Weekly Digest 104 - (#329 - #331)

I Want To Shirk My Responsibilities!

It took Lori several days to build the bath house in River's Fork. Most of this was the difficulty of moving material to the building site she had chosen—the rock debris hadn't nearly been enough to work with—but the rest was the sheer difficulty of the project. It wasn't just that she was working outside of her demesne and had to claim wisps like any other Whisperer, or it was so stupidly hot and humid! No, the delay was caused by practical problems.

To build the bath house in a way similar to the ones she'd made before, she'd need a pipe to be able to draw water from the river, and another pipe for the used bath water so that it wouldn't go back into the river so close to where the demesne would be getting its drinking water. However, making pipes would be difficult without her awareness of the demesne's wisps to assist her in forming to pipes and displacing the stone. To properly make the pipes with the resources and capabilities she had available, she'd either need to have the ground dug up so she could lay out pipes manually, or make above-ground pipes from the river to the bath house.

The former wasn't practical, whether she did it herself by excavating the ground with earthwisps, or had it dug up by other people. If she did it herself, she'd be taking a lot of time to do it. If she had it dug up, it would require bringing in people from her demesne to do it or having the people of River's Fork do it, which would disrupt their work. Food was still tightly rationed in the demesne, and a lot of time was spent tending to and growing or catching what food they had. The above-ground pip was the only practical solution. Building the above ground—or rather, ground-level—pipe all the way to the river required a decent amount of stone, which she needed to excavate herself. Since she'd need to excavate stone to build with in any case, a little bit more for the pipe wasn't a problem.

Figuring out where to direct the waste water was her next problem. While she could just let it all flow back into the river… she didn't want to, not the least of which because there as a chance that the waste water would get drawn into the intake pipe again. That would just be disgusting. Ideally, she'd reroute the waste water towards the fields… but even if the site of the bathhouse was equidistant between the river and the fields, that would still require a lot of piping.

An open gutter might have worked, conferring the water towards the fields with a minimum of construction on her part, but that was a short step away from having an open sewer, which was just asking for someone to do something disgusting. And on more practical terms, such a gutter would need to be cleaned since rocks and dirt would no doubt fall into it. Covering a gutter makes it all but a pipe anyway, and she'd be back to the annoying amount of work she'd have to do.

She was tempted to forego the pipes and just have people manually fill the baths with water from the river. It would be time consuming, but doing so would remove a very tedious portion of the work she'd have to do. What stopped her was the very real possibility that the work would be pushed on the few remaining children in the demesne. It was the sort of heartless cruelty parents would think of, making children carry heavy containers of water under the hot sun, and probably scold them for using that water to cool themselves down. And doing it that way still wouldn't have solved the issue of disposing of the used bath water. If she just made it flow out to a cistern outside the bath house, it would likely start getting malodorous, and someone might try to use it for quick washes and ugh.

Lori spent a lot of time considering the problem as she excavated stone from the closest source, which was the bedrock of the nearby river itself. After all, it wasn't like losing a little stone there would matter. It was a time consuming process that had her standing under the sun with water up to her calves in the river as she used her wand to claim the stone, wearing her boots without socks to protect her feet from rocks, graspers, and bloodsucking slugs. Her hat had new clips of bone at the edges of the brim for her to anchor bindings to, which made it easier to keep her head and face cool.

Once she'd claimed enough earthwisps, Lori gently drew the mass out of the water, leaving a long trench in the river that had slowly grown wider as she removed more and more stone. The stone was carefully moved up the broken ground of the riverbank until Lori was able to pile it up next to the spot where the bath would be. By the time she was finished excavating—which took three days—she had a pile of stone bigger than a house—well, one of the early-built houses in her demesne—which was a decent start.

First she made a foundation that would also act as a floor, spreading stone on the ground from one side of the pile of excavated stone in a long strip three paces wide. She anchored the stone onto the bare dirt, which she also claimed, bound and then compressed under the stone, making sure the floor was raised higher than ground level to prevent rain and dirt from flowing into the bath house. It probably wouldn't be any use against the spring floods, but that was a future matter to worry about.

Once the floor was laid out, Lori started hollowing out the pile of stone next to the foundation.

