Her second time expanding her demesne went much like her first. In fact, it went as exactly like her first as she could manage it. After all, if she was going to experiment with ways to improve on the methods of expanding her demesne, then she had to be sure that consistent methods yielded consistent results.

Yes, that was absolutely why she did it that way, pushing herself for who-knows-how-long until she was mentally exhausted and collapsed on her bedroll. Perfectly planned to confirm a consistent, repeatable baseline.

Doing so predictably left her in the strange state of being mentally fatigued and exhausted while still being physically well-rested. She was much better prepared for it this time, knowing what to expect, and so she was able to force herself to move. That seemed to help, at least, her body rousing her mind. Her eyes wanted to droop and felt sleepy, and she splashed water over her face to try to wake herself up.

By the time Rian came up to call her for lunch, Lori was… well, not exactly back to normal, but at least functional. Mostly functional. Reasonably functional. She forced herself to eat lunch, concentrating on getting food and soup into her mouth, chewing and swallowing. Thankfully, there didn't seem to be anything of import that needed her attention, and so she was able to just focus on eating her food in peace.

After eating, Lori very much wanted to go up to her room and sleep the afternoon away. However, she still had work to do, and so forced herself to her feet and trudged towards the reservoir. She moved the stone blocking the way to it, looking at the thing with annoyance. Despite having resigned herself to it being permanent, she couldn't make herself come to like it. Even with the waist-high stone wall all around it to keep things from falling in, she still half-expected to find something inside the reservoir when she looked, but no, the watery pit was clean as far as she could see. Though admittedly, she wouldn't be able to visually tell if something had been mixed into it unless it was a corpse, or was something easy to identify like floating excrement.

Lori walked up to the stone wall around the reservoir and looked inside. The interior of the reservoir was brightly lit by lightwisps studded along its sides, illuminating the churning water that flowed in from the water hub, keeping it constantly filled. Pipes leading to the baths also drew their water from it, though Lori was alarmed to see how high the water was. It was still four paces below the top of the wall, but it was far higher that it had been the last time she'd come here to get water for blasting apart the stone for the Dungeon farm! Lori groaned and hastily reached towards the water hub shed, deactivating the bindings there.

Idiot! She was an idiot! She'd left water running without checking on it to keep it from overflowing! The bindings she'd placed had kept pushing water into the reservoir even when the water level had risen above the discharge pipe, and if she hadn't checked up on it, it would have flooded. The only thing keeping her from screaming in frustration at the fact was that she'd actually manage to catch it before it had started flooding her Dungeon.

She'd… have to devise some kind of system to stop the water from overflowing, wouldn't she? Either stop the flow of water into the reservoir, or build some sort of runoff pipe that would send water somewhere else once it reached a certain level. Ugh… well, she was here to modify the reservoir to provide water for the Dungeon farm anyway… what was one more thing she needed to make?

Come to think of it, she needed to be ready to use this reservoir to provide drinking water again in the event of a dragon, so she might as well prepare for that too. That meant pipes and basins to put the water, and more dealing with overflows and runoffs… and people will probably still get water from there even if there wasn't a dragon passing, wouldn't they? It would be just like them… though she supposed with winter having arrived, people would naturally want to get in out of the cold. She'd have to add drinking water basins to the bath houses, so it would be closer than her Dungeon…

She didn't want to. Even though her tiredness didn't really affect her ability to bind wisps… she didn't want to. All that work, feeling the way she did… but she'd have to, wouldn't she? After all, it wasn't like there was anyone else who could do it. And it was needed. If she didn't do it, people would keep spilling water inside her Dungeon… and her Dungeon would flood, of course. And the flooding would negatively impact their farm, which was at the Dungeon's lowest point…

"Lori?"

It took her a moment to realize someone was calling her. She shook her head, turning around to find Rian standing at the mouth of the passageway leading to the reservoir. "Rian?" she said, sighing. What now? "What now?"

"Are you all right?" Rian asked. "You seem… not yourself."

"I'm perfectly well," Lori said, waving a hand dismissively.

"Probably… but that perfectly well self doesn't seem to be your usual perfectly well self. Have you been having trouble sleeping lately? I'm your lord, if there's something you need me to do for you—"

"Then I'd tell you," Lori snapped.

Rian nodded. "You'd tell me. I'm more worried about what you wouldn't tell me. Because you don't tell me, so I don't know whether I should worry about it, so I default to worrying." He spread out his hands. "At lunch today and the day before, you looked like you'd been up all night and hadn't slept. Except I saw you at breakfast, and you were your usual, well-rested perfectly fine self. So you clearly did something between the time we got back from the edge of the demesne and lunch." Rian leaned back against the passageway. "Maybe you should go rest today? You've been working hard all year, a rest won't hurt."

Lori glared at him. "I thought you said we needed water for the dungeon farm?"

"We do, but not at the expense of our Dungeon Binder's health." He gestured towards her. "This isn't a per-day student work contract where you'll be summarily dismissed without pay if you don't do every little thing you're told to do instantly." He paused. "Can we make so those kinds of practices are illegal here? At least force them to have to pay for time already worked?"

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"It's far too early to be considering such things. We don't even have beads yet." Ugh, they didn't even have beads! How was she supposed to find time to make those when expanding her demesne already let her so exhausted?

"So you're not doing it?"

"Of course I'm doing it, I hate those people." She'd been working for almost the whole contract, and all of a sudden just because she told the man she wasn't properly certified to lightning-weld metal suddenly she was dismissed without pay? ARGH! He knew she wasn't certified, she'd had to specify it in her application, which he'd been holding, the cheap, cheating—

"Uh, I'm not saying we have them executed for it…"

She glared at him again. "Did I say it would be an execution offence?"

