Weekly Digest 7 (#21-#23) (Patreon)

Checking On Corpses

"I said 'after you'," Rian said.

"And I'm not falling for it, stay in front of me," Lori said flatly.

"The way you're gripping the back of my shirt so firmly is concerning, though," Rian said.

"Don't get distracted in front of the beast, that's how people die."

"That's what I'm worried about!"

It would have been trivial for Lori to kill the beast right then and there. She was very experienced at it after all, between the long overland journey, often through high grass that beasts just loved hiding in before launching an ambush, to their little beast baiting that got them meat, skins and useful bones.

But while it wouldn't be difficult to drag the beast to the cave– the two hunters with them assured her that the individual beasts the abomination was made of were ones they'd eaten before, to no ill effect– it would probably unsanitary to kill it near the sawpits, not to mention the smell of its entrails and such might draw the other abominations in the demesne to the area, and to the dungeon by extension.

So at the very least, they had to lure it away from the sawpit so that they'd have one less thing to clean up after killing it. Lori and Rian kept an eye on it while the volunteers led by the two hunters Ralii and Armis (names Lori was already beginning to forget) went in the direction they intended to lure it. As far as Lori could tell there was nothing alive that way but trees, but there might be something dead that wasn't moving but could. They had spears, they could handle any moving dead things just fine.

When the volunteers came back and waved that they'd found nothing, only then did Lori make her move. She willed the ground under the abomination's feet to soften, becoming like wet mud, then soaked clay, until its feet started sinking down into it.

The abomination noticed, of course, and distractedly started pulling out its feet, but after a while it seemed to resign itself and just let itself sink. Lori made it lower slowly, shaping the ground so it wouldn't completely enclose the feet even as it sank lower and lower. Lori tensed as the abominating adjusted its feet once more, stepping to the side, but she managed to make the ground in that direction part so that the abomination didn't rise out of the trap. Finally, as the thing settled its feet once more, Lori had the parted ground rush in, trapping its three legs up to the first reversed knee and compacting the stone solid.

The result was immediate. The beast gave two high warbling cries, one from each mouth, then cut off as its rotund torso heaved. Evidently there was something wrong with its lungs. It thrashed, trying to free itself, but Lori was reinforcing the stone, which held firm. The ground began to flow, and the abomination started sliding away from the sawpit and the settlement. The volunteers hastily moved out of the way of its long tail and reaching neck. The frill around the abomination of combined beasts neck flared wide, and the sideways jaw opened wide, only for it to start choking, and a thick mucus began to dribble down from the corner of the mouth and towards the ground.

"I think it spits poison or something," Rian said. "Just a guess."

"Noted," Lori said.

"Can you please stop using me as a human shield now?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Now, continue protecting me."

The volunteers fell in with them, and Rian reminded them to keep watch, especially upward, as Lori continued sliding the abomination away. They didn't go far. The woods and canopy of leaves around the settlement were still thick, even after the dragon's passing– in fact, Lori go the distinct impression some leaves were comically bigger than they should be– and with the low sun, it was soon dark under the trees. She spent the time gathering water vapor from the air, gathering it as mist around her hand.

When they had walked far enough, she gathered the vapor into water, and used a narrow, pressurized stream to cut off its head.

Thankfully, the abomination died as it should with its head severed from both necks. The hunters began draining it of blood while the others went back to the sawpit to get something to carry it back to the Dungeon with. Lori found a place to sit with a tree at her back as she watched them efficiently go about turning the beast from a corpse to food and useable materials, keeping watch for any approaching voids of wisps as she helped move the blood along. Now that it was dead, the wisps in its body were her to claim just like any other. They handled the head carefully, as it was dripping something besides blood that Lori assumed must have been the venom it had been trying to spit. There shouldn't be much of a problem– Rian claimed that venoms tended to not be poisonous when ingested, something the hunters among the volunteers confirmed– but since this was meant to be topical venom instead of one injected into the blood, they treated it carefully anyway. Someone put the head in a bag of beast skin so they could get the jaws and teeth later.

