Sword and Snow

I learned quickly that Emery was not kidding. Vale was, indeed, a terrible match up for both of us, and it only took one round of practice to see how clearly outmatched we had been.

And we were going to be moving into round four.

Even using my expended range to my advantage and avoiding fighting Vale up close, his flames countered my ice at every turn. Any sort of distraction I could offer lasted, at best, a second, and never two.

Emery could feasibly make use of distractions that were that miniscule, but we weren’t coordinated enough to pull that off. Not yet, at least. Instead, Vale easily shrugged off Emery’s onslaught, all while removing any distractions I could throw at him.

In the third round, I had gotten frustrated and launched all out attacks at him, too. His fire Qi had burned away my Snowflakes and had even reduced my Blizzard Dragon to nothing more than a light flurry of snow.

I knew that this wasn’t indicative of an even fight, to be fair. His Qi just severely outclassed mine in almost every respect. Emery hadn’t told me what Realm Vale was actually in, but based on his Qi’s density and strength, he was at least well into the Heavenly Realm, if not perhaps even the Celestial Realm.

I slowly got to my feet, still in thought. Emery and I had been taking short meditation breaks in between rounds to recoup our spent Qi. I had tried to formulate some kind of plan during each break, but nothing really came to me.

Emery stood beside me, her own meditation seemingly finished.

“Any ideas?” She asked me at half volume. It felt right to be somewhat secretive about the conversations, but Vale could almost certainly hear us no matter how quietly we spoke.

“Nothing.” I said with a long suffering sigh. Each of us unfurled our Domains, letting our Qi suffuse the area. As before, Vale’s Domain actively pushed against mine, overwhelming it to make space for his own, while I made space for Emery’s Domain.

The feeling that each point of contact gave off was strikingly different. It took some effort to fight against Vale’s Domain from simply overrunning my own, and I had to keep a portion of my concentration focused on that task throughout the fight.

In direct contrast, wherever my Domain made contact with Emery’s felt calming, almost. I couldn’t put a word to it, but similarly to when we had our Qi connected during Dual Cultivation, wherever our Domains met felt almost as if both Domains were content to touch. Almost as if it were natural.

If nothing else, it took no real effort to allow Emery’s Domain to exist within mine, nor did it appear that Emery needed to concentrate to keep her own Domain active against mine.

That was, at least, a small blessing during this terrible fight.

“Ready?” Vale asked. We took our stances, then nodded.

He was on us in an instant. Emery immediately stepped up to try to contain him wherever possible. She was actively using more floating weapons than I had ever seen her command up until now, with at least twenty blades swirling around her like a hurricane. Between her floating swords and her arms and legs, she did her best to match Vale and keep him contained.

It was a losing battle. As she had said, he knew all of her tricks and forms, and would bait her into specific patterns and capitalize on their weaknesses. I had suspicions that it was all on purpose, to try to break Emery out of her tendency to react without thought, and rely on her body’s trained responses to certain attacks.

It was something I had noticed during our own matches as well, though I wasn’t fast enough at hand to hand fighting to use it to my advantage. But Emery would often react the same way when attacks came at certain angles, or relied on similar patterns in her own attacks. My Qi control, which I had long built up to be adept at sensory input, was actually very good at reading attacks like that. My body just couldn’t keep up.

And to her credit, allowing her training to run her body through practiced motions like that made Emery viciously fast and brutally efficient. But if an enemy could read those patterns and react in time like Vale could, it left her in trouble.

I did put my combat assessment abilities to the best use I could manage in our fights. I interfered with Vale wherever I could. A patch of ice on the ground where he was about to step to make him loose footing. Flash-freezing a limb as he swung at Emery to try to throw off his rhythm. A Dancing Snowflake interposed itself to take an attack for Emery.

For as little effectiveness as my skills had against Vale’s dominant fire Qi, the tiny inconveniences were the only thing keeping Emery fighting as long as she was. Without my support, I was sure that these fights would last seconds rather than almost two minutes.

Invariably, Emery would tire from barely breathing over such intense fighting and would get caught out by Vale’s superior skills and strength.

As I could see Emery beginning to flag, I tried to compensate by throwing more support behind her. I parried two different blows that would have otherwise struck her jaw, and I could see the realization on her face immediately after that she would have just lost right there. Her fervor seemed to redouble as her emotions flared.

At the same moment, I felt a twinge in my Domain where it touched hers. The feeling was indistinct at first, and I was hesitant to focus on it rather than focus on supporting Emery. I was sure she would crumble under Vale’s assault if I slipped up.

Then I felt Emery’s focus slip. Her emotions flared as she got frustrated and I saw her lash out with a practiced combination of strikes that I recognized.

Vale recognized it too, and immediately capitalized on it, putting Emery on the ground with a well placed leg sweep.

I was too stunned to do anything about Vale’s offense though, caught completely off guard when I clearly felt Emery’s frustration boil over. It didn’t come as words or anything so distinct, but her willfulness to get through Vale’s guard had come through loud and clear, as if I could feel her thoughts.

In that moment of frustration, Emery’s Domain had reached out and connected with mine in a way similar to the way we connected during Dual Cultivation.

It wasn’t quite the same connection. It didn’t come with all the intense emotional overload that came with the Cultivation link. It was more subtle than that, somehow.