"It was implied by your clenched fists, enraged eyes, gritted teeth and borderline animalistic growls of fury," Rian said. "How about just flogging? It would make the people they cheat feel so much better, especially if we have them do it."

Lori thought about flogging the man who had dismissed AND forcing him to pay her for the work she had already done. "I'll consider it."

Rian nodded. "So… do you want to tell me why you've been so tired in the afternoons?"

"It's none of your concern," Lori said.

"Given that it seems like something I'll need to schedule around for both your sake and mine, I think it falls under my concern," Rian said. "It seems to occupy your mornings and makes you all but dead on your feet for the afternoons. Not impossible to compensate for, but I need to know about it." He shrugged. "If it goes on for three more days, I was planning to call the doctors to examine you. I'd already set aside a whole bunch of salt to have you treated in River's Fork if it was necessary. This kind of sudden onset exhaustion isn't something you used to go through, after all. As lord, it's my job to keep you alive, and I'm doing it."

Lori glared a third time, but this time her heart wasn't in it. Scheduling. Resource allocation. Keeping her alive. Those weren't concerns she could really dismiss and tell him to stop doing. Keeping her alive was vitally important. The most important thing in the world, really. Sighing with bad grace, she crossed her arms over her chest, not looking at him. "I'm fine. The tiredness is just a side effect of my ongoing efforts to expand the borders of my demesne."

"Ah. I figured it was something like that when you started measuring this morning." Her eyes snapped up towards him, and he was just finishing nodding, looking self-satisfied. "What? I need to be a little smart to be able to keep up with you, and there aren't many reasons you'd suddenly be using the measuring stick function of your staff." He nodded again. "Ah, that's why you want to go out again tomorrow and for the foreseeable future. I assume that marker you put down is currently on the demesne's current edge, so you're measuring the demesne's growth every time you expand? Trying to figure out a baseline so you can optimize the procedure?"

"… yes," she managed to get out.

Rian nodded. "Would it be more efficient if I went out and measured the growth in the mornings? That way we don't have to worry about exposing our very important Dungeon Binder to potentially being attacked by a hungry beast at the border of the demesne, and you don't have to waste your time doing it."

"How would you be able to identify the new border?" Lori said. "The snow is hiding the Iridescence."

"If I go out there now and leave some bowls or something in a line, they should be coated by enough Iridescence tomorrow I can make it out, even if they get buried in more snow," Rian said, waving a hand dismissively. "Or some kind of board propped up with rocks, in case I'm incorrect about where I think the edge is from the marker. I could get one now, leave it out there, go back in the morning, reset for the new border, and keep doing that every day. That way you don't have to go."

The suggestion was… very tempting actually, especially for her tired mind. She tried to think of a way to justify why she needed to be the one to do it and found none. After all, she'd only gone because she'd felt she was the only one who could discern the demesne's border, but Rian's suggestion had merit.

"Do you want to keep this secret for some reason?" Rian said. "Because Riz's friends talked and people know you've been doing something up there."

She waved a hand dismissively. "You deal with it."

Rian nodded. "So, will you be expanding the demesne again this afternoon…?"

She gave him a withering look. "Do I look like I'm in any condition to do that?" she said.

"I wouldn't know, I can't do magic," Rian shrugged.

"No, I won't," Lori said. "I'll be working on expanding the capabilities of our reservoir. I'll expand the demesne tomorrow."

"Of course," Rian nodded. "Well, I'll leave you to it. I'm sure you have many things you need to plan first before you actually start building, so that your new improvement don't cause any unintended flooding problems. You probably need to plan the layout, figure out how to prevent flooding from too much water, how to keep the reservoir from running out of water too fast, things like that which have to be planned out before you even start building."

"…obviously," Lori said. "After all, it would be foolish to start building without some kind of plan." Yes, she should probably plan this out first, shouldn't she? After all, she had to make irrigation water accessible to the third level, add drinking water access to the baths for the winter, and add a means of stopping the water's flow to prevent the reservoir from overflowing, which was the most important part…

And actually, she should probably have a way to make irrigation water shut off by itself, shouldn't she? She could easily imagine some lazy idiot leaving the water running, not realizing that the water wouldn't just drain into the earth if it overflowed, and resulting in the third level flooding…

And she'd need the same for the drinking water access, wouldn't see? Else the water would just keep overflowing, possibly overwhelming the drains and causing the bath houses to flood…

"Well, I'll leave you to that then," Rian nodded. "Tell me if you need anything commissioned from the smiths and carpenters, like more spigots and things."

Spigots would be helpful actually, especially if they could have some sort of mechanism to automatically close them…

"Huh?" Lori shook her head, looking up at Rian. "Ah, yes, yes, I'll tell you if I need anything. "

Rian nodded, and turned to leave, then paused. He turned back towards her. "Um, I have to ask, is there any particular reason why you have to expand the demesne in the mornings? Couldn't you do it in the afternoons instead? That way you could have dinner and just go straight to bed and not force yourself to work when you're clearly tired."

Lori stared at him.

Rian just stared right back.

"Get to work, Rian," Lori finally said.

"Yes, your Bindership," he said, turning away obediently. "I'll see you at dinner, then."

After Rian left, Lori just stood, there, feeling… tired. Then she shook her head, looked around the reservoir one last time, and headed down the passage back towards her room, barely remembering to close the way behind her to block access to the reservoir. Without anywhere else to work, she headed towards her room to plan out her approach to improving the reservoir.

Lori sat down on her bed with its nicely stuffed bedroll because there was nowhere else more comfortable to sit, one of the stone tablets she kept prepared in hand, a stylus made from a beast tooth on a stick in the other for writing, and began to plan out how she was going to improve the reservoir.

She most definitely didn't fall asleep in the middle of planning. That would be wrong.