Weekly Digest 144 - (#452 - #454) (Patreon)

Not Actually Trying To Procrastinate

As much as she wanted to, Lori wasn't able to test the enlarged lightning ball on a living subject. Trying to put a seel into the binding wouldn't be demonstrative of the results of the binding on a dry subject, and trying to put the binding underwater would fundamentally change it. Given how busy everyone was, there wasn't time left in the day to catch a choker to use as a test subject. However, her tests had concluded to her satisfaction and a lightningball binding she felt would suffice for being able to kill decisively, so Lori felt everything was ready. She was ready.

"Is everything ready?" Lori asked Rian at dinner that night as she stirred her stew. While she had worked on developing the binding, she had left all the other matters up to him.

"As ready as we'll ever be," Rian said, looking tired. Kolinh, sitting on the bench with him, merely looked patient. "I'm sure you've noticed that the children from River's Fork are back. Again."

The sounds of the children eating at the table behind her were hard to miss. "Are they? I couldn't tell."

She didn't react as there was a splash and a cry behind her. One of the children's cups had tipped over, spilling water.

"Ah…" Rian said, nodding for some reason. Mikon, sitting next to him today, gently nudged him with her elbow, and he had a spoonful of stew before replying further. "Well, you have been busy taming lightning out of the sky and turning it into your own personal ball of death, so it's to be expected little details life that escape you. The children from River's Fork are back and staying in Shanalorre's house again, and Shanalorre came back. With luck, the children will be back home tomorrow or the day after, once we've dealt with the typhon abomination."

"There's no need to rush," Shanalorre said from behind Lori at the other table. "Take as much time as needed to deal with the matter sufficiently."

"Your opinion is noted," Lori said flatly. She kept her gaze on Rian. "Beyond the children, what about the other preparations?"

Rian turned to the man sitting past Riz and Mikon as Lori ate her own food. "Kolinh?"

"There's very little preparation to be done, given the time we had available, what we will be dealing with, and what resources we have on hand," the older man said. His food was already halfway eaten, although he had ceased eating when the attention turned towards him, sticking the bread he'd been holding into his stew bowl. "With the assistance of the carpenters and Wiz Taeclas, we were able to make several pikes that should be more effective in keeping something the size of the abomination at bay. Those will be less effective among trees, but should someone actually need to try and drive it off they'll stand a better chance. However, I must stress very strongly that any plan where the militia will need to do such a thing will be doomed from the start."

"Because of the length of the pikes, they'll need to be carried in their own boat, or else it might capsize from the weight distribution," Rian said. "It would be easier on the Coldhold, but her Bindership hasn't pulled that out of the river yet. We have volunteers who will be coming along to wield them, and we will also be distributing them among those we sent to River's Fork earlier today. All the volunteers are former militia and have experience wielding them and working together. No civilian volunteers this time, although the hunters will be coming with us to supplement the scouts."

Lori frowned as she finished chewing the mouthful of bread she was masticating. "Why is that necessary? Shanalorre will be able to tell us exactly where it is. That's why she was sent there this morning, after all." Among other reasons.

"With all due respect to yourself and Binder Shanalorre, Great Binder," Kolinh said, putting down his spoon, "from what Binder Shanalorre describes, at best she will be able to point to where it is and perhaps give us an estimate as to the distance from her location. Binder Shanalorre will not be able to relay the terrain, nor be able to provide a proper analysis of it to be able to say whether a location will be suited towards trapping it, or whatever plan we will affect. While I am told that the hunters are confident it will take the path they have identified, if it doesn’t we will need to adapt, and scouts will be able to find ideal locations for such adjustments better than Binder Shanalorre can."

She considered the statement and reluctantly nodded in acknowledgement. Lori supposed the argument had merit. While her awareness of the wisps in her demesne technically allowed her to examine every location within it, she would be hard pressed to describe any landmarks that wasn't the river or a man-made structure. Directing people to a location wasn't a problem for her, since if she needed to she could simply lay down a glowing line of lightwisps and mark the destination, but Shana would be unable to do the same beyond pointing in a given direction and perhaps providing an estimated distance. "Noted. What else?"

