"So… the only hammers we have are made of metal. Will that be a problem? Seepage and whatnot?" Rian asked

Lori shook her head. "It shouldn't be as long as the metal isn't also in contact with a binding. Metal is a conduit, not a receptacle."

Rian frowned. "Why is seepage such an issue, then? Shouldn't it only be a problem if a bead is around bindings?"

"Can you see bindings to avoid them?"

"Ah. Good point."

After she had given Rian authorization, he had arranged for assistance with breaking apart the large bead. He'd also informed her that for some silly reason, the rumor was going around that the bead wasn't actually a bead but a dungeon's core. Therefore they had to be careful of idiots 'accidentally' spilling their blood on it.

The bead was being broken outside, near the mouth of the tunnel leading out to the woods, in case there was some sort of unfortunate explosion. Lori didn't think there would be, but the cold should keep most people away, though she had to undo the binding of airwisps keeping the front of the tunnel clear so that they wouldn't seep from the bead. They were trying to break it, not drain it.

First she set down a surface of stone, with contours and a low wall in place to keep the bead from moving around and rolling. When that was done, Rian put the bead in place, and she altered the shape of the stone base to hold the bead more securely. Pieces of scrap wood were then wedged in to place to hold the bead tight.

They had immediate scrap wood because the assistance Rian had arranged involved calling the biggest and most muscular of the blacksmiths, carpenters, sawyers, woodcutters and the stone masons. The blacksmiths had brought along a selection of their hammers, long-hafted things with steel heads, while the stone masons had blunt-looking metal chisels with wooden grips.

After getting rid of Landoor, Rian turned to the assembled men. "All right," Rian said while Lori put together a binding to emit warmth. They were working outside, after all. "As many of you may have heard, her Bindership has worked out how to make beads. We're still in the starting parts of that, so no one is going to have to remember how to pay taxes any time soon—" everyone's eyes widened at that, "—but that's not why we're here. We're here because her Bindership gave me permission to try breaking this bead open."

"So it's not a dungeon's core?" one of the blacksmiths, red-haired man with work-darkened skin, asked, sounding disappointed as Lori used darkwisps to mark the binding's location, putting it far above the bead so that it would warm everyone efficiently.

"No, that's not how dungeons work," Rian said as Lori checked to make sure there were no bindings were near the bead. The earthwisps that had been used to shape the stone was inert and unbound, and there was nothing in the air above it. "If this were really a dungeon's core, we wouldn't be able to move it and it would vanish as soon as it was inside the demesne. No, it's a really big bead. If we had any sort of bound tool, we could probably run it for an absurdly long time. As we don't… we get to break it open and see what's inside."

Everyone looked at the bead.

"Can we even break a bead?" someone Lori vaguely recognized as one of the carpenters asked. "I've never heard of a bead breaking."

"They can't be unbreakable," Rian said. "Otherwise someone would make a big bead like this and use it as the head of a drop hammer or an anvil or something. It would be really expensive, but then they'd have a perfectly round, smooth, unbreakable hammer head. It's not as if there's some reason beads can't be big. We have a big one right here."

The men, craftsmen all who had probably seen a drop hammer at some point, all looked thoughtful.

"If we can't break it, can we use it as an anvil?" one of the men holding a blacksmith's hammer—so he was probably a blacksmith—asked.

"Or a round form?" added one of the carpenters.

Rian turned to Lori. She rolled her eyes. "Schedule it among yourselves, at least until we have a bound tool to wire it to," she said, waving her hand dismissively.

"Though that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to break it," Rian said dryly. "So let's put our backs into it, all right?"

The other men gave him dubious looks. While Rian could hardly be called lean, some of the men looked like they weighed twice what he did in muscle. Well, that was probably an exaggeration, but one smith had arms thicker than Rian's legs.

"Maybe you should just sit and watch, Lord Rian," one man said kindly.

"Eh? I'm not that weak, am I?"

All the other men looked away.

"You're that weak," Lori said.

Rian sighed. "You didn't have to say it out loud for everyone. Can I at least hold one of the hammers that's not being used so I can feel useful?"

The men gave him a hammer to hold. Rian promptly fell over backwards into the snow. "I can't move… all right, take the hammer back, I'm too weak!"

Lori sighed as the men laughed and helped him back up. Rian and his stupid theatrics…

After covering the bead with some tent canvas so that if it broke the pieces couldn't go flying and holding the canvas in place by using some rocks to tuck it against sides of the stone platform, the men began trying to break the bed. First, the largest-looking blacksmith picked up the heaviest-looking hammer, held it in both hands, and just swung down at the top of the rounded mound that was the bead. The head of the hammer rebounded with a dull sound, but with a smooth and practiced motion the blacksmith had the hammer ready again and was swinging down a second time.

