Demesne 114 - A Mess To Deal With, Again (Patreon)

The next day, once Rian had rested to correct for the night shift and Lori had gotten back the sleep that had been interrupted, they prepared to move out in force out of the Dungeon. The former militia who had volunteered—Riz among them—were armed with spears, and there were a substantial number of volunteers as well, armed with the tooth spearheads. Others carried clubs and axes, in case of beasts too small or too close to use the spears on.

This time, Lori remembered to check for undead, concentrations of wisps that moved without being wisplings or any other influence, and found a disturbing number of them. Since the dome had been up, they probably didn't need to worry about thought-shades and twisted vistas. Even if they had, the wait had most likely drained them of any magic imbued by the dragon. So, only abominations to worry about, and hopefully the dome would be able to cut keep any of them from being plants.

Distressingly, there seemed to be a lot more of the abominations wandering around, and large ones at that considering the voids they generated. It might have been several smaller abominations huddled together, but that was deeply concerning in its own way. They were not physically equipped for large swarms of small abominations.

While some of the militia stayed behind at the dungeon, guarding the now-open entrance—Lori made a note to have a permanent door put on it before winter, to keep the heat in—the rest moved out in a large, almost comical group bristling with sharp, pointy ends. Rian, as was predictable, was near the front, carrying both a spear and his sword. He spoke with an air of quiet competence that seemed to endear him more to the former militia than any overt friendliness or casualness had before, assigning work to people and then leaving them to it. Lori didn't know how he picked the people he spoke to, but then, that's why she had Rian to do these sorts of things.

Lori, unfortunately, stood near the from, just behind Rian, so she could see in case she had to use Whispering to deal with… well, literally anything. She had her staff in one hand, a fresh coal in the coalcharm for easy access to a firewisp, her hip bag of firewood, and Riz next to her. The woman had been told she had one job: keep Lori alive. It was assumed every was to help with that, but it felt better to have someone specifically in charge of hit. Near Lori, four burly men carried a half-finished door between them. Their job was to hold the door and give her a place to stand where she could see over the group if she needed to use Whispering in a direction besides the one she was on. Riz was to make sure she didn't fall and break her neck if it came to that.

At a casual glance, the demesne was looking much to be in much better repair than the first time it had endured a dragon. Most of the roofs still seemed to be intact, with only a plank or two broken. Some even had large rocks or dragon scales resting on them, with the roof only slightly collapsed beneath them. At least one roof had a hole in it, but all in all, the houses had faired very well. The backs of the bathhouses were exposed and missing their roofs, but that was to be expected since she had made them from ice and hadn't bothered to keep them imbued. The aqueducts were also still, and the shelters and baths were dark. What looked like a dragon scale had fallen on the clay pit, crushing the kiln and the little shack the potter used to dry the shaped clay before loading them into the kiln.

Between some of the houses, things moved. They were long, dark and thicker than barrels, looking like wet seels. Instead of fur, they glistened strangely, as if covered in oil. There were also strange creatures with rough, cracked-looking pale skin with dark spots that dragged themselves around on flippers that ended with short, almost stubby claws. Their long, triangular jaws were filled with wicked curving teeth, and the danger they represented was not detracted from at all by the fact many of them had their stomachs torn open and their innards trailing out, releasing a vile scent and probably all sorts of noxious dustlife. She'd have to burn those, or at least boil them very, very thoroughly.

"Are those slugs?" someone exclaimed.

"Good eating on those," someone else commented.

Lori tried to keep her stomach from roiling at the thought.

"Save your appetite until we see what color its blood is," one of the older militiamen snapped.

"Ignore the slugs," Lori said, "it's the undead things we have to worry about."

"Dillians," Rian supplied.

She paused. "I thought those were bigger and dark blue? Bigger than a full-grown seal. These are barely longer than my leg, and a third of that is tail."

"Those are shallow water dillians. They eat smaller prey, so they're smaller," Rian shrugged.

Lori stared at him for a moment. "Regardless, they're undead and their guts are spilling out everywhere. If we're close enough to smell the rot, we're close enough to get sick, so stay away. But they're not our biggest problem."

"They're not?" someone in the crowd asked nervously.

"Something out here ate a lot of the bug abominations," Rian said, raising his voice to carry. "It wasn't the dillians, they're not agile enough. It's not the slugs, because no matter how big they are a bug is still faster than a slug. So what ate them?"

Even the abominations at the bottom of the moat in front of the Dungeon's entrance had been eaten when they'd come out. Lori became very aware of the feeling of voids of wisps in her demesne. While her dome had kept out most of the dragon's hostile magic, the abominations it spawned were alive and solid enough—or in the undead's case, just solid—to be able to push through. And in her head, she could feel a lot of large voids moving around, many of them with what felt like far too many limbs…

"So everyone, keep an eye out!" Rian continued. "We're not going to get them all today. Our task is to assess and clear what we can of the town, then let Binder Lori get more water for the Dungeon so we don't die of thirst." There was a beat. "We'll kill them all tomorrow, after we've had a good night's sleep."

