Weekly Digest 101 - (#320 - #322) (Patreon)

Resting to Be Ready For Emergencies

Once a second bucket was placed to catch water, it was time to eat.

Lori made a little seat of stone extrude from the wall a little bit away from the sink and sat down, one hand on the tube to continue imbuing the binding. It was relatively simple, so she'd be able to form another one another if it ran out of imbuement and dissolved, but she'd rather she didn't have to. She'd have to alter one of the wisplights to provide imbuement for the binding, maybe keep it from dissolving when the imbuement ran out.

Riz came back with two bowls of stew. Lori took one and started eating quickly, filling her empty stomach. With all the work she'd been doing, she'd been able to distract herself, but now that she had food in front of her, her hunger wouldn't be ignored anymore. She ate, the familiar taste of beast meat, fat, some sort of leaf that… well, hadn't poisoned anyone yet, what looked tasted like faint traces of mican, and meat broth.

…

It could use salt.

She ate the food nonetheless, because she was hungry and it was the only food available.

When she was done, she left the bowl and utensil on the sink. As much as she'd like to consider the thing done, she knew that they couldn't wash dishes very efficiently at a bucket of water at a time. She'd have to make come kind of cistern to catch the water with. Something they could scoop the water up from using the buckets.

Well, she'd already eaten.

She took a moment to check on the state of her demesne. The dome of darkwisps was losing imbuement as it resisted the magic being thrown at it, only to be replenished by the connection to her core. Though from what she could perceive, very little abrasion seemed to be happening. Oh, there was some, but it seemed to be very light contact on relatively small areas of the dome.

Actually, most of what was entering her demesne was…

Was that rain?

Yes, that was rain, if a very warm rain from the amount of firewisps among the waterwisps. And… there was something else falling with the rain. It was hard to judge dimensions, since the things were falling through her demesne quickly, but at a casual comparison, they were bigger than the drops of water, and smaller than a person. Smaller than a child.

And each and every single one was full of firewisps. Firewisps far hotter than the firewisps on the raindrops, firewisps that got hotter and hotter as they fell. Any raindrops they made contact with in mid-air seemed to change state into steam, but some of the smaller drops simply seemed to vanish as the firewisps simply got hotter and hotter.

There was a sudden burst of firewisps, and Lori saw what had once been one falling solid became several…

Wait. Were they… exploding?

The bursts of heat…

Oh.

Well, that explained the sound she could hear through the air vent. The dragon was raining explosions over them.

No, wait, whatever it was dropping were solid objects, so technically it was hail. The dragon was hailing exploding dragon scales on them.

…

Their crops would be ruined, would they?

…

Lori let out a sigh as she opened her eyes. One thing at a time. They'd worry about it when the dragon finally left and they could go back outside.

For now, she just had to make a water cistern before people finished lunch.

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As she was in a rush, she made the cistern the fastest, simplest way: she excavated the floor.

She used some of the displaced stone to make a little pillar that supported the sink's tube and doubled as a wall so that the debris that dropped out of the water when it changed state wouldn't fall into the cleaned water. The rest of the stone, she made a little wall around the cistern to keep people from kicking things in it or stepping in it. With the little walls, cistern was wide enough that to allow someone to scoop water out of it using a bucket.

"All right, it's done," Lori sighed. "Erzebed, give me the water." No one was bothering her, but Lori could see the stacks of dishes building up over at the kitchen area.

Riz handed her the bucket of dirty water from the bottom of the mine. It was dark and murky, but it wasn’t particularly rank. Even if it was, distillation should be able to separate the water from everything. Still, she poured the dirty water into the sink slowly, watching the water that came out of the tube and into another bucket so she could see it clearer. Lori let out a sigh of relief as the water came out clear, the dissolved minerals and things falling out of the hole in the tube and into the gritty catch bucket underneath, which already had some dark particulates in it.

Lori nodded in satisfaction. "All right. It finally works. Have someone get more water from the mine and tell them to pour it—slowly—down into the sink to clean it. Theoretically, the water that comes out should be clean enough to drink, but… don't."

"Don't drink the sink water," Riz said. "Got it, Great Binder. Um… how do you feel, Great Binder?"

