Weekly Digest 141 - (#443 - #445) (Patreon)

Restoring Water

The latrines were dried enough to be emptied after lunch. The waste wasn't as dried as Lori would have liked—it was still slightly damp, which meant they still smelled—but it had reduced the volume of the waste enough that the access hatches could now be opened without the waste spilling out onto the floor of her dungeon. Of course, with many of the latrines outside having been cleared, they were no safe to use, and Lori had given permission for people to leave the dungeon to use them.

However, clearing the outside had not been without incident.

"They were full of bugs," Yllian reported over lunch. He'd joined the table, sitting next to Riz, who had apparently ceded Rian's usual seat in the middle to Mikon. Taeclas and Lidzuga were also sitting on that side, although her wife and his sister were absent, currently sitting at some other table, as there just wasn't enough space. Sitting on their short bench next to me were Shanalorre and her cousin. "It seems the bugs sought shelter from the cold inside them. They huddled together to stay warm, and then started eating each other when they grew hungry. Many managed to survive, and we had to drive them out of the latrines. A lot of the inside was covered with dead bugs. No live abominations, strangely enough, though we found a few dead ones that had been devoured by the other bugs. They were probably eaten for their blood."

 Lori nodded. It was common knowledge that dragonborn abomination blood was very, very sweet, which was why it was so thick and syrupy. She had read that in some demesnes, various dishes or sweets were made from abomination blood and regarded as delicacies, while many of those same demesnes had declared those same dishes illegal due to how dangerous it was to extract the blood and how it the blood might contain deadly impurities. There had been attempts to try and domesticate various abominations to extract their blood and refine it for sugar, but they had never lasted, since abominations tend not to breed true. She knew this because there had been a period of two years where it seemed every novel she'd bought had included some sort of plot twist or even just trivia involving abomination blood, and during that period a local confectionary had started selling alleged 'abomination blood pastilles'.

She'd tried the pastilles out of curiosity, and all they'd been was honey and golden bud juice. Nothing at all like the sickeningly sweet smell of spilled abomination blood. That confectionary had never actually been near real abomination blood!

"Were they all cleared?"

Kolinh nodded. "We had to give them all a thorough cleaning and sweeping. All the dead bugs were everywhere, and they'd tracked—that is, they'd left silk all over the walls and other places. We cleaned it all as best as we could, but the inside of the latrines is dark, so we likely missed some."

Ah. Right. The lights in the latrines were some of the few bindings that she had still actively maintained, and since she… hadn't…

"Noted," Lori said, and Kolinh nodded. "Is there anything else?"

"I suspect that all the houses in the demesne are likely full of bugs, Great Binder," Kolinh said. "They no doubt went inside trying to escape the cold, and since there's dragonfrost around the chimneys, the things probably still think it's cold outside."

"Well, everyone should have brought anything they wanted to save to the dungeon," I said. "What's a little more cleaning?"

That being said, Rian and Shanalorre's houses should be relatively free of bugs. The binding of lightningwisps Lori had placed over the windows, door and chimney should have prevented any bugs from gaining entry. That didn't meant it was impossible for bugs  to have made their way inside, but it was probably far fewer bugs than at the other houses.

A thought occurred to her, and Lori sighed. "Do we have enough paper to repair all the demesne's windows?"

"Yes, Great Binder," Shanalorre replied immediately. "The remaining supply of window paper that Lord Rian brought back would be enough to repair all windows in the demesne, should they have been damaged. However, that should not be necessary. We have the materials needed to affect repairs, and Mistress Kutago is capable of reusing the damaged paper to make new paper."

Everyone finally seemed to realize what Lori meant as Shanalorre finished speaking, and Taeclas sighed. "Ugh, I hate paper fusing. They always feel too thick."

"That's the point," Lori pointed out.

"I know, but it feels terrible! You can always tell where it's been patched! There's no way of getting it as nice and this as it used to be!"

"That's the point." She pointed out again.

