Sword and Snow

I concentrated on pushing my Qi as far out as I could. It stretched a little beyond what I figured was my natural range, pushing near what I thought was twelve kilometers.

My body rebelled at the strain. I felt sick and dizzy. Thankfully, Emery and I had found a little stone overlook to hide under a good distance from the demonic sect’s camp. As Emery’s hand rubbed pleasant, comforting circles on my back I finally gave up on stretching further.

“I’m at my limit. Twelve-ish kilometers.” I said, straining through gritted teeth against the nausea. “I’m going to scout. If anything happens here, give me a good shove or hit me. It should knock me back to my body.”

I felt the reassuring pressure of Emery’s hand on my back increase a little. I guessed she was nervous. “Understood.” She said firmly. “I’ll keep an eye out while you’re gone. Good luck, Avuri. Hopefully you don’t need it.”

I smiled wryly. “I hope so too. See you soon.”

I called up my Qi and channeled it into my far-sight technique, First Snow.

My senses were abruptly ripped from my body. It always felt jarring, but this was the first time I had used the technique at such a long distance, let alone with my Qi stretched well beyond my natural reach.

The sudden shift and pulling sensation made the nausea much worse at first. But as I mentally sped along my Qi, the distance made the pulling effect last much longer. Distantly, I felt my body wretch as I ‘traveled’ through my outstretched Qi.

I had pushed my Qi out and up. The sect must have known we were coming by this point, given that the one man we fought was rescued by some presumably earth-based technique. Given we wanted to take advantage of whatever small amount of surprise we could manage, I changed how I was scouting for us.

The instant that I had felt any sort of Qi signature with my own, I pulled my Qi back in. We traveled a bit further than that before hiding under the outcropping we found. I took advantage of my First Snow technique’s ability to let me visually observe areas through my Qi, and sent it diagonally up into the sky above the enemy’s camp. While it wouldn’t be entirely safe, and could still be noticed by someone, viewing from well above the camp was certainly safer than just letting my QI flow over the whole area; that would absolutely be noticed immediately.

When I finally reached the edges of my Qi, I opened my ‘eyes’. A cold sensation hit me - a byproduct of this technique. In the spot that I chose to manifest my sight, for as long as I viewed from the spot, a light flurry of snow would fall. This high up in the air, though, I doubted anyone would notice, if it even somehow managed to reach the ground.

I directed my Qi sight downward to take in the sect’s camp. It was…honestly, smaller than I think either Emery or I would have expected. There were only a few buildings, and those were mostly large pitched tents made of cloth. A few people seemed to roam about the area, but they were clearly on alert. Their heads were all facing outward from the camp, watching the horizon. Mostly the direction we would be approaching from.

Without alerting them to our presence and scouting more forcefully with my Qi, I couldn’t get any sort of read on strength levels or anything like that. I also couldn’t see any prisoners or children from my vantage point in the sky.

What I could see was still infuriating though. There was a huge mess of blood on the ground in the center of the camp. It was hard to tell at this distance, but something about it felt ritualistic to me. It looked like it may have been shaped into some kind of Formation, though it wasn’t done cleanly.

There were also a large number of metal cages around the camp. The ones I could see into were currently empty, but there were enough cages to easily hold more than a single caravan’s worth of people.

As I took a few moments to watch the camp, I became more and more worried. Before being spirited away, the demon we fought had said we would need to hurry if we wanted to make it here before the kids were killed. And as I watched, it appeared that several of the people in the camp were doing something to the large patch of blood in the middle of the camp.

I had the sick feeling in my stomach that they were preparing for some kind of ritualistic mass killing.

And the obvious assumption was that the children they abducted would be the sacrifices.

While I lived with Emery, she had gone over many of the demonic techniques she had seen over the years - and there were many. Vale had even gone out while Emery was still young to try to interfere with demonic sects where we could. And they had filled out a fairly impressive amount of journals and notebooks with various demonic techniques they found.

Enough of them involved ritual sacrifice and bloodletting that I was comfortable in my leaps of logic. We needed to stop them sooner, rather than later, or any prisoners they had - adult and child alike - were likely in a lot of danger.

With a thought, my senses snapped back to my body. I quickly retracted my Qi to within normal bounds as well. The nausea and dizziness that pervaded my senses began to fade, which felt lovely after several minutes of fighting severe vertigo.

Emery placed a steadying hand on my shoulder and knelt down to meet me eye to eye. “Are you alright, Avuri? You still look pale, do you need a drink?”

I tried to offer her a small smile, but choked back a wretch instead. “Honestly, the thought of putting anything in my mouth right now is just abhorrent. I’ll be okay.” I said weakly.