She blinked at the strange question. "What?"

"How do you feel? You've been up all day, and it's probably been most of a day already. Do you need to rest?"

She frowned. "I'm fine. I can rest after dinner. "

Riz hesitated. "Uh, with all due respect, Great Binder… do you need to? Everything seems to be working well, and… well, nothing seems to be trying to get inside. Shouldn't you conserve your strength in case there's an emergency only you can do something about?"

Lori considered that. "Rian told you to say that, didn't he?"

"Yes, Great Binder," Riz said promptly.

…

Ugh. She hated it when he had a point.

For a moment, Lori considered continuing on. After all, she was the Dungeon Binder. Rian was subservient to her, he didn't give her orders. Except now that she thought of it… she was tired. It had been a long day, and even though she wasn't struggling to keep her eyes open, they felt like they'd be quite comfortable being closed.

A part of her felt like there were still things she needed to do. Surely she needed to make sure that the sink wouldn't run out of imbuement and dissolve…

…

Lori shook her head. If it dissolved, it dissolved, but she'd heavily imbued it, so it shouldn't. "Tell them to use the sink for cleaning and use water only from the cistern." Perhaps she should make something to let them recover water from— "Tell them not to overuse it and use only small amounts of water at a time or else it will be overwhelmed and get clogged." A lie, but the sort of thing that people who don't know how her binding worked would think was reasonable. "I'm going to sleep. Don't let anyone near me and old wake me up in an emergency that Yllian can't deal with, or if someone kills someone else."

Riz nodded. "Yes, Great Binder."

Lori grabbed her staff, making her way back to her alcove. As she walked across the length of the shelter area, she saw some people had started unrolling their bedrolls on the ground, though it looked like a one and a half-pace wide walkway was being left clear for people to walk down. People spoke quietly, heads close together, and it was nothing like the low murmur Lori was familiar with when people were talking in her Dungeon.

It was an annoying reminder this place wasn't her home, even if it was technically hers.

Lori walked to her alcove, where Deil and Tackir were still linger in the mine tunnel outside, leaning on either side of the binding of lightwisps she'd anchored to the wall.

She paused as she passed them. "Have you to eaten?"

"Yes, your Bindership," one of them said. She knew their names, she didn't know whose name was what! "Riz had some food sent for us."

Lori grunted. "Good." She headed into her alcove.

Her rain coat and pack were still on the niche in the alcove. She leaned her staff against the stone wall and checked the wispbeads in the panels. The bead supporting the active defenses was now noticeably smaller than the one imbuing the air vent, though not by much. Lori had to stare to be able to say that the former was just a little bit smaller than the latter, as if someone had shaved a thin layer like the skin of a pink lady off the bead. That boded well for the wispbead's capacity in the long term. It probably wouldn't be completely consumed while she was sleeping.

"Erzebed," she called out.

"Er, she went off to talk to Lord Yllian, your Bindership," Deil or Tackir said. "She said she'd be quick."

Lori sighed, then gestured towards them. "Come here then, you two. Someone needs to know before I go to sleep. Tell Riz when she gets back."

The two carpenters walked to her, and she pointed at the bead imbuing their second defenses. "You two see that bead?"

They both nodded.

"Whenever you're here, check on it but don't touch it. It's on a contact." They were both carpenters, so if they ever worked with a bound tool like a water cutter or a driver saw, they'd know what that meant. "If you ever see it the size of two fists or smaller, run for me immediately. It's what's imbuing what's keeping us alive. If it runs out, we die. Understood?"

The two of them stared at the bead.

"I said, understood?" Lori repeated, annoyed.

"Yes, you're Bindership!" they both said loudly.

Lori nodded. "Good. If anyone tries to touch it for any reason—actually, any off the beads in this alcove—if it looks like anyone who's thinking of it gets within two paces of this bead or the one next to it, don't bother being nice. Drag them away and beat them unconscious if you have to. I'd rather not die because an idiot meddled with something I built, and I doubt you do either."

"See? Now aren't you glad we didn't sit on it?" one said to the other.

"I never said anything about sitting on it, I just said it was too short for a proper seat!"