"It's like that for contracts and agreements and things so no one can alter it after the fact, but why does it have to be like that for windows?"

"It doesn't change the functionality, though?" Really, Lori couldn't understand why she was making big deal about this.

"It's the principle of the thing!"

…

"Taeclas, you have very strange principles," Lori said flatly. "Please don't obsess about such silly things and consider what's actually practical."

For some reason, Kolinh, Riz, Mikon, Umu and Shanalorre looked at her with the same strange expression on their faces.

––––––––––––––––––

After lunch, it was back to work. Lori had left a hot vapor binding over the waste pit before she'd gone in for lunch, and it had melted enough of the dragonfrost to reach the buried waste underneath. That was just enough space for them to be able to toss in the waste from her Dungeon's latrines, once Lori had removed the binding of waterwisps. No point in desiccating the waste only rehydrate them again with  her own binding.

With that done, Lori went to check on the water hub shed before reactivating it and reconnecting the pipe that let it feed her Dungeon's reservoir. Both Taeclas and Lidzuga had reported that there wasn't any new harmful dustlife in the river water—"Just the same dustlife as usual," Taeclas had reported cheerfully—so if everyone started getting sick from drinking the new water, she'd be able to blame them. Still, Lori took her own precautions, just in case. She deactivated the water hub shed's defenses against bugs, the shed's roof still covered by dragon frost, and visually inspected the interior for debris, bugs that had somehow gotten inside, and anything else that might have made its way in.

At least, she tried to. It was only then she realized that, as the waterwisps, firewisps and lightwisps she had formed to make the water hub shed function were all anchored, one way or another, to the stone walls of the shed, and the shed was one of the structures that was reinforced by the binding of earthwisps imbued directly by her core, the water hub shed's binding had bindings had not deactivated nor run out of imbuement. While she had closed the pipe that would have brought water from the shed to the reservoir, the shed had continued drawing up water from the river and, with no other place to send it, the water had apparently reached the overflow and been dumped back into the river.

…

She might need to rework this. Still, at least the overflow was clearly working as intended, and the binding of firewisps that kept the boiling hot water from heating the stone structure of the shed was also effective. There was dragonfrost on the outside of the building, after all.

It took Lori a few moments to claim and bind the water hub shed's defenses—the lightningwisp binding that would both deter and kill bugs that would try to enter the shed, and the lightwisp binding that emitted unseen light to kill dustlife, mold, and any other small thing that actually manage to enter the shed—so that she could deactivate them, anchoring them to her fingernail for lack of anywhere else to put them as she inspected the interior of the water hub shed.

Thankfully, the interior was empty, and nothing was floating in the water… which was still how and both hotter than boiling and still liquid because of the binding she'd placed on it. Despite how the temperature of things was always in a comfortable range for her within the confines of her demesne, she wasn't eager to find out how hot it would feel if she immersed an extremity in that water.

While disconnected, the pipe leading towards her Dungeon's reservoir was full of water, as the water hub shed hadn't deactivated properly. Lori claimed and bound all the waterwisps in the pipe and drew them out. The water returned to the water hub shed, filling the holding tank there and overflowing back onto the river. Best to not fill the reservoir with water that had lain stagnant for more than a week.

Once the pipe was empty, Lori bound some of the light wisps in the air outside of the water hub shed, forming them into a binding that would shine with unseen light. She sent the binding down the disconnected pipe as she imbued and activated the lightwisps, filling the stone pipe with unseen light as she stretched out the binding across its length, claiming and adding more and more lightwisps to allow the binding the spread that far.

Letting the lightwisp binding shine, Lori spent the time reforming the bindings in the water hub shed. While it was convenient that they could be imbued directly by her dungeon's core, she needed a way to deactivate certain bindings. Doing so wasn't hard. All she needed to do was to anchor the bindings to spots on the stone walls that weren't being reinforced by the earthwisp bindings being imbued by her core, while also anchoring the binding to a spot that was being reinforced. Doing so would allow her to deactivate the various bindings that the water hub shed needed to function by simply pulling them off from where they were anchored to the reinforced stone. She did the same for the binding of unseen light she'd deactivated, anchoring it onto another patch of stone wall that was no longer reinforced by an earthwisp binding so it wouldn't activate.

