They didn't find whatever had eaten the bug abominations. Rian suspected that perhaps they had killed or eaten each other, while the dillians had swallowed the evidence. Certainly at least one of the dead things with a still-intact stomach was full of bug parts. Despite being awkwardly shaped to move on land, even worse than the seels, the undead dillians were aggressive as the islandshell had been, and unlike the islandshell could right themselves when turned on their backs.

Clearing out all the buildings took the better part of two days. The militia and Rian had to handle it all themselves most of the time, save for the occasional pit-making and wall raising, because Lori was busy keeping her population from drinking corpse-tainted water. While most Deadspeakers took the time to maintain their undead so that they weren't rotting and spreading disease, Lori doubted that dragon was as responsible. The distillation wasn't producing enough water quickly enough when merely left alone, so Lori had to actively control the bindings boiling the water to steam and condensing it into pure, if vile-tasting, water without any of the lingering rot from the dillians. Lori could have turned the reservoir into a well, since it already reached well below the water level… but in all honesty she didn't know how to do that, and it seemed unlikely to happen on its own, since she had left it untouched for months and water hadn't filled it at all. So forcefully purifying river water with heat—several times—was the best she could do.

Once the buildings were cleared, along with the hill over the Dungeon, they were finally able to allow people to come out and start rebuilding, with firm admonitions not to drink or bathe in the water yet, and to stay out of the woods. Groups of militia and volunteers went into the woods, patrolling to, if not exterminate everything there, then to at least keep them out of the town. People gathered the fallen dragon scales, clearing them out of the way so work could begin.

Thankfully, her gambit with sinking the curing sheds worked. When she shifted the ground to open a tunnel down into them to check, the wood was still intact and dry, with no rot or fungus growing on them. Getting them out was a bit harder, since while she'd been able to sink the sheds, raising them back up whole was harder. However, the sheds had only been packed dirt, so it was easier to write the sheds off and just lift up the wood. She could always build new curing sheds later, and they needed to get to work on repairing the roofs as soon as possible.

There had been several injuries, but they had honey from the hives the sweetbugkeepers hadn't managed to bring into the Dungeon. The hives outside had mostly survived damage, though their bugs had seemingly all been eaten, and one of the hives had been opened by a slug and the contents—bugwax, honey and hive binder—all consumed. Still, some of the hives still had their hive binders, and the sweetbugkeepers were hopeful they could rebuild.

The honey was used to treat what wounds they could, which were mostly work injuries and burns from being splashed by slugs full of sticky, boiling abomination blood. The facial burns were the worst: the patients kept trying to lick off the honey, never mind it was the only thing keeping them from getting infected.

The carpenters worked day and night, repairing the roofs that had broken and replacing planks. They didn't need to, but at night it seemed they were putting the finishing touches on their waterwheel for the workshop on the second level, since they were rigging it to be able to power more than just a lathe.

"I have a petition from the carpenters asking for a saw they can attach to the waterwheel," Rian said as they both sat down waiting for the kitchen to be ready for dinner. He looked tired from a day of patrolling in the woods. "And a recommendation from myself that you allow a wheel and a saw for the sawyers as well. One that's much bigger, of course, since they'll be cutting up tree trunks into planks instead of just planks into something else."

"Oh?" Lori said, raising an eyebrow at him. She had finally finished getting the water hub working again, adding a binding of firewisps into the receptacle tank to boil the water while another binding of waterwisps kept the water from turning into steam. It was water hotter than water actually physically should be capable of, and if she removed the binding it would explode—literally— into steam in an instant, but it gave her a way to kill any rot in the water while keeping it liquid, which made it much more efficient to move. It required a step to cool it, since adding more-than-boiling water to the reservoir and baths was a terrible idea, but fortunately cooling was simple since Lori had been reminded of liquefied air. "Did they find so many iron dragon scales?"

"A lot," Rian confirmed. "Most of it is iron, but we also have copper, gold, tin, a blue one that I think is salt that we should give some of to the tanners, and a disturbing one I'm pretty sure is bone." Lori raised an eyebrow at that. Bone wasn’t unheard of as a dragon scale, but it was certainly a little strange. "I think it's gotten to the point it's more practical to use it rather than stockpile it for emergencies. Given the wear and tear on our tools, it's about time we started making replacements for them, especially the saws, and come next year, we're going to need proper harvesting tools for what our farmers make. Enough of the vigas crop survived that even with what we'll be setting aside as seed we'll be able to eat some, so that would be a good mid-winter reserve."