After all, it was already of a decent height as to act as a roof, and the sides of the pile could act as walls. All she had to do was hollow out the pile, basically re-excavating the stone as she made a space that formed a cave-like hollow that had a self-supporting, arching curve to it. The stone she slowly extracted was 'pulled' outwards from the hollow to continue the curve of the walls and ceiling. The whole mass of stone—foundation, hollowed stockpile and slowly extending walls, essentially everything that she that she wasn't actively moving—was all part of a single binding that reinforced the structure of the stone, allowing the stone to support itself when she had not yet finished forming the supportive arches. At intervals, she also raised up stone pillars to support the ceiling,

She slowly lengthened the stone structure over days. The work had to be done carefully, since the shape of the structure was important, and she had to remember to imbue the binding of earthwisps that reinforced the stone while she worked.

Twice, she found that the stone she had excavated was insufficient, and so Lori had to go back to the river to excavate some more. The excavated stone was piled around the open end of the tall, arched structure she was making, to make it easier to extend the building to the length she needed it to be. While the overall structure wasn’t all that big—it only needed to be able to serve less than fifty people, and not even all at once—the walls needed to be thick enough to bear the weight of the roof, and she also needed more stone for the internal fittings, like the basins to hold water, the pipes, and the internal walls to prevent people from seeing inside…

At the end of a day of work, when the sun began to hang low in the sky, Lori, Riz, the friend Riz would bring that day, and the hunting party that helped the demesne hunt for beast meat would get on Lori’s Ice Boat and back home. Without the security of sleeping in her own room aboard the Coldhold, as well as the numbers afforded by having Rian and the operators of the Coldhold present back when she’d been building the dragon shelter in the spring, she didn’t feel safe spending the night in River’s Fork. Oh yes, ostensibly it was because they didn’t want to have to draw on the demesne’s supplies for breakfast and dinner, but Lori just didn’t want to stay. Not with the weather the way it was. Sleeping in Shanalorre's office too hot!

In the evenings, they’d get back to her demesne as it was getting dark, the sun hidden behind the trees, casting the sky in shades pinks and purples and orange and red. More often than not, dinner would have already begun without them, though there was always still food waiting. The next day, they would proceed back down river after Lori had spoken to Shanalorre and, after checking her rock for his name, Kolinh. Lori would be back to work building the bath house and sweating profusely by mid-morning.

Slowly, far slower than any of its counterparts, the bath house took shape. Instead of two long, half-cylinder structures parallel to each other—one for men, the other for women—Lori simply made one such building, then build a wall in the middle to divide it into two segments. Finishing the building was a relief, since it meant that she’d finally be able to work in the shade without the intense sun shining down on her.

Of course, the relief was short-lived, because as the day wore on the inside of the bath house got increasingly hot, and so along with lightwisps to let her see, Lori also had to anchor bindings of airwisps to circulate the still and hot air, and bindings of firewisps to destroy heat within the bath house to mitigate the heat. If she hadn’t been a dungeon binder, she’d probably have never been able to do all this alone, since she’d have been spending significant amounts of her time simply imbuing the bindings that let her work.

Sometimes, when Lori was alone and she was sure Riz and whoever else couldn’t see her, she’d simply stop working sit down, and wait for the urge to cry to go away. This… wasn’t anywhere near what she thought being a Dungeon Binder would be like. Building a stone structure by herself in oppressive heat, unpaid…

It wasn’t like she’d ever actually use this building herself. She’d certainly never used any of the bath houses she’d built in her demesne. Did the idiots that lived here really need it? They’d been doing well with… however they’d been bathing so far. Why did she have to work this hard by herself?-! Jurt her, fingernails scrapped ragged from all contact with stone, making pipes with the stone foundation and stone basins for holding in water…

She never let her stop working for long, even when the heat and frustration meant she cried as she worked. Or perhaps that was just all the sweat pouring down her face. She went through the little jars of warm water she had Riz get her quickly, drinking to keep from getting dehydrated.