Once that was finished, Lori deactivated the binding of lightwisps in the pipe, and did one last check for voids or any concentration of wisps that were not contiguous airwisps or contiguous earthwisps. Finding none, she carefully reconnected the pipe from the water hub shed and her Dungeon's reservoir. She carefully shut the door of the water hub shed, sealing it in place so that no one can get into the shed and that there were no openings for bugs and dust to enter through. Finally, she set the binding of lightningwisps to keep out bugs back into place, anchoring the binding around the door.

Then she headed back to her dungeon, keeping well out of the way of someone coming out with a cart full of waste that was being emptied from the latrines. Thankfully, none of it was falling onto the floor, though the smell was lingering and ugh, that smell was being drawn into her dungeon by the ventilation, wasn't it? Lori reached out to deactivate the binding for the ventilation over the door, then sighed as she realized that because it was anchored onto stone that was being reinforced by earthwisps…

By the time she finished reforming the ventilation so she could deactivate it if she needed to, the smell from the waste had already dissipated, and while the smell of waste was still strong at the entrance, that was because the latrines being emptied were nearby. Ugh, there were little dark patties of waste on her floor! They had better clean that! at least they'd remembered to close the latrine's access hatch.

Grumbling and holding her breath until she was well past, Lori headed towards the water reservoir at the back. The way to it was sealed off with a door now, one that was elevated a few yustri off the floor so that no liquids could creep under it. She unsealed it by moving aside the stone protrusions holding the door in place and slid aside the latch—a bit superfluous in this instance, but a latch was a latch—to swing the door open. She altered the binding of lightwisps to cease emitting unseen light, only visibly light, so that should wouldn't injure her eyes as she looked over the stone wall around the reservoir. The water was a long way down from her, and the floating valve that would close off the pipe from the water hub shed was hanging open.

Lori reached through her core, reached for the bindings in the water hub shed, and activated the binding of waterwisps that would draw water through the pipe leading to the reservoir. She waited.

Eventually, water started flowing out from the pipe, and the reservoir started to fill up.

Lori nodded in satisfaction. They had water again. Well, they already had water, but now the reservoir was in no danger of running out. It would take some time for the reservoir to be full again, but hopefully they wouldn't need that much water any time soon. Once Kolinh had cleared the baths—and likely clean them, since the baths might be full of bugs—she'd be able to close up her Dungeon's baths… probably work on improving them. Clearly she needed to have them reclaim the bath water so they wouldn't dump so much into the third level, and perhaps extend the amount of time the water in the reservoir would last.

Sealing the reservoir closed once more and altering the lightwisps to emit unseen light again so that they kill any dustlife that somehow managed to survive the heat of the water hub shed, Lori headed out to work on getting rid of the dragonfrost in the area around the outside of her Dungeon. The hot vapor had been effective, so…

–––––––––––––––––

How To Get Rid Of Dragonfrost, Limited Mass Implementation

It had been a long day.

Lori stood outside of her Dungeon, standing in the light cast by the lightwisps anchored to the entryway. It made the already dark night seem gloomy as the light of the moons was obscured by the dragon's tendrils still high in the sky. Most of the light was coming from the lightwisps anchored to the outside of houses, latrines, and the fronts of the baths. The baths were open now, full of people who had spent the late afternoon sweeping and scrubbing the interior clean of the few bugs that had gotten inside. Water flowed inside, heated once more, and the roof was now mostly free of dragonfrost.

Despite this, few lingered outside, hurrying between the baths and her Dungeon, and no one looked up.

Lori rolled her eyes at their silly behavior. As if not looked at the dragon's tendrils would somehow prevent them from falling on the demesne.

