Sword and Snow

Dinner that night was a loud, boisterous affair. Emery and Avuri had been assisted by Talya in finishing up dinner, as well as making a little extra for their not-entirely-unexpected guests.

The kids were all caught up in the excitement of Uncle Vale’s return - even Shara who had evidently forgiven him for ruining her braids and was now happily sitting next to him while he told the group a story. There was a wide variety of ‘ooh’s, ‘ahh’s, and laughter coming from the audience Vale had amassed, which made the entire dining pavilion rather loud.

Emery, Avuri, and some of the younger kids were seated at a separate table with Talya and Gray, taking the time to run through introductions. There were ten children that were new enough to the family that they hadn’t met Talya yet, let alone Gray. And they were trying to remedy that now.

Given how antsy the kids were to go listen to Vale tell a story, clearly the introductions wouldn’t last long. Shara and Ritz were already over there listening, completely skipping the introductions for now.

Emery took a deep breath before beginning. “Okay! We’ve got eight of the ten kids here, so we’ll start with them. First,” she said, pointing to Astra who was sitting right next to her, “we have Astra right here. Then going down the line and around the table we have Arek, Syrus, Jak, Evin, Flyn, Kal, and Luc.”

Emery pointed at each child in turn as she went down the line. When she got to the end, she offered Faye an extra smile. “And of course, you know Faye already. Thanks for helping with Luc and Kal, sweetie.”

Faye smiled back and nodded. “No problem, Mom. But if you hear Karn or Wulf call me Momaye again, can you, like, rough them up a little bit? I really hate that name.”

Most of the adults at the table worked to hold back laughter, or at least a chuckle. “I can do that. Should I really scare them, or just tell them to stop?”

Faye ‘hmm’ed in thought then responded, “I don’t want you to actually hurt them, but I’ve been telling them to stop for weeks now and they won’t.”

“We’ll get them for you.” Avuri chimed in. “If they don’t stop after that, we'll really sit down and talk with them. They’re definitely old enough to know to stop using a name someone doesn’t like.”

Faye nodded and said her “Thank you”s. Then Emery waved the group off. “Go ahead and run over to Vale.”

She barely finished her sentence before half the kids were up and gone. Faye took a bit longer as she wrangled the two four year olds and took them with her. Once they were gone, Emery looked over toward Vale and pointed out Shara and Ritz.

“Those two, Shara and Ritz, are the only others you haven’t met yet, Talya. And Gray,” Emery leaned back from the table to see around Talya as they were all seated on one bench, “we’ll introduce you around to everyone else at some point. It’ll probably be in small groups.”

“That’s probably for the best. Meeting new family is hard enough. Meeting thirty-odd new family members all at once is a whole other level of difficulty.”

Avuri covered her mouth as she chuckled, “We’ll try to keep it to smaller groups so you can try to memorize the names five or six at a time.”

Talya rubbed her husband’s back. “You’ll get there. It just takes time.”

He eyed Talya, his expression showing some annoyance. “And what were the names of the kids you just met?”

“Astra, Arek, Syrus, Jak, Evin, Flyn, Kal, and Luc.”

Gray put out both hands toward Talya, as if he was presenting her to an audience. “And that’s why I feel bad about it, folks.”

“Talya has an unfair advantage when it comes to memorizing things.” Emery said. “You should know not to take it personally.”

“I know, but that doesn’t make me feel any better when someone we’ve both met one time comes up to us and Talya just remembers exactly who they are.”

“Sorry Gray. Between my job requiring lots of interfacing with people and remembering everyone and my Cultivation being focused on memorization of Arrays, I’ve just gotten really good at remembering people.” Talya apologized.

Avuri scoffed. “Don’t forget to mention that your particular brand of Qi involves mental enhancement. Cheater.” Emery laughed at that. It was an old gripe of Avuri’s that she was jealous of a few of the effects of Talya’s Sky Realm Qi type.

“I guess that’s just what happens when a Cultivator eschews normal martial arts and focuses 100% of their effort into Arrays, but never stops Cultivating.” Emery said through her mild laughter. “People like that are rare.”

“I’m still shocked I even made it to the Sky Realm.” Talya said, then smiled at Avuri. “I really have you to thank for that.”

Avuri sighed and deflated. “You’re welcome, I guess.” She said flatly. “Just don’t show off in front of me or you really will make me jealous.”

The conversation continued on light hearted topics for a while against the backdrop of Vale’s storytelling and the reaction of his audience. Eventually, the kids began to disperse to go about their evening activities as dinner winded down.

The group of five adults took over the washing of the dishes for the night, and waved the last few children off to go with their siblings for some after dinner fun.

As they all gathered up the massive number of plates and cups and serving dishes, everything was deposited into a few deep washing basins. Avuri started to call on her Qi to generate the water to wash with and began mixing in the soap. Everyone took up position in front of their own tub and started the process of scrubbing down dishes.

“So,” Emery eventually started, glancing toward Talya, “is now a good time to elaborate on the trouble you think is headed our way?”

Talya and Vale glanced at one another briefly before anyone said more. Finally, Talya sighed. “There’s a group of Cultivators from The Deposits headed north this way. Kota said that they’re dead set on getting into the Peaks and setting up shop up here.”

