Demesne

When the typhon abomination moved, Lori expected the ground to shake and a vibration like a deep bass drum to spread with every footfall… which was silly, because such things were merely theater conventions meant to convey size and drama. That thought came later, and it took an embarrassingly long time to do so. So when the abomination stepped forward, Lori was momentarily confused as to why it was moving so quietly.

All around the prepared ground, the militia stood in their trenches and behind various thorny obstacles, even as the groups with pikes slowly turned to keep the points of their long weapon pointed towards the abomination. As the thing approached the first of the trees whose branches had been entangled together in a makeshift barrier, Lori was suddenly struck by how big the abomination was. She'd known that it was large—she'd read it in the almanac, after all— but she'd had to walk under many of the entangled branches when she'd been laying down the stones with her lightningball bindings on them. The branches had been well above her head.

For the typhon abomination, they were lower than its face. Four paces at the hip, Lori recalled. However, given how the beast elevated its head and upper body, in practical terms it was far taller than that. Before the abomination would have struck the barrier, it turned to the side, avoiding the interwoven branches as Rian said it would, and causing it to set foot on the game trail. Although from the sigh of relief next to her, her lord hadn't been as confident it would do so as he had appeared. They watched at the abomination continued walking, now following the trail, its nostrils flaring.

For all intents and purposes, the dragonborn moved in utter silence. That could simply be distance, as it was still well away from her—it was still well outside the ground they had prepared around the game trail, although the beast seemed to be on the trail itself—but if it had been behind Lori, she likely would have had no idea it was near until it was dangerously too late. It was unlikely to be far too late, since she was a Dungeon Binder, but… well, her next binding would have a high probability of being her last.

"Your Bindership, may I respectfully suggest you get into the boat with Shanalorre and move to the middle of the river while you wait for us to kill this thing?" Rian said. For some reason, he was speaking through tightly clenched teeth. "Please?"

"It's still far away, Rian. I have plenty of time to get in the boat if it comes close enough to be a danger."

"Your Bindership, you don't actually think it moves that slow when it's intending to take down prey, do you? Most predators that size move in absurdly fast bursts to surprise and take down its prey. If it wants to eat you, it will suddenly move faster than a leaper and bring its whole head down to bite you in one move."

Lori turned to stare at her lord. So did Shanalorre. She got the sense that Riz would have turned to stare if she hadn't been so professional. "Why do you know that?"

"I once knew a vitalogist who was very enthusiastic about all the ways beasts could kill each other and also us. And that was just from casual conversation and listening. Did you know most venoms are edible? They're intended to be injected into the bloodstream, so taking them orally, as long as you don't have a mouth sore or an ulcer, is actually no problem."

"Fascinating, and pointless. I do not believe this one has any venoms."

"I should hope not. If it had venoms, then its natural prey is something significantly bigger that it is. We'd have noticed an islandshell on land. Uh, is it standing on one of your traps now, your Bindership?"

Lori turned and the abomination had gotten closer and she hadn't heard a thing! After a brief moment of heart-clenching panic, she checked the state of the bindings anchored to her fingernails, then mentally set aside the ones that weren't lightning balls. She inspected each binding, but didn't feel any additional lightningwisps and firewisps within the volume of any of them, even as her eyes checked where her stones were. "No, it isn't," she said. Since she hadn't managed to lay out all of her stones, the bindings only covered two-thirds of the game trail within the prepared ground. However, since the abomination was following the trail, all she had to do was wait, and it would reach her bindings…

All it needed to do was continue on its way…

"Shanalorre, if Lori's not going out into the water—"

"I will stay," Shanalorre said.

"Shana, now is not the time!" Rian hissed. "You're not needed here, we can already see the thing, get out in the water so Yoshka doesn't have to risk losing another family member if that thing gets too close."

Lori heard wood scraping on rocks and water splashing, soon followed by the sound of one of their boats' steam jet drivers activating. She glanced towards Rian as he returned to stand beside her, an arrow nocked on his bow. "None of you loose until I tell you to," she said. "I need to activate the binding before you release it." She didn't know if she had enough lightwisps to still connect her to the arrows after they were loosed, so she wasn't going to take the chance.

"Understood, your Bindership," Rian said, and the other men with bows echoed him. They kept their bows down, not yet drawing.

