Lori walked into the unknown, armed with nothing but her map, her wits and her will, boldly going where no one had gone before, exploring the furthest reaches of the unknown!

"Put your clothes on properly and go do something productive," she said sternly to the two who been in the midst of… well. "And if I catch you two doing this again, I'm flogging you both. And take a bath!" At least they hadn't been completely naked, merely strategically moved aside certain… well.

As the young man and young woman frantically pulled their clothes into place, stumbling to leave—"Go that way, I'd rather not stumble over you again on the way back!"—Lori sighed. Twenty steps. They'd barely taken twenty steps into the woods from the cleared area where the houses were being roofed—she could still hear all the carpentry work happening behind them— before walking in on that deplorable sight, the two up against a tree and… well.

"This idea is rapidly losing its appeal," Lori muttered, then shook her head.

As she checked her map, since the surprise had mildly disoriented her, she heard her two guards talking. "I didn't know those two were getting together."

"Should we tell their parents when we get back?"

"What, and get mixed up in their nonsense? No, no, too much trouble. Her Bindership will know what to do."

"Her Bindership is likely to do nothing."

"Well, that's probably the thing to do."

"All right," Lori said, interrupting whatever nonsense the two were talking about. "This way! Follow me." She took two steps and stopped. "You two walk ahead to clear the way."

They looked at each other for some reason, but just said, "Yes, your Bindership," And began walking in the direction she indicated.

"No, a little bit more to the left…. There, that's the way," she said as she double checked the map, and proceeded to follow after them.

Rian was right, she was annoyed to find. Despite the trees, sunlight streamed through enough that she did need her hat to keep the heat off her head. After many months, the trees were alive with the sounds of songbugs, the snaps of more predatory bugs eating songbugs, and the buzzing as bugs flew through the air, eating leaves and going from flower to flower. There was the occasional rustle of leaves as small, verminous beasts barely the size of her hand darted through the undergrowth, no doubt hatched from eggs the foraging groups missed. Still, over the months, life had managed to return, insidiously sneaking its way into her demesne. Hopefully the coming winter and Rian's prediction that beasts wouldn't be able to survive the cold would take care of them. They'd managed to find plenty of eggs by the large, predatory ones that made for good eating, but they'd eaten those, those ones not far enough along to have developed. The rest they destroyed so there wouldn't be any large, predatory beasts in her woods.

Her footsteps paused as she realized they hadn't managed to do that on the other side of the river, and made a note to have Rian tell a hunting party to go there and clear them out before they became a problem. Well, at least they had a lot of former militia to take care of it now. And she'd be able to kill some too, behind a nice, thick wall of other people between the beasts and her…

Lori had the two stop a few times so she could check her map. A normal person might have gotten lost, but she was a Dungeon Binder. With the direction of the sun, she was able to get her bearings, and her awareness of the position of the core, the position of the river, and her wisps located in the aqueducts, the shelters, the bathhouses and the Dungeon gave her waypoints to orient herself again, if at a distant remove. Still, it was enough to be able to roughly ascertain where they were on the map. They were nearing the dragon scale, at least, and were only a little bit off-course, which she corrected for as she set off again, the two in front of her so she could keep an eye on them.

When she surmised she was near, she reluctantly said, "Be on the lookout, you two. We're looking for large rocks in a clearing with a shattered tree."

The two started in surprise at her voice, one nearly tripping over a fallen branch as they turned to stare at her. "Er, could you say that again, your Bindership?" Deil said.

Lori sighed, and repeated herself. "It's a dragon scale," she said. "Copper at least, maybe something else."

"Er, we don't have to carry it, do we, your Bindership?" Tackir asked nervously. "Just the two of us?"

She waved away his worries. "No, I'll be moving it. Just help me keep an eye out for it, and any other weird rocks you might find." She thought for a moment. "And if you see a hairy blueball tree or a happyfruit tree, remember where it is so people can come back to it later,"

"Yes, your Bindership," they chorused, sounding relieved.

