Over the next few days, Lori continued with the things she had to build to prepare for the thaw, whenever it came. A stone pipe was added to the corner where the two segments of flood barrier met, with an opening at the bottom of a small recess on the landward side of the wall where water could gather, and the other opening at the top of the wall on the river side. She placed a binding of waterwisps at the base of the pipe—another thing she had to remember to imbue—which would only draw in liquid water so that it could be siphoned up and then dumped into the river.

Once that was done, Lori proceeded to make… it wasn't really flood barrier, was it? More like a slight lip to keep loose water out. She added one to the entry of the passageway into the dungeon, a short step made of stone a little past ankle height, instead of the knee-high one she had originally thought she needed. After all, the water would mostly be flowing downhill past her the passageway, and would be siphoned out into the river, so the water was unlikely to reach knee high.

After far too many reports of people tripping on it—even though most people saw her building it—she added some lightwisps to illuminate it so people couldn't possibly miss it. This, strangely, caused even more people to trip, as now they claimed they couldn't see it because of the light, so they didn't know to step over it. Normally, she would have just ignored all this complaining but…

She tripped over it. Twice.

Finally, she decided that instead of making a little wall that people had to step over, she'd make a sort of landing that people stepped up to, and then down again as they walked into the passage. It required far, far more stone but people finally seemed to see and step over it now. For texture, she took a broom, and passed it back and forth over the stone while it was softened so that lines would form, giving water somewhere to drain if people stepped on it with wet feet.

She had to include a similar step to the baths, blocking the doorway to prevent any melting snow or possibly rain from getting in,

Once that was done, she found time to add an observation platform to the flood barrier, so that the volunteer Rian had found could keep an eye on the river to see if it was melting. She'd need the warning so she could properly secure their boats when the time came. Building the platform was simple enough, and involved adding more stone to the upper corner where the walls of the barrier met until she could shape a relatively flat area. The intake for the siphon pipe was directly underneath it, but that was fine. The platform would need a ladder to reach, and there were no rails or barriers to keep people from falling off, but the drop wasn't so far that such were needed.

Then, with all the preparations finished, Lori went back down to the third level and continued preparing farm plots. After all, there was still a lot of soil and mud down there, and it needed to be dealt with. Fortunately, Rian was able to find her more workers. She didn't like how so many of them were children, but apparently they'd heard of about how the previous volunteers had been able to shape the softened stone, and some had volunteered simply to try it out themselves.

Lori had been worried one of the children would try to throw the handfuls of softened stone they were working with, most likely at someone else, but thankfully that hadn't happened. Perhaps they had thought the handfuls too heavy. Perhaps it was the way the brat had glared at anyone who looked like they might try. Eventually, most of the children who had only volunteered out of curiosity stopped, and Lori was left with people who were actually willing to work. That still included the brat and two other children, but they seemed to be taking the matter seriously, and didn't seem to be there because their parents wanted them kept 'out of trouble'.

There were enough volunteers that Lori was able to divide them into three groups, one for each size of rock to be shaped for the farm plots' drainage. Snow was brought down, the waterwisps bound to keep them solid, so that the volunteers would have a surface to lay their finished rocks on and keep them from sticking to the stone floor.

To give herself something to do while the volunteers did this, Lori also tried an idea Rian had proposed, laying a long log of softened stone on top of a long block of bound ice. The ice had a curved depression in the middle to hold the stone in place, and she used her stone-shaping tool to divide the stone into smaller pieces. It worked… to a degree. Because of the depression in the bound ice, her stone-shaping tool couldn't cut through all the way. However, by dividing the stone log like that, she could separate the rocks by putting a little weight on them and breaking the little extrusions of stone connecting the pieces she divided.

Well, it worked well enough, so she got some of the bigger volunteers, made more blocks of ice, and had them start dividing tubes of stone, and then breaking them apart after she'd solidified them.

Rian, for his part, worked on taking the finished stones and putting together new farm plots. Biggest rocks at the bottom, then smaller ones, and so on, while she made stone slabs to put on top of them before the soil—mixed with some desiccated latrine waste—was shoveled on top.

The work was interrupted after a week while they harvested the vigas they had planted in the farm plots. The vigas had been allowed to dry on the stalks, with Lori doing her best to control the humidity of the third level. Harvesting the vigas took less than a day, as despite their best efforts, the dungeon's farm wasn't that big. It actually took longer to clear the plots of the remains of the vigas and get them ready for another planting.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

In the middle of that, Lori was surprised to hear that things were starting to thaw.

"It is?" she said to Rian at breakfast a week and a half after Shanalorre had last left.

"I honestly can't tell," Rian said with a shrug. "It's all painfully freezing cold to me. But apparently we're starting to get rain instead of snow, and the sun's warmer now when its clear and sunny."

Lori frowned. Like Rian, she couldn't really tell herself, since inside her demesne she felt either pleasantly cool or simply just the right degree of warm. "How does the river look?"

