Weekly Digest 9 (#27 - #29)

Lori's Boat

With the probationaries telling them that there was, in fact, no rapids between her demesne and their previous, now unclaimed one, as well as the assertion there were wounded left behind, Lori was… all right, still worried this was a trap. But the possibility of an unclaimed demesne was worth the risk… but someone would know that, that's why they thought it was a trap, and the supposedly unclaimed demesne was the bait… but if it wasn't a trap…

For the first time in her life, Lori was starting to understand why even a reasonably intelligent person might fall for a scam.

But the story of how there was (supposedly) wounded left behind had spread, and while Lori was, of course, completely immune to social pressure, Rian had no such resistance.

"We're going to have to go after them today," he said over breakfast. "I know it's not ideal but if there really are injured and we're just being paranoid–"

"Ugh, fine," Lori said, feeling very put upon. "If you want to rescue these supposedly injured people, then you can. But I'm going with you. If there is an unclaimed demesne, I'm taking it."

"Wouldn't it be safer for you to stay here and wait for me to come back with confirmation?" Rian said.

"I'm sure I can handle anything they throw at me," Lori said.

"Even another wizard? Or another Binder?"

"I'm a Whisperer," Lori repeated haughtily. "I can handle anything they throw at me."

"You haven't been outside the demesne since you set it up," Rian pointed out. "Can you even adjust to not having whatever boost it's giving you?"

All right, Lori was getting tired of this discussion. "We're going, that's final."

Rian rolled his eyes, then chuckled. "I should have realized."

"Realized what?"

"That you were recklessly ambitious too," he said, an outrageously baseless accusation, "Or else why would come to this continent instead of staying back home taking advantage of the opportunities available only to an educated wizard?"

"You sound like my parents," Lori said, rolling her eyes. "Besides, you're here too."

"Yes, but I had absolutely no prospects or any marketable skills," Rian said. "What's your excuse?"

"I wanted a demesne," Lori said simply.

"You could have set up next to Covehold," Rian pointed out.

Lori snorted. "Oh, please. Those colorbrained idiots are too close. They'll be killing each other to claim each other's demesnes within a year."

"As opposed to you, who waited for someone to die of natural causes."

"Exactly," Lori nodded. "Why fight when you can scavenge?"

"How does that fit into 'handle anything they throw at you'?" Rian said.

"Finish eating, we need to get start this morning," Lori said. "Have you picked out who'd be coming with us?"

"Three of the boys will be coming along," Rian said.

"Any particular reason for choosing them?" Lori asked, uncertain if he meant actual boys or just other males close to his age.

"They were chosen on the strength of their demesne apparently having encouraged quarterstaff fighting as a pastime for bored young people," Rian said. "Or perhaps better to say an inability to discourage it." He paused. "And it's just occurred to me that you don't actually have a law against people hurting each other, only killing each other."

"I believe everyone should have the right to punch idiots in the face for being idiots," Lori said.

"And the reason you're not worried this means people willing to punch you in the face…?"

"I'm not an idiot. But they are for trying to punch me. So they get to be punched in the face."

"Ah. Sounds about right."

"We will be using the barge, once I make some modifications."

Rian raised a single eyebrow, which made Lori blink in surprise. "What sort of modifications?"

"We want to be fast, don't we?" Lori said.

––––––––––––––––––

The small barge the probationaries had brought with them to carry supplies and luggage had obviously been made by a Deadspeaker. It was all one piece, with no seams or joins, and was clearly made from three different types of wood.

Lori really wanted to be able to do that. It would be SO convenient! She'd finally have furniture not made from rock!

It was, however, still a barge. Wide, flat-bottomed, and more built for space than speed. It handled like a log, and while it definitely displaced enough water that someone standing at one of its corners wouldn't cause it to capsize, it was still a barge.

She could work with that.

Only Deadspeakers could work with wood, whether living or dead. Living, to accelerate and control growth, induce flowering and fruiting, or reshape and alter even the bloodtraits– not that trees had blood, but they apparently had bloodtraits. Dead, to be reshaped and molded as she would stone or ice.

Given she had to make some modifications to the barge to make it more suitable for her use, this was a problem. But only a minor one.