"Don't ever try to sit on it. We'll die, and in the time before we do, I'll personal set the person who does it on fire."

"Yes, your Bindership!"

"Understood your Bindership!"

Lori nodded. "Good. Tell Riz when she gets back. I'm going to sleep so I'm rested for any emergencies that come up." She waved a hand dismissively. "As you were, then."

The two went back to their wall, staring at the panels surrounding the bead.

"Maybe we should make a bench to go over that…" Deil or Tackir said, just loudly enough Lori heard them as she straightened out her coat on the stone of the niche. "More secure than those panels."

"It's pretty secure. Lord Rian told me those things should be able to take a kick without coming off," Tackir or Deil said as she did her best to fluff up her pack with the clothes inside it. "But you're right, it needs something better. Maybe some kind of chest, with posts securing it into the ground and wall."

"I'll consider it," Lori said as she sat on the stone niche and took off her boots and socks. Laying down, she winced at the familiar but unwelcome feeling of stone through thin leather. Outside, through the doors and the vent, she could hear the rumbling sound the dragon was making. "Could you keep it down? If you want to talk, move further down the tunnel."

"Sorry, your Binderhip!"

"We'll do that, your Bindership!"

She closed her eyes as they moved away, their already low voices growing more quiet until there was only the sounds of the dragon's rumbling. How many explosions were going off that she was hearing it as a continuous rumble? Still, the sound wasn't so loud, and it was actually quite comforting to listen to if she didn't think of the source.

…

Lori sighed, sat up, pulled her boots over her bare feet to keep them somewhat clean against the cold and gritty stone, got up, and walked to her staff. The glowing binding of lightwisps she'd anchored to it went dark as she deactivate the binding, then leaned her staff back against the wall. She glanced at the binding of lightispps anchored the wall and with a grumble she walked towards it, altering the binding to give it directionality so that the light was directed down into the mine tunnel instead of just letting the light go everywhere.

With a satisfied jerking nod of her head, she went back to her niche, took off her boots, and lay down, closing her eyes with a satisfied sigh. With the darkness behind her eyes not being driven back by light on her eyelids, she was ready to sleep.

…

"Uh, Great Binder...?"

Lori's eyes snapped open in annoyance as she turned her head at an already-wincing Riz, standing at the entrance of her alcove. "What?-!" she demanded.

"Um… Rian told me to remind you before you went to sleep that you…" her temporary-Rian faltered slightly in the face of her unamused face, but swallowed and continued, "that you should dim the lights in the second level when you went to sleep so that it wouldn't be so bright for peop—children also trying to sleep."

Lori gave her a flat look at the blatant correction. "Fine. Now leave me alone."

"Yes, Great Binder! Sleep well, Great Binder!" The tail ends of the platitudes were barely audible as Riz very quickly made herself scarce.

Lori grit her teeth and wanted to drop her head down on her pack in frustration, but remembered just in time it wasn't all that thick. Instead, she closed her eyes, ignored the urge to pettily go straight to sleep, and reached through her connection to her core to the lightwisps in her Dungeon, took a moment to identify the ones that illuminated her second level, and deactivated them.

She nodded curtly to herself, kept her eyes closed, and went back to trying to sleep.

…

Then she sighed, opened her eyes—a useless gesture, since she was going to be closing them again, but they made her feel like wasn't trying to sleep—then closed them again to help her concentrate as she began altering the bindings to provide a dimmer illumination so people wouldn't walk into any of the pillars or step on someone.

Finally, she closed her eyes again and tried to go to sleep once more.

…

Her last distinct thought was that perhaps she should sleep further from the door so she wouldn't be the first to die if something did manage to get through the shelter's defenses…

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Uncomfortable, Boring and Annoying

When Lori woke up, it was on her own cognizance. So unless she'd woken up, done things while half-asleep, and forgotten about them—not unlikely, given anecdotal evidence from her mothers—there hadn't been any emergencies she had needed to take care of during the night. And save for the way her back ached from sleeping on hard stone with only a layer of leather as cushioning, Lori felt refreshed and well-rested. Aching, but well-rested. The feeling was enough to remind her of where she was.