"Honestly, it looks the same as usual, but I hear that's normal for frozen rivers. Personally, I wouldn't be sure that things have started to thaw until I looked outside and see the snow turning into slush. Though if we are starting to thaw, maybe you should reinforce the ice tunnels? We wouldn't want the tunnels to collapse on anyone."

Lori frowned, closing her eyes for a moment and focusing on her awareness of the wisps in her demesne. The river felt solid for the moment, but that meant little. It would be solid right up to the point it melted, and she wouldn't really be able to tell what temperature it was. She opened her eyes and nodded. "I suppose that's a reasonable precaution," she said. Another thing she needed to imbue. A thought occurred to her, and she frowned. "How many more pregnant women are left?"

"Only three more about to give birth soon, which is what I think you're asking about," Rian said. "Not that I'm trying to rush them, but I hope they go into labor soon, while the snow between here and River's Fork is still reliable. The closer we get to things thawing, the less confident I am about trying to use the sled to bring Shana here and them taking her back home."

Rian's concern turned out to be justified. When the next woman started giving birth a few days later, Rian went to fetch Shanalorre—and her escort of militia—and brought them to Lori's demesne. In the middle of her usual three day wait to see if the mother or the child would get sick—it had happened one time, causing Shanalorre to stay two more days afterwards to make sure they wouldn't get sick again—the river started to flow.

It wasn't much, just a seeming trickle of water flowing along the middle of the river, cutting a path through the accumulated snow, but it meant that temperatures were warm enough that water was more likely than ice. Through her awareness of wisps, Lori found that while the river was still mostly ice, it was starting to melt in the middle—or at least stay liquid—though the areas near the banks were staying solid.

"Great Binder, we should head back," Lord whatever-his-name-was said as he stood next to his Dungeon Binder outside, standing on the now-cramped platform that overlooked the river. "With water in the river, it's only a matter of time before it all starts to crack."

"I agree," Rian said. He was standing on the narrow level band on top of the flood barrier near Lori as he looked out onto the river with a frown on his face. "We don't know how long before it starts melting, and I'm not confident in our sled's ability to travel over wet slush." He had never gotten around to giving her any plans to turn Lori's Boat into a proper sled.

Lori and Shanalorre both stood on the observation platform, its usual occupant displaced to the ground below to hold the ladder on the muddy ground. Occasionally, water trickled out from the output of the pipe on the river-facing side of the wall, sending water flowing down the wall's side. Water that actually reached the snow at the bottom instead of freezing, and was starting to turn the snow into slush.

"I have no objections to you leaving now," Lori said. "We don't know the weather patterns of the area, so it's best to err on the side of caution. The river might stay like this, slowly melting, for another week, or it could break apart at any moment."

Shanalorre looked out over the river impassively, before shaking her head. "I understand your concern," Shanalorre said, "but it's just one more day to make sure mother and child don't fall ill. We can wait that long, can we not?"

"If we knew that for sure, we wouldn't be suggesting you leave earlier," Rian said dryly.

With this indicator that things were finally starting to thaw, Lori double-checked her flood barriers and other measures. She had to alter the binding on the siphon to be able to deal with mud, altering the binding so that it rotated the water in a vortex to prevent the mud from accumulating and blocking the pipe. At Rian's suggestion, Lori also made holes along the bottom of the ice tunnels through the snow, to keep water from being trapped by the tunnel when the snow melted.

It was during this that she was surprised to realize that the tunnels weren't completely buried in snow anymore. With the inside of the tunnels being lined with snow for better insulation, the view through the ice had been blocked, but it was soon clear that portions of the tunnels were now well above the snow line.

It was at that point that Lori decided to bring down the ice tunnels. It kept her occupied for the rest of the day as she bound the waterwisps in the ice and carefully made the tunnel sag down in segments, removing the arching roofs and adding the ice to the walls on either side, making them thicker. By the time she stopped for dinner, most of the ice tunnels had been brought down, and the paths and streets of her demesne's village was open to the sky which was clear and cold and already being tinged with the light of the red moon.

––––––––––––––––––

"I don't suppose you could be convinced to put the ice tunnels back up?" Rian said at breakfast the next morning. His winter robe was damp, his hair was wet, and even with Riz and Umu wrapping their arms around him from either side—and lightly glaring at each other across his back—he was still shivering slightly.

"I spent all of yesterday bringing them down, so no," Lori said. "Why are you even asking?"

"Because it's raining actual, wet rain right now, and it's still freezing," Rian said, actually looking miserable. He glanced sideways at Shanalorre. "Sorry, your Bindership. I don't think it's safe to try and take you back home today."

"No need for apology, Lord Rian. You did advise me to leave when I could," the smaller Dungeon Binder said. "Would you like me to heal you so you don't get sick?"

"Please—achoo!"

"Rian, cover your mouth when you do that, that's how diseases get spread."

Lori made sure she was healed too, just in case.