It had been a long day.

Lori stood outside of her Dungeon, standing in the light cast by the lightwisps anchored to the entryway. It made the already dark night seem gloomy as the light of the moons was obscured by the dragon's tendrils still high in the sky. Most of the light was coming from the lightwisps anchored to the outside of houses, latrines, and the fronts of the baths. The baths were open now, full of people who had spent the late afternoon sweeping and scrubbing the interior clean of the few bugs that had gotten inside. Water flowed inside, heated once more, and the roof was now mostly free of dragonfrost.

Despite this, few lingered outside, hurrying between the baths and her Dungeon, and no one looked up.

Lori rolled her eyes at their silly behavior. As if not looking at the dragon's tendrils would somehow prevent them from falling on the demesne.

Still, she wasn't here for that, but rather to do one final check on her binding to remove the dragonfrost before she went to bed. While the area behind the floodwall—between her dungeon and the baths, as well the claypit—was clear, as well as the most direct path between her dungeon and the nearest stand of latrines, that still left substantial parts of her demesne covered with the dragonfrost. It was probably far too late to do anything to keep the cold from damaging anything. Lori doubted the temperatures the ground and their leaves and branches had plummeted to had been beneficial for any of the trees—which would probably make… uh, crazy-woman-who-named-her-sweetgrass happy, what with her irrational hatred of trees.

Mist covered the dragonfrost in front of her, a thick layer that she had drawn from the water taken from the claypit, spread out over an area about five paces square. At the moment, the vapors were constrained because even all the water that had been in the claypit would be spread thin if she had spread it across all of the land that had been cleared and built on around her Dungeon. That said, she'd used a tenth of that water to do exactly that, spreading a binding of waterwisps to contain vapor so that it wouldn't escape into the atmosphere. At the moment, there was no vapor to contain, but if this binding worked, that would change.

The waterwisps were anchored to all the top-most layer of ice that was part of the dragonfrost. Most of her efforts had been to make sure that all of the waterwisps in the ice were properly claimed and integrated into the binding. With the ground frozen, she didn't have to worry about the water being absorbed into the ground.

Lori double checked her binding, then checked it one more time. It wasn't the largest binding she had ever formed—that would be the shells around her demesne that she used to expand—but it did require that everything be placed and anchored properly so that there wouldn't be any spots where she'd lose heat or water. That was why all the waterwisps were already claimed and part of the binding, which would keep the water from rising up and away from the ground.

Once she was satisfied, Lori activated the binding, the firewisps integrated with the waterwisps beginning to warm the vapors even as she forced them to condense into water. That warmed the air as the now-liquid water splashed onto the dragonfrost, warming the ice beneath them and causing the solidified air to sublimate. The cold air bubbled under the water, creating mist, which further spread heat across the mist-covered ground…

She had modified the binding she had used at the claypit slightly. The liquid water was now also heated by the firewisps so that they wouldn't just turn to ice, as the binding was no longer working on a contained depression in the ground. The blanket of heat was causing the dragonfrost to melt slowly but steadily. Satisfied that the modification was working as intended for the moment, as was the rest of the binding, Lori turned away to head inside and sleep. Whether it continued to work properly through the night or not, she'd find out in the morning.

…

She stepped out again, and formed a binding of airwisps to disperse the air that would be released from the dragonfrost, and another to blow out air from the lower part of the entryway. It was exhalation after all, and she didn't want to have an asphyxiation hazard in her demesne.

Then she went to bed, the familiar fatigue of a day's work making her eyelids heavy. It was enough to keep her from trying to stay up and just do some observation notes on the samples she'd collected from the dragon, just a few, just observe one sample…

Lori threw herself onto her bed and pointedly closed her eyes, trusting her tiredness to render her uncon—

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As it turned out, while the binding had worked as intended, it hadn't spread as far as Lori would have liked during the night. When she stepped out to check on the binding the next morning, she'd found that it had cleared the initial area she had started from—the ground in front of Rian's house—and had slowly spread from there, as she had intended, but the hot vapor had been drawn uphill between the houses, in some strange inversion of water seeking the path of least resistance to lower ground. While the main road leading towards the old dining hall and up the rise towards the more organized row of houses was mostly clear, there were still thick patches of dragonfrost between the houses, as if the hot vapor hadn't spread there.

The binding had also seemed to get less effective the more it had spread, presumably because the firewisps had needed to heat an increasingly larger area as well as increasingly greater amounts of water vapor, until the binding had reached the point where it couldn't heat the vapor faster than the dragonfrost could chill it. Reforming the binding so that the firewisps produced more heat had helped allowed the binding to melt more dragonfrost, and Lori had added more firewisps to allow the binding to function for longer before it reached equilibrium with the environment again.

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With paths now cleared, Kolinh began clearing the houses. Most contained only bugs that had come in through the chimney, a great many of them dead from eating each other, but three contained dragonborn abominations that had needed to be dealt with. They were small things, all of them bugs of some sort, and had been dealt with using axes and shovels, because they'd been too small for spears.