The modifications were minor and intended to make it easier to make the thing move straight. Barges were usually towed or pushed, usually by another boat or from land by people with ropes. While they could be self-propelled, this one wasn't. It had been pulled from the shore and maneuvered with poles.

Lori didn't want to do the same.

She had to be quick, since they had to leave by lunch at the latest.

Most of the beast skulls had been turned into shovels. Some of the bones had been cracked for marrow and broth. Other has been made into tools like knives, needles for sewing the seel skins, hooks, all sorts of needful things that they didn't have metal for or didn't want to use metal for. But beasts had a lot of bones, and so did the seels, and so had that large undead islandshell, once it had FINALLY stopped moving and she'd desiccated the fleshy parts before they could rot. And bones had earthwisps.

She made her away around the cliff, in the direction away from the river, towards where they stored bones. It was mostly a recess in the ground next to the stone face not deep enough to be called a pit, where bones were left to dry. People were mostly free to take what they needed, though Lori had prior claim on all beast teeth and claws.

Absently pulling some of the rocks from the cliff face to make a work surface for her to lay things on, Lori quickly got as many big bones as she could. She swiftly identified which side had bones that were dry and not disgusting, going for the ones broken open for marrow. These she methodically piled on her stone surface.

She had a nice pile by the time Rian found her.

"As you keep telling me, you don't know how to Deadspeak, so this big pile of dead things is mildly worrying," Rian said. "Not as much as your corpse cache, but getting there. I thought we were leaving?"

"Not without propulsion," she said as she stepped back from the pile and grimaced at her hands. She condensed water out of the air to give them a quick wash. "I'm not rowing." She claimed the earthwisps in the bone and began to reshape.

"Wait, are you… magicing bone? That's… new? I thought Whispering couldn't manipulate bodies, living or dead."

"Whispering can't manipulate living body functions and structures," Lori said. "Otherwise you would have things like taking the lightningwisps from someone's brain and killing them. This, however, is dead bone. Bone is used to align with earthwisps when Whispering."

"So… it counts as a kind of rock?" Rian said. "Oh, right, you were able to reshape teeth, weren't you? And teeth are like bone… But why bone?"

"It's lighter than stone and can be as strong as metal," Lori said.

Rian tilted his head. "Are those… panels?"

There were four, thick as a finger, wide as her forearm and twice her arm's length, meant to be attached to the sides of the barge to stabilize it and keep it going straight. "Yes. Take those to the barge, and be careful with them. Don't drop them," she warned.

"Yes, Great Binder!" Rian said in an overblown attempt at the probationaries accents, but did as he was told, taking the panels one at a time as Lori continued working on the last piece.

It was long and vaguely shaped like a vase, a much larger version of something she'd once made to demonstrate principles of propulsion. It was uneven, since she didn't have any tools but her hand to shape it, but it didn't have to be perfectly shaped. Holes in the front to draw in water, lengths of fused bone to mount it to the barge, enough thickness to make it less likely to break…

She carried back herself, not trusting Rian to hold it right.

––––––––––––––––––

"Is that some kind of… egg?" Rian said, staring at the object Lori was carrying. With him were Grem and three of the young men, looking in their late teens, maybe twenty at best, all carrying beast-tooth spears. Rian and Grem were wearing swords in addition to spears, the latter wearing it much more comfortably that the former.

"It's a means of propulsion so we don't have to row or be pulled along," Lori said, walking up to where the barge had been beached. It had been emptied of contents and looked much bigger out of the water, coming up to Lori's waist. In addition to small packs of personal supplies like blankets and maybe a change of clothes, there were jars filled with stewed meat submerged in broth to serve as rations, boxes of dried meat, dried firewood, rope (from among the probationaries' supplies), long poles for pushing the barge along, oars for when it was too deep to do that, skins of water, a couple of sealed sacks, and folding buckets made from seel skin and wooden ladles for washing away Iridescence. Her staff was already there where she'd left it, and she put her hat in as well. "With luck, we'll be able to get up to enough speed that we'll arrive where the wounded are and claim the demesne by nightfall."

"Will it work outside the demesne?" Rian asked, gesturing at what she'd made.

"Are you questioning my capabilities?" Lori glared.

"Yes," Rian said bluntly.

Why did he have to be so annoyingly honest?

"It will work outside the demesne," Lori huffed.

