When Lori woke up from a dreamless sleep, she discovered that in her bed she had not been turned into a dragonborn bug abomination.

Instinctively, she checked the dome above and sighed as she found it still holding. Unfortunately, the dragon was also still there. She could feel its oppressive presence over the demesne, a pressure on all her wisps like a strong wind, even though the air itself seemed dead and still as a hot summer.

…

Lori turned to go back to sleep, as no one had woken her up, so it wasn't her shift yet. Best get as much rest as she could.

…

She got up and went to her private bath to relieve herself. Then she went back to bed, curling up on her nice, soft bedroll and closing her eyes.

––––––––––––––––––

Sometime later, Lori woke up to someone knocking on her door.

This was concerning, because she didn't have a door, just a hallway she sealed with magic, and she'd definitely remembered to seal it the night—day?—before…

Groaning, Lori sat up, somehow feeling more tired and sleepy than when she'd last woken up despite probably having slept for longer, got up, and stumbled out to her hallway to see what was going on. She found the way, as intended, still barred with stone growing from the walls, and through what gaps they were, she saw Rian standing there… holding his writing plank of wood against a gap in the stone and knocking on it with his knuckles.

"Oh good, you're up," he said with annoying early morning cheerfulness. How did someone who was so difficult to wake up manage to be such a morning person? "Breakfast is ready, the baths need more water, and the air slits are slightly clogged but air's still getting in, so no rush."

Lori nodded tiredly. "Did anyone die?"

"No, everyone managed to stay safe and—oh, you're probably not talking about the militia. No, no one killed someone in the night either," Rian assured her. "No one's been reported as sick with anything either, which is good. And most people got a good night's sleep. Come on down to eat, we can talk about it at the table."

Lori nodded, grumbling. "I'll just take a bath," she told him.

She headed for her room, undressed, and went to her private bath to do just that.

…

Then she had to connect the pipes leading to her bath to the reservoir and check all the pipes for voids of wisps before finally managing to take a bath.

––––––––––––––––––

Unable to see the sun and moons, time maintained only by the brat during the designated 'day' and whoever Rian had to replace her at night—whom Lori suspected wasn't as diligent at it as the brat was—life took on a strange monotony. Lori took to brightening the lightwisps at the start of her shift and added a few firewisps to them to simulate sunlight. At the end of her shift, she removed the radiant heat and dimmed the light in the dining hall, and even further in the second level, while making the lightwisps change between red, blue, and pale white to simulate the moons. It was something they did in the dragon shelters when people had to stay there for more than a day, and it was only now that Lori realized how important they were, marking the cycles of day and night so people knew when to sleep, lest the unchanging walls drive them to be constantly awake.

Despite this, there was an increasing restlessness during the 'daytime' hours, when Lori was active and when most people were awake, save for the night shift who would deal with cooking and guarding the air slits. After weeks and weeks of work for nearly everyone, every day, this sudden lack of things to do, while initially welcome, emphasized there was little else to do but work.

Some people had things to keep themselves busy. Besides the carpenters and weavers, whose work areas were already moved to the Dungeon, the farmers worked to keep their uprooted crops alive and watered and well using what little dirt they had, and Rian had given them permission to get the soil from the pots of fruit seedlings provided they kept the seedlings alive too. The hunters and tanners checked that the skins, hides and furs they had brought in were curing properly, and an alcove needed to be cleared to give them a temporary place to work, since the skins had to be spread out. The sweetbugkeepers had brought their large, boxy hives into the Dungeon covered in old tent cloth to keep the things from getting loose, and checked hourly to make sure it was still secured. Even one of the immature workers getting out would be disruptive, never mind one of the mature ones, big enough to fit in Lori's fist. The chandler was also finding time to do some work, even if it was just taking the rendered fat from the kitchen and letting it settle and congeal.

Most of the rest had no seels to kill, no hidden food to gather, no ropeweed to cut, no trees to fell, no Um to use…

"Maybe you should let them play music and start dancing?" Rian suggested brightly one dinner between shift changes. With Riz, Umu and Mikon beside him being completely ignored, things almost seemed normal. "It'll let them burn off energy, give them something to concentrate on, we have the space for it—"

"No!" Lori declared as she made her move, taking the stones from a bowl and beginning her turn. "That's practically a party! It'll be loud! Annoying! I won't be able to sleep!"

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"If we hold it during the day shift, you wouldn't need to sleep," Rian pointed out. "Actually, you're not supposed to sleep, that's my time to sleep. So it will actually help!" He sounded so proud, as if he'd actually thought of a good idea she'd approve of.

"No," she said flatly as she finished her turn and Umu began peering at the bowls, obviously counting.

"It's the same principle as the competitions," Rian pressed. "People need something to do, and unless you're going to give them digging tools to expand the Dungeon…" He blinked suddenly. "Wait, are you actually thinking of giving them digging tools to expand the Dungeon?"

"Please don't," Umu said to no one in particular.

"It's better than the alternative," Lori said flatly.

As the days passed, however, Lori was reminded of Rian's insidiousness. A day later, she woke up to find someone had moved around the tables in the front half of the dining area. The tables had been pushed to the edges, except for the side where the militia were stationed in front of the air slits. In the cleared area people were dancing as people clapped and sang, feet pounding on the floor in an almost synchronized fashion as people did the steps together to the beat of the song. There was no music, but from how noisy it was one could be forgiven for thinking there was.

