"We just smile and refuse to explain and be conspicuously helpful and everyone will just have to cope." Does it feel like she has to touch people? Or does it feel like touching them would help? She starts heading out in the direction of people.

Nope. They are in her demesne. She can be touching them from anywhere, magically speaking.

Nico hands her his spare tunic and starts sealing up the core room behind them, with his bag in it, after picking up an odd sort of staff. The stone flows like gooey syrup.

A sea of expectant faces lit by three lonely torches await them, outside.

"The Core is established!"

And... What after that. "I'm going to get water for everyone. My fellow binder will be healing people. Most urgent first."

And turn and make for the daylight visible through the cave system.

The People, all three hundred or so of them, break out in murmered conversations and shuffle in every direction at once. Someone cheers. Someone yells 'heal my wife first!'.

"Hi! Call me Sable. I'm actually a girl, body's wrong, gonna fix that after I fix y'all. Health of the populace is more urgent. I don't need to touch people, but gather 'round anyway, if you can."

Okay, who's most injured? How about they cut that out right now? And then the next? And the next? Until either she runs out of power or people to heal? She'll just keep walking the camp and healing people until one of those happens.

She is not going to run out of power, basically ever. Her only real limit is attention and throughput. Someone, apparently a doctor, starts sticking to her and directing people around shortly into this. They want to go carefully, cleaning burns as best they can.

An hour into it, they're doing it with clean water straight from a stone sink Nico just made. The other deadspeaker, Hessia, doesn't wake up when healed, but does breathe easier and seem less pale.

...And there are five bodies, shown to her just in case. She could animate them, but not return them to life.

She gives the doctor a grateful smile at the help.

She frowns sadly. "I can't bring them back. I can animate the bodies, but it wouldn't be them, so there's no point."

...Yeah.

Someone mentions the option, but nobody wants their loved ones turned into a set of engine legs unless it's the only option. They'll prepare things for a cremation later.

It's dinner time. Someone offers her a plate. Baked potatoes and jerky. Yum?

There have been some quiet arguments, but nothing important enough to distract from healing.

Nico has hung magic lights all around the cave now.

"I think the most urgent things are done. I assigned someone to count supplies- The man who was supposed to become binder is dead, but his chosen deputy is still alive and sort of took charge of things. I don't like him though. More a bureaucrat than a leader. Mr. Cooper, there."

A finger pointing him out.

"We should talk in the core room. And possibly sleep there. I've already heard a rumor that we're married, though."

Dinner! Yum! She thanks whoever gives it to her.

And when Nico comes, she nods in greeting. "Yeah, we should talk. Married though?"

She giggles softly.

"I don't know you nearly well enough. Also I'm mostly only into women. That can maybe ever stretch, but it's not likely."

"Rumors are like that. We can just deny it. Co-binders. What a fucking day."

She nods and giggles as they walk to the core room. "If it comes up where I can hear it, maybe I'll just say something like 'he's nice but no, I prefer women', and then hopefully I have the alternative problem of girls I don't know well enough to date yet flirting with me."

She shakes her head. "I don't mind taking on the social stuff. I don't know enough about what all a new colony needs, but I'm willing to listen to people who do know. You seem like you know more of the important colony stuff, so I'm gonna be listening to you a lot, but I get the sense that social is not your favorite thing."

"A much better problem to have, really. And... No. Decisively no."

"Well, you're free to make social stuff my problem if you don't mind my picking your brain to keep our New Colony To-Do List full. Call me Sable."

"Nico."

He opens the stone barrier to the core room again, and doesn't close it behind himself.

"So... Earth. America? Did the stupid Vietnam thing finally end?"

"Did. Then a couple dust-ups in the Persian Gulf, then there was a terrorist attack on American soil that killed three-kay, then that was used to justify a terrible war, and more stupid shit followed. Eventually an absolute moron of a demagogue got elected president, and there was a Coronavirus that was a borderline plague, and that's where we were when I got hit with the Truck."

By the end of this she's scowling, but she shakes her head and blows out a slow breath, calming back down.