Many mornings, she just wanted to stay in her demesne and make beads. After all, it’s not like the stone she’d already raised and form was going to go anywhere. Surely she could put it off for a day… or even put it off completely until Rian came back, and only continue it if he had actually managed to recruit any Deadspeakers lazy and insecure enough to be willing to work for someone else instead of founding their own demesne. After all, no point building something if the intended user never arrived…

For two weeks, Lori left her demesne every morning and took Lori’s Boat downriver to River’s Fork. Each day, every day, she made the journey and worked on the demesne’s bath house bit by bit. The basins were made, running along the center of both halves of the bath house. Pipes were formed to take the used water and pass it though an above-ground pipe to a stone-lined pit near both the fields and the in-progress planting terrace, the pit currently empty since the bath house had no water yet. She'd excavated the pit to be lower than the baths, so that only gravity was needed to get the water there, with stone-line sides to keep it from collapsing.

Another above-ground pipe of stone was laid between the bath house and the river, and Lori debated wondered if she needed to put in something to repel slugs, squids, graspers and aquatic bugs from getting into the pipe to the bath house before deciding that it was just bath water. There was no need to overdo it. She ran the pipe from the river along the outside of the bath house, and eventually passed the pipe through the wall between the bath house's halves, where the tube then let out to the basins she'd made.

Once the building was finished and the pipes were laid, all that was left was to make the bound tool that would draw water from the river and bring it to the bath house’s basins for people to use. That, at least, she could design from the cool and convenience of her room in her Dungeon. A bound tool core mounted to a tube of bone—because stone was annoyingly heavy to try to move around on her table—on which a combination of waterwisps and airwisps were anchored. When it was mounted to the pipe she'd stuck into the river, the airwisps would draw air from the pipe, and the suction would pull water up the pipe. Once the water reached the portion of the pipe where the bound tool was located, the water would be propelled the rest of the way by the binding of waterwisps. Given the weather, there was no need to make the water warm.

It was a simple binding she'd used before—she used a variant of it in the bath houses of her demesne—so she was confident it was save to leave alone with the idiots of River's Fork.

And then it was back to River's Fork to actually install the bound tool onto the pipe where it went into the outside wall of the bath house. She used local stone to make a protective shroud around the contact receptacle of the bound tool, to protect the wispbead from being dislodged by the wind or bugs. Keeping bugs from roosting on the contact receptacle could be Yllian's problem.

"It's simple enough to use," Lori said as she showed Yllian how to operate the bound tool. "Put a bead on it, and it will draw water up from the river to fill the basins. Don't let the basin overflow, that will be a waste of water, and I don't suggest drinking the water from the basin. At the very least, it might have silt. You'll have to clean the basins every so often to get the silt out."

"Understood, Great Binder," Yllian said solemnly.

"I've already tested it, so the basins inside already have some water in them. Remember, one is for men, the other is for women."

"I'll make sure nothing untoward happens in the baths, Great Binder."

Lori nodded. "You'll have to build your own shelves for storing your clothes while your bathing. I don't have the time for that. If anyone vandalizes the bound tool, I will personally break their leg."

"I will see to it that their leg is reserved exclusively for you, Great Binder."

Lori nodded absently. "Now, the four new wisplights I gave you are for the bath house only. They're far brighter than the ones you already have, which is needed because aside from the entrances, there are no openings into the bathouse, otherwise people will get up to nonsense."

Yllian nodded in agreement. "Understood, Great Binder. May I use my own discretion for designating someone to handle the wispslights in the women's side of the baths?"

"Make arrangements you feel you need to," Lori said, waving a hand dismissively. "Make sure to keep an eye on the waste water pit near the fields. Don't let it get too full or else the baths will probably flood, and you'll be walking around in your own filthy bath water."

"Noted, Great Binder," Yllian said. Hesitantly, he added, "If I may ask… why are there no bathing pools?"

Ah. Right, Yllian had used the baths in her demesne, hadn't he? "Because they require dedicated full time maintenance and a more robust facility for dealing with used bath water, neither of which the demesne is capable of. Besides, the river is right there,"

"Understood, Great Binder. But… do you suppose that you could find it in you to add something like it before next winter?"

Lori gave him a flat look. "You realize you'll have to walk out of the dome into the cold just to use it, don't you?"

"Yes, Great Binder."

The two stared at each other.

"I'll consider it if Rian comes back having recruited a Deadspeaker who knows how to fuse wood and other materials together," Lori finally replied.

