Demesne 455 - The Abomination (Patreon)

Once they arrived in the dome of River's Fork, work began quickly. Yllian had met them with a large group of able-bodied men that had been sent yesterday to prepare for today, as well as—Lori checked the rocks in her belt pouch—Lidzuga. Kolinh and Yllian briefly spoke with one another as the arrows and stones were removed from one of the boats, then spoke to Shanalorre. A boat was loaded with people before crossing the river to the opposite bank. Seemingly unarmed, not even carrying bow or spear, they slipped into the trees. Those would be the hunters and scouts, Lori recalled, who would ascertain the abomination's location and condition, and if necessary try to guide the abomination towards where it could be killed.

As much as Lori would have loved to stay at the dome on the other side of the river from the abomination, she had preparations to make. One that unfortunately required that she also cross to the other shore, although she was able to delay the matter until all the other militia had made the crossing before her to ensure that there was some preparation to keep her safe. On the other side, Lori was surprised to find the ground heavily worked. There were deep trenches just wide enough for a person to fit inside that seemed randomly situation, trees whose branches seemed to have woven and sometimes fused together into strange lattices of walls at just barely above head height, and large thickets of thorny brambles made from a mix of random branches and ropeweed. Distributed seemingly at random were small piles of branches covered with leaves, and interspersed among them were shallow pits that had been covered over by branches and leaves to hide them, the branches intended to break should the abomination's weight rest on them.

"Such a short fall seems pointless," Lori commented when the purpose of the holes had been explained to her. "The abomination could simply stand up from it."

"That would be the case it this were a little thing like a choker, or even just a leaper. Well, a small leaper. But you're forgetting how big this abomination is," Rian said. "To something of that size and weight, what would be a little fall to us would probably break its bones, since it weighs far more. Even if it doesn't break a leg, a sprained ankle that the abomination can't put weight on would hamper it greatly."

 The preparations were mostly concentrated on either side of a particular area that to Lori's unpracticed eye seemed to be a rather wide trail leading towards the river that the hunter had put forward as the abomination's most likely route. A so-called 'game trail', it was apparently a path that had likely been regularly trodden on by beasts before demesne had been founded. While there had far fewer beasts using the trail recently, it hadn't yet faded, and it was reportedly also the most convenient route for something the size of the abomination to pass through the trees towards the river. While she had been expecting some kind of preparations, she hadn't expected them to be able to accomplish this much in just one day.

Apparently beasts—and abominations, by extension—didn't like having to rub up against trees or walking through bushes and things unless they were marking their demesne, so the abomination would mostly likely walk the path of least resistance… especially if they tied ropes between trees to mildly discourage the abomination from walking between them. It wasn't certain the abomination would rather choose unobstructed and wide paths, but was supposedly very likely.

"The trenches are to give people something to try and dive into," Rian exposited quietly as Lori eyed one such trench running perpendicular to the game trail nearby. The dirt on either side was only loose earth that had been piled to either side, but ropes and a tangle of branches with large, visible wooden thorns had been placed atop it, partially covering the trench beneath. "By  the hunter's estimate, it's too narrow for the abomination to simply stick its head in and pull someone out, and the ropes and thorns are meant to deter it from trying. If the thing tries to reach in with its limbs—very unlikely—it should get stuck enough we can try to pike its sides. The rest are to try and discourage it from going certain ways in case it decides to chase someone. "

Lori looked at all the Deadspoken wooden shapes as she checked the rocks in her belt pouch. Lidzuga—with assistance from Shanalorre—had done a lot of work yesterday. Hopefully it all worked. The Deadspeaker was making a few more last moment barriers, a pair of militiamen following him in case Shanalorre announced the abomination's arrival. He was clearly not having to imbue the wood himself, as he simply touched the tree he was standing next to and the branches immediately began to move. The fact Shanalorre was looking straight at him was another clue.

Well, Lori had to make her own preparations.

––––––––––––––––––

Lori barely managed to finish laying down the marked stone she was working on, expanding the binding anchored onto it into a sphere four paces wide just as she had done with the rest, when a high-pitched, piercing whistle filled the air. She glanced up as she took another one of the marked river stones from the bag over her shoulder. Thankfully the bag had gotten lighter as she had laid out the bag's contents.

"Great Binder, that means the abomination approaching," Riz said, holding a bow and three of the imbued arrows in one hand, said. The three other women with them were similarly armed.

"So I surmise, Erzebed," Lori said, letting the stone fall back into the bag as she began to stride towards the source of the sound. Only a quarter of them remained, the rest distributed along the game trail and a few open spaces that Lori thought it the abomination might step out of the trail… or step into it. "Can you see it?" She didn't want to look behind her and accidentally fall into one of the trenches and holes. In front of her, she could see other people reacting to the whistle. Pikes were being handed out, and the people wielding them were forming groups of at least three. Others were jumping down into trenches or climbing up trees, carrying ropes, bows and arrows, jars and…burning sticks? No, those were burning cords wrapped around short sticks.

