Sword and Snow

Emery

Things were quickly spiraling out of control. Vale was generally overpowering, and even together with Avuri he was too powerful for Emery to handle.

Still, it was a combination of Avuri's masterful combat reading and Emery's own experience from roughhousing with Vale that kept her half a step ahead. More than once, Emery could literally feel Vale's arm closing around her neck to put her in a headlock before she just barely slipped from his grasp. She survived on that slim line for a remarkable amount of time, which all told amounted to less than two minutes.

After Avuri brought up the idea that they could use a sudden transformation to shake up the situation and perhaps throw Vale off his game, Emery was excited to give it a shot. However, if she truly wanted it to work, she needed to wait for a genuinely opportune moment to knock her father off balance.

And so far, such a moment had yet to arrive. Emery desperately wanted to turn the tables, however briefly, without their draconic transformations and then shock him further in that moment.

Casting her memory back, Emery had locked on to a single moment that had stuck in her head growing up. In all the years that she and her siblings had played with Vale, she could count the number of moments where they had pulled one over on him on one hand. And all of those had required immense teamwork across at least four kids.

All except one.

Rylie had escaped Vale's grapple one time, completely on her own, with a costly, unrealistic maneuver that had surprised Vale just due to how sudden it had been.

The issue was that every time Emery considered doing it, she chickened out at the last second because trying it would put her in danger. After all, she'd have to put herself in position to be grabbed. If she failed, their little fight was over.

Emery took a deep breath, firmed her determination, and let it happen.

She fell half a step back, letting Vale's arm once again close around her neck in his normal headlock. Emery closed her eyes tightly, focusing, trying to let Vale assert the grapple without escaping or fighting back.

Right before he had her trapped, Emery pushed her Qi, essentially purging a mass amount of it from her body. In a real fight, shoving out so much power was a stupid and desperate move. Even if it did work as a defensive maneuver, spending so much Qi was only putting yourself at a worse disadvantage.

But the sudden surge of Qi was enough to soften Vale's tightening grip, allowing Emery to essentially cheat her death. She slipped out of what would have otherwise been a game-ending headlock at the last possible moment.

And it was just enough of a turnabout to set Vale back by just a hairsbreadth as he smiled at what he assumed was Emery's last ditch effort to avoid losing.

Emery didn't wait. She set her feet and spun back around to face Vale directly for the first time since he had reached them. Even that action was enough, after spending so much time running, to extend the moment of excitement that Vale was relishing.

Emery waited until she could see him prepare to charge at her again. As soon as she could sense that initial twitch of muscle, she untangled the twist of Qi that was essentially her disguise technique that made her appear fully human. Avuri, standing just behind Emery, did the same.

The technique unraveled quickly, forcing their draconic selves back to the surface. Emery's horns reappeared on her head, and she was suddenly covered nearly entirely in molten black scales. Her tail was wrapped snugly around her waist to avoid dealing with the balance issue for the time being.

At the same time, she could feel the sudden presence of raw cold behind her as Avuri's form was revealed. Her antler-like horns emanated cold, and the sudden additional weight of wings on her back required her to resettle her feet to keep her balance firm. While her silvery-white scales didn't make quite as strong an impression as Emery's black ones, she was sure they reappeared as well.

Vale's initial step faltered just a bit. As Avuri had suggested, the sudden change was enough to catch him off-guard. Now they just needed to do something about it.

Emery mentally Avuri to back her up as she moved. In an instant, Emery was half a step away from Vale, a punch chambered at her side. She was very conscious about maintaining proper form; overextending for a more damaging haymaker here would almost certainly take too long, so she aimed for a normal, straightforward punch.

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Vale had basically reasserted his footing to move by the time Emery closed the distance, but with his daughter suddenly directly before him, moving forward was no longer an option. In the same instant that he shifted his weight to slide to the left, Emery's punch caught him square in the face.

Emery had punched her father before. Plenty of times, really. Any time they had been in the middle of a scuffle like this one, she had felt like she had broken her hand. The amount of pain was usually immense and immediate, like striking a solid chunk of forged and tempered metal.

This time, she felt none of that. Her scale covered hand hurt, but it was the expected amount from any punch. And while Vale took the hit admirably, it had been effective. His head snapped to the side from the impact. Emery had even gotten extra lucky as she had hit him with a right-handed cross, while he was trying to step toward her left side, which sent him off-balance in the same direction he was stepping.

