Demesne

While Lori would normally have no objection to eating lots of nice, tasty and presumably untampered-with fruit for lunch, it was annoying when she saw the stew that she had missed. Rian had eaten it with enthusiasm, despite the fact the stew had grown cold and slightly congealed, and the bread had become hard.

"You know, it's still good. You sure you don't—?"

"Eat quietly, Rian!"

With her stomach full, Lori moved on to dealing with the rest of the dragonfrost as she left the corpse to burn. Well, she left the corpse to burn after she found some rocks she could use to anchor a binding of airwisps that blew the smoke—and other gasses, many of which were nauseating—as far upward as she could send it, which was very far. The ground around the corpse was wet so there was little chance of the fire spreading, but Lori still formed a second binding for firewisps and lightwisps in a low ring on the ground. The lightwisps demarcated the binding, while the firewisps were set to reduce anything that crossed it to human body temperature, in case one of her idiots decided to poke it with a finger or something. Any fire that somehow managed to stay alight despite the mud around the corpse and tried to spread across the ground would be reduced to well below the amount of heat needed to sustain itself.

After heavily imbuing everything so that it would last a while, Lori could finally leave to deal with the dragonfrost. Drawing water from the river and using a binding to increase its viscosity and surface tension so she could roll it as a ball across the ground to bring it to her destination, she then combined the binding of waterwisps with firewisps, and turned the ball of water into vapor. It exploded around her, shockingly cold, but the firewisps were quick to start raising up the water's temperature again… which quickly become hideously uncomfortable. It was like being covered with hot sweat, even if it wasn't condensing on her skin!

Lori hastily reformed the binding of firewisps until the vapor felt nice and cool on her skin. After all, it didn't need to be all that hot, simply hot enough to melt the dragonfrost. As long as the vapor was above the temperature that water froze, it would work. The binding she'd used in her demesne had been hot mostly so that it would self-sustain in the face of a widening area while she did something else. Most of the dragonfrost inside the dome was manageable with shovels and didn't really need to be moved, but outside was a different matter.

Their two fruit orchards, the cluster of trees with the bindings to let it grow branches quickly so they could be harvested for firewood, the original fields where the demesne had grown crops, and the newer ones such as the terraced plots that allowed them to grow on sloped land were all covered in dragonfrost, as were the trees themselves. The meanings on the trees had been deactivated when the dragon had first arrived, but Lori couldn't help but note that keeping them active might have been more beneficial. The meanings caused the trees to produce excess heat, after all.

Not that it was all cold. There was a pile of burning abominations outside of the dome, and while it gave of some smells of charring meat and hair, it was mostly woodsmoke from the wood and plants that had been fused to the bodies of beasts and bugs. Some of the abominations seemed fully plant, if several plants fused together and deadspoken to be mobile. Certainly it was burning far cleaner than the corpse she had set alight, although there was still the cloying sweetness of burning abomination blood. Two people had been tasked with both tending to the fire as well as throwing in further abomination corpses from another pile, otherwise the fire would have grown far too big.

Lori skirted them to keep her vapor cloud from shrouding their work. In this, the relative stillness of the weather was a boon, as the only air turbulence was coming from the updrafts generated by the two fires. There were no winds she had to account for to keep the vapor she'd bound to her staff in place, so she was free to let it mostly trail behind her without having to worry about it being blown away. She walked the border between the dome and the fields, anchoring the binding of waterwisps to the ground at regular intervals as Rian and Riz fell into step next to her, a spear in one hand.

She paused, then turned towards them. "Rian, Erzebed what are you doing here?"

"I saw you walking outside the dome and thought you might be planning to do something about… well, that," he said, nodding towards the dragonfrost-covered fields. "It's safe on this side, but there might still be abominations further from the dome. I don't know how far from the dome is safe, but it's just generally a good idea to have someone to watch you back when you're doing Whispering that might be taking up all you attention from, say, some abomination coming up behind you." He jumped and kicked his feet to dislodge some bugs that had buzzed around his legs as he looked behind them. "There probably won't be any, but you're our Dungeon Binder. Best you're protected."

Riz nodded in agreement. "The others are helping with the bug clearing, so it's just us."

She looked down at Rian's feet. "Won't that be difficult when you're dancing?" Riz, in contrast, was wearing boots.

"Yes, I was sort of hoping if I stood close enough to you I can be standing inside whatever binding you have around yourself." Rian said with… well, completely expected blunt honesty. "I'm sorry for whatever I did. Can you please make my bug repeller bigger now?"

Lori gave him a blank look. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"This is about the notes, isn't it?"

"If you're going to be protecting me while I work, than stop talking and let me work. You're being distracting."

"Come on, if I'd put the notes in your pack, it would have gotten wrinkled and maybe damaged! And this time you didn't bring a pack, so should you really be bringing home your notes? They might get wet!"

…

She hated it when he had a point.

Lori gave him an annoyed look. "You have a solution, I presume?"

"We can put it in Riz's pack," Rian said. "There should be room inside, and the soap's dry by now. Of course, that's if she agrees to—"

"Erzebed, let me put my notes in your pack to keep it from getting wet on the way back to Lorian Demesne."