"Well… if you say so…" Rian said. "How does it work?"

Lori gave him a frustrated look, then sighed. "Well, I suppose I'd better test it, just to be sure. Help me get this in the water."

By which she of course meant Rian was to put it in the water. Carefully, he set the long, vase-shaped construct of bone in the water. As he steadied it from behind by holding on to the two long projecting struts of bone, she bound waterwisps at the inlet holes.

Water and vapor erupted from the open end of the construct as the waterwisps bound to the inlets pulled water in. The bone constructed leaped forward, pulling a surprised Rian forward to fall face-first into the water as the bone bulb scraped along the muddy ground and seemingly darting up the slope to dry land before it ran out of water to propel it.

Lori hurried forward, checking the bone construct, and sighed in relief as she found it hadn't been damaged, though little clumps of water still clung to the inlet holes, their binding holding them in place and waiting for more water to propel down the tubes. "It's fine," she declared.

Rian was slowly pushing himself out of the water. "Oh good," he said blandly, completely soaked. "I wouldn't want anything to happen to it. You could have warned me, you know."

"You wouldn't have understood," she said.

"It's a water jet. It sucks water in from one end and shoots it out the other, propelling the whole thing forward as long as it's submerged," Rian said, voice still bland. "What's hard to understand about that? It's basically shaking a beer bottle and then knocking off the cork to send it spinning, except it never runs out of beer. Please warn me next time, I might have stood in front of it, and then you'd be down a lord."

Grem looked aghast. "Who does that to beer?"

"People too bored to drink it," Rian said.

Lori sighed and pulled some beast teeth from one of her belt pouches. "Will you stop talking about weird beer games and help me put this thing on?"

"I'm fine, by the way. Completely unhurt, nothing broken, just a little wet."

"How nice. Do you want to go and claim the demesne or do you want to talk about how wet you are?"

Sighing and muttering something about holding out for more rights, Rian got up and helped her install the water jet to the barge using the beast teeth to grip the wood and clamp the jet in place by the bone struts. The panels were similarly installed at the corners with their own teeth-studded bone clamps, to serve as fins to keep the barge going straight. Thankfully whoever had built the barge had included a rudder, if only as an aid to being pushed around by poles or pulled by ropes.

They were about to push the barge into the water when Rian suddenly said, "Wait! Does this boat have a name?"

Lori, Grem, and the three young men, as well as the inevitable onlookers milling about stared at him.

"What?" he said. "Where I come from, it's bad luck to travel on a boat with no name. I'm almost sure that's a thing. We need to give it a name."

Lori stared at him. "Surely you can't be serious?"

"I am serious. And my name is Rian."

One of the young men chuckled, quickly stifled.

Lori rolled her eyes, and turned reluctantly to Grem. "Does it have a name?"

He shrugged. "We just called it the barge."

"Bad luck," Rian repeated. For some reason, people started nodding as if agreeing with him.

"Ugh…" Lori groaned. "Fine! I hereby name this 'Lori's Boat'. Now can we get it into the water now?"

"Are you just going to name everything after yourself?" Rian said. "You're not going to name this 'Lori's River', are you?"

Lori looked thoughtful.

"Push the boat in before she actually does it!" Rian cried, and suddenly people were pushing and Lori had to scramble along so she'd be in position to get herself on Lori's Boat before it got too deep. She was first on board, wincing as she heard her things ground. Eventually though, it was in the water, and the men were scrambling to pull themselves in, with Rian going last as he was completely soaked. He immediately had them grabbing poles to push them deeper as people on shore called and waved.

Lori found a nice place to sit and began imbuing her water jet.

––––––––––––––––––

Beyond the Demesne Again

There was much screaming, holding on to the sides of the barge and lying down next to the pile of supplies crying about how they were going too fast.

"You're all being overdramatic," Rian sighed.

That was rich coming from him, but Lori couldn't help but agree in this instance

"Seriously guys, relax," he said, trying to coax the other four men on the barge into something like a dignified position as Lori handled the rudder. "You're missing out on a great view."

