Demesne 332 - Seeling Is Not Shirking My Responsibilities! (Patreon)

So, after 332 chapters here, I'm here to correct a grave disservice on my part. I would like to acknowledge and thank Obloquy, who has been my pre-reader and beta for the whole length of time that I've been writing this story. It's... like, VERY late, but I figure better late than never. He's been with my since day one of this story, reading every chapter and occasionally bouncing ideas with me, and it's high time he's given the public acknowledgement on my part that he deserves. He's been very supportive and encouraging, and without him the boring parts might have been longer and more boring. So thanks, dood! you've been the best!

And now, on with the show!

“I’ll build the trap. Find me a place we can lure the beast so that I can anchor the bindings in place,” Lori declared after breakfast the next day.

"Uh, are you all right, Great Binder?" Riz said, making a vaguely concerned face.

The non-sequitur made Lori frown. "Of course I am. Why do you ask?"

"You seem to be breathing heavily. And you're clenching your hand so hard it's shaking."

She looked down at her hand. Ah. So she was. Why was that happening? Lori made her hand relax, entwining her fingers together. Much better. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "As I was saying, I will build the trap. Find me a place we can lure the beast so that I can anchor the bindings in place."

"What sort of location do you need, Great Binder?"

Lori considered the question. Given how she aimed to construct her trap…"Someplace close to the river would be best, relatively flat, and preferably twice the beast's length in diameter so its whole body can be caught. I'll be bringing rocks to anchor the trap to in any case." She'd debated how she would trigger the trap, whether she should be close enough to activate it or use a wire, but had ultimately decided neither was necessary. "I need to be within sight of the area of the trap to be able to activate it, but far enough that the beast can't reach me. The most reliable way it can't reach me is if I were in the middle of the river."

Whatsisname—Lori checked her rock—Kolinh slowly nodded. "I'll inform the hunters to look out for a suitable spot. We'll need to scout the area so we know where the beast likes to drink, and when. It will make it easier to set up the trap."

"How long will that take?"

"Ideally, it will be a few days, but… I will ask the hunters."

"Don't send them to scout until you get back to me on the matter," Lori said. "In the meantime, send out a party to go seeling in River's Fork and ONLY seeling." Lori hesitated, then sighed. "Shanalorre, can you please inquire with Karina if she will be amenable to joining them. Emphasize it's purely voluntary."

"As it happens, I have a petition from Karina asking if she may be allowed to visit River's Fork to go seeling there," Shanalorre said blandly. "I was going to raise the matter once we finished this discussion, but as it has become relevant…"

Lori managed not to wince even as she nodded. Her sole taxpayer was very… enthusiastic when it came to seeling and seel meat. Having to ask the young girl to use her talents and enthusiasm to keep River's Fork from starving—again—would have felt far too much like asking her to work, a guilt that was only slightly mitigated by the fact that the girl was apparently volunteering. It felt still felt too much like taking the girl's time to rest and relax for Lori's own benefit. "Why is she asking to do that?"

"She heard that River's Fork has having problems with food again, and approached me for more details. After I explained, she put forward her petition. Well, she had the idea for it, and I suggested I put it forward as a petition on her behalf, in keeping with established practices."

The brat had petitioned for it, Lori reminded herself. The brat had petitioned for it… "Very well. Inform her that she may go to River's Fork to go seeling there. She'll be traveling with the party we are sending."

"Uh, Great Binder, shouldn't we inform Karina's parents first?" Riz said. "So they don't get worried about her not being in the demesne? They probably haven't given their permission for her to go."

Lor's back straightened. "Why? It's Karina's petition, and if she wants to travel to another demesne, she has every right to."

Riz stared back for a moment, then sighed. "Um, please just let me inform them first, Great Binder? I'm sure Karina would want to tell her she's going anyway."

"I don't see why it should matter."

"I believe it's what Lord Rian would classify as a 'dealing with people' matter, Great Binder," Shanalorre interjected.

