Kolinh's suggestion to deal with the beast was to lay a trap. A pit filled with spikes, or simply gather piles of Iridescence ready to be set on fire—an idea that Lori found both horrifying and dangerously pragmatic—which would be set alight once the beast was near enough to ignite the Iridescence growing on its own body.

"Given the situation, we don't have the days it would normally take to track the beast and learn it's habits," Kolinh said.

"But we do have the time it takes to gather that much Iridescence?" Lori said flatly.

"It won't take that long, Great Binder. We'd simply need to scrape all the nearby trees and scoop it up off the ground. The summer's heat has been making them grow to be very thick."

Lori shuddered at the thought. "You say this will be best for dealing with the beast quickly?"

Kolinh nodded. "Yes, Great Binder. However, there are still dangers. We will need a way to lure the beast towards the trap, whatever the trap may be, and building the trap will likely be dangerous, as we'd need to build it near enough to the beast's territory that it might be drawn to us while we do so."

"Should I just assume that every part of dealing with this beast will be very dangerous so it doesn't need to be repeated?"

"That would probably be for the best, Great Binder."

Lori sighed. "Would we even be able to dig a pit trap deep enough, quickly enough, to be useful without taking so much time that it would be more efficient to simply switch to sending food to River's Fork?"

"With sufficient manpower, it should be possible, Great Binder. Either that, or…"

She gave him a flat look as he trailed off. "Or?" she prompted.

"You could excavate the hole yourself, Great Binder."

Lori simply stared at him. Eventually, she said, "Moving on. How would we lure it to any trap that we set up?"

"Blood and fresh meat of some sort would be best, Great Binder. Kill a seel or smaller beast and leave it where it can be found. With the area vacated by other beasts, it should be the only one that will be drawn to the smell." Kolinh paused for a moment, as if remembering something. "Though it would be best to set the trap and the bait near the river, Great Binder. A beast of the size reported would need to drink no matter how much the feeling stings, especially in this heat."

That… made sense. If the heat was bad for her, it must be terrible for the beast, who wouldn't have the option of jumping into the river to cool off with burning agony as the Iridescence was washed off its body and the spots where the crystals had pierced through its skin were opened. She remembered reading somewhere that beasts didn't sweat, instead panting and fluffing their feather to release body heat.

Shaking her head, Lori focused on the now. "So. We set a trap for it, and lure it in with fresh meat. How do we make sure the trap kills it?"

Kolinh visibly hesitated as Riz turned her head, seemingly looking at something far to the side.

In the middle of the two, Shanalorre said, "While igniting a pit of kindling and Iridescence would no doubt be damaging, there is no guarantee that the beast will be fatally caught in the blast, and it would be extremely dangerous for the one who would ignite the fire. Spikes would probably be effective, but making and installing them would take time, and a beast is unlikely to simply fall into an open pit. The most effective trap would likely require your involvement. A sufficiently lethal binding would allow the beast to be killed after being drawn by the lure, and would not require overt physical construction that would put people in danger for extended periods of time as they labored to construct it. And anyone in both demesnes would gladly give their life to keep you safe should the beast appear while you are preparing the trap."

Lori stared at the other Dungeon Binder, who stared back as the other two with her looked away.

"I will consider your proposal," Lori said, getting to her feet. "If there's nothing else, the three of you are dismissed for the evening."

She lingered for a moment, waiting, but they also said nothing, so she turned and headed back to her room.

Then turned around to tuck her chair into place at the table so that people wouldn't run into it. Then she headed back to her room.

––––––––––––––––––

In the privacy of her own room later that night, Lori very, very seriously considered the merits of simply… not doing anything. While they couldn't make more defined plans to deal with the beast whose very presence had made all other beasts vacate the vicinity of River's Fork, they had the general outline of one, which was to find it, find a way to contain it to a small area and have Lori set it on fire or hit it with lightning until it died, possibly from the safety of the branches of a tree.

…

Put like that, it sounded both very simple and extremely dangerous. They didn't know where they'd be encountering the beast, and the idea of 'containing' it if it was as big as described was laughable to consider with the equipment they had on hand. A koncallos, according to what she'd read, weighed an average of two taugrain of heavy muscle, could chase down anyone on foot, and tear someone in half in a single bite.

Oh, bad stories involving random idiots finding Dungeon Cores and somehow becoming the most powerful Dungeon Binder in existence made it seem they were easy to kill with but a wave of the hand and a flash of lightning, but they weren't. More serious novels whose protagonists had ran and hidden from koncallosi had taught her why these beasts were so dangerous. Their flesh was too thick to cut quickly through with a water cutter, and they moved too quickly for such a stream to be concentrated long enough to go through flesh, much less cut through enough to be debilitating. Their feathers were a covering that would act as an ablative layer against fire and firewisps, even with the Iridescence no doubt growing on them being dangerously volatile. Those same properties also made them difficult to kill with handheld conventional weapons.