The torso was opened to remove the offal and other objectionable parts being spilled out onto the ground. From experience, Lori had long since readied bound airwisps to keep the smell away from her. After they removed the organs, she helped in cleaning blood from the insides by condensing water from vapor to wash it out. It was a routine she and… well, probably one of these two at some point, but also some of the other people versed in dressing wild meat had become familiar with.

It was getting dark enough for her to feel the need to bind the few lightwisps left when they finally finished dressing the beast. They had to remove a lot of parts that just seemed wrong, like muscles that seemed to have fused with bone or had somehow become bone, but most of it was in the torso, and everyone agreed the meat there was often too dry, so it wasn't much of a loss.

They loaded the now-dressed abomination– no point wasting meat, and both hunters had examined the parts they were bringing along scrupulously, and intended to check it with those volunteering to cook as well– on some boards they'd taken from one of the surviving curing sheds. The light was fading, and what Lori had bound didn't seem enough, so she drew firewisps from a coalcharm and used it to light one of the lengths of firewood she was carrying. It caught, and she was able to bind the lightwisps it produced to add to their light.

Directionless, radiant light glowed around them, lighting their way back to the Dungeon. The islandshell was still struggling, but it seemed to be weakening. It wasn't really alive, given that Lori could see its open brain being eaten by slugs and small bugs, and undead, like wisps, would eventually run out of the magic imbued into it. She didn't know what sort of commands had been given to this islandshell to make it act like it did, but whatever it was, it was consuming the magic imbued into it by the dragon to accomplish it. She figured it would be properly dead by morning if they just left it alone. The next day at the latest. While they wouldn't eat the meat for… well, probably a whole host of reasons, starting with some of the flesh probably having decayed, and not even getting into what Deadspeaking does to dead flesh, the bones, shell and thick skin would still be very helpful, once it was safe to harvest it.

They made their way back, and nothing came at them, living or dead. At the Dungeon's entrance, Lori gave the volunteers the still-burning torch she was holding for light and gestured for them to go in as she repaired the shattered rocks and other damage caused by the islandshell trying to get at them.

"Come on," she told Rian. "We need to go check on my corpses."

"It's very disturbing when you put it that way. You realize that, right?" Rian said. "I mean, most people don't have a corpse stash lying around."

"It's not just lying around," Lori said as she pulled the lightwisps around them and moved them above and behind her head for the best illumation. "They're safely frozen and buried. Hopefully the ice lasted."

"If we find either of them walking around, I'm going to scream and run away," Rian warned. "Just letting you know in advance."

"Noted," Lori said. "Come on, this way."

The ground seemed undisturbed, if muddy, and a little moving of earthwisps showed that the corpses were still there, though with much less ice and more mud around them. It was simple to rip the water out of the mud and solidify them back to ice. Lori had to carefully redirect the heat this expelled into the ground, but she was soon finished ensuring her corpses were preserved.

"I suppose I should have asked sooner," Rian said as Lori finished burying them again, this time putting compressing the dirt above them to keep anything from digging them up, something she should have done before, "but is there something special about their corpses in particular? Not to be callous, but a lot of people, may they rest in peace, died on our way here, but those two are the only ones you're being careful about preserving. Why?"

"Does it matter?" Lori said.

"We literally have no other form of entertainment out here besides… well. And you've already shown you hate my stories," Rian said. "So either you try and teach me something, or I try telling you a new story and see how well you like it."

"Will it be as stupid as the previous one?" Lori said.

"Only you will be able to tell me," Rian said. "So, why them?"

Lori sighed, but she supposed it wasn't exactly a secret. There were even stories about it, although they didn't seem to be coming to mind for him. "The corpses of wizards can be revived as undead capable of using magic," Lori said. "Not intelligently, and not independently– they're dead, after all– but a Binder using them can create an undead capable of enacting simple bindings. If I'd had Elceena's undead, I'd have likely been able to get more sleep against the dragon and left constantly imbuing the darkwisps to her."

"Huh…" Rian said, sounding strangely thoughtful. "So they're like… music boxes? Wind them up with magic, and they’ll do this one thing, so you can leave them alone and do something else?"

That… wasn't a bad analogy. "Essentially. The stories vary," Lori said.