Normally, she'd have proceeded to go over the bindings she needed to check in her demesne—she could remember most of them, and even if she forgot some, none of them were part of the defenses, so that was fine—but her aches prompted her to sit up to start alleviating them. She winced at the muscles that had been resting on stone all night protested at the movement, and wiggled her toes. Lori rolled her shoulders as she tried to massage her body to a state of 'awake and not aching'.

The air was a little warm, probably from her being in it all night, and black as a soul. Distantly, she could hear the continued rumbling of the dragon and its explosions. In the mine shaft beyond her alcove, the binding of lightwisps she'd anchored to the wall was gone, its imbuement no doubt consumed while she'd been asleep. Her eyes being open or closed seemed no different save to alter the texture of the darkness. Out of habit, she reached through her connection to her core to claim a few firewisps before she remembered where she was. Grimacing, she shuffled to the end of the niche and gently felt around her where her staff was hopefully still leaning against the wall.

She let out a sigh of relief as a fingertip touched cold wire, and Lori was able to grab her staff before it unbalanced and fell over. Reaching through the wire, she reactivated the binding of lightwisps she'd anchored to it, which had endured because of the imbuement she'd had placed in it.

The light showed Riz sleeping in front of the entrance of her alcove, a pile of packs next to her bedroll laid out block her path should she roll towards the receptacles of beads. Around her were… and… what were their names again… umm D-something and T-something… or was the two D names? Well, the two carpenters were sleeping a little beyond her, as was someone else…

Just how many people were sleeping outside her alcove? Had they had so little confidence in her defenses that they'd decided to keep watching on the entrance themselves? It was annoying, considering any kind of defenses was a definite improvement over the distinct lack of them when they had been under Binder Shanalorre.

Sighing, Lori imbued the binding of lightwisps on her staff so that it would last longer as she shuffled across niche to put her back up against stone. Leaning on the wall, she made herself comfortable, one hand idly fanning her face. Perhaps it was the excess of bodies that had made everything so warm.

Out of habit, she reached through her connection to her core to claim a few firewisps before she remembered where she was. Grimacing, she reached out a claimed a few of the firewisps in the air through her hand and made a simple binding to delete heat, imbuing it slightly and anchoring it in front of the air vent that was blowing in air from outside. A part of her squirmed slightly at leaving such a binding unattended, which went against the work habits she'd been taught about firewisps, but it wasn't a powerful binding, and if it made her alcove too cold, she'd could just deactivate it.

Actually…

She pulled on her socks, then her boots so she wouldn't have to step on the gritty floor. Using her staff, she anchored the binding of firewisps in front of the vent blowing out air from outside. That spared her from making a biding of airwisps to circulate the cooled air to mitigate the warmth.

Satisfied, she went back to sit at her niche to check on her demesne.

Her defenses were holding, and if there were any damage to the reinforced stone structures, it was minor enough she couldn't identify it with her cursory inspection of the earthwisps. The exhaust vent that let out smoke from the kitchen, as well as the air that settled in the third level, seemed to be intact and continuing to send our out to the water hub shed, where it bubbled out. The bindings that controlled the light, temperature and humidity of the Dungeon farm in the third level were working, and from what she could tell nothing needed adjustment.

Though why were all the lightwisps on the second level—?

Oh, right.

After she changed the illumination back to normal levels, she went back to checking her demesne. The water in the reservoir was holding, and the used wash water was going down to the dungeon farm, into the cistern for watering all the crops. The runoff cistern had plenty of space to hold the water, though the crops needed so much watering each day that the cistern getting too full wasn't really a concern. The bindings keeping Lori's Ice Boat solidified were imbued, so that it wasn't going to melt inside the stone cube keeping it safe. With the rain, she also made sure that the binding of waterwisps built into the lowest point of the floodwall that drew up water that pooled there and sent it out to the other side of the wall was activated and imbued, so that there wouldn't be any water trapped behind the wall.

Everything seemed to be in order. Her Dungeon was functioning, protected, and seemingly safe.

And she was here.

Opening her eyes, Lori let out a sigh.