Her fins had worked, sort of. The barge had gone straight. Unfortunately, it had then made turning difficult, as the barge kept wanting to go straight, and the rudder hadn't really worked to turn the barge against the force being exerted by the water jet. They'd stopped for a bit to reluctantly take the forward fins off, which had given them just enough leeway that the rudder would actually make them turn. They had also moved the water jet to one side, making the barge slightly unstable and requiring careful adjustments of the rudder, but this at least made the stupid thing turn.

Now that they had a viable configuration, all Lori had to do was imbue and imbue and imbue the waterwisps pulling water into the jet's intake holes. The barge moved so fast the front was actually starting to rise of the water, and they left a frothing white wake behind them as Lori kept imbuing. An active binding such as this consumed more energy than a relatively passive binding like reinforcing stone, but while Lori was still in her Demesne, she could imbue the waterwisps with an overabundance of magic and–

"I think we're getting to the edge," Rian suddenly said.

That brought Lori up short. With a start, she realized he was right. They were getting closer and closer to the edge of her awareness of the demesne's wisps.

In fact, she could see it. Before her were the dark browns and vibrant greens of the demesne's plant life. But beyond that, after a certain, knife-sharp point…

Colors.

Literally.

Along the river bank was a discernible corridor of noticeably shorter Iridescence growth, the path that Grem and the other probationaries had broken through to reach Lori's Demesne. Only the river and the parts of the river banks where water lapped with some regularity was free of it. Everything beyond the demesne was coated in the nauseatingly familiar, manifold colors of the Iridescence. It hadn't rained in some days, and the taint was thick. Delicate-seeming crystal growths like very fine salt grew on everything that didn't move.

Leaves and branches dipped towards the ground, weighed down by glittering lattices of Iridescence that could extend more than a finger's length from the branch. As she watched, a leaf fell, too withered and browned under the layer of crystal covering it to continue supporting its weight, and a huge chunk of crystal fell off, the delicate structures readily turning to dust as they struck other leaves and branches on the way down, some of which falling as well, before slamming into the ground in an explosion of multi-colored powder, crushing crystal lattices on the ground and sending up clouds of prismatic dust. A moment later the wind rose, huge clouds of glittering rainbow colors wafting into the air as leaves and branches shook and Iridescence broke as a result. Lori instinctively covered her mouth and nose and averted her eyes, even as the dust ceased to be as the cloud crossed the border of the demesne.

The skies above the Iridescence was alive with the buzzing of bugs and the high, whistle-like calls of beasts. Every movement caused small puffs of still-delicate iridescence growth to powder as bugs landed on trees to rest their wings, consume leaves and fruits, and swarm unfortunate members of other species, breaking through their shells to consume what lay within. There were flickers of movement in the trees as beasts rested in the day's heat, grooming their feathers to straighten them or sharpened their claws on trees, casually tearing through Iridescence and bark. They were covered in a glittering layer of crystal growth kept short due to their activity, but the iridiation no doubt went deep into their bodies. When they stood still, they seemed to be part of the landscape, the coating of Iridescence on their bodies perfectly blending with all around them.

Only the seels looked the same, swimming in the water and sunning themselves on where they could easily slither back into the river, where the beasts were unlikely to pursue them.

Lori realized she had stopped the barge, and they were all just staring out into the death beyond the border.

"Lori…" Rian eventually said. "Do you need some time for… whatever magic thing you need to do to the water jet so it won't run out of power? So it'll still keep going fast for a long time when we exit the demesne?"

Lori glanced towards the little bit of wire jutting out from one of the struts of bone, taken from her precious reserves. "I… think that would help, yes. I didn't realize we'd reach the edge so fast. I thought I'd have more time to imbue."

Rian nodded. "Why don't we all take a break. Give Binder Lori time to make some magic, and we can all have an early lunch because I doubt we'd want to eat while the barge was moving. To be honest, I did not miss walking through the rainbow glitter of death where more death might be hiding everywhere. I'm totally fine with putting it off for a little while. Those wounded will keep."

Lori blinked as everyone else quickly agreed. The anchor was thrown overboard, a hook molded from a treebranch around a rock to give it weight. More Deadspeaking from the previous dead Binder of her probationaries. As they did, Lori did as suggested, settling down to imbue the waterwisps in the jet. There was, theoretically, no upper limit to how much a binding of wisps could be imbued, only how long someone would be willing to breathe in magic and imbue it into the binding..

