. The 'rows of hallways' arrangement she had made as a way of excavating the third level was easy to fill with planter boxes that the tubers and other small food-plants could be planted in. Rian had organized it, just as she had told him to, finding out the details and what was needed before finally telling her. Making the long rows of planter boxes had taken only two days, and with light watering, the boxes didn't even need any drainage built in save for a small hole in the side.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The planter boxes were all wide and low to the ground, rising only up to her knees, and would probably cause backache for anyone tending them… which was fine with Lori, since she wouldn't be doing it. They also had a smell, but fortunately it didn't spread far, and she was seldom close enough to smell it. And while she didn't exactly approve of finding many of the children in the third level tending to the planters, she had to admit that it was probably safer than them continuing to hunt the few remaining seels in the river, especially given how it was apparently getting colder and colder. And it wasn't exactly strenuous work…

Well, the children seemed enthusiastic about it in any case. The brat seemed to have taken charge, or as well as anyone could be said to be in charge of children. And they heeded her when Lori told the brat they needed to leave because she was going to blast, which would brutally and violently kill them all if they stayed, yes, all of them, no exceptions, no they couldn't stay and watch.

Slowly, the third level took shape. A drainage cistern was dug out to one side where all the water could drain to, and then the rocks Lori had blasted were laid out in plots, the largest ones at the bottom, then finer layers—the smallest ones had needed to be smashed with hammers—then the slabs, and finally half a pace of soil, ready to be planted. Each plot had to be planned out in advance, since they couldn't be expanded without one end basically collapsing and all the layers getting mixed together. That had been annoyingly difficult to salvage.

However, once plots had been laid out, the farmers finally had the time to start planting them with grain. Blasting was moved to a distant, isolated hallway so that the steam and debris wouldn't ruin the crops, and proving Lori right when one blasting managed to break down the wall between hallways, causing her to hurriedly condense all the steam that had leaked out past her condensation binding before they reached the crops.

The third level was slowly planted, one plot at a time. Most of the plots contained vigas, though others were planted with mais, glits, and the other things Rian had brought back from Covehold, which no one had been willing to risk outside where the chokers were. Every few days, another plot was excavated, filled with rocks, set up and planted, so that all the plots eventually contained plants of different heights.

"This is going to take forever," Rian groaned one night during dinner, some weeks after Lori had started blasting stone into smaller rocks, Umu leaning against him and hugging his arm with her cheek against his shoulder. "I'm glad you didn't put some sort of mandated deadline for this."

Lori tilted her hear thoughtfully.

"Oh, PLEASE don't put a mandated deadline for this!" Rian protested. "You of all people should know how long it takes to set up each plot before it can be planted! Even if you make the third level as wide as all the above ground fields we have put together, it'll take us four, maybe five times as long to plant. Up at ground level, we have soil already. Down there, even that has to be installed, and we're sort of running out. If we dig up all the soil available, it's going to bite us when it comes to future ropeweed production, as well as other plants that would have grown there naturally."

Lori huffed. They actually had a lot of rocks now, and all the plots were ready to be dug up, with two plots already filled with stone so they'd be somewhere convenient and out of the way. "So now the production bottle neck is soil?"

"Pretty much," Rian said, shrugging. "Right now, the only way to fix that is to start making a large compost pit and scouring the woods for leaves, branches and things to compost with the latrine stuff, but with how cold it's getting, any compost pit we put outside isn't going to start composting until spring."

"It's that cold already?" She'd mostly been staying in the Dungeon.

"I've been putting a little water in a bowl out on the entry way above the Dungeon," Rian said. "This morning, there was a little skim of ice in it."

Lori nodded. "Ah, definitely that cold already."

"Oh, yes. Why do you think all the children are in the third level, where it's nice and warm?"

Lori blinked at that. Huh. That… actually made sense. "Huh. That actually makes sense. Well… that aside, is there any other way to get the soil we need?"

"If we'd set up a big pile beforehand and it had already started composting, I think its own internal heat would have let it last through the winter, but even then, it wouldn't be ready for us to use until spring," Rian said. "The compost pile we already have is mostly depleted from all the other plots we've already set up, and it hasn't been replenished since most of the waste that would have gone into it instead when straight to the tuber planters. And since we're still making more tuber planters, that replenishing isn't likely to happen any time soon." Next to him, Umu made a face.

With a sigh, Lori ran a hand over her face, trying and failing to somehow squeeze out the frustration. "I thought I told you to organize this."

"This is organized," Rian said dryly. "Right now, we can't do much more because of a lack of materials. If we'd been badly organized, we wouldn't be having this conversation until three weeks from now, when we'd overextended ourselves, and our above-ground farms were failing from not having enough soil and fertilizer." He sighed himself. "At best, we could set up a compost pit in the third level—"

"No," Lori snapped as Umu straightened, releasing her grip on Rian slightly.

"—and I figured you'd say that. I'm not fond of the idea either. It'll stink, bringing almost-fresh human waste through two floors of important things, especially the kitchen where our food is prepared, is practically asking to spread sickness around, and it wouldn't be ready any sooner than spring in any case." Rian shrugged. "At this point, I think its best we switch from trying to make more plots in the third level and focus on properly maintaining the ones already planted."

Lori frowned at him, but sighed. "Very well. Start setting up compost pits—wait. Couldn't we use the soil from digging up the compost pits?"

"Where do you think the soil from the last three plots came from?" Rian said dryly. "I'm having more pits dug, so we might be able to make some more, but as it is the holes need to be dug manually, and need to be filled in with compost before it starts getting really cold. We needed some place to dump latrine waste over the winter in any case." He shrugged. "The farmers tell me we could probably get the waste to compost a little over the winter if we keep it warm, but… how do you feel about using magic to keep holes full of excrement warm and drained of melted snow?"

Lori made a face.

"Yes, that's what I thought."

"Um, Rian?" Umu said, looking nauseous. "I don't want to interrupt or tell anyone to do anything… but is there any way to stop talking about this when Riz and Mikon come back with the stew?"

Rian sighed. "Was really trying not to think about it, Umu." He reached across his chest to pat her arm awkwardly. "Sorry. Uh, anyway your Bindership, I'll have the holes dug, and you can decide whether you want to do any… maintenance on them. Shouldn't be too much of a problem. When we expand the fields we can just fill them up and plant over them."

"If we have enough soil," Lori noted blandly. She idly moved one of the pieces on the chatrang board in front of her, ready to be moved to whichever side Mikon decided to sit this time. It occurred to her she hadn't challenged Rian to a game yet. She should really get around to that… "All right. We will proceed with maintaining the plots starting tomorrow, though I expect the soil from the compost pits to be brought down to the third level. As to the last plots, see if they can be used to grow the happyfruit and hairy blueball seeds."

She was going to have fruit trees in her Dungeon and nothing was going to stop her!