Demesne

"Rian!"

Thankfully, Umu had the presence of mind to go around Lori to reach the man in question, and thus there was no danger to Lori's notes. Nauseatingly affectionate sounds ensued behind her as she passed an amused-looking Mikon, who gave Lori a bow in greeting. Lori nodded to her in return, not slowing down as she headed towards her room.

"Welcome back, Rian," Lori heard Mikon say behind her. "We missed you."

"Oh, now you 'miss' him? You and Riz seemed to be having a lot of fun when you kicked me out of the house."

"You were welcome to stay, Umu. It's your house too."

Thankfully, Lori didn't hear the rest of that as she entered her Dungeon. The dining hall was full, and dinner seemed to be only just beginning—the line for food was still long, and not many people were eating yet—and reminded her that while technically delicious and sweet, all she'd had for lunch had been fruit. The temptation to immediately peruse her notes was met with the immediate counterpoint that she didn't want to do so hungry, and so it wasn't too difficult to pull herself away to go back downstairs.

Her table was currently full, as whatever-his-name-was—Lori checked the rocks in her belt pouch—Lidzuga was sitting on one end with his sister, who seemed to be borrowing Shanalorre's bench to be able to sit at the end of the table. Lori had contemplated having the woman go away—she wasn't a wife after all, unless she and her brother were from one of those demesnes—that first meal she'd had on coming back, but there wasn't really a point to it, and even with Rian back the other side would only be at capacity. Given how closely Umu and Riz or Mikon tended to sit next to him…

Lori settled into her chair, closing her eyes and sighing in relief.

"So…" Rian said across from her, "are you going to manage the self-control to keep from losing yourself in your notes again, or am I going to have to do something potentially dangerous to my person?"

"Shouldn't you be insisting on getting the food yourself?" Lori said, not opening her eyes.

"… I'll do it tomorrow, it's been a long couple of days. Well?"

"You realize I'm the Dungeon Binder and answer to no one, don't you?"

"You answer to no one but yourself," Rian said, in the tones of a correction. "How do you feel about the demesne's most useful and productive worker indulging themselves when there's work to be done and everyone needs to help get the demesne back to normal?"

Lori opened one eye just enough to give him a glare. Well, half a glare, since she was only using a single eye. Rian just gave her one of his cheerful—and annoying—smiles. "I am perfectly capable for exercising self-control, Rian."

Rian hummed noncommittally. "…so, do you want me to hold on to your notes until all the cleanup is finished or—?"

"I can handle my own notes, Rian."

"Of course, of course, I never doubted that. Can you stop handling them, though?"

Lori opened both eyes to glare at him, even as a part of her grudgingly admitted that was a legitimate question. "Rian."

"Yes, your Bindership?"

"Drop the subject. Now."

He sighed, shrugging. "Yes, your Bindership. How's your soap supply, by the way?"

The strange, unrelated question made Lori blink in confusion. "My soap? It's fine. Why do you ask?"

"Ah, I was concerned you'd run out during your bath before coming down, since you finished so quickly. My mistake."

What was he talking about? She hadn't taken a bath before she'd come dow—

…

Oh.

…

Ugh, she hated it when he had a point.

––––––––––––––––––

The next morning, though it almost physically pained her to do so, Lori gave Rian her notes, still pressed between the two bone tablets. She'd have to send River's Fork some replacements for them, as they would be staying in place for some time.

For all his comments about not being able to control herself, Rian looked no better himself that morning as he accepted the pressed notes. He was also walking strangely, and sat down gingerly when he got to the bench. At least his hair was wet, meaning he had bathed. "I'll give this back to you when you ask for it," he said.

"Give it back to me when all the cleaning is done and the demesnes are back to normal," Lori ordered.

"Are you sure? What if you insist on having me give it to you?"

"Then I expect you to disobey me until the demesnes are back to normal."

"Huh. That's new. Usually you expect absolute obedience."

"Yes, which you will do by disobeying my orders to give me the notes before that point."