Rian opened one of the jars of rations, pouring the broth and stew into bowls, and letting Lori have first pick. Loti took one of the bowls at random, and everyone started to eat. They listened to the sounds coming from beyond the border, of wings, of cries, of occasional death screams as a lucky beast caught a seel, dragging it to land and tearing it apart with teeth and toe claws…

For some reason, the three young men were turned off from their food. Really, they should know better and just eat what was in front of them.

She sat and willed power to the binding, eating her lunch slowly. Lori sat at the back, next to the bone mount of her water jet, and everyone else spread around the boat so they wouldn't tip over to one side. The food was cold, and but it had enough firewisps left that she was able to reheat hers before she went back to imbuing the water.

It all felt very familiar. She'd gotten a lot of experience imbuing water while she'd waited for the site of her Dungeon to get built. Lori was tempted to start running her hand through the water to get in the familiar rhythm, then remembered just in time that seels liked to bite at fingers. She hadn't been willing to lose a finger for her dungeon, she wasn't losing one to a seel.

"I don't suppose you left any fields of grain crops in your old demesne we could bring back with us?" Rian asked Grem. "Because honestly, I'm getting a bit sick of meat. I've been fantasizing about bread with salt for the last few days…"

"Mashed tubers," one of the young men said despondently. "Steamed until soft, with butter and cream…"

"Fruit jam…" another said. "Sweet fruit jam…"

"Nice, fat, juicy larva meat…" the third sighed.

Everyone gave him a disgusted look.

"Look, it's a traditional food in my demesne, all right?! At least try it before judging!"

"Whatever, slugeater."

"Look, larva are not slugs, they're the immature form of bugs! Lord Rian, tell him!"

"Please leave me out of this," Rian said. He looked at Grem hopefully.

"Of course we have grains and tubers!" he said. "Why wouldn't we? They're good, tasty food that grows easily anywhere! Don't worry, we brought it with us. A little planting and in a few months, as the blue moon turns, we shall have bread, beer and tubers. No larva though, that's disgusting."

Lori closed her eyes. If she pretended, it was almost like she was having lunch back in the dining hall…

––––––––––––––––––

Leaving her demesne felt strangely like leaving her own body. Lori gasped as they crossed the border between her demesne and the Iridescence at high speed, the water jet propelling their barge faster than a man could pull on a rope or row with oars. It… it felt like she was leaving a large part of herself behind, venturing forth in a small, lonely island of infinitesimal size.

"Are you all right?" Rian asked her, soaking wet again and handling the rudder at her request in case... well, exactly this. The men had all elected to jump into the water one at a time to get themselves completely soaked, as if getting prematurely wet would prevent them from getting iridiated for just a bit longer. They'd doused the supplies and the inside of the barge too, forcing Lori to bind the water sloshing at the bottom and turn it into vapor. Idiots.

"Yes, just… I wasn't expecting that," Lori said.

"Do you want us to stop?" Rian asked, concerned.

Some part of Lori gibbered, wanting to go back to the safety and security of her demesne.

"Keep going," she said through gritted teeth.

There was a demesne out there, she reminded herself. An unclaimed demesne, just waiting for her to get her hands on it…

Unless Grem was lying. Unless this was bait for a trap. Unless…

Lori closed her eyes and reminded herself she couldn't actually feelIridescence growing on her.

"Can I ask you a technical question?" Rian said as they navigated the thankfully gentle curves of the river.

Lori glanced at him, even as she put one of her hands on the bone strut with the wire she'd laid in. She didn't need it yet, as the waterwisps of the jet were still heavily imbued– she thought they might actually be able to travel through the night– but she felt compelled to check that she could use it if she needed to. It had been weeks since she'd had to use a wire to imbue. "That depends on how technical, but go on," she said.

"You made the Dungeon by… well, doing some sort of magical thing that you never really specified," Rian said. "Can't you just do the same thing again by stepping out of the demesne and moving a little way off? Why do you need to claim this demesne instead of making another one?"

Lori frowned. Rian… Rian didn't sound like he was asking a question. He sounded like one of her teachers, the kind that pointed out something you did wrong and asked you what it was, expecting you to not so much answer him as confirm what he already knew.

"Because I can't," Lori said.

Rian nodded that annoying 'I guessed that' nod. "Some mysterious and technical magical reason?"

