The bone that Lori would have used as an improvised tool for throwing around lightning or any other binding she felt necessary yesterday had been part of the bones extracted from the typhon abomination's corpse, and had been the equivalent of a foot bone. Claw bone? Talon bone? Whatever. On the dragon born, the bones in question had been almost the size of the arm bones of a smaller beast, and was much more pleasantly symmetrical besides. This one was about the length of Lori's forearm, and just slightly too wide to be immediately comfortable to hold extended in one's hand.

  Still, that was something she could fix later. The unmodified bone was good enough for her purposes at the moment.

  Lori's first inclination had been to anchor her aiming binding onto the bone so that the beam was parallel to its length, since it was easy to hold the bone pointed straight and parallel to her arm such that she could sight down it. It had been more in hope of an easy solution that had been overlooked than any actual confidence it would work, and to her resigned disappointment the margin for error didn't actually improve, with the line of lightningwisps that the unseen piercing light created landing a little bit away from the target. A few repetitions made the cause clear: she was aiming by aligning her eye along the top of the bone—at least, the part she could see or surmise, since her thumb was in the way—and while that seemed like a straight line, the way she held the bone to get that alignment was giving the bone a slight upward or sideways tilt.

  The beam of unseen light also started making her hand start to grow warm, which was mildly concerning. That hadn't been the case when the binding had been anchored to her staff, but then her hand hadn't actually been in the binding then.

  Well, it had been wistful optimism anyway.

  With that failure, Lori went to try and implement the idea she'd actually had. She stripped down to just the unseen piercing light, lengthening the binding so that it was the same length as the bone. Anchoring the binding to some darkwisps she'd pulled out of the legs of her trousers—deactivated, so the darkness was invisible—she anchored the darkwisps to the side of the bone, such that the unseen piercing light was as parallel to the bone as possible. It didn't really need to be perfectly aligned—the bone was merely something to hold to manipulate aiming and not what was actually being aimed—but if she could get it parallel, she would!

  In the end, she had to force herself to ignore the urge for it to be perfectly aligned and get back to actually working on it…

  …

  All right, now she was done trying to align things!

  Claiming some more lightwisps out of the air, Lori formed it to create a small point light and carefully anchored it to the part of the unseen light binding facing her as well as the darkwisps the latter binding was attached to, which was directly opposite of the direction the binding sent its light. Then she carefully cleaved the darkwisps, separating the small light from the unseen piercing light while making sure the former remained in the same relative position. Placing an identical binding of lightwisps at the other end of the unseen piercing light binding, the one facing away from her, Lori repeated the procedure, until she was left with three separate bindings anchored to the bone in her hand.

  Carefully, she activated the now-separate binding closest to her. A thin line of darkness appeared, a small light shining at the end of it. Lori winced slightly, then changed the color of the light to make it more distinctive, settling on a red just barely bright enough to be visible in the air. Nodding to herself—and remembering to imbue the bindings as she did so—Lori activated the similar binding at the opposite end. Another light appeared seemingly held up by a thin line of darkness. Holding up the bone, Lori sighted along the two lights, aligning the two with the target in the middle of the river.

  She activated the unseen piercing light, and smiled as the beam struck the darkwisp target. While not hitting the center of the darkness, it did manage to hit the binding itself. No need for adjustments, no compensating, this time she actually hit what she aimed at.

  Of course, that was just the start of the tests. She still hadn't tried this with actual lightning, after all. It was time to finally start with that…

  Her lightning didn't really produce thunder. Thunder, according to her old classes, was the result of the air that the lightning has passed through getting so hot it explodes. What she got wasn't so much thunder as a crack in the air, which didn't so much explode as puff out loudly.

  Now the river, that exploded in a quite satisfactory manner.

  She'd placed several targets of darkwisps and lightwisps along the river, and took turns shifting her aim between them and sending out lightning. Lori had a lightning ball off to one side—there was no place to safely anchor it to the bone at the moment, something she'd need to rectify later—to provide the actual lightning she was sending out. It was an arrangement not unlike the test she'd done a few days ago, which she had not yet managed to integrate into a single binding.