The abomination was still walking, still following the path even as its nostrils were flaring and its head kept swinging from side to side. In one of the trenches that paralleled the game trail, the militia had to hold their pikes vertically, as they had no room to keep the weapons leveled at the abomination due to the walls of the trench being so narrow.

"It can smell us," Rian muttered. "It knows we're here, but it probably doesn't know what we are, and its kind probably hasn't learned how to react to people yet…"

"Rian, who are you expositing to?" Lori said, spyglass once more raised to her eye. Just a little bit more… it was almost at the first binding…

"Uh… myself, to be honest. Sorry."

Lori would have rolled her eyes if she wasn't using them for something more important. "Don't be so loud."

"Noted, your Bindership."

The abomination stepped over one of her stones—the very last one she had set down, in fact—entering the sphere of the lightning ball binding anchored to it.

Lori reached for the lightwisps anchored to her fingernail to activate the binding and activated it.

Even as lightwisps created a line of light between her fingernail and the lightning ball binding, she wondered if she had made a mistake. If she should have waited until the abomination had moved further forward, so that there would be a lightning ball binding behind it to keep it from being able to escape. If she should have waited until the abomination was blocked on either side by trees…

Then lightning bloomed like an exploding flower in the middle of the sphere of the binding, which lit up the darkened woods. The center of the lightning ball was a burning star casting all about it in stark radiance and dark shadows. Dancing arks of lightning caressed the abomination like a dragon trailing its claws over the land, to a sound like the world's largest bug beating its wings angrily. The very air reached such extremes of heat it burned, and Lori had to lower her hand and cease looking through her spyglass as the light was brightened greatly when it passed through the binding. She heard cries of surprise from the militia, but they were muted and brief, and all remained in their positions. It was hard to see because of both distance and brightness, but the abomination seemed to be smoking where it had been struck, the misty haze visible in the air as it partially reflecting the lightning's radiance.

"—please die, please die, please die, please die—" Rian was muttering repeatedly, one eye closed, the other almost closed so he could see through it as he watched the abomination not simply be struck by lightning but have lightning flowing through it near constantly. Even as the lightningwisps flowed, bringing with it bright and burning lightning and heat that expended the binding's imbuement, Lori was imbuing the binding, drawing magic from her core and channeling it through her body and into the lightwisps anchored to her fingernail, which then spread it through the rest of the lightning ball—

The abomination began to topple, unbalanced as its stiff, unmoving legs made it unable to remain upright. As Lori watched, the abomination began to fall sideways atop one of the trenches that paralleled the game trail. The pikes poking out from the trench that had previously been upright due to lack of space to maneuver them were all pushed back by the abomination's bulk, snapping under its weight as the butts of the pikes lodged against the wall of the trench.

They all stared as the abomination twitched were it lay on the ground, a few small fires burning on its feathers, illuminated by the lightning of the binding next to it. When Lori deactivated the binding, the shape of the abomination was plunged into darkness, save for the small flickers of light from its burning feathers.

As Lori raised her spyglass binding up to her eye to assess the abomination's state, it seemed to stir, feebly trying to raise its head. Not dead yet, then. Still, it seemed to be having trouble moving, its tail and one of its legs twitching randomly as it tried to right itself atop the trench it had fallen on. Unfortunately, it was out of position for the lightning ball that had struck it previously, and even if Lori altered the binding's shape, there were militia in the trench that the abomination had fallen on who would be endangered if lightning struck the typhon abomination in its current position.

There was movement to the side, and Lori saw people climbing from the far end of the trench, away from the abomination's head. They appeared covered in dirt, and Lori suspected that the dirt that had been piled up on the edges of the trench had fallen on them when the abomination had fallen. She counted four people exiting the trench and running towards the next closest trench, avoiding some thorned barriers. Behind them, the abomination was struggling to get to its feet, and it was clearly favoring the side it had fallen on. It tried to tuck in its legs beneath it despite the twitching, but even so, it didn't seem to have the strength left to push itself up.

Next to Lori, Rian sighed. "I'm going to try and get close enough to hit it, see if I can stick an arrow in its chest so that we can finish it off," he said. "Your Bindership, be ready to activate the binding on the arrow, please?" Without waiting for a reply, he began to move forward, an arrow nocked on his bowstring.

Lori frowned but nodded. "You three, go with him. If that thing stands, throw Rian into the nearest trench. If he misses, take your own shot."