"Probably," Lori shrugged. "But whatever that reason is, we don't know it. Just that no one who has ever been able found a demesne has founded more than one. Attempts to do so… fail. Not catastrophically, but they fail. Consistently. It's not mentioned in any biography, since most foundings happen far enough in the past that warfare and time has likely destroyed those records. The same holds for anyone who's currently a Binder of a demesne. If you've claimed a demesne, you become incapable of founding a new one. It's why some demesne had a practice of having a succeeding Binder claiming an area outside of the demesne they're meant to succeed, to allow them to take advantage of their one opportunity to enlarge the demesne. Nowadays in the old continent demesne are too close to do that without violating treaties about unclaimed zones, so it's only just a ritual."

"That… sounds like a really arbitrary declaration," Rian said. "Don't people do tests on this?"

"I speak from experience when I say the Dungeon Binder has too many colorful things to do to waste time on it, and anyone trying it out for themselves requires them to make a demesne twice," Lori said. "Given doing it even once near any of the demesne across the ocean is regarded as anything from treason to a declaration of war, it's not the sort of thing they let you test."

"You can test it out here," Rian pointed out.

"And finally, if you could do it, I don't think Covehold or any of the demesne around it would still be perfect circles," Lori countered. "Because someone would have tried it then started doing it repeatedly for some kind of advantage, and then there'd have been one large, strangely-shaped demesne where Covehold is and a lot of bodies for Deadspeakers."

"I… suppose you have a point there," Rian said.

"But…"

Rian and Lori looked towards the other four people on the barge, and most especially, at the one with the temerity to join their conversation. Well, Lori supposed they had been speaking loudly enough and from far enough apart to not really be having a 'private' conversation.

"Yes?" Lori reluctantly prompted. The boy– young man, whatever– had a boringly generic face and dull, forgettable blue hair, and only the fact he was talking made him stand out from the other two.

"But that's not how it goes in the story of–" was as far as he got.

"STOP!" Rian called out, frantically shaking his head for emphasis. "Trust me Landoor, you do not want to finish that sentence! Don't do it, I'm begging you!"

Lan-something blinked. "But Lord Rian, in my favorite story, about the tailor who found a dungeon in the desert–"

"Landoor, what did I just say?!"

"– she managed to claim that dungeon, and then made one hidden under the black forest, and another one inside the mountain of ice–"

Twitch.

"No, she moved the dungeon from the black forest to the mountain of ice," another idiot said helpfully. Twitch.

"Oh right, she did, she put it on a cart on rails and moved it," the first idiot said. Twitch.

Rian glanced at Lori and sighed.

"You brought this on yourselves," he said in a resigned voice. "I tried to save you, but you didn't listen." He settled back to operate the rudder.

Lori's cry echoed over the water, making beasts on shore glance up and startling bugs into flight. "THAT'S NOT HOW DUNGEONS WORK!!!!!"

––––––––––––––––––

Obviously, Grem Lied

"– according to her biography!" Lori ranted. "So, it doesn't work like that!" She panted and reached for the water skin for a drink to soothe her throat.

Landoor– and his name would forever be burned into her head for his utter stupidity– said, "But in the story–" and that was as far as he got before the other two hurriedly clamped hands over his mouth and shuffled him off to the far side of the barge from Lori, hissing urgently. She made a note to try and remember their names if it came up next time. It was good to know there was some basic intelligence around.

Lori grabbed the wooden dipper, carved some a single piece of wood, next to her and skimmed it over the water rushing past the boat, splashing herself in the face. The mild, thick, unclean feeling of Iridescence growth was already making her skin feel grimy. The water brought her some relief, and she resolved to take a bath that night. Or just jump into the river too, she had to get it out of her clothes as well after all. She took off her hat, doused it in water, and put it back on her head. The water flowed down her hair and she sighed in relief from both the sense of grime and the sun's heat. Looking down at the water now sloshing beneath her, she absently willed it to go over the side, then sighed in frustration as it didn't happen and she remembered why.

She fell back on old learning, taking deep, even breaths, channeling the magic she drew in through her veins and letting it out through the pores in her hands, which she submerged into the water sloshing on the deck to bind their waterwisps. The resistance of from the water wisps was jarring after having been so attuned to the wisps of her demesne. It reminded her of when she'd first started learning, and it had been so frustratingly hard to get the wisps to do as she wanted…

Yeah, no. She was a Binder now, she wasn't taking this sort of attitude from a puddle.

