Sword and Snow

Avuri

Emery didn't even bother to ask why I had suddenly started moving so frantically. She had certainly felt my sudden spike of concern, and likely had some idea of what happened. She also knew that we would be within sight of the Inn before I'd even have time to explain, given how quickly we moved.

It was only a few mid-power leaps before we could see the scene that I had sensed taking place in front of the Inn's entrance.

Emery and I didn't find out until much later that Resin had a messy history when it came to demons. The city had actually been established by a demonic sect originally, before eventually being cleansed however long ago. The whole situation had made the city more sensitive to demon-related issues, and that sensitivity had gotten worse around 200 years previous, when there was yet another demonic Cultivator incident involving four full demons trying to forcefully take over the city.

The demons had succeeded in their ploy, ruling for a few months before they were once again cleared out. However, the residents overreacted and forced out any and every person who had any sort of contact with the demons. That voracious appetite for keeping the city free of anything even remotely related to a demon had remained ingrained in the people.

While I had never confirmed it ourselves, looking back on it now, Emery and I both believed that it was likely one of the guards had tipped off a normal resident about there being 'demon-touched' in the city.

However it had happened, someone had clearly found out that the kids and two adults hiding in our Inn room had been taken by demons and took that poorly. There was an entire angry mob in front of the Inn, circled around our six charges. There were a few Cultivators mixed into the crowd, but none were in the Sky Realm.

It was unlikely that anyone that had made it to the Sky Realm would judge those kidnapped by demonic Cultivators, anyway. That sort of judgement was almost solely the domain of those who were inexperienced in Cultivation or willfully ignorant like my idiot brother. Most Cultivators with experience learned, one way or another, to respect the danger of demonic Cultivators, and if not to care for those tortured by them, at least to pity them.

Instead, in the fairly short amount of time it had taken us to gather the few supplies we needed, an angry mob had formed and dragged the four children and two adults out into the street. Risha and Fal were bound and gagged tightly with Qi-enhanced rope, hands behind their backs and feet tied together. They were furthest from the Inn's door, clearly dragged forward by ropes attached to the bindings, led like animals.

The children, while not bound as tightly, were faring worse. They had only been bound in simple cuffs, with rope tying the four of them together. The mob of adults had closed the circle behind them, with the closest of them kicking the children as they stumbled, trying to get away from the danger on all sides.

All six of our charges were freshly covered in dirt from being knocked around in the street. The kids, with their extremities uncovered by the cheap sacks they wore, bore fresh bruises and small cuts that were easily visible. The two adults bore similar injuries, but while the kids' faces remained seemingly untouched, Risha was bleeding from a nasty wound near her left temple, while Fal sported several bruises, a split lip, and a heavily swollen left eye.

As soon as we could see the situation, I felt a massive surge of Qi from Emery, filled with anger and hate. I was not far behind her, my own Qi quickly bubbling to the surface as we both descended like falling stars into the middle of the crowd.

Emery, as I had expected she would, landed by the children. In an instant, they were surrounded by a mass of floating, sharpened shrapnel. They were crude and quickly fashioned, not even in the realm of Emery's usual craftsmanship. But the jagged, vicious looking shards of metal looked as angry as she felt.

I leapt to the adults' aid. In an instant, I stood between them, with a ring of sharpened icicles growing like palisades around us to force the crowd back.

It took only a moment for the crowd to make sense of what had happened before they started shouting and hurling insults.

"What are you doing?" One shouted.

"They're demon-touched trash!" Another yelled.

The insults and vitriol poured so easily from the crowd that I couldn't even parse it all. It was simply a deluge of hate. I wasn't even the main target of it all, but I could still feel the disgust and venom being thrown at our group.

"You should all be ashamed!" Emery shouted, her Qi-boosted voice cutting through some of the noise. "They're just hurt people, same as anyone else."

"They're demon-touched! Not people!" was the immediate response from someone in the crowd, which was quickly picked up and repeated by others.

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Emery shouted back at the crowd, trying her best to defuse the situation. I was impressed by her, then, trying her best to avoid what felt like an almost forgone conclusion to this situation despite her own anger at the crowd.

I took the moment, while maintaining my barrier of sharpened ice, to try to untie the adults beside me. I removed their gags first and watched Fal spit out a wad of blood and a tooth.

"I'm sorry. We shouldn't have left you." I muttered, trying to hold back any emotional response to this turn of events until the current danger was passed.

Risha appeared dazed, probably from whatever blow she took to the head. Her eyes seemed unable to focus properly. Fal, meanwhile, minutely shook his head - the best he could do in his current state. "Not your fault, Mrs. Avuri. Not your fault." The words were distorted, as if Fal was speaking with food in his mouth.

I took a breath to try to steady myself, then looked out angrily at the shouting crowd. They were still hurling incoherent insults, with several of them slowly inching closer to my ice. With a quick flex of Qi, icicles extended out toward them at attack speed, stopping just short of hitting them. A clear warning, I hoped.

