Weekly Digest 135 - (#425 - #427) (Patreon)

A Cold Wind

The dragon did not arrive that day, which was fortunate, because it had taken all day for the three adult seels Lori had been able to drag out of the water to be skinned and butchered. From the rate the dragon was approaching, there was a very really possibility this would be one that lingered, and they might be stuck inside the dragon shelter for a week or more.

At lunch, Lori checked on her demesne. Rian had still not given the signal, although all the voids of wisps that denoted people were inside her demesne now, and the waterwisps that made up the Lori's Ice Boat ahd been beached and the boat was lacking its driver and… it's outriggers? Ah, right. She needed to remove the ice from that, didn't she?

Lori carefully liquefied the solidified water wrapped around the Lori's Ice Boat's wooden frame, doing it one section at a time. Normally this would require her to use firewisps to carefully add heat to the water, but… well, it was a very hot day, as usual. Each small section drew in the heat from the air around it, momentarily causing the air to liquefy or even solidify, but it was so hot that she only had to wait a few moments for the cold air to disperse and then there was enough heat in the air again for the water to absorb and use to liquify.

To prepare for the possibility that this slow-to-arrive dragon would also be slow to leave, Lori spent the afternoon making head-sized blocks of ice—each with a binding to keep the water solidified—that were hauled up to the dragon shelter by everyone who weren't busy butchering the seels. The ice blocks were stack in the room that was intended to be a bathing area, atop a layer of straw from the last harvest to keep them from sliding on the ground. It was either that or trying to enlarge the water reservoir, and doing the latter was would have been complicated given the present situation. Moving the excavated stone out, putting the water in… yes, keeping the blocks of ice perpetually solid would require her active intervention, but once she'd fused all the small block into one massive block, it was easier to keep imbued, and blocks didn't need buckets to be carried.

She had needed to make clear that the ice blocks were not for holding against themselves to keep cool, but was their future water supply. It had been necessary to have Yllian put someone to guard the ice block so that none of the idiots tried to chip off a piece to rub all over themselves.

Lori just hoped this would be enough to keep them supplied with water for more than a week, if the dragon lasted that long. Intellectually, she knew that she must have drunk reclaimed goldwater during the times she and her mothers had sheltered in Taniar Demesne's, and that it had been common practice for millennia in dragon shelters and dungeons, but… no, no, it was far too early to be considering making her idiots drink their own goldwater.

…

Although…

No, no making anyone drink their own goldwater, no matter how annoying Shanalorre's uncle was.

Dinner was served in the late afternoon so that there would be time too carry all the benches—no one had brought out the tables— back to the dragon shelter. The bits of meat had been fire roasted instead of stewed, probably because it was faster. Lori had seen—and  smelled—several large chunks of seel meat being roasted over open fire, the people tending to them sweating profusely. The food that had resulted had been delicious, though.

After dinner, the benches were carried back to the dragon shelter, and Lori finally reactivated the ventilation bound tool by placing the large wisp-bead back into its bead receptacle. Air began to audibly flow through the wooden tubes that served as the mine's ventilation system. Lori stood and held her hand up towards the vent that released into her alcove, smiling widely at the cold air that blew over her hand. She would seal off the air vent actually closest to her alcove—there was still the possibility of the dragon producing poisonous gasses—but only when she was sure  that dragon had arrived. Right now however, there was no reason to be hotter than she had to be.

With that done, Lori moved on to the next matter, which sh regarded with bemusement. "Erzebed," she said, "why is there a pile of straw in my sleeping niche? All the straw is supposed to be under the ice block."

"You looked sore this morning, Great Binder, so I had Mekari put some clean straw down for you," Riz said. "If you don't like it, you can give it to me Great Binder. I'm always glad to have something between me and rock."

Lori poked at that admittedly thick pile of straw, then patted it with her open hand. The material was surprisingly springy, though not very soft. The straw was clearly much softer than the bare rock, however. While it would probably be like sleeping on wood… that was much preferable to sleeping on rock.