"Yes!" Riz exclaimed. "Yes, that's exactly it! Let me deal with this, Great Binder. I'll just speak to them the way Rian would, and then there won't be any problems with Karina going seeling."

Lori gave her a flat look, but rolled her eyes and waved a hand dismissively. "Fine, fine, take care of it. Shanalorre, I'll leave informing Karina to you."

"Yes, Great Binder."

"Kolinh, I need a wild choker."

"A… wild choker, Great Binder?"

"Yes. I need something to test the binding I'll be using for the trap."

"I presume you don't mean the ones we've been raising, Great Binder?"

Huh. She'd forgotten about those. "Wait, did those survive the dragon?"

"Yes, Great Binder. Lord Rian had them and the sweetbugs moved to the third level, where they were penned in their own tunnel."

Lori considered that, then sighed. She'd have to remember to making dedicated storage spaces for their domesticated chokers and sweetbugs. "Then yes, I don't mean them. Mildly injured chokers are fine. I just need them alive enough to kill."

"I… will see what I can do, Great Binder. "

Lori nodded. "Very well. Are there any other matters?"

Riz and Kolinh looked at each other.

"Given the current lack of ready meat due to the hunters being temporarily reassigned, should we suspend or increase the processing of smoked and cure meat, Great Binder?" Shanalorre asked. "I would recommend the latter if we will need to provide meat to River's Fork for the near-future. They weigh less and pack more heavily compared to frozen meat, as well as require less involvement on your part to bring to River's Fork, since they won't need to be kept cold."

Lori considered that. "I thought the curing shed was already operating at capacity?"

"I have spoken with—" Shanalorre paused a moment, then shook her head, "—the individual operating the facility. He says that he might be able to fit in a little more meat into the smoking racks."

Eventually, Lori shook her head. "Have him continue production at the current rate so far, but start getting what smoked and cured meat we currently have ready for transfer to River's Fork."

Shanalorre nodded. "Noted, Great Binder."

"With the Great Binder's permission, we can put a temporary halt to logging and sawing activities and have people divert to seeling," Kolinh said. "That should mitigate most of the impact of reassigning our hunters to look for this beast, and the number of people we throw at it should make up for young Karina being in River's Fork."

Lori considered that. "No," she said. "No, I'll handle seeling today. You'll need time and people to get me my chokers, after all. And it's been a while since I've been seeling. I could use the relaxation."

––––––––––––––––––

Lori knew how to seel. She’d once spent an unproductive day learning to do so, cutting her own seeling rod, sharpening it, learning how to stand in wait, how to account for the water bending the light that passed through it when aiming for her prey…

She wasn’t any good at it, but she knew how.

That didn’t mean she didn’t know how to catch seels. She just did it her way.

After all, what was the point of being a Dungeon Binder if you couldn’t indulge yourself every so often?

The sun was merely pleasantly warm instead of agonizingly hot as it shone down at an angle, not yet mid-morning. The spot that the children usually went to catch seels was as loud and full of prey as usual, but already the children were sweating, and a few had set aside their seeling rods and shorts and had dipped into the river to cool themselves. Given how much they were exposing their backs and arms, Shanalorre would probably have more supplicants asking to be healed of sunburns again.

While the children were far more experienced at catching seels than they were a year ago, the sinuous fursh had also seemed to have gotten better at avoiding them. They could have caught some of the younger seels easily enough, but many seemed to be avoiding that now. Lori wasn’t sure if it was because they’d realized targeting the juveniles would eventually reduce the seel’s numbers or if it stemmed from competitiveness in getting bigger and bigger seels.

Off to the side, a young man hiding in the shade of a tree was looking bored as he watched over the children, and Lori vaguely recalled something about how the children weren’t allowed to clean the seels on their own because that work involved knives…

Lori ignored the children looking at her, though she glanced at the ones soaking in the river. Some were propelling themselves with their arms, slowly swimming through the water. One was splashing loudly, seemingly trying to move his arms as quickly as possible. He moved through the water quicker than the others, but it was only by a small margin.