"I'll have to set up a more permanent smithy for the smiths, then," Lori mused. "They can't be downstairs, it will be too hot and noisy for everyone else, but it should be someplace I can seal off in the event of a dragon…"

"Why not just have them right outside the Dungeon?" Rian said. "I mean, that's the obvious solution. You'd have to redesign the front anyway."

Lori blinked. "Why would I need to do that?"

"Because keeping the air slits maintained during a dragon required your personal attention," Rian pointed out. "You could do it during the day, but unless you're willing to trust another Whisperer to be in your demesne—yes, that's what I thought." He nodded as Lori made a face. He drew out his plank and began to draw. "If we design a sort of kill room in the front of the dungeon to help keep abominations out while making sure killing them doesn't interfere with our access to air…"

Lori tilted her head, frowning. "What sort of floor plan is that?"

"It's a side view, that line there is the floor, that's the entrance to the Dungeon."

"Oh. Well, make that clear!"

"Right, it's my fault, right… all right, so the problem with the previous two air slits has been that they've been at ground level. You putting a pit in front of them drastically reduced the number of things trying to get in. So we do that, but better, and permanently. We put a… um, call it an entryway room into the dungeon." He drew, adding a measure to the side of one line to show how tall it was.

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"You want me to make the entrance taller?"

"Well, we've found height works at keeping things away from the air slits. So, the fresh air comes in up here, and the entrance is down here, and during normal times both are open and let air in. But when a dragon happens, you seal up the door and raise a low wall here to keep casual stragglers out, and turn here into a pit for if they decide to come over the wall. With this opening, we'll get a lot of air coming in, and it'll enter the dungeon from up here. This overhang acts as a roof to keep rain off AND things that climb down from getting at the air slits, which you can make into actual air shafts, and if we make the pit like this," Rian turned the plank and started drawing on another part as Lori tried to keep up with his descriptions, "then abominations will have a way out and so they don't just die there and start rotting and tainting our air."

Lori frowned down at the drawing, which showed a tall chamber that according to the scribbled dimension was at least seven or eight paces tall, and practically level with her bedroom, with a large air shaft placed above a thick door that sealed the dungeon at ground level. It… made a kind of sense, she supposed. Get the air from high up, where abominations can't seem to reach, and it would be more defensible, allow through a greater volume of air, and require less direct maintenance on her part. . He hadn't accounted for things like wisplings, thought-shades or twisted vistas, but if she filled the intermediate space with darkwisps and wired the binding to her core, it would be able to keep them out…

"Or if things get bigger or can climb somehow," Rian continued as the dining hall filled up with more people, turning over his plank and starting a third drawing, "then we could make it a double sealed design. See, a door here to close off the dungeon, then a defensible position for people, and then a door to the outside proper, with a side passage and stairs that leads over the room and in front of the air shaft so that if something tries to climb up here, we can put people in front of it—"

"It can't stick out that far," Lori protested over the rising sound of the dinner conversation. "Abominations aren't the only threat during a dragon, there's also the actual dragon. We need a mass of stone between it and us, to protect us from dragon scales falling out of the sky at the very least. It's dropped at least one immature island shell at us, and if that had landed on this," she tapped the drawing, "there's a good chance your overhang would collapse. It would need to be recessed deeper into the dungeon, which would mean either extensively redesigning the interior or adding more stone to the outside, which means I have to get that stone from somewhere. Either way, the kitchens will have to be reorganized, because they were placed near the entrance so they could vent out smoke while cooking. And they can't vent out near where we get our air, because then the smoke would be pulled back in again."

"What if outgoing air comes out of a different place than incoming air?" Rian suggested.

Lori rolled her eyes. "What deep insight into the blindingly obvious. Rian, having a second outlet for air to come out from, while convenient, means another point we have to guard against something trying to get in."

"Not if it's underwater," Rian said, and Lori actually to pause as she parsed the bizarre statement.