Only the table with Lori's Boat remained where it had been, serving as some sort of bizarre, off-center centerpiece to it all.

Lori felt her eyebrow twitching as she came down, finally realizing what the loud noise that had woken her up had been. She'd have shouted for Rian, but he was standing in front of her stairway.

"No music!" he said defensively as soon as he saw her. "They're just dancing and singing, but there's no music!"

"I was sleeping," she said grimly.

"It's about an hour past the start of your shift," Rian said, "so you actually slept longer than before. But don't worry, I'll still start my shift at the same time later tonight."

Lolilyuri was silent for a long time, just glaring at him. Finally she ground out, "Breakfast had better be ready."

"At the usual place, your Bindership," Rian said.

The dancing was actually quite tolerable without the music, but she wasn't going to admit that. But it kept people occupied, and for some reason less people were using the bathroom and latrines. Still, it meant less people were working on spinning thread or making the waterwheel. She was initially surprised to find Umu and Mikon working on the spinning wheel, but after some thought, it made sense. After all, Rian was asleep (in her hallway still, and why didn't he at least try to get an alcove, there were some still free that people weren't crowding anymore because they were dancing), and if they couldn't try for him…

Or maybe they just didn't know how to dance. Lori didn't, after all.

––––––––––––––––––

Six days after the dragon had arrived, with the water at less than half their reserve, the demesne several new game boards richer, and several days of musicless dancing, Lori woke up to finally feel the dragon starting to move away from the demesne. As it did, howling winds and pouring rain—which might not even have been water, but some other liquid, given dragons—could be heard through the air slits. It seemed to keep the dragonborn abominations away from the slits though. There were also sounds of things dropping. It might have been anything from normal hail to dragon scales.

Lori supposed they'd find out when the dragon had finally passed and the abominations and wisplings had finally settled down enough to open the Dungeon safely.

"I suppose that now is a good a time as any for planning what we should do once it's left completely," Rian said tiredly over breakfast. He winced a little at the echoing dance steps and Lori took a moment's malicious glee at seeing him so obviously annoyed by his own idea. "What should our priorities be?"

"Going to River's Fork to claim its core if it's still there," Lori said immediately.

"And… checking to see if our miners are all right, right?" Rian ventured.

"No, they're probably horribly dead," Lori said bluntly. "Shanalorre's a healing savant, she'd be completely ignorant of how to do anything that would even vaguely protect them from a dragon. Only the extremely lucky are probably still alive, and if the ferocity of the dragonborn abominations here is any indication, those still alive will have probably been swarmed and eaten."

Rian winced, and even the women next to him were looking uncomfortable. "Maybe people were able to get to the mine and barricade it," Rian said. "It's a possibility, right?"

"I wouldn't bet on it," Lori said. "No, they're probably all dead, best we just pick up the pieces while we still can." She titled her head. "Speaking of pieces, if we're lucky we'd be able to recover at least some of their grain. That should make a wonderful seed crop, with some left over for bread…"

It was a cheerful thought. Bread would have been nice. Surely with this many people, someone would know how to make bread, right?

Rian was taking deep breaths with his head bowed. "Well," he said, voice shaking slightly. "Beyond that, what else do we need to do?"

"Send out armed people to find abominations and kill them," Lori listed out. "Mark out any new plants on suspicion of being abominations and set them on fire. Mark out moving plants as abominations and set them on fire. Make sure the water is drinkable. See if the cured wood I buried can be retrieved. Repair all the roofs. Hope there are still seels and beasts left to hunt."

"We might actually have to use the dragon scales right away to make nails," Rian mused. "They'll be there already, and with nails it will be easier to repair the roofs."

"That will mean heavy lifting to move the dragon scales and getting the smiths ready and able to start forging," Lori said thoughtfully. "No more dancing tomorrow, people need to be well rested for all the work that needs to be done."

"I'll tell them," Rian said. "People have probably tired themselves out by now anyway."

"Do it before you go to sleep, I'd rather have a peaceful day today."

Rian rolled his eyes, and then yawned. "Yes, your Bindership, I'll do more work so I'm good and sleepy."

––––––––––––––––––

They cautiously opened the Dungeon again two days later, a day after the dragon had finally left the area of the demesne, just to give the abominations time to spread out and hopefully start dying. It was in the middle of Lori's 'day' shift, and she'd finally been able to release the dome of darkwisps from above them, as well as retrieving her staff from the core.

There were rows of militia in front of her, all with spears pointed towards where the entrance would be as she bound the earthwisps that made up the front of the dungeon. Lori had checked to make sure there were no voids of wisps that might have been a living thing or any mobile wisplings before she parted the stone. There was no change in smell or temperature, since all their air had been coming from outside in any case, but the sound of falling rain—and it was rain rather than acid, or golden abomination blood or liquefied air (oh, liquefied air! She was so stupid, she should have thought of that sooner…)—increased in volume.

Everyone stared at the darkness beyond, the rain blocking out even the faintest tint of colored moonlight..

Lori took one look, and then closed the Dungeon again, rebuilding the air slits back into place. "I'm going to wake up Rian and then going to sleep," she declared in general. "Night shift is his job. Someone wake me up when the sun rises again."

Grumbling, Lori went upstairs to do just that.