She bound the wisps to her will, wrapping the water around her hand like she was picking up a towel, continuing to breathe until she'd gotten it all, then held her hand over the side. The water collapsed from around her hand, falling back into the river and leaving her hand nice and clean.

Nodding in satisfaction, Lori sat back and glanced at her lords, both of whom had been utterly unhelpful in helping her educate the ignorant. Indeed, Grem was sleeping, a wet cloth over his eyes to try and prevent Iridescence growth as other parts of him began to take on a light, dusty texture. Rian was somehow keeping the barge stable despite the fact it was continuing to move at a speed even she found worrying, his arm almost casually draped on the rudder as if it was the back of a couch he was lounging on and adjusting their course with only the most minute motions that made the barge turn smoothly to follow the contours of the river.

On either side of the river, the plants and stones glittered poisonously, and Lori was pretty sure she was missing beasts in plain sight because they were standing still. Rian kept them to the center of the river, since that let him see turns and possible obstacles well ahead of time. Occasionally, there was a bump from beneath as adult seels hit them, seemingly curious, but beyond that they were unmolested.

Lori reached over and placed her hand on the wire that stood out from the bone strut supporting the water jet, connecting through it towards the waterwisps powering the jet. They were consuming magic evenly, but still had a lot imbued, and continued to respond to her with alacrity. She sighed, once more regretting leaving her demesne.

The late-noon sun was low and more than halfway down to the horizon as they continued to speed along.

"It's getting late," she told Rian. "Maybe we should stop and find a place to anchor so we can get ready for the night?"

"It's probably safer for us to just stop in the middle of the river," he said. "No need to worry about beasts that way. But if you can make us some light, we can just keep moving all night. The barge doesn't need to stop for us to sleep." He nodded at Grem.

Lori blinked. The thought hadn't occurred to her. She thought she'd stop the jet so they could rest during the night, change the binding on the wisps to conserve magic while they slept. She eyed the sleeping– or at least resting– Grem. "Can he steer us without crashing?"

Rian shrugged. "It's not that hard. Just be relaxed and remember small adjustments are all you need. Though actually, we might not need you to make light. Between the moons and how reflective the Iridescence is, he should be able to well enough for us to not crash."

It sounded like a good idea. But as she glanced at Rian, he subtly shook his head. Ah. Yes, he didn't want to leave himself asleep and in Grem's power if this was a trap.

"I don't want to risk crashing in the dark," Lori said. "Actually, perhaps we should wake him. Given how fast we've been going, we might have already passed it. They said it only took them a couple of days, didn't they? That's not far."

"They had the river," Rian pointed. "Walking along the banks would be faster than going overland, since it would be slightly easier to see beasts since they weren't hiding in tall grass. Slightly." Still, he nudged at Grem's leg slightly with his boot. "Grem, wake up. We need you to tell us how far we might be from your wounded."

Grem muttered incoherently, pushing Rian's foot away and settling back to sleep.

Rian sighed and nudge him again. More incoherent muttering. Rian rolled his eyes, glanced at Lori, and mouthed 'hold on'.

Wordlessly, Lori held on to the side of the boat and did just that.

Then Rian began wiggling the ruder from side to side. There were cries from up front as the three young men grabbed at the boat's sides and Grem rolled over before jerking away, grabbing his cloth from his face and going for his sword before falling over with a curse as Rian shook the rudder again.

"Good afternoon, Captain Grem," Rian said cheerfully as he finally stopped wiggling the rudder, allowing Grem to push himself up. "Had a nice nap?"

"You could have woken me up normally," the older man grumbled, glaring at the other lord.

"I did. This way actually worked," Rian said, then gestured at the bank. "Anything look familiar?"

Still muttering, Grem wipe the cloth over his face, and then looked around. He frowned, getting up on his knees looking around. "I don't think we’re there yet," he said. "We set up River's Fork at a confluence of rivers. And… yes." He pointed, and in the fading light, Lori saw some distant peaks in front of them. "Those are too small yet, but we're getting closer. We won't make it today, but we should be there late tomorrow morning."

