When Lori woke up, it was on her own cognizance. So unless she'd woken up, done things while half-asleep, and forgotten about them—not unlikely, given anecdotal evidence from her mothers—there hadn't been any emergencies she had needed to take care of during the night. And save for the way her back ached from sleeping on hard stone with only a layer of leather as cushioning, Lori felt refreshed and well-rested. Aching, but well-rested. The feeling was enough to remind her of where she was.

Normally, she'd have proceeded to go over the bindings she needed to check in her demesne—she could remember most of them, and even if she forgot some, none of them were part of the defenses, so that was fine—but her aches prompted her to sit up to start alleviating them. She winced at the muscles that had been resting on stone all night protested at the movement, and wiggled her toes. Lori rolled her shoulders as she tried to massage her body to a state of 'awake and not aching'.

The air was a little warm, probably from her being in it all night, and black as a soul. Distantly, she could hear the continued rumbling of the dragon and its explosions. In the mine shaft beyond her alcove, the binding of lightwisps she'd anchored to the wall was gone, its imbuement no doubt consumed while she'd been asleep. Her eyes being open or closed seemed no different save to alter the texture of the darkness. Out of habit, she reached through her connection to her core to claim a few lightwisps before she remembered where she was. Grimacing, she shuffled to the end of the niche and gently felt around her where her staff was hopefully still leaning against the wall.

She let out a sigh of relief as a fingertip touched cold wire, and Lori was able to grab her staff before it unbalanced and fell over. Reaching through the wire, she reactivated the binding of lightwisps she'd anchored to it, which had endured because of the imbuement she'd had placed in it.

The light showed Riz sleeping in front of the entrance of her alcove, a pile of packs next to her bedroll laid out to block her path should she roll towards the receptacles of beads. Around her were… and… what were their names again… umm D-something and T-something… or was that two D names? Well, the two carpenters were sleeping a little beyond her, as was someone else…

Just how many people were sleeping outside her alcove? Had they had so little confidence in her defenses that they'd decided to keep watch on the entrance themselves? It was annoying, considering any kind of defenses was a definite improvement over the distinct lack of them when they had been under Binder Shanalorre.

Sighing, Lori imbued the binding of lightwisps on her staff so that it would last longer as she shuffled across niche to put her back up against stone. Leaning on the wall, she made herself comfortable, one hand idly fanning her face. Perhaps it was the excess of bodies that had made everything so warm.

She reached through her connection to her core to claim a few firewisps before she remembered where she was. Grimacing, she reached out a claimed a few of the firewisps in the air through her hand and made a simple binding to delete heat, imbuing it slightly and anchoring to the stone next to her. A part of her squirmed slightly at leaving such a binding unattended, which went against the work habits she'd been taught about firewisps, but it wasn't a powerful binding, and if it made her alcove too cold, she'd could just deactivate it.

Actually…

She pulled on her socks, then her boots so she wouldn't have to step on the gritty floor. Using her staff, she anchored the binding of firewisps in front of the vent blowing out air from outside. That spared her from making a biding of airwisps to circulate the cooled air to mitigate the warmth.

Satisfied, she went back to sit at her niche to check on her demesne.

Her defenses were holding, and if there were any damage to the reinforced stone structures, it was minor enough she couldn't identify it with her cursory inspection of the earthwisps. The exhaust vent that let out smoke from the kitchen, as well as the air that settled in the third level, seemed to be intact and continuing to send air out to the water hub shed, where it bubbled out. The bindings that controlled the light, temperature and humidity of the Dungeon farm in the third level were working, and from what she could tell nothing needed adjustment.

Though why were all the lightwisps on the second level—?

Oh, right.

After she changed the illumination back to normal levels, she went back to checking her demesne. The water in the reservoir was holding, and the used bath water was going down to the dungeon farm, into the cistern for watering all the crops. The runoff cistern had plenty of space to hold the water, though the crops needed so much watering each day that the cistern getting too full wasn't really a concern. The bindings keeping the Coldhold solidified were imbued, so that it wasn't going to melt inside the stone cube keeping it safe. With the rain, she also made sure that the binding of waterwisps built into the lowest point of the floodwall that drew up water that pooled there and sent it out to the other side of the wall was activated and imbued, so that there wouldn't be any water trapped behind the wall.