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It took seven days, as best as Lori could judge since the shelter didn't have a water clock, for the dragon to pass. She supposed it could be worse. Those four days could have been exciting and terrifying as dragonborn abominations battered at their door, tried to creep into their air vents, and been filled with long days and tiring nights as the shelter had to be actively defended with spears and bindings and all that heroic nonsense.

Instead, those seven days were alternately uncomfortable, boring and annoying in various combinations.

Uncomfortable, because for all the work she had done on the dragon shelter, it had been focused on functional matters. The storage for the food so that those in the shelter wouldn't starve—and the food wouldn't be stolen—the three doors to keep abominations from getting inside, the extensive defenses on the vents so that they'd have air… all these things were made to keep the shelter safe, and clearly they were working, as nothing had gotten inside yet!

…

Granted, there was nothing trying to get inside, but Lori was confident that if there was anything trying to get inside, it still wouldn't be able to!

However, the dragon shelter had something of a dearth when it came to comforts, hence 'uncomfortable'. There were no sleeping niches along the walls, no alcoves for privacy, no bath, no tables and benches—though she'd learned that many people had brought in stools, as those could be carried by one person—and no fixtures for light. As such, she was forced to make a circuit of the shelter every day, anchoring new lightwisps in various places, most especially the kitchen area—where she also had to place a binding of firewisps three times a day so that meals could be cooked—and the new sink area.

Thankfully, the sink was working as intended, although she had to keep it heavily imbued because, try as she might, she couldn't find a good way of placing one of her new bound tools to maintain the binding when the imbuement ran out. Since she didn't have the necessary equipment to safely draw her blood, she had to heavily imbue it between the periods of time that the sink was being used.

She also had to put in bindings of airwisps to help circulate the air. While new air was coming in through the mine's original air circulation tubes, fed by her bound tool, that was originally meant to bring air into the mining tunnel, not the shelter. As such, she'd needed to anchor bindings to the ramp that blew in air from the tunnel, forcing the air inside the shelter to circulate.

After four days, they'd needed to put in another large wispbead to power the shelter's active defenses once the bead she'd put in on the first day had reduced down to half its diameter. It was far slower than she thought, but if the situation in River's Fork was the same as in her own demesne, nothing was actively trying to get into the mine. If she was correct, most of the imbuement was probably being drawn by the binding of earthwisps reinforcement of the stone around the entrance, keeping the stone together in the face of the explosions happing outside.

Occasionally, a loud explosion would echo through the mine shaft, which had Lori reaching for the contact wire to check if the mine's first door had been breached the first time it had happened. She'd been relieved to find everything still seemed intact and the door still in place. She wasn't sure what the state of the door was, but there was no smoke being pulled by the vent, so the copper alloy sheathing on the door had probably held, and the wood hadn't caught fire.

After it had happened a few times, Lori theorized it was occurring because whatever was exploding—from the lack of distinctive odors, she suspected it was due to caustic metals reacting to the rainwater, which from what she'd learned in school would account for what she had perceived in her demesne—had managed to land directly in front of the mine entrance, or close enough. The sound of the explosion came in through the vents, which is why it had been louder than the background rumble.

Lori had still check the state of the mine entrance through the contact point, but given she hadn't died from some sort of poisonous gas or otherwise impaired from breathing some kind of odorless air, she'd ultimately decided the explosion's results were relatively harmless.

The bead imbuing the bound tool that drew in air hadn't been needed to be replaced at all, the simple and efficient binding of airwisps requiring relatively little imbuement.

Boring, because after she'd done all those things… there really wasn't much else to do besides sit next to the sink and imbue the binding there, or sit in her alcove, doing nothing. Neither were particularly appealing. While others in the shelter had nothing to do either, Yllian was able to keep them from growing restless. The first two days, the doctors left in the demesne—all three of them, which included the one who had come with Lori—checked over everyone's physical condition. It kept the doctors busy, especially that idiot uncle of Shanalorre's, and people were occupied trying to recall recent ailments to see if they needed to be healed by Shanalorre, or some sort of special medicine.

They most likely didn’t have that medicine, but that wouldn't change the fact someone might need to know they needed it.