As Emery came to her senses after getting knocked on her ass and her emotions settled, her Domain began to let go of mine. With little effort, I latched on to the connection she had established, and held tightly, strengthening whatever the connection was.

Our Domains both seemed to fuzz around the edges wherever they made contact, then interwove with each other. It was as if they were connected by a gradient that faded from one to the other where they touched, rather than the harsh divide between our Domains with Vale’s.

I was pretty sure we could both feel something click into place, as Emery suddenly stopped, and her head snapped to me, confused. Vale’s head cocked questioningly, then something seemed to dawn on him. A huge, vicious looking grin split his face.

“No rest this time.” He said, walking away from Emery and back to his starting place. When he reached his spot, he turned toward us hungrily. “Again.”

Operating entirely on feel, as I had no idea how this worked, I urged Emery to get up in my head. I willed it as hard as I could.

She stared at me, completely dumbfounded, sitting on her butt. The confused, absolutely gobsmacked look on her face made me laugh.

“Get up and come here, Emery.” I said aloud. “I think things just got interesting.”

She still looked stunned as she stood, but her face slowly turned contemplative as she walked toward me. She looked like she was concentrating very hard on something.

Then I felt impressions come through the link again. I felt a strong urge from her - she was going to punch me.

When she approached me, her body suddenly exploded into movement. If she hadn’t basically already told me she was going to hit my left shoulder, I would never have been able to react in time. But I did, and I caught her hand with mine.

Her eyes went wide for a moment, as what was happening really dawned on her. Then a slow grin crept over her face. I was pretty sure mine matched.

“I think we may have just found the beginnings of an edge.”

“We did.” I said, matching her grin. “It’s going to take some work, but I think we can make this work.”

Emery rolled her shoulders and made a show of excitedly cracking her neck. “I can take a few more rounds of beatings if we can straighten whatever this is out..”

We turned and faced Vale together, who responded by punching one hand into his other palm. Both fists sprung alight with fire Qi, and he smiled at us over the flames.

I felt Emery’s sudden fear come through our tentative connection as she muttered, “Please don’t let those hit me without some ice Qi in the way.”

“I promise nothing.”

‘Left!’

I screamed into the connection, as I saw one of Vale’s attacks coming from that direction. Emery reacted so fast, that I wasn’t even sure it was a conscious reaction. One of her floating weapons moved to intercept the attack, as quickly as if I had moved it myself.

‘Right foot, slip. Left arm, ice.’

I wasn’t sure what kind of signals Emery was receiving, but short forceful thoughts seemed to be best. Sure enough, as my ice appeared under Vale’s right foot, Emery moved to hook her foot behind his ankle and pull him further off balance, using the ice to her advantage. The ankle pick came out almost at the same time as the ice did. It successfully pulled Vale off balance, as he pulled his left fist back to throw a hook at Emery.

His forearm, as I had called, suddenly froze, encased in ice. In the instant it took Vale to melt it with his fire Qi, Emery struck forward with a sword. We were getting much closer to matching our timing perfectly. This time, Emery managed to sneak in an attack during the slight window that I had given her, and had nearly made contact.

It was one of the closest attacks all day.

The fight continued from there. And it continued for more than two minutes.

When Vale finally made a decisive blow and nearly knocked Emery out cold, he finally called the end of the fight. I rushed over to make sure she was alright.

My hands trailed around Emery’s body, assessing for any damage as Vale laughed heartily. “Eight rounds!” He shouted, arms spread wide. “Eight rounds, and the two of you have nearly managed to land a hit on me!” He continued to laugh.

“We still haven’t though.” Emery muttered as she spit out a bit of blood. “I think I cut my cheek on a tooth when you punched me.”

My hand swung up to her cheek, warm, healing Qi already flowing through it, as I continued to look her over for other minor injuries.

“I didn’t expect the two of you to meld your Domains so quickly.” Vale said, thinking aloud. “If you train to fight like that, you’ll both be incredibly dangerous. Especially with your individual strengths, I’d dare say you’d be a threat to just about any Sky Realm Cultivator out there. At least in a two-on-one scenario.”

“We’re still not quite fighting as well as we could be.” Emery said, working out her jaw as I continued to run soothing Qi through it. “Avuri’s callouts are fantastically helpful, but I still don’t react quickly enough. And taking the time to make sense of weak impressions is a loss of moments we can’t always spare.”

“There were several moments during those fights where I felt your emotions, Emery. And they were clear as day. If we can learn to communicate effectively that way, like a shortcut without words…it’s our best bet.” I said.

Vale nodded. “I’ve seen multiple partners who fight together, using melded Domains to their advantage like that. With practice, you’ll be able to send everything from complex sentences to raw emotions and will over the link. With enough trust, you can even feasibly control each other’s bodies.”

I raised an eyebrow at that, and Emery shivered. He just looked at us curiously. “I can’t say if you’ll ever get to that point, but I’ve met two other pairs that do it on occasion. It’s an incredible skill when it works.”

“Well,” Emery said, poking the inside of her cheek with her tongue, feeling for damage. “I think we’ve found exactly what we should train ourselves on for the next week.”

I nodded resolutely. Emery returned the nod, then looked back to Vale.

“Then, we go hunting.”