Emery nodded, but stayed where she was to offer silent support while I recovered. Thankfully, it didn’t take too long for me to start feeling a little better. I met her eyes seriously before telling her, “I think we need to hurry. It looked like they were preparing a ritual sacrifice or something along those lines. There was a big, bloody mess in the center of the camp. It looked like it might be a Formation.”

Emery’s face darkened immediately in response, and she turned to face toward their camp. Not that she could see them from here. “Did you get a good look at the Formation?”

I shook my head briefly. “I couldn’t get that good a look from my height. The impression I got was that the Formation was messy and done rather sloppily though. I honestly thought it was just a big mess of blood at first, before I noticed that it might be shaped purposefully.”

Emery let out a low, frustrated growl. “It’s likely that they’ve repeated the ritual so many times that all the blood coagulated over the original Formation and made it look that way. I’ve seen that before.”

I nodded. “That makes a twisted sort of sense. They also have a large number of empty cages, and I couldn’t see any obvious non-sect people. They’re also actively watching this side of their camp. The other directions are watched too, mind you, but not as heavily.”

I paused a moment before adding, “I think they may have expected us to take longer to arrive? From what I could see, they were actively preparing the Formation for something, but they didn’t appear to be in a huge hurry.”

Emery looked like she was thinking about that as she stared into the distance. “I don’t know if that’s a good or bad sign.”

“Me either.” I said in agreement. “But ultimately, I saw four large cloth tents, eight large empty cages, the blood Formation, and seven sect members moving around. I did not see the demon we fought earlier.”

Emery nodded, taking in the numbers. “That’s not many people, all things considered.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” I said, nodding. “Some were moving in and out of the tents on occasion, so I don’t know how many others may have just been inside while I watched, but I can’t imagine that there’s more than fourteen total.”

“Doubling the number of those working outside seems like a reasonable assessment. And we’ve got no idea how strong any of them are given our inability to scout them physically.” Emery was muttering to herself at this point. Then she snorted. “This isn’t looking great for us.”

I laughed, in spite of the whole situation. “Nope. Not even a little.” Emery joined me with a chuckle for a moment, as we tried to lighten our moods.

“There’s enough people there - and tightly gathered - that I don’t know if surprise will be all that helpful.” I said, thoughtfully. “Maybe it would be a good idea to run by, get them all within my range. Let me get a sense of their numbers and which Realms they’re all in. They’ll know we’re nearby, but we can make our decision to engage or not after that.”

Emery considered the idea, then made a sour face. “You’re right, that should be the move.” She said finally. “I don’t like the idea of running, but if they have too many Sky Realm fighters among them, we may not have a choice.”

I nodded gravely. “I don’t want to leave any people behind either, Emery. But throwing our lives away in an effort to save people when there’s no real chance to do so isn’t helping anyone.”

Emery grimaced, but nodded. “You’re right. Are you ready to move?” She said, glancing back at me over her shoulder.

I took a deep breath, feeling myself for any remaining nausea. “Give me two or three more minutes. That nausea ran deep, and the last thing we need is me making a silly mistake because we jumped in too early by seconds.”

We were running our hardest tangentially to the camp when my Qi began to finally flow over it.

“I’ve got it. Keep running.” I said, focusing on what I could feel through my Qi. As I worked my way through the bodies I sensed, I spoke aloud.

“I think I’ve got everyone directly around the camp. Nineteen total bodies.” I paused for a moment, pushing my senses a layer deeper. “Three Sky Realm. Six Earth or lower. Ten people are tied up in one of the tents. Eight of those are kids.” I droned, my focus entirely on my Qi senses.

“I…don’t think the demon we fought earlier is there. There’s no obvious demonic Qi, other than what’s coming from the Formation. No doubt it’s a Formation now, the Qi is overflowing from it.”

“What do you think? Are three Sky Realm Cultivators something we can handle?” Emery asked, an odd lilt to her voice.

“Something tells me that you’re pretty confident that we can do it.” I said in response to her tone.

“Not confidence.” She said; and this time, I heard her voice break slightly. “Three just isn’t enough to run from. As long as we’re careful about this.”

“Right. If you want to go in, I’m with you. To the end.” I said resolutely, as I pulled my Qi back to my body.

Emery turned to meet my eyes then, and I saw the fire burning there. As well as a huge well of trust hiding behind that. “We start the fight just outside the walls. Try to lure as many of them into a smaller fight first and isolate them wherever we can.”

“Try to pick them off individually wherever we can before the brawl really starts. Got it.” I said with a nod. “I’ve got your back, Emery. Trust me.”

“I do.” She responded, and then turned to angle in towards the camp.

With a deep, steadying breath, I followed right behind her.