Demesne 382 - Accelerated Harvest (Patreon)

Rian looked up from the almanac Lori had handed him, having apparently finished reading the entry on the typhon beast. “And you want to kill one of these things?”

“It’s necessary,” Lori said. “Its presence has disrupted the hunting in the vicinity of River’s Fork, impacting the available food supply. Until—” Lori reached into her belt pouch and felt around for the rocks there, glancing between them to find the note signifying gender, “—Taeclas can significantly increase our crop yields, we are still dependent on hunting the local beasts and seels for a significant amount of our food. As such, the disruption the beast is causing must be dealt with.”

“And so you want to killone of these things.”

“Yes.”

“Did you find out how to do Mentalism without telling me? Because unless you’ve found a way to fly above this thing and throw down lightning, any attempt at trying to kill it will have to be done at ground level, where it can eat us.”

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean trying to kill it as we are is a good idea! We have a river, can’t we just hunt on the side of it the typhon beast isn’t? And it’s river’s fork, so there another river to be on the other side of!”

“We have, but the hunters have not been as successful in their hunting there due to the a noticeable lack of beasts.”

“… Are you telling me that beasts—dangerous beasts that are bigger than us, faster than us, and have more claws than us—find this thing so terrifying that they don’t think being on the other side of a river from it is safe enough… and you still want to go after this thing?”

“I don’t want to, but it’s necessary to keep our food supplies for the coming winter stable, and we need the experience should we have to deal with another one of these things in the future.”

Rian groaned, closing his eyes and burying his face in his hands. Lori took the opportunity to take the almanac back from him, inspecting the pages for residue or stains before properly closing the book. “Rian, stop being theatrical.”

He didn’t, raising his head slowly as if he was doing it for dramatic effect. “Do you at least have some sort of plan?”

“Find the area where it regularly drinks. Place a lightningwisp-based trap. Kill it.”

“Ah. And have you figured out where that is yet?”

“The hunters are still ascertaining the location.”

“Ah. And… this trap you want to set up… how long will it take to prepare? Because I doubt you want to have the typhon beast show up while you’re still in the middle of preparing.”

“…”

“…have you at least practiced preparing your trap and timing how long it takes so you know how long you need?”

“…”

Rian sighed. “Well, at least you haven’t actually tried to kill it yet.”

“We were waiting for you. Killing the typhon beast is a major undertaking, after all.”

“I have never been more glad you don’t want to do anything that needs coordinating with people without me,” Rian said, sounding very fervent for some reason. “All right… tell me about this lightningwisp-based tra—”

“No!” Riz exclaimed. “Rian, please, don’t ask about the trap until after we’ve eaten!”

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After the lightningwisp traps was described, Rian offered the suggestion that the issue of the typhon beast continue to be deferred until the hunters had sufficiently ascertained it’s habits such that they could reasonably predict where it would be. The plan he was able to quickly formulate was… honestly annoying in its simplicity, but it relied on learning a bit more about the typhon beast’s habits, as well as the loss of some meat from both their stores and from their freshly butchered seels. Until those habits were learned, they waited.

This didn’t mean they were idle.

Over the next few days, the carpenters focused on making frames so that everyone could have paper sheets on their windows. While the addition was simple enough, and sort of silly to Lori, it meant that people could have light come in through their windows while they were technically closed. As such, some people could work in their homes without the doors and windows being open to let in light, meaning the bugs could be kept out.

The weather made it all seem like a sick joke. It was so hot that apparently people waited well into the night for interiors to cool before they went to sleep, and at midday her dungeon’s second level and dining hall were full of people avoiding the heat. No one was spending time in their houses if they could help it.

Still, the frames were made, the paper glued onto the frames, and the finished screens mounted onto people’s windows. Just because it seemed unnecessary now didn’t mean it would be so forever. Once the weather shifted next season, it would be more useful for those who worked in the workshops that had been converted from houses after some families were moved. Some people, like the chandler, she couldn't allow to set up a workspace in her Dungeon because of the odor. She'd actually had to set up bound tools to draw air up the chimney to keep some of the workshops ventilated. It didn't do much for how hot the house was, but it pulled air in through the open door, keeping the smells mostly contained as the odors were vented well above the nearby houses.

Lori assisted in mounting the new paper screen shutters to the windows once the carpenters finished assembling them. The woodworking went on noticeably faster compared to how long it took to make shutters the previous year, and the carpenters were almost childishly enthusiastic as they used their new hand-held bound tools. Part of that was no doubt from how much less materials the screens used, since most of the screen's surface area was composed of paper.

The wire lattice on a pole' that… whatshisname, annoying male Deadspeaker…uh, Lidzuga… suggested was made, though as a proof of concept test, one of the mesh screens was given to… whatshername, crazy plant-naming Deadspeaker… Taeclas to see if she could use it as a contact for claiming and taming stalks of their crops. When it was shown to work—and the mesh they used for the test wasn't damaged—Lori authorized the wire to have three of the poles made. The final result was a tool consisting of a wire lattice on a pole three paces long, on the sound logic that some reach was needed. They wouldn't be able to use the full three paces when holding the poles horizontally, but the length made a decent counterweight so that the lattice could be controlled and not damage or dislodge the heads of vigas.

The length of wire with handles was retained in case it had some utility. Rian had started muttering about putting the ends of the wire on poles and hanging mesh screen from there wire, and Lori could almost see what we was thinking.

With the wire in her hands, whatshername started working her Deadspeaking on their crops on the fields outside. According to Rian, she woke up early in the morning, the rock Lori had given her tied to her forehead for light, and used the new pole to claim and tame meanings on to their crops until breakfast, after which she continued until it was far too hot to work outside, at which point she moved on to claiming and taming meanings onto the crops, tubers, vegetables and saplings in the third level.