After that, Yllian found other ways to get people organized. He politely requested that Lori make a little plot for the crops that had been brought in so the buckets could be used for other things, which Lori graciously did because she literally had nothing better to do. Then she put in more lightwisps, since the crops would wilt if they weren't getting the right kind of light. Then she made a little runoff channel since someone was sure to overwater the crops, and then they'd get waterlogged and get root rot or something. And then she made a little dirt trap so that any dirt that got carried away by the water wouldn't go far and could be put back onto the crops…

With the buckets available, restless people were put to work going down to the bottom of the mine, drawing some of the murky water that had gathered there from rainwater trickling into the mine tunnel, and bringing it back up to run through the sink to clean it. So Lori had needed to anchor more bindings of lightwisps though the mine so people could see where they were going, and then expanded the cistern next to the sink to be able to hold more water. This has resulted in the sink's binding needing more imbuement, so she had used a little bit of her wire to put make a metal contact that she could more easily touch, as well as fashion something that could hold a bead so that could imbue the binding while the sink was being used so she would have to crowd in around it.

People started using the recovered cistern water to wash, taking buckets of clean water back down to the mine to give themselves a standing wash. So Lori had to make a cistern there too for them to put the clean water, but she didn't make another sink because all the back and forth was a way to keep people occupied. The amount of water in the mine increased again as all the wash water runoff flowed down there, to be scooped up again and ran through the sink once more.

Lori had even taken a bath herself, with Riz keeping watch so she wasn't interrupted. She distilled water directly from the pond of stagnant and now soapy mine water so she wouldn't have to carry buckets, and gave herself a wash that felt wonderful after three days of having not done so. She didn't have a towel, but given she could just claim waterwisps through her skin, it wasn't really necessary.

Annoying, because this went on for seven days. Seven days away from her demesne, of her needing to run around to do things, of having to actually come into contact with bindings to imbue them. Seven days of sleeping on rock, eating food that alwaysseemed to need salt, of occasionally being jarred awake as the sound of an explosion came from outside, of being bored and uncomfortable. All she could do was sit silently and long for home.

To distract herself, she had focused on their plans for after the dragon had passed. She and Rian had agreed that they would send the Coldhold to Covehold Demesne at either midsummer or after a dragon had passed, whichever had come first, and simply hoped that a dragon wouldn't come after midsummer. The timing had been important, since the dragon's arrival meant that after it had gone, they'd have a relatively safe period to travel. The midsummer deadline had simply been because they wouldn't have been able to delay much longer if they still intended to try and make a profit that year.

They had also needed to check with the docks if there had been any word about when the next group of settlers from the Golden Sweetwood Company would be arriving with their personnel and supplies. Rian and Yllian had been confident that the next group could be convinced to settle in River's Fork instead of founding a new demesne, but Lori really couldn't see why. There was no reason for the wizards of the group to not found their own demesnes where they'd all be able to rule as Dungeon Binders. Rian's explanations of wanting to live with their friends in secured, established demesne's had been nonsensical. If the Golden Sweetwood Company had wanted that, they'd have simply joined one of the already established demesnes around Covehold.

Still, Rian was going to try to get their settlers and resources for themselves, even if it was extremely unlikely to actually happen. The best she herself could hope for was for them to found their demesnes far, farawayfrom hers, and most especially noton the same river as her.

Try as she might to think of the potential profits that their plan of selling wispbeads to workshops to power their bound tools would bring them, her thoughts always came back around to those thoughts, which added to her annoyance.

On the seventh day after they'd sealed the mine shut, the rumble of things exploding outside of the mine finally fell quiet.

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Stepping Outside Again

Lori didn't unseal the mine immediately, even though she could feel the dragon moving away. First, she checked on her demesne through her connection to her core, and was able to ascertain that while it was still raining, no solids of potentially caustic metals were falling any longer, and the falling rain wasn't filled with firewisps anymore. There were also no mobile voids of wisps that might denote living dragonborn abominations, though that didn't bar the possibility of undeaddragonborn abominations. Still, there also didn't seem to be any of those either.

