Sword and Snow

I watched in awe from the back line as Emery danced.

There was no other word for it. She moved from enemy to enemy, weaving masterfully between strikes as though she knew exactly how to avoid each one. Even knowing that I was directing her and telling her where attacks were coming from, she moved like she didn’t need to think about it.

I had never seen anything like it, and it was immensely beautiful.

Less than a minute into the fight, and Emery seemed to find her rhythm. Her movement was so fluid that it looked almost like well-planned choreography.

Then her weapons appeared.

It took seconds for her to cut down practically all of the Earth Realm Cultivators. With only two remaining, the Sky Realm Cultivator yelled at them to attack me instead, as I was clearly interfering enough to be a major problem.

With all of my focus on defending Emery, I felt a quick spike of fear as one of the demonic Cultivators charged toward me. I readied to defend myself, but they suddenly dropped, Emery’s flying swords sticking out of their back like so many arrows.

With the immediate threat down, I focused back on the only remaining enemy we could see: the Sky Realm Cultivator. They had prepared some kind of stone and dirt armor with earth Qi, and it looked both dangerous and highly defensive. Their feet were even solidly planted and attached to the ground by more dirt and rock.

As Emery neared them to attack, a pulse of demonic Qi erupted from them. It seemed to infuse their armor, warping it into something more demonic and twisted. It looked dangerous.

‘Be careful.’

When Emery struck, her blade snapped, and her flying swords all bounced off the armor harmlessly. As I saw the enemy wind up a swing, I immediately willed Emery to retreat. The giant bludgeoning fist swung faster than I had expected, and Emery just narrowly avoided it. The force of the swing was so immense that I felt a breeze ruffle my robes.

I watched as Emery reforged her sword, this time into the glowing white of her demonic purification technique. This time, when they clashed, I saw her blade sink into the opponent’s gauntlet, cutting cleanly into the demonic-Qi-infused stone.

They parted again, then Emery moved in for what looked like she intended to be a fatal blow.

As she closed the distance, the demon’s stone armor lost the red coloring, turning fully black. Emery’s blade was stopped dead against the newly altered armor.

I panicked, seeing the wind up for a kick in response. I willed Emery to retreat as strongly as I could as I sent Snowflakes hurtling in for defense.

Even reacting instantly, it was nearly too late. I saw two of her swords flying in to try to block the attack. Thankfully, my Snowflakes were close enough that I was able to get one in the way of the kick fast enough.

A stone spike on the armor’s greaves had managed to slip between Emery’s defensive sword wall, but crashed into a Snowflake. The point of the stone cleanly pierced the center of the Flake, but didn’t penetrate far enough to make it to Emery’s side. I sighed in relief, then felt a signal from Emery.

‘Defend me.’

While inwardly cursing as I watched Emery close her eyes to focus, I brought my Qi to bear against the demonic enemy. They were slowly trudging toward Emery. I froze their armor to the ground several times to slow their advance, while conjuring more Snowflakes for defense. I sent them out to form a wall in front of Emery as I watched her Qi-made jian bubble and warp in her hand.

The demon crashed through my Snowflakes with some effort, but not enough to buy any real time. I dashed closer while pulling in my Domain somewhat to strengthen it by condensing it. With a scream of effort, I forced a solid block of ice to appear, encasing the demon in it. I knew it wouldn’t hold for long, given I couldn’t actually freeze their body, only the air around them. It was the same reason freezing an enemy’s limb wasn’t as damaging as it implied. It was technically just forming ice around the limb.

As the demonic Cultivator called up rock to crack and break the ice, I pushed my Snowflakes into place to stop some of the rocks, but the raw bludgeoning force still got through and cracked the ice. I was only able to hold the monster for around a minute.

But it appeared to be long enough.

As the demon broke their upper body free of the ice, Emery darted in, her sword mid swing.

I briefly saw the sword before it made contact. It was still glowing white, but it was distorted slightly, and not as bright. It wasn’t until her swing traveled completely through the torso of the demonic Cultivator and appeared from their body on the other side that I could clearly see the fuzzy, distorted look that Emery had said made it intangible.

The instant I felt the blade pass through the armor, I mentally switched off part of the intangibility effect I had layered into the jian. A small section of the blade cut through the middle of the demon’s torso. I felt it rip through muscle and bone.

With some luck, I would have cut the spine - or perhaps even their Core - but my technique was very haphazard and not well controlled. I had no idea exactly which part of the blade was tangible, before I flipped the switch once more, allowing the whole blade to exit the demon’s body and armor.

There was a moment where I wasn’t sure it had worked. Their entire head was encased in stone, so I had no way to gauge a facial reaction.

But after a moment had passed, I clearly felt their Qi waver and die. With their legs still trapped in ice, the black stone seemed to lose whatever force was holding it up, and it collapsed on itself, as if the armor had no one holding it up.