"Fine, but if you get mad at me, I'm going to remind you this was all your idea." Rian looked down at the pressed sheets. "Anything interesting in here I can look forward to you implementing?"

Lori considered. While she didn't remember every detail, some impressions of why she had noted something down remained. "Better ways to use lightningwisps, mostly."

"I'm hoping that's just what sticks out in your mind and that you have some kind of way make boats fly or something."

"Why would I make a boat fly?"

"Because it would cut down on the travel time to Covehold if we can just go straight there? I mean, it's not like we'll be passing through the air of any demesnes. And if there are any, wouldn't it be a good idea to know about them? Actually, what about that last demesne we passed last year? Shouldn't we see if they're still around, if only so we know if we'll have to deal with them in the near future?"

"The one that was weeks away and was practically still in sight of Covehold Demesne?"

"All right, probably not them. But maybe someone built a demesne a little past them? We should probably check, just in case."

"Wouldn't it be simpler to find out the distribution of known demesnes when you next go to Covehold?"

"…yes, that's probably simpler than sending someone to try and make it back the way we came."

"Good morning Rian! Good morning, anyone else listening!"

"Mornin', Taeclas," Rian said, helpfully giving Lori her name as the Deadspeaker and her wife arrived, sitting down at one of the bench. "How did you sleep?"

"Great! We slept all night," Taeclas said cheerfully. "Rian, can we borrow your house? Just for a little bit after breakfast? Please?"

"… Tae, I like you, but I don't feel comfortable doing that."

"But our house is still full of bugs! Come on, please? I'll be your best friend?"

Rian looked like he was seriously considering the offer. "Does that mean Rybelle won't be your best friend anymore?"

Taeclas stared at him, eyes flicking to her wife, who looked amused. "You'll be one of my best friends!" the Deadspeaker hastily amended.

"But not your best friend? Sorry then, if I'm going to let anyone do unspeakable things in my house, they'd have to be my best friend, you know?"

"Eh…" Taeclas sighed. "That's… fair…" She sounded like she was going to cry, for some reason.

Rian sighed. "Your Bindership, can we prioritize getting Tae's house cleaned today? You know, to help improve the morale of our resident Deadspeaker?"

Taeclas immediately went from tearful to hopeful as she turned towards Lori, a pleading look on her face.

"Clean your own house," Lori said.

"Does that mean they can borrow the brooms after breakfast?"

Lori rolled her eyes. "It's a 'dealing with people' matter, deal with it."

"Yay! Rian, you're officially a best friend!"

Rian held out his hand to the Deadspeaker. "Well in that case, can you check if I bruised or strained anything?"

Taeclas cheerfully reached for this hand, then paused.

"I washed my hands," Rian said flatly. "See, this is why I won't let you use my house."

"All right, fair enough…"

––––––––––––––––––

Clearing both demesnes took almost the rest of the week. The bugs were surprisingly tenacious, and houses were cleared and cleaned slowly. While everyone was willing to clean their homes, they only had a limited number of brooms long enough to reach the ceilings, where various strands, nests and bug corpses were. Rian had to set up a schedule as to who got to clean their houses, while the rest checked over the outsides of all the buildings, especially the roofs.

Unsurprisingly, there was damage. Paper window screens had to be repaired—Taeclas' strange principle objections aside—or replaced, some of the roof planks had swelled and become loose from water damage, a couple of the showers outside of the baths had their doors come off…

Most of the crops left outside had died, including the patch of tubers that Shanalorre was growing behind her house. It wasn't a great loss, as the tubers were still edible once dug out of the ground—because the ground had been frozen, and had still been very cold by the time Karina and Shanalorre had gone to check the tubers—but it boded badly for the rest of the plants around the demesne.