"I gave permission that some of the small storage jars be converted into bombs," Rian said. "We don't really have the material for anything that explodes, but we were able to put together a mix of fat, straw and grass, and a little tinder to make smoke bombs, and we'll be preparing piles for smoke fires tomorrow as well, in case we need to cover up our scents or need to smoke out the abomination. I'm not sure how effective it will be, but the one we made earlier smoked well enough, so… hopefully we won't need it? We've gathered all the strong rope too, in case we need set some kind of trap."

Lori looked at him in askance. "Rian, what sort of trap could we possibly make?"

He shrugged. "I don't know, but Kolinh said it might be helpful. Besides, maybe we'll get stupidly lucky and manage to get a loop around the beast's foot or something."

"That sounds like a stupid idea from a bad play."

"Look, all I know is the abomination probably doesn't know how to untie knots. If we manage to do that, we might be able to tie the other end to a tree, and keep it mostly in place enough so you can work your magic on it somehow."

She rolled her eyes. "It won't come to that."

"We're hoping it won't come to that," Rian said. "If things go unpredictably wrong, I want to give everyone options beyond 'poke it with long sticks' or 'run away'. To that end, we'd also been making stone-tipped arrows. Or rather, we've been putting the stone and bone arrowheads you've already made onto new shafts."

"I don't think poking at the abomination with even smaller sticks will do much good, Rian."

"They will if you put some kind of binding on the arrowhead. Preferably one that explodes, I know you have a few. We had the one arrow before, but given what happened last time we could have used it… well, more arrows means more chances that they'll hit."

Lori considered that. "I'll need to do some more testing, but the arrows probably need to be within my line of sight," she said. Although… yes, that binding might work. "Once I've put the binding onto it, they'll need to be handled with care, or the binding might be set off while the arrow is being held." It shouldn't come to that, if she made the binding correctly. Of course, she'd need to do some testing of that binding to make sure that that binding worked as intended…

"How much testing will you need?" Rian asked. "Another day? Because that would give us more time to prepare and make bombs. Though after this is over, Gunvi is going to need to make a lot of replacements. We need those pots for everyday use, after all."

…

"Rian… are you trying to procrastinate?" Lori said flatly.

He blinked, looking surprised. "What? No! Why would you…?"  He paused. "All right, I think I see why you'd think I was doing that, but I'm not trying to procrastinate here! It's just we'd benefit from having more time to prepare."

"So… procrastinate."

"Again, I can see why you'd think that, but that's not what I'm doing!"

Lori gave her lord one more suspicious look before looking over her shoulder. "Shanalorre, how close is the abomination to the dome?"

There was a pause as Shanalorre no doubt tried to translate her perceptions into something understandable to those without it. "Very close, Great Binder. From what I can perceive, it has stopped moving within sight of the river. If it weren't for all the trees obstructing sight, the typhon abomination would likely be visible from the top of the hill the mine is in. It… seems to be devouring another, smaller abomination that it managed to catch. According to the hunters, beasts generally do not stay in the vicinity of their kills after they have fed, but most of the directions it is likely to move towards will soon bring it to the river, which will put it in view of the dome the next time it goes to drink."

That… sounded very close. "That sounds very close," Lori noted.

"How close is it in terms of… oh, the diameter of the dome?" Rian asked.

There was a brief pause. "Measured from the edge of the dome facing the abomination towards the abomination's approximate center… about five to six dome diameters' distance, approximately. Unfortunately, I cannot be more precise than that."

That was… concerningly near, put in context. Lori didn't have an exact measure of the dome's diameter, but she had walked through and around it enough time to have a sense of the dome's size. Walking four or five times across its length wouldn't be that much distance. Lori wouldn't even complain about needing to walk somewhere that far.

"It appears that procrastinating isn't an option, Rian," Lori said.

"I wasn't suggesting that we—ugh, never mind. Yes, that's disturbingly close. If it's eating, then it might head for water soon to wash off the blood, and that would put it even closer. With everyone in the dragon shelter, there shouldn't be any risk of people being endangered, but if it's close to the dome it would limit the bindings you could use without causing damage to the dome's infrastructure buildings. Kolinh, can we deal with the abomination tomorrow with what we have?"

