Rian had put a lot of fruits in the sack. There was so many, in fact, that Lori couldn't finish it. She gave the sack to Riz to dispose of the rest of it before settling down to get some work done before they reached her destination. While Riz and the other four ate, they passed through the boundary between her demesne and the rest of the world.

The summer heat suddenly slammed into Lori like a stifling blanket, and she felt her sweat immediately start to bead all over her everything. Lori groaned at the reminder of one of the reasons she hated leaving her demesne. In her demesne, the temperature around her immediate person, as well as most things she touched, immediately adjusted to being at most pleasantly cool or comfortably warm. While there were exceptions for extreme temperatures like cold intense enough liquefy air or the heat of a pottery kiln, in theory even those would adjust given enough time.

Outside her demesne, she had no such comforts. Already she felt like she was taking a bath. A small part of her that sounded distressingly like Rian pointed out that with that much water on her person, she at least wouldn't have to worry so much about Iridescence growth.

Metaphorically kicking that part in her shins, she took off her hat—instantly regretting it as the sunlight touched her bare head and face—grabbed the wooden ladle lying on the floor of the boat, and carefully scooped up some water from the river by lightly passing the dipper through their boat's wake. The churned water filled the ladle, and she poured the water over her head. She knew the respite of the cool water would be brief, but just then, she didn't care. While her head was still cool, she put her hat back on.

She reached out and started claiming every firewisp in her vicinity.

Outside of her demesne, without the connection her cover gave her to every wisp inside it was wasn't inside a living creature, claiming wisps to form them into a binding had to be done the way she'd first learned it, the way all wizards who were merely Whisperers did it. Thankfully, being connected to her core still gave her some advantage there.

Even as she began the deep, even breathing that pulled magic into her lungs, Lori drew power from her core. It was a bottomless, inexhaustible well, and it was all hers. She channeled outwards, through the heat and firewisps of her internal organs, through her muscles and now out through her very, very warm skin. She claimed the firewisps immediately around her, anchoring them to other firewisps on her skin to keep them in place and binding them all together. She didn't need much, only a thin layer all around her.

Then she very carefully set the binding to draw out heat.

It was a binding she'd gotten around to using relatively recently because of the summer heat and her new responsibilities, taken from the almanac Rian had gotten from Covehold Demesne. The firewisps drew out heat from her and transferred it to the air around her, and a secondary binding airwisps would weakly circulate that air to disperse the heat. As temperature control went, it wasn't instantaneous, but it had been in the almanac because it was relatively quick and simple to set up, the low amount of imbuement it consumed over time meant most Whisperers could keep it imbued when they had a spare moment like walking from place to place, and the even if left heavily imbued and unattended for long periods of time it was unlikely to destroy so much heat as to be harmful.

She could have also destroyed the heat, but that was dangerous to do when one was not paying attention.

Lori wished she'd known it when she'd been younger. Hot summer days had been hot.

Comfortable again, she went back to work. It also conveniently gave her a reason to keep her eyes closed, letting her ignore the sight of the Iridescence beyond her demesne's borders. The crystalline growths covered everything in a many-colored, rapidly growing layer. Trees, rocks, plants, the ground, the feathers of the beasts lazing about in the shadows of the trees… the only things not covered with the glittering Iridescence were the rocks near the river that were regularly sprayed with water.

No, she didn't look at it. There was only the darkness of her soul behind her eyes, the heat, and the slight coolness that her binding was creating.

After over a year of using her Whispering at things she couldn't see through her connection to her core, Lori had become quite accomplished at it. She still had to close her eyes to do it most of the time, but that was more a matter of being able to concentrate, and not strictly necessary.

The mushroom farm was easy to seal off. She claimed and bound the earthwisps of the stone at the front of the artificial cave of their Dungeon's mushroom farm, reshaping the stone to seal up the entrance. The stone was layered thickly to best protect the entrance behind a pace of material. One never knew exactly what would happen when a dragon passed overhead, so Lori simply put the breakable but immovable assets behind a lot of rock to try to mitigate physical damage while her other measures blunted magic as best as it could.

After that, Lori moved her attention to the wood storage sheds, where they kept the demesne's supplies of processed wood that hadn't been moved down to her Dungeon yet. She'd done this before, burying the wood storage sheds underground the last time a dragon had passed. That time, however, she'd had the sheds in front of her as reference.

Now she was in a rush. Once she reached her destination, she'd be occupied with things she had to do there, at least until Rian gave the signal to seal up her Dungeon. Given the speed the ice boat was going they'd be at River's Fork Demesne soon.

