After the first time a dragon had passed over her demesne and caught her unawares, Lori had steadily started upgrading her Dungeon's defenses as well as its ability to house the people of her demesne for extended periods of time. More food storage, more water storage, more space for people, more space to bring in the demesne's resources, better defenses against dragonborn abominations, better air vents… Her Dungeon was hardened, well-defended, safe and comfortable.

Unfortunately, she wasn't inside it at the moment.

However, it was still in her best interest to protect it. Her Dungeon's core was there after all, and she didn't want it to be destroyed, which a dragon was well-capable of doing. If anything happened to her Dungeon's core… well, she didn't exactly know what would happen. There was a dearth of literature about what happened to a Dungeon Binder in those circumstances. At best, it would mean she would be without a core, and would at minimum lose the endless supply of magic it gave her. At worse, she could lose the ability to use all other forms of magic and leave her a mere Whisperer once more, or even die because of her core being destroyed.

Lori would rather none of those possibilities happened.

Also, her stuff was in her Dungeon, and she didn't want to lose any of the tools and equipment she had, especially her glassware!

Lying on her back in River's Fork, Lori reached though her connection to her Dungeon's core to activate the defenses that were not yet in place that she could without actually blocking off entry into her Dungeon. She began sealing off all other points of entry into her Dungeon, which at this point were the pipes running through the stone between the water hub shed next to the river and the water reservoir in her Dungeon, as well as the pipes from the reservoir to the baths outside of her Dungeon. The exhaust vent for the air was well defended enough, since it was submerged in boiling water, though she checked to make sure the binding that kept the water in that state was well-imbued.

Once that was done, she proceeded to armor the outside of her Dungeon. The stone stockpile near the front of her dungeon grew and shrank depending on whether she'd built anything or she'd excavated more of her third level—she really needed to excavate that completely so they'd finally have more secure farmland—but she always kept enough to create a defensive bulwark for the entrance of her Dungeon. Now she made it flow slowly, anchoring and fusing it to the stone of the entryway and the outside of the smithy. Carefully, she moved the stone to thicken the front of her Dungeon, especially the top of the entryway, where it was most vulnerable to breaking from something dropping on it.

There wasn't enough stone to reinforce the entire entryway, but Lori was resigned to having to rebuild parts of her demesne anyway. Perhaps it wouldn't happen, but she would rather not bet on that.

Once the stone had been distributed to her satisfaction, Lori claimed the earthwisps of the stone in the front of her Dungeon, and formed them into a binding she hadn't used in some time. The binding of earthwisps reinforced the stone's structure, making it more durable. When she had first started building her Dungeon, she had used the binding to keep the ceiling from collapsing on her, before she had started using pillars and arching load-bearing structures. The binding had honestly slipped her mind until she realized she could use it in conjunction with her current designs.

She used the binding now, reinforcing the front of her Dungeon and a little bit of the ceiling of the first level so that the binding would contact one of the wires that connected to her core. The wire's direct connection to her core kept the binding imbued, allowing it to persist without her paying attention to it. Really, she wished she'd had wire back when a dragon had first passed over her demesne, when she'd had to manually reinforce the entire hill with earthwisps…

…

Oh.

Lori spent the next little while claiming the earthwisps of the hill her Dungeon was under. Well, most of the earthwisps, the ones corresponding to contiguous solid stone, since she didn't want to ruin the soil. And… well, it was built into the hill anyway, so she claimed the earthwisps of the flood barrier as well. and since the flood barrier was built right into the bedrock, she claimed the bedrock as well, and through the bedrock, claimed the earthwisps of the stone walls and floors of the hospital. And the stones of Rian's house. And…

Well, it took some time—and she resolved to never, ever tell Rian she only made this realization now—but she was glad nearly all the buildings she had made in her demesne had foundations that went down to the bedrock. And for those that didn't… well, the soil directly under a building was unlikely to ever be used for planting anyway.

With every stone structure in her demesne reinforced—which was nearly every structure—Lori felt a little better about her demesne's chances. There would probably still be things in need of repair afterwards—they always had to replace roof planks—but at least it would hopefully minimize the things that only Lori could repair.

After that, there wasn't much left for Lori to do until Rian gave the signal. She took the binding of lightningwisps that kept bugs from entering her dungeon, and moved it towards the new wire that had been embedded into the stone of the entryway—the now actively-reinforced stone— anchoring the binding so it touched the contact point. Carefully, she expanded the binding so that it extended across the entire entryway. At the moment it was a bit inefficient, since bugs really only needed to be kept from the front door and the intake vent above it, but once her Dungeon was sealed…

"Great Binder?"

Lori opened one eye, turning her head slightly until Riz came into view. "What it is, Erzebed?" she said. Distantly, she heard the din of people.

"Everyone's inside the shelter, Great Binder," her temporary-Rian reported. "We've managed to bring in most of the benches, and we've transferred as many of the crops we could fit into buckets in case the dragon hits the fields particularly hard. Uh, Rian told me to remind you to put some light on them so they wouldn't wilt?"

Lori quashed the urge to build the demesne a dungeon farm. Her own demesne's dungeon farm was still incomplete, she wasn't about to start building for another one. "He specifically mentioned that to you in particular?" she said dubiously.

Riz nodded. "Yes, Great Binder. Rian…" She shrugged. "You know how he is."

Yes, she did. "Noted. Show me where they are."

The buckets of crops—vigas, the same grain crops they grew in her demesne—were indeed stuffed root-first into various buckets, with damp soil with them in an attempt to keep them planted. They'd been left in a line along the main tunnel of the mine, little clumps of dirt flattened into the ground around them.