Each successive swing came down with just a little bit more force. After five increasingly heavy swings, the blacksmith stepped back, and the tent canvas was pulled aside so they could examine its surface. Rain crouched down next to the bead to get a closer look

"I think it's cracking. It didn't have those cracks before, did it?" Rian said, pointing to something on the surface of the bead.

Everyone crowded around him to peer at what he was pointing at, though they made way for Lori when she leaned over. At first, there didn't seem to be anything on the cloudy white surface of the bead, but a closer look revealed stark white lines. They seemed to be just under the surface of the bead, following a wiggling path like lightning. Lori ran her fingers over the smooth, glass-like surface, but she didn't feel any breaks or imperfections along where the cracks were, only perfect smoothness.

Still, it was a good sign, since it meant that hitting it repeatedly was doing some good. Putting the tent canvas back on to cover around the bead, the men stood in a circle around it and, wielding their own hammers, began taking turns hitting the bead. Rian had to relinquish the hammer he was holding, but he was put in charge of keeping counting out the rhythm of the work.

Soon an almost constant series of hammer blows were falling down on the bead as Rian kept time. With nothing better to do than watch, Lori sat down on a block of bound ice pulled from the snow and started preparing for expanding her demesne later. Despite herself, she found her knee bouncing to the rhythm of the hammers as the men worked. It made her strangely nostalgic, remembering the days she used to be a student and worked in the small metal workshops to earn beads.

The dull echoes faded into the background as she did her work while they did theirs in the cold winter air. Every so often they'd stop and pull back the tent canvas, examining the surface of the over-sized bead. From the sound of it, more and more cracks where developing, but from where she was sitting away from them so she wouldn't get hit by the swinging hammers, the bead was still unmarred, so the cracks were likely very small and subtle. Still, the number of cracks were apparently growing, because after very check, the circle of men went back into place and resumed hammering with vigor.

It was about half an hour before there was a result that wasn't just the hammers rebounding dully. Lori glanced up, pausing in her imbuing as she heard a sudden crack. She rose to her feet, then had a moment to look down in annoyance as she realized her boots were resting on mud from the passive heat around her. It took her a few moments to dry the mud sufficiently so that her boots wouldn't sink into it. By the time she managed to make her way to the bead, the tent canvas had been carefully pulled back.

The surface of the bead was shattered, its glassy surface and cloudy white interior marred, and a curving shard lay lopsidedly on top of the outline that matched it, along with many smaller, less distinct pieces. Small, fine shards were scattered around the cracks, the wind causing some of them to slide down the sides of the bead to the stone stand below. She'd have to be careful to collect everything from the base later.

"See, we broke it," Rian said excitedly.

"Well, there goes using it as an anvil," one of the blacksmiths sighed.

––––––––––––––––––

Once the outermost glass-like shell was broken—and hadn't resulted in any sort of violent explosion or reaction—the tests began.

Well, after moving the bead, of course. Now that it had shown breaking it wouldn't cause it to explode—not that there had ever been any reason to think it would, since neither Iridescence or bindings were known for just exploding—Lori ordered the bead moved down to an alcove in the second level, where she could test it under more controlled conditions.

The bead, stone stand and all, was carefully picked up and moved, the tent canvas thrown over it again so that the wind couldn't blow away the loose shards. Once the stand was placed in an alcove, Lori got more stone and blocked off the alcove from the breezes caused by the air circulation. It was only when the air inside the alcove she had requisitioned was completely still did she carefully remove the tent canvas off the bead, absently handing it off to Rian.

The first thing she inadvertently learned was that while beads didn't react to water, the contents of beads definitely did. She found this out when she reshaped the stone stand to get at the bits and fragments of the bead that slid down beneath it and found, among the powdery remains and shards, small drops of cloudy white translucent water that almost, but not quite, looked like flour had been dissolved in it.

It was, she noted, not unlike the appearance water took after it had been used to dissolve and wash away Iridescence, a multicolored sheen like a layer of oil refracting light. However, unlike water that had dissolved the colors, the drops of water in under the stone stand didn't gradually become clear water again. Instead, the drops remained cloudy white.

"Huh," Rian said, writing notes down on his plank. "Is it… supposed to be doing that?"

"It shou—" Lori caught herself, shook her head. "I don't know. It's doing it, however, so it probably is supposed to do that."

"Maybe we should take samples?" he suggested. "Can you gather them up with your syringe?"

Lori thought of all the stairs and rolled her eyes. "Or I could just do this instead," she said, reaching out to binding the waterwisps in the few droplets.

The second thing she inadvertently learned was that while beads were as nonreactive to magic as glass, the contents of beads were not. She had just claimed and bound the waterwisps when the cloudy water suddenly became clear and the binding became imbued.

"Wait, you cleared it?" Rian said. "How?"

Lori stared down at the now-clear droplets. "Rian," she said, "write this down…"