Lori was not one of those foolish people who refused to admit she was wrong. She was very willing to admit she was wrong, once presented with sufficient empirical evidence. She wouldn't admit it out loud, because that would be pointless and silly and unnecessary, but she would admit it to herself, and that was really the only person such an admission mattered.

It was still incredibly irritating, those wasted days, but she had a superior method now. At least, it should be superior. With all the wisps at her demesnes border now all part of being a prepared binding instead of simply being bound and willed, she'd been able to heavily align and imbue it. The alignment phase was still important, since she was going to technically be claiming something outside of her 'body'.

And if the idea didn't work, she had a binding so wide and heavily imbued that she might actually be able to substantially divert the weather. That would actually be fun to try, she'd never done it before. Weather tended to be a little higher than what she could affect with the size of her demesne.

Still, Lori prepared her corner nook, lined it with her bedroll and put her pillow behind her head. She made herself comfortable, leaning back and clasping her hands together. Then she closed her eyes and focused on her awareness of her wisps.

She could feel it, the massive binding across her demesne's entire border, heavily imbued from this morning. Carefully, she made sure the bindings weren't anchored to anything material. She did not want the stone at her borders to suddenly convulse outwards. For one thing, that would needlessly consume a lot of imbuement. And it would probably also be very messy.

Well, there was no use delaying. Lori reached out and took control of the binding and all the wisps that were part of it. A part of her winced as she did so. The binding was a disorganized mess, wisps of all kind bound together without any sort of organization, purpose or division, all of them merely claimed and bound as they had passed. Lightwisps, darkwisps, a preponderance of waterwisps and earthwisps, lightningwisps, airwisps. There were probably even firewisps there she couldn't perceive because they were too cold.

She took a deep breath and braced herself, despite the effort being completely of the will. Then she reached outside of her demesne and claimed. Doing so in all directions at once hadn't become any easier, but she managed to make her wisps surge out, into cold, snow covered lands beyond. Beneath the snow, in the ground away from the water, in the little pockets of air in the snow, delicate crystals of Iridescence grew, carefully growing with the chains of ice. They trapped her wisps, and drew out the imbuement from them, growing and crystallizing. She could perceive some delicate interplay as the Iridescence grew, bonding to each other, displacing the small flakes of snow and ice…

Lori could feel the Iridescence beginning to draw more and more imbuement, trapping more and more wisps… but something was different. She could feel it distinctly. Carefully, the Dungeon Binder released her direct control of the binding, letting it revert to an inactive state as she took a moment so sit back and make sense of what she was perceiving.

It took several moments to be sure of what she was feeling, moments where she had to open her eyes half way to metaphorically rub her eyes to clear them and look again. However, what she was perceiving didn't change.

The Iridescence was trapping wisps and drawing imbuement at a greatly reduced rate. It was, in fact, the same rate of decay her bindings experienced normally when she created them outside of her demesne. It was a feeling she wasn't going to ever forget. It was also far less than the seemingly voracious rate of consumption she had perceived over the past two weeks when she had been expanding her demesne. What?

She looked closer, and realized that wasn't exactly true. There was almost no such consumption above the ground, out in the open sky… which made sense. No Iridescence there. The storm was too cold and blowing too energetically for there to probably be much in the way of small Iridescence crystals on the wind. And as she had perceived, there was some Iridescence in the snow, nestled in the gaps of the frozen water. And underground…

Lori observed her earthwisps on the underground part of her demesne. There, at least, imbuement was being drawn and consumed. But while it was at a greater rate than the above-ground decay, it wasn't exactly the voracious consumption she'd become used to when she'd expanded…

Slowly, carefully, Lori made a hole in her spherical binding at the river's entry point that she was beginning to think of as her reference. She aligned and channeled magic, then made it flow to that spot, binding wisps and heavily imbuing them. Through the hole in her demesne-sized binding, she reached outside of her demesne as she had done before, and used the wisps she had just bound and imbued to claim wisps outside of her demesne…

Nothing. Well, no difference from how her binding was currently being consumed. What…?

Oh, right. She was claiming outwards on the river. The ice and water wouldn't have any Iridescence, after all.

Lori opened another hole, this time underground amidst solid stone and trapped water, and repeated what she had done—

Ah, there was the voraciousness with which she had become familiar! Her wisps becoming trapped, the consumption slowly escalating, as if the more imbuement the Iridescence devoured, the more they could devour. Lori observed the process with interested detachment, imbuing more and more magic to the wisps she had claimed as they became trapped but still hers. She watched and waited, like a child throwing things into the fire to watch them burn in the flames. Without the distraction and strain of trying to reach out and claim in all directions at once, Lori calmly watched as more and more of the wisps she had reached out beyond the borders of her demesne with were entrapped.

As the last of the wisps she had reached out with were about to be consumed, Lori calmly bound the Iridescence to her will. Her wisps became part of the Iridescence, and the Iridescence became part of her wisps, their increasingly familiar sensation seeming to melt away.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Lori opened her eyes and sat up straight, frowning down at her floor. Had it been open so she could see into the room where her core was, would she have seen its surface ripple? Probably. The increase to her demesne's size was likely infinitesimal, though. It had required claiming outwards from every part of the border of her demesne to expand forty-four and a half yustri. One probably needed to be a Horotract with a parvusight to be able to tell how much her demesne had expanded from that little exercise.

She sat back again and considered what she had discovered. So, in addition to greatly reducing imbuement loss, forming her wisps into an active binding also reduced the rate that the colors devoured imbuement… which made sense. She'd made bindings outside of her demesne before, after all. It's just she hadn't realized the full repercussions of the effect on the steps needed to expand her demesne.