"It would depend on how the Great Binder intends to approach the abomination," Kolinh said. "We would at best simply be distractions to try and guide the thing to where the Great Binder needs it to be."

"Couldn't we stand well back and cheer her on as her plan goes perfectly and no one is any danger whatsoever?" Rian said hopefully.

"Probably," the other man said, "but I wouldn't count on it. It's very hard to get a beast to go where you want it, never mind an abomination."

Rian sighed. "Ah, my hopes and dreams, dashed by this cruel world…"

"Rian, stop being a useless thespian. Is there anything else?"

Rian looked towards Kolinh for a moment, as if waiting for the man to bring up anything else. When the man stayed silent, her lord shook his head. "No, I think that's all of it."

"Then finish your food and get me those arrows. I'll see about what kind of binding I can anchor onto them." She'd need to premake the lightningball bindings in any case, and for that she'd need a lot of lightningwisps—which was why she hadn't dissolved the lightningball she'd made earlier, merely deactivated it, as well as binding all the loose lightningwisps it had generated—so she might as well anchor bindings to the arrows as well. Wait, she needed something to anchor those lightningballs too as well. "And river stones."

For some reason, Rian turned and gave Kolinh a smug look. "See? I told you gathering all those rocks was a good idea."

"So you did," Kolinh said, handing Rian one of his micans. "I'll have them brought in, Great Binder. Where do you want them?"

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Staying Up To Work

Lori hadn't stayed up late to work in a while. That period when she'd been taking notes didn’t count, as she barely remembered it as anything but a haze of tiredness. Most days, she'd just go straight to her bed after dinner, do one final check of the reduced number of bindings she now maintained for ones she needed to imbue, maybe take another bath if she wanted to feel cool instead of warm, and go straight to sleep. Maybe she'd read her almanac for a little stimulation, reading over uses for vistas and tamings and various other things. They were vaguely interesting but not arresting, and she was able to drift off to sleep reading things that were probably useful but didn't interest her.

Not tonight. For the first time since the expedition had settled here, Lori needed to stay up and get some work done to be ready for the next day. Since they would be leaving immediately after breakfast, there would be no time to do it then, and Lori probably wouldn't be lingering over her food either.

It reminded her of school, in a depressing 'I thought I was done with having to do things like this' sort of way as she sat on a bench, her back to the stone outer walls of her Dungeon's entryway. On one side of her was a pile of arrows with a mix of arrowheads that were a mix of stone and bone, some of which she actually remembered making. Lori knew that she'd previously made much more, but this was all that remained to date. She'd have to set aside some time to make more arrowheads soon.

There was a slightly smaller pile on her other side, where she placed the arrows that already had bindings anchored to them, imbued but deactivated. She'd need to activate them before they were used, since even if she used a line of lightwisps as a channel to connect herself to the binding on the arrowhead, if the line were stretched far enough the binding would break apart from there simply not being enough wisps to stretch across the physical distance.

The binding she anchored onto the arrowheads was relatively simple, consisting of two heavily imbued 'spikes' of lightningwisps that protruded as far from arrowhead as she could make without them starting to deform, which was about a hand-length. Each had an opposing directionality, with the intention that once loosed the spikes would penetrate the flesh of anything the arrows were shot at, and lighting would flow from one spike through the flesh of the target and into the other spike, which would draw the lightning back into the first spike, creating a loop of lightning that would do horrible things to the flesh that was the intermediary that allowed the lightning to pass.

Per Rian's request, she had formed such that the loop would exist only very briefly, because once completed the binding would immediately consume all imbuement and likely cause the flesh to violently explode. If the typhon abomination was altered enough to have syrupy abomination blood, it would hopefully catch fire.

As long as whoever was shooting it was careful to not touch the arrowhead, it should be safe to handle once she activated the binding, though Lori would need to activate each one individually. Not ideal, but if the abomination was close enough and in an area open enough they could have several people shooting arrows at it, her lightningballs would have either failed or been avoided.