While people had probably come this way before several times, it had likely been with the intention of looking for easily gathered mushrooms, wild vegetables, tubers, and other food, not useful rocks. Even during the clean up after the dragon's passing, they'd only really gathered the valuable minerals that had fallen near the village, so it didn't surprise her that there were still more somewhere in the woods. Possibly a few had even been found by one person or another, and had been kept quiet or hidden with the intention of coming back for it later or something, when they had finally had money in their economy and one could actually make a tangible profit from it.

It was Deil who found it, pointing towards the break in the tree cover the clearing caused. A tree had been shattered midway up the trunk, by lightning or some other phenomenon the dragon had been flinging at random, and had fallen over while still connected to the tree as if hinged. While the fallen top half was dead, the bottom half seemed to still be growing, with young supple branches bearing richly colored leaves sprouting from its bark and growing upwards towards the clear sky.

Lori frowned and checked her map. Ah, now she knew where they were. They'd gone a little bit too far to the right by her reckoning, and had missed their intended destination, though in hindsight the map had been accurate enough. This clearing with its broken tree had been marked on the map, at least, so she knew where they were. Well, she'd have wanted to come here anyway. It had also been marked with dragon scales, though there had been no indication of what kind. Just a vague note written on the side of the edges of the leather about the rock being 'mixed'.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

As promised, there were a lot of large rocks, which despite the months were still clearly out of place in the clearing. They were the wrong colors and had strangely curved shapes, like they had been liquid droplets that solidified in midair, but of enormous size. Definitely dragon scales of some sort.

"Sit," she ordered absently. "I have work to do. Don't get in my way. "

As they sat down on the edge of the rocky clearing—which wasn't all that big to begin with—Lori began examining the rocks. Copper was easy enough to identify by color even if some of it was coated blue, and iron only a little bit harder. Many of the stones were the latter. At the very least, she was able to confirm they were all metal, since both lightningwisps and magic passed through them easily, though the smiths might be able to tell for sure what kind.

There was even a small, head-sized chunk of gold—it felt lighter than it should, so it was either hollow or wrapped around something else, but it was definitely gold and not pyrite, from the heat test she did—which was something she could add to her stores. She'd have a nice stock to draw wire from when winter came.

One of the chunks that had originally been dark on the outside and brighter where she'd scratched it had even turned blue when she'd heated it to test what it was, and she'd immediately darted back and equalized the heat back down as best as she could when she saw. Fortunately, a little color change was all it did. Anatass was a dangerous metal to heat. Supposedly it had to be small amounts to ignite, but she wasn't taking chances!

After that, she stopped test heating the bright metals in case they were anything else that could catch fire. Instead, she went around, identifying all the pieces using lightningwisps. It occurred to her she'd never gotten around to Rian's suggestion of using the ores they'd collected to look for metal underground, but they'd been so busy… Even the smiths has been too busy repairing what metal they had to try and smelt the ores they'd gathered. She'd have to order them to set aside time for it. Or, well, she'd have Rian order them to do it.

Lori shook her head. This was supposed to be a restful walk collecting big hunks of mineral wealth and confirming the map. Why was she thinking about work?

She bound the earthwisps in the clearing and had them start contorting the ground to push the dragon scales together, so they'd all make one large chunk, and used the dirt under her control to push a few of the relatively smaller ones on top of the relatively large ones. Once that was done, she covered them with dirt and compressed the dirt to hold it all in place.

Nodding in satisfaction to herself, she climbed on top of the resulting compressed dirt boulder—it was far wider than it was tall, for stability and because not all of the dragon scales could be put on top of each other— and sat down with her legs crossed, then opened the map on the surface in front of her. She hummed to herself, then bound the earth under the broken tree and imbued it. She didn't make it do anything, she just wanted to mark where the tree was in her mind.

"All right you two, follow me," Lori said. "I want to get to the next spot, then we can have lunch there." Using the bound wisps at the tree, the core, and the other places in the demesne to triangulate again, she picked a direction and bound the earthwisps directly under her boulder.

The ground began to flow, and her boulder slowly began to pick up speed.

"Um, your Bindership, are you sure that's safe?" Deil said.

