Demesne

Eventually, all the preparations were finished. Everyone was inside the dragon shelter, the box-like planter was crammed full of uprooted crops and dirt—and Lori had needed to make two more—the necessary bindings had been formed and anchored, and the multiple doors that secured the dragon shelter had been shut. Lori had even had the time to carefully raise a stone barrier outside of the dragon shelter's entrance using the mining tailings, an added layer of protection against any large dragonborn abominations or the possibility of something large and heavy hitting the doors and battering them open.

Then all there was left to do was wait.

Lori had ordered Riz to go to sleep, and told Riz to have one of her friends do the same. Then she had unfurled her bedroll, locked the door to her alcove, and done as she had ordered them to, waiting for the dragon's arrival. The Dungeon Binder had fallen asleep feeling the emanations coming from the distant but approaching dragon, hoping she was correct in her estimation.

When she had awoken, it had been of her own volition rather than someone banging on the door to wake her up. Sitting up and wincing at how uncomfortable the stone niche she'd slept in was—she already missed her bed—Lori took a moment judge what she could feel of the dragon's approach. The waves had grown stronger as she'd slept, but not by much. How slowly was it moving?

She checked her awareness of her demesne's wisps next, and found that Rian had not yet given the signal for her to seal the demesne. Either he had been supremely negligent, or he had spoken to Shanalorre—or one of the two Deadspeakers there at the moment—and had come to the same conclusion she had: that it would be some time before the dragon arrived, and that they had time. Her lord was many things—strangely oblivious, not as funny as he thought he was, overly theatrical—but if he was negligent, she'd have probably already set him on fire.

Sitting up and pulling on her socks and boots—as comfortable as they were, she wasn't going to be wearing tsinelas in a situation she might have to run—Lori grabbed her staff and slid back the latch on the door of the alcove, carefully pulling it open. No one was sleeping on the other side, but that was because Riz and her friends were already up, their bedrolls and packs set neatly along one wall. They all turned to look at her as she stepped out, but she ignored them as she began lowering the stone barrier outside of the shelter's entrance.

"Uh, Great Binder? Is that safe?" Riz said.

"The dragon isn't here yet," Lori replied absently as she softened the stone barrier and let it collapse into a pile. Easier than trying to pull all the stone neatly into the ground or making it swing out of the way. "So yes, it's safe to open the door. Best empty out the latrine and get water while we can. Help me get this door open."

Which meant Riz and her friends lifted the wooden beams that kept the doors into the dragon shelter secured. Three layers of doors were unlocked, the final one letting in a burst of warm air—ARGH, she had to add a firewisp binding to the ventilation, or else she'll bake!

That aside, there was nothing unusual about the view Lori saw when the doors opened. There were the trees on the other side of the river that rose up higher than the hill they were currently in and on—and for the first time she wondered what had been done to clear the slopes of the hill of trees so thoroughly, then looked towards the dome and wondered why she'd bothered asking—and beyond that was the blue sky and clouds.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the direction the dragon was coming from. Lori had to step out of the dragon shelter—deactivating the binding of lightningwisps before doing so, just in case—and walked until she was facing the direction she could feel the dragon coming from, the sun shining on her right side as she faced an empty-looking sky. Well, empty of dragons. The clouds appeared to be perfectly normal clouds, the sky was perfectly normal sky. They didn't give her the sense of a yawning void, or something that was staring at her. There was no unnatural lightning or sounds that acted incorrectly. There was simply perfectly normal sky.

…

That was actually far more disturbing. Was it an invisible dragon? Invisibility technically wasn't hard, after all. There was a binding of lightwisps that had light flow around you. After all, if light didn't reflect off you, you couldn't be seen. The problem was the binding only worked for light coming in one direction and exactly that direction, and there were a multitude of directions to choose from. So the binding only really worked if you were standing on the end of a long hallway, with people only glancing as they passed by the opposite end, and it helped if you were standing somewhere dark.

It wouldn't surprise her if a dragon could somehow render itself invisible, though. Dragons did strange things like that, and if a Dungeon Binder was very, very lucky, they'd be able to figure out how. There were stories and hearsay about the Dungeon Binders of some demesne being able to alter materials into dragon scale.

Lori claimed and bound lightwisps, anchoring them to her thumbnail and forefingernail—claiming through her skin was so much more convenient than using her eyes—and forming them into complementary bindings that acted like a spyglass. It took some adjustment—it always did—as she didn't have some sort of straight edge to draw out the edges of the bindings, and when she was finished the edges of the image produced were blurry—it always was—but she was used to that. Her thumb and forefinger extended at right angles to each other, she held her hand close to her face and closed one eye as she looked through the binding.