Up in the sky, the dragon's trailing threads continued to obscure the sky and made the moons look like they'd been cut into slices in preparation for cooking. There was a distinct lack of bugsong in the air as Lori worked, but it was more than made up for by all the people not sleeping. Now that everything was more or less back to normal—the typhon abomination not withstanding, since it was in another demesne—people had returned to their usual habits. With the relative cool returned, there were once more bonfires lit in front of the baths, surrounded by benches filled with people talking and making all sorts of noise that was at least not music. Some people were doing some late-night laundry, and while there was no more line in front of the Um, the open doors indicated that the rooms were still occupied.

Riz was manning the ledger of who was using the Um's room and would therefore need to clean it up at the end of the week, although she seemed to be doing it with her head in Mikon's lap. A part of Lori wondered if this mean Umu was home alone or was doing late-night laundry alone, before dismissing the thought as nonsensical.

Next to Lori, sitting on the ground—on a plank instead of directly, so he wasn't getting his trousers too dirty—Rian was using a pointy rock to carve 'top' onto several riverstones so there were would be no confusion about which side it should be facing. He was humming happily, and it actually seemed to be genuine instead of some sort of affectation. From the way the humming's rhythm kept changing, they seemed to be songs.

She focused back on the binding she was making, drawing lightningwisps from the binding next to her. The binding she had tested over the river earlier that day was now anchored to the ground next to her, marked by rings of light to keep people from walking into it—she didn’t want them accidentally grounding the lightningwisps—and helping her see. She had reformed the binding so that the lightningwisps in the center merely filled the air with sparks instead of lightning, while the shell of lightningwisps and airwisps kept the sparks contained so they wouldn't get loose. It provided her with a replenishing source of lightningwisps for the bindings she was making. There were still a lot of bindings to make tonight. Once she finished with the arrows, she'd still have to make and anchor lightningballs onto the rocks she was having Rian mark.

Ugh, why did she have to do this herself? She was the Dungeon Binder! She should have Whisperers doing this for her!

…

Ah, right. She couldn't trust any wizards to not try and kill her to claim her core, since she couldn't just sequester herself in her dungeon and shut everyone out. Actually, ever since that first dragon, her Dungeon had never really been empty, had it?

Sighing, Lori put down the arrow she'd just finished anchoring a binding onto and picked up the next one.

"You don't have to stay up to do this, you know," Rian said, not looking up from what he was working on. "A day—"

"No," Lori interjected as she claimed lightningwisps and began to form the binding. "No procrastinating."

"Would procrastinating really be worse than having all our preparations in order and our Dungeon Binder—the one we'll be relying on to kill this abomination—getting a good night's sleep so she's well-rested when she has to deal with the thing?"

"I can sleep on the boat," Lori said as she shaped the binding into a pair of spikes. "This needs to be done. I will not have an abomination of that size within one of my demesnes."

"You could have Taeclas or Lidzuga teach Shanalorre some kind of meaning that can deal with the abomination," Rian suggested.

"Firstly, never suggest such nonsense again. Secondly, we do not have three years for her to learn the bare basics of Deadspeaking, which will be needed for her to learn any meanings."

"So… she should start learning now?"

"Rian."

"Yes, your Bindership?"

"Shut up and get back to work."

Rian sighed. "Yes, your Bindership."

"And never bring up the subject again."

"No."

Lori paused in setting down the arrow she'd just finished, turning to stare at him as she let the arrow fall from her fingers.

Rian still didn’t look up. "I'm not going to let you willfully ignore viable options just because you don't like them. If the options exist, they need to be actively considered for the situation, even if your considered answer is 'no'. As your lord, I'm supposed to give you good advice, not just the advice you want to hear. You should have read enough history and story to know what happens to people who do that. It's your prerogative to ignore the advice, but it's my duty to give it. So no, I will not comply with never bringing up the subject again, not when Shanalorre is far more useful to you and both demesnes if she actually knows how to properly do Deadspeaking."

Lori gave him a flat stare. "Noted," she said eventually. "Now drop the subject and get back to work."

By the time Lori completed anchoring bindings onto the arrowheads, Rian was long done. However, rather than returning to his house, he simply moved his plank up against the wall of the entryway and sat with his back to it, staring up at the stars. Lori had expected him to accompany Riz and Mikon when the former finally closed up the Um, but he simply waved to them and sat back. What was he waiting for?

Well, Lori didn't have any more time to bother with him. She still had more bindings to make.