Predictable.

Still, people laughed, even the militia this time.

They didn't range far. There was no need to, when a good number of their problems could be solved by just going back inside the Dungeon and waiting. Still, they needed water for that, and to replenish the water safely, Lori needed to see the water to make sure nothing was going in with it that should be, like strangely colored fluids, beast blood, and such. They moved close enough to the nearest houses for Lori to raise earthen walls to keep the dillians and oversized slugs back, allowing her to define a safe.

A few people wanted to go to the Um and clear it out of any possible abominations, but both Lori and Rian stepped on that idea hard. The Um had too many rooms and a narrow corridor. If there WAS an abomination there, then the new design was practically a deathtrap guaranteeing that anyone in front would die. Horribly injured at best. And there WAS something in there according to Lori's awareness. Several somethings, in fact. Lori threw in a burning length of wood and sealed off the Um with another earthen wall, making sure it was airtight. Why fight when you could asphyxiate?

She did the same with the shelter and the baths, sealing off the openings with earth and, once she remembered the river was an option, ice heavily imbued to stay solid for a day. Then it was the burning wood and sealing it all up. The chittering, scrambling and strange animal cries coming from inside once the smoke spread sent a chill up her spine, and Lori and everyone else hurriedly moved away, ignoring what shadows of movement were visible through the smoke-shrouded ice.

The clay pit was pronounced cleared, and several men proceeded to carefully drag the dragon scales to one side. It probably crushed what little dried clay pottery was left, but it was no loss. The clay could be shaped again.

There was a scream as a dillian suddenly burst out of one of the water basins in the laundry area, clumsily launching itself at the nearest person. Fortunately, it missed, seemingly not used to launching itself like that, and several spears were stabbed into it to keep it in one place long enough for Lori to sink it into the ground and trap it. She raised a wall to block off the laundry area and set the water in the basins to boil. The water would still need to be replaced, but it made her feel better.

With that warning, however, she had to check the river, and found it also full of disgusting dead but moving dillians. In the water, they moved with terrifying agility, and after more several instances of the things launching themselves out of the water, Lori had to raise another low wall and rethink their water replenishing strategy.

Drinking the water as it was clearly wasn't doable, and waiting for the river to flow enough to send the tainted water downstream was equally impossible. She'd have to distill the water…

Lori sighed and got to work putting together a distillery.

––––––––––––––––––

She managed to get the distillery running before dinner.

"Not a perfect solution, but we're getting clean water that dead things haven't been swimming in and spilling their dead guts everywhere," Lori commented over dinner. The build had been simple enough, a long stone trough that was filled with water, enclosed in earthwisp reinforced stone to keep it from being an explosive pressure vessel, where water was forcefully heated into steam by water- and firewisps, with the steam being pulled into another tank to condense, before the condensed water was boiled again and finally added to the Dungeon's reservoir. It was tuning the various bindings to prevent the tank from exploding that had been problematic, but she had managed it.

"It buys us time," Rian agreed with a nod, blowing on the stew he'd scooped up on his spoon. "How long do you think before the dillians are properly dead and you can just force the dirty water downsteam?"

"I can force the water downstream now, it's how many undead are still in the water upstream that worries me," Lori said. "I'll see about distilling more water tomorrow." She ate her stew, not worried about heat. Her firewisps took care of it.

Rian finished chewing his mouthful and swallowed. "Please be careful so you don't explode yourself."

Lori rolled her eyes. "I'll be careful. It's basically just a kettle, after all."

"Have you ever had boiling water splashed on you? It's not fun. Please be careful," Rian insisted.

She'd have rolled her eyes again, but that would have been repetitive. "Shouldn't you be worrying about exterminating the abominations?"

"My job is worrying about you, remember? Everything else is basically something I do while I'm doing that."

"That's not why I made you lord and you know it…"

The Dungeon's dining halls echoed with dinner and, thankfully, no dancing as everyone relaxed and got used to a proper cycle of day and night again. The brat no longer had to call out the eighths of the day. The entrance had been sealed shut again and air slits had been put back in, and a guard was kept, but this was mostly in case something managed to fall down from the top of the hill and land in front of the Dungeon, or something pulled itself out of the water. After all, there were still abominations out there, even if they were all bigger than the air slits now.

Tomorrow… tomorrow the serious, bloody work of clearing out their demesne would start. But that night, they had water, they had food, they had a safe place to sleep, and Lori wasn't brutally exhausted from having to stay up for most of the days the dragon had lingered over her demesne.

Tonight, they were safe.