Sword and Snow

After leaving Emery to recover, I quickly moved toward the tent that held the prisoners. I kept my Domain active and in touch with Emery’s just in case, though I didn’t expect to need it active for this.

When I had first scanned the area with Qi, I had felt a total of ten people tied up in the tent, eight of which were children. A quick scan before stepping through the flap of cloth used as the door told me the situation hadn’t changed.

As I stepped into the tent, I quickly took in my surroundings while prepped for a sneak attack of some kind. I hadn’t sensed anyone but the captives in the room, but Qi senses could be fooled with some techniques.

My Snowflakes, which were still extra thick and sharp from the previous fight, hovered beside me at the ready. I waited a moment to double, then triple check the room before moving into the center where all of the prisoners were tied to the main support beam of the tent.

Most of the kids were scared, huddled up into small balls of themselves. Many were ghostly white and terrified. A few were seemingly too young to really recognize what was happening around them, and were either spacing out or taking in the room with big, round eyes.

The two adults were my first priority, assuming they would be able to help with the kids. I made the assumption that they were related in some way to the caravan, though I wasn’t entirely banking on that. I moved up to them first to get them both untied.

Both of them were men. One of them was battered and bruised. His face was even misshapen and swollen, presumably from being beaten. His body was still fully clothed, though mostly in rags, so I couldn’t see if the rest of him was hurt as badly as his face, but he was moving around enough that I guessed he wasn’t in too much pain.

The other man was slumped over on the ground whimpering quietly. I rushed to him first, to check him over for injuries. With the way he was clutching his side, it looked like he was definitely hurt.

Between my Qi based senses and Sky Realm speed, taking all of this in and moving to the wounded man’s side was apparently too fast for anyone to make sense of what was happening. When I all but suddenly appeared beside the man and knelt down to assess his body, there was a big gasp from the kids as well as a clear reaction of fear from them. They quickly huddled as far away from me as their bindings would allow.

“Sorry, kids. I’m not here to hurt you, I just want to help.” I turned to face the oldest child, a boy I guessed would be around eight, maybe nine years old. I smiled at him welcomingly, then pointed at the wounded man in front of me. “What happened to him? Do you know if he’s hurt?”

When I addressed him, the boy went paler still, his eyes going wide with fear.

“I promise, I’m really not -”

“Miss, look out!” The boy suddenly yelled, cutting me off.

Without taking any chances, I leapt and rolled to the side, away from the center of the tent. As I rolled to a crouch on my feet, I felt pain and warmth bloom from my right side. My right hand immediately moved to the wound and applied some healing Qi to it.

I met eyes with the second man that had been in the tent, the one with the swollen face. He wasn’t tied up now, if he had been at all. And he held a wicked looking blade that had clearly been dipped in some kind of viscous gel-like substance. Almost certainly poison.

I felt a garbled message of alarm and worry from Emery. It wasn’t clear, but I tried to send back that I was alright. At least for now.

“You know, I have to admit. I didn’t expect the two of you to be able to the handle Meral, let alone Auban and Eozia.” The man began, his voice dripping with venom just like his dagger. My mind whirled, and I quickly adjusted my healing technique to draw out the poison instead of healing the wound.

It didn’t feel too deep, nor had it felt like it hit anything important internally. But it was bleeding enough to be of at least mild concern. But if I healed the wound shut before removing the poison, I would almost certainly be making things worse.

I wanted to buy some time while my medical technique drew out the poison, so I faced my new attacker. “And I’ll admit, when those two demons first came out, I thought Emery and I were doomed.” I said, as I shifted to hide my right hand and the wound behind some layers of my clothing. If he couldn’t see what I was doing, it would certainly be to my benefit.

“Ha. Well, lucky for you, they were too arrogant to take you seriously. Admittedly, I’m surprised that they should’ve taken you seriously, but here we are. I won’t be making that mistake. Not again.” And suddenly, the whole room reeked of demonic Qi.

The man’s face warped and cleaned itself up. The bruises and welts vanished, leaving a much healthier face in its place. One I recognized, no less.

“Ah, I see.” I said, nonchalantly. “I was wondering what happened to you after I didn’t sense your gross Qi in the camp. Guess I can stop worrying that your bosses chopped off your head for losing a fight. Felt like something they’d do.”

“Nope. They let me play the failsafe just in case they lost. Never thought I’d get the chance, though.” He spun the knife between his fingers as he spoke. “For the record, both you and this guy,” He nudged the other man who was on the ground beside him, “have a nice dose of my favorite poison running through you. You’ve got, oh, I don’t know. Five or six minutes before your body locks up and goes into shock, and you’re basically comatose on the floor.”

He kicked the other man in the side before continuing, “And he’s got maybe two minutes.” Then he laughed.

I focused hard on drawing the poison from my own wound, and I could feel the sludge-like substance beginning to exit the wound. “Alright then. I guess we should wrap this up quickly before I’m on the ground?”

I brought my Snowflakes to bear, with six defending me while four took care of my offense.

