Demesne

By the time they ate, the drinking water had been replenished one last time, the latrines had been cleaned, the dragon shelter had been sealed, Lori had imbued the blocks of reserve—reservoir?—ice, and the defenses of her dungeon had been set in place. Her dungeon's entryway had been turned into a moat filled with boiling water that had been bound to remain liquid, the lethal lighningwisp binding had been activated, and she had firewisps to keep the water's heat from transferring to the air so that her dungeon wouldn't become heated.

There had been voids of wisps shaped like idiots on the upper balcony between the two air intake vents as she had begun sealing up her dungeon, and they had stayed and probably watched as she reconfigured the entryway for the dragon's arrival. Fortunately, the idiots had left as she'd been finishing, else she might have needed to try to direct them back into the dungeon. The upper balcony was for if it became necessary to actively defend her dungeon's air vents against particularly durable bug-like dragonborn abominations trying to crawl into them, which her lightningwisp binding was theoretically meant to prevent, and was kept as a redundancy. Really, what was the point of having such heavy defenses if people were going to leave them just to look at the dragon through the air holes?

Breakfast in the dragon shelter had been served so late it was practically an early lunch. Lori took her food in her alcove, because the main shelter had been crowded and noisy and she didn't have any other orders to give to Yllian, so there was no reason to subject herself to that. After eating, she just sat there, dividing her attention between her ears and her awareness of her demesne's wisps.

There were few firewisps left in the air, meaning it had cooled significantly, and the waterwisps that had saturated it had changed state, condensing from mostly air to mostly liquid. Fog, she surmised. All of the stone structures of her demesne were covered in water as the humidity had condensed, and the part of her familiar with woodworking winced at the damage this was undoubtedly doing to the wood. Their roofs had been designed to resist rain, and had been treated accordingly, but the underlying beams and… well, whatever the bits that weren't beams were called… had not been as prepared. She could feel the waterwisps entering them, no doubt causing them to swell and doing who knows what.

Lacking anything better to do, Lori did what she could to alleviate the damage, claiming waterwisps and slowly drawing them out of the wood, then forming them into a binding to keep more moisture out. It was probably pointless in the long run, but she had little else to do besides sleeping or reading her almanac, and until the dragon actually arrived she didn't want to compromise her ability to perceive her demesne with either.

It was later afternoon when the dragon arrived. At least, she was reasonably sure that was the time. Yllian had the forethought to set up a water clock—Rian must have provided it at some point, as the dragon shelter hadn't had one last time—and she had seen it when she'd gone to make another firewisp binding to cook dinner. As she felt the presence of the dragon practically upon them, she felt something cross over her demesne's boundaries.

Realization took a few moments, and comprehension took a few more. Dragons were usually high in the sky, and while it was well-recorded that dragons regularly entered the sphere of larger demesnes several taums wide—which meant all modern demesne in the old continent—Lori had thought that her own demesne at a mere two and a half taums in radius didn't reach the altitudes necessary. She'd read somewhere that dragons usually occupied the skies between ten and fifty taums above the ground, well above the height that Skykeep Demesne floated at.

What Lori felt enter her demesne was, as far as she could estimate, only five hundred paces or so above the ground.

In hindsight, she had possessed a few unconscious preconceptions as to what a dragon was. She had thought it would be something like a massive wispling, a somehow-metabolizing conglomeration of wisps. After all, it was well-known that Dungeon Binders had devised many of the more esoteric bindings, meanings, formations and even a few vistas from observing the dragons that had passed through their demesnes. Logically, that meant there were wisps that she would be able to perceive through her connection to her dungeon's core… and life and thoughts as well, she supposed, once she figured out how she was supposed to do that.

The dragon was a void.

Everything above five hundred paces was simply gone from her awareness. It was like a wall had entered her demesne, cutting her off from the sky and slowly casting its shadow upon her. The dragon moved with almost painful slowness, what Lori judged to be just faster than a slightly hurried walking pace. Lori was alarmed to see that the hemispherical binding of darkwisps, intended as an ablative layer against the dragon directing magic at her demesne, was simply being pushed out of the way… because the only place the binding was anchored was at her entryway.

Hastily, Lori quickly took hold of the darkwisp binding and anchored it to more places to keep the binding within the confines of her demesne. The darkwisps had already started to bulge out beyond her demesne's borders on the far side opposite the dragon's approach, but she was able to pull it back in.

