"So…" Rian said casually at lunch as they started to eat, "was that scream we all heard coming from your room something that I should worry about, or…?"

Lori glowered at him as she put down the last of her stones into the bowls of the sunk board and finished her turn. She'd decided to bring it down today, something that Mikon seemed happy about. For herself, after what had happened this morning, she needed the satisfaction of an easy victory against the weaver. "Everything is fine. There is nothing to be concerned about."

"Ah. So you didn't break your leg or something?"

"Rian, I walked down here, how could I do that on a broken leg?"

"I don't pretend to know what a Dungeon Binder could be fully capable of," Rian said. "Most of what I know that didn't come from you comes from stories, which I have been told are not how Dungeons work. Loudly. Repeatedly. Several times."

Lori gave him a flat look. "I had a realization. It was an irritating realization."

"Ah. That kind of scream." Rian nodded as if he actually understood. "Well, it could be worse. Think of what it would be like if you hadn't made the irritating realization."

"Don't give me trite and hollow platitudes, Rian."

"Yes, your Bindership," he chirped. "Anything you want to tell me so I can provide you with accurate and specific platitudes instead?" Next to him, Riz covered her mouth and started coughing. Ugh, be careful woman! That was how diseases got spread!

Lori glared at him. "No," she said.

"Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me," he said, as annoyingly cheerful as ever. "Now, on to other business: I'd like to discuss our recovery plan for after the storm blows over."

Ah. Yes, that was probably something they had to plan for properly, wasn't it? "What do you have in mind?"

"We'll probably need more of your tunnels," Rian said. "Because while we have more tools now, the bulk of our tools are outside in the toolshed. In future, they'll probably have to be moved closer to the dungeon to prevent exactly this sort from happening, but that's for future Rian and future Lori to talk about. For now, our first step after the storm breaks is to get there so we have more tools to clear with. All of our shovels, some of our buckets, and all of our wheeled carts are there."

Lori frowned. "Why aren't those things stored in the dungeon?"

"Shovels and carts mostly get used for latrine clearing."

Ah. No wonder. "Ah. No wonder. Yes, getting to those tools is a priority."

"After that, we clear the houses," Rian said. "Get the snow off their roofs and chimneys, and then clear out the latrines so they can be used. Even with what you're doing, the latrines are slowly getting full." He looked down at his food. "Though we can talk more about that after we finish eating."

Lori looked down at her meaty soup as well. "Agreed."

On either side of Rian, Riz, Umu and Mikon all sighed in relief.

"If this is the sort of weather we can expect for winter here, we might need to maintain the tunnels, even after the snow ends and people go back to living in their homes," Rian continued. "At the very least, keeping the tunnels will give us a measure of safety and mobility, especially if another unexpected storm hits."

"As long as no one tries to hit the walls with hammers, the ice should hold as long as it's cold enough for ice," Lori said.

Riz glanced at Rian and began to nudge him with her elbow.

"Yes, Riz? Do you have something to add?" Rian said.

"Packed snow would support the tunnels almost as well and would hold in heat better than ice, meaning the tunnels would be warmer," Riz told him. "The ice is probably packed enough by now that the tunnels wouldn't collapse if the ice is removed."

"Huh. That sounds useful…" Rian turned to Lori. "If we're going to be having people using the tunnels to get around, it would be nice if they were warmer. " He frowned. "And you don't really need to get rid of the ice. Just line the inside of the tunnels with snow as best as we can for insulation. If it starts melting, well, we're unlikely to run out of snow any time soon."

Lori waved dismissively. "I'll leave that to you."

"Uh, there's also a matter only you can take care of," Rian said. "The chimneys. Clearly no one expected the snow around here to be this deep. As soon as it's viable, the chimneys will have to be raised up higher so that they're less likely to be buried in snow."

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Lori frowned, but reluctantly nodded in agreement. "And some sort of ventilation tube, I suppose," she said reluctantly. "So that no one suffocates if the snow overtops the roof before they can get out."

"We should probably rebuild the roofs come spring so that snow slides off better," Rian added. "Make them steeper, like the roofs of the houses on the rise. It will use up more wood, but that way they're less likely to be buried. And speaking of wood, we should get the rest of the wood out of the curing sheds and bring them to the Dungeon. Just in case."

"I suppose we'll have to subsist on the food in the cold rooms from now on," Lori said. "Hunting is no longer likely to be as viable."

"Given how deep the snow is outside, it's probably just a form of suicide at this point," Rian agreed. "I'll do an inventory of the cold rooms and see how much food we have. Between all the meat in there, the tubers we're growing, and the grain not being saved for planting, we should be good to last."

"Do that," she said. "If people have been taking from the cold rooms, I'd rather know sooner rather than later. Eat."

"Eat?" Rian said.

Lori pointed at his bowl, untouched since he'd started speaking, in stark contrast to her now-empty bowl. "Eat."