"Yes, Great Binder," the three other bowmen said, following after Rian, their own arrows nocked but not drawn as Lori franticly claimed lightwisps so she could extend the connection between her and the arrows. She had to make the lines of lightwisps arc upwards so that their bodies wouldn't block the line, since Rian was the only one who was making an effort to hold his arrow so there was a clear path between her and the binding on it.

The abomination was still struggling to get to its feet when Rian finally stopped moving, standing behind a tree to keep it between him and the dragonborn. The twitching of the abomination's limbs had slowly ceased, and was finally managing to get its legs under it, though it was still having difficulty pushing itself up. Rian visibly checked how his arrow was nocked on his bow before raising it up and beginning to draw…

Then the arrowhead fell off where it was resting just above the fist gripping the bowstave, and Rian had to hastily reset it, even as the abomination continued trying to stand…

"Oh, Great Binder," Riz said, sounding horrified.

"What, Erzebed?" Lori demanded.

For once, Riz didn't become flustered by her attention. "He doesn't know how use a bow!"

Lori blinked, and looked back toward Rian, pointing her spyglass binding towards him. "He seems to know what he's doing well enough." With the arrow now back in place, the way he was drawing back the bowstring looked very experienced, if a bit slow.

Riz had one hand over her face now. "Great Binder, his arm is shaking!"

"Is it not supposed to?"

"No, it's not. It means the bow's draw is heavier than he's used to."

"That's your bow though, Riz," one of the other militiawomen said. "I think his bow is still in the boat? Isn't that it there?"

"So it's not like he doesn't know how to use a bow, it's just he doesn't know how to use your bow," another militiawoman said.

Lori ignored them, still watching Rian intently. He was far enough away she was unlikely to hear him even if he yelled. He'd finally stopped drawing the bow, and now she could easily see what Riz meant about his arm shaking. It wasn't much, but the tremor was obvious…

Rian loosed. Lori activated the binding on his arrow.

There was a brief line of light as the lightwisps connecting her to the binding became active in the brief moment before the arrow struck the abomination in the cheek, where the abomination's feathers were thin. It struck, lodging into place, and the abomination flinched, its jaws parting before starting to twitch and shake. The fact that there was no immediate explosion was a good sign, as it meant she'd designed the binding properly. As with the lightning ball binding, the bindings on the arrows were causing lightning to flow through the abomination's body, a gradual process that was still heavily damaging. Its whole body slumped down as it seemed to lose strength again.

Rian gestured at the other bowmen, who had all stayed well behind, pointing first at one then at the abomination, then at his chest—no, his heart—and his head. The bowman he pointed at nodded, bringing up his bow—from much further away than Rian—and slowly drawing it as Lori sorted through the lines of lightwisps she had anchored, finding the one that arced towards his arrow.

The arm he was using to draw the arrow, she noted, was moving smoothly and steadily and definitely not shaking.

He loosed, and Lori activated the binding.

This time only the arcing line of light that appeared when she activated the binding allowed her to see where the arrow had stuck. It buried itself into the abomination's chest, sinking among the thick feathers there that insulated the torso. The abomination began to convulse, losing its balance once more and falling on its side as its legs kicked weakly. Rian took the opportunity to hurry away from the dragonborn, moving much faster than when he had approached it as he joined the three bowmen where they were standing.

For several long moments, everyone remained where they were, watching the abomination warily as it convulsed. Lori kept imbuing the bindings on the two arrows lodged into its body, slowly increasing the power of the lightning being generated by the lightningwisps.

It was only when she felt her bindings surrounded by waterwisps and firewisps that she could claim that she finally deactivated them. Being able to affect the wisps in a body meant the body was no longer alive, as the soul that had been claiming those wisps was now absent. With a sigh, Lori deactivated all of the bindings anchored to her to prevent any accidents. "It's done," she told Riz. "Tell everyone to stand down, the abomination is dead."

"Are you sure, Great Binder?" The non-officer looked skeptical.

"I've deactivated the bindings that were killing it and it's still not moving," Lori said flatly. "That's dead enough for me."

The militiawoman still hesitated. "Perhaps we should check with Binder Shanalorre, just to be sure?"

Lori rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine. Are you sure you don't want to be an officer? You're acting very officious."

Riz shuddered.