It left him off balance enough that while he moved to recover, Emery was able to pummel him with another two punches, aiming entirely to keep him off kilter. Avuri took advantage as well, creating a rime slick underneath Vale's feet while kicking at his legs.

Every move they made was with the purpose of keeping Vale off balance. If he regained it, they would lose - as they had expected to do from the beginning.

But this was, by far, the closest Emery had ever come to "beating" her father in this sort of contest. She used her Qi to create a sturdy metal baton mid-swing, cracking the rod hard against Vale's side. The impact was enough to prevent him from regaining his balance, but didn't impart enough force to push him further because the force was too concentrated.

Emery recognized the mistake too late. She was only saved by having Avuri beside her, as the other woman launched a gust of frigid, icy wind at Vale.

Fighting mostly on instinct to guide her new draconic power, Avuri's blast of wind turned out to be quite a bit more effective than she had expected it to be. Her white horns glowed brighter as she channeled her Qi into the technique, strengthening it in some way that she had yet to understand. What she had expected to be a solid gale force wind whipped into a middle range hurricane force wind.

Even with her precise control, the force dragged the air around the technique with it. While Vale got blasted with the powerful wind and sleet, Emery got mixed up in the edges of the technique as well, though it was significantly weaker.

Still, both of them lost their balance. Emery, thankfully, only stumbled. It would have been a massive opening for an enemy to take advantage of, had this been a real fight - but Vale was still sticking to his traditional, self-imposed rules, which included no big Qi techniques.

In addition, the blast of wind and sleet pushed Vale entirely over. He had clearly been prepared for something and had set his back foot accordingly, but the force had gone beyond his expectations. It lifted him completely off his front foot, forcing him to wobble unsteadily on his back foot. That alone would've been easy for him to recover from, or even shift into a kick or punch with his high level of balance and body control.

However, the addition of getting pelted by icy sleet in the wind was enough to make it a struggle. Avuri had to focus; this was her best possible opportunity to force something to happen, but Emery had been blown off-balance momentarily and couldn't capitalize on the opening.

With another push of Qi, Avuri forged a quick bridge of ice between Vale's arm, which had been outstretched a little wide for balance, and the ground, locking him in place. She had no doubt he'd break it easily, but she only needed it to last a second or two.

Inspiration struck her then, and she quickly transitioned the ice Qi she was using to make the ice to take on Emery's metal aspect. The ice collecting around Vale's arm and the ground began to grow an outer layer of metal that should make it more difficult to break out of.

Vale quickly shifted his attention to breaking his arm out of the snare. Avuri could feel his Qi bubble up, with the express purpose of melting the ice around his arm with heat alone. Unfortunately, she knew from experience that he could get his Qi hot enough to melt steel, too, so it was only a matter of moments before he was free again.

That short gap was enough.

Emery regained her footing. With a thought and a little bit of Qi, the steel rod that she had crafted changed. She called forth one of her masterwork weapons that rarely saw any use, because she simply preferred a sharp blade to bludgeons most days.

That didn't make her two-handed hammer any less impressive. She had based the design on the more familiar one-handed chui - a hammer that consisted of a pole with a large metal sphere on the end for the bludgeon. However, she decided that there was no reason for her not to make a larger variant designed for two hands.

The hammer head itself was gorgeously well-crafted. Chui often featured ridged spheres, but they usually were fairly simple vertical ones that extended from the top of the hammer's head to the pole it was attached to in a straight line. Emery had fashioned hers in waves, reminiscent of the ocean in traditional art. She had also colored the hammer head mostly a light azure, with the tips of the ridges a clear, shiny silver. The overall effect was incredibly pleasing.

The pole that functioned as the extended handle for the two-handed hammer was mostly a wooden base with inlaid metal for extra reinforcement. The embedded metal had been meticulously treated to shine brightly, looking almost silver despite being more akin to a polished steel. The handle itself had been wrapped with thin cording for grip, with entwined strands of water blue and silver.

The chui hit home, hard. Emery hadn't held back on her swing, and with the pressure and force distributed through the much larger hammerhead, it wasn't as easy for Vale to redirect. As his arm became superheated with Qi, the ice and metal bridge holding him in place melted enough to shatter and let him go, just in time for the hammer blow to topple him completely.

Emery didn't pull back for another swing, only pushing her initial swing harder against Vale's body, forcing him over and down.

In the end, it was enough, and Vale's elbow and shoulder, for the first time in thirty years, hit the ground.