The latrines were dried enough to be emptied after lunch. The waste wasn't as dried as Lori would have liked—it was still slightly damp, which meant they still smelled—but it had reduced the volume of the waste enough that the access hatches could now be opened without the waste spilling out onto the floor of her dungeon. Of course, with many of the latrines outside having been cleared, they were now safe to use, and Lori had given permission for people to leave the dungeon to use them.

However, clearing the outside had not been without incident.

"They were full of bugs," Kolinh reported over lunch. He'd joined the table, sitting next to Riz, who had apparently ceded Rian's usual seat in the middle to Mikon. Taeclas and Lidzuga were also sitting on that side, although her wife and his sister were absent, currently sitting at some other table, as there just wasn't enough space. Sitting on their short bench next to her were Shanalorre and her cousin. "It seems the bugs sought shelter from the cold inside them. They huddled together to stay warm, and then started eating each other when they grew hungry. Many managed to survive, and we had to drive them out of the latrines. A lot of the inside was covered with dead bugs. No live abominations, strangely enough, though we found a few dead ones that had been devoured by the other bugs. They were probably eaten for their blood."

Lori nodded. Dragonborn abomination blood was very, very sweet, which was why it was so thick and syrupy. She had read that in some demesnes, various dishes or candies were made from abomination blood and regarded as delicacies, while many of those same demesnes had declared those same dishes illegal due to how dangerous it was to extract the blood and how the blood might contain deadly impurities. There had been attempts to try and domesticate various abominations to extract their blood and refine it for sugar, but they had never lasted, since abominations tend not to breed true. She knew this because there had been a period of two years where it seemed every novel she'd bought had included some sort of plot twist or even just trivia involving abomination blood, and during that period a local confectionary had started selling alleged 'abomination blood pastilles'.

She'd tried the pastilles out of curiosity, and all they'd been was honey and golden bud juice. Nothing at all like the sickeningly sweet smell of spilled abomination blood, in hindsight. That confectionary had never actually been near real abomination blood!

"Were they all cleared?"

Kolinh nodded. "We had to give them all a thorough cleaning and sweeping. All the dead bugs were everywhere, and they'd tracked—that is, they'd left silk all over the walls and other places. We cleaned it all as best as we could, but the inside of the latrines is dark, so we likely missed some."

Ah. Right. The lights in the latrines were some of the few bindings that she had still actively maintained, and since she… hadn't…

"Noted," Lori said, and Kolinh nodded. "Is there anything else?"

"I suspect that all the houses in the demesne are likely full of bugs, Great Binder," Kolinh said. "They no doubt went inside trying to escape the cold, and since there's dragonfrost around the chimneys, the things probably still think it's cold outside."

"Well, everyone should have brought anything they wanted to save to the dungeon," Lori said. "What's a little more cleaning?"

That being said, Rian and Shanalorre's houses should be relatively free of bugs. The binding of lightningwisps Lori had placed over the windows, door and chimney should have prevented any bugs from gaining entry. That didn't meant it was impossible for bugs to have made their way inside, but it was probably far fewer bugs than in the other houses.

A thought occurred to her, and Lori sighed. "Do we have enough paper to repair all the demesne's windows?"

"Yes, Great Binder," Shanalorre replied immediately. "The remaining supply of window paper that Lord Rian brought back would be enough to repair all windows in the demesne, should they have been damaged. However, that should not be necessary. We have the materials needed to affect repairs, and Mistress Kutago is capable of reusing the damaged paper to make new paper."

Everyone finally seemed to realize what Lori meant as Shanalorre finished speaking, and Taeclas sighed. "Ugh, I hate paper fusing. They always feel too thick."

"That's the point," Lori pointed out.

"I know, but it feels terrible! You can always tell where it's been patched! There's no way of getting it as nice and thin as it used to be!"

"That's the point." She pointed out again.

"It's like that for contracts and agreements and things so no one can alter it after the fact, but why does it have to be like that for windows?"

"It doesn't change the functionality, though?" Really, Lori couldn't understand why she was making a big deal about this.

"It's the principle of the thing!"

…

"Taeclas, you have very strange principles," Lori said flatly. "Please don't obsess about such silly things and consider what's actually practical."

For some reason, Kolinh, Riz, Mikon, Umu and Shanalorre looked at her with the same strange expression on their faces.

––––––––––––––––––

After lunch, it was back to work. Lori had left a hot vapor binding over the waste pit before she'd gone in for lunch, and it had melted enough of the dragonfrost to reach the buried waste underneath. That was just enough space for them to be able to toss in the waste from her Dungeon's latrines, once Lori had removed the binding of waterwisps. No point in desiccating the waste only to rehydrate them again with her own binding.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

With that done, Lori went to check on the water hub shed before reactivating it and reconnecting the pipe that let it feed her Dungeon's reservoir. Both Taeclas and Lidzuga had reported that there wasn't any new harmful dustlife in the river water—"Just the same dustlife as usual," Taeclas had reported cheerfully—so if everyone started getting sick from drinking the new water, she'd be able to blame them. Still, Lori took her own precautions, just in case. She deactivated the water hub shed's defenses against bugs, the shed's roof still covered by dragon frost, and visually inspected the interior for debris, bugs that had somehow gotten inside, and anything else that might have made its way in.