Still, she wasn't here for that, but rather to do one final check on her binding to remove the dragonfrost before she went to bed. While the area behind the floodwall—between her dungeon and the baths, as well the claypit—was clear, as well as the most direct path between her dungeon and the nearest stand of latrines, that still left substantial parts of her demesne covered with the dragonfrost. It was probably far too late to do anything to keep the cold from damaging anything. Lori doubted the temperatures the ground and their leaves and branches had plummeted to had been beneficial for any of the trees—which would probably make… uh, crazy-woman-who-named-her-sweetgrass happy, what with her irrational hatred of trees.

Mist covered the dragonfrost in front of her, a thick layer that she had drawn from the water taken from the sawpit, spread out over an area about five paces square. At the moment, the vapors were constrained because even all the water that had been in the claypit would be spread thin if she had spread it across all of the land that had been cleared and built on around her Dungeon. That said, she'd used a tenth of that water to do exactly that, spreading a binding of waterwisps to contain vapor so that it wouldn't escape into the atmosphere. At the moment, there was no vapor to contain, but if this binding worked, that would change.

The waterwisps were anchored to all the top-most layer of ice that was part of the dragonfrost. Most of her efforts had been to make sure that all of the waterwisps in the ice was properly claimed and integrated into the binding. With the ground frozen, she didn't have to worry about the water being absorbed into the ground.

Lori double checked her binding, then checked it one more time. It wasn't the largest binding she had ever formed—that would be the shells around her demesne that she used to expand—but it did require that everything had to be placed and anchored properly so that there wouldn't be any spots where she'd lose heat or water. That was why all the waterwisps were already claimed and part of the binding,  which would keep the water from rising up and away from the ground.

Once she was satisfied, Lori activated the binding, the firewisps integrated into the binding of waterwisps beginning to warm the vapors even as she forced them to condense into water. That warmed the air as the now-liquid water splashed onto the dragonfrost, warming the ice beneath them and causing the solidified air to sublimate. The cold air bubbled under the water, creating mist, which further spread heat across the mist-covered ground…

She had modified the binding she had used at the claypit slightly. The liquid water was now also heated by the firewisps so that they wouldn't just turn to ice, as the binding as no longer working on a contained depression in the ground. The blanket of heat was causing the dragonfrost to melt slowly but steadily. Satisfied that the modification was working as intended for the moment, as was the rest of the binding, Lori turned away to head inside and sleep. Whether it continued to work properly through the night or not, she'd find out in the morning.

…

She stepped out again, and formed a binding of airwisps to disperse the air that would be released from the dragonfrost, and another to blow out air from the lower part of the entryway. It was exhalation after all, and she didn't want to have an asphyxiation hazard in her demesne.

Then she went to bed, the familiar fatigue of a day's work making her eyelids heavy. It was enough to keep her from trying to stay up and just do some observation notes on the samples she'd collected from the dragon, just a few, just observe one sample…

Lori threw herself onto her bed and pointedly closed her eyes, trusting her tiredness to render he uncon—

––––––––––––––––––

As it turned out, while the binding had worked as intended, it hadn't spread as far as Lori would have liked during the night. When she stepped out to check on the binding the next morning, she'd found that it had cleared the initial area she had started from—the ground in front of Rian's house—and had slowly spread from there, as she had intended, but the hot vapor had been drawn uphill between the houses had mostly gone upwards, in some strange inversion of water seeking the path of least resistance to lower ground. While the main road leading towards the old dining hall and up the rise towards the more organized row of houses was mostly clear, there were still thick patches of dragonfrost between the houses, as if the hot vapor hadn't spread there.

The binding had also seemed to get less effective the more it had spread, presumably because the firewisps had needed to heat an increasingly larger area as well as increasingly greater amounts of water vapor, until the binding had reached the point where it couldn't heat the vapor faster than the dragonfrost could chill it. Reforming the binding so that the firewisps produced more heat had helped allowed the binding to melt more dragonfrost, and Lori had added more firewisps to allow the binding to function for longer before it reached equilibrium with the environment again.

