Sword and Snow

“I guess it’s our turn to try something weird.”

With Mica’s declaration made, she slipped closer to Glenn while Cove left the field. They began whispering about something that was difficult for Emery and Avuri to hear. That sort of whispering was a very difficult trick to master, and they were both impressed.

Cultivator senses were, of course, incredibly well honed. A Cultivator could regularly and easily hear a normal whisper quite a ways away, especially if there wasn’t other noise to mask it. It effectively made normal whispering more akin to a stage whisper in most cases.

However, the enhanced hearing also allowed Cultivators to hear much softer sounds. In an attempt to retain the ability to be secretive around other Cultivators, some had developed something like a technique for extra soft whispering. It didn’t involve Qi, but was a physical technique to mask your words almost to the point that you were saying nothing. But if another Cultivator was close enough, and you were skilled in the technique, they would be able to make out the words formed despite a seeming lack of sound.

Emery knew from experience how long that skill took to master. She regularly had used it to communicate with Vale while they were undercover in various cities. It had taken her most of her early teens to get it even close. And now the skill had gone unused for so long, she wasn’t even sure she could do it correctly. Not that there was ever much cause to use it these days, when she could literally talk to Avuri without speech.

“Alright!” Glenn shouted, their conversation apparently finished. “Let’s do this.” He moved to take a position closer to the center no man’s land than before, and created a wooden club.

Emery and Avuri were preparing for Mica to toss him the ball and for him to hit it at them with the club. But instead, Mica remained slightly further back, pushing a large amount of Qi into the ball. Previously, her Qi had glowed a pristine golden yellow when she had imbued the ball - the traditional earthly color. This time the ball took on a slightly deeper, nature-like green.

“Wait, isn’t that cheating?” Cierra called from the dead zone.

“They’ve clearly mixed their Qi!” Enrik added, recognizing the wood and earth Qi color from practice sessions with Karn.

Glenn laughed. “All we said was that Emery and Avuri could use their special combined Qi. We never said they couldn’t attack together.”

“He’s right!” Mica joined in Glenn’s laughter. “Their combined Qi has multiplicative properties. I don’t mind if they join forces as long as their Qi remains ‘seperate’.”

Emery and Avuri glanced at one another with a grin. “We hear you.” They called together.

Mica didn’t like the look in their eyes, but that was fine. She was determined to take at least one of them out with this throw. Or one of the many possible follow-ups.

As she packed in the last bit of Qi she felt comfortable spending on this attack, she let it solidify within the ball. The earth Qi coalesced together within the core of the ball and took on extra weight to help the ball maintain momentum. Then a few extra layers grew around it, made of a weird material reminiscent of wood. It looked almost springy.

When Mica finally let her throw fly, Emery and Avuri both dodged to the side, easily avoiding the straight course of the ball.

“Everybody! Now!” Mica shouted, well before the ball had even made it a quarter of the way through the opposing team’s field.

Karn, Stena, Cove, and Kord, all lined up neatly in the dead zone behind Emery’s team quickly sprung into action. Cove, Karn, and Stena used a combination of their Qi to create a large wall in the deadzone, behind the back line. Kord used a little metal Qi to reinforce it against the coming impacts and generally harden the wood and stone creation.

The ball smacked straight into the new wall and bounced off. It barely lost any momentum at all - some, but not enough to make it catchable. Emery threw up pillars of metal in front of the ball, but when it made contact with them it similarly just bounced off and rebounded back to the wall, where it rebounded again, flying back toward the cousins’ side of the field.

When it crossed the no man’s land, Glenn swung his weapon, but it was no longer a club. He had fashioned it into a wide net with a handle, and the net made from thick vines. With ease, he caught the ball with it and in the same motion launched it back toward Emery. She slipped out of the way, and the ball once again bounced off of the wall in the back and back toward Glenn, who had repositioned to once again smack the ball.

This time, it was Avuri that had to step aside, allowing the ball to fly past and rebound back again. Emery once again tried to block it off with a few pillars of metal, but the ball bounced its way back to Glenn, who - for the third time - launched it back toward Emery.

Avuri created a wall of ice in front of Emery to block the ball. “Do your thing!” Avuri shouted.

Emery did exactly that, preparing to create a much larger wall of metal to trap the ball behind once Glenn hit it back again. If she trapped it between two solid walls, it should -

“Emery!”

Her line of thought was broken when the ice wall that Avuri had made to cover her shattered on the impact. By the time Emery processed that she needed to move, it was too late, and she couldn’t get out of the way fully. The ball barely skimmed her elbow, but it still touched her.