She hoped that the same was true of the demesne outside the mine, but with no ability to perceive outside, there was no way of knowing for sure. Still, she couldn't just keep people inside. Even with the sink, they had been depleting their drinkable water. She'd had to desiccate the latrines of all that post-water several times. If the dragon had stayed for longer, she might have been forced to try to recover that was for more drinking, which… well, she was glad she didn't have to. While it was technically no different from her drawing moisture out of the air to drink back when they had first journeyed from Covehold Demesne to where her demesne was now, and she knew that the distillation process would remove all substances besides water… well, she was glad she didn't have to continue trying to build a water-recovery latrine.

Of course, opening the mine again wasn't something she could just do. Plans had to be outlined so she wouldn't get killed. Preparations had to be made so she wouldn't get killed. People had to be organized to set out, and people had to be assigned to protect the ones remaining in the shelter. Only the former had to do with her not getting killed, but the latter would make sure no one went through her things while she was outside investigating what had happened to her second demesne.

Normally, Rian would be the one arranging these things, but he wasn't here. She did, however, have a temporary-Rian, as well as a lord who, while not Rian, was at least capable.

"The dragon has passed," Lori told Riz and Yllian after lunch. Technically, it was the second meal since waking up, as they weren't sure what the time of day was. Even with Yllian having people maintain a distinct schedule of waking up, having three meals and sleeping, that still didn't mean that they'd been managing to properly approximate the cycle of one day. Even Lori thought that seven days had passed because she'd had a hearty sleep seven times. Given how long she'd slept, it might have been closer to eight or nine days. "I need you two to start organizing people to venture and see if everything is clear. Once we've confirmed that there's nothing waiting out there to kill us, we can refill our reserves of water once I've checked its drinkable."

Yllian frowned. "Why do you think the water will be a problem, Great Binder?"

"I suspect that the dragon was making it rain dragonscales of caustic metal," Lori said. "If you don't know, caustic metals react to water and explode." Not exactly, but that was what they'd understand. "The ashes that result can dissolve into the water, which you don't want to be drinking. The river water is probably full of the stuff, so I might have to build something to distill water for people until the river is clear."

"Ah. Yes, that would be helpful, Great Binder," Yllian said. "I'll start getting people organized to go out. I'll need a few moments, perhaps an hour to make sure everyone knows what needs to be done."

Lori nodded. "Good. Inform me when everyone's ready so I can open the mine. I need to try to inform Rian to do the same."

Now, she just had to hope he was paying attention.

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Lori and Rian had worked out two signals between the two of them. The first, Rian placing the stone with a binding of lightwisps she had given him on it on top of a shelf with its own binding, was his means of informing her that the Dungeon was to be sealed. The second signal, one that she would send him, was meant to tell him to organize the militia to prepare go out as she opened the mine. His reply—putting the stone back on the shelf—would tell her his preparations were done, and that she was to start deactivating her demesne's active defenses to start letting people out.

More importantly, it meant that Rian had better be getting a boat ready to pick her up and bring her home.

She signaled him now, making the lightwisps on Rian's stone blink. Deactivate the binding, wait for a count of three, activate it again, wait for another count of three, deactivate again and continue the repetition. Then, to ensure he got the message, she began to do the same with the lights of her Dungeon's dining hall. Deactivate, activate, deactivate, activate, deactivate, activate… Lori patiently did this for ten repetitions. Even if Rian was asleep at the moment, someone would go to wake him, and if he managed to miss the signs, there would be people to tell him.

In the meantime, Lori deactivated the active defenses. She reconfigured the binding of lightningwisps guarding the entryway of her Dungeon back into a binding to repel bugs, and dissolved the dome of darkwisps, letting the light of the sky shine down on her demesne again. The stone she had displaced to make the moat in her entryway, she slowly moved back, though she kept the stone barrier under the overhead balcony in place for the moment. Just because she couldn't feel anything roaming her demesne didn't mean there weren't any.

As the moat water being displaced by the returning stone began to rise, Lori double checked that the binding of waterwisps at the floodwall to pump water from the lowest point behind the wall to the river, and found it functioning as intended.

Once the water was gone, Lori restored the entryway floor as best as she could without actually being there to see it. She'd have to do it properly when she got back home. The final wall of displaced stone, she left in place for until Rian signaled back that they were ready.

