Demesne

Lolilyuri could hear another dragonborn abomination trying to crawl through the air hole again. There was too much chittering and the sound of multiple wings, and the void it left in her sense of the demesne's wisps was all wrong to be any ordinary sort of bug. She pushed magic into the darkness she was controlling directly over the Dungeon's entrance to reinforce it for a moment, then focused her attention in front of her and contracted the air hole from a wide opening into a slit a finger wide. The sound of shell cracking was interspersed with bones breaking, and it might have been Lori's imagination, but she thought she'd felt a sudden mist as of pulped insides being ejected violently out of a body. The hair on the back of her neck rose as she still heard something moving.

She took the coal at her side and some wood split for kindling that Rian had piled next to her, and put the firewisps in one into the other. The coal cooled to almost nothing as the firewood burst into open flame that Lori directed into a stream through the little slit. There was sizzling and a nauseatingly sweet smell like burning sugar. She kept the flame going until the wood in her hand was consumed. When the dark came back and she had to blink the bright afterimage burned into her eyes, the air hole was mercifully silent, if smelling like a burnt batch of poisonous caramels..

Cautiously, she expanded it back to size, and the sounds of the dragon passing– of eerie silences, of stoning grinding and rumbling, of trees and wood snapping, of things being displaced, of stranger sounds she couldn't identify– entered though the pitch-black opening with the air. She went back to reinforcing the darkness over the Dungeon and the other structures she still had control over. She'd already lost one of the shelters and some of the houses in a moment of inattention, the chaotic forces the dragon was throwing around wearing away her darkwisps until it had been depleted of the magic she had imbued, breaking apart and letting the dragon's touch reach the stones she had raised before she could reinforce them. That had been hours ago.

The structures were still mostly there, but she sensed strange voids of wisps all around them. And there were other voids roaming about outside, voids that did not feel like beast or bug or anything that swam through her river, but she couldn't focus on them, she had to maintain the darkness. Wind and rain and hail and rocks being lifted up and dropped from the sky passed through her field of darkwisps without any resistance whatsoever, but she managed to hold back the dragon's chaotic magic. In addition to the force of a storm, the dragon altered the world around it. Space twisted, and time stopped flowing smoothly. Formless, invisible power clawed and ripped and flung the lands as easily as someone's cloak dragging across the ground as they walked. Gravity inverted and spiraled and magnified and halved and trees started moving as if they had muscles instead of wood. Wisps were bound in ways she didn't think were possible or sane, producing invisible light that boiled all the water it touched, rocks compacting so densely they warped the very world around them before flaring like the sun and exploding, lightning wisps that came together and broke down all matter they touched into something that was neither stone nor fluid nor air and burned hotter than any fire she'd ever made…

Lori could feel these abominations and more hammering into the bulwark of darkness she had raised, immaterial powers that struck her barriers and were repulsed, leaving the matter they had been bound to slam violently against her shell of stone. They contributed to the unnatural, chaotic, unspeakable sounds she heard through the airway as they shattered or exploded or in some instances were so hot they fused to the stone and would have melted their way in if Lori hadn't ripped the heat from them. The stone had cracked, and she had needed to frantically repair the damage, leaving her darkness to be worn away without her supporting it…

She'd been at this for hours, sitting in the dark in front of the air hole, eyes unseeing as she relied on her connection to the Dungeon's core and the sense it granted her of the wisps in her demesne to understand what was going on outside. The stories always said how the Dungeon Binder was aware of everything that went on in their demesne. Lori was starting to think that was either greatly hyperbolic, or she needed more practice.

Occasionally Rian came, bringing her wood or a skin of water that was nice and cold and didn't taste pissed in. There was no food but for some fruits the children had brought, something that had been sweet and mushy and runny and made Lori want to strip all the trees in her demesne bare to find more. Also, the children had definitely been planning to keep whatever this fruit was a secret among themselves, the greedy things. She wondered what they had called it.

