Lori changed quickly, pulling on her clothes and rushing down the stairs from her room, barely remembering to seal the way behind her. It was still dark outside the dungeon, and Lori wondered how long she'd managed to sleep… no, no time for that. She hurried towards the one shelter left, noting that the Um no longer had a line in front of it. Was anyone inside…?

Shaking her head, she reached out and altered the bindings on all her lightwisps, diminishing their glow and leaving only the light of the moons, partially obscured by clouds. She scanned the horizon—what she could see of it— trying to find…

She felt it again, that distant sense of a wave being pushed in front of something, and she turned towards it. The horizon was dark… too dark. It seemed a yawning void, deeper than any black she had ever seen…

Lori carefully bound the lightwisps in her eyes, slowly increasing the intensity of what passed through, and the night began to brighten. The clouds almost seemed to glow with colors of moonlight. But not that horizon. It remained dark and terrible and…

Lori felt a shiver run through her as the dark moved, and she was reminded of nothing so much as a hungry tongue licking lips.

She undid the binding on her eyes and ran for the shelter.

The shelter had a door, but it was more to keep the heat in than people out, so there was a latch on the outside as well. she fumbled with it for a moment before flipping it up and opening the door. The inside was dark, and she reached her hand out into the moonlight to catch some lightwisps to bind, slapping the binding on her forehead so that the glow would light her way.

Rian was sleeping closest to the door, on… what appeared to be her old bed. She recognized the marks on the headboard. Did that mean before she'd given up her bed, he'd been sleeping on the floor…? No, focus!

"Rian," she said, not bothering to lower her voice or whisper. "Rian, wake up!"

Rian groaned. "Go away," he… probably said. He seemed to be using only his throat to communicate, as if enunciating was too much effort.

"Rian, wake up, we have an emergency," she said sternly.

"Unless it's a dragon, go away."

"It's a dragon," Lori said.

Silence.

The silence continued as Rian sat up, one hand up to block out the light shining from her forehead to look him in the eye. "Really?" he said, actually enunciating this time.

"Yes." She let him have the time to embrace the implications.

Matter-of-factly, Rian turned, grabbed his pillow, pressed it against his face, and screamed.

He did this twice more as Lori began to get impatient.

"All right," he eventually said. "I'll get everyone inside, you… I think we don't have water?"

Lori nodded. "Get everything that can be moved to the Dungeon moved," she said. "And fix your bedroll."

"Really? My bedroll?"

"Do you want to sleep on rock after this? We have a little time."

"Getting my bedroll!"

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Lori claimed and imbued the darkwisps of the night sky of her demesne before she shined the lights again so people could navigate. She tore open the front of the Dungeon to let people get through easily, moving the stone aside so she could rebuild the bulwark later.

The old reservoir pit was still there, and Lori softened a thin layer of the exposed surface and drew up the stone to revel a new layer of it, to remove anything that had been growing down there. She bound firewisps to heat and sterilize its surfaces, just in case. There was no charred scent of anything getting cooked, so hopefully nothing had grown inside and fallen off when she drew out the stone. Still, perhaps…

No, no time to worry about that. Lori rushed to the river, binding the water to move back to the reservoir.

Around her, the demesne was waking up. Thankfully, no one panicked, not even the young children. One learned not to panic and just do what you were told when a dragon was coming. People were packing up their belongings and getting it ready to be brought to the Dungeon. An orderly line had formed as they waited for Lori to finish moving water to the reservoir.

With every passing moment, Lori could feel the dragon's coming. Every immaterial wave sent a shiver up her back despite her best efforts, made her hairs stand on end. The sky was an impenetrable black dome above, her claimed darkwisps forming a thick shroud, leaving her unable to tell the time.

With the reservoir filled and the way obstructed to keep people away from contaminating it, she allowed people into the Dungeon.

They hadn't practiced, hadn't drilled, and so many people simply set down their things in the dining hall like last time.