At first, Lori had thought she would need to make a full-sized lightningball binding to anchor onto the rocks that she'd had Rian mark, but on consideration she decided that wouldn't be necessary, at least for the moment. She'd simply make a smaller binding utilizing a disproportionately large amount of lightningwisps, which she would expand to the appropriate size tomorrow. It would make moving the bindings around easier, as she wouldn't have three-pace wide bindings knocking against each other and other bindings around them—

"Do you want me to get you some water?" Rian said suddenly.

Lori blinked, looking up from the binding she'd just completed and was minimally imbuing so it would last until morning. "What?"

"You've been working for a while, so I thought you'd like something to drink."

Lori opened her mouth to tell him she wasn’t thirsty, and realized she actually was. How long had she been working? "Yes, thank you," she said, standing up and—argh, how long had she been sitting? Her posterior was loudly telling her she should have moved sooner, her back was complaining she'd been bent over too long, and her bladder was informing her why she was thirsty. "I will be back in a moment."

When she returned, in addition to a cup and a jar of water, Rian also had a pair of micans and some blueballs. "I figured you needed something to eat too, in case you were starting to feel sleepy."

"I wasn't until you brought it up," Lori said, taking the cup. It was empty, but Rian picked up the jar and poured when she held out the cup. She had two more drinks before grabbing one of the micans to peel it open—

"Did you wash your hands?"

"…"

After coming back from washing her hands with soap in her room, Lori started peeling open one of the micans. The little wedges were sweet and tart in her mouth as her bite released the fruit's juices. She let the flavor wash over her tongue before chewing and swallowing. Next to her, Rian had cracked open one of the blueballs, popping the firm and dry-looking fruits into his mouth. A few moments later, he spat out the seed into his hand before tucking it into the peel.

For a moment, they just sat there.

"Shouldn't you be going asleep?" Lori said as she started peeling the second mican.

"Shouldn't you? You're the one who's supposed to be killing the abomination tomorrow. Besides, if a choker walks by while you're working, someone has to notice it, and it certainly isn't going to be you."

Lori frowned. "Are there still chokers about?"

"No idea. No one's reported seeing one yet, but maybe they didn’t think it was worth reporting. The patrols have found an abomination or two, however, so there's that." Rian picked up a stick lying next to him that Lori hadn't really noticed until he'd picked it up. "Keep on working. I'll be right here."

A sound came from Rian's house. It was muffled by the walls, but had a very familiar in tone and pitch. Very motherly.

Lori gave Rian a flat look. He'd turned to look towards his house when the sound came, but was now looking away, adjusting his legs as he sat. When he realized she was looking at him, he said, "What?"

"If you want to go back home—" Lori said dryly.

"Don't you have work you still need to do? Or are you going to sleep now?"

She gave him one last look and shrugged, picking up another river rock the size of her palm and making sure that the inscribed 'top' was facing her. Claiming airwisps from around her and lightningwisps from the sparks released by the binding next to her, Lori began forming another lightningball. One down, nineteen more to go.

…

Why did she think it was a good idea to make twenty of these bindings?-!

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Setting Off To Finally Kill This Thing

When Lori woke up the next day, she felt strangely miserable, and it had nothing to do with the loud knocking on her door. That was its own, separate misery.

A third misery was added as a loud voice called out, "Your Bindership, wake up! You told me not to let you sleep in, remember? It's time to get to work." Rian's voice, and with it came memories of last night telling to do exactly that, UGH!

Making a sound between a groan and a growl, Lori reluctantly sat up on her bed, rubbing at her eyes. Despite the fact that—by her orders— it probably wasn't that much earlier than the time she usually woke up anyway, Lori felt like she was severely lacking in sleep. It was what always happened when she didn't wake up on her own. "I'm awake, now stop it!" she called out towards the door.

"Oh good, you're up!" Rian said cheerfully—and loudly—through the still-closed door. "I'll be back in a bit to make sure you didn't just flop into bed and go back to sleep, like you ordered! What fruits to do you want for breakfast?"

Lori glared at the door, but she had in fact foolishly told him to do that. Well, if she was going to be up unreasonably early anyway… "All of them!"