Everything seemed to be in order. Her Dungeon was functioning, protected, and seemingly safe.

And she was here.

Opening her eyes, Lori let out a sigh.

––––––––––––––––––

It took seven days, as best as Lori could judge since the shelter didn't have a water clock, for the dragon to pass. She supposed it could be worse. Those seven days could have been exciting and terrifying as dragonborn abominations battered at their door, tried to creep into their air vents, and been filled with long days and tiring nights as the shelter had to be actively defended with spears and bindings and all that heroic nonsense.

Instead, those seven days were alternately uncomfortable, boring and annoying in various combinations.

Uncomfortable, because for all the work she had done on the dragon shelter, it had been focused on functional matters. The storage for the food so that those in the shelter wouldn't starve—and the food wouldn't be stolen—the three doors to keep abominations from getting inside, the extensive defenses on the vents so that they'd have air… all these things were made to keep the shelter safe, and clearly they were working, as nothing had gotten inside yet!

…

Granted, there was nothing trying to get inside, but Lori was confident that if there was anything trying to get inside, it still wouldn't be able to!

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However, the dragon shelter had something of a dearth when it came to comforts, hence 'uncomfortable'. There were no sleeping niches along the walls, no alcoves for privacy, no bath, no tables and benches—though she'd learned that many people had brought in stools, as those could be carried by one person—and no fixtures for light. As such, she was forced to make a circuit of the shelter every day, anchoring new lightwisps in various places, most especially the kitchen area—where she also had to place a binding of firewisps three times a day so that meals could be cooked—and the new sink area.

Thankfully, the sink was working as intended, although she had to keep it heavily imbued because, try as she might, she couldn't find a good way of placing one of her new bound tools to maintain the binding when the imbuement ran out. Since she didn't have the necessary equipment to safely draw her blood, she had to heavily imbue it between the periods of time that the sink was being used.

She also had to put in bindings of airwisps to help circulate the air. While new air was coming in through the mine's original air circulation tubes, fed by her bound tool, that was originally meant to bring air into the mining tunnel, not the shelter. As such, she'd needed to anchor bindings to the ramp that blew in air from the tunnel, forcing the air inside the shelter to circulate.

After four days, they'd needed to put in another large wispbead to power the shelter's active defenses once the bead she'd put in on the first day had reduced down to half its diameter. It was far slower than she thought, but if the situation in River's Fork was the same as in her own demesne, nothing was actively trying to get into the mine. If she was correct, most of the imbuement was probably being drawn by the binding of earthwisps reinforcing the stone around the entrance, keeping the stone together in the face of the explosions happening outside.

Occasionally, a loud explosion would echo through the mine shaft, which had Lori reaching for the contact wire to check if the mine's first door had been breached the first time it had happened. She'd been relieved to find everything still seemed intact and the door still in place. She wasn't sure what the state of the door was, but there was no smoke being pulled by the vent, so the copper alloy sheathing on the door had probably held, and the wood hadn't caught fire.

After it had happened a few times, Lori theorized it was occurring because whatever was exploding—from the lack of distinctive odors, she suspected it was due to caustic metals reacting to the rainwater, which from what she'd learned in school would account for what she had perceived in her demesne—had managed to land directly in front of the mine entrance, or close enough. The sound of the explosion came in through the vents, which is why it had been louder than the background rumble.

Lori had still checked the state of the mine entrance through the contact point, but given she hadn't died from some sort of poisonous gas or otherwise impaired from breathing some kind of odorless air, she'd ultimately decided the explosion's results were relatively harmless.

The bead imbuing the bound tool that drew in air hadn't been needed to be replaced at all, the simple and efficient binding of airwisps requiring relatively little imbuement.