Rian nodded. "Of course they do. Why wouldn't they? Vary how?"

"Some depict them as simple, like music boxes," Lori said. "Others speak of small forces of dead wizards being led by Binders to battle, and routing numerically superior forces of living wizards."

"Huh. Well, I'm just some guy, not a wizard like you, so I don't have any experience with using magic," Rian said. "But if common people can make mistaken assumptions about magic in their stories, why not wizards?"

Lori gave him a withering look. "Because we actually know what we're talking about?"

"And how many wizards know about what Dungeon Binding is like?" Rian said. "Before they become one, that is."

Lori opened her mouth… and paused, mouth open.

"Because it seems to me that a Dungeon Binder would have a vested interested in telling outright lies about what they can do so people will overestimate them and leave them alone," Rian continued. "After all, a lot of people would love for them to die so their position will be open for the taking. Why not cut down the numbers by telling grandiose stories about how invincible they are to make people think twice about trying to attack them?"

Lori stared at him… and eventually remembered to shut her mouth.

"Just a thought," Rian said with a grin. "It's not like I went to wizard school and know what I'm talking about–"

"Oh, shut up," Lori snapped. "You make an excellent point, now stop being all humble and smug about it. Perhaps it's a deliberately untrue story, perhaps something that's learned with experience and finesse. Either way, I'll find out once I…" Lori cut off angrily.

"Go back to the continent and spend more years learning to Deadspeak?" Rian said. "And… what's the other two? Horotract and Mentalist?"

Lori closed her eyes. She REALLY wanted to tear at her hair and scream in frustration.

To her surprise, a hand patted her shoulder. Her head snapped up, glaring at a suddenly-closer Rian. "Don't worry," he said. "You'll work it out. You're the smartest, most stubborn person I currently know. If anyone can work out how to do three other kinds of magic from the ground up without so much as a beginner's guide, it's you." He smiled at her, the bright, encouraging, stupidly heroic smile that made him look like some sort of portrait of some great hero, encouraging men to their deaths for his glory. Inspiring them to die for his cause despite the forces arrayed before them. "I'll bet you'll be doing more than Whispering inside a year."

"And if I don't?" Lori said, feeling a strange weight settling on her shoulders, a familiar, painful weight full of her mothers' smiles and encouragement.

"Then I'm probably off by a year," Rian said. "But you'll be able to do it Lori. Because you're too much of a raging egomaniac to not leave the subject alone."

He smiled a bright, heroically encouraging smile. Forward, stupid minions, die in the jaws of death for my historic glory!

Lori really wanted to punch those teeth in. They were very annoying.

Instead, she glared at his hand, and he pulled it back easily.

"Come on," she said. "Let's hope no one's used the water reservoir as a lavatory."

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Rebuilding

The reservoir was, from what Lori could tell, still clear, and no one had used it as a lavatory. She was almost impressed.

She had everyone clear a path to the reservoir, with Rian in charge of keeping the way clear, as she sat on a convenient bench she'd formed from the stone bulwark in front of the original cliff face just outside the dungeon and drew water from the river. While the river had looked clear from what they had distantly seen, it was better not to take chances, and turning the water to vapor was the best way to ensure nothing was tainting it. A thick stream of vapor rose from the river, carried on airwisps past her and into the dungeon, where it condensed back into water at the reservoir. After it was filled she'd boil the water just to doubly ensure it wasn't tainted. That it circulated new, less smelly air into the dungeon was a minor bonus. She'd changed the binding of airwisps at the lavatory so the air in there would be replaced by the new ones coming in.

It was slow work, but they needed water, and she was refining the process so she wouldn't have to oversee every step. Bound waterwisps at the river to turn water into vapor, a circulating current of airwisps to move it to the dungeon, and another binding to condense it back again. That made it so she only intermittently needed to devote her attention to each step, leaving her time to sit around and physically do nothing. That was always a good sign of a streamlined process.