Emery sighed, looking over at the ball. “That was tricky, you assholes.”

Glenn and Mica laughed together. “We knew that eventually Avuri would try to make an ice wall to defend one of you.” Glenn said.

“And we may not be able to bust our way through the metal with that ball, but ice is easy.” Mica continued.

Avuri walked over to collect the ball while Emery hung her head in defeat. “And removing the bouncy outer covering on that last hit made it so it would hit hard instead of bounce. It was a good trick.” Emery said, as she placed a hand on Avuri’s shoulder and walked past her. She briefly touched the ball on her way by, pushing some metal Qi into it. Emery’s head was down, but that was to hide her smile.

“They’ve struck first.” She said quietly. But not so quietly that the others couldn’t hear. “I left you what you need. End it.”

“Yes, dear.” Avuri said with a smile. She turned to Elise and asked, “Just to be sure, we said there’s no real time limit between throws? Within reason, of course.”

Elise simply looked confused. “That’s what we decided on, yes.”

“And as long as we don’t combine our Qi, creating a combo is alright - like they just did.”

“Yes?” She responded again.

Most of the spectators were watching, confused as Emery walked back to the deadzone behind the cousins’ team with a weirdly large smile that she was no longer trying to hide. The expressions on Mica, Glenn, and Cove’s faces were growing slowly concerned, though.

And those expressions grew steadily moreso when Avuri moved to pull two roughly similar metal pillars from the ground. She placed the ball on the ground while examining the two metal rods.

“Avuri!” Emery called from the dead zone, “There’s two well shaped ones there and there that would be perfect.” She pointed to two semi-circular metal pieces that also were jutting from the ground. When Avuri retrieved them, she froze them together to create a perfectly formed cylinder.

“Thanks, hun.” Avuri called absently, as she carefully fixed the two metal rods she had picked earlier to the inside of the cylinder.

“Avuri…?” Mica said, sounding almost scared. “You’re not about to kill us, right?”

That got the crowd’s attention.

“We’re limited to Earth Realm techniques and no combined Qi, so no.” She glanced up to offer Mica a smile before making sure her rods were frozen in the correct place inside her barrel.

“You can even do this without any Sky Realm techniques?” Glenn asked, shocked.

“There’s no way.” Cove muttered.

“It’s a lesser version.” Avuri said while she continued to prep her cannon. “I can’t get the metal fully cold enough to really use the full potential with our Qi separated. And in this way, it’s going to cost significantly more Qi than it would if I could do it right.” Once she was satisfied with her construction, she propped it up on another piece of leftover metal and pulled the ball closer to her with her feet.

“Even worse, without Emery’s Qi I have to hold the damn thing physically, which is a pain.” Avuri complained as she began to feed Qi into the cannon, rather than the ball. She was using her cold Qi to simultaneously lower the metal’s temperature while suffusing the two pillars with as much Qi as she could manage. She also pushed a little Qi out of her foot and into the ball, just to be sure that the ball had enough resilience to survive being launched like this.

Glenn and Mica had stopped talking. Instead, they were entirely focused on building up defenses. Walls of stone and wood went up between them and Avuri. Several layers of walls. Then they each reinforced each other’s walls. They both covered themselves in a version of armor as well as a layer of protective Qi.

Avuri was waiting for them to finish. The ball floated just outside the rear end of the cannon, held aloft with ice. She knew as soon as it touched the two charged pillars - as long as it had Emery’s metal Qi spread in it correctly - it would launch.

“Are you two ready?” She called.

“I guess?” Mica called back, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

When Avuri let the ball touch the cannon, there was a huge, deep boom that seemed to vibrate the very air around everyone. And suddenly the walls in front of Mica were shattered, splintered remains laying all over their side of the field. Mica had been blown back and was laid out on the ground, her arms and legs spread wide. There was clearly damage done to her armor, so there was no question as to whether she was hit or not.

A few seconds later, Vale appeared from the trees with the ball. Evidently, he had to move further away from the back of playing field to catch this one - or it had gone by him.

Avuri was more concerned that she didn’t actually hurt Mica. She nervously did her best to look for any injuries from where she was, but was fairly confident that the version of the cannon she had used wasn’t powerful enough to actually really hurt Mica. Especially with all of her defenses in place. Glenn was already kneeling by her to check for real injuries.

Mica raised a shaky arm and waved it around, dazed, and let out a hollow, somewhat crazed laugh. “I’m okay!”