With paths now cleared, Kolinh began clearing the houses. Most contained only bugs that had come in through the chimney, a great  many of them  dead from eating each other, but three contained dragonborn abominations that had needed to be dealt with. They were small things, all of them bugs of some sort that had managed to climb up through the chimney, and had been dealt with using axes and shovels, because they'd been too small for spears.

As she had predicted, Rian's house didn’t have any bugs in it at all, and so cleaning it had been quick. Mikon had cheerfully led the way as she and Umu had begun moving their packs back in.

Other houses had slowly been cleared as well, even as Lori's mist had melted more and more dragonfrost. She'd needed to add more firewisps twice more as the binding was spread thin again.

Removing the dragonfrost from the roofs of building required her active participation, but by then she'd developed her methodology. As soon as a house had been cleared and confirmed to not have any abominaitons, Lori used a cloud of hot steam—steam, not just vapor—to surround the roof in question. The steam had coated the dragonfrost, and imparted enough heat to melt the ice and sublimate the solidified air, while doing so slowly enough that solidified air hadn't exploded all at once. There had been pops and minor explosions, but at worse it just sent some ice flying up. Lori had stayed well back.

 On the third day after she'd begun putting her demesne back in order, Lori ordered Riz to retrieve Lori's Shed Boat from the third level and have it inspected by the carpenters and the Deadspeakers so she could take it to River's Fork.

"You're going already, Great Binder?" Riz said. The woman had a strange smile on her face, and looked  like she was still half asleep. Mikon seemed to share the same expression, humming happily to herself as she ate. Umu was staring intently at her food, and looked like she hadn't gotten much sleep, occasionally glaring accusingly at the other two women. Lori felt a strong surge of sympathy towards the blonde weaver. No doubt what she'd likely have to put up with the night before as Mikon had fulfilled her promises to Riz had been far worse than simply having to hear her mother's being enthusiastic through the walls. 

"The dragonfrost is clearing well enough, and at the moment we don't need to clear the fields yet because people will probably be focusing on cleaning their houses. There's nothing for me to do, so I'm going to River's Fork and dealing with the matter," Lori said.

"Understood, Great Binder. I'll have the other boat prepared as well."

Lori frowned. "Why?"

"We have manpower to spare, Great Binder, so it would probably be helpful to send some people over to help with the work. Also, it's well past time for the miners there to come back home, so we can send them back to be with their families."

"Is that really necessary?" Lori sighed, then waved her hand dismissively before Riz could reply. "Fine, fine, if you must. Mining is on hold at the moment anyway, so retrieve them." Really, why did people have to spend so much time with their families? Lori hadn't seen her mothers for months at this point—at least two years—and she felt no urge to go back to them or see them for anything except to turn away and not have anything to do with them.

"Yes, Great Binder," Riz said.

"Kolinh, will you be correcting me and saying you actually need me for something after all?"

"No, Great Binder. We need to consolidate and secure the village, and we're clear enough for that now. we might need you when we go out into the woods, but until them, we can handle things."

Lori nodded. "I will be leaving, then, and dragging Rian back with me." She checked her belt pouch. "Lidzuga, you will be returning with me. It's past time River's Fork had its Deadspeaker back. Get packed."

"Uh… my sister wants to know if she can keep living here instead? And if I can stay here, for that matter?"

Lori gave him a flat look. "Well, you could, but you wouldn't be eligible for those half-days off you wanted. Having to go back and forth to and from River's Fork by boat everyday would no doubt take that long, depending on what propulsion method you construct to move the boat."

"I'd… still need to work at River's Fork?"

"Of course. Its crops need someone to tend to them."