Lori took the binding of lightwisps anchored to her staff and anchored them on the stone over the uprooted crops. Manipulating lightwisps outside of her demesne had gotten easier ever since she had realized the light could pass through the edges of her skin and even her fingernails. Admittedly, it needed a very strong light, but that was what actually sticking her hand into the illumination was for. No more having to put her eyes near her staff to manipulated lightwisps!

Altering the binding of lightwisps so that it would imitate sunlight was easy, since she had plenty of experience with it. If these crops died, it would not be because of improper light.

She held out a hand, both collecting lightwisps in the air for another binding to anchor onto her staff, and to imbue the binding to make it last for more than a day. "How close is the dragon?" she asked as she anchored the binding of lightwisps in place and began imbuing them to make them last.

"Hard to say, Great Binder, but we can see more of it over the trees now,"

Lori pressed her lips together. "All right. I'll do what's needed for the outside of the mine, then we can seal up the doors."

She headed back to the alcove behind the third door where she had lain, and collected the bindings of darkwisps she had anchored to the stone. As she headed out of the mine, she found trios of men and women stationed at the doors, looking nervously outside at the darkening sky. Wait, wasn't it close to noon?

Lori stepped outside and in morbid curiosity turned to look towards where she could feel the dragon's presence. There was what seemed like an undulating pillar that rose in the sky and kept on rising, fading as it grew smaller and smaller at its distant peak. Then her gaze lowered, and she realized it wasn't so much a pillar as a cone. The cone, covered in orange and green swirling patterns, seemed thicker than the clouds it floated above, and unlike the dragons she had seen before, this one didn't roil and bubble like boiling water. Instead it seemed to flow like thick honey, light passing and reflecting through it in disquieting ways, even as the core of the cone remained dark as ink, the suggestions of eyes and teeth glinting disquietingly within.

The patterns spun on the cone's surface, orange and green spiraling together until the swirls exploded into twisting, two-toned orange and green cloud columns that didn't look like clouds, too solid and thick like paint smearing across the sky. They erupted in too-straight lines for what seemed great distances before making an abrupt right angle turn and starting to spiral inward back to the cone. The base of the cone was just barely visibly though the trees, a dark tunnel from which fell dragon claws, streaks of many colored lighting that seemed to be sweeping across the ground like the bristles of a broom. As she watched, one of the flickering, too straight lines of lighting began to curl, forming a spiral that began to tighten as the lightning seemed to draw back into the gaping maw of the cone, even as more colored lightning unfurled and started to trail down, seemingly almost to the ground. Instead of thunder, there was a deep rumbling that Lori didn't so much as hear as feel resonating in her bones,

Lori wrenched her gaze away as she saw eyes within the base of the cone. Her heart was beating fiercely, she realized, and her breathing had fallen into the deep, even rhythm she used to most efficiently draw in magic… or to calm down. Shaking her head, she resolutely kept her back towards the dragon and started anchoring the darkwisps she had collected to the rock outside the mine, even as her bones continued to vibrate. The darkwisps formed a half-dome over the mine's entrance, blocking out the light and the sight of the dragon.

With the dome formed, the only light left came from the lightwisps anchored to her staff. She deactivated the lightwisps on her staff for a moment, plunging her in darkness, and she reached out and claimed the darkwisps that suddenly appeared in the lightless space, binding, imbuing and integrating them to the half-dome she had anchored, anchoring the new additions to the ground and the stone of the mine, making sure she anchored darkwisps around the grate set into the ceiling of the space between the mine's first and second doors. When she reactivated the lightwisps on her staff again, the darkness remained, and she had to part the darkwisps so she could find her way again.

The militia stationed at the first door stared at the darkwisps nervously, and they stepped out of Lori's way as she approached. She ignored them for the moment as Riz stumbled out of the cloud of darkwisps after her. The Dungeon Binder touched one of the pieces of quartz that had been set into her staff, which was vibrating slightly in a steady beat. Laying her finger flat against the quartz, she extracted the lightningwisps she'd stored within, forming them into a binding. When she had extracted all the lightningwisps, the quartz lay still.

Lori couldn't reached the ceiling, so she used her staff to anchor the binding of lightingwisps to the stone above the door, and had the binding pass through the stone grate. That done, she stepped through the door, ignoring the way the militia there stepped hastily out of her way, and drew the binding over to the stone grate on the ceiling, anchoring it such that the lightningwisps surrounded the grate opening, then reshaped the rest of the binding so that it would extend out to her satisfaction.

"Have them close the first door so I can barricade it," she ordered Riz, "then tell them to get ready to do the same for the second door. I need to go check something."

"You heard the Great Binder," her temporary-Rian said as Lori moved past them to head towards the alcove behind the third door. "Get that door closed and barricaded unless you want us all to get eaten by dragonborn. Uh, can you leave us some light, Great Binder"

Lori stopped, sighed and turned around. She took the binding of lightwisps from her staff and anchored it to the stone wall opposite the alcove behind the first door, then collected more lightwisps from the air to anchor another binding to her staff as she continued back on her way.

The second and third receptacles next to the bead that powered the ventilation intake was still empty. Lori knelt and touched one of the metal contact points that a bead was intended to rest on. She used the metal as a channel to reach out to all the wisps the wire that lead from the receptacle was touching. Earthwisps in the stone surrounding the wire, some firewisps from the heat of her hand, airwisps in… well, the air… and darkwisps and lightningwisps from the bindings she'd anchored around the stone grate, which was where the wire led.

Good, the all bindings were making contact with the wire properly.

Lori took a moment to imbue both bindings through the wire for a moment. They were unlikely to run out of imbuement any time soon, but habit was habit, and their defensive bindings could never have too much imbuement.

Then she stood and went to secure the first door.