She'd never really seen their settlement at night, having turned in early before now. She'd never had reason to. It wasn't like they had a nice restaurant or something that made her want to go out and stay up late. As soon as she was done eating dinner, it was back to her Dungeon, and if Rian needed to speak to her about anything, he either knocked on her boulder or waited until breakfast. As she looked upon the wonders of the natural world, she had to conclude she wasn’t missing much of anything. It was mostly lots of dark and nothing, nothing at all like the bright, vibrant lights of the demesne of her youth. Honestly, it was lacking even compared to the time before she'd managed to build the Dungeon. Say what you would about the Iridescence, but it was beautiful, glinting in strange, poisonous colors even in the dim light.

Now those nighttime colors were gone in the safety of the demesne. Only the blue moon and the storm moon were out, casting their pale lights on the world, and she gathered the meager lightwisps they cast until she could bind enough to light the area around her. Small luminescent bugs flicked back and forth in the night, winking in and out as they danced randomly, sometimes briefly outlining the larger bugs that hunted them a moment before they were eaten. The air was filled with the distant sound of the river flowing, the honking of seels, the slowing struggles of the islandshell, the clicking, chirping and occasional death cries of bugs. The bug population had recovered quickly after the Iridescence had been purged from the demesne, though it was mostly smaller bugs, who had weathered the iridiation leaving their bodies because they'd been eggs or not far enough along in their life cycle to be pained by it. Some of the larger bugs had only just started coming back, gestating from their aquatic stages or slowly coming in from being hatched at the edges of the demesne.

Lori checked the progress of the reservoir. Filling slowly, since for all its volume, water vapor condensed into very little water. But it was filling, and at a rate that wouldn't take all night, so Lori let it be. She glanced inside the Dungeon, lit by the cook fire for dinner and bound lightwisps. Despite Rian's chiding, some of the children were playing in the stream of water vapor, laughing and running and trying futilely to catch the passing cloud. Rian seemed to be trying to get them to sit down. She shrugged. Not her problem. She went back to refilling the water reservoir, and considered making some sort of stone pipe arrangement where the water was vaporized in a vessel before quickly being condensed and flowed into a pipe for faster transfer. Something to try tomorrow.

She sat there, staring into the dark, occasionally making sure her bindings weren't deviating from what she wanted it to do. A part of her was mildly aghast at how wasteful the whole arrangement was, just to transport water. it would have been far more efficient to do what she'd done previously and made the water flow uphill. But she had seemingly inexhaustible magic and time, and no reason to be frugal with either.

She heard a sound from the entryway and turned sharply, clutching her staff. A thin, vaguely familiar man stood there, cringing back from her, some sort of leather case in his hands.

"What?" Lori demanded.

"S-sorry to disturb you, your Bindership," he said. "I just wanted to see the stars."

Lori blinked, then squinted. She willed some of her lightwisps to move and illuminate his face, bringing nervous features and pink hair into view. "Oh, you're the astrologer," she vaguely recalled.

"J-just an amateur, your Bindership," he said. "May I step out?"

"Don't go too far," Lori said. "There are things out there." She saw him glance toward the islandshell, still flailing on its back.

"Oh my…" he said. "It's still alive?"

"No, it's undead," Lori said. "I'm just waiting for it to stop moving."

He stared at the islandshell again, but eventually started setting up a tripod. It was a metal tripod of some silvery grey metal, and very light from the how easily he handled it.

She stared at him intently as he set up his telescope and calibrated it with his compass, then began to check through a notebook in the case, seemingly comparing increments on the base with the compass. After a while, Lori shrugged and leaned back, checking on the reservoir again. It was rising steadily as water fell into it in a steady drizzle–

Lori blinked, than chuckled as she realized she was making it rain inside her Dungeon.

Leaning back and raising a footrest for her feet, she watched the moons as she waited for the water to fill.

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The next day, they started rebuilding. Or at least clearing. After a night sleeping in an impromptu alcove carved into the stone next to the entrance with a thin opening to serve as an airhole, lying on a bed of rock and a pillow of rock, Lori was very ready to get people out of her dungeon and back to being useful, contributing members of her demesne.