"Thank you," Lori said, absently. "Have someone keeping watch for the dragon outside of the shelter tonight, and tell them to wake me immediately if they something." She paused. "Be sure they take a moment to make sure it's not just a cloud with strange colors from the moons."

"Yes, Great Binder. I'll take the first watch."

Lori checked on her demesne again, but Rian still hadn't given the signal. She checked the level of the water reservoir, and found it barely depleted. Did Rian have people taking drinking water from the river too?

She sighed. While she didn't actually want a dragon to come to her demesnes, all this waiting for it to show up… it was wearing on her. They were all ready to seal themselves into the dragon shelter, but since the dragon wasn’t actually here yet, they couldn't. Or at least, she wouldn't let them, lest they devour through the limited supplies, though ironically they were unlikely to run out of food no matter how long the dragon lingered.

Lori was tempted to stay up reading. Her almanac called too her from her pack, full of entertainment and distraction… but the dragon was still to come, and she didn't want her mind to be exhausted when it came time to finally seal her dungeon and the shelter.

Not that she wanted for there to be a dragon over her demesnes, but if it was coming, then it really should be here now so she can finally close everything and just go to sleep…

She was still spinning around in her own head, these two thoughts chasing each other as she sank into the darkness behind her eyes.

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The next morning dawned, and there still seemed to be no sign of the coming dragon. Lori could feel it still coming, seemingly headng straight towards them. That was mostly likely a false impression, as the dragon was probably so wide she just couldn’t properly notice any change in the angle that the wisps in her body and her demesne were being pressured by the force of the dragon’s presence.

Unsealing the entrance to the dragon shelter again, Lori stepped out to check the horizon once more, shivering slightly at a cold morning breeze. A cursory view revealed nothing, just more empty sky and—

“Great Binder, I think we should get back inside,” Riz said.

Lori blinked, turning to her not-an-officer. "What? Why?"

Riz held up a hand, waving it vaguely through the air. "The wind is cold, Great Binder. When was the last time the wind was this cold?"

The question sounded non-snesical to Lori. Of course the wind was cold, it was early morning…

…during an absurdly hot summer.

Oh.

Lori tuned to face the direction she could feel the approaching dragon again, and found the cold wind directly in her face. She sniffed the air, but there was only the smell of the trees and leaves. At least, she assumed that was the smell of the trees and leaves, as it was what she always smelled when she was near the towering vegetation. The air was just cold, so cold she could feel her face cooling by the moment, and she could see… was the fog among the trees on the other side of the river?

Lori reached through her connection to her dungeon core, letting herself be aware of the wisps in her demesne. Waterwisps filled the air, and there were no firewisps to be found outside. The presence of lightwisps were muted, and there were a lot of darkwisps not part of the binding she had prepared close to the ground. Tellingly, there were no idiot-shaped voids of wisps outside of her dungeon, and four stones with lightwisp bindings anchored to them were stacked on the little stone shelf that Rian was supposed to use to signal her. That wasn't the procedure they had discussed, but she could see Rian doing that as a method of being emphatic.

"Erzebed?"

"Yes, Great Binder?"

"Tell Yllian we're eating in the dragon shelter this morning. I'll provide a binding for them to cook the food on. Before breakfast though, I want the latrines cleaned one last time and the drinking water replenished one last time." Lori paused, going over  the instructions again. "Not in that order, I want clean hands bringing in the water. We don't eat until I seal the dragon shelter again."

"Yes, Great Binder. Uh… can we put our things in your alcove instead of in the passage while the latrine is being cleaned?"

Lori stared at her, then sighed. "Fine. Use the floor, then take it all out once the passage is clean."

"Thank you, Great Binder."

Turning, Lori headed back to the mine to get to work on sealing off her dungeon. The stone of the hill and the white Iridescence-alloyed copper over the door was covered with moisture, and it was only now that Lori realized that the excessive humidity of the previous day was gone. At the door, she glanced back over the horizon.

The sky continued to be unhelpfully empty, as if taunting Lori with the dragon's tardiness, the cold wind on her face disdainful.

