“Demesne in sight! Demesne in sight!”

  Yhallisu—Yhal to most—looked up at the cry from the lead elements of the march. They had been walking for days now, three hundred people and livestock, and so far the trail they’d been washing through the Iridescence had seemed never ending. Their progress was slow since they had so many people, many of them civilians unused to prolonged marching through the colors, but at least the river had been continuous. The barges that their carpenters and Deadspeakers had assembled for carrying their supplies hadn’t need to be carried up over any waterfalls or rapids, which had helped lighten the loads, although it meant that one of the Mentalists had to concentrate on pulling the train of barges along at all times. The other two would either be floating above the march, keeping an eye out for beasts and possible obstructions ahead, or with the forward scouts using their thought force to move obstructions that were easier to pick up and move out of the way. The expedition’s other wizards were divided among those either deeper inside the woods to discourage beasts from getting close, or those in the rear guard doing the same.

  People glanced up at the announcement, and while there wasn’t a sudden surge of people suddenly moving faster, the air suddenly seemed filled with… well, not energy. Everyone was just as ‘we hate walking’ tired as they had been before, even the militia among them who would normally think this was a casual stroll to town on a nice warm summer day. It was more like everyone became just a bit more determined to push on, to just get inside the demesne’s boundaries so that they’d be safe from the beasts and the colors.

  Distantly, he heard a high-pitched beast cry and out of habit listened intently, but fortunately there was no whistle calling for reinforcements. The Whisperers and screening forces were managing to keep beasts back from investigating the large group of walking meat that was the expedition, though the relatively low number of incidents recently so far was vaguely concerning. When they had landed and were still building the barges, beasts had come to investigate them several times, and while as experienced militia they had managed to drive the things off, they had learned beasts approaching them so casually was to be expected,

  That had changed in the last two days, with the scouts reporting a notable drop in the number of beasts in the woods around them. Normally, that would mean they were approaching the boundaries of a demesne, but given what Yllian has said, it had seemed strange, and Yhal had been expecting the bill to come due at any moment.

  He was still expecting it as he finally crossed the borders of a demesne again. Their stop in Covehold Demesne had been brief and rather cramped, as they hadn’t been allowed to step off the ship, since the locals had been afraid they would rob the storage warehouses or attempt to make off with the other ship that had been docked for some absurd reason. That had led to a miserable three days. Here… well, Yhal wasn’t the only one who let out a sigh of relief as he crossed the border into the demesne. Others began to cheer outright, and a few even collapsed onto the ground.

  “All right, none of that,” Yhal said, chivying the latter. Most of them were civilian relatives, although he recognized a few of the former enlisted among them. “On your feet, we still have a ways to go before we get to the center of the demesne where the town is. Come on, get up, get up, all of you.” He fell back on his ‘captain’ voice even if he didn’t phrase it as an order. As they were retired, all of them were equals now—otherwise he’d have a sergeant to do this—so he was relying on force of habit to do the work for him.

  There were groans, but thankfully that seemed to work, even if there was more profanity in his direction than there would have been in the militia. Fortunately, that was self-correcting as those who were married found their wive and husbands giving them grief about their language in front of the children.

  Still…

  “Once everyone’s inside, we stop for a break,” Yhal said, raising his voice so the wizards and all the former sergeants could hear him. “Let everyone have some water and check the beasts’ feet. Since we’re inside, their Great Binder must know we’re here now.”

  Despite all of them being retired, falling into the structures of the militia was a habit, especially since it helped no one die. Or at least, that was the idea. Most everyone fell back into familiar roles, although now there was no need to keep everyone busy to keep them out of trouble. Nearly everyone had families to take care of anyway, so their hands were full already.

  Yhal allowed about a quarter hour’s rest before rousing everyone to start setting up a temporary camp and prepare lunch. It was honestly a bit early for it, but they needed a way to celebrate finally reaching their goal. They still had a lot of work ahead of them, since they needed to prepare for the coming of winter, but they still had a little under a couple of blue months or perhaps most of a red month to get things ready. Yllian’s letter had said that they didn’t have enough people to do more than keep everyone alive, and had been limited by the loss of Koshay and Laven.

  Yllian had gone heavily into the details of their deaths, explaining how Koshay’s attempts to use his insane tree-dome as a means of protecting the demesne against a dragon—or trying to use it that way—had failed because the dome had contained far too many open spaces to be effective. Rather than trying to persist with something that hadn’t worked, Koshay had opted to take his own life to allow his wife Laven to claim the now-unbound Dungeon core of the demesne. As the new Dungeon Binder, Laven had maintained a protective barrier around the town that the first group had established… and had died from exhaustion, lack of sleep and, fancifully, grief soon after the dragon had finally passed over the demesne.

  It was much more likely that Laven had already been near exhaustion then even before the dragon’s arrival. That woman seemed to delight in finding things to cause herself stress and overwork. Had. Had seemed.

