Demesne 191 - Seasonal Hazards (Patreon)

The day started normally enough for Lori. Get up, wash her face to wake herself all the way, sit down on her bed and go down her list of reminders to imbue everything there—there was a mark on the water wheel in River's Fork since it didn't need to be run at the moment—go through the list again to make sure she didn't miss anything, take a bath, contemplate whether her clothes were good for another day or whether she should change—they were still good—and then head down for breakfast.

She was halfway down the stairs when she paused and frowned. The dining hall below sounded… strangely quiet, save for the sound of the bindings of airwisps circulating air and wind from outside the Dungeon. There was no din of conversations, no sounds of footsteps, no echoes of sounds running together and bouncing off the walls. In fact, it was it was so quiet her ears started to ring. Lori hesitated, the turned and hurried upstairs to get her staff, her footsteps suddenly sounding strangely loud.

Armed with her staff, a stone spearhead added to its butt using rock she'd pulled from the walls, Lori cautiously crept down to the first level of her Dungeon, keeping her back to the walls. The dining hall was empty, the bindings of lightwisps shining down on neatly arranged tables and benches that had no occupants. There were no people sitting, talking, playing games or napping. The kitchen was equally devoid of life. The long rows of stoves were bare, the stones where the heat rose up to the pots sealed up with wooden covers to keep the heat of the firewisps in the firebox contained. The new copper pots and the old stone pots had been put away, the taps with water for drinking and cooking closed up. The only sound was blowing through the dungeon.

Lori stared. What was going on? She'd never seen her Dungeon like this. Had she woken up too early? Was it still the middle of the night? Frowning, Lori turned and pushed one of the front doors of the Dungeon open, intent on going outside and finding out what time it was.

As soon as she managed to open a gap in the door, a blast of howling, utter cold blasted through the crack, slamming into her face like a bucket of freezing water. The cold was so intense it actually momentarily overwhelmed the passive warmth of the firewisps around her, and Lori jerked back in surprise, the doors closing shut again.

Lori stared at the doors for a moment, then looked up to the vent slots in the stone above the door that pulled fresh air into the dungeon. She raised one hand, and felt the freezing cold air blasting through the slots, cold that she could feel even though the warmth around her. It wasn't comfortably cool, as it usually was, but chilling and uncomfortable.

She leaned her staff onto the rack next to the door, placed both hands back onto the closed portal and pushed. The doors swung easily once she managed to get it open and give the wind another avenue to go around the door instead of pushing against it. The sound of the wind suddenly rose in intensity as she pushed to door all the way open until it struck the rock behind it. Beyond the door, the narrow stone passage was full of snow almost to the doors, rising up to about chest high at the open mouth of the passage. Cold wind slammed into her face, sending her hair flying and reminding her she needed to borrow scissors to cut it. Her shirt rippled under the onslaught as she forced herself to step forward, crunching over the snow that had spilled into the passageway a she tried to see out into her demesne.

Lori forced herself through the snow, then realized how stupid that was and bound the waterwisps in them, making the snow flow out of her way and compress into ice on either side of her. Fortunately, the snow at the mouth of the passageway was so packed it didn't collapse a she approached it, and she was able to bind the whole thing in one piece as her breath fogged the air. She reached out, claiming and binding more and more of the snow, before fusing them all together. Bracing the fused mass against the stone at the mouth of the passageway, she made the whole mass push itself outwards, clearing the entrance.

Beyond the passageway, a blinding white curtain of snow fell. The Um, the shelter and the baths were just mounds in the snow storm, their outlines barely visible. Past that, the houses where just white shapes with some glowing bindings of lightwisps at the corners. The snow was piled alarmingly high…

For a moment, Lori thought of going back in and getting her raincoat and winter robe. She was actually starting to feel the cold, like a mask growing on her face and climbing up her arms. Then she shook her head, reached out and bound the airwisps around her, binding them with the firewisps that would normally keep her warm and imbuing both, shrouding herself in a sheath of warm air. Water immediately started to condense on her face and arms, and she wiped it off in irritation as she stepped out into the snow, imbuing the warmth around her just enough to last her some time before she focused on the snow.

It would have been so convenient to just turn all the water into steam, but that would be problematic. The heat from the state change would have to come from somewhere, so as she turned more and more water into steam, the area surrounding the water she had converted would grow colder and colder as the heat was sapped from them by the evaporating liquid. As the temperature was already well below the point water would freeze, there already wasn't much heat to begin with. She could clear the way but create a path so utterly cold no one could safely pass through. And with the snow still falling, it would only be a temporary measure at best, unless she found a way to keep the snow from falling…

Oh!

Well, at least building material was plentiful.

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It took her a while to realize she could check on whether people were alive by focusing on her awareness of the wisps in the demesne and checking for voids. After all, it would probably be a waste of time trying to get to people who were already dead from cold or asphyxiation or something. Fortunately, when she concentrated, there were many such voids nearby, surrounded by airwisps surrounded by earthwisps surrounded by waterwisps, meaning they were probably inside the houses, so people were still alive and this wasn't a pointless effort.

With all her practice with making pipes, making arches and excavating tunnels in the third level while she was expanding it, binding the snow out in front of her dungeon's entrance passageway, and compressing it outwards to form a tube of ice through the snow was relatively easy. It helped that they didn't have to support thousands of sengrains of weight above them. She worked quickly enough that she was able to walk forward as her tunnel through the snow formed in front of her. It was a slowly, almost leisurely walk, but it was a walk.