At least, she tried to. It was only then she realized that, as the waterwisps, firewisps and lightwisps she had formed to make the water hub shed function were all anchored, one way or another, to the stone walls of the shed, and the shed was one of the structures that was reinforced by the binding of earthwisps imbued directly by her core, the water hub shed's binding had not deactivated nor run out of imbuement. While she had closed the pipe that would have brought water from the shed to the reservoir, the shed had continued drawing up water from the river and, with no other place to send it, the water had apparently reached the overflow and been dumped back into the river.

…

She might need to rework this. Still, at least the overflow was clearly working as intended, and the binding of firewisps that kept the boiling hot water from heating the stone structure of the shed was also effective. There was dragonfrost on the outside of the building, after all.

It took Lori a few moments to claim and bind the water hub shed's defenses—the lightningwisp binding that would both deter and kill bugs that would try to enter the shed, and the lightwisp binding that emitted unseen light to kill dustlife, mold, and any other small thing that actually manage to enter the shed—so that she could deactivate them, anchoring them to her fingernail for lack of anywhere else to put them as she inspected the interior of the water hub shed.

Thankfully, the interior was empty, and nothing was floating in the water… which was still both hotter than boiling and still liquid because of the binding she'd placed on it. Despite how the temperature of things was always in a comfortable range for her within the confines of her demesne, she wasn't eager to find out how hot it would feel if she immersed an extremity in that water.

While disconnected, the pipe leading towards her Dungeon's reservoir was full of water, as the water hub shed hadn't deactivated properly. Lori claimed and bound all the waterwisps in the pipe and drew them out. The water returned to the water hub shed, filling the holding tank there and overflowing back onto the river. Best to not fill the reservoir with water that had lain stagnant for more than a week.

Once the pipe was empty, Lori bound some of the lightwisps in the air outside of the water hub shed, forming them into a binding that would shine with unseen light. She sent the binding down the disconnected pipe as she imbued and activated the lightwisps, filling the stone pipe with unseen light as she stretched out the binding across its length, claiming and adding more and more lightwisps to allow the binding the spread that far.

Letting the lightwisp binding shine, Lori spent the time reforming the bindings in the water hub shed. While it was convenient that they could be imbued directly by her dungeon's core, she needed a way to deactivate certain bindings. Doing so wasn't hard. All she needed to do was to anchor the bindings to spots on the stone walls that weren't being reinforced by the earthwisp bindings being imbued by her core, while also anchoring the binding to a spot that was being reinforced. Doing so would allow her to deactivate the various bindings that the water hub shed needed to function by simply pulling them off from where they were anchored to the reinforced stone. She did the same for the binding of unseen light she'd deactivated, anchoring it onto another patch of stone wall that was no longer reinforced by an earthwisp binding so it wouldn't activate.

Once that was finished, Lori deactivated the binding of lightwisps in the pipe, and did one last check for voids or any concentration of wisps that were not contiguous airwisps or contiguous earthwisps. Finding none, she carefully reconnected the pipe from the water hub shed and her Dungeon's reservoir, before carefully shutting the door of the water hub shed and sealing it in place so that no one can get into the shed, ensuring that there were no openings for bugs and dust to enter through. Finally, she set the binding of lightningwisps to keep out bugs back into place, anchoring the binding around the door.

Then she headed back to her dungeon, keeping well out of the way of someone coming out with a cart full of waste that was being emptied from the latrines. Thankfully, none of it was falling onto the floor, though the smell was lingering and ugh, that smell was being drawn into her dungeon by the ventilation, wasn't it? Lori reached out to deactivate the binding for the ventilation over the door, then sighed as she realized that because it was anchored onto stone that was being reinforced by earthwisps…

By the time she finished reforming the ventilation so she could deactivate it if she needed to, the smell from the waste had already dispersed, and while the odor was still strong at the entrance, that was because the latrines being emptied were nearby. Ugh, there were little dark patties of waste on her floor! They had better clean that! At least they'd remembered to close the latrine's access hatch.

Grumbling and holding her breath until she was well past, Lori headed towards the water reservoir at the back. The way to it was sealed off with a door now, one that was elevated with a few yustri of stone off the floor so that no liquids could creep under it. She unsealed it by moving aside the stone protrusions holding the door in place and slid aside the latch—a bit superfluous in this instance, but a latch was a latch—to swing the door open. Lori altered the binding of lightwisps anchored inside to cease emitting unseen light, only visible light, so that she wouldn't injure her eyes as she looked over the stone wall around the reservoir. The water was a long way down from her, and the floating valve that would close off the pipe from the water hub shed was hanging open.

Lori reached through her core, reached for the bindings in the water hub shed, and activated the binding of waterwisps that would draw water through the pipe leading to the reservoir. She waited.

Eventually, water started flowing out from the pipe, and the reservoir started to fill up.

Lori nodded in satisfaction. They had water again. Well, they already had water, but now the reservoir was in no danger of running out. It would take some time for the reservoir to be full once more, but hopefully they wouldn't need that much water any time soon. Once Kolinh had cleared the baths—and likely clean them, since the baths might be full of bugs—she'd be able to close up her Dungeon's baths… probably work on improving them. Clearly she needed to have them reclaim the bath water so they wouldn't dump so much into the third level, and perhaps extend the amount of time the water in the reservoir would last.

Sealing the reservoir closed once more and altering the lightwisps again to emit unseen light so that they kill any dustlife that somehow managed to survive the heat of the water hub shed, Lori headed out to work on getting rid of the dragonfrost in the area around the outside of her Dungeon. The hot vapor had been effective, so…