After breakfast, and another check around the settlement, this time with more volunteers, everyone came out of the Dungeon to start rebuilding. The children, seeling rods in hand, went to catch more food, this time accompanied by more people despite the children's protests that so many would scare the seels away and make their catch poorer. Of course, no one listened, because they were children and what they said didn't matter. People were also told to stay away from the baths, since it was still flooded and had waterwisplings inside it. There were far fewer than there had originally been but were much bigger.

As people cleared out the rocks, fallen wood, fallen trees, dirt and other debris with the simple tools at hand, setting the stones to one side for either building material or to be examined later, Lori got to work clearing out the flooded shelter

There were, in facts, seels in the shelter, as well as a lot of water. Technically there was one seel, all fused together by their tails into a many headed abomination. Some of the smaller heads were dead, devoured by the larger ones, leaving only bloody stumps of fur and bone.

Lori had asked some of those with hunting experience to be on hand with wooden clubs as she bound the waterwisps in the shelter and had the water flow up and out though the entrance, pulling the seel abomination along with it. As the seel abomination was being beaten to death with clubs, Lori checked inside the shelter. Apart from some wooden debris and mud that hadn't been swept out with the water, the inside of the shelter was empty. She checked on the structural integrity of the stone walls, curved roof, air circulating windows and fireplaces, and repaired any cracks or structural weaknesses that she found. After some thought, she decided to raise up central pillars to help support the roof, to avoid a collapse similar to the other shelter. It made the space seem more cramped, but she wasn't going to be sleeping in there, so that didn't matter. The mud she compacted into the walls, and she dried the wooden debris for firewood, leaving them where they lay. Someone else could cut them up and put them in the fireplace.

That done, she headed warily for the other shelter, her quiver of firewood at her side and a new coal in her coalcharm. She circled around to the collapsed part of the roof and watched the reeds growing from it. While they superficially resembled the reeds along the river, they moved disconcertingly. It took a while to realize that they sometimes seemed to move against the wind. In the interest of intelligent inquiry, Lori touched one of her coalcharms to one of the lengths of wood she was carrying, transferring firewisps to the latter until a small tendril of smoke showed it as smouldering. Then she stood back and threw the lengths of wood at the reeds growing from the collapsed shelter. It struck one reed a glancing blow.

Even though she was half-expecting it, Lori still jumped in surprise as the reeds struck at the log like beasts pouncing from tall grass, mouth-like openings full of sharp, beast-like teeth snapping open and embedding themselves in the log. She stared in heartsick shock as more reeds struck at the wood. Some missed and instead clamped onto another reed, many of which snapped off and leaving strange twitching fibers…

Lori had seen enough. With a thought, she imbued the firewisps in the wood with power, binding them to burn. There was the crack of an explosion as the wood exploded violently in a large, burning ball of heat and light, consumed instantly for energy.

There were cries of alarm around the settlement, but Lori ignored them, focusing on the reeds. Many had been caught in the blast, and some had even lit on fire. Quickly, Lori bound the firewisps, and imbued them with more magic to make them burn brighter. Small flames, burning feebly on the still-wet plant, suddenly flared to life, and there were sizzles and pops as moisture in the reed exploded into steam, which were thrashing violently. She imbued it with more magic, made the flame hotter, made it consume more fuel despite that fuel being full of water. It was an inefficient, magic-intensive binding, but there was no way Lori was going to get any closer to that plant… abomination… thing. Not until it was dead enough for her to claim every wisp it had and make it boil…

"Everything all right?"

Lori turned, but it was only Rian. "Fine," she said. "Just burning this."

Rian glanced at the burning reeds. "Plant monster?"

"I suppose that's a concise way of putting it," Lori said.

Rian sigh. "I don't suppose you could maybe warn everyone before you start using magic that makes things explode?" he said. "I know you don't like talking to people, but a few words to keep people from panicking would be very helpful, especially when some of them are holding sharp and pointy objects, or are standing on wet rocks and are likely to fall on more rocks. Please?"

"Fine," Lori said, hiding her discomfort. Right, safety…

"By the way, can you stop by Lanwei when you have time?" Rian said. "He's identified some metal ores among the rocks that fell from the dragon, but he doesn't have a furnace yet, so we were hoping you could help with smelting them?"

"Which one's Lanwei?" Lori asked as she made the reeds burn. They were thrashing a bit less violently now.