Lori and Rian exchanged looks. "That close?" he said.

Grem nodded. "We're already a lot closer than I thought we'd be. This goes so fast! Do you have more like it?"

Lori put her hand on the bone strut a finger on the wire. "Sit down Grem," she said. "You might fall off."

He glanced at her and sat down, one hand on the side of the boat.

Lori reached through the wire, touching the bone down below and binding the earthwisps in the bone, reinforcing their strength. Then she reached towards the bound waterwisps, and altered her will on the binding.

The barge noticeably lurched forward, getting faster as she increased the suction of the water jet.

"Well, in that case," Rian said easily, seemingly unperturbed as their already fast boat started moving even faster, the front rising higher out of the water. "If we hurry we might make it by tonight."

Grem gaped at them. "Tonight?" he said, surprised.

"It's much safer for us to sleep in a demesne than out in the open," Lori said. "We just go in, I claim the core, and then we can sleep not having to worry about beasts coming at us in the night. I'm sure the injured you left behind would appreciate the safety."

"Actually, I should have asked sooner, what sort of shelter do they have?" Rian asked. "I mean, they've been there for days. Are they crowded in? What supplies did you leave them? You said you planted grain. Any chance they have flour?"

"We left them some…" Grem said, shuffling. "We brought a lot of it with us since we had more people, but we left them supplies."

"And you intended to come back for them, of course," Rian said, nodding. He shifted the rudder as the river curved again. "You didn't intend to leave them to die."

"Are you implying something?" Grem said.

"Is that how it came out?" Rian said with theatrical innocence. "Sorry if it came out like that. But we're here now, and you brought us here. Don't worry Grem, we'll take care of your people. Well… The five of us will take care of your people, Binder Lori will follow as soon as she'd made the core her toy."

Well, of course. She was there for the core, after all.

A thought occurred to her.

"Your deceased binder," she said. "What did you do to their body?"

"Lori, no," Rian said sternly. "No desecrating! Use the ones you already have first!"

Lori rolled her eyes, but he probably had a point. Besides, if the corpse hadn't been put on ice it might be too degraded to use by now. Supposedly an intact brain was needed to make magic-capable undead, and soft tissue like the brain was always the first to go.

––––––––––––––––––

At around sundown, when the dark was encroaching on the light, Lori stopped the boat, letting it drift on momentum and the current. A little while later, the anchor was thrown overboard

"Grem," Rian said levelly. "Didn't you say your binder was dead?"

"I wasn't lying," Grem said. He was fairly calm for a man with three spears and a ball of water pointed at his chest, because even if the spears where held nervously, the ball of water had anger behind it. "Our wizard, our Dungeon Binder Koshay is dead. He died protecting us from the dragon."

"And yet you don't really look all that surprised by the fact there's a demesne in front of us," Rian said.

Even in the fading light, it was clear that a hundred paces in front of them, the world had stopped being brilliant and glittering as green leaves and brown trunks swayed in the wind, and no poisonous dust rose into the air with everything movement. The difference was abrupt and seemingly cut as sharply as a knife.

Grem pursed his lips, staring down at his feet. "We didn't think she could do it. She wasn't a wizard, she'd just found out she could do magic the day before. The Great Binder is right, it's not like the stories. You don't just spill your blood on a rock and become a Great Binder. You need to know what you're doing. But they said she were going to try. They must have found a way."

"Do you really expect me to believe that?" Lori demanded, her ball of water ready to burst into a stream and pierce through his heart. All she needed to do was will it.

"It is the truth," Grem said. "Touch my heart and know, Great Binder."

"I am not going to get close enough for you to grab me," Lori said flatly.

From the resigned look on Grem's face, he couldn't argue with that reasoning. "The demesne is still open to you, Great Binder," he pleaded. "All you have to do is take it. I did not lie. All our wizards are dead. The one who has claimed this place, she is not a wizard. Only someone with too much power and no understanding of what they're doing. I cannot leave my friends to someone like that, Great Binder. It invites catastrophe."

Abruptly he knelt down so fast one of the spears cut a tear on his shirt. The point was made of beast teeth, after all. Forehead to the floor, his voice was pleading. "I have angered you. Take my life, if you must. But please… claim this place and save my friends."