"No Great Binder, but that doesn't mean we should wait until it is," Riz said. "Please Great Binder, we need to hurry."

Hurry? The only reason Lori wasn't running was because all the digging had left loose dirt everywhere and she was afraid of tripping!

Fortunately, the abomination had not yet appeared by the time they reached the banks of the river, where the various boats were and Shanalorre had finally stopped blowing on the whistle that someone had provided for her to signal with. Riz and the women with her immediately grabbed pikes that had been left behind and moved to place themselves between Lori and the woods. Rian took the bow and arrows from Riz and stepping to the side, possibly to get a better view of the abomination in case he needed to draw and loose. He shouldn't, because until Lori actually activated the binding anchored to the arrow it would do nothing, but he was clearly preparing himself. The three other militia who had stayed behind to guard Shanalorre spread out as well, also carrying bows, although their arrows had no bindings anchored to them.

The lines of lightwisps connecting the stones to Lori were strained to their utmost, but fortunately none seemed to have overextended themselves and snapped from distance. She gathered more lightwisps out of the air through her skin and added them to the lines anchored to her fingernail to give the binding some more slack as she finally turned around, looking among the trees for the abomination. Everyone seemed to be doing the same, trying to spot the approaching danger, pikes in hand and ready to lower to try to discourage the abomination from approaching.

"Shanalorre, where is the abomination?" Lori asked she took the rest of the arrows with binding anchored to them from the quiver hanging from her waist. As quickly as she could, she started claiming and binding more lightwisps, using them to make lines that connected the arrows to her fingernail.

Shanalorre pointed. "There," she said, her finger pointing steadily into the woods.

Lori tried to follow the indicated direction with her gaze, but she saw nothing beast or abomination-like. Rian actually bent down and put his head next to Shanalorre's hand so he could sight along the length of her finger, with had remained still and true. She narrowed her eyes, trying to see better, even if doing so didn't really help. While her vision had always been good—she'd gone to see an ocular Deadspeaker every year to keep her vision perfect, at least until she'd left Taniar Demesne—the irregular shapes of the trees, the distance, and the gloom caused by the dragon's tendrils blocking out the sky made it hard to see into the woods.

Claiming and binding more lightwisps, Lori formed them into complementary bindings to act as a spyglass as well as slightly intensify the light passing through them to mitigate the gloom, and anchored the bindings to her thumbnail and forefingernail. A quick adjustment to bring the image seen through the bindings in focus, and she was able to use it to start scanning the woods—

There!

With the binding, what had been dark, distant and obscured brightened, and she was finally able to see the typhon abomination. It was still a great distance away, but she could see it now, standing between distant trees.

Lori had seen the typhon beast before, though it had usually only been briefly as she passed it when travelling along the river. The beast had never lingered, always turning away soon after she'd spotted it as if aware she desired its quick death. She had gotten the sense of a thick body, a head that appeared almost grotesquely oversized in comparison to the rest of its body—at least compared to the leapers and chokers—and the rows of large, knife-like spines running down its back.

That had changed.

Within the boundaries of the demesne, the colors of the now-abomination's plumage were revealed to be shades of dark brown. Despite its size, most of its body would have blended with the gloom beneath the trees if it weren't for the binding that intensified light for Lori. She needed a second look to realize that the abomination had patches of bark instead of feathers in seemingly random places, as the colors of the two seemed to blend together in her eyes, and at a distance the different textures would likely have been indistinguishable.

Some features, Lori had expected. The abomination seemed to have a branch fused to the end of its tail, a few stubborn but dead leaves still hanging on as the many smaller branches made the appendage look like a broom. There were other, smaller branches apparently fused to its spines, as if the tree limbs had fallen on the abomination's back and had sunk into the flesh and bone. A branch had fused to the side of the left side of the abomination's head, running mostly parallel to its jaw, now covered in blood.

Lori also saw that the abomination was heavily injured. One of its forelimbs was hanging down instead of curled up close to its body, and she could see that everything from the elbow of that extremity downwards seemed be flopping bonelessly. One eye was also a bloody golden ruin, and the abomination kept turning its head to let its single eye cast its gaze forward. On a second glance, patches of the abomination's feathers were matted down and sticky with golden, syrupy blood. It was also moving slowly, and… was that a limp? Didn't the scouts say it had been relatively uninjured?

Perhaps this could be to their advantage? If it were injured, it should be easier to kill.

"Rian, can you make the target at this distance?" Lori said.

"I can barely see the target, so no," her lord said, looking at the other bowmen as Lori finished making lines of lightwisps to anchor the various arrows to her fingernails. "How about you three?"

"Still too far, Lord Rian, especially with the draw on these bows," one said. "If this was a clear field or the day was brighter, perhaps, but…"

Lori tuned out the rest, watching the abomination. She held up her left hand, the lines of lightwisps anchored to her nails stretching towards rocks she had laid out even if she couldn't see them, and selected the line connecting her to the binding nearest the abomination. She couldn't see the rock anymore, but remembered where it was. If the beast would just step over it…

As she watched, the abomination took a slow step forward.