  And now they’d left their daughter to outlive them and follow in their footsteps as their demesne’s third Dungeon Binder.

  The lives it had cost to establish the new demesne had been the leading factor in discouraging the idea of simply starting a new demesne in another place, with many arguing it would be disrespectful to the fallen to abandon the settlement. Many had argued that there was nothing inherently bad about the location, it was simply that they’d had the ill luck to have faced a dragon while the demesne was still unprepared. The exasperation at Koshay’s priorities had been unsaid, but floated in the air like campfire smoke.

  To that end, Yllian’s letter had been invaluable in informing them of what had been successful… although usually it was because the other nearby demesne had been doing it to great effect. Their Dungeon Binder had originally been a Whisperer, and so Whispering was the most commonly utilized magic. Yllian had spoken of Whispering-propelled boats, stone buildings, an extensive system of plumbing running through the other demesne’s bedrock…

  He’d even mentioned a full-sized boat made of ice, as if someone had taken the little blocks of river ice that children carved and built it full-sized, and which somehow actually worked. Yhal would believe that when he saw it.

  As a result of Yllian’s report, the decision had been made to have as many Whisperers as possible with this second expedition. Of course, that didn’t mean they had only Whisperers, but instead of the two or three they had originally planned, they had eight that had spent at least some time working in an Engineering banner. One of them, Ghirkun, was even a blacksmith with experience building mechanisms and gears.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The number of Deadspeakers with them had been increased to six, and had been put through an abbreviated course in both carpentry and farming. They had brought only the medics who had managed to learn how to grow plants and work with dead wood. The Horotracts and Mentalists had also been increased in their number even if they had only risen from one to two and three, but the increase had already been very valuable, the Horotracts using their magic to reduce the weight of their supplies and the Mentalists cutting down overly large trees and lifting them out of the way, as well as helping the Whisperers move the barges against the current.

  Their assistance had cut down duration of the march from where the ship had set them down to a third, in comparison to how long Yllian had said it had taken the original expedition, something that Yhal intended to include in his report back to the rest of the company. While he wouldn’t say no to them sending more wizards, clearly the next group needed to be met with as many of their wizards as possible to help smooth their journey upriver…

  But that was for another time. At the moment, any further contact with the rest of the company besides mail would be to ask them to send specialized equipment, crops, or perhaps information currently unavailable on the new continent, while the new demesne would send back what sugars, furs, and distilled booze they could to help offset the costs. Of course, that would require them to successfully resettle and expand River’s Fork demesne…

  It was well into the afternoon and everyone was just finishing their early dinner—or possibly just an afternoon snack—when someone finally arrived to check up on them.

  “Yhal!” he heard Nansi Hightown—her grandparents had been foreign—call, and he had instinctively glanced up for a moment out of habit before turning to face the Mentalist. She was running from upriver, pointing at something behind her. “There’s a group coming downriver! One of them is Captain Yllian!”

  Ah, finally. Yhal wondered what had caused the delay, then remembered that the Great Binder was a child of eleven. Well, twelve now, since it had been a year. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed their arrival, or it had slipped her mind? They had arrived just before noon, so perhaps the child’s attention had been occupied by her meal or something. “About time,” he said as he got to his feet, ignoring the way they protested that with the ease of long practice. Feet didn’t give orders to officers. Nansi came to an easy stop as she came near, not even looking winded despite having just been in a dead run a moment before. “How did he look?”

  “Well enough,” Nansi said. “He seems to have lost a little weight, but not enough to imply they’re having food shortages. The others with him are looking good too.” The orange-haired woman frowned. “They’re all carrying spears though, and look like they might use them.”

  “They might just be worried about any leftover abominations,” Yhal pointed out. He knew he would be if he didn’t have a full militia to scour the demesne for the dragon’s twisted discards. “They could have beasts in here, for all we know.”

  “If there are, I should tell the screens to go back out again,” Nansi said.

  “Tell the screens to move out again,” Yhal agreed.

  Best to be cautious, after all.

  “Yllian!” Tsad greeted with a big smile. Despite not actually being fat, the Deadspeaker somehow gave the impression of being a fat, jolly tavernkeeper as he exchanged grips with Yllian. “It’s good to see you again! How are you?”

  “As well as one could be, Tsad,” Yllian said with his own smile. “Yhallisu. Xiasam. Otin. I’m glad to see you all managed to get here safely. I hope you had a boring march?”

  Otin grunted, the bearded Whisperer putting weight on the spear he used as a staff. Not that he needed it. The man was lean as a whip and hit just as hard. “Not as boring as we’d like. We ran into a flock of beasts who wouldn’t get out of our way. Tall, fat, long necks, stand up like posts?”

  “Waddlers,” Yllian said, nodding in recognition. “Best to stay well back and just let them drink their water. They finish fairly quickly.”