"I see…" Yllian said thoughtfully. "I understand, Great Binder."

Lori nodded. "Good. Now, I need to do some more tests before you can tell everyone they can use the baths. I will inform you when I am finished."

"Yes, Great Binder. I'll see to it that everyone is rationed some soap."

Lori waved a hand dismissively, and Yllian went off. "Riz?"

"Yes, Great Binder?"

"Did you two pack soap with you like I told you?"

"Yes, Great Binder!" Riz and her militiawoman friend both chorused.

Lori nodded, very aware of how drenched with sweat she was, how hot she was, and how her clothes stank of both. "Good. One of you get the packs, the other come with me."

Her responsibility here had finally been discharged. She supposed now was a good a time as any to use one of the bath houses she'd built.

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Food Supply Problems

Even after she finished with building the bath house, Lori's Ice Boat continued to make the trip to the other demesne and back. Beasts and seels had to be hunted for food, after all, and the nearly week-long stay in the shelter while the dragon passed had depleted much of the comfortable margin that they'd managed to build up over the spring.

Thus, hunting was redoubled, as the still abundant numbers of beasts and fursh were slowly rendered into food. The hunters stay in four day shifts before coming back to rest for a day—or at least, do a different sort of work while they spend meal times with their families, which Rian said was important—and then going back to River's fork to hunt again. They brought back reports on the demesne's condition from Yllian, which were told to Riz or… uh… Kolinh, which eventually made its way to Lori, update's on River's Fork's inventory that went to Shanalorre for collating, and supplies of fruit that went to her demesne's food storage.

The construction of the baths has also seemed to have given River's Fork some initiative, Shanalorre reported they've increased their soap production, using the rendered seel and beast fat. They didn't have an experienced chandler among there number though, and so the soap they produced carried a strong smell from the fats used, but given the sweatiness that they were using the soap on, the smell probably isn't too much of an issue.

She still had Yllian arrange for the necessary supplies to be sent to Lori's demesne so that they'd make the soap themselves. According to Shanalorre and… ah, what was his name… oh yes, Kolinh, the chandler's was only limited by a lack of molds and materials when it came to making soap. Increasing production to also meet the needs to River's Fork presented no great difficulty, especially since he'd taken on an apprentice to assist him, or so Lori had been told.

Lori had her own work to do, making beads in her shed. They were becoming increasingly necessary, given the number of rudimentary bound tools they were using now. Lori had even made three new large beads, two to replace the ones that had been used during the dragon's passing and one extra in case it was needed.

It wasn't that their usage of the beads was coming close to equaling her production rate, but if Rian was successful in his mission they'd need more beads to trade with. At least, that was her optimistic hope. The alternative was Rian wasn't able to exchange the beads for anything, or even worse, the beads had been seized by Covehold Demesne's authorities without restitution. That would be the sort of insult she'd have to answer… eventually, once she'd grown her demesne to be a match for Covehold.

She hoped the worst didn't happen. Getting her demesne to a war footing would be quite annoying.

Still, the days passed quietly, and she had plenty of work to do in that time. So she didn't think about how long the Coldhold had been gone. She didn't need to remind herself that with the improved, more efficient driver bound tool propelling it—all the tubes and curves of the previous driver had been reducing its efficiency, as had been made clear when the bound tool driver had propelled the boat much faster with the same binding—the would be able to return much faster. She was too busy for such things!

All she had to do was wait. Only a couple more weeks and they'd be back, hopefully with the profits and the new recruits, who would no doubt bring their own problems, but those were matters for later. As long as she didn't start any more projects, she could just  keep on making beads. When Rian came back, she'd have all new difficulties to deal with, so she might as well enjoy the relative rest she was having now.

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"There's a problem in River's Fork," Shanalorre said at their after-dinner briefing, a week after Lori had finished building the baths.

"Rainbows," Lori swore in deadpan tones, then sighed. "All right, who died and who did it?"

"No one died, Great Binder," Riz said.

"So the malcontents didn't kill the ones guarding the food stores, stole everything and ran off into the hills?" she said incredulously. Ever since she'd become responsible for River's Fork, that had been something she'd been waiting to hear had happened.