As she had predicted, Rian's house didn't have any bugs in it at all, and so cleaning it had been quick. Mikon had cheerfully led the way as she and Umu had begun moving their packs back in.

Other houses had slowly been cleared as well, even as Lori's mist had melted more and more dragonfrost. She'd needed to add more firewisps twice more as the binding was spread thin again.

Removing the dragonfrost from the roofs of building required her active participation, but by then she'd developed her methodology. As soon as a house had been cleared and confirmed to not have any abominations, Lori used a cloud of hot steam—steam, not just vapor—to surround the roof in question. The steam had coated the dragonfrost, and imparted enough heat to melt the ice and sublimate the solidified air, while doing so slowly enough that solidified air hadn't exploded all at once. There had been pops and minor explosions, but at worse it just sent some ice flying up. Lori had stayed well back.

On the third day after she'd begun putting her demesne back in order, Lori ordered Riz to retrieve Lori's Shed Boat from the third level and have it inspected by the carpenters and the Deadspeakers so she could take it to River's Fork.

"You're going already, Great Binder?" Riz said. The woman had a strange smile on her face, and looked like she was still half asleep. Mikon seemed to share the same expression, humming happily to herself as she ate. Umu was staring intently at her food, and looked like she hadn't gotten much rest, occasionally glaring accusingly at the other two women. Lori felt a strong surge of sympathy towards the blonde weaver. There was no doubt that what she'd likely had to put up with the night before as Mikon had fulfilled her promises to Riz had been far worse than simply having to hear her mothers being enthusiastic through the walls.

"The dragonfrost is clearing well enough, and at the moment we don't need to clear the fields yet because people will probably be focusing on cleaning their houses. There's nothing for me to do, so I'm going to River's Fork and dealing with the matter," Lori said.

"Understood, Great Binder. I'll have the other boat prepared as well."

Lori frowned. "Why?"

"We have manpower to spare, Great Binder, so it would probably be helpful to send some people over to help with the work. Also, it's well past time for the miners there to come back home, so we can send them back to be with their families."

"Is that really necessary?" Lori sighed, then waved her hand dismissively before Riz could reply. "Fine, fine, if you must. Mining is on hold at the moment anyway, so retrieve them." Really, why did people have to spend so much time with their families? Lori hadn't seen her mothers for months at this point—at least two years—and she felt no urge to go back to them or see them for anything except to turn away and not have anything to do with them.

"Yes, Great Binder," Riz said.

"Kolinh, will you be correcting me and saying you actually need me for something after all?"

"No, Great Binder. We need to consolidate and secure the village, and we're clear enough for that now. we might need you when we go out into the woods, but until them, we can handle things."

Lori nodded. "I will be leaving, then, and dragging Rian back with me." She checked her belt pouch. "Lidzuga, you will be returning with me. It's past time River's Fork had its Deadspeaker back. Get packed."

"Uh… my sister wants to know if she can keep living here instead? And if I can stay here, for that matter?"

Lori gave him a flat look. "Well, you could, but you wouldn't be eligible for those half-days off you wanted. Having to go back and forth to and from River's Fork by boat everyday would no doubt take that long, depending on what propulsion method you construct to move the boat."

"I'd… still need to work at River's Fork?"

"Of course. Its crops need someone to tend to them."

"Not it!" the crazy woman—Lori checked the rock she'd left on the table—Taeclas declared. "I'm not moving out of my nice house that I'm still waiting for them to clear so I can start cleaning it up. I like my house! It's so big! "

"Perhaps you can apply again once the Golden Sweetwood Company arrives. If I recall correctly, they would have Deadspeakers among their number. Once they settle in River's Fork, the demesne would have more than enough people to tend to the crops, so no doubt you can apply again," Shanalorre said.

Lori twitched at the reminder of interlopers still coming. She had gotten the impression that they would arrive in mid-summer, and it was already well-past that, but every day they didn't show up was a good day for her. The very fact they would be bringing more wizards already made them a potential danger to her, and when they started building their own demesne—because what wizard wouldn't want to have the power of a Dungeon Binder?—she'd no longer have the luxury of continuing as she had before, as they would no doubt be trying to kill or worse, impoverish her. It's what she would have done in their place, after all. "In the unlikely event that some of the Golden Sweetwood Company's Deadspeakers actually choose to surrender to my authority and reside in River's Fork, I will reconsider your application."

"I… suppose that's fair…"

"Your sister is free to move in immediately, although at the moment there's no place for her to stay. The shelter still hasn't been cleared."

"… I'll tell her that, your Bindership…"

"We'll clear the shelter after breakfast, Great Binder," Kolinh said. "We don't hear anything from its windows that might be a dragonborn abomination, but best to make sure."

Lori nodded. "Clear the Um last. It's the least necessary building in the demesne."

"…yes, Great Binder…"

Lori nodded in satisfaction as she finished eating her breakfast. Rian had better be keeping her notes safe! If something had happened to her notes…

Well, Lori did remember some things…