"Why wouldn't it be?" Lori said, just as her boulder passed over something that wasn’t earth she could bind and lurched sideways as a result. She was thrown off-balance to the side and instinctively tried to catch herself, but the boulder was too small and curved, and her hands came down too low to right herself.

Lori didn't even have time to cry out as she fell over the side of her boulder, skidding down on her side and slamming shoulder-first onto the ground, which was hard and messy with undergrowth. The boulder kept moving under its own momentum before coming to a halt.

"Ow," Lori groaned in pain. She grit her teeth and clenched her eyes as her arm and elbow screamed at having to be the first to land to protect her head, her shoulder protested loudly against this mistreatment, her side complained that it had not liked the experienced of hitting and sliding against rock and the bag of firewood she'd had at her side, and her legs gave the postscript that they hadn't liked getting dragged along behind the rest either, even if they had weighed the least and fallen the most gently. The rest of her just wanted to lay there until all the very vocal parts of her shut up about how they'd suffered.

"Your Bindership!" someone cried. "Are you hurt?"

"Of course I'm hurt, I fell," she wanted to say sarcastically. Instead, all that left her lips was another pained groan.

Why did this hurt so much? She'd fallen before, when she had been younger, and it hadn't been this debilitating. Gingerly, she tried to stand, and her limbs responded, even as the parts of her that had hit things redoubled their complaining. She vaguely heard someone swear, and it wasn't her.

Belatedly, she thought to check if she'd broken any bones, but a quick sense of all the earthwisps in her body told her they were all whole as they were meant to be. No, the pain was all in her skin and muscles and… why was her arm sticky? Wincing, she unbound the darkwisps on her and tried to get another look at the arm she'd fallen on. She saw red, and suddenly the pricking pains she felt along there made more sense. She'd fallen on something sharp, likely rocks, and cut herself.

Oh. Well, that was bad. She almost wished for the broken bone. Lori was almost certain she could mend that with wisps alone…

This however… an open, bleeding wound, right onto undergrowth… cauterize? No, that would be agonizing. Pull out all the lightningwisps in her arm and then cauterize? No, that was probably bad…

"Deil?" she said, voice shaking only slightly. "Tackir?"

"I'm here, your Bindership," she heard one of them say. "Tackir ran to get help like Lord Rian told us to if anything happened. Don't move, you might have broken something. Er, if that's all right with you, your Bindership. Please don't get mad at me."

"Nothing's broken Deil," she said. "Deil, I want you to pick me up and run me to the doctors. Now. I need to get this wound cleaned before it gets infected." It probably already was—she'd fallen on rotting undergrowth, after all—but she had to try.

She felt someone kneel next to her, tentatively try to pick her up, then pull back as she hissed. Why had she let Rian talk her into taking off her coat? It might have helped… "Pick me up," she ordered. "Don't be squeamish. I won't get angry."

"Um, I don't think I'm strong enough, your Bindership," he said, sounding upset. "I might drop you. Please don't be mad, your Bindership!"

She closed her eyes. He looked strong, but maybe that was just looks after all. "Then help me up," she said. "We'll start walking. Leave the food." She raised up the arm that didn't hurt.

This time there were no excuses. She felt two rough hands grab her hand and pull her up like was a sack on the ground, but to his credit, he immediately slung her arm over his shoulder. She got her feet under her, and though one side ached, the other didn't and she was tentatively able to put weight on that as Deil waited for her to get on her feet.

"All right," she said, wincing at the pain on her sides. She pointed with her bleeding arm, towards the core and her dungeon. "That way!"

She took a step forward. The side of her half ached like it had been struck painfully, but that was all. The leg moved as it should. Really, if the rest of her didn't ache, she wouldn't need help…

And then the bag of firewood at her side slammed onto her leg and she winced, hissing painfully. "Wait!"

He sat her down on the conglomeration of dragon scales as she used her uninjured hand to undo the buckle of her firewood bag, reluctantly letting it drop to the ground. She'd have to send someone to get it later…

Lori sighed, and resolved never to take a day to relax again, if things like this were what happened. Next time she needed rest, she'd lock herself in her room and just go to sleep, uncomfortable bed or no.

One foot after painful foot in front of the other, they headed back to her nice, safe Dungeon.