"All of the fruits we have, got it! Enjoy your bath, your Bindership!"

Lori glared at the door some more before grudgingly slipping on her tsinelas and getting to her feet as she headed for her private bath.

A quick wash, the water comfortably cool then comfortably warm, and Lori was feeling far more awake—unfortunately—and still miserable, though her thoughts had cleared. By the time Rian came back to check on her, she was already half-dressed and pulling on her trousers. While the fog of sleep had mostly been faded away by that point, the misery of having to wake up early hadn't, and she was in a foul mood as she went down the stairs to the dining hall, her staff in hand. The quartz embedded into it vibrated as they hadn't in a long time, full of lightningwisps, and a piece of charcoal rattled around in the coalcharm at the end of her staff, currently unlit but ready. She'd rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and pinned them in place to keep them out of her way, her head bare since her hat would only have gotten in her way.

The kitchen was active, and breakfast seemed already in progress, and there were already several people at the tables. A glance out through the doors showed her that the outside of her demesne was still cloaked in early morning light, and a brief check through her connections to her core showed the pervasive presence of dew. Ugh, just the sight made her want to turn and crawl back into her bed…

There was a pile of fruits on the table in front of her chair, which did in fact seemed to consist of all the varieties of fruits they had available. And while the table was occupied, it was less full than usual. Only Riz, Rian, Shanalorre—and her cousin, who had folded her arms on the table and was sleeping—and… uh… Lori reached for her pouch out of habit but she was fair certain she didn't have a rock with his name on it.  She could recall that much. The older former militiaman who wasn't Yllian. Eh, she'd just wait for Rian to say his name.

"Good morning, your Bindership," Rian greeted cheerfully, and Lori had an urge to strangle him all over again. However, now that she could actually see him, he looked as awake as she felt. His eyes slightly half-lidded, his hair was wetter than it usually was when he came out of the baths, and seemed to be shivering slightly. Still, he had a clearly forced smile on his face—unusual in itself, since most of the time his smiles were theatrically sincere—and he seemed to be forcing himself to sit up straight. "All the fruits, as you requested. They should tide you over until the rest of breakfast is ready. Kolinh says everyone is ready to leave as soon as we've all eaten."

Ah, Kolinh, that was his name. Lori nodded in grumpy acknowledgement as she sat down and reached for a golden bud, scoring the skin with her thumbnail and tearing it open from that tear. "Hrm."

"The arrows and rocks have been packed up," Rian continued, taking her non-answer as encouragement to keep talking—colors, did she remember to imbue the bindings on them? No, she hadn't, she'd decided she'd imbue them in the morning!

"Where have they been packed up?" she asked, simply to narrow down where to look.

"They're on the boat at the dock," Rian said. "Do you want to inspect them before we leave?"

Ah, there they were. Lori waved a hand dismissively as she chewed and swallowed the yellow wedge in her mouth. "That won't be necessary," she said as she started imbuing all the bindings, taking care to heavily imbue the ones anchored to the stones. "Shanalorre, where is the abomination now?"

"It has not strayed far from its previous location last night, Great Binder," the other Dungeon Binder said. "The abomination is currently immobile and staying in place. I believe it is still asleep at the moment."

"Hopefully, it will stay so until we get there," Lori said.

"Somehow, I doubt it.," Rian sighed. "But I suppose that's what all the arrows are for, right?" He looked towards the kitchen and got to his feet. "I'll go get the food."

Lori glanced down at the fruits in front of her and quickly grabbed a happy fruit, beginning to peel it open. She needed to eat as many fruits as she could before proper breakfast arrived.

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Breakfast was filling, comfortably warm—meaning it was probably still too hot—and unfortunately quick as everyone ate hurriedly, even Shanalorre. By the time they were all finished, people were already starting to enter the dining hall, meaning that others arrived to occupy her table. For once, the other Dungeon Binder didn't try to wake up her cousin and coax her to eat, instead asking the brat to take care of the girl in Shanalorre's stead. The brat gave a cheerful affirmative as the two of them guided Yoshka to sit at the other table, where the young girl once more curled up with her head pillowed on her arms.