  Uh, that should probably be her next priority. Being able to aim lightning wouldn't be much good without proper lightning to use.

  Still, her two lights seemed to be working, although she'd made some modification. She'd given the lights different colors so she could line them up better, and made the light closer to her dimmer so it wouldn't affect her eyesight. Lining them up properly caused the colors to seemingly combine in her eyes, becoming a third color. She lined up the lights with the targets she'd placed, activated the unseen piercing light to create a line of lightningwisps in the air, then sent lightning from the lightningball binding along the line. This resulted in a bright flash as a line of lightning leapt from the binding and into the river, and an explosion of water as the lightning struck and turned the spot of the river she'd aimed at into steam.

  Very satisfactory.

  Unfortunately, it wasn't a very good binding. Lori couldn't use it very quickly since she needed to activate two separate bindings to get it to work, as well as deactivate it between uses, lest she have the unseen piercing light sweeping everywhere and confuse the path of subsequent lightning. While it would be effective against a single target, if she needed to deal with all of the wizards at once… well, she'd need something better.

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  "Having fun, your Bindership?"

  Lori had been about to take aim at another target, but upon hearing her lord's voice she paused and lowered the bone she held, deactivating all the bindings on it. The lightning ball she had to move some distance away before deactivating, the hot air and some lightning-fire inside it exploding slightly as the bindings of airwisps keeping the ball contained stopped functioning. "I will admit, it's enjoyable when it is working as intended," she said. "What is it, Rian?"

  "It's lunch time," he said, and Lori became aware that the sun was high overhead. "Figured you'd want to know."

  It was only then that her stomach informed her it was empty and wanted to be filled, preferably soon.

  Lori looked down at her bone and at bindings on it. Well, it was as good a time to stop as any, and she needed to refine her binding to be used effectively in any case. "Very well. Let's go then."

  Rian nodded, stepping aside to leave her a clear path and smoothly falling into step just a little behind her as she passed him. "So, how's throwing lightning coming along? Ready to use it to defend yourself?"

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. "What do you think?"

  He hummed. "I think you need to test if the strength of the lightning you're using is strong enough to do what you want."

  "Rian, it's lightning. I think that's enough."

  "Not for the typhon abomination. Not immediately, anyway. Admittedly, I don't know how exactly you'd test how you put enough punch in your lightning, but wouldn't you look silly trying to kill someone with lightning only for them to get up when you looked away."

  She glared at him in hatred at the point, ugh. "It's not as if we have any criminals for me to perform tests on."

  "That would be immoral," Rian said.

  She rolled her eyes. "Of course I'd only use criminals sentenced to death, Rian, what sort of person do you take me for?"

  "The kind that needs to add that sort of clarification, and still makes people nervous anyway," he said instantly. "For example, you might decide to lower the requirements as to which crimes would get someone sentenced to death."

  "Tax evasion and anything that involves children," she said instantly.

  "So that's all the parents eligible for execution…"

  "Well, maybe this will get them to treat children better instead of as a source of labor!"

  "… let's change the subject before people hear us and start getting nervous," Rian said as they stepped into the entryway of her Dungeon. "As I was saying, maybe you need a better way of ascertaining if your lightning is effective, like maybe a more durable target than water? After all, you don't need a lot of force to make water explode, a thrown rock can do it, and those aren't likely to be fatal unless you hit people in the head."

  Her hatred increased, and she grumbled wordlessly as they passed through her Dungeon's open doors and into the dining hall. "What do you suggest, then?" she said.

  "We have a couple of broken or damaged pots that we've been letting pile up before we asked you to put them back together," Rian said. "Maybe those would make better targets? After all, a clay pot takes more force to break, and if your lightning can break them…"

  "Why do we have broken pots?"

  "Accidents happen!"

  "Well, people should be more careful, then! The next person who breaks a pot is going to answer to me!"

  "Often it's the children getting pots of cold water from the cold dropping them because the pots are wet and heavy."

  "… well, it can't be helped then, accidents happen."