The image in the center was greatly magnified, letting her see the tops of distant trees closer to the horizon. Lori turned slowly so she could actually see what she was looking at as she scanned for signs of dragons. The wind moving the wrong way, eyes, things floating upwards, beasts whose forms were mashed together like clay, unnatural colors in the sky…

Scan as she might however—which admittedly wasn't for very long, because she got impatient—there were no signs of a dragon. Well, no obvious signs. Was it still over the horizon? It wasn't unlikely—such had happened before—but usually it was possible to see something once a night had passed. She checked for clouds, seeing if they were distorted where she was looking, but the heat meant there were no clouds to see…

Lori lowered her hands in disgust, absently deactivating the binding on her fingertips. "Erzebed, have someone go get Yllian," she ordered over the sounds of bugsong and seels making their usual loud, obnoxious sounds.

"Yes, Great Binder?" a voice behind her said.

Lori turned to look, and saw Yllian patiently standing there. She gave Riz an approving nod. "Good work on the promptness, Erzebed. Yllian, tell everyone that the dragon will be some time yet. Tonight, possibly even tomorrow. All equipment is to remain in the dragon shelter, but while we can, we'll be eating in the dining hall and be outside so we don't have to use the ventilation. Have the latrines cleaned out and the drinking water replaced. After breakfast, I'll be catching some seels. Get them butchered and ready for storage as soon as possible. Don't track blood or waste in the shelter."

"Understood, Great Binder."

Lori nodded, and turned to add some firewisps for deleting heat to the airwisp binding of the ventilation.

Breakfast was a bit late that morning, as people had slept in from last night's rush, and the benches and table had to be carried out and set back in place in the dining hall. The breakfast stew was River's Fork's usual strange blend of meat, small cubes of tubers, root vegetables, leaves and sweet fruits. Not exactly objectionable, but she preferred the way stew was cooked in her demesne.

After the meal, men and women went off to do as Lori had ordered Yllian to have them do, as well as other work to keep them occupied and out of trouble. Water went in, latrine waste went out. Fruits that were ripening that day were picked and added to the food stores. Small things that had been forgotten in homes were retrieved. And Lori had gone seeling.

The brat had tried to teach her how to seel properly once, the year before. The methods had involved a sharpened stick, a rather uncomfortable wait standing on sun-heated rocks, and trying to manually adjust for refraction as she tried to track and anticipate the fast, darting forms under the water. She… well, she hadn't really taken well to the brat's methods. Only natural, of course. The brat had said it had taken several days of constant practice, and Lori had only had the morning to learn. Still, she'd learned to seel in her own way, and it was effective enough.

Of course, that had been inside of her demesne, where she had been able to control all the unclaimed wisps simply by willing it, but the principles were sound.

"Don't make any noise or sudden movements," Lori ordered Riz. "Just… stand there unless I'm attacked. Keep an eye on that part of the sky—" she pointed in the direction where she could still feel the dragon approaching, "—and warn me if you see anything that might be the dragon approaching, no matter how small or far away."

"Don't do anything different from what we always do. Understood, Great Binder."

Lori paused in the act of sticking the metal-capped butt end of her staff into the water, turning to give the woman a flat look. "Leave the attempts at being funny to your man or else I'll make you an officer."

The woman flinched. "Yes, Great Binder. Sorry, Great Binder."

With the end-cap of her staff in the river, Lori reach through the wire connected to it to start claiming the waterwisps of the river. It… had been a while since she'd had to claim moving water, and it took a few frustrating moments for her to remember to anchor the waterwisps to the riverbed so it wouldn't flow away. Still, there was something… soothing about just standing there at the edge of the water and holding her staff as she slowly claimed more and more waterwisps, compensating for how the river's current tried to push what she'd claimed further on.

Well, it would be soothing if the sun wasn't getting progressively hotter and the air more humid. As it was, the soothing parts of the experience were quickly grown over by the agonizing discomfort. The airwisps and firewisps—and now there were waterwisps as well to try to mitigate the humidity—anchored to the bone clips on the brim of her hat did their best to keep her cool, but the relief was limited to her face, and maybe the sides of her head. The rest of her body felt like it was boiling. She was so covered in sweat one would think she'd fallen into the river, although it wasn't anywhere near as coo—

Lori blinked and stared down at the river. She reached up and took of her hat. "Erzebed, hold this."

Riz dutifully took hold of the hat.

Making sure to keep a grip on her staff and the waterwisps she was claiming through it, Lori took two steps into the river and fell face-first into the water.

If she was going to be wet anyway, it might as well feel good!