"He was with us yesterday, remember?" Rian said. "Big man, clean-shaven, balding in front, hair tied back?"

Lori frowned, vaguely remembering someone like that. "Don't know him."

"Don't know–" Rian sighed. "Well, tell me when you have time and I'll introduce you. Maybe you can use the ores as a reference so you can look for them underground."

Lori blinked. That was a thought that hadn't occurred to her. "I'll remember that," she said.

"Right, well…" Rian glanced back at the burning reeds, which had stopped moving and were just on fire now. "I'll let you get back to your pyromania. Remember, please warn us."

Waving him aside, Lori stepped around and felt inside the collapsed shelter, finding more voids of wisps. It was also, like the other shelter, flooded.

As she bound the firewisps, pulling them down into the shelter towards the voids she could feel there, she made the water she couldbind boil.

Soon the insides of the collapsed shelter echoed with the sounds more of thrashing.

Hopefully she'd finish be able to finish fixing the shelters by lunch. That would give her time to get the baths unflooded and maybe have time to make something to hold a waterwispling…

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The Importance of Lunch

For several days, the entire settlement worked to rebuild. In a way, the fact that not many houses and buildings had been raised was lucky for them, as there wasn't much that had been damaged. There was still a lot, but not every family had lost their house. Most of what did need to structural repairs was left to Lori, which meant she was up and working all hours of the day, and had to go back to a Dungeon that was still being used as a dining hall and hospital. She also still hadn't gotten her bedroom back, meaning she was back to sleeping on rock in an enclosed, secure alcove, and hoped no one got the bright idea of using smoke to kill her in her sleep. It wouldn't work, but it might asphyxiate other people in the cave, and that would be annoying.

Most who weren't Lori were cleaning up, gathering the debris that had fallen in the dragon's passing for any valuable or useful materials. The remaining roof that was no longer wood had been stripped off and set aside to be replaced in case it was dangerous or poisonous, and Lori had claimed it for something to study. The fields of wild edible plants they'd set up had… well, some had things fall on them, some had grown wildly, some had fused together with the other plants next to them, but most had been completely unaffected. A lot of the men and some of the women were armed with spears (which Lori had to make) in case one of the dragonborn abominations wandered close, and there had already been three encounters.

Fortunately no one had died, but a man had hurt his arm from a beastly abomination biting it, and it had been pure luck the thing hadn't been able to get any of its claws to bear. Lori and Rian had been able to drive it off and later kill it, but now she was down a worker with a mauled arm. It could have been much worse, since when they finally killed it the thing turned out not to have any teeth, but instead crushing ridges in its jaws. It hadn't been the man's dominant side, but that still meant he was laid up in her cave, recovering so the arm wouldn't need to be amputated.

Really, why did all these things have to happen to inconvenience her?

Still, after several days and much hard work later, the settlement was finally back to where they had started.

Tables and benches had been recovered from the collapsed dining hall, and they'd repaired what they could since it was faster than building new ones. The furniture been brought to the Dungeon so the settlement would have someplace to eat while the dining hall was being cleared and rebuilt, and Lori had needed to rebuild the kitchen facilities so they wouldn't have to keep staining the floors of her Dungeon with soot.

The reservoir was constantly being refilled using stone piping and waterwisps now, and she'd added more lavatories. When the pit outside the dungeon she'd been pulling the waste into had threatened to overflow, Rian had suggested desiccating the waste. Lori had to admit, pulling all the water out of the waste certainly helped compact it and cut down on the smell. When they could finally start farming, they'd have a good cache of fertilizer, since the latrine field had become overgrown.

"Ugh…" Lolilyuri groaned, lying face-down on one of the rebuilt tables that they'd pulled from the dining hall. They'd rubbed it down with sand from the river to smooth it, but she felt she could still feel the debris on it, and thought it felt lopsided. It probably wasn't but it certainly felt like it. Her feet hurt, her socks felt … crusty, the waterwisplings she'd caught had… well, 'died' seemed as good a descriptor as any, despite her carefully binding and imbuing them, and the reverberations of people eating and talking was giving her a headache and making her long for her nice, big, empty Dungeon. She still hadn't found time to do her laundry, not helped by the fact most of her clothes were under piles of metal in her room. With things finally rebuilt, that should change later today, and she intended to be on hand to watch in case anyone made off with what little she had. "All this work, just to be right back where we started."