  “Oh, they did,” Xiasam said, the muscular man looming over everyone like a tree even with an amiable smile on his face. “It was the things that came to eat them that was the trouble. Who’s this civilian?”

  The civilian in question was a young man, wearing a well-maintained shirt and trousers. His hands were holding a branch that had one end on the ground like a walking stick, the other end in his grip like a club waiting to happen, and kept shifting his weight from one foot to another, which was what had marked him as a civilian unused to long marches. At the focus on him, he gave them a wide smile and a small wave of his hand, as if they weren’t standing four paces in front of him. “Ah, hello. I’m Rian, from upriver. Sorry for interrupting your reunion like this, but I was just in River’s Fork when Shana—”

  “Binder Shanalorre,” one of those who had accompanied Yllian, Raradina, interjected.

  For some reason, Rian let out a small sigh and visibly aborted rolling his eyes as Raradina and the other local militia all looked away from him with small smiles. “I was in River’s Fork when Binder Shanalorre informed everyone of your arrival, and thought I should do the polite thing and welcome you to the continent.” He paused a moment. “Welcome to the new continent. Try not to die, you’ll find your stay more enjoyable that way.”

  Yhal looked at Yllian in askance, wondering what the fool civilian was talking about, and found the other captain—well, retired captain—simply nodding along in agreement. “Well… thank you for the welcome, I suppose,” Yhal said. And indeed, being welcomed was a lot better than being unwelcome… but why was it by this strange civilian?

  The strange civilian in question looked around and seemed to come a realization. “Ah, I’m making things awkward, aren’t I? My apologies. Yllian, can you take care of things, then? I’ll just stand behind that tree over there, staring at how lovely, dark and deep the woods are and waiting for my cue to step back in.”

  “…I think that might be for the best, Lord Rian,” Yllian said.

  Lord Rian? Someone thought highly of themselves.

  The civilian in question nodded. “Just call me if you need me.” Turning towards them again, the man gave a genial nod and began to walk away to the tree in question, humming softly to himself. The militia around Yllian exchanged glances, and two of them broke off to follow after him, likely to keep him from finding some way to get himself killed. If there was a way to get killed while standing behind a tree, Yhal was confident a civilian would find it.

  They all waited for the man to get out of hearing rang before Otin and Xiasam finally relaxed and smiled. Tsad hadn’t even waited that long. “It’s good to see you again, Yllian. From your letter, we were worried you wouldn’t survive the winter.”

  “Oh, we got through it just fine,” Yllian said, a dry smile on the face. “It was spring when we nearly ran out of food.”

  “Well, since you’re here, I guess you got over that problem,” Yhal said, stepping forward and offering Yllian his hand. The two of them exchanged grips in greeting, followed by Otin, Xiasam and Tsad.

  “We did,” Yllian said, “although we had to make certain decisions that… well, they’re probably going to be very problematic now.” He sighed. “It would take some time to go into the exact details and circumstances that led to the decision right now, but suffice to say, River’s Fork is now under the rule of Binder Lolilyuri, the Dungeon Binder of our neighbor from upriver.”

  As they all stared at him, and Yhal could feel the distant, muted pain at the realization that another life had been lost in the claiming of this demesne. Yllian actually had the nerve to look apologetic. “I’m sorry, but it was the only way we could negotiate to get the food to feed everyone in the demesne before the crops could come in. The Great Binder did her best, but…” He shook his head. “Able management can do little against not actually having what you need to survive.”

  “Shana is dead?” Tsad said, sounding horrified—

  “Of course not,” Xiasam sighed. “The civilian just said that it was Great Binder Shanalorre who told them we’d arrived, how could it slip your minds already?” He sounded exasperated and Yhal just managed to not blush in sudden embarrassment as he remembered exactly that. “What the colors happened, Yllian?”

  “It was not a decision Binder Shanalorre made lightly,” Yllian said, “but given a choice between starving… the Great Binder—Lady Binder now, I should say—the Lady Binder decided to set aside her pride and surrender herself and the demesne to Binder Lolilyuri. Lady Binder Shana and River’s Fork are now under her rule. And… she is not pleased at your arrival. I’m sorry.”

  “Not pleased? Why?” Tsad said

  “She thinks all of you are going to try and kill her,” Yllian said. “Well, all the wizards, at least.”

  …

  Yhallisu decided he was really coming to hate this continent.

  Patreon. We also have a that needs filling! Please also leave a rating, or better yet a review, to help bump this story up in the rankings!

  The Souls-like DLC Duel Boss You Need To Git Gud To Beat Is Reborn In A Fluffy Otome Game World!'. It's about... well, it has a very helpful lightnovel title. So far, only the story trailer is up, but there are already chapters in Patreon. I'll be posting more chapters of it in SB in a couple of weeks.