I supposed that was more or less true.

Avuri ran up to me then, holding her hands up in defense against the stone-clad demon.

“I think they’re dead.” I said, taking the short moment of safety to catch my breath. “Or at least not a threat.”

Avuri kept her hands up, her Snowflakes floating close at hand just in case, as she spoke. “I hope so. The last thing we need is to be attacked from both sides.” She nodded her head toward the rest of the camp. “We should move. There’s still two Sky Realm Cultivators left, and then ten people needing help. As long as we make it in time.”

I nodded resolutely, turning to move into the camp proper. Avuri moved quickly behind me, keeping an eye on the defeated earth Qi Cultivator for a while before we eventually made it out of sight. Thankfully, they did not move.

As we moved into the main center of the camp, we kept ourselves ready for any sudden attacks or traps. It wasn’t a huge concern, given we could both feel the two remaining enemies in one of the tents, but they could still try to surprise us.

I sent Avuri a silent plea to protect me through our Domains. She looked at me and nodded before posting up between me and the tent where our remaining quarry was.

And I turned my attention to the massive bloody Formation on the ground.

I only had passing knowledge of demonic techniques. Most were passed from teacher to student through word of mouth alone, and they were often very specific to each group that studied them. It was exceedingly rare that more than one demonic sect used even similar techniques, let alone the same one.

And in typical fashion, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what the monstrosity before me could or would do. What was obvious to me was that it was currently inert. From a lack of fuel or some other reason, though, I couldn’t say.

Before I could really do anything of importance with the Formation, our last two enemies began to move. My attention snapped toward the tent they were moving from, and I leapt to stand in front of Avuri while silently willing her to back up. I figured the message was received when she took several steps back to make some space.

I took a deep, focusing breath as the last two demonic Cultivators strode confidently from their tent. They had already unleashed their Domains earlier, as soon as they had felt ours I imagined, so we wouldn’t have that advantage in this fight. It would be on relatively even terms - a two on two with roughly even power scales.

Before you factored in any demonic Qi boosts, anyway.

And as they ducked to push the tent flaps aside to walk into the campground’s center, my breath caught in my throat. Both Cultivators were simultaneously stunningly beautiful and terrifying all at once. I had never seen Cultivators that I felt so comfortable calling demons. I also felt as though I had a pretty good idea of what the Formation may do.

On the left was a tall, lean man. He had the look of a classical Cultivator, all prim and proper, right down to the pristine red and black martial artist robes and long, straight black hair. He had a beautiful face with piercing red eyes that matched the coloring of his robes.

The whole appearance, however, was also marred by numerous demonic traits that made him appear rather terrifying. He had horns protruding from his forehead that gave off an eerie red glow. His eyes were vertical red pupils floating in pitch dark sclera, with red veins emanating from his eyes out around the sides of his head. Perhaps most striking of all was the thin scaly tail that wrapped around his waist like a belt, but clearly moved under its own muscles.

The woman on his left was just as imposing. My eyes drifted first to the absolutely massive stone hammer that she carried slung over a shoulder as though it didn’t weigh several tons. But as I finally took in the rest of her form, I was no less struck by her than the man. She, too, had a lovely face as well as a well-shaped body befitting a traditional Cultivator. Her robes were a brown and green mix, evoking earth and wood.

She also had horns, but unlike her male counterpart, they came from the sides of her head and angled forward, framing her face like a pair of bull horns. Her face was impeccably adorned with makeup, right down to a smokey eye that made her dark sclera appear extra large, framing smaller, glowing yellow cat-like pupils.

The woman smiled. “It seems we have a few pests, Auban. Whatever shall we do?”

The man frowned slightly as his red eyes scanned Avuri and me. “They killed Meral, Eozia. We should be at least marginally careful.”

Eozia tutted in response. “You’re no fun.” As she turned to look back at me, I felt a sudden spike of danger.

I screamed ‘Get back!’ at Avuri as strongly as I could through our connection. All of my will went into it as I prepared for the attack that I was sure was coming. I had a brief moment to inwardly sigh in relief as I felt Avuri leap away before Eozia was upon me.

And it was instant. I barely saw her move before her smiling face was centimeters from mine. As I prepared to defend myself and move away from her, she just laughed in my face.

Then I felt Auban’s Qi crackle to life. The air around us seemed to come alive for a moment, and I heard a loud crack. The dirt beside where I had stood a moment before suddenly exploded, showering the area with dirt and gravel.

Lightning. The fucker had lightning.

“You missed.” Eozia teased, her voice ringing out in a pleasant sing-songy tone.

Auban sighed. “You got in the way. And as much as I would love to fry you, it would be counterintuitive to kill you right now.”

The woman laughed again, as she hefted her hammer. “Fine. Kill me after we’ve killed them, yeah?” She said, her tone still light and carefree. “In the meantime, let’s have some fun.”