For the first time, Lori seriously began to reconsider the merits of having other wizards in the demesne. If they had some other wizard, any other wizard…

A Horotract would have been able to enact the plan of trapping it in a pit. A Deadspeaker—well, a Deadspeaker other than Shanalorre—would probably be able to use the many parts of skeletal remains to make some sort of undead that could occupy the beast's attention, or alter trees to be able to cage or trap the beast. A Horotract and a Deadspeaker could probably combine their efforts and kill the beast instantly… and while she would normally be very and rightfully concerned about such a capability being used on her, at the moment she couldn't help thinking it would be a wonderful solution to her current problems. A Mentalist would probably be able to use a formation to hold a beast completely still long enough for them to manually shove a spear into its eye and into the brain. And a Whisperer… well, they wouldn't be able to do anything Lori couldn't do herself, but the important point was that they would be doing it instead of Lori!

She didn't have to do it. Putting herself in that sort of danger had not been any part of her agreement with Shanalorre, and the discussion had made it clear that while it would cause added difficulties in future—and possibly require her to make a new boat—they could quite easily ride out this difficulty with the resources they had at their disposal. Also, there was no large beast disrupting hunting around her primary demesne, so they should still be able to continue as they have been, even withdraw the hunter who'd agreed to take up partial residence in River's Fork to oversee the hunting there and allow him to come back home. Then Rian would arrive and…

…well, they'd probably need to reexamine the decision of focusing their efforts on killing this beast, but she'd have Rian to help plan that now, and she trusted him to make optimum decisions.

But… the only choices Rian would have to decide between would be continuing to leave the beast be and trying to subsist with their current resources… or try to kill it with those same resources.

And try as she might, she couldn't see what Rian could possibly add that would make what they had at hand even more capable of killing a beast large enough to make other beasts avoid it. Yes, by the time Rian returned he'd might be coming back with one, possibly two—there had better not be three!—Deadspeakers, but that didn't mean they'd be able to contribute… much less be trustworthy!

No, if they waited for Rian to come back, all they'd have was Rian and maybe the men who'd gone with him to Covehold Demesne. The newly recruited settlers and any family they had would be of questionable reliability and motivation, and unless Rian secretly had some sort of past experience trying to put down koncallosi out in the colors, they would be relying on the experience of those who'd been militia for the planning and strategy of dealing with it.

That meant that now was as good a time as any to try to bring it down.

…

Lori didn't have to do this. She didn't want to do this, hunting down a large, predatory beast that was reportedly injured and therefore in pain and likely more aggressive than usual. She could simply order Kolinh and the militia to try and kill it without her. They'd understand why she wouldn't want to commit herself to this kind of hunt. It was extremely unsafe. No one would question her if she didn't include herself in the attempt to try to deal with the beast. After all, she was the Dungeon Binder. If anything happened to her, the demesne would collapse, and the only one capable of claiming her core and restoring the boundaries of the demesne was Shanalorre… who didn't know where Lori had hidden the core and would have difficulty reaching it if she was told. Rian would have to tell her. She was fairly certain he remembered where it was. He remembered things like that.

…

She wanted to tell herself it was too soon to make some kind of decision on this. After all, the hunters wouldn't be taken down to River's Fork to find the beast's tracks and locate its den until tomorrow. She had plenty of time to make her decision.

But she also knew that no matter how much time passed, her options were unlikely to change. Either she risked her life to deal with this beast decisively… or she had to start building one or two new boats, and commit her demesne to an extended period of delivering food to River's Fork as they adapted to the displacement of the local beasts, possibly straining both demesnes supplies.

There was, she supposed, the option of just transferring the population of River's Fork to her demesne and leaving only a small group of people to tend to and harvest the fruit trees they had an interest in… but since no one in the demesne seems to have so much as inquired about the possibility, it was clear they didn't want to leave for whatever inane reason. And if she did transfer them, that was an equally distasteful result. She'd have to build more new houses, expand their infrastructure, and it wouldn't change the fact they'd need to increase their food stocks to accommodate the increased population… a population that had already proven to have elements that were undisciplined, disruptive malcontents among their number, as well as people who continued to allow such behavior to continue.

So either she'd be spending more of the summer building things and making all the infrastructure she'd already built in River's Fork go to waste, one way or another… or she could risk her life, and by extension the existence of the demesne, in trying to kill this beast.

…

It was a very difficult, aggravating decision.

And as such, best she made it quickly so she'd have as much time as possible to make the preparations for mitigating the difficulties presented by her options.

Unfortunately, she knew what she would choose, even if she didn't want to.

After all, despite how much she wanted to shirk them… she had her responsibilities.

She would simply have to keep herself as safe as possible.