Avuri stared down Quarris as Emery mopped up her two opponents. Leon had been removed from the fight for now, trapped by Avuri’s Chilling Cage. All in all, things were proceeding in their favor - outside of Quarris’ seemingly high level of resilience.
The Blizzard Dragon at point blank range apparently had minimal effect. It had torn some of Quarris’ armor to shreds, and bit deeply into some of her less heavily armored and defended extremities, but hadn’t drawn any blood that Avuri could see. And while her Blizzard Dragons weren’t necessarily built for a single high-powered hit, the damage they caused was significant.
Avuri could pin her hopes on one of Emery’s weapon strikes doing the job. A full powered cut could, presumably, simply slice the woman in two. Unless there was an even more significant defense hidden beneath the layer of sand that she had seen slough off after the Dragon had done its work.
As Emery knocked out her last target, she sent a question to Avuri through their link. “Why not try our new trick?”
Emery had no doubt felt Avuri thinking about it in the back of her head. They did have the second technique - if it could even be called that - still hidden. It was almost without question their single most destructive attack, but it was still mostly untested.
“Do you really think live testing in a fight like this is a good idea?”
“We know it works on a small scale.” Emery responded as she quickly made her way to stand beside Avuri. Quarris was gathering Qi for some kind of technique, and they wanted to be able to deal with it together.
“Yes, but we also know how destructive it is on a small scale. If we land the shot, we might just kill her outright.”
“She told us she was going to ‘cleanse’ our children, Ri. I don’t very much care if we accidentally take her head off.” She raised her spear toward the woman in a defensive stance, ready to intercept whatever came their way. “We could kill her while fighting to disable her anyway. It’s a risk she accepted when she chose to fight us.”
The floating stones that orbited Quarris began to rotate around her at speed. They moved very quickly, to the point that they were nearly a blur. Emery laughed. “Just try to aim for a leg or arm, I guess?”
Avuri rolled her eyes. “Right. I’ll do what I can, then. Defend me.”
She didn’t even really need to ask - Emery already knew how this would go if they ever needed to use this particular thing in combat. It was a very delicate process to set up based on their testing, and Avuri would need more time than Quarris would give her if she were undefended.
Without needing to actively agree, Emery stepped in front of Avuri quickly. In the same instant, Quarris launched a few of the stones from her orbit forward. They were replenished form the ground at the same rate they were launched, which was a nifty little trick.
Their speed was impressive enough that Emery didn’t feel comfortable trying to knock them out of the air. Instead, she altered her floating swords into wide steel plates. They moved to intercept each shot that Emery could track. Just in case, several of the plates stretched thin to cover more area and made a barrier to cover both of them.
The stones bounced off the metal with a distinct pinging sound. Worse, there were a few that rebounded from the larger barrier that hid them from the shots. That meant there were some hidden projectiles that Emery couldn’t easily track. She wasn’t sure what the mechanism of the attack was, as normal looking rocks fell to the ground after being stopped.
“You’re smarter than I thought.” Quarris said, sounding almost bored. “Most people don’t put up such a wide defending screen when they can clearly see an attack coming. Good on you for not trusting that.” Her praise sounded almost genuine.
“Well, thank you for the praise!” Emery smiled as she responded. “I assume that a few hidden, high speed projectiles isn’t all you can do?”
Quarris smiled in turn. “Of course not. Are you ready for a second volley?”
“Just about.” Emery said. “I’m curious to see how you do under pressure.”
Quarris raised her arms as she called up a second and then third group of orbiting stones. They spun up to match the speed of the first set quickly, but left Emery just enough time to start her own move. She stomped a foot on the ground and pushed off into a straight forward dash. When she stomped, metal sprung up from the ground all around her and Avuri. Thicker walls were in place to defend Avuri just in case now; but more importantly, large pillars of a specific metal popped up as well.
Avuri sent her thanks, as despite being able to do it herself, they were both still much faster with their own skills. Emery’s metal creation was at least twice the speed of Avuri’s, but probably even faster than that. Especially when it came to creating very specific metals. Emery did leave the more exact work to Avuri though.
“You should have the time you need. Get it done.”
“I’ll keep an eye on you just in case.” Avuri said, keeping a sliver of her attention on the battle through their Domain as she got to work on putting their attack together.
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Emery darted in close with her spear and several floating disks that had been fully shaped into functional shields, complete with a slight curve to deflect the projectiles. As she got within striking distance of Quarris, she realized just how complete the other woman’s technique was.