"No, not up here!" Lori yelled. "Downstairs, all that stuff goes downstairs! One alcove per family, keep all your things down there! Rian!" People winced as she used airwisps to let her voice be heard. She needed Rian to deal with this, she still needed to alter the latrines so that they'd have capacity and build some baths where there was still time and space…

"Your Bindership?"

She turned and saw… what was his name? Beard… ah, right, Deil! "What?" she demanded.

"Lord Rian sent me your Bindership, he's making sure all the blacksmithing tools don't get left behind," the carpenter said.

Lori grimaced but… "You've set up shop below, correct?" Lori said. At his nod, Lori pointed to the people who just dropped their things at the dining hall. "Get them down there and make sure they put their things in alcoves and not just on the ground. One alcove per family, we need to fit as many people down there as possible. Then stay up here and keep people from just setting up wherever and getting in my way."

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The man nodded. "Yes, your Bindership," he said. He started chivying people. "You heard her Bindership! Downstairs, all of you, one alcove per family. Bring your things, we all eat up here and we can't do that if you leave them all over the tables! Move, move!"

Lori turned away, waiting impatiently for some children carrying bedrolls, pillows and blankets to make way so she could head towards the latrines. They'd been altered so that they could be cleaned manually, but from the smell, no one had cleaned them yet. The contents had festered, leaving a…. rich aroma. Face set, Lori formed the hole under the latrine into a pit three paces deep, displacing the stone to the side so it would rise somewhere else, which she set aside for later to reverse the alteration. She also set a binding of firewisps inside the receptacle to try and kill the smell and reduce the volume of what was left.

She left the latrines sizzling, a binding carrying the bad air outside while they still could. Right, now she needed to make a bath…

Waste water, she needed to deal with waste water… she'd been feeding her bath's waste water into the ground under the farm fields, but she wasn't sure that would work in this instance… well, no choice. She didn't have stone to spare, so she picked one of the back corners of the dining hall and began to excavate the ground to about a pace down, using the stone from that to raise walls and form a basin for water. This also meant she didn't have to worry about water spilling out everywhere. It was small, so people would have to bathe in shifts near constantly, but hopefully it would help people from getting sick. A wall divided the new bath into sides for men and women. And if she had to deal with peeking, she'd just toss them out into the dragon…

All right, that was water, baths and latrines… was there anything else…? Lori headed towards the front of the Dungeon, looking around. People were still coming inside, but there were still some milling about outside. She felt at her connection to the wisps, felt voids moving back and forth between buildings…

"Rian!" she called again, her voice amplified by airwisps and making some people standing near her jump.

A shadow outline near the second dining hall turned and headed towards her. She began moving towards him, not having time to wait, and they met halfway up the slope. "Yes?" he said with what seemed like strained patience.

"Do you have someone keeping track of all the people coming into the Dungeon?"

"I have Cassan and Doctor Ganan doing that, and they should have told off the other medics to check too," he said. "The new houses have been emptied and locked down and we're about finished with the old houses. Everyone in the shelter have moved their things down into the dungeon already and I've asked people to go around making sure no one left any fires burning. I'm having the tables and chairs from the second dining hall carried in too, but only after everyone else has gotten inside." He hesitated. "We also need help with the hunters and tanners. Our demesne's entire store of raw and curing skins are with them, and the brine pots too. The brine pots are important, because it took them weeks to gather them up from seel and beast brains…"

"Change priorities to the skins and brine, then," Lori said. "We can always make more tables." She felt the dragon, coming closer and closer. The air was still, without a breath of wind to it at all, but there was a smell in the air, like charred sweetness… "Put them in front of the metal vaults so no one has to navigate the stairs."

"That's where we put the blacksmith stuff, but I think there's still room," Rian nodded. "What about the wood curing sheds? Do we try to get some down to the Dungeon?"

"I'll handle that," Lori said. She hesitated, then raised up a hand, gathering lightwisps to make a binding. "Hold still."

"What are you—" Rian managed to get out before she reached up and slapped her hand on his head. He might had felt the air thicken strangely before she took her hand away. "Did you just put a light on my head?"