“We flew over them on the way up here.” Vale said solemnly. “They were camped on the northern side of Meteor Lake so they haven’t gotten very far yet, but I suspect they’re still amassing their group.”

“And you think they have a shot at getting through Flowing Dragon City?” Avuri asked while Emery was still processing.

“I’m not sure.” Vale said. “I honestly can’t imagine Flowing Dragon City allowing a large group of outsider artisans like that to move in and set up a permanent residence of any kind. It would run entirely counter to their businesses.”

“On the other hand,” Talya picked up the explanation, “the group is full of representatives from the major companies all throughout The Deposits. I’m not sure Flowing Dragon City is able to just turn up their nose at the largest producers of ore for thousands of miles around.”

Emery rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache coming on. She regretted it almost immediately as soapy water dripped down from her fingers. “So the City is about to find themselves on something of a business battlefield that may end up with the Peaks being entirely overrun by Cultivators obsessed with mining and stripping the land.”

Gray nodded. “The potentially worse part of all this is, assuming they have a number of strong Cultivators, they could bypass the City and just climb one of the Peaks without permission.”

Avuri glanced up and around at everyone. “They wouldn’t do that, would they? They would bring the entirety of Flowing Dragon City down on them if they started to mine and harvest the mountains without permission.”

“The earth and metal Cultivators from The Deposits aren’t exactly renowned for their intelligence.” Vale said. “A lot of them are the ‘do things now, apologize later’ types. If they’ve got it in their head that the Peaks hold all kinds of natural treasures that they could dig up, I’m not sure what they’d do.”

Emery gave Vale a long side-eyed look. “What do the rulers of Flowing Dragon think about this?”

“I haven’t gone to tell them yet. I’m planning on doing so tomorrow.”

“Avuri?” Emery asked her wife a silent question.

“Tell them Emery and I are prepared to fight alongside them if this comes to blows.” Avuri said as an answer. “We owe them a lot for allowing us to stay here. You too, of course.” She added with the best bow she could manage while cleaning dirty dishes.

Vale just sighed. “I’m not looking forward to this little chat. Cyril and Lyn are going to be pissed. And that’s not even considering Ray, Eiry, or Vyne.”

Talya laughed weakly. “We’ll be sure to send you with some baked goods tomorrow. Did you already tell them you wanted to see them all?”

“Just a message through an Array to Lyn to gather everyone.” Vale responded, moving back to work on the dishes again. “I didn’t say why, but they may already know. Vyne’s Earthsense can reach Meteor Lake, so he may already feel the small army they’re putting together. Doubt he knows they’re marching this way though.”

Emery took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What a mess.”

Gray placed the last of his dishes in the drying rack near him. “I feel like I’m missing something rather large.”

“That’s because you are, Hun.” Talya said sweetly. “But it’s not our place to share, unfortunately.” Her eyes darted to Vale then back to her husband. “You might be brought into the fold eventually, but honestly, it’s not something you need to worry about.” She said, then added, “Probably.”

Gray shrugged and leaned against his empty sink. Emery chuckled. “Not even going to ask, hm?”

“I’ve learned it’s better not to. I’m sure I’ll hear about it if it’s important eventually.” Gray pushed off the sink and walked over to Talya and hugged her around the waist as she continued to towel dry her last few dishes. “Or I won’t. It’s fine either way.”

“I promise we’ll tell you if it ever becomes relevant.” Talya said, turning her head to give him a quick kiss.

“If this whole situation blows up on us, it will be.” Vale said. “I’ll check and see who is allowed to be brought up to speed. Especially if there’s a potential war coming.”

Avuri let out a hollow laugh. “Surely it’s not that bad.”

“It really just depends how many people they bring.” Vale said with a shrug. “When we flew over their little outpost, I think there were maybe a hundred or two at most. If the majority are Cultivators, and they gather more? Yeah, this could definitely turn into a fight.”

“Do we even know why they’re headed this way?” Emery asked. “You said to mine and harvest materials in the Peaks, but they could’ve done that at any time in the last several hundred years. Why now?”

Emery put her last dish away and looked between Talya, Gray, and Vale. They all shrugged as Vale answered. “No idea. Kota said there were rumors going around that they’ve dug too deep into The Deposits and something went wrong -”

“- But I’d bet it’s just plain old greed.” Talya said, interrupting Vale. Her father looked at her as if to say ‘I was getting there’, then spoke again.

“Hopefully we’ll know for sure soon. Ieji is planning to join up with them to feed us information.” Vale said with a half smile.

“Oh?” Emery asked, not having heard her younger sibling’s name in a while. “And just where did you find them?”

Talya laughed. “The jerk was staying with Kota but didn’t tell anyone. When we dropped in to visit Kota, they just showed up at dinner time ready to eat. You should’ve seen the look on their face - it was priceless.”

“Well, at least we know where they’ve been then. Last I heard Ieji was…what, on the Southern Continent I think?” Emery asked.

“Yeah. They came back and just happened to run across Kota in Deep Well, and decided to stay there for the last few years.” Talya said.

“Well, it’s good that we’ll have someone talented on the inside, at least.” Emery said and nodded. “Ieji should be more than capable.”

“Ieji scares me.” Avuri said, half-whispering to Gray. “Did you get to meet them?”

A shiver ran up Gray’s spine as he thought back to their visit to Kota’s house. “Sure did. That one absolutely gave me the creeps.”