Not only could she fire off attacks from any point in the orbits, giving the attack more angle possibilities than Emery had expected, the speed that the orbits spun around her were also similar to punishing saw blades. She could move them well enough to deflect the spear thrusts, and when the high speed rotating stones hit the spear’s tip it would do so with enough force to wrench the attack away. It even broke the spear’s tip more than once.
It also made for a handy ‘do not touch me’ defense. Emery wasn’t confident that she could get into a close-quarters fight with Quarris and take several rocks to the body at those speeds. Which meant she was also locked into trying to use polearms or other weapons with a bit more reach.
Thankfully, her flying shields were enough to deflect most of the projectiles sent her way, and repurposing a few of the shields into projectiles of their own kept her in the fight. When things got particularly dicey, Emery implemented a few of Avuri’s techniques. A well placed rime slick on the ground to destabilize Quarris, or a flash-freeze of a limb was enough to balance the fight again.
The two traded blows and attacks on fairly even footing. And Emery’s onslaught was enough to keep Quarris occupied - or at least occupied enough that she was only able to send minor attacks at Avuri. Occasionally, a projectile got launched in Avuri’s direction, but pinged off of one of the many metal walls that Emery had created.
The equilibrium lasted for a few exchanges before Quarris added in whatever technique it was that she had used earlier.
In the middle of fending off the speeding projectiles while striking out with her spear, Emery suddenly felt a pinching sensation in her side followed by a quick lance of pain. She felt Avuri’s shout of concern in their Domain but reassured her that she was fine - and she was. The injury was shallow, despite being painful.
The problem was that, like before, she hadn’t seen the attack itself. And when there were already so many projectiles that she could see, one or two hidden ones could be a real problem.
And worse still, Emery still hadn’t found anything that would work as a counter-offensive. She had been placing her invisible air blades all around them for a while now, but they did nothing. As soon as Quarris approached one, her orbiting stones would touch it first, and they were spinning with enough force to break the hidden blades when they contacted them.
Even when she had gotten creative and faced the sharpened side at the right angle so that the rocks would hit it instead of the flat, they would just cut a few of the stones before getting clobbered by the rest.
For as simple as it was, Quarris' technique was annoyingly effective. Or at least it was an effective counter to Emery’s weapons. If she could throw fire or some kind of less rigid physical attack at the woman, it might work, but as it was, all of her attacks would get deflected or pulverized by the spinning rocks.
Emery sharpened her focus and her Domain’s senses on trying to discern what exactly Quarris was doing to cause her hidden attack. They continued to move around the battlefield together, Emery unwilling to let Quarris make any appreciable distance between them. Quarris, meanwhile, moved well despite her armor - even if it was a lighter version than normal.
Quarris had also spun up two more orbits worth of stone. They now encircled her in five different directions, which helped cover her from most angles. Anytime her stones smashed into one of Emery’s invisible blades, she readjusted her movement and avoided it. Emery had to admit, the woman was good.
When the next hidden projectile shot through Emery’s left shoulder, she finally thought she understood what was happening. Once again, she had to reassure Avuri that she was alright, and that Avuri should keep on working on their attack. It was, thankfully, almost ready. After the initial metals were prepared, Emery didn’t have much left to do; Avuri would take care of the rest.
But it wasn’t like Emery was just about to lay down and let Avuri take care of everything. She couldn’t raise her left arm as well as normal, but that was fine. It wasn’t permanent damage and would heal.
Quarris would, however, regret not going for a fully crippling blow. Or at least, Emery wouldn’t let another of those hidden projectiles land.
To her credit, Emery was impressed. The technique was simple and effective, but also unexpected and difficult enough to not immediately recognize.
Quarris’ Domain control was surprisingly good. She had pushed it deeper into the ground than Emery had ever seen anyone else do. And the trick was that a thin sliver of her Domain had stretched off a ways and then returned to the surface - several meters behind Emery. It was that little sliver of Domain that was launching the ‘hidden’ projectiles, except they weren’t hidden at all. Just coming from an entirely different angle.
It was a simple trick. The impressive visuals of the orbiting rocks, plus the potentially overwhelming amount coming from one direction made it very easy to overlook a single projectile coming from a different direction. But with such a small portion of her Domain launching the attack, her aim and power both suffered. Emery had no doubt that if she dedicated more of her Domain to