She'd had to stop sitting down and start pacing as the hours wore on and she grew tired, her eyelids drooping in the dark, as the sun set still more dragon passed overhead. It wasn't unheard of for a dragon to be over a hundred taums long. There was a good chance that Covehold was still in the dragon's shadow with them, under its own shield of darkness. Or…

Lori blink, realizing she'd been staring into the dark for a while now and might have fallen asleep with her eyes open. She hurriedly checked the darkwisps, and hastily imbued them with more magic. In any other situation, what she was putting in them would have lasted the wisps days, but it took power to resist the phenomena that surrounded the dragon.

As she imbued, she went back to her thought. What sort of wizard had founded Covehold? Had they been any more prepared than she had been? Had they worked out how to use the other forms of magic yet? Because this would go a lot easier if she could use Deadspeaking to cleanse her body of tiredness, or use Mentalism to be partly asleep while the other part kept imbuing. Colors, if she could just Horotract a little, they'd be a taum underground and not need to worry about anything breaking in…

She straightened to find someone shaking her shoulder as she stood leaning against the wall. "Wah…?" she said blearily, wondering what he was doing in her room and why did it smell like blood and caramel…

Panic seized her, and Lori reached up, seeing the darkness start to collapse. Hurriedly, she imbued it once more, dragging out the darkwisps that had suddenly snapped back in place in the cave after the magic imbued into them had run out, rebuilding the bulwark. "W-who's there?" she asked. Her coal had died, but someone had risked a single candle in the cave, and it was just enough light to give the dark contrast.

"It's me," Rian said, voice low, sounding almost as tired as she felt. "I came to check on you when something started trying to come in and it didn't die right away. Are you alright?"

"I need you to slap me," Lori said. "Hard. In the face."

"Practically speaking, slapping someone doesn't actually make them more awake," Rian said.

"No, but adrenaline will, on account I'll be angry at the idiot who just–"

Something struck her in the shin, and Lori let out a cry of anger and dropped her staff. It clattered loudly to the ground as she leaned against the wall. "Breath, that hurt!" she roared.

"You're welcome," Rian said, sounding annoyingly cheerful enough to strangle. "And hey, this way, no risk of brain injury."

"Thank you," Lori snarled through gritted teeth. Well, her blood was up and there was definitely adrenaline in her system, so… success? "Did it get in?"

"I dealt with it," Rian said. His shadowed outline moved, and something caught a glint of the distant candlelight. There was a sword in his left hand, barely a darker shape in the gloom. Lori bound the lightwisps in her eyes, and suddenly the cave seemed to brighten in shades of black and white, and in his hands, hidden from the rest of the cave with his body, was a sword. A thick, almost tarry substance was smeared on it, slowly trickling down like thickening tree sap.

"I didn't know you were left-handed," she said for lack of anything else to say as she rebuilt the darkness outside.

"I'm not," Rian said, grimacing. Whatever the tar was, some of it had splattered on his hand. "I hope this thing doesn't etch. I don't know if any of the blacksmiths can fix it if it does."

"How long has it been?" Lori said.

"I don't know. Midnight? It could be the next day for all we know," Rian said. "I don't suppose you learned a magical way to tell what time it is?"

Lori rubbed at her eyes. In the dark of her own mind, she could feel the darkwisps outside, eroding erratically at the dragon's influence on the world. She imbued it, reaffirming the binding of her will. "I don't know if I can last…" she said quietly.

"Do you want me to tell you a story?" Rian said, leaning on the wall next to her. He slumped, and Lori realized he must have been as tired as she was.

"Isn't that for putting me to sleep?" Lori said.

"That depends on what sort of story you're being told," Rian said. "Would you consider yourself a learned person?"

"Yes…?" Lori said, wondering where this was going.

"Would you be offended at gross ignorance of what you consider basic principles?" Rian said.

"Where is this going?" Lori asked suspiciously, even as her attention flickered upwards to the darkwisps on the other side of the stone bulwark next to them.

"Well, there's this story that I heard," Rian said, letting his back slide down the wall to sit on the ground, the sword carefully to one side.