  Rian nodded in understanding. "Accidents happen. Still, the damage has been minimal, such that asking you to put them back together would be more efficient than making a new batch of small pots. By the way, do you have time later this week? Gunvi—the potter—has some large pots for grain storage ready and needs help with the oven."

  She waved a hand dismissively. "Give me a day's notice."

  "Yes, your Bindership. He should be ready in a day or two, he says because of the weather the more recently-made pots aren't drying very well, so some of the later pots may break in the oven."

  Lori settled into her seat, setting her bone down on the table. "Noted."

  On the short bench next to her, Shanalorre gave her a nod. "Great Binder."

  "Binder Shanalorre."

  "I have a request for your consideration."

  The words made her glance at the other Dungeon Binder. Shanalorre seldom requested anything, and most of the time they either related to the children's needs or were imminently needful. "What is it?"

  "I would like to ask permission to be allowed to return to River's Fork for the next week."

  Lori's eyes narrowed. "Why?" she said sharply.

  "Because while I have surrendered my demesne to your authority, I am still the actual Dungeon Binder bound to River's Fork's core," Shanalorre said. "As such, I will likely be afforded more recognition by the newly arrived settlers of the Golden Sweetwood Company as our demesne of origin, Lomabuyar Demesne, contains a high number of people that practice Dungeon worship. Should any issues arise as the settlers integrate into the demesne, I would be able to use the respect that my position engenders to resolve them, in your name." Shanalorre paused. "And while as the rightful Dungeon Binder of River's Fork you would no doubt also engender that respect, your presence in River's fork would put your life at risk. The period of a week should be sufficient time to settle any major matters that should arise from the settlers."

  For a moment, Lori gave Shanalorre a long, level look. Finally, she looked away. "I will consider it."

  Shanalorre gave her a nod that was also a seated bow. "As you say, Great Binder."

  Lori turned away, and started to consider how to properly integrate her lightning ball binding with the unseen piercing light binding. Unfortunately, due to the way to two bindings worked, they couldn't be combined into one. The lightning ball binding had to be active at all times, while the unseen piercing light only needed to be active when she was sure of her aim. And while her means of aiming had improved considerably, it was clear that simply anchoring everything to a convenient length of bone would be insufficient. Keeping the bone properly pointed at a target put a strain on her wrist, and she found the tip starting to rise as her muscles sought to relax.

  No, throwing lightning would need a purpose-built tool to anchor the different bindings onto. She would need at least three, since the lightning ball would be generating heat that would need to be mitigated lest she burn herself again. At the very least, she'd need to modify the bone so she could hold it steady for long periods of time without having her muscles relax and pull the binding off-center, and perhaps purpose-built points to anchor the little dots of light to help with aiming…

  She was going to need more bone. Huh, she might actually use a shoulder blade or a pelvis this time instead of limbs…

  "Your Bindership?"

  Lori blinked. "What is it, Rian?"

  "I'll be going to River's Fork after lunch to bring the mail and check on the settlers," her lord said. "Anything you want me to do while I'm there?"

  Lori raised a hand and started to dismiss the question when she paused, tilting her head. "Memorize the faces of all their wizards," she said. "I need you to be able to identify them for me."

  Rian smiled. "I was going to do that anyway, but I'm glad you thought to suggest it. Will that be all?"

  She hesitated, and restrained the urge to glance sideways. "Inform Yllian to be ready to receive Binder Shanalorre. She will be returning for the week to handle any immediate problems… within reason."

  For some reason, Rian's smile grew. "I'll tell Yllian how you mentioned him by name." He glanced at Shanalorre and gave her a nod. "I'll inform Yllian to get your house ready, Binder Shanalorre. Or would you prefer your office?"

  "My office would be preferable."

  Rian nodded. "I'll tell him. I think that's everything for now, your Bindership. Unless you need me for anything?"

  She waved her hand dismissively, leaning back as her flow of thought picked up where she'd left off. She had several bound tool cores now, could she make the unseen piercing light a bound tool so that she only needed to operate the lightning ball? It was a thought to consider…