"Actually, those people had become much more well-behaved ever since you built the bath house," Shanalorre said. "I am not Lord Rian, so I would not care to speculate as to why, but perhaps he could provide an explanation when he returns. No, the problem is that replenishing the demesne's food supply has met with serious impediment."

What? "What?" Lori said.

"The hunting parties have recently been unable to hunt for beast meat, because beast meat has become scarce in the areas we've been hunting in," the younger Dungeon Binder said. "The access to seel meat has been unaffected, and it is likely we might have to switch to focusing on our efforts on them. If it becomes necessary to do so, I must request that Karina be given permission to assist in the endeavor. Her experience will allow us to increase the yields that will perhaps allow us to meet previous rates."

Lori took a moment to consider all that. For a moment, she wondered why Shanalorre was the one reporting this. Such a report was supposed to be Riz's purvey, as something that had been relayed by Lori's subjects, or—Lori checked her rock—Kolinh’s purvey as someone who organized what work there was to be done. So why was Shanalorre the one reporting this?

She was about to open her mouth, the words “Binder Shanalorre, why are you the one reporting this?” ready to leave her mouth when she suddenly became more aware of the first word in that sentence. Ah. Right. Her incompetence at the role side, Shanalorre was technically still the Dungeon Binder of River’s Fork, at least until Lori finally got around to claiming the core, and if nothing else she has been earnest in trying to fulfill the responsibilities of the role. Given that this was a matter that was an issue for River’s Fork alone, as well as pertinent to the agreement they ha made when Shanalorre had subordinated herself to Lori…

“Do we know why beast meat has become so scare in our hunting area?” Lori asked.

“Hunter Ralii believes that the dragon’s passing displaced one of the larger local beasts. They’d found very large tracks in the areas they been hunting in, as well as damage to trees and Iridescence that indicates a beast of great size,” Shanalorre reported. “It was a direct sighting that led them to conclude its presence has been what has been scaring away the local beasts. Hunter Ralii estimates that it was ten to twelve paces in length and somewhere between three and four paces tall at the hips, bulkier and longer than a koncallos. Not the sort of thing we should be trying to poke to death with spears. Hunter Ralii believes it has established a den nearby, likely after its previous den was destroyed by the dragon’s passing. Though he did not risk getting close, he believes that the beast might be suffering from burns received during that period, which is what is making the local beasts vacate the area. The injury is no doubt making the beast more aggressive than normal.”

Reflexively, Lori glanced up at the ceiling as she tried to imagine a beast that tall. Given the usual posture of beasts, that was probably not even the highest point of its body, merely the highest point that was consistently that high without being affected by changes in balance. While she wasn’t some sort of enthusiast or vitalogist, she had some common knowledge of the large kinds of beasts, the ones commonly used in plays to put the characters in peril when they wander out of a demesne, like koncallosi and rahimics. A koncallos, if she remembered correctly—and it wasn't someone's name, so she did—was about that height, and was considered one of the largest land predators alive, hunting chasmoses and thaggomses and… uh, what else… did it hunt rahimics? Well, whatever else was out there in the wilds outside of demesne.

"Can the hunters deal with it?" she asked.

"Only if they were insane and suicidal, Great Binder," Kolinh said. "A koncallos is the sort of beast that militia are sent to deal with when it got close to farmlands, and we have either heavy ballistae or wizard support to deal with it, usually both."

Lori tilted her head. "How would you have dealt with a koncallos, then?"

"A pit," Kolinh said immediately, "with a Horotract to be sure. Make the pit, then have them put a reductive vista on it so it doesn't look like a pit, then bait it with blood and meat. Have riders on lakimays bait it to the pit, then when it's in position invert the vista so the pit is too deep for it to get out of. Have the Whisperers finish it off."

Lori nodded slowly. "I see. We have almost none of those things, though I can stand in the place of a Whisperer." She'd started as one, after all. "Could we sustain the demesne on seel meat, or move our hunting to other areas?" There was the shore on the other side of the other river, after all, as well as simply the other side of the river itself.