"Yes, Great Binder."

"Wow, instantly?"

"I'm the Dungeon Binder."

"She's the Great Binder."

"… well… all right then. See, there was a solution after all!"

"Stop being distracting Rian, I have work to do."

Lori had finished going around the parts of the perimeter of the dome, anchoring the binding of waterwisps she was trailing as vapor, and had just finished walking out to the stand of trees whose growth would normally have been accelerated to grow branches quickly when they did actually encounter a dragonborn abomination.

She had been in the midst of the now-routine motion of anchoring the binding she'd been trailing when she heard Riz say in a calm, level voice, "Rian, be ready to get the Great Binder out of here."

The words prompted Lori to turn to see what she was talking about—and cause her to spin around instantly, the binding she'd been handling becoming a secondary concern as she raised her staff diagonally before her, gripping the wooden stave with both hands.

The beast—no, abomination—the abomination wasn't notably big. Though shaped like a leaper, it seemed smaller than normal, its head only level with Lori's shoulder. A juvenile or perhaps an adolescent? Instead of a normal coat of feathers, it looked like it had been fused to a honeydungeon's worth of sweetbugs. The coat writhed with countless semi-transparent wings that beat futilely, the bugs seemingly part of its feathers and skin, though most of it seemed to be concentrated to the left side of the abominations body. It was some distance away—Lori would estimate it to be twenty, maybe thirty paces—and if it hadn't been for Riz' warning letting her know there was something to look for, Lori probably wouldn't have noticed it until it was much closer. Riz had leveled her spear at it, putting herself between the abomination and Lori. Rian had moved next to Lori, trying his best to hold his spear like Riz was doing and only looking partly successful.

"Should we yell for help?" Rian asked through gritted teeth, as if the very act of moving his mouth would draw the abomination's attention.

"Don't move. Maybe it will go away. If it moves towards us, you and the Great Binder run and start yelling, in that order," Riz said, much more quietly and calmly. "I'll hold it off. Don't argue."

"Wasn't planning to. Don't die."

As a rule, Lori didn't normally rush when she was forming a binding. The binding was formed when the binding was formed, and if she wanted to form it properly, she had to pay attention to all the details. That being said, ripping lightningwisps from the binding around her repelling bugs and hastily forming a binding of lightningwisps and airwisp was definitely rushed. Her heart beat rapidly as Lori tried to remember how she had seen it made. Lightningwisps in the middle, airwisps and lightningwisps around this core to keep the lightningwisps contained, airwisps to provide thrust and maneuverability, lightwisps anchored to her skin to allow her to control the binding at a distance…

After the initial hurried panic, Lori watched the beast intently as she continued forming the binding. She'd never made this before, but when she'd seen it, it had stuck to her mind despite her having written down the flow diagram and adding as many notes as she could through her far-removed, non-visual observations. It had probably helped she'd done so early in the duration of the dragon's passing, when her mind had still been fresh. It had been fascinating to observe, the lightningwisps being contained in a ball to prevent premature eruption, and she had immediately hit upon the idea of guiding it as an airwisp projectile.

Her 'lightning-ball' would no doubt have a velocity far slower than a stream of lightningwisps, but theoretically it would have the advantage of not needing to lay a pathway for the lighting to travel across, meaning it could be launched immediately upon forming and taking aim. No need have a stationary target or having to maneuver the target towards the pathway she had made. Just form and blow it towards the target, and if it misses, the connection through lightwisps would allow her have it correct and perhaps even self-propel.

If it worked. After all, this was the first time she'd formed it.

…

She wished she'd kept a piece of wood on her person to throw. Thrown firewisps were always reliable.

The three of them stood still, although Lori was prepared to throw her binding and start running if need be. Rian had even stopped his silly dancing, holding still lest his sudden movements draw the abomination's attention as he moved to her side. The bugs on the abomination's skin continued to buzz, and it seemed to shudder as if the abomination was trying to dislodge the bugs off itself. The abomination seemed to turn away—

There was a blur of movement, and by the time Lori had realized the abomination was running towards them, it had already crossed half the distance. Rainbows! She hated how fast leapers were! Her hand snapped up, the binding she had prepared ready, and even though it wasn't a water cutter, she let it go. Air blasted away from her and towards the abomination, carrying the still-deactivated binding of airwisps and lightningwisps. Through the channel of lightwisps anchored to her hand, she activated the binding, and a line of light appeared between her and a rapidly moving point in the air. That point erupted in lightning, lines moving outward in all directions only to be stopped as it hit shell of lightingwisps and ariwisps, becoming a ball of swiftly-moving light—

The ball of lightningwisps slammed into the abominations chest, and there was a deafening explosion of thunder, a blinding light, and a feeling of heat on her face. Lori felt someone grab her raised hand and start pulling her in a run. She stumbled a bit on the dragonfrost, dropping her staff, but Lori didn't fall as she heard muffled yelling.

Then she was running, her ears ringing and bright spots in her eyes…