Lori rubbed her eyes, but sat down more carefully, still giving Rian a suspicious look as she let the binding in her eyes lapse, and the cave snapped back to darkness. "What story?" she asked, even as she kept one metaphorical hand on the metaphorical staff that was imbuing the darkwisps.

"Well, it goes like this: a hunter… no wait, it was a miner–" Rian corrected himself, "is digging in his mine, searching for iron."

"Wait, he owns the mine?"

"Well, it's his mine, so I suppose."

"Then why is he digging by himself? If he owns the mine, he should be wealthy enough to hire other people to dig for him!"

"Maybe he doesn't have the beads? Spent it all on buying the mine?"

"That's no excuse, any bank would be willing to let him put up the mine as collateral for a loan. If he had enough confidence it would make beads, he'd have done at least that already, just to cover overhead and expenses!"

"Look, that's how it goes! He's in a mine, he owns the mine, and he's digging by himself."

"About that. That's very unsafe. What if he had an accident in the mine? He could become stuck there and die because no one knows he's hurt. You can't just assume the Dungeon Binder will keep an eye on you just because you're operating one of their mines."

"Ah, I knew I forgot something! This isn't in a demesne, it's on the outside, so Iridescence everywhere."

"Okay, this story is becoming even more stupid. You mean he's mining, alone, by himself, out in the Iridescence? Then he's obviously got money, at the very least he'll need a hose and pressure tank to spray the area he'll be mining with Iridescence so it doesn't powder and start building up in his lungs."

"Nope, no washing rig. He's mining by himself, just his pick axe and his lantern to light his way, mining deep in his mine."

"Deep in his mine? Rian, are you relating the circumstances of a suicide to me?"

"I haven't even finished setting up the story! Just let me finish, okay?"

"… fine…"

"So, there's a miner, digging in his mine, all by himself. He's been excavating for days, but has little to show for it–"

"Obviously, if he's trying to run an iron mine as a one-man operation. "

"– but every day, he wakes up hoping this will be the day he strikes it rich."

"Wait, hoping he strikes it rich? Are you telling me he's unsuccessful not because he's excavating a seam by himself, but because he hasn't even found anything worth mining in the first place? This IS a suicide! Your miner is on the path to financial ruin! Next you'll tell me he's too cheap to bathe!"

"Well, the way I heard it, he's already covered in Iridescence, and he figures he only has one day left or he'll die."

"If he's covered by Iridescence, he doesn't have one day, he already has brain damage from it affecting the lightningwisps in his brain. This IS a suicide story."

"Look, it's not a suicide! Let me keep telling it."

"There better be a change in his circumstances, or at the very least he turns around and takes a bath to wash the iridiation off…"

"While mining a particularly stubborn and hard wall, he accidentally cuts himself, causing blood to well up from his cut."

"And dooming himself to death, as that much Iridescence on the skin, and then an open wound… he's a dead man."

"The blood smears on the stubbornly hard stone, which suddenly glows with brilliant light. All of a sudden, the iridescence starts melting away as the glowing stone wall reveals itself to be a Dungeon Core! By offering it some of his blood, he had made a pact with it, becoming a Dungeon Binder, gaining powers and abilities far above mere ordinary men."

Silence. A deep, wrathful silence broken only by sporadic strange and eldritch noises from the air hole leading outside.

"Rian," Lori said, her tone quiet and threatening, "are you seriously telling me some coloredbrained 'How some ignorant yokel became a Dungeon Binder' story?"

"This was the start of his days as a powerful Dungeon Binder, and how he offered just rule and an easy life to all who lived in his demesne," Rian said cheerfully.

Lori took a deep breath.

Sleeping people were awakened to the outraged, offended cry of, "THAT'S NOT HOW DUNGEONS WORK!!!!!"

As Lori began angrily lambasting all the illogical elements of the opening scene of the story alone, Rian leaned back and smiled in the most irritating way possible.

Outside, the dragon continued to pass over Lori's Demesne, Lorian, wreaking havoc upon the world with its touch. Beneath it, the bulwark of darkness never wavered.