"Only if we increased the number of people we dedicate to seeling," Kolinh said. "Moving to another area would be possible, but only to the other side of the river. We've changed to that, but the beasts there are reportedly more wary. Ralii suspects that they're smelling the koncallos-like beast and think it's nearby. Their increased caution is making it more difficult for our hunters. They'll likely settle down in a few days, but…"

"A few days will mean having to switch to stricter rationing, put us dangerously close to no margin for error at all if we continue at the current rate of consumption, or have to retain all of River's Fork's fruit harvests to feed itself, even accounting for us theoretically managing to seel at the rate we've been able to so far," Shanalorre interrupted.

She didn't like the implication of that. "What would happen if we waited the week, perhaps week and a half, that it would take for Rian to make it back?" she said, the 'make this his problem' unsaid but obvious.

The three she was speaking to obviously heard the addendum. While Riz had a moment of looking mildly guilty, Kolinh had a seemed to be seriously considering the option, as did Shanalorre.

It was the latter who answered the question, shaking her head. "River's Fork would have to live exclusively on the stockpiled food supplies, which would no longer be enough to last the demesne until the projected harvest date of the demesne's crops," Shanalorre said, looking down at her tablet to check her numbers. "Once those are exhausted, we would have to actively provide them with supplies from Lorian's reserves, which will monopolize the time of either the Lori's Ice Boat or the Coldhold, which will likely curtail our activities on the opposite shore of the river. A construction of a new boat might be needed to be able to return to mitigate this. If Lord Rian has managed to recruit a Deadspeaker capable of fusing materials, they should be able to assist in that, but given previous priorities, it would be more efficient to have then assisting in increasing grain production."

Lori considered that. on the one hand, each item started at distasteful and escalated from there. On the other hand… "If we deal with the koncallos-like beast now, would the beasts settle down enough for us to continue hunting?"

"No, Great Binder, it would take a few days for its scent to dissipate," Kolinh said. "However, we'd at least have its meat to add to our stores, and since its presence has made smaller vacate the area, we can probably take our time with butchering and dressing it’s meat."

She nodded solemnly. “And how do you plan to kill it so we can reach that point?”

“We… would need your assistance, Great Binder,” Kolinh said, sounding both reluctant and embarrassed.

“Couldn’t we just build a ballista to shoot it with?” Lori said, allowing herself to hope.

“They are not simple to make, Great Binder. And even if we could, we’d need to transport it to where the beast is, which we would still need to find.”

Lori sighed. Well, it wasn’t like she had never killed beasts before. In fact, she’d killed quite a lot of them when they had been traversing overland from Covehold. She’d just… well, never seriously imagined herself having to kill a beast the size of a koncallos. Oh, she’d imagined a long time ago when she’d been young and silly, killing a koncallos while riding atop a charging lakimay after watching one too many adventurous plays or reading about it in a book, but in real life…?

“How would you suggest we deal with this beast without a Horotract to assist us?” Lori asked.

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Shirking My Responsibilities Is Sounding More And More Tempting

Kolinh’s suggestion to deal with the beast was to lay a trap. A pit filled with spikes, or simply gather piles of Iridescence ready to be set on fire—an idea that Lori found both horrifying and dangerously pragmatic—which would be set alight once the beast was near enough to ignite the Iridescence growing on its own body.

“Given the situation, we don’t have the days it would normally take to track the beast and learn it’s habits,” Kolinh said.

“But we do have the time it takes to gather that much Iridescence?” Lori said flatly.

“It won’t take that long, Great Binder. We’d simply need to scrape all the nearby trees and scoop it up off the ground. The summer’s heat has been making them grow to be very thick.”

Lori shuddered at the thought. “You say this will be best for dealing with the beast quickly?”

Kolinh nodded. “Yes, Great Binder. However, there are still dangers. We will need a way to lure the beast towards the trap, whatever the trap may be, and building the trap will likely be dangerous, as we’d need to build it near enough to the beast’s territory that it might be drawn to us while we do so.”

“Should I just assume that every part of dealing with this beast will be very dangerous so it doesn’t need to be repeated?”

“That would probably be for the best, Great Binder.”

Lori sighed. “Would we even be able to dig a pit trap deep enough, quickly enough, to be useful without taking so much time that it would be more efficient to simply switch to sending food to River’s Fork?”