"Not completely where we started," Rian said, handing her a bowl of food. She accepted it when she saw it had a spoon in it. "We have some new metal now. It's not a lot, but the smiths think they can use it for more tools. We even found some gold for you."

Lori supposed that was true. Gold wasn't useful for much except art since it was too soft to build with, but wizards prized it as a very good conductor of magic. With gold, she could draw wire, and with wire, she might finally be able to start on her ideas for a binding that would automatically and constantly be imbued by her core. It was a nice thought, and actually made Lori smile. It was certainly something nice to look forward to.

…Even so, her socks still felt crusty. Sighing, she started to eat their usual meal of stewed unspecified meat in unspecified meat stock with added unspecified wild plants.

"So, I spoke to the doctors, and Mister Havin's arm doesn't seem to be getting infected," Rian said. "I'm having him help watch the children on seeling duty so he'll have something to do while he's recovering. The dining hall should be finished by tomorrow, and then after that the carpenters can go back to putting roofs and houses. All told, it could all be a lot worse."

"Does this mean I get my Dungeon back?" Lori said.

"Yes, we're moving all the tables out tomorrow," Rian said. "So if you can make the entrance bigger to fit all the tables, we'd really appreciate it. Then you can go back to living alone in your big, empty cave."

"Dungeon," Lori corrected.

Rian rolled his eyes. "You actually like living like this, don't you? All alone in a hole in the ground, by yourself?"

"It's quiet and it's all mine," Lori said. "I'm even willing to be lenient about music past sundown as long as I can't hear it."

"How generous of you," Rian drawled.

"I'd rather they do it out there instead of in here where it echoes," Lori said.

"You used to live next to a musician, didn't you?" Rian said.

Lori shook her head. "No, our apartment was in too good a neighborhood for a musician to afford to live there."

"Huh. I'd have thought… why do you have a problem with music, then?" Rian said.

Because every time a dragon passed their demesne, people would always start playing music and dancing in the shelters while Lori was trying to sleep. "That's my business," she said.

"All right, fair enough," Rian said.

They ate in silence for a moment.

"Are you getting as bored with this food as I am?" Rian said.

"It's all we have, and it's meat," Lori said, though she was getting bored of it, yes.

"If you want to increase morale, you can help the children catch one or two of the fat, adult seels, and we can render down its fat for oil," Rian sighed. "I think beast meat would taste great fried."

"Sounds like a lot of work, and I'm already doing a lot of that," Lori said dismissively. "Fried, you say?"

"Yup, all we need is a good pan and some seel oil, and we'd have some nice fried beast," Rian said. "Fried leg meat would be delicious. It'll be all soft and juicy…"

"Rian, you're already eating, why are you drooling?" Lori said, even as she had another spoonful. Why did the food suddenly taste even more lacking than it already had?

"Tail meat might be good too…" Rian went on, not seeming to hear her, off on his own little demesne. "Not breast meat, that's always too dry…"

"Rian, I'm trying to eat. Stop mentioning hypothetically more delicious things, you're turning me off my food," Lori said sternly.

"It's too bad we don't have any flour of anything, flour-covered fried meat is even better…" Rian sighed with a lust usually reserved for lascivious fantasies and lewd talk.

Lori kicked him under the table.

"Ow!"

"Stop fantasizing and eat your food," Lori said. "I probably worked hard at some point to kill it, don't let it go to waste."

"I'm almost sure this is seel meat," Rian said.

"Even worse. Do you want the children's efforts to go to waste?"

"You don't actually care about that," Rian pointed out.

"No, but you do."

"You've got me there," Rian said, and went back to eating his repetitive, brothy stew.

Lori did as well and tried to put the thought of fat-fried beast meat out of her mind.

"Speaking of how well we did, I need to talk to you about the Dungeon," Rian said.

"My Dungeon," Lori corrected.