As Lori stepped back through the mine entrance, a thought occurred to her. Perhaps the dragon would be able to kill the typhon beast for them? So far, the plan to learn the beast's habits and try to set a trap for it… well, admittedly, it had somewhat fallen by the wayside, although at least they hadn't lost anyone over it yet. She resolved to finally put the plan into effect after the dragon, if the beast was somehow still alive afterwards.

…

Given her luck so far, the thing would come out of this completely unscathed, ugh.

As Riz headed deeper into the mine to relay the orders to Yllian and her friends, Lori returned to her alcove. Sitting down atop her bedroll, she leaned back against the stone wall, closed her eyes, and got to work.

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Beneath The Dragon’s Shadow

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 damage.

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 a 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.

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—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 bloomed in symmetrical clusters of more void, spiraling tendrils. When the void tendrils moved towards each other, the tendrils 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 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 as it fell and struck the ground… and immediately 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 all along the river's length like hailstones, and she could only suppose the same was happening upriver and downriver beyond her demesne as well. The entire river 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. 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 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 draw 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 one—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 passing over her dungeon slowly, the ablative layer of darkwisps holding firm but not stopping the solid voids from passing through—

Something tried to challenge 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 challenge against 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 that 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.

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Simple Solutions

Unfortunately, the problem with the world turning sideways is you still had to deal with it.

Keeping a grip on her darkwisps while continuing to work on her demesne was a challenge—and an irritating inconvenience—but nothing she couldn't do! it forced her to work slowly and carefully, but putting care in your work was a good thing! Haste was wasteful, after all!

…

Why hadn't her school taught her how to work on two bindings at once? It was clearly an important skill that she needed to learn, but her school had conspicuously not included this very important skill in their curricu—

Despite how good it felt, Lori had to stop muttering colorfully about her school under her breath, as conceiving of sufficiently colorful language with which to paint them was one flow of thought too many, and her grip on the binding of darkwisps nearly slipped as the dragon kept trying to override her claim.

Stubbornly, Lori continued working. Carefully, she modified the binding of firewisps she'd placed above the pool of boiling water in the entryway of her dungeon. The air getting drawn into her dungeon being hot was no longer a concern. Well, it was now much less of a concern compared to the air in her dungeon getting too cold. While the solidified air would not have much as mass and capacity to sap heat compared to water, it was likely going to add up, especially since there wouldn’t be a lot in the way of heat sources in her dungeon to counter the cold. At least, no heat sources that weren't dangerous for her to remove the bindings of firewisps that kept their heat contained. And that heat source—the water evaporator and condenser for making sure the water was clean and drinkable—wasn't properly positioned to take advantage of the heat in any case.

She supposed the water in the reservoir would act to stabilize the temperature, but as with the evaporator and condenser it wasn't well-positioned to do so. Theoretically, people could shelter in the third level, as she had bindings in place to maintain the temperature so that it remained in within the range that was optimal for growing their crops, but the dungeon farm wasn't designed for actually housing and sustaining people. She could only imagine the disaster what would happen if her idiots tried—

Lori barely managed to reassert her claim as the dragon took advantage of her momentary distraction to begin binding the darkwisp barrier to its will. Argh! Don't get distracted, don’t get distracted! Don't let the dragon claim the most important defense against it doing horrible things to her demesne! She returned towards dividing her attention only between two things. Darkwisps and firewisps, darkwisps and firewisps…

…

She was an idiot.

Lori anchored the binding of darkwisps to the binding of firewisps she was trying to work on, and detached the firewisps from the waterwisps of the moat.  Ah, much better! Now she technically only had one binding to pay attention to! Carefully, she reformed the binding of firewisps to alter the temperature of what passed through it to what she hoped was a comfortable temperature. It was difficult, since what most people considered comfortable was just slightly below human body temperature, and that was hard to assess without being physically at the location to feel the air. Still, as long it was well above freezing, it should not be much of a problem.

