"Rian," Lori said as she deactivated the bindings on the air jet, "I need workers for a project."

Rian blinked, pausing in the middle of wiping his nose with his towel and ugh, that was disgusting, and he was going to wrap that thing back around his face too! "Er, sure. I'll ask around."

Riz's friend immediately made herself scarce, just barely evading the hand Riz reached out to try and grab her.

Lori nodded. "I'll need two or three people, no particular skills beyond being able to follow orders and use their hands. They will need to have their own leather gloves in relatively good condition, and good arm strength." If not, she'd have to provide either heating or cooling, which could be… well, it might require her to set up more bindings. "Not Landoor."

"That should be easy," Rian said as Riz looked conflicted. "When do you need them?"

"Now. Tell them to meet me near the laundry area, I just need to go retrieve something."

Riz seemed to settle whatever internal conflict she had, because she turned and immediately made herself scarce.

"I'll see what I can do," Rian said, turning. "Riz, could you— huh. I could have sworn she was just there." He looked perplexed for a moment, then shrugged. "Guess she had something to do… oh, well. I'll see who I can find, your Bindership, though it would help if I can tell them what you need them for."

"I need them to roll rocks," Lori said.

"Ah. How suitably vague of you."

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"Oh. You literally meant roll rocks," Rian said.

Lori stood outside the laundry area, on the stretch of ground that in warmer days would have been full of poles and washing lines full of clothes drying. Now, however, it was merely a relatively flat, snow-covered area, her snow pads letting her stand without sinking… much. The snow beneath her was slowly melting from the subtle warmth around her body. She'd have to move soon before she sank.

In front of her was a block of bound ice, of a height and smoothness to use as a table. The top was mostly level, because she'd turned it into water for a moment before freezing and binding it again. Next to the table was a pile of softened stone she'd gotten from the stone stockpile. The pile lay next to the ice block table, on which Lori was rolling a mass of softened stone.

"Yes. I said so, didn't I?" Lori said. The rock she was handling like bread dough was about the size of two fists put together, and was cool on her hands. She let the vaguely rounded mass of stone slip out over the edge of the block away from the mass of softened stone, dissipating the binding on it as she did so. "Or at the very least, assist me in figuring out the most efficient way of turning—what is she doing here?"

The brat stood next to Rian, along with two young men she didn't recognize, which was everyone. One had blue hair, while the other had dark green hair. Lori pegged them as Blue and Green.

"I asked for volunteers, they volunteered," Rian said with a shrug. "Karina was insistent about volunteering."

Karina waved. "Hello, Wiz Lori."

Lori grunted, looking at the brat intently. "Do they all have gloves?"

"Uh, no. Most of those with gloves suited for work are currently working and wearing them," Rian said. He raised his own hands. "Even I don't have gloves, I just borrow a pair sometimes from one of Riz's friends, and not very often at that."

Lori scowled, looking down at the block of ice she'd prepared.

"What exactly were you going to make them do?" Rian asked.

"I was going to have them roll the stone into rocks so we'd have a supply of properly sized rocks for the drainage of the new plots in the Dungeon farm," Lori said, "but if they don't have gloves, then it would be too cold for them to handle the stone in this weather." It would be far more time-consuming than using explosions to blast sheets of rocks into smaller rocks, but it wasn't like they didn't have time and many people not doing anything.

"Couldn't you just… warm the stones?" Rian said as the three looked back and forth between the two of them. "I mean, you could, right?"

"Yes, but if the stones are warm, they'd melt the snow."

"Why is it important they not melt the snow?"

Lori gestured at the snow at her feet impatiently. "After the stones are rolled, they need to be put on the snow so they don't stick and clump together before I can undo the binding that makes them malleable. If they're warm, they'll melt through the snow."

"Ah, so the stone is softened stone, got it. You forgot to mention that."

…oh. She had, hadn't she?

"Well, the stone has been softened," she said, poking the pile of softened stone next to her. Her finger sank easily as if it were dough, if particularly hard dough. "The plan was to have them pull off stone from the pile like this." She sank her hand into the softened stone, pulling out a chunk. It was cool in her hands, which probably meant it was freezing. "Then they roll it with their hands like this—" she rolled it around in her hands, then put it down on the surface of the ice block and used the surface to help shape the softened stone into a roughly round shape, creating a sort of dome, "—and when it's shaped, they were supposed to put it on the ground until I can get around to removing the binding that softens it."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"And this is important, because…?"

Lori rolled her eyes. "Because otherwise the stones would stick to each other since I can't keep watching all the time to remove the binding from every individual stone as soon as they're done. They'll need the room to lay them out," she said, taking two more handfuls of softened stone and demonstrating. The stone did, in fact, fuse on contact because of the binding they both shared.

Rian nodded. "All right, I understand. Just one question, then."

Lori sighed. She'd explained the process as simply and clearly as she could. "What?"

"Can't you just bind the snow to not melt?"

Lori stared at Rian. Then she looked down at the stone at her feet, full of waterwisps.

Ugh, she hated it when he had a point.