"Not it!" the crazy woman—Lori checked the rock she'd left on the table—Taeclas declared. "I'm not moving out of my nice house that I'm still waiting for them to clear so I can start cleaning it up. I like my house! It's so big! "

"Perhaps you can apply again once the Golden Sweetwood Company arrives. If I recall correctly, they would have Deadspeakers among their number. Once they settle in River's Fork, the demesne would have more than enough people to tend to the crops, so no doubt you can apply again," Shanalorre said.

Lori twitched at the reminder of interlopers still coming. She had gotten the impression that they would arrive in mid-summer, and it was already well-past that, but every day they didn't show up was a good day for her. The very fact they would be bringing more wizards already made them a potential danger to her, and when they started building their own demesne—because what wizard wouldn't want to have the power of a Dungeon Binder?—she'd no longer have the luxury of continuing as she had before, as they would no doubt be trying to kill or worse impoverish her. It's what she would have done in their place, after all. "In the unlikely event that some of the Golden Sweetwood Company's Deadspeakers actually choose to surrender to my authority and reside in River's Fork, I will reconsider your application."

"I… suppose that's fair…"

"Your sister is free to move in immediately, although at the moment there's no place for her to stay. The shelter still hasn't been cleared."

"… I'll tell her that, your Bindership…"

"We'll clear the shelter after breakfast, Great Binder," Kolinh said. "We don't hear anything from its windows that might be a dragonborn abomination, but best to make sure."

Lori nodded. "Clear the Um last. It's the least necessary building in the demesne."

"…yes, Great Binder…"

Lori nodded in satisfaction as she finished eating her breakfast. Rian had better be keeping her notes safe! If something had happened to her notes…

Well, Lori did remember some things…

––––––––––––––––––

She Hates It When…

"Your Bindership! I'm so glad to see your all—"

That was as far as Rian got as Lori took two steps forward clapped a hand over his mouth to silence whatever theatrics were going to come out. "Where are my notes, Rian?" she snarled at him.

A part of her, the part that liked good presentation in stories and plays, noted that she should have probably had some sort of pre-amble to that statement. Something like 'I'm only going to say this once' or 'I do not have time for any of your nonsense'. Possibly 'Answer me immediately or I'll kill repeatedly kick you'. However, that same part agreed that in many instances statements like that made the character in question less threatening and more silly, or at least harder to take seriously. So, straightforward queries directly backed by violent action it was.

Fortunately for his life shins, Rian immediately pointed towards the dragon shelter.

"Show me," Lori ordered, letting him go and striding to the mine in question.

"Hi Riz! I'll see you later, I just have to deal with this!" she heard him say behind her, followed by hurried footsteps that fell into step besides her. "So, how's home looking like? Less… frosted, I hope?"

 Lori ignored him, focusing on her destination. She moved as quickly as she could without running, each footfall heavy and deliberate.

"Your notes are fine, by the way. I made sure it was all dry and pressed them between some planks to try and flatten it out. And don't worry, I made sure to put sheets of paper between each page so that if any of the ink rubbed off it wouldn't be on any of the other notes."

Annoyance and relief filled Lori in turns, as she'd been afraid that he would try to flatten out her notes in a fit of misguided helpfulness and that ink would rub off on other pages. "Good," she managed to ground out, not letting herself feel relieved. If she felt relieved, it would ruin the righteous outrage filling her at Rian not putting her notes in her pack! "I'm displeased with you."

"Can't think of why," Rian said cheerfully. "Did I somehow turned off all the lights in the demesne or something? Did I do it twice?"

What was he talking ab—?

Oh.

Lori twitched slightly as she remembered that in her half-asleep fumbling she had done that. simply deactivated every lightwisp binding in the demesne. Fortunately she'd remembered what she'd been supposed to be doing and was able to correct the matter before she fell asleep, but… ugh, she'd been hoping everyone had been asleep and hadn't noticed. After all, it had been the middle of the night!

"Yeah, that was an eventful lunch," Rian continued, blissfully ignorant of Lori's thoughts. She subtly widened her pace to try to leave him behind. "It really upset the children, they thought something had happened to you out here, and that they were going to die soon because there was nothing protecting them from the dragon anymore."