Once the adjustments were finished, Lori anchored the firewisps to the stone of the entryway again before detaching it from the darkwisps. While she'd been working, fog seemed to have entered the entryway, which rose and swirled as it made contact with the boiling and forcibly liquefied water, then sank as it passed through the diagonally-slanted firewisps that deleted the heat and caused it to cool, only to rise again as it made contact with the boiling water.

Sank…

Oh.

Sighing, Lori started anchoring airwisps to the darkwisp binding. Unfortunately, doing so gave the turbulent air currents and fog something to push against, and Lori had to anchor the darkwisps to the entryway for some stability. She was tempted to sigh, even as she endured another attempt by the dragon to override her claim on the ablative barrier. Right, right. Given that the river wasn't freezing over, and that the solidied air was becoming air directly instead of transitioning to a liquid state, it was likely exhalation that was hailing down on her demesne.

It was a dangerous vapor, as sufficient concentrations of it were harmful. While the air intake vent for her dungeon was well above the ground, the fact that so much was falling down on her demesne likely meant there was a higher than normal concentration of it present. As a precaution, she set some airwisps—anchored onto the stone of the entryway, which was being reinforced by earthwisps and imbued directly by her core—to forcefully blow the air along the bottom half of the entryway, outward. This had the added benefit of blowing out the little voids of solidified air that had bounced and fallen into the entryway, which would definitely be releasing most-likely-exhalation where it was most likely to be pulled into her demesne, as well as blowing out the fog.

More and more fog was filling the air, rising up from the river on the bubbles being released by the sublimating voids in her awareness. The bits of solidified air— a part of her noted they technically counted as a form of dragon scales—falling into the river's waters were bubbling away, but didn't seem to be causing an appreciable change in the river's temperature. There was just far too much water. The river was flowing as well, meaning that the no part of it was allowed to sit and grow cold. Still, she would have to keep an eye on it. Even this indirect method of cooling could have a cumulative effect if it persisted for long enough, and if it started icing over…

Well, she'd deal with that when it became an issue she needed to deal with. At the moment, there was a far more pressing matter!

How was she supposed to get any sleep when she had to keep the dragon from claiming her darkwisps?-!

"Um, Great Binder?"

Lori blinked, and it took her a few moments to recall where she was, and another moment to not forget to actively maintain her claim on the darkwisps of her demesne. "What is it, Erzebed?"

The pink-haired woman, standing just beyond the open door of Lori's alcove, pointed down mine tunnel, deeper into the shelter. "There's fog coming out of the air vents. Is that something we should be worried about?"

Fo—oh. "Fo—oh. Yes, that's perfectly normal, Erzebed." Lori said, then paused, frowning. "Though I suppose I should do something about it. The wood hasn't been treated to take that much damp. We wouldn't want mold where we store our food." Lori got to her feet, keeping her hold on the darkwisps. The dragon was still trying to claim it, its attempts almost rhythmic. “Go over there and tell me if the fog stops.”

She went back to the contact point, and out of habit checked the wispbeads. Still a considerable amount. No need to replace them any time soon, then. Lori touched the metal contact point leading to the airwisp binding that took care of their ventilation, tentatively reaching through it. Having an actual object in front of her to touch helped her stay focused as she reached through the metal with her right hand and made contact with the binding.

Still keeping part of her attention of maintaining her claim on her demesne’s darkwisps, she carefully deactivated the binding, preventing air and fog from being drawn through their ventilation. The mine’s areas were large enough that they could survive some time without active ventilati—

“Great Binder, the fog’s stopped coming out!” Riz called out, her voice echoing through the mine tunnel.

…

“Noted. Tell me immediately if there’s any change.”

Carefully, Lori began gathering waterwisps out of the air and fog, which was made simpler by the binding being deactivated. The waterwisps could remain anchored to the airwisps without issue, and she didn’t have too worry about forming the waterwisps intoa coherent binding. Lori slowly continued to build up the waterwisps, thought mostly because she couldn’t rush due to needing to split her attention.