When she finished securing her ablative layer—fortunately, enough had been under the dragon anything it had tried to do to the actual material surface of her demesne had been prevented— she that took a moment and focused specifically on the edge of the advancing void. Lori perceived voids that she was just able to identify as curved, subtly spiraling tendrils. The tendrils stuck out at strangely repetitive angles, until the ends of the tendrils bloomed in symmetrical clusters of more void, spiraling tendrils. When the void tendrils moved towards each other, they seemed to weave together, twisting over and under each other, tendrils filling up her remaining pockets of awareness until Lori lost all ability to perceive the wisps there. Despite this, there were no displacements of airwisps or airborne waterwisps that implied anything solid was moving through the air.

If Lori hadn't been so focused on perceiving such fine details, she would likely have missed what the dragon was doing until much later.

Beneath the dragon's shadow, dropping from its formless body that she couldn't perceive, small voids of wisps were falling. The voids were swiftly covered in waterwisps and ice that coalesced out of the fog, even as what few firewisps there were started disappearing. The frost-covered voids were displacing airwisps and waterwisps as they fell downwards, indicating that unlike the dragon itself, some sort of solid matter filled those voids. Something that was very cold, cold enough that ice formed around them instantly…

Lori followed the progress of one of the ice-covered voids as it fell and struck the ground… and began to release airwisps.

Wait.

She concentrated her awareness along the ground, and found more and more voids being scattered, slowly vanishing into literal puffs of air. Lori focused her awareness all along the length of the river. The little voids were falling into the part of the river under the dragon's shadow like hailstones, and she could only suppose the same was happening in the parts of the river beyond her demesne as well. The river under the dragon was beginning to roil as if boiling, very thick clouds of waterwisps rising from the water's surface, joining the fog that the already in the air.

…

Were those voids solidified air?

That… that seemed the best explanation she had at the moment. Solidified air—and liquified air, for that matter—were voids in her perceptions of the wisps in her demesne, since they were no longer air but not made of water or rocks and had no heat, although liquefied air could contain lightwisps and darkwisps. But that meant that…

Lori turned her attention back to the dragon slowly passing over her demesne. Her fingers twitched…

Then she shook her head.

No, no, it was not the time to focus on the dragon, no matter how interesting what it was being. Focus on the repercussions of its actions. If it was dropping solidified air into her demesne, then the air within the dragon must well past freezing. Even if this was simply exhalation and not some other gas, that was still a significant drop in temperature! And with the dragon so slow…

Lori's eyes snapped open, her eyes turning towards the vent through which air drawn in from outside the mine flowed out. She got to her feet, bare toes feeling for her tsinelas out of habit before remembering she hadn't brought those. Sighing, she put her socks and boots back on—maybe she should have brought her tsinelas—before she was finally able to walk towards the vent, holding her hand up to it.

The air coming in was cold and felt damp. Lori reached down and touched the bit of wire on the side of the reinforced bead receptacle, touching the metal contact. She altered the firewisps she had integrated into the ventilation, carefully detaching them from the binding and, with some moving around, anchoring them to a portion of stone she'd removed from the earthwisp reinforcement. With no more heat being deleted, the air coming in was merely cool and damp. That was certainly an improvement over the damp heat that the air had been this summer, but…

Lori checked on the dragon passing over her demesne again as she went back to sit on her bedroll. The dragon was still moving over her dungeon slowly, the ablative layer of darkwisps holding firm but not stopping the solid voids from passing through—

Something tried to override her claim to the darkwisps, and Lori felt the familiar sensation of another trying to take away wisps that she had bound to her will. She instinctively reacted as she always did when someone tried to do that and enforced her claim, her will gripping the wisps of the binding tightly. The attempt to override her continued, the one opposing her trying to push her will aside and impose its own claim, but Lori stubbornly held on.

This was her demesne, even if she was outside it at the moment! In her demesne, the wisps within were as part of her body, and she always had the superior claim—wait, who was challenging her claim?

…

…

…

!!!

Lori maintained a firm grip on the barrier of darkwisps above her demesne. Or at least, a grip. As long as she consciously made an effort to keep the darkwisps bound to her will, it would. That allowed her to sit there and try to calmly come to terms with the realization that a dragon was challenging her claim to her own binding.

She took a deep breath, and considered the situation rationally. Logically, this should come as no surprise. After all, dragons had to be capable of Whispering, or else Dungeon Binders studying them wouldn't result in new bindings. And being capable of Whispering, that meant that a dragon should be able to perform all the necessary steps to perform Whispering. And the most basic step was claiming wisps and binding them to your will. So really, it was to be expected that a dragon was capable of trying to claim wisps in her demesne.

…

No, no, Lori still felt her concept of a sane world turning sideways.