Rainbows. He was keeping up. He was shorter than her, he should have shorter legs!

"If you insist on talking, inform me of River's Fork's status," Lori said curtly.

"We've been able to clear the dragonfrost, but it's mostly been the main paths," Rian said, gesturing ahead where there was a path bare of dragonfrost leading up to the dragon shelter. The ground around the shelter had also been cleared, which her lord exposited about immediately. "We cleared the ground around the shelter because no one wants to asphyxiate in our sleep. We also killed two of the three dragonborn abominations around the dome that Shana's—"

"Shanalorre's."

"…Shanalorre's Deadspeaking didn't incapacitate or kill. Actually, we think she might have healed wounds they'd taken."

Lori actually slowed slightly so she could give her lord a piecing look. "Two out of three?" she said pointedly. It was a very sharp point, and was very inclined to stab. "Are you telling me that there's a dragonborn abomination still alive around here?"

"Oh no, it's dead, it's just we didn't kill it. Too disgusting." He looked around, then grunted. "You can't see it from here, and since I had people use the dragonfrost to bury it you can't smell it much either. I'll point it out to you when we get up to the shelter. We've put off cleaning it up since we didn't have any Deadspeaker to take care of our people if anyone caught something from it."

"It can't be that bad," Lori said.

"Whatever that abomination was, it was inside out. Its guts, its lungs, its hearts, they were all on the outside, and they were bloody since the bugs had been nibbling at them. Given what's in something's intestines, no one wanted to be near that smell or whatever dustlife was floating with it. We were going to put arrows into its hearts to put it down, but when we finally got around to it, it was already dead. I think it was dehydration, although it could be anything, really. Having your insides on the outside is not conducive to staying alive."

"I'll take your word for it," Lori said.

They exited out from under the dome again, and Lori began to climb the slope towards the copper mine and dragon shelter.

"There, you can see the abomination over—oh, you're just going straight into the dragon shelter," Lori heard behind her as she went straight through the mine's open doors. The ventilation was active, drawing in air from the outside, but the secondary defenses were down, as exemplified by the lack of darkwisps or fatal binding of lightningwisps. absently, Lori reached out to claim the binding of lightingwisps—it was anchored to a bound tool core full of white Iridescence, so it hadn't dissolved despite being out of imbuement—and reformed the binding into one that kept out bugs, anchoring the binding to the stone just inside the first door of the mine and the binding of airwisps for the ventilation.

She glanced at each alcove behind each door in passing, noting that the beams used to secure the doors were back in place. The tunnels smelled strongly of people—specifically unbathed people—and Lori grimaced in displeasure at the sign of slovenly behavior. She was shaking in her head in annoyance, already planning to inform Yllian to tell whoever had been so unsanitary when she'd put in so much effort to provide bath water when she entered the alcove behind the last door and her nose was struck with the smell at it's strongest.

…

Oh. Had her smell really been that bad? It hadn't seemed like it at the time…

"The smell isn't as bad close to the ground, so I've been sleeping there," Rian said, coming up behind her. "Wait a bit, I'll get your notes."

Her notes were being held between two bone tablets held together with cord, which were pressing the stack of notes flat. Rian had place the pressed notes in the second bead receptacles, of all places. Lori had to keep herself from simply snatching the notes out of his hand as he handed them to her, sitting down on the sleeping niche—where the smell seemed to have infused the very rock—and enduring  as she undid the bows that the cords had been knotted into. Rian didn't offer to help, trusting she was perfectly capable of undoing such simple knots by herself.

Carefully, she laid down the pressed stack on the stone next to her and pulled up the top tablet, and was met with a blank sheet of paper. She carefully pulled that up, and was glad to find it hadn't adhered to the notes underneath it nor pulled up ink. That spoke well of the quality of both the ink and the paper from Covehold Demesne, she supposed.