"Oh! Right, right… " He went back to eating his lunch. After a couple of spoonfuls, he said, "We should probably send someone to check on River's Fork after the storm, see how they're doing?"

"Eat," Lori said sternly.

Rian went back to eating.

He was probably right. There was always a chance that this sudden storm had resulted in such difficulty and hardship that the demesne had collapsed such that Shanalorre had died. Lori doubted it, though. Their protective tree dome was far better suited to keeping snow off, and they had enough supplies. Still, it was best to check. Who knows, maybe they were all dead and Lori could just step in and claim their demesne's core like she had wanted.

––––––––––––––––––

After lunch, once the bowls and utensils had been put away, Lori and Rian continued their discussion since they no longer had food to be turned off from.

"Dealing with latrine waste will be more problematic now," Rian said. "We had that pit dug up to dump all the waste in, but that's probably full and buried under snow by now. Heating and desiccating it will help, but eventually we're still going to need to deal with the solid waste that's left."

"Rian, just skip the exposition," Lori said irritably. "We both know what the problem is, stop wasting my time and get to the solution you want to propose."

"You sound even more like my sister than usual," Rian said, and what did that mean? "But fine, fine. I suggest we turn the waste into charcoal, or close enough."

Lori stared at him. "Perhaps a little exposition," she allowed.

"I talked to Riz, Riz's friends, the smiths, the farmers and the charcoal burners," Rian said. "There are only a limited number of ways we can deal with our latrine problem since we don't really have any place to dump it, what with the pit we were using covered in snow and the ground frozen solid so we can't really dig another one unless you use magic, which would ruin the soil. So our choices are limited."

He held up one finger. "We can just desiccate it as you've been doing and take it down to the Dungeon farm for fertilizer and for mixing new soil in the tuber planters. We can just throw it out in the snow, but that's going to thaw in the spring, so we're basically just delaying the problem in a very disgusting way. Or we can use it as fuel."

"Fuel," Lori said skeptically.

Rian nodded. "In the north, it's prepared like charcoal, put into a kiln and heated with sawdust to create fuel. Since we already put sawdust in the latrines to sop up the waste, after you desiccate it all we have to do is put it into a kiln to cook it."

"A… kiln," Lori said slowly. "You realize you're saying we need to spend fuel to produce fuel."

"No, I'm saying we spend fuel to get rid of waste. The fact we get rid of it by turning it into fuel is simply a bonus. We can try the others as well, but eventually the farm is going to reach the point where we don't really need all that fertilizer because it would unbalance the mix of the soil or something, and the same for the tuber planters. "

Lori gave him a flat look. "You want me to build a kiln for the waste, don't you?"

Rian shrugged. "It's either that, or we build some sort of elaborate furnace where we use the fuel we have now to cook the waste into fuel, while also providing warmth to several houses." He frowned. "Or maybe you can just make a desiccating box, like the snow melt box. Just make something that will desiccate anything we put inside it, and I'll handle organizing people to get the waste there so you don't have to do it manually. Once it gets full of completely dried waste, we can decide on the next step. We can actually do it all in stages, using it for fertilizer, and then when that's no longer viable, turning it into fuel. I'm told that some amount of equipment will be needed to start making the waste into fuel, and… well, it's probably not something we want being done in the second level, since that's where people will sleep in an emergency. Maybe we can do it in the wood curing sheds after we move all the wood into the Dungeon?"

"Put together a plan and get back to me," Lori told him. She sighed. "I will consider building a dedicated desiccator for the waste." She'll probably have to soon. Even with her desiccating the waste, she could see the amount in the latrines building up.

"Yes, your Bindership," Rian said. "I'll let you get back to your afternoon plans then… Ugh."

Lori sighed again. "What now?"

"It just occurred to me. How are we going to measure the growth after this? The river's probably frozen, so we can't take any of the boats upriver, and with the snow so thick, the markers I used are probably buried so deep I won't find them until the spring thaw."

Ah. That would be something of a problem, wouldn't it? Just because she didn't obsess about the numbers and rates didn't mean she didn't need to know how much her demesne was growing with her expansion attempts. "I trust your ingenuity to devise a means of travel for us," she said.

It was Rian's turn to sigh. "Yes, your Bindership. I'll get to it after I put together a plan for dealing with our increasing amounts of latrine waste."

She nodded, picking up her sunk board, all the stones in the bowls. "Good. We'll talk again at dinner. I have work to do. No need to set the clocks."

"Well, good luck."

Lori headed upstairs, carrying her game board. After this morning's preparation and frustration, she still had a demesne she needed to expand. Hopefully, her altered methods would work. Because if it didn't…

Well, she could easily imagine the next scream that would rip itself from her lungs if that were the case.

Within her awareness, the spherical binding surrounding her demesne remained inactive, heavily imbued and waiting to be used…