Work continued on as the water level of the river rose. Lori was informed when the river began to exceed its banks, and so she went out to see it for herself. The dock was properly underwater now, and the relevant working parts of the water hub shed were just barely above water. She hastily deactivated the building when she saw this, and began sealing the pipes leading from it again.

After checking to make sure that the exhaust vent leading from her Dungeon wasn't being overwhelmed and filling with water—it wasn't—Lori considered what she should do. They needed water, and unfortunately, all their water was provided by the water drawn from the shed. It was why it was the hub, after all. The water for the baths, the water for the kitchens, the drinking water, the water in her Dungeon's reservoir… all of it was drawn through the bindings in this building, which drew it from the river…

Oh, right!

Lori turned, looking past the laundry area and towards the stone pillars, troughs and arches of the aqueduct. It had to stopped working during the winter because it had gotten too cold, and so she hadn't been keeping the bindings on it imbued, letting them dissolve. Now, however, with the temperature warm enough for water to be liquid—even if Rian still insisted it was freezing cold—she could put the bindings back in place and get it working again.

At the very least, it would ensure the demesne wasn't lacking for drinking water, though she'd have to tell Rian to have the basins where the water would flow down cleaned. They'd still need water for the baths, at the very least, which was their most significant expenditure. She might be able to reroute all the pipes so that the used bathwater would be evaporated so it could be reused again, but…

No, no, better to just build another water hub shed. Even when it's been thoroughly treated, people objected to bathing and potentially drinking water they'd sullied. Even she objected to it, and she knew how thorough the process was!

She had considered it some weeks earlier, but really, the best way to do this was to move the water hub shed such at it could still functioned even if the river was flooded. That meant raising it up such that the area where water was boiled to clean it was well above the level the flood water could reach. And it just so happened she'd build a nice, high stone structure recently…

…

Yes, this flood barrier was probably going to be an annoyingly permanent feature of her demesne, wasn't it?

"Rian," Lori told her lord later at lunch that day, "I need you to have the water basins under the aqueducts cleaned. I'm going to be reactivating the aqueducts tomorrow, and I don't want anyone getting sick because something has accumulated in the basins."

"Ah, I was wondering if we'd still be using those this year," Rian said. "Though shouldn't we clean the aqueducts themselves as well? There's no point in cleaning the basins if the water is passing over dried bug droppings on the way there."

The women on either side of him made expressions of distaste. So did the one in front of him for that matter, though for a slightly different reason. "Ugh, you're right," Lori said. "Can it be done safely?"

"I think so…" Rian said thoughtfully. "Our ladders should just barely let us get to the top, and as long as there's no water running, it should be relatively safe. I'll ask Arak if he has a rope long enough that we can use as a safety line. A little soap and some scrubbing… though it would probably take a day or two before it's finished, since we'd have to be careful…"

Lori sighed. She'd been to check her Dungeon's reservoir earlier, and while it was still full, without the snow melter or more water from the river adding to it, that wouldn't last. "Get it done in a timely manner," Lori said. "I'll work on moving the water hub shed so it can still function with the flood this afternoon." She thought of it, then added, "Until that's done, no one is to use the pools in the baths."

"That's going to be a hit to morale," Rian sighed, "but I suppose it's understandable. I'll tell the bath house managers to stop refilling them after lunch."

Lori ignored the disappointed groans from the nearby tables, as well as the sigh from next to her.

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After lunch, Lori got to work on building the new water hub shed. While she knew that Rian would do exactly as he said and have the soaking pools in the baths not be filled with water… it was likely that her idiots would ignore that order and do so anyway. So she had to move quickly to get something built that would replenish the water.

Even though the old water hub shed was right there, she didn't disassemble it for building material to make the new one. It might function as a good backup. Also, it was currently surrounded by calf-high rushing water, and while she could probably dismantle it at a distance without getting her boots wet, that would leave her Dungeon's exhaust vent without physical protection, so best leave the old water hub shed where it was for now.

Building the newer water hub shed into the structure of the flood barrier was actually relatively easy. She didn't build any pipes inside the wall—that might have resulted in some kind of structural weakness—but raising some stone walls allowed her to build a small water tank on the inside incline of the wall. They were simple vertical walls, since they weren't expected to have to hold back much water—at least, not compared to the flood barrier—but Lori made them a bit thicker in the bottom, just in case.

