Demesne

To make a Dungeon and the demesne that surrounded it was actually relatively simple, provided you were a wizard and could actually do it. A lot of the stories commoners told were of ordinary folk somehow stumbling into a Dungeon and claiming it in ignorance or by accident, becoming mighty and powerful in the process. Rainbows. There was no way to claim a Dungeon by accident. Every wizard knew that. But not, obviously, most ordinary folk.

Creating a Dungeon and claiming one were based on the same ritual. One merely took longer than the other because of a lack of infrastructure. Infrastructure that Lori would have to build herself.

After melding her blanket to the stone over the entrance to give herself some privacy and block out the cold winds coming from outside, Lori got to work.

She began by checking her pack, making sure she still had all she needed. A vial containing the last of her baby teeth. Her brass syringe. A small glass bowl. A phial with a good cork stopper. A cheap clay cup. Five brass-backed glass mirrors. A fat candle which she'd been saving through her whole trip from the old continent. A piece of quartz. Eight gold-plated lead disks, each about the size of her palm and thin as her thumbnail. A sealed glass bottle with a glass stopper containing a glittering powder. Her pillow. Her last pair of dry socks.

She was NOT doing this with wet feet.

She'd taken off her pointy leather hat, letting her short dark hair free of the constricting brim to tickle the back of her neck. She'd have to find someone with a pair of scissors she could borrow to cut it again. Something to remember for later.

The ritual space was as she'd specified. Dirt and surface rock had been excavated to a depth of seven feet, creating a bowl-like space in the rock. She saw tool marks mixed in with the inexplicable handprints and strange mixed strata of where softened stone had been molded by hands and mortaring tools. That wasn't very common, with most of the shaping work being done by the settlement's stonecutters and one aspiring sculptor who looked like he cried himself to sleep at night and wished he'd stayed on the old continent.

Still, it was a good, decent workspace. The floor was mostly level, if not exactly smooth or even, as small puddles of water and dirt had formed. She tapped her staff on the ground, getting the waterwisps in the moisture that had soaked into the wood to spread into the moisture from the enthusiastic washing the eventual core had received. They responded to her readily, obeying her will with almost as much alacrity as the ones in her spit and blood. Slowly, so she didn't tire herself, she had the waterwisps spread, gathering all the moisture and dirt together into a large cloudy ball at the end of her staff. When she was sure the ritual space was dry enough, she carefully walked up the slope on her bare feet, dipped her feet into the water to get them dry, then threw most of the muddy water outside into the rain. What little water left around her staff, she dripped into her glass bowl, putting many of the waterwisps that had lived in her staff into it. She placed the bowl of water on the front, on top of one of the disks of gold and lead.

She put down another disk, and onto that she placed the stone from where she had slept and buried her pack for safe keeping. The phial went on another, the stopper lying next to it. Next was the unlit candle, followed by the clay cup turned over so it rested on its open end. She carefully took another, smaller candle and put it down on another disk, then carefully arranged four of the mirrors around it so it formed a box, with the fifth ready to complete the box. On another disk she placed the piece of quartz. It was actually the other Whisperer's quartz. The one she'd brought was much smaller.

The seven disks had been arranged in a circle. At their center, she placed the last disk, and on it, the bottle with the powder. Its contents glinted of many colors, and Lori felt an instinctive shiver of fear shake between her shoulder blades and vibrate its way up to her neck. She reminded herself that it couldn't grow on glass, that as long as the vessel was sealed it couldn't hurt anyone. Just don't do anything stupid, like breathe it in…

Taking a wooden taper she'd cut from a branch and dried in preparation for this, Lori called a firewisp dwelling in the heat of her body and set the paper alight before lighting the small candle. Breathing in once more, she channeled the magic through her organs, through her muscles and out the thin skin on the back of her hands, calling the firewisps drawn by the open flame away, binding them to keep their distance. She took deep, controlled, circular breaths, drawing more and more power from the air feeding it to the barrier of firewisps around the light, until she had a light that burned but didn't gather firewisps to it. They came close, drawn by the fire, but they were stopped by her binding and barrier. She'd have to work fast.

With the care of someone who's done this before but not nearly enough to be casual about it, Lori took her syringe and drew some blood. She mixed the blood into the bowl of water, the waterwisps from her body mixing with the ones in the water that had grown tamed by her power.

On the stone, she placed her old baby teeth. She channeled magic through it every day of the voyage here, reminding the earthwisps in it they came from her, that the tooth was born of her body. It wasn't as good as a fresh finger bone, still warm after being severed, but she wanted to keep her fingers.

Into the phial, she gently blew, calling the airwisps from her lungs and into the container. They moved as obediently as if they were her fingers, bound absolutely to her will. Quickly, she placed the stopper.

The fat candle, she lit with her magic, drawing firewisps from the warm core of her body. She felt herself grow cold, felt limbs start to shiver, but didn't stop, gathering the heat and firewisps into flame for her candle. For a fire drawn from her very self, the dancing flame on the candlewick seemed insultingly small.

Still shivering, limbs still shaking to be warm again, she kept on breathing, giving power to the firewisps left within her to carefully raise her body heat, even as she cupped a hand over her open mouth. Breathing through her nose, she carefully closed her hand, and with delicate movements carefully tilted up the clay cup and slipped her hand into it. She released the darkwisps, drawn from the ever-dark places within her body, into the darkness under the cup.

As her body slowly grew warm again, she swayed slightly, feeling strangely empty. She couldn't stop though, she needed that empty feeling. That emptiness was meant to be filled.

Lori closed one eye and stared at the light in the box of mirrors. She concentrated on her breathing, on the power flowing through her, and channeled magic through her eye. Her sight slowly dimmed as the lightwisps left her, moving faster than thought towards the light she'd bound. She dropped the fifth mirror over the light, completing the box of mirrors.

She blinked, opening her other eye, and sighed. That one could still see. She closed her other eye to keep from being confused until she adjusted, even as she turned to the last of the elements of ritual. The quartz crystal sat innocently as she lay a hand upon it. Once more she drew breath, drawing in the magic in the air.

Very, very carefully, Lori channeled the power gently from her lungs, along her nerves that allowed her to command her body, and up to her arm. Then she gathered the wisps there and ordered them to move. Lightningwisps flowed down the nerves of her arms, from her bicep, down to her elbow, down her forearm. They flowed down her hand and through her palms, into the quartz. The quartz began to vibrate in place, even as her arm became numb, punctuated by patches of pins and needles.

Shaking, feeling drained, Lori collapsed down to sit, throwing an arm out to catch herself. Too late, she realized she was giving orders to an arm that had too few lightningwisps to function.

"Ow," Lori said, trying to rub the spot on her shoulder blades she'd fallen on and failing. Carefully, she pushed herself up with her functioning arm.

She wanted to take a moment, to have a drink, maybe eat something. A nap sounded nice too. But if she did, she knew she'd have to start all over again.

She was so close. A Dungeon of her own. Power and abilities beyond that of mere wizards, the power of a Dungeon Binder, who wielded all four magics!

Oh, and to make the settlement safe too, she supposed.

Taking a deep breath, she began the ritu–

She paused, then stood up and grabbed her pillow, stuffing it into her now-empty pack so she'd have someplace soft to sit on. Sitting down, she finally changed her socks.

Ah. Much better.

Feeling fortified and more ready to face what lay ahead, Lori, wizard, Whisperer, began to make her Dungeon.