Rian rolled his eyes. "Fine, your Dungeon. Given our current population, how long do you need to get it ready so that the next time a dragon comes by, everyone in Lorian can just drop what they're doing and shelter in it? I'm talking ventilation, air circulation, food stores–"

"Not needing to lose my bedroom?" Lori said.

Rian nodded. "Yes, that too. How much time do you need just working on your Dungeon?"

Truthfully, it had been a subject Lori had been giving a lot of thought to. A Dungeon was meant to be the demesne's most secure stronghold in addition to being the center of the Dungeon Binder's power. It should theoretically be able to hold the entire population of the demesne, or at least the capital city around the Dungeon's core.

"I'll need more space," Lori mused. "More excavating… reinforcement… maybe another floor? Three days? Five? The food stores… it would be convenient if the food was already there instead of needing to be moved from the dining hall." She blinked and gave Rian a suspicious look.

"You said it, not me," he said blandly.

"I am not turning my Dungeon into a public space."

"I wasn't asking you to."

"Yes, you very clearly didn't ask to permanently turn my Dungeon into a dining hall."

"Again, you said it, not me."

"We will simply have to divide our food stores," Lori said, ignoring him. "We should have been doing that anyway."

"I'm sure that's not going to start any rumors about you hoarding food for yourself while decent people something-something," Rian said.

Lori glared at him.

"You asked me to find a way to keep things like that from happening again," Rian said "This is how I'm doing it."

"I'm not turning my Dungeon into a dining hall."

"Still wasn't asking you to."

"We have a perfectly serviceable dining hall. We just need a plan for quickly getting the food stored there here in an emergency."

"As you say, Binder Lori."

"I can make wheels, we can have some kind of cart or wagon."

"Smart idea, Binder Lori."

"Rian, stop acting like a sycophant and agreeing with what I say, you sound like an idiot."

"I refuse," he said with a grin.

Before Lori could make up her mind about whether she should kick him or not, someone ran up to the table. It was a brat– not one Lori was familiar with, she was certain the brat she knew was a girl– with his trousers rolled up and mud on his feet.

"Lord Rian, Lord Rian!" he cried, completely ignoring Lori's presence. "There are people coming up the river!"

That drove every other thought out of her head. Lori's eyes snapped shut, delving into her awareness of wisps. The river flickered, too full of plants and animals… the voids of everyone in the Dungeon… voids rushing towards the dungeon from the river, most too small to be adults… and voids walking along the river banks, coming from down river. They all dripped with water, and the things they had with them seemed soaked with it.

Her eyes snapped open and met Rian's. "People coming," she confirmed. "From outside. They've been washing Iridescence off themselves for long enough most of what they have is soaked." She grabbed her staff, checked the coalcharm, grabbed the bag of cut firewood she'd set aside to sit down and started tying it back to her belt.

Rian, meanwhile, stood up. "Everyone!" he cried, gathering everyone's attention, as if the brat's– the boy brat's– announcement hadn't already done that. "It looks like we have visitors from outside the demesne." A murmur rose among the people eating in Lori's Dungeon. "I know everyone's concerned, but let's not all panic. For safety's sake, all the children should stay here. Everyone else, grab what you need and let's get ready to meet them. After coming all this way, I'm sure they'll appreciate a warm welcome."

There were grim nods and for once Lori was glad Rian was so stupidly good at giving heroic and inspiring speeches. People looked determined, but not afraid, and at the back, someone was already handing out spears form the rack near that door that she'd put it because they kept falling over and became a tripping hazard.

"All right!" Rian said. "Let's go out there and greet these people, whoever they are, and show them how we do things in Lorian!"

There was a cheer, that had Lori wincing and rubbing her ears. Still, she had to admit, his words were effective. Whoever these people were, Lori was confident– not that she hand't been before, of course!– that she could handle them from the safety of a wall of people!

––––––––––––––––––

"Hi! Welcome to Lorian. Have you had lunch yet? We've got plenty to eat, so help yourselves," Rian said to the strangers as they gathered near the river.

Lori was fairly certain she wasn't the only one feeling betrayed as Rian held out a wooden bowl filled with today's lunch stew.