And then there was a dull thump behind me.

I spun around to see Briar, who had been cowering behind Emery and Kord alike, fall to the ground, a large bloody spot on her forehead and a rock the size of a melon stained with blood on the ground beside her. Emery and Kord both screamed, while the other two kids stared in quiet horror.

I let more Qi flow out of me, extending my icicle wall up and around us, forming a half dome on my side while extending the spikes further out. I did my best not to skewer anyone, but at this point, I wasn't nearly as careful about it as I threw myself down beside Briar and immediately called up what little medicinal Qi I had to try to heal whatever damage had been done to Briar's head.

At the same time, I used a little water to clean the smudge of blood that had appeared away, to try to see how bad the damage was. Despite Briar being knocked unconscious by the rock, the physical damage thankfully wasn't too bad, mostly just a bloody gash that opened on her forehead. I just had to hope that my simplistic medical techniques would be enough to curtail any internal damage.

When Emery saw my focus switch immediately to Briar's state, her focus switched outward. Angry Qi oozed from her in waves as I felt her Domain extend from her nearly unbidden. I could feel the effect of it sharpening the grains of sand and dirt in the road, making them sharp to the touch. The smell of fire and blade oil took over the space, an obvious sign that she was seriously angry.

"Who threw that?"

Her voice came out in a growl, and it seemed like the combination of her voice and her Domain had finally gotten the angry mob to stop shouting. It felt like the city itself had gone entirely quiet for a block or two around us, although I'm sure it was just the sudden quiet from the crowd that felt that way.

When no one answered, or even moved, really, Emery asked again. "Who. Threw. That. Rock?"

With Emery's state clearly fueled by anger, I silently hoped that she was more in control than she currently appeared. I had a flash of an image in my head of the rock thrower appearing and immediately becoming a pin cushion.

And that was when a second large rock came flying over the crowd. The three other kids immediately cowered, covering their heads and whimpered. The rock never made it anywhere near them, though. Emery, now fully focused on the space around us rather than trying to engage with the crowd, had caught the rock midflight by trapping it in a cage of metal shards.

"I see."

The short statement carried a lot of weight behind it. I wasn't immediately sure what Emery's next move would be. Part of me wanted her to take brutal revenge and let her metal shards erupt violently through the crowd for what they had done to innocent people. Or at least send the rock back to the one it came from, which she could surely figure out with her Domain.

Another part of me knew that we should try to minimize the harm we caused here. Despite the injuries that were doled out by the crowd, the 'ideal' outcome was us leaving the city with no more injuries on either side.

Before Emery followed up her statement with any action, there was an angry shout from the edge of the crowd, accompanied by a Domain. A weaker one than ours, admittedly, but a Domain nonetheless.

"What's with all this angry Qi?" The voice was one I recognized, and only took me a moment to place. The third guard that had greeted us at the city's gate. The one that had been generally unhelpful and insulting.

Emery held the line, keeping her Domain strongly opposed to the guard's allowing him less than a meter of space around his body. Her flying shrapnel remained in the air around us as well, while I remained focused on healing Briar and maintaining my half dome.

When the guard broke through to the front of the mob, he sneered at us quite spectacularly, despite clearly being overpowered by Emery. "You all should've left the city quicker. We did warn you."

Emery narrowed her eyes on the guard, whose arrival seemed to break the spell of fear on the mob.They began to get rowdy again, fully expecting the guard to be on their side.

I heard Emery's voice in my head clearly over the racket around us. "How is she?"

I inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, Emery sounded fully in control of herself. I had to admit, she played the angry beast very well. "I think she'll be okay. The wound is minor, so long as there is no internal damage that I can't sense. Risha is dazed, but conscious. Fal is beat up, but I think alright. He might lose that eye though." I sent back.

I felt Emery's acceptance of the state of things as her intent narrowed in on the guard. "We've gotten what we need from this shit city. If you let us leave peacefully, we will just go."

Emery's words were full of implied threat, but were about as generous an offer as we were going to allow. There were injuries to our side, while nothing was done to theirs, but we would still simply leave if given the option.

I took a quick stock of our side's state. Briar was unconscious, so she would need to be carried. Risha might need to be assisted as well, depending on how badly she had been dazed. Fal was probably alright to travel out of the city, but not much further without rest.

Kord, Karn, and Enrik were all cowering, their tears dried up under the threats. At least one of them had probably wet themselves, as I could smell urine pretty clearly. But they were crouched down still on their feet, despite the cuts and bruises. I imagined they could walk if they had to.

As I was mentally putting together the best way for our group to hobble out of the city, I felt my stomach drop out for a second time today as the guard responded.

"No."

I closed my eyes to focus and firm my resolve for whatever came next as my wife asked, "No?"