…

Ugh, she just remembered they had a contractual obligation to deliver another batch of beads before winter. Did they have time to do that before the Golden Sweetwood Company arrived?

She shook her head, dropping that flow of thought as she concentrated on carefully peeling apart the pressed layers. "The pages aren't in order," she said.

"That was the order they were stacked in when I found them," Rian said. "Not my fault you didn't number the pages."

Lori grunted. True, she hadn't numbered the pages, but that didn't mean the order the pages should have been in wasn't ob—wait, did this page come first or that one?

"So… what's so interesting about these notes that neglected sleeping and bathing like you were trying to get to the end of a new book you'd been looking forward to?" Rian asked.

Lori wanted to protest that she'd never neglected bathing when she'd finally brought a new book, but given the current circumstances, that wasn't a flattering comparison. "They're notes on my observations of bindings that the dragon made," she said. "The ones I could understand, at least. Many seemed nonsensical and half-completed, and others were utterly strange, but I took note of what I could."

"Huh. Shanalorre said the dragon was low enough that it entered the border of her demesne. I suppose you'd actually be able to see what it does when it's that close," Rian said thoughtfully. "So, does that mean you saw wisplings getting made? You weren't really able to study any last year because cleaning up the demesne took so long, were you?"

She was surprised Rian remembered that. "I'm surprised you remembered that?"

Rian shrugged. "I was vividly reminded because of the similarity of circumstances. Well, now that you've seen your notes, can we get to work now? We need you to burn the inverted abomination because it would take too much wood for us to do it normally, and there's still dragonfrost on all the trees. Lidz told me he managed to deactivate the bindings on them before they'd left, so they haven't been trying to grow for the past two weeks, but I'm concerned having so much dragonfrost on them is damaging the trees. Nature doesn't usually get cold enough to solidify air. there's a very real risk this killed a lot of our fruit trees. A lot of all our trees, for that matter, and Shanalorre's meaning doesn't work on plants."

Lori glared at him. Ugh, she hated it when he had a point.

––––––––––––––––––

It turned out that they had been having difficulty clearing out the various houses in River's Fork because they were all full of bugs.

To be more specific, the houses were full of bugs because the dome was full of bugs. The structure had managed to prevent much of the dragonfrost from reaching the ground, and the rest had acted as some degree of insulation. Given that there had been several dragonborn abominations in the dome, not simply the three that Rian had mentioned, and the bugs had several ample food sources of both meat, fat, and a few instances leaves and fruit to subsist on while the dragon had been in progress.

The remaining people in River's Fork had done their best to try and dispose of the dead abominations do something about the bugs, but it had been difficult without proper protective clothing. While they had gloves and thick jackets, they had lacked protective veils and screens to keep the bugs away from their head, leading to several people being painfully stung of bitten as a result of trying to drag the abomination corpses out of the dome. Trying to use spear shafts and rope as improvised catchpoles to ensnare a limb and drag the abominations that way had been more successful, but there had just been so many bugs swarming that some injuries had still been gathered.

This also meant that the bugs were difficult to dislodge from the houses because unlike in Lori's demesne, they had not turned upon each other and reduced their numbers, as they had other food sources. The inverted abomination, for one thing. Lori's first course of action was to make portable bug-repellant bindings, as a means of trying to heard the swarms of bugs out of the buildings.

They were simple enough to make by putting some softened stone onto some sturdy branches, and then anchoring the binding of lightningwisps to the stone. This limited the area that the binding could cover, as lightningwisps could only extend so far from an anchor point before beginning to be affected by the naturally occurring lightningwisps in the air, but that was more than enough when the intent was to use the binding bindings as a goad to move and drive away the bugs.

Soon the air was full of dislodged bugs, which… well, wasn't really much of a change, but with their new protection, her idiots in River's Fork were now able to finally make progress in dragging away the abomination corpses.

Lori, meanwhile, had to burn a corpse because moving it would spread contaminants everywhere, and they had not time to scavenge for wood.

She had never burned a corpse before.

It should be fun.