Demesne Patron EX SS 37 – The Captain, Retired

When he was a child, Yhallisu—Yhal to his friends, formerly of the Lomabuyar Demesne militia, now retired and for his seniority as a captain was put in charge of the other retirees and civilians of the Golden Sweetwood Company on this boat—had heard about the Armada, a strange people who lived on the oceans instead of safely on land in demesnes like sane people. They lived on big boats the size of towns, and had no dungeons or dungeon binders to protect themselves from the colors.

As he had gotten older, he'd grown to disbelieve those descriptions, relegating them to the sorts of silly, fictional stories told to children. Really, boats the size of towns? Ridiculous. Nothing made of wood could possibly be made that big, even with Deadspeakers fusing wood together. Such a thing would simply be too big. It would sink or capsize and then sink. After all, river boats going up and down were always worrying about weight and waves, and he'd heard that the ocean was much more turbulent than lakes and rivers. If anyone made a boat the size of a town, surely it would face the same. It was as nonsensical as the story of sailing steel boats through a sea of stars, or the skies somehow mandated who could be Dungeon Binder. Old stories meant to entertain, but had no real basis in reality.

Then he had seen a boat the size of a large building, and suddenly it had all made sense. The Armada didn't live in ships the size of towns, but rather had towns made of boats. Having several boats the size of buildings close together would be more than enough space for the Armada to be able to live in reasonable comfort, he'd thought.

After months of living on a boat, needing to sleep in shifts due to lacking enough of space for everyone to lie down at once, always feeling constantly wet because that was the only way to rid themselves and everyone else of the Iridescence, only rarely being able to eat fresh food because the fursh, waterbeasts, dillians squids and graspers in the water were often too big, too fast or too deep to be caught and retrieved even by the Mentalists and Whisperers working together, the added maintenance of needing to dry clothes just to get them wet again the following day, Yhal found himself fantasizing about being on a boat the size of a town. Room to walk… a place to sleep that wasn't so cramped everyone had stopped feeling awkward about morning clappers pressed against their backs and sides… fresh meat… fresh greens… really, any greens at all. All they'd been eating was stew made of grain and salted meat… or beans and salted meat… or porridge and salted meat… with a mican or golden bud on the side…

If the Armada did live in boats, they must either be insane or masochists. This was no way to live! While he and the other families of the other members of the Company had endured months as the boat had crossed the ocean, moving on sails and steam drivers imbued by their Whisperers, that was with the understanding that living in the boat would someday end, at which point they would never need to live in a boat ever again. The very thought of living like this indefinitely—from birth until death, growing up like this, raising his children like this, spending his old age like this—made him seriously consider just going over the rail and into the water to sink and die.

Fortunately, the end was in sight, and they'd finally be able to go there soon.

Yhal leaned against the railing at the front of the boat—ship, whatever—staring out ahead of the vessel towards the dark shadow of the continent ahead of them, and he wasn't the only one. Many of those who were part of the shift to get washed down to rid themselves of Iridescence and get some fresh air were gathered near him as well, their clothes dripping with salt water. Most  ignored the sight of the long black threads across the sky in front of them, or the form of the dragon still distantly visible off to one side, its form roiling with eyes and teeth and teeth around eyes and eyes around teeth and strangely colored lightning spreading from it across the sky. At his age, he'd seen so many dragons that they… well, they didn't exactly stop being terrifying—the things were stronger than any Dungeon Binder and kept making messes everywhere—but he had certainly developed an eye for them. Militia were the last ones in and the first ones out of dragon shelters, after all.

Everyone else was mostly inured to the sight of the dragon after the weeks they had seen it slowly moving across the horizon in front of them as it continued its unknowable, chaotic, and leisurely way towards whatever demesnes it would be terrorizing next. People only had eyes for the land in front of them. They were still too far away to be able to distinguish between demesnes and unclaimed lands, but the 'captain'—not a real captain like in the militia, just a boat 'captain'—had told Yhal that when night fell they should be able to see the light from Covehold Demesne's lighthouse, which would help guide them towards the demesne's boundaries.

For many people traveling to the new continent—no one seemed to have agreed on any sort of name for the place as of yet, despite how long it had been known—it was where they would be disembarking to make their way to whatever new demesne they would join or found on foot as they sought out what to do next or reorganized into settlement parties to found new demesnes. However, the Golden Sweetwood Company had already established their plans well in advance, and so the stop in Covehold Demesne would merely be a short stop to sell some of their cargo so they could take on more provisions. After that, they would be setting off again towards the hidden bay and river that the advance scouts had managed to find, and start making their way upriver to the demesne that Koshay had bound.