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Rian's suggestion, annoyingly correct as it was, required some more infrastructure to set up. Snow had to be gathered in sufficient amounts—though that wasn't exactly hard—bound to not melt, imbued, then compressed by walking all over them to tamp them down. The surface needed to be malleable and textured enough so the stones wouldn't slid around after they were laid out, or else she'd have just used ice. Fortunately, she didn't have to do the first and last parts, though the brat had to be cautioned not to be so energetic about it lest she slip.

Once bound, the snow, like the ice, was actually not at all cold to the touch, since the binding kept them from exchanging heat with the environment around them. Combined with the firewisps she added to the binding of earthwisps that softened the stone, and the volunteer's hands were actually very warm as they worked. Lori showed them how to shape the softened stone on the block of ice to the dimensions and shape needed, which was also not cold because of the binding on it. Still, the minute heat from the stones was enough to melt the occasional bits of snow that got blown onto the block, the surface of which soon had a layer of water that rendered it frictionless.

With the three volunteers, Rian, and Lori herself, they went through the pile of stone she'd taken from the stockpile surprisingly quickly. Once everyone knew what they had to do, it only took them a few moments and gestures to get the stone to size and then down on the bed of bound snow before they were ripping of more softened stone from the pile.

Lori soon found herself too occupied to form the rocks herself. She was too busy removing the bindings on the finished rocks and going back to get more softened stone from the stockpile. It was only possible to move small amounts since she had to take it through the tunnels in the little windows of time when no one was bringing soil down to the Dungeon farm, and she also had to squeeze it past the back laundry area. Fortunately, there weren't many people doing their laundry.

The four moved quickly. So quickly, in fact, that Rian had to stop helping make rocks and find more people to move the finished rocks away so the three could have more space to put down any further rocks they made. Soon they had more volunteers whose job was to remove the rocks—after Lori had removed the bindings softening them—off the beds of bound snow and eventually just start carrying down to the third level to store them.

When noon and lunch came, they had a surprisingly large pile of rocks in the third level, a total of five volunteers making rocks, and as many more moving the finished stones out of the way and carrying them to the third level. It was not yet enough for a plot—they'd need smaller and smaller rocks—but it was surprising progress for half a morning. If they continued on into the afternoon, and maybe got more workers… well, they'd have enough large rocks for the bottom layer of a plot's drainage.

"This… was surprisingly more labor intensive and efficient than I thought it would be," Lori said, sitting down heavily on her bench.

"You want to make it faster, just form the stone out into a long roll and have someone go from one end to the other cutting it to size with a shovel," Rian groaned. Next to him, Mikon put an arm across his shoulders as she patted him comfortingly. Normally Lori would have chided him for exaggerating his tiredness, since all he did was run around looking for people to do the real work. However, as Lori had spent her time running around getting stone, removing bindings from stone, then turning seemingly immediately as the stone she'd gotten turned out not to be enough and she had to get more, she instead could only sympathize.

It was a truly bizarre sensation. Usually people were too idiotic to sympathize with.

Lori actually took a moment to consider the method Rian proposed. "It would sink into the snow," she said, closing her eyes tiredly.

"So turn the snow into ice and make some kind of channel or rest in the middle for the stone to go into."

"Too imprecise," she countered. "No quality control for the rock's size. No real way to make sure the pieces don't stick together while the person cutting moves on."

Rian grunted. "The shape doesn't have to be perfect," he said, "but I suppose I can understand how it would be hard to keep the pieces from sticking after they've been cut." He sighed. "Pour snow over the stone before cutting to act as a separator coating?"

Lori considered that. It sounded annoyingly doable. "I'll consider it." She barely strangled the urge to sigh herself. "Tell everyone we're done for the day and to take all the finished rocks to the third level. We'll start again tomorrow. I'll see if I can make the process more efficient." A scowl came over her face as she realized something. "It might be simpler to set up the work down in the third level. We'll have ready access to more stone, and the rocks can immediately go into a storage plot. The volunteers moving the rocks won't have to go as far… " Moving snow bound to not melt would be simple enough, and if they needed more… well, it was downhill, they could bring down a whole cart of snow.

"I'm sure they'll enjoy being completely warm," Rian said. "You might actually get more volunteers than you'll be able to use. Will you be doing those preparations today or tomorrow? You still haven't expanded the demesne today, right?"

"Maybe later today. Or tomorrow," Lori sighed. "Something to do while the soil is being dug up… How much longer will that be?"

"It should be done tomorrow or the day after," Rian said. "We're going to have to leave a stretch undone so that people can reach the laundry area."

"No, dig it out anyway," Lori said. "I'll start there and dump stone for people to walk on. Less disruption that way."

"I'll tell people this afternoon. Hopefully, I can get people to get all their laundry done before then so we don't have a bunch of people trying to jump over or go back and forth while we're digging."

Lori grunted. "Find more volunteers as well. If we're lucky, we'll be able to prepare a surplus of rocks for farming plots before the thaw happens. Ugh, we should have been doing this before now!" So many days of winter, wasted!

"It's not like we'd have had the soil before now," Rian said. "We live, we learn, we'll be ready for next winter and all the other winters to come. Relax, Lori. We're here for the rest of our lives. Let's not cut those lives short by working too hard."

"You just want to procrastinate," she accused.

"Only a little," he admitted cheerfully.

Lori sighed. Rian might be the least idiotic of her idiots… but he was still one of her idiots.