Once she had enough waterwisps, Lori formed them into a binding that would prevent other waterwisps—and thus any form of water—from passing through the binding. Once that was done, she began to carefully—and blindly—move the waterwisps towards where she thought the stone grate above the outermost door of the shelter was. It took some doing and constantly trying to claim any wisps that her binding made contact with, which meant she could be rushed. Eventually, however, she was able to made out a regular series of straight arrangements of earthwisps—the stone grate above the door—and the carefully anchored the waterwisps into place, spreading the binding across the grate and anchoring it securely. With that in place, Lori was able to slowly put the airwisps binding back into place, and checked all the bindings protecting the shelter. Airwisps, lightningwisps, earthwisps, darkwisps… she nodded in satisfaction at finding them all active.

“Erzebed, is fog still coming out of the ventilation?” she called out.

There was a momentary pause. “No fog, Great Binder!” came the reply,

Lori nodded, even thought Riz couldn’t see her. “Inform me if the shelter starts becoming cold,” she ordered. “I’ll be in my alcove checking up on m—Lorian Demesne. Inform me if there’s anything else.” She paused, then amended, “Anything you or Yllian can’t solve yourselves.”

“Yes, Great Binder!”

Sitting in her sleeping niche again and resisting the urge to lie down—it would make her sleepy, and she couldn’t risk falling asleep—Lori went back to keeping the darkwisps away from the dragon. She had to find a way to prevent the dragon from subverting their defenses that didn't actively require her direct supervision!

Ugh, think, think! How could she keep the dragon from claiming her darkwisps when she wasn't maintaining her hold on them? If the dragon were another wizard, Lori would hit them in the face with her staff to break their concentration and make them let go, but… well, historically a Dungeon Binder provoking a dragon has never ended well. The most common words to describe it were 'crater where the demesne's dungeon once stood', though the exact methods varied. The prior incarnation of Endless Caverns Demesne had its dungeon and core destroyed with a vista so twisted Horortracts claimed it had torn holes in the face of existence, and had resulted in a perfect sphere where stone and all other solid matter had just vanished.

She didn't want that to happen to her dungeon.

Well, she couldn't hit the dragon, and it wasn't like she could just move the binding where the dragon could—

…

Slowly, Lori examined what her connection to her core was letting her perceive. The void that was the dragon, moving slowly over her demesne. Her binding of darkwisps that the dragon repeatedly tried to claim. The way to two were pressing against each other, the immaterial dragon that had somehow pushed the equally immaterial darkness ahead of it…

…

Face flat, Lori drew down the darkwisps, pulling the binding away from the dragon and leaving a gap between the two. The dragon immediately began claiming the airwisps, waterwisps, firewisps, and lightwisps beneath it, forming them in… in…

…

Oh.

Oh…

That was… it was… wait, why did it…? how did…?

Lori shook her head, distracting herself from what rainbows the dragon was doing with Whispering, observing instead how far it could manage to claim wisps. The rain seemed to be… not very far from the void that was its… body? It's body. She couldn't really judge distances too well, as there were no points of reference she could use, but its reach seemed very short. If her binding hadn't almost literally been rubbing against it…

Warily, Lori loosened her focus and will on the binding of darkwisps, ready to take hold of it immediately if she felt the dragon trying to claim it. As she watched, dragon started releasing the ill-bound wisps—she couldn't find it in herself to call those bizarrely formed things bindings—fell, striking her barrier of darkwisps. some simply bounced off, not reacting, but other's started expending imbuement into the darkwisps,  and the binding did the same to prevent the ill-bound wisps from penetrating. All along her binding, she felt other such reactions.

Many of them were from something she couldn't perceive, though Lori could guess what happening. The dragon was using insane thoughts, rampant life and twisted vistas and trying to reach down through her darkwisps. Although given how the ill-bound wisps, perhaps they were simply being released to drop down into her demesne…

…

Well, her problem was solved, so Lori could move on to other things!

"Erzebed," she said as she claimed one of the ill-bound wisps falling towards her demense, easily overriding the dragon's previous claim and binding the thing to her will, "find Yllian and tell him I need paper, a working pen, and something to write on."

Not waiting for a reply, she began to study the dragon's creation, trying to work out what it could do and how…