"The outlet for smoke and other used up air only needs to go out, not in," Rian said, starting yet another drawing, only to realize there was no place left to draw. He pulled the plank under the table and moved a little, and when it came up one side was smeared and reasonable usable again.

"Did you wipe that plank on your shirt?" Lori said.

Rian rolled his eyes. "Don't be silly. It was on my pants. Now look," he started drawing again, "if you use a binding to force air out under pressure, you can vent it out through an underwater pipe. If it's vertical like this and you can use… something, pressure or waterwisps or whatever, to keep air out, then you don't need a lot of force to expel the air, and the water will keep most things out."

Lori nodded thoughtfully. "And if it doesn't even need to be at the river," she mused. "It can be to a pool outside the dungeon's entrance. If I make the water boil, nothing—" she paused, then amended that statement, "—few things will be inclined to dive into boiling water, and since the air is all moving outward, the heat won't matter."

"Now, there's an idea," Rian said thoughtfully, tilting his head. "What if you put a pool of boiling water in front of the dungeon's entrance to discourage abominations. Though I'm not sure how that will discourage the ones whose blood is already boiling, though."

"The dead ones will also be unlikely to be discouraged," Lori agreed. "But it will likely keep away almost nearly all living abominations."

"So, seal off the entrance, put in a pool of boiling water, and three, four paces above that, we have our air shaft," Rian mused.

"No, we need the mass of stone to protect any structures from falling dragon scales, remember? Here, give me that stick… So instead we make an entry tunnel into the dungeon with a door three paces in that we can seal and block off. And between the entrance and the door, we have the pool of boiling water. Instead of a wide of a space, the ceiling slants up like this, and we have the air slits up there, pulling in air. We can't have the outlet in the boiling pool, since that would cause the air to cycle back in, but just outside—"

There was a thump that made both of them glance up in surprise as Riz and Umu each put two bowls of food down on the table, followed by Mikon putting down one bowl, one of the new glazed pottery pitchers that sounded like it was full of water, and five wooden cups stacked on a plate on top of the pitcher, all very carefully balanced. As Mikon removed the plate and began to set down the cups, filling them with water, Riz and Umu pushed all five bowls together in the middle of the table, each with a spoon sticking out, slightly nudging the plank Lori was still drawing on.

"Dinner," Riz said to no one in particular, not even looking at Rian as she said it. "You seemed distracted, Lord Rian, so we got it for you."

Umu, meanwhile, was looking down. Lori thought it was very blatant and even lewd that she was staring at his crotch so intently, until the blonde weaver said, "Rian, what happened to your trousers? Is that soot? Why do you have so much soot on your lap?"

Rian suddenly looked very guilty as he inched forward on the bench to futilely hide the stained lap of his trousers.

Umu sighed as she sat down next to him. "Really Rian, please take better care of your clothes. Stains like that are very hard to wash off, I'll need to use soap, and I only get as much as anyone else."

"…sorry…" Rian said in a small voice, looking away guiltily.

Umu sighed again. "Well, there's nothing to be done about it now. But be more mindful in the future, all right?"

"…yes…"

"What was that?" Umu said, raising her voice slightly.

"…Yes, Umu…" Rian said, louder and even more sheepishly.

Umu nodded, then patiently folded her hands on the table as if she was waiting for something, staring past Lori intently.

Mikon was sitting on Rian's other side, with Riz next to her. They also sat patiently, staring at something behind Lori. Lori turned to look, but there didn't seem to be anything there, just the brat and her family enjoying their own dinner…

Rian coughed. "Uh, Lori, are you going to pick a bowl any time soon?"

Lori blinked, then looked down. Five bowls, all seemingly identical. Five cups of water too…

Oh!

"You didn't have to—" Lori found herself starting to say.

"Your Rian wasn't doing it, so as your temporary Rian, it was my duty to do so, Great Binder," Riz said. "They helped. Can we eat now?"

Hesitantly, reached over and picked the one nearest to Rian, sliding it around the rest of the bowl and towards herself. After a moment, she did the same with the wooden cup of water too.

The other three women quickly helped themselves to a cup and a bowl each, leaving Rian to stare at the bowl left in front of him and slightly to the left. He and Lori exchanged bemused looks across the table

"Eat up, Rian, it'll get cold," Mikon said with a smile as she started eating.