"Oh, a lot of the trees will probably live through this," Taeclas said, looking quite disappointed as she said it, after she'd been asked to investigate the matter. When she'd been stubborn at 'looking after the well-being of stupid trees', Rian had simply called her 'cheater', she had groaned, sighed, and sullenly done as she'd been told. "The dragon was only here for short time compared to winter, so they didn't bury everything. While many trees did lose branches, and a lot of leaves were frozen, it's unlikely to have killed the whole tree. Smaller shrubs and grasses that were buried are more likely to have died, but that's normal for many of them in the winter." She shrugged. "It's not the first time that a dragon has brought an unseasonable or extreme degree of cold to a demesne, but I don't have the literature memorized. And for all he's part of the Mysteries, I doubt Lidz does either."

"But we're not looking at total plant death across the whole demesne?" Rian said.

"Only in the short term, although the timing for it is terrible. The fall is coming up, so plants should be in the dying phase of their yearly cycle, but because it's triggered early, because of the relatively mild weather they might be fooled into thinking it's spring, which would mean any fresh shoots die during the winter."

That had nothing to do with her, as none of that required Whispering. Lori, for her parts, focused on removing dragonfrost from areas they needed, such as the charcoal-burner's clearing, the outdoor mushroom farm, the part of the shore where the children usually hunted seels—although there seemed to be far fewer seels than usual, and Rian suspected they had been tricked into migrating early because of the dragonfrost—various roofs, the few parts of the opposite shore that they needed such as the curing and smoking shed, and the sawmill. The rest left to melt on their own, which they were well into doing in any case.

Every other day, she'd go to River's Fork to assist in the cleanup there. Lori had been forced to place a binding to repel bugs around each house after they had been cleaned to prevent the bugs from simply returning to settle inside them, something she had to imbue every time she went back. Fortunately, the bugs slowly started dispersing as the days went on, and at the end of the week Lori was able to just let the bindings dissipate.

Shanalorre had also warned them that there were still a numbes of possible abominations in the demesne not far from the dome, but save for the one that Lori had seen, no one saw any further sign of them. Which was slightly disappointing, because she had developed a better and more stable version of the lightning ball binding. As the first iteration had not been immediately fatal—and had suffered from having the binding consuming all the imbuement at once again, resulting in an admittedly nice explosion—she had modified the binding to exude 'spikes' of lightningwisps so that on contact, there would be more than one channel for the lightning to flow through, resulting in the lighting actually passing through a beast's body instead of simply unleashing so much lightning the air itself exploded from the heat.

Lori hadn't been able to properly test the binding due to a lack of living samples to try them on. Given the differences in scale, while the bindings had killed the bugs in the air she had launched them at, it wasn't a properly conclusive test since a bug was a far cry from a beast or beast-based abomination. And while she would have wanted to try using the binding on dragonborn abominations, it was a stupid idea to actively go seek them out to do so, although she had ordered she be informed if any came in sight of the central dome.

While puzzling and mildly curious, in the end the absence of the abominations wasn't really anything important. At the very least, it meant that Lori wouldn't need to set up a defensive perimeter of lightningwisps to keep them away from the central dome and its fields. With the ground finally thawing, the houses now cleared, and Lidzuga and his sister residing in River's Fork once more, that demesne was finally back to normal and Lori could go back home.

––––––––––––––––––

"Great Binder," Shanalorre said from behind Lori.

Lori blinked in surprise, turning away from the game of sunk she was playing with Mikon. "What is it?" she asked.

"I believe I have identified a beast within the confines of River's Fork demesne," Shanalorre said. "It is difficult to estimate size without a better reference, since I am being forced to use random passing bugs and leaves, but I am also certain of my identification."

"Of what?" Lori said, glancing towards the gameboard, where Mikon was finally making a move, carefully dropping one stone onto each bowl in order. She could already see she was going to win this one, and from the annoyed look on the weaver's face, they did as well.

"Of the typhon beast. It is within the confines of River's Fork demesne."

Lori slowly turned to face Shanalorre, the game no longer important. "What."

"The typhon beast," the other Dungeon Binder repeated. "I cannot be absolutely certain, but based on what I have identified of its relative size, girth, and distinctive features that I remember from my own sightings of it, I believe that it has entered the boundaries of River's Fork Demesne. And it does not seem inclined to leave."