At the thought, Yhal winced, closing his eyes for a moment and bowing his head in respect towards his dead friend. From the letter that Yllian sent on behalf of—and it still felt insane to say—Great Binder Shanalorre, three things were obvious: the settlement was in a sorry state from a lack of both infrastructure and workers, the Dungeon Binder of the neighboring demesne was clearly taking advantage of their weakened position, and Koshay had clearly indulged in trying to make his own version of Treeshade Demesne's famous giant tree.

Colors, Koshay! He supposed as indulgences went, it was harmless enough, and apparently the dome provided a degree of protection from the weather, but it was still a waste of time! And making houses from whole trees? Laven had been there, she could have just cut up the trees and he could have fused them together, just as they had done back in the militia when making temporary palisades against beasts.

What a mess.

Yhal hoped that the demesne had managed to hold on through the winter. The letter reported that they had a sufficient stockpile of grain, more than enough to last the demesne, but while that would certainly be filling, during winters fat and meats were needed to be able to remain active through the cold.

There was also the matter of the significant number of people who had abandoned the established the demesne in favor of begging for admittance into the other demesne upriver. Given the circumstances, Yhal couldn't blame them. The ones who had survived the dragon that had killed both Koshay and Laven had families to think about, and it stood to reason that they would prefer to live in a demesne prepared enough that it had suffered no casualties. Relations between the two demesne were supposedly reasonably amicable, although their Dungeon Binder was reported to be merciless when it came to negotiating with Great Binder Shanalorre.

On the one hand, that was probably to be expected. In an exchange between an adult and a child, the child couldn't possibly win. On the other hand, what kind of adult would take advantage of a child in the manner? It didn't help that Shana had apparently tried to conduct the negotiations on her own out of a sense of responsibility, and though Yllian had tried to advise her, their situation had apparently been quite unfavorable to begin with.

Hopefully, their arrival would be able to turn the demesne's situation around… if the demesne was still standing. The black threads across the sky in front of them trailing back from the amorphous, constantly shifting mass of the dragon in the distance showed that at least one dragon had passed over since the letter had crossed the ocean to reach the company. It was far more probable that the demesne was had been abandoned in favor of the neighboring one, or perhaps even destroyed entirely by this dragon that had just passed, the core destroyed as a result.

In which case, they would either be starting from the beginning once more—not an outcome they'd want, since they would need to essentially build housing that would be able to sustain through winter and dragons and dragons during the winter—or would be reclaiming what structures had already been built… which from Yllian's report would be a grandiose dome made from still-living trees and made a few houses made entirely from a single piece of wood.

Colors, Koshay, did you even bother to think of how difficult those would be to repair without Deadspeaking?

Yhal and the other senior officers of this expedition weren't very optimistic for the demesne's survival save for Tsad, but Tsad had always been the optimistic sort. And perhaps the Deadspeaker just didn't want to think of his friend's daughter joining her parents so young. The man had been talking about how best to start teaching Shanalorre how to Deadspeak, completely in denial about the far greater likelihood that she was just simply dead.

They left him to it. After all, the man needed a way to pass the time of the preceding months, and planning simple lessons that he likely would never need to teach was harmless enough. Besides, a couple of the older children with them had already been identified to have the gift themselves, so it wasn't like the man's preparations would be going to waste.

In any case, Tsad was in the minority. Yhal and most of the other once-militia had already resigned themselves to starting once more, with the faint hope that there were enough usable structures remaining to at least shelter the children while more were made. while they had enough wizards that they could simply establish a new demesne anywhere—though along the river would still be best, since a source of fresh water was invaluable—River's Fork's old site had a convenient copper vein. Such a resource couldn't just be overlooked. Besides, it also increased the likelihood there was more copper in the surrounding area, so it was only logical that they at least tried to secure the site.

Shaking his head, Yhal turned back to everyone. "All right, that's enough staring," he said. "Finish washing up, the next shift will want their turn in the open air too."

He had to chivy everyone a few more times before they all stopped staring so longingly towards the land and got back to pouring seawater over themselves. Their time on board this boat wasn't over yet but soon…

Well, after months on this boat, simply being on land again would be a relief. He was looking forward to the relatively simple problem for having to secure ground and fortifying it so that it could support over three hundred people and their livestock. Some of the eggs they were carrying would be nearing the ends of their incubation periods. But that would be someone else's problem, since what did he know about rearing farmbeasts?