She found a place to stand where she could look out over the seels. Most were in the water, although some were resting their upper bodies on rocks that broke the surface of the river. It seemed an awkward way to keep their heads above water, though Lori saw that some seemed to be watching the shore. She supposed it was how they kept an eye out for beasts? It made sense. They had to rest at some point, and there were only so many rocks in the middle of the river.

Narrowing her eyes slightly, she focused on her awareness of the wisps in her demesne. The earthwisps mixed with waterwisps, darkwisps and minute amounts of airwisps that permeated the ground, defining the half-sphere that was the lower part of her demesne. The airwisps mixed with lightwisps, firewisps, small amounts of darkwisps and minute amounts of waterwisps and earthwisps that made up the above-ground sphere of her demesne. The long, flowing length of waterwisps that was the river, and the voids of wisps that were scattered through her sphere of awareness, voids she couldn’t perceive because they were in the body of a living being.

Those were what she focused on now, the voids in the river that were long and undulating and sinuous… surrounded by waterwisps.

And differing amounts of all the rest as well, but that wasn’t important at the moment.

She focused on one in particular, a long and bulky adult seel specimen swimming in a relatively open section of river. Relatively, because there were seels within a pace of it, but above the water, it looked like it was alone, swimming just enough to not be taken downriver by the current and keeping its head up.

Lori reached through her connection to her core and claimed the waterwisps around the seel. The way it moved though the watr would normally have made it hard to keep it surrounded by the wisps she claimed… so she just claimed all the waterwisps in all directions for five paces.

Then she formed all the waterwisps into a binding to increase the viscosity of the water, trapping the seel within her binding… along with parts of several seels that also intersected the water that she had claimed. The binding made the water thick and almost solid, and was the same one Lori used with the water she gathered from the bottoms of boats so she could throw it over the side. Some of the trapped seels were able to wiggle out of the viscous water, but the target she had aimed for and a couple of others that had been trapped headfirst in her binding, and their forelimbs, body shape and the viscosity were preventing them from extracting themselves. She claimed the waterwisps around them as well, adding them to the binding that made the water viscous.

She let out a sigh at how easy it was to claim more waterwisps in the river, and using them to impart force on the viscous glob of water and trapped seels to push it towards the riverbank, careful to avoid the children in the water. This… she’d missed this. No needing to reach out though metal contacts, not slowly having to claim outwards from a point because she was limited in what she could do. This… this was the power of having a core! No, more than power! This was the convenience!

With a surge of force redirected from the river’s current, the large, viscous glob of water was pushed up to a stretch of unoccupied rocky riverbank, oozing like a large blob of slime. Huh. The blob was bigger than the she thought at more than seven paces wide, although that was from getting squashed down by its own weight. The children present immediately noticed, and proved themselves to not be idiots as they immediately darted back out of its way or, even better, realized it wasn’t going to go anywhere near them and stayed put, but looked on curiously.

Lori anchored the waterwisps at the bottom to the rock as she reshaped the waterwisps, using the momentum of the push to keep it rolling. Some of the children pointed at the seels that had been caught in her viscous blob, which were rolling around inside. Lori carefully moved the three trapped seals apart—two of them were adult specimens, while one was slightly smaller, possibly a young adult—before she altered the binding of waterwisps she had trapping them to cause the water to solidify into ice, carefully deleting the firewisps this state change expelled out into the air. It was already hot, she didn’t need to make it any hotter.

Shoving the three seels trapped in ice between some convenient trees so they wouldn’t slide or move around, the binding keeping the water solid and not exchanging heat with the environment, Lori turned back to the river to capture more seels.

Hopefully the brat would show up as some point. She wasn’t sure where the seels were supposed to go next after they got caught.