Boring, because after she'd done all those things… there really wasn't much else to do besides sit next to the sink and imbue the binding there, or sit in her alcove, doing nothing. Neither were particularly appealing. While others in the shelter had nothing to do either, Yllian was able to keep them from growing restless. The first two days, the doctors left in the demesne—all three of them, which included the one who had come with Lori—checked over everyone's physical condition. It kept the doctors busy, especially that idiot uncle of Shanalorre's, and people were occupied trying to recall recent ailments to see if they needed to be healed by Shanalorre, or some sort of special medicine.

They most likely didn't have that medicine, but that wouldn't change the fact someone might need to know they needed it.

After that, Yllian found other ways to get people organized. He politely requested that Lori make a little plot for the crops that had been brought in so the buckets could be used for other things, which Lori graciously did because she literally had nothing better to do. Then she put in more lightwisps, since the crops would wilt if they weren't getting the right kind of light. Then she made a little runoff channel since someone was sure to overwater the crops, and then they'd get waterlogged and get root rot or something. And then she made a little dirt trap so that any dirt that got carried away by the water wouldn't go far and could be put back onto the crops…

With the buckets available, restless people were put to work going down to the bottom of the mine, drawing some of the murky water that had gathered there from rainwater before the mine had been sealed trickling into the mine tunnel, and bringing it back up to run through the sink to clean it. So Lori had needed to anchor more bindings of lightwisps through the mine so people could see where they were going, and then expanded the cistern next to the sink to be able to hold more water. This resulted in the sink's binding needing more imbuement, so she had used a little bit of her wire to make a metal contact that she could more easily touch, as well as fashion something that could hold a bead so that could imbue the binding while the sink was being used so she wouldn't have to crowd in around it.

People started using the recovered cistern water to wash, taking buckets of clean water back down to the mine to give themselves a standing wash. So Lori had to make a cistern there too for them to put the clean water, but she didn't make another sink because all the back and forth was a way to keep people occupied. The amount of water in the mine increased again as all the wash water runoff flowed down there, to be scooped up again and run through the sink once more.

Lori had even taken a bath herself, with Riz keeping watch so she wasn't interrupted. She distilled water directly from the pond of stagnant and now soapy mine water so she wouldn't have to carry buckets, and gave herself a wash that felt wonderful after three days of having not done so. She didn't have a towel, but given she could just claim waterwisps through her skin, it wasn't really necessary.

Annoying, because this went on for seven days. Seven days away from her demesne, of her needing to run around to do things, of having to actually come into contact with bindings to imbue them. Seven days of sleeping on rock, eating food that always seemed to need salt, of occasionally being jarred awake as the sound of an explosion came from outside, of being bored and uncomfortable. All she could do was sit silently and long for home.

To distract herself, she had focused on their plans for after the dragon had passed. She and Rian had agreed that they would send the Coldhold to Covehold Demesne at either midsummer or after a dragon had passed, whichever had come first, and simply hoped that a dragon wouldn't come after midsummer. The timing had been important, since the dragon's arrival meant that after it had gone, they'd have a relatively safe period to travel. The midsummer deadline had simply been because they wouldn't have been able to delay much longer if they still intended to try and make a profit that year.

They had also needed to check with the docks if there had been any word about when the next group of settlers from the Golden Sweetwood Company would be arriving with their personnel and supplies. Rian and Yllian had been confident that the next group could be convinced to settle in River's Fork instead of founding a new demesne, but Lori really couldn't see why. There was no reason for the wizards of the group to not found their own demesnes where they'd all be able to rule as Dungeon Binders. Rian's explanations of wanting to live with their friends in secured, established demesne's had been nonsensical. If the Golden Sweetwood Company had wanted that, they'd have simply joined one of the already established demesnes around Covehold.

Still, Rian was going to try to get their settlers and resources for themselves, even if it was extremely unlikely to actually happen. The best she herself could hope for was for them to found their demesnes far, far away from hers, and most especially not on the same river as her.

Try as she might to think of the potential profits that their plan of selling wispbeads to workshops to power their bound tools would bring them, her thoughts always came back around to those thoughts, which added to her annoyance.

On the seventh day after they'd sealed the mine shut, the rumble of things exploding outside of the mine finally fell quiet.