"Great Binder? Lord Yllian says they're ready."

Lori opened her eyes at Riz's words. Her temporary-Rian was standing there with her spear, looking content to wait indefinitely. Unfolding her legs beneath her, Lori got up from her niche and walked over to the receptacles imbuing their active defenses. She carefully touched the contact wire were it sank into the wall, and deactivated the binding of lightningwisps keeping abominations out of the air vent intake. The darkwisps in front of the mine entrance were also deactivated and dissolved.

Straightening up, Lori grabbed her staff so she wouldn't have to bend down again and used it to contact the stone she had raised to keep the doors from opening. The stone sank down, actually leaving a little depression on the ground as she displaced the material sideways to the wall. "All right," she said, "Open the doors. But don't put the stones and bars into my alcove yet! I'm still using it."

The mine tunnel outside her alcove were full of men who had the look of both northerners—at least, north of Taniar Demesne, the place she grew up—and former militia. Pale skin that easily flushed red with exertion, hair in mostly pale shades of color, general physical fitness, and an air of casual, almost bored readiness. They moved with quickly and competently to pick up and move the rather heavy rocks out of the way of the door. The wooden beams were lifted from where they rested to bar the door shut, and the door was opened.

Nothing was waiting for them beyond the door but more stone, more beams, and another door, which was a good sign.

The manual labor was repeated twice more, and then the outermost door was being opened.

"Great Binder, why are you gripping the back of my shirt so firmly?" Riz asked.

"Don't be distracted," Lori said firmly as she stood behind her temporary-Rian.

"Great Binder, if you're going to use me as a shield, then just stay behind me. I'll protect you."

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

"If you keep holding my shirt like that, I won't be able to use my spear properly, and won't be able to protect you as well."

Coincidentally and completely by chance, Lori's hand, which had been pushing on Riz's back so that the two of them wouldn't be crowded so close, fell down to grip her staff. Lightningwisps were making the quartz in her staff vibrate, and she had a few lengths of firewood in a bag at her side, convenient mediums for carrying and throwing firewisps. Whisperers throwing lengths of wood with a binding of firewisps on it was the truth to the popular theater trope of hurling fireballs, since in theater productions they couldn't use actual wood and had to use brightly painted balls of fabric and ribbon streamers instead.

The binding of lightwisps still anchored to the staff had been dimmed since it was close to most peoples' eye-levels, but she was ready to brighten it as soon as it was needed.

Nothing leapt at the foremost militia when the doors opened, which was a good sign. Actually, a wave of damp coolness washed over them as rain fell outside. The skies were dark, and it was hard to see. Lori couldn't tell if it was early morning, late afternoon, or midday with really thick cloud cover.

She stared out at the rain as people grumbled but began to ready themselves to step out into it. "Everyone, back inside," she said.

There was a moment's pause in the grumbling.

"Great Binder?" Riz asked.

"It's too dark to see anything, it's raining so people are going to get sick, and we're on a rocky hill that's been blasted apart for most of a week," Lori said. "Which means the grounds is probably littered with rumble and slippery besides. Everyone back inside, we'll check things when there's more light to see by. Yllian, have some of the empty water barrels brought out to catch the rain. It should be clean enough, and if it's not, I can do things to it." There was enough flat ground in front of the mine entrance, though as she had said it as strew with rumble, mostly rocks that had been blasted apart. "Close and bar the doors again when you're done."

"Wouldn't be the first time we've drunk rainwater, Great Binder," Yllian said. "All right, you all heard the Great Binder. Everyone back inside. No one's to go into that and break their neck 'til it's brighter out. You three, get some barrels out here. Make sure the only thing dripping on them is rain. The water dripping down from higher up might be tainted with something."

Despite the order, no one really went back inside, though Lori decided to retreat back to her alcove. The militia stayed crowded around the mine entrance, watching the rain as three barrels were carried out and positioned so they wouldn't roll down the slope. A Lori waited for them to come back in so they'd close all the doors again, she checked back on her demesne.

Ah, there, Rian had put the stone on the shelf.

She reached through the core and began to lower the final stone barrier separating her Dungeon from outside as the doors of the mine were closed again.