The next day, some stairs were added to the incline so she could more easily reach the top of the wall, a job she was able to give to the masons and plasterers with their tools and some softened stone. While the stairs were being put in place, Lori laid down a stone tube on the outside of the flood barrier that reached down into the river, which she then form a pipe inside for the water to pass through. She made sure the stone tube was thick so that it was unlikely to be damaged. The end of the pipe actually connected with the old water hub shed, using its mass for further protection, before opening up into an intake tube within the river.

Lori wanted to keep the weight of the new water hub structure to a minimum, so as to put less stress on the flood barrier it was built on top of, but that wasn't really possible. The new water hub shed needed to be durable enough to survive a dragon, or at least dragonborn abominations. Still, the extra-thick walls such reinforcement needed would serve just as well to strengthen the flood wall from breaking under the pressure of a flood, so it was probably a net advantage in the end.

The walls she had already added to the flood barrier needed a little extension so she could properly build a shed she could stand up in, while the roof was a simple stone half-cylinder roof. She had to reinforce it with ice acting as a solid support while she was building it, but by the time she finished, the arching half-cylinder was a sturdy, solid thing that… well, would probably crack if a dragon scale fell on it, but it would be enough to keep the weather out.

After having the carpenters measure out a door for the one opening in the new water hub shed, Lori got to work on actually building the necessary components within it. The new water hub shed didn't really have a floor, as such, only a triangular, sloping tank for the water that would be pulled from the river. First she placed a binding in the pipe extending into the river, to draw up water and dump it into the water tank, but didn't activate it yet. Then she placed a slatted frame made of bone she'd made in front of the pipe output, securing it in place to the stone and anchoring a binding to it that would attract the mineral sediments to the bone to filter out large particulates.

Only then did she activate the first binding, drawing water from the river, and examined the resulting quality.

…

Lori sighed and anchored a binding of lightwisps inside the water hub shed, since not a lot of light was really passing through the opening into the shed, and she was blocking most of it. With the better illumination, she was able to give the water a closer look. It looked far clearer than the water flowing outside in the river did, so it did seem like particulates were being removed. Still, the water was no doubt filled with dustlife, some of which could cause illness…

After that, all she had to do was build an intake about halfway up the holding tank that led down to the pipe from the old water hub shed to the reservoir, placing a binding on it to draw in water. Then she began drawing water from the river and filling the holding tank. Once the holding tank was partly full, Lori added in the binding of firewisps and waterwisps that would simultaneously heat the water to boiling while preventing the water from becoming steam.

More bindings of firewisps on the inner surfaces of the new water hub shed prevented the heat generated from leaking outward, keeping the heat contained within the she and in the water. The binding also functioned to pull heat out of the water being drawn through the pipes towards her Dungeon's reservoir so that she wouldn't be filling it with superheated water. After a certain point, the binding would stop generating heat and simply keep it within the binding.

At that point, the most pressing concern would be to keep people from entering the water hub shed and killing themselves by accidentally falling into superheated water.

"What about bugs?" Rian asked later at dinner when she told him why she was waiting on the door the carpenters were still in the process of building before activating the new water hub shed.

Lori frowned. "What?"

"Bugs. You know, hard shells, more than four limbs, occasionally wings—"

"I know what bugs are, Rian. What about them?"

"Well, the door keeps people out, right? What's keeping bugs out so they don't fall into the water and get boiled alive? For that matter, what's keeping bugs and slugs in the water from being pulled up the intake tube in the river?"

Lori stared at him. Then she sighed. "I… think there was a binding in the almanac that mentioned an efficient means of keeping bugs away from a location using lightningwisps," Lori said. "I'll read up on it tonight, and see if it can be adapted to work in water."

Rian sighed. "I suppose I should ask around and see if anyone has some clean cloth scraps you can just secure onto the end of the tube to act as a filter or something."

"That… will probably work too," Lori conceded.

Sighing, Rian reached for his cup of water and was about to raise it to his lips for a drink when he paused. Slowly, he looked down at his cup. "You know, I just realized… the way you're saying it, you never built any way to keep bugs and things out of the old water hub shed, right?"

"Yes…?"

"And… when you opened the shed earlier this winter, you found a lot of dead bugs in there…"

Lori stared at him. Then she twitched and looked down at her own cup of water.

"When was the last time you actually checked inside the water hub shed before you opened it this winter?" Rian asked, still staring down at his cup.

"I'm sure it's fine," Lori said, also still looking down at her own cup. "The water is boiled beyond the capacity of life to survive, evaporated, and shone with unseen light that actively kills all life exposed to it. The phase where it is evaporated alone ensures that only clean water could possibly come from the Dungeon's reservoir."

"So it's not rotting bug water, it's well-cooked bug broth?"

They both continued to stare at the water in their cups…