Lori had learned this when she'd the found woman napping in one of the alcoves in the second level one afternoon, and Rian had hurried intercepted her to explain that the woman had technically already done a day's work. She left the woman alone after that. Lori wasn't unreasonable, after all. As long as the woman started working before sunrise, she saw no reason to interfere with a well-deserved afternoon nap.

For various reasons, the limiting factor soon became Shanalorre. In addition to having difficulty using the poles as she tried to imbued the crops due to her small size, she needed to spend more time on the crops to imbue them to the amount of magic that would sustain the meaning for five days, which was the amount that Taeclas said would be enough to push the crops to maturity so they could be harvested. Shanalorre also started waking up before dawn as a consequence, to take advantage of the relative coolness.

In an attempt to try to help Shanalorre get her imbuing done faster, Rian had on his own initiative had tried to find a way to increase her productivity.

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Lori arrived out in the fields to find Rian, Riz, Shanalorre, and both wire lattice poles in the demesne—the third had been sent to River's Fork to be used there. Despite everyone wearing wide-brimmed reed hats to keep the sun off them, everyone was sweating.

Her lord and Riz were standing one either side of Shanalorre, holding the wire lattice poles and laying the heads—gently—on top of some of the crops that Lori supposed… whatshername…—she checked her rocks, feeling around for the one of the right shape—Taeclas had probably already tamed with meanings and just needed imbuement. Riz was wearing an expression of tired exasperation, but was at least holding the pole properly so the wire lattice only rested lightly on the crops as Rian spoke to Shanalorre.

"Rian," Lori said, repeating herself until her lord finally looked up to face her. "What are you doing?"

"Seeing if there's any way Shana—"

"Shanalorre."

"—Shanalorre could imbue twice as many crops at a time!" her lord said cheerfully. Up close, her lord was clearly less uncomfortable in the mid-morning heat, while both northerners were sweating so much they looked like they were taking baths. Slightly less uncomfortable.

"By using twice as many poles, I presume," Lori said.

"Yup," Rian chirped. "After all, the limitation is how many crops she can imbue at once, not how much imbuement she had. At least, I presume that's the case if her access to magic as a Dungeon Binder is the same as yours."

"It appears to be working, Great Binder," Shanalorre interjected, one hand wrapped around each pole as she imbued the meanings on the crops through the wire in her grip. "However, I am unsure if doubling the number of meanings I can imbue in this manner is efficient. Adjusting both poles to make contact with the next set of meanings without overlooking any meanings in between takes notably more time than maneuvering a single pole by myself."

"I see. Do you have a rebuttal to this, Rian?"

"I'm sure that we can fix that problem with a little practice," he said with persistent cheerfulness.

"No," Lori said firmly.

"But—"

"I am not losing you to being Shanalorre's pole carrier during the mornings and before, Rian."

"It doesn't have to be me!"

"So Shanalorre will have to begin from the start with someone else, thus losing more time?"

"I know we'll lose a few hours as they start, but once they know what to do—"

"Rian."

"Yes, your Bindership?"

"Let Shanalorre get back to work and put the other pole back to wherever it's supposed to be stored." Huh… where were they storing those things?

A sigh. "Yes, your Bindership."

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Unfortunately, the initiative did not bear fruit—or grain, as it were.

Despite these difficulties, Shanalorre and Taeclas’s work yielded good results. When it became too hot to work outside, Shanalorre took a bath, checked on the children in her charge, and then moved on to imbuing the crops that were being grown in the dungeon’s third level.

The crops in the dungeon farm were the first to mature enough to harvest. After Shanalorre had imbued them, Taeclas had activated the meanings so that they were all affected on the same day. They had reached maturity within the week, and had promptly been harvested, the gathered sheafs laid out in the sun to dry—it had been judged that the sun would do a far better job than the desiccator sheds—before the grains could be winnowed. Word had also arrived that River’s Fork was in the process of harvesting. As Shanalorre technically still claimed the demesne’s dungeon’s core, the imbuement of the crops there had been much easier.

Lori had needed to take a trip to River’s Fork and form a binding to keep bugs from devouring the drying grain. It had been an effort taking sticks topped with softened rocks and arranging them around and between the stacked sheafs. With the stone to let her anchor the binding of lightningwisps, she’d been able to establish bug repellant binding over a wide enough area. Some softened stone, a short length of wire, and the reduced but still very large wispbead that had been used to imbue River’s Fork’s dungeon shelter defenses were used to keep the binding imbued as a crude but usable rudimentary bound tool. After all, she wasn’t going to waste a bound tool core on something like this.

It was only a small harvest, but Rian asked her for a holiday anyway.

“In this heat?” Lori said incredulously.

“Well… admittedly, everyone will probably spend the holiday in the dungeon,” Rian admitted, “But come on! It’s our first harvest that was accelerated by Taeclas and Shanalorre’s Deadspeaking… and Lidzuga’s too, down in River’s Fork. Something like that is worth celebrating, even if people will be celebrating by staying indoors where it’s cool.”

“What, no roast meats? What kind of holiday is that?”

“It’s a bit too hot for roasting, though…?”

“Then what’s the point?”

Rian stared at her. She stared right back.

“Right… so, just to confirm… you’ll authorize the holiday if there’s roast meat?”

“It’s the only part of holidays I like. If there’s not going to be any roast meat, I see no reason for their to be a holiday at all.”

“I was thinking we’d have honey bread with every meal? You know, to celebrate being able to harvest the crop in the dungeon farm?”

“… and the roast meat?”

Rian opened his mouth… then paused. He closed his mouth, tilting his head thoughtfully. “As long as there’s roast meat, right?”