"...I guess none of that really matters here and now. The politicians were idiots then, and they're idiots now. Do you need... A hug."

He sounds like he would honestly rather not give one.

"Also, yeah, I can be more in charge of... Practical realities. Food, water, shelter. I need to figure out how the murder hallways work... They're full of monsters that people can kill for meat and skin and such, but why do they have to be monsters, and not, say, terminally ill cows? I don't know. And, I don't actually know the people here all that well? What they're going to expect of their new 'ruler' and how much fuss there will be about honoring whatever the charter says... Bleh. I didn't want to become a binder, but here we are. And the perks are nice. Speaking of perks. Magic lesson? Or at least an attempt at one."

She smiles lopsidedly. "I'll be okay. I'll save getting a hug for someone who wants to give one. A motherly sort, or maybe a girl that flirts with me. In the meanwhile, hmm. Just riffing off narrative tropes and the fact that you called it a dungeon core, maybe it's a monster-source system that got repurposed, and it's really just optimized for monsters the whole way through?"

She shrugs.

"As for a magic lesson, hell yes. Maybe I should get used to local swears. Colors yes?"

She shakes her head bemusedly at herself.

"Colors is really used more like 'shit'. Fucking yes would be better. Or... No, 'colors yes' works. Okay, so- All four magic disciplines share a few things. Claims, and bindings. You claim some of the thing- Wisps, life, thoughts, or space. And then you create a binding, or a meaning, or an idea, or a vista. The binding- And I'm going to use the word whisperers use for it, though technically each is different- The binding controls what, exactly, you want the components of magic to do. Bindings can be activated or deactivated- Or set conditionally, say, only turn on this 'create heat' binding on waterwisps, so it'll only use imbuement when there's water to be boiled. Bindings have to be imbued. If they run out of magic, they vanish. When I was moving stone around, what I did was- Claim some of the stonewisps, then create a binding that says 'move this way', simultaneously imbue and activate it, and adjust the binding as the stone moved in order to build what I wanted. In today's case, a pipe and evaporator and pump and sink and stuff. Then when the stone was in the right shape, I deactivated the binding and it became ordinary rock again, nice and solid. Following so far?"

She tilts her head, then nods. "That makes sense. So with deadspeaking it's a claim on some dead matter or life in my demesne, or that I'm touching?"

"Yep! When you were healing, you probably did it all as a - single learned motion. Like I did when I first got here. I was, like, ten, and played around with water and breezes without actually knowing what I was doing? Ended up being shuffled off to an orphanage school- But that's for another time. It helps to be aware of each separate step, and how you can adjust it for nuances and stuff. I don't know that much about deadspeaking, but one of the common things is sculpting dead wood- For building houses, boats, sometimes furniture and suchlike, though typically carpenters do most of that and you'd melt it all together- I'm going to bug anyone with masonry experience to make building faster. And when I think about it for long enough and follow my feelings, I can sort of work out how to do advanced tricks that line up with something I want. Magic can be real dangerous though, you can hurt yourself by being careless. Steam explosions and the like are warned against for whisperers."

She nods. "I get a distinct sense that I need to brush up my knowledge of biology and anatomy very thoroughly before trying anything particularly clever. I can probably manage some little things like never needing to shave again, or changing my hair color, all on instinct. Maybe redistribute fat. But I need to make sure I understand the underlying systems if I'm going to change big things properly."

"Yeah. Fat redistribution should be safe. Surface cosmetic stuff generally, moles and the like. Hair growth or un-growth. I remember talking about work with deadspeakers and all of those came across as simple interventions. Things that were difficult were... Full biological parts changing, and height, and complicated internal diseases like, uhhhhh, word, diabetes. Sweetblood disease, here. I can't really help with the doctor stuff. I was- Well, kind of a kid, but I was going to work with these new things called 'computers'- Anyway, Hessia's a decent doctor."

She nods. "Computers got bigger than you'd expect. You'd have done well if you went into working with those. I'll probably try a few things when we're done talking, then."