Did this affect expansion? Lori closed her eyes and regarded the binding around her demesne, which now had two holes in it. It was still heavily imbued, even as the underground portion was having that imbuement drawn on by Iridescence. She tried to judge how long it would take for the binding to collapse from the draw rate. So far, it looked like it would last all through the afternoon and a short ways into the evening, but that didn't account for the slow increase in the rate at of consumption…

So she had plenty of time… if this method worked. She still hadn't successfully expanded with it, after all.

Lori nodded to herself. All right, test that first, worry about the repercussions later. The repercussions would only be worth worrying about if this actually worked. Taking several deep, even breaths to steady herself out of habit, Lori reached out and took direct control of the binding around her demesne once more, then began the process of binding the iridescence to her will—

It started going wrong immediately.

As soon as she reached through her binding and bound the first of the Iridescence, she felt her binding, her entire sky-wide binding, suddenly heave violently as the wisps trapped in colors became part of each other… and then began dragging the entire binding with it, drawing the whole binding towards the first point that she had claimed the Iridescence in like water into a drain.

The shock caused her simultaneous other attempts to collapse, which in hindsight was probably for the best as she instinctively tried to reassert control of the binding. It was nothing like trying to fight someone who was trying to claim wisps already under her control. Her claim was still in place, it was just that the entire binding was moving anyway!

Frantically, Lori reached out and severed the wisps fused with the Iridescence from the rest of the binding, forcibly dissipating the wisps closest to the voracious amalgamation as she cried out in a frantic panic. She nearly collapsed in relief as this worked, the binding suddenly falling still again as the amalgamation was severed from it, the latter vanishing from her awareness as soon as it was no longer part of the binding.

Lori stared at the stone ceiling above her, panting as if she had actually physically exerted herself. That… that had never happened before. Nothing like it had ever happened before! That was… that was…! Well, she would have said it was impossible, but it had clearly just happened and—

There was a frantic knocking on her door. "Lori!" Rian's voice cried though the wood. "Are you all right?-! Are you hurt?-! Lori! Say something!"

Lori blinked in surprised, sitting up. "Rian?" she said. What…? Oh. She had cried out involuntarily, and someone must have heard her. "I'm fine! Just… I'm fine."

The knocking had ceased as soon as she'd spoken, for which she was glad. It had been quite strident. "Can I come in?" her lord called through the door?

Lori hesitated, then nodded. Then realized he couldn't see the nod. "Fine, come in," she said.

The door opened, and while she'd been expecting Rian, she was surprised to see other people crowding around him in her hallway. Thankfully, none of them tried to come inside as Rian stepped in and closed the door behind him. "Are you all right?" he said immediately, as if she hadn't already answered his question.

"I already told you, I'm fine," she said, irritation coming forward.

"People who scream like that are seldom fine," Rian retorted. He turned and open the door, stick his head outside. "She's all right! Nothing to worry about, she's not dying! Everyone relax, I'll take care of whatever it is!" Lori glared at the back of Rian's head as he made people stop crowding outside in her hallway. Eventually, he pulled his head back in, closing the door behind him once again. "What happened, then? You went 'Ta-wa-wa-wa-wa' so loudly I heard you from the bottom of the stairs." He looked around. "Nothing seems damaged, so… did something happen while you were trying to expand the demesne?"

"I…" Ugh, why did he have to be so perceptive? She let out an annoyed huff. "Something unexpected happened," she finally admitted.

Rian raised an eyebrow. "Good unexpected or bad unexpected?"

"Unexpected unexpected," she flatly. "Something completely outside of my experience or education."

Rian frowned, looking around again as if he expected to see something. "Is it dangerous?" he asked. "Do we need to get everyone inside and seal up the dungeon? Or get everyone out of the dungeon?"

Lori shook her head. "No, no, nothing like that. The unexpected occurrence occurred just outside the demesne. I managed to stop it before… well, I managed to stop it."

"You paused. I heard that pause. That sounds like a very disturbing pause I should be very concerned about."

She glared at him, but her heart wasn't in it.

For some reason, Rian walked towards her and knelt down meeting her eyes. "Lori…" he said. "If there's been some sort of unexpected magical accident or something, maybe you should tell me what it was? Because this is sounding disturbingly like the part in a story where one character doesn't tell the other characters what they know, and vital information that should have been passed isn't, and the whole story ends tragically with everyone dead."

Lori snorted. "You read far too many stories," she said.

"Play, actually. It's a surprisingly common bit of plot-mandated stupidity in tragedies." Rian shrugged, spreading his hands. "Come on Lori, tell me. The worst that could happen is I don't understand a thing because I'm not a wizard. Who knows, maybe if you explain it, hearing what you're saying out loud will lead to some sudden epiphany enlightening you to what happened."

That… was something that happened in stories, wasn't it? "You realize that's just a plot contrivance to exposit to the audience so they can be fed all the relevant information leading to the sudden twist, don't you?" she said flatly.

Another shrug. "It might work," Rian said. "I know it's sometimes happened to me."

Lori rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine," she said. She supposed she did need to figure out what had happened. Absently, she checked the large binding around her demesne. It was still intact and imbued, although it had a third hole in it now at ground level, and the binding had grown thin at the opposite end of the demesne from whatever that amalgamation had done. "Sit, I'll only explain this once." Rian sat at the foot of her bed, looking expectant as she was forced to organize her thoughts. How to relate what had happened… "To begin with, as I was making preparations for expanding the demesne this morning, I came to a realization… "