"Do you want to examine her?" the Deadspeaker—Lori glanced at her head, and was glad she was wearing a cloth today—Taeclas said as she sat down, giving the young girl a concerned frowned. "That sort of lethargy isn't normal in children her age."

"She's fine," Shanalorre said. "She's been examined before and is completely healthy, she just likes sleeping. Once everyone else is here she'll wake up because there's food and people to play with."

Lori distinctly saw the sleeping girl's head move in a nod.

...

Well, it wasn't like Lori couldn't understand wanting to sleep more.

Thankfully, there was no delay from overly long goodbyes and pointless crying. Lori had barely seated herself on Lori's Shed Boat and made herself comfortable on her chair there when the former militia and hunters began making their  way aboard, as well as onto the other boats.

Three boats were being used to convey everyone to River's Fork this morning, her own and two others. One of the boats was simply for all the pikes, ropes, jars and other equipment that had been prepared for this hunt, while the other carried the people that wouldn't fit in Lori's Shed Boat. In what seemed like a few moments, the three boats were off, moving together down river.

"You should get some sleep," Rian said, sitting on one of the side benches of the boat such that he was leaning back on one of the poles along the sides of the boat. In front of Lori sat Riz's friends, in the middle of whom sat Shanalorrre. The women seemed to be fretting over the smaller Dungeon Binder, which they had never done for Lori, offering to vacate their seats if Shanalorre wanted to be comfortable.  "We have some time before we get to River's Fork, so you might as well get a nap in."

Lori frowned at him.

"What?"

"Why aren't you operating the boat?"

Rian pointed behind her. "Riz pulled non-rank. She made the completely logical argument that she has more experience operating this boat than I do, so she should steer."

"I also said you should get some sleep," Riz said from behind Lori.

"Yes, Riz," Rian said in the same tone Lori heard her Ina use when her Nanay was nagging as he made a show of leaning back and closing his eyes. "Sleeping now."

He actually did seem to go to sleep, or at least fall into a doze, despite the movements of the boat as the steam jet driver propelled it over the water. Lori gave him an incredulous look as she settled herself more comfortably in her seat, continuing to imbue the bindings she had so painstakingly prepared last night. In front of her, Shanalorre was leaning against one of Riz's friends, using the woman as backrest as the Dungeon Binder closed her eyes and also seemed to fall asleep.

Lori shook her head as she sat back to be more comfortable. Really, trying to sleep was a futile effort with all the movement. The boat had a strange rocking motion to it as the front moved up and down, meaning it simply wasn't possible to settle in place. Closing her eyes to help her concentrate on the bindings she was imbuing, Lori let the motion keep her awake as she leaned her head back and—

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"Your bindership? Wake up, we're almost there."

Lori jerked awake, blinking in confusion. Had she actually fallen asleep? She hadn't been that sleepy, had she? However, a hurried look around revealed that they were in fact approaching the dome of River's Fork, meaning she'd been asleep since… well, she'd been asleep.

"Shanalorre, where is the abomination now?" Lori said as she rubbed at her eyes to try and pull herself to wakefulness, straightening up in her chair and wincing at the small aches her slouch as she had slept had given her.

"It's roused and is moving towards the river, Great Binder," Shanalorre reported, rubbing at her eyes. "I… I think it was in some kind of altercation with one of the surviving smaller abominations. It seems to be injured, though I cannot say for certain."

"Are the injuries enough to make it easier to deal with?" Rian said hopefully.

Shanalorre tilted her head, eyes closing slightly as she concentrated. "I… am unsure. However, the abomination is still mobile, so…"

Rian sighed. "Well, looks like we're all still going to need to earn our keep today," he said.

"I don't pay any of you anything," Lori pointed out.

"Ah, right. We're not even earning anything, we're donating our time." Rian directed a pitiful look towards her. "Are you sure this can't count towards out taxes when you eventually get around to doing that?"

Lori rolled her eyes. "I'll consider it."

"Um…" came Riz's voice behind her.

Lori turned her head so she could see the woman out of the corner of her eye. "What is it, Erzebed?"

"Does that include all the 'donations' over the past year?"

She was distinctly aware that all of the other women at the front of the boat were also listening intently.

"I'll consider it," Lori said flatly.

Why did everyone cheer at that?