If she didn't have to actively concentrate to shape and form icy walls around her to keep out the rest of the snow, Lori might have gotten impatient at the rate the tunnel formed. As it was, she was just annoyed at how slowly she was working as she tunneled towards the shelter next to the Um, where she could feel several voids of wisps and a large concentration of firewisps what was probably the shelter's fireplace. It seemed like they'd only lit one and had huddled around it, perhaps to use the other as an air intake.

Eventually she found herself facing the shelters thick wooden door, which glistened a bit wetly from the lightwisps she'd bound to the top of her head. She tried the latch, sliding it sideways to pull the bolt and pushing the door open. "Is anyone dead in here?" she called out as she stepped inside. The lightwisps inside still glowed brightly, the wooden covers that normally covered them at night when people slept pulled back as the group of people all huddled in front of the fireplace looked up in surprise. They were all covered in their winter robes, blankets and even bedrolls, all sitting together in groups of at least two to share warmth.

"Y-your Bindership?" someone said.

"Yes, yes, it's me," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "Did anyone die?" She looked around, but there were no body-sized lumps pushed to the corners, which was probably a good sign. Belatedly she realized people couldn't look at her properly with the binding of lightwisps over her head. She decided to keep it there. "No dead, then?"

Annoyingly, no one answered her questions. Instead, they all started making a din about how 'they were saved' and 'her Bindership saved us'. Lori rolled her eyes. Ugh, people. Couldn’t they just respond properly to a simple question?

"Put out that fire and get to the dungeon," she said. "It's warm there. If you have any tools we can use to dig, bring them, we still need to get to everyone else first—I said put out that fire! Do you want to waste fuel?"

Sighing, Lori stomped back outside to her tunnel, grimacing to herself. Ugh, obviously she couldn't delay this anymore.

Orienting on the stone she had given Rian that had a binding of lightwisps on it, Lori began digging another tunnel straight towards his house. She'd need to him to keep people away from her and to direct everyone during this emergency. Ugh, stupid storm! Why couldn't it have come in the middle of the day, when it was convenient?-! Really, the only thing worse would have been a dragon suddenly appearing!

Lori froze, but despite what her novels and the narrative convention of theater plays would have her believe, thinking that didn't somehow immediately make her aware of an approaching dragon. Letting out a sigh of relief, she went back to compacting the snow into ice and tunneling through it, trying to move as fast as possible… just in case.

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After a brief detour to grab her staff, seal off her room, and yell at the people in the dungeon to NOT get any food from the cold rooms since they weren't authorized, Lori was finally able to tunnel to the front of Rian's house. The doors and shutters were all shut, of course, but there was a void inside and a concentration of firewisps, which probably meant her lord was alive.

She opened the door and frowned. There was only a small fire in the fireplace, and Rian had dragged his bed dangerously close to it. Like the others, he was wrapped up in his winter robe, blanket and bedroll, facing the fire with his eyes closed.

"Rian, why is your fire so small?" she demanded.

The clump of fabric and padding jerked, and Rian's eyes snapped open. . "L-Lori?" he said weakly through chattering teeth.

"Yes, I'm here, I'm here," she said. "Get up, it warmer in the Dungeon. I need you to take charge of the idiots I just pulled out of the shelter while I try to get everyone else out of their houses."

He blinked at her, looking uncomprehending for a moment, then shook his head as if trying to clear it. "Right…" he muttered. "Right. Emergency… What's the situation?" By the end of the sentence he almost sounded like his normal self.

"There's a snow storm burying the demesne, so I woke up to find breakfast isn't ready yet," she told him. "I'm hungry, but unfortunately I don't know where the people who cook live, so I need to get to everyone to find them."

For a moment, Rian stared at her. "Ah. I see. And you didn't just grab some meat from the coldrooms and feed yourself because…?"

"I don't know where they keep the kitchen knives." She certainly wasn't going to use her own knife to cut up meat like that! She knew what she'd used that knife on!

Rian nodded, shoulders shaking a little. "Right… right. I'll get up and join you as soon as I pack up my bedroll. I think it might be safer to sleep in the Dungeon tonight…"

Lori scowled as he confirmed what she feared. "Only for the duration of the storm," she said. "I'm not letting everyone else just live in my Dungeon."

"I'm sure that's well understood," Rian said as he hurriedly began folding up his bedroll and blanket.

"Good," she nodded curtly. She frowned, looking around. "Why are you alone in here?"

That made Rian pause in his packing as he looked up at her. "Why wouldn't I be alone? It's my house and I don't have any other family around here."

"Huh. I'd have thought that given how forward you've been, you'd have invited the three of them to keep you warm at night."

Rian gave her a flat look, then went back to folding up his things. "Well, I didn't. It wouldn't be appropriate."

She glanced down. "And the four of you probably wouldn't fit on the bed, I suppose." The bed she'd used to sleep in was narrow, meant for a single person, or two if they were being disgustingly intimate. Three people would already press it beyond its limits.

"I'll have you know that even when they do visit, they always go back home afterwards. In fact, I walk them home to make sure they get there safely. Can we drop the subject now? I thought there was an emergency on." He hefted the bundle containing his bedroll and pillow.

"Come on, then," Lori said, waving at him to follow her.

They had a long day ahead of them.