The man laughed harder as his demonic Qi began to surround him, much like it did during our first encounter with him. I glanced at the kids behind him to be sure he wasn’t hurting them; thankfully he wasn’t though they were huddled as closely together as they could manage and were clearly scared. Some of the youngest were even crying now, despite a lack of understanding of what was happening.

I swallowed and refocused. I was confident that I had removed enough of the poison now, and worked on messily closing the wound to staunch the bleeding until I could deal with it later.

“Without that other bitch here, somehow I doubt you’ll be able to get through my Demon Shroud.”

I was prepared to fight however I could, but if his ‘Demon Shroud’ was actually just a thick defensive aura of demonic Qi, he was probably right. I was positive that Emery would be trying to keep an eye on the fight through her Qi senses by now, so I sent a short message to her while I had the chance. ‘I think I can handle this, but if you can, help?’

I wasn’t sure what she could realistically do, with her body still in pain and exhausted from the previous fight, but anything she could offer may be the difference between a win and a loss. Then I thought about how I should play this encounter.

“Maybe not, but I can at least try to make you work for this.” I said, trying to sound as unsure of myself as I could. Talking big and making him take me seriously from the get go was surely not a good plan.

“We’ll see.” He said in a sing-song, mocking voice. As his Shroud passed over the last parts of his body, it began to ooze onto the dagger as well. The Shroud seems to coalesce over the blade, and extended its reach to that of a decent one-handed sword. “Let’s see exactly what you’ve got to offer, snow bitch.”

I internally laughed at the old insult I hadn’t heard in a while, before motioning my Snowflakes forward. The cut in my side was just about managed to a point where I could freely move, but I needed to buy a few more seconds.

The demon used his sword to great effect as he slowly progressed toward me. He wasn’t able to outright destroy any of the Flakes, but he could certainly damage them, so I had to keep Qi flowing to them for repairs. They flew about, darting in at difficult angles to defend from, the sharpness of their edges keeping the demon mostly honest in this fight.

When he finally made it within a leapable distance from me, he wasted no time. With a single wide sweep of his sword, he knocked two of the Flakes away and closed the last bit of distance with a leap and lunge.

I nimbly dipped under his strike and danced out of his reach again, as four more of my Snowflakes moved from defense to offense. They kept him engaged as I moved away toward the entrance of the tent. Thankfully, it seemed like eight Snowflakes were enough to keep him pinned, even though I wasn’t able to do any damage. Even if a Flake did manage to find an opening, they failed to cut his skin through the Shroud.

But I had moved to the tent entrance for a reason - I felt some of Emery’s Qi gathering there. And sure enough poking through the bottom of the tent flap was a beautiful, snow-white blade. I smiled and picked up the sword.

The blade was different from Emery’s normal style. It was made with a bit more leaning toward form over function, in direct contrast to Emery’s normal weapons which were clearly function over form.

The handle and guard were inlaid with shapes reminiscent of snow and wind, calling to mind an image of a snowstorm. The blade was one-edged and slightly curved, but not as large as a typical saber. It was light and well balanced, and was almost certainly designed to fit perfectly in my hand.

Smiling, I turned to face the demon who was still locked in combat with my Flakes. “It’s been a while since I’ve used sword forms.” I said ruefully. “I hope I haven’t forgotten them.”

The demon snarled as my Snowflakes left an opening for him to jump at me, his sword raised. “You’re gonna regret that confidence.” He said, his voice warped with demonic Qi.

The opening I had left him was a bait, of course. And with his sword raised the way it was, his strike was predictable, even for me. I blocked, and the snow-white blade sheared straight through the Qi-based portion of his sword, dispersing the demonic Qi and leaving him with just a dagger again.

He seemed confused for a moment, and I didn’t miss the opening. I swung my weapon around, and made a shallow cut on his left flank. As he moved to defend too late, I took advantage of his late guard on the left and made a second shallow cut on his right. While the blows themselves weren’t deadly, they did what I wanted them to do. The Demonic Shroud was dispersing under Emery’s purifying technique.

The demon screamed in fury and flowed into a series of strikes that, under different circumstances, may have been difficult to block effectively. But he was easy to read while so angry, and he was effectively wielding a dagger as a full sized sword. I moved between his attacks and blocked and parried where necessary.

As he grew desperate, the demon put too much force into one swing. I dipped my guard to let the blade swing by, then swung my weapon back up to push against the back side of his dagger, forcing him to over extend. The swing pulled him off balance and as he recovered, I plunged the snow-white blade into the demon’s chest.

I twisted the blade and pulled it out in a brutal yank. As he fell to his knees, I copied a motion I had seen Emery make several dozen times by this point in practice, and removed the demon's head. At this point, I was unwilling to take any chances.

As his body fell in two pieces, I flicked the sword hard with my wrist, removing some of the excess blood on the blade before placing it carefully in one of my cloth belts.

With a deep breath I calmed myself before rushing over to the wounded man and the children, ready to help anyway I could.