…

Well, the point of this exercise was to preserve the material and not the building, after all.

Lori began to lower the sheds into the ground, displacing the ground and stone underneath them by having the ground rise up along one side of the row of buildings. The process was slow, because even earth and stone that earthwisps had softened and moving like fluid wasn't actually a fluid. She had to consciously control them to make them move. It was not unlike pulling out folded shirts from the bottom of the stack to lower the topmost shirt so she could reach it. Fortunately, unlike the shirts, sheds were unlikely to tip over because they still had the surrounding stone Lori wasn't displacing to keep them centered.

Once the sheds were down deep enough to Lori's satisfaction, Lori had the displaced stone that had been rising up flow and cover the arching, half-cylinder roofs of the sheds, burying the sheds under thick stone and packed dirt. One of the roofs cracked and collapsed slightly under the weight, but Lori just let the stone solidify. The wood was what she was trying to preserve, not the buildings. She'd just rebuild them after the dragon passed.

Or maybe she wouldn't and just make some wood storage that was already underground and protected so she wouldn't ever need to do this again…

––––––––––––––––––

The dragon still wasn't visible when they reached the borders of River's Fork Demesne, which was when Lori finally finished burying the wood. Given the trees in the way, that meant little, but Lori could feel it coming closer. She suspected if she could see the horizon, it would already be tainting the sky.

The settlement at the center of the demesne was on a large triangle of land where two rivers met and combined into one, hence the name. Planted directly over the core was an unnaturally large tree surrounded by a circle of trees that were only smaller in comparison. Deadspeaking had been used to combine the branches of all the trees, fusing and weaving them together to form a massive dome of interlinked branches.

Perhaps it had been impressive when its creator had been alive, but in the five seasons that Lori had been coming to River's Fork, the dome had gotten progressively more and more wild, untended, and depressing. It had become clear that the structure needed active maintenance from a Deadspeaker, something the only living person actively capable of some amount of Deadspeaking that Lori knew of couldn't provide.

As they approached the rebuilt dock—the original had been gutted for materials to try and make a water break against the spring flooding earlier in the year—Lori saw people tending to the demesne's field of crops just outside the dome, as well as seemingly testing the planting terrace that had been built to give them more level ground to plant crops on. A few seemed to be collecting the fast-growing fruits from the fruit trees around the dome, and she saw a wheelbarrow no doubt full of latrine waste being pushed to fertilize the trees and restore what the quick growth had depleted.

They were seen, of course, but even so, Lori and those with her were in the middle of disembarking from Lori's Ice Boat before anyone actually approached to speak to them. She both recognized them and knew their name. Given that applied to only two people in this demesne, and one of them was someone she couldn't stand, it was good they were meeting with the other one.

Yllian was the lord in charge of the idiots who insisted on still living in the demesne. He had originally been Binder Shanalorre's lord, back when she ruled this place, but after the latter had submitted to Lori's authority, he had been retained after proving he was capable, disciplined, could follow orders, and had the intelligence to do things on his own initiative.

"Yllian," Lori said as soon as he was within hearing range. "There's a dragon approaching. Get everyone organized and have them transfer anything they want to save in the mine, priority on clothing, bedding and anything else needed to live through the winter. Nothing that takes two people to carry, unless it's metal and irreplaceable. We don't have a lot of space in the mine."

The man stared at her, but to his credit he didn't waste time on protestations, repeating what she'd just said, or complaining. Instead, he simply nodded. "Any other orders, Great Binder?"

Lori waved a hand dismissively. "I leave organizing everything to you. Have someone keep watch in that direction—" she pointed in the direction she could still feel the dragon coming from— "so that we have warning when it's close. I'll handle preparations at the mine." She paused, then sighed. "Inform the idiots that they have until I send the boat back to change their minds about sending their children to m—Lorian Demesne for their safety." Lori considered some more, and nodded. "That will be all."

Yllian turned and broke into a dead run.

Picking up her own pack from the boat, her staff in hand and hat on her head, Lori headed towards the mine that served as River's Fork's dragon shelter, trying not to think that two Dungeon Binders had previously died trying to protect this place from a dragon. Riz fell in behind her, the woman's own pack slung over the arm she wasn't using to hold her spear. The two vaguely familiar men and the doctor fell in behind her, all also carrying their own packs. Against her will, she tried to remember their names, but all she could recall was… something about sweat and sawdust… and scissors?

No, no, not important. Focus on the task at hand.

Still, the annoying feeling that she should be able to remember some names nagged at her, an itch in her mind she couldn't scratch.

She really hated that feeling.