“With sufficient manpower, it should be possible, Great Binder. Either that, or…”

She gave him a flat look as he trailed off. “Or?” she prompted.

“You could excavate the hole yourself, Great Binder.”

Lori simply stared at him. Eventually, she said, “Moving on. How would we lure it to any trap that we set up?”

“Blood and fresh meat of some sort would be best, Great Binder. Kill a seel or smaller beast and leave it where it can be found. With the area vacated by other beasts, it should be the only one that will be drawn to the smell.” Kolinh paused for a moment, as if remembering something. “Though it would be best to set the trap and the bait near the river, Great Binder. A beast of the size reported would need to drink no matter how much the feeling stings, especially in this heat.”

That… made sense. If the heat was bad for her, it must be terrible for the beast, who wouldn’t have the option of jumping into the river to cool off with burning agony as the Iridescence was washed off its body and the spots where the crystals had pierced through its skin were opened. She remembered reading somewhere that beasts didn’t sweat, instead panting and fluffing their feather to release body heat.

Shaking her head, Lori focused on the now. “So. We set a trap for it, and lure it in with fresh meat. How do we make sure the trap kills it?”

Kolinh visibly hesitated as Riz turned her head, seemingly looking at something far to the side.

In the middle of the two, Shanalorre said, “While igniting a pit of kindling and Iridescence would no doubt be damaging, there is no guarantee that the beast will be fatally caught in the blast, and it would be extremely dangerous for the one who would ignite the fire. Spikes would probably be effective, but making and installing them would take time, and a beast is unlikely to simply fall into an open pit. The most effective trap would likely require your involvement. A sufficiently lethal binding would allow the beast to be killed after being drawn by the lure, and would not require overt physical construction that would put people in danger for extended periods of time as they labored to construct it. And anyone in both demesnes would gladly give their life to keep you safe should the beast appear while you are preparing the trap.”

Lori stared at the other Dungeon Binder, who stared back as the other two with her looked away.

“I will consider your proposal,” Lori said, getting to her feet. “If there’s nothing else, the three of you are dismissed for the evening.”

She lingered for a moment, waiting, but they also said nothing, so she turned and headed back to her room.

Then turned around to tuck her chair into place at the table so that people wouldn’t run into it. Thenshe headed back to her room.

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In the privacy of her own room later that night, Lori very, veryseriously considered the merits of simply… notdoing anything. While they couldn't make more defined plans to deal with the beast whose very presence had made all other beasts vacate the vicinity of River's Fork, they had the general outline of one, which was to find it, find a way to contain it to a small area and have Lori set it on fire or hit it with lightning until it died, possibly from the safety of the branches of a tree.

…

Put like that, it sounded both very simple and extremely dangerous. They didn't know where they'd be encountering the beast, and the idea of 'containing' it if it was as big as described was laughable to consider with the equipment they had on hand. A koncallos, according to what she'd read, weighed an average of two taugrain of heavy muscle, could chase down anyone on foot, and tear someone in half in a single bite.

Oh, bad stories involving random idiots finding Dungeon Cores and somehow becoming the most powerful Dungeon Binder in existence made it seem they were easy to kill with but a wave of the hand and a flash of lightning, but they weren't. More serious novels whose protagonists had ran and hidden from koncallosi had taught her why these beasts were s dangerous. Their flesh was too thick to cut quickly through with a water cutter, and they moved too quickly for such a stream to be concentrated long enough to go through flesh, much less cut through enough to be debilitating. Their feathers were a thick covering that would act as an ablative layer again fire and firewisps, even with the Iridescence no doubt growing on them being dangerously volatile. Those same properties also made them difficult to kill with handheld conventional weapons.

For the first time, Lori seriously began to reconsider the merits of having other wizards in the demesne. If they had some other wizard, any other wizard…

A Horotract would have been able to enact the plan of trapping it in a pit. A Deadspeaker—well, a Deadspeaker other than Shanalorre—would probably be able to use the many parts of skeletal remains to make some sort of undead that could occupy the beast's attention, or alter trees to be able to cage or trap the beast. A Horotract and a Deadspeaker could probably combine their efforts and kill the beast instantly… and while she would normally be very and rightfully concerned about such a capability being used on her, at the moment she couldn't help thinking it would be a wonderful solution to her current problems. A Mentalist would probably be able to use a formation to hold a beast completely still long enough for them to manually shove a spear into its eye and into the brain. And a Whisperer… well, they wouldn't be able to do anything Lori couldn't do herself, but the important point was that they would be doing it instead of Lori!