"Makes you easier to find," she said. Technically, it wasn't on his head, it was on the airwisps around his head, which she'd bound to stay near his vicinity. Hopefully it wouldn't come off, she'd bound the air around his temples and down his chin. "Get moving!"

Lori hiked up towards the curing sheds before pausing a moment. She reached upwards, towards the darkwisps she'd bound and willed them to part to the east.

No light. It was still night.

Binding the new darkwisps that had rushed in, she continued on her way.

The sawpits were clear, and the tool sheds were empty of anything but dust and small offcuts of wood. Thankfully, the curing sheds were in a line all the better for when she had to sit down and maintain her binding to dry the wood for use. For a moment, Lori stared at them, already reconsidering what she wanted to do… then shook her head. If they lost the wood, they lost the wood. This way, at least, they'd have a chance of keeping them.

The sheds were made of packed earth using her Whispering, the doors made of wood so that the humidity and heat could be controlled while curing. Nothing too hard to replace, given enough time. Out of habit, Lori knelt down, touching her fingers to the earth as she breathed in magic, passing it through her bones, through her nails and into the earth, even as she bound the earthwisp directly under the sheds. She began to displace the earth and stone sideways.

In front of her, the sheds and their stored wood began to sink into the ground. She did it carefully so that the sheds would stay level, even as she made a heap rise using the displaced earth, formed behind the sinking sheds. She sank them down, deeper and deeper, until they were a pace below the surface. The heap flowed forward, covering the trench the sheds has sunk into, and Lori used it to mark where the sheds were buried.

The smell of burned sweetness had gotten stronger, making Lori feel strangely hungry as she moved on to the next thing she had to do, passing men and women carrying tables and chairs down from the second dining hall. She sealed the cave where they kept the mushrooms—they'd already been harvested, so only immature ones were growing, but it was full spore-laden wood, and it would have been annoying to replace—leaving only a small air hole the width of her finger. The bone pile was also sunk beneath the ground and covered. An experiment, she told herself, to see if it helped.

Rian found her as she was heading back towards the Dungeon, the light on top of his head letting her know he was coming. "There you are! We're moving the tables and benches from the second dining room, and we've already brought down the pots, bowls and utensils. Also, the curing sheds seem to have collapsed. Was that you?"

"I buried them," Lori said succinctly. "We can try to recover the wood later."

"Smart. You need to go to sleep."

Lori blinked at him. "What?"

"The dragon isn't here yet, so you need to sleep while you can," Rian said.

Lori hesitated, staring up at the dark sky, then towards the Dungeon. A waved washed over her, seeming to emphasize the smell of charred sweetness. Reluctantly, she parted it in the direction of the dragon.

It had crept over the horizon, looking terribly close. The darkness deeper than black made patterns now, not by the light of the moons or lighting, but of deep gradients of nothingness, tracing flickering forks of branching lightning…

"Can you see it?" she said, and found her voice sounded small.

"I can see it," Rian said, and Lori realized he was staring up as well, his shoulders shaking. "Even though I'm pretty sure it should be physically impossible…"

As they watched, the multitudes of branches seemed to uncurl, reaching out in all directions…

Rian violently shook his head. "I'll keep an eye on it," he said, a quaver in his voice. "Go to sleep. I'll wake you up, just keep your door open."

"I don't think I'll be able to…" Lori said, swallowing. Why did she feel like it could see her even without eyes…

"Well, you have to try," Rian said, and his voice had a forced harshness in it. "You've done everything you can already. Until that gets here, you need to rest to protect us from it. So go and rest."

Lori closed her eyes—why was it burned into her eyelids, even though it hadn't been bright?—nodded sharply, and stumbled towards her room. Rest… she needed to rest…

She stumbled up her stairs, moving the stone out of the way and sat down on her nice, soft bed. Her hands shook as she took off her boots. The charred sweetness was weaker up in her room, for which she was glad as she lay back onto her pillow.

She could feel it out there, still coming…

Lori didn't know how, but she managed to fall asleep. Her dreams were filled with darkness that writhed…