She didn't have to do it. Putting herself in that sort of danger had not been any part of her agreement with Shanalorre, and the discussion had made it clear that while it would cause added difficulties in future—and possibly require her to make a new boat—they could quite easily ride out this difficulty with the resources they had at their disposal. After, there was no large beast disrupting hunting around her primary demesne, so they should still be able to continue as they have been, even withdraw the hunter who'd agreed to take up partial residence in River's Fork to oversee the hunting there and allow him to come back home. Then Rian would arrive and…

…well, they'd probably need to reexamine the decision of focusing their efforts on killing this beast, but she'd have Rian to help plan that now, and she trusted him to make optimum decisions.

But… the only choices Rian would have to decide between would be continuing to leave the beast be and trying to subsist with their current resources… or try to kill it with those same resources.

And try as she might, she couldn’t see what Rian could possibly add that would make what they had at hand even more capable of killing a beast large enough to make other beasts avoid it. Yes, by the time Rian returned he’d might be coming back with one, possibly two—there had better not be three!—Deadspeakers, but that didn’t mean they’d be able to contribute… much less be trustworthy!

No, if they waited for Rian to come back, all they’d have was Riana and maybe the men who’d gone with him to Covehold Demesne. The newly recruited settlers and any family they had would be of questionable reliability and motivation, and unless Rian secretly had some sort of past experience trying to put down koncallosi out in the colors, they would be relying on the experience of those who’d been militia for the planning and strategy of dealing with it.

That meant that now was as good a time as any to try to bring it down.

…

Lori didn’t have to do this. She didn’t want to do this, hunting down a large, predatory beast that was reportedly injured and therefore in pain and likely more aggressive than usual. She could simply order Kolinh and the militia to try and kill it without her. They’d understand why she wouldn’t want to commit herself to this kind of hunt. It was extremely unsafe. No one would question her if she didn’t include herself in the attempt to try to deal with the beast. After all, she was the Dungeon Binder. If anything happened to her, the demesne would collapse, and the only one capable of claiming her core and restoring the boundaries of the demesne was Shanalorre… who didn’t know where Lori had hidden the core and would have difficulty reaching it if she was told. Rian would have to tell her. She was fairly certain he remembered where it was. Her remembered things like that.

…

She wanted to tell herself it was too soon to make some kind of decision on this. After all, that the hunters wouldn’t be taken down to River’s Fork to find the beast’s tracks and locate its den until tomorrow. She had plenty of time to make her decision.

But she also knew that no matter how much time passed, her options were unlikely to change. Either she risked her life to deal with this beast decisively… or she had to start building one or two new boats, commit her demesne to an extended period of delivering food to River’s Fork as they adapted to the displacement of the local beasts, possibly straining both demesnes supplies.

There was, she supposed, the option of just transferring the population of River’s Fork to her demesne and leaving only a small group of people to tend to and harvest the fruit trees they had an interest in… but since no one in the demesne seems to have so much as inquired about the possibility, it was clear they didn’t want to leave for whatever inane reason. And if she did transfer them, that was an equally distasteful result. She’d have to build more new houses, expand their infrastructure, and it wouldn’t change the fact they’d need to increase their food stocks to accommodate the increased population… a population that had already proven to have elements that were undisciplined, disruptive malcontents among their number, as well as people who continued to allow such behavior to continue.

So either she’d be spending more of the summer building things and making all the infrastructure she’d already built in River’s Fork go to waste, one way or another… or she could risk her life, and by extension the existence of the demesne, in trying to kill this beast.

…

It was a very difficult, aggravating decision.

And as such, best she made it quickly so she’d have as much time as possible to make the preparations for mitigating the difficulties presented by her options.

Unfortunately, she knew what she would choose, even if she didn’t want to.

After all, despite how much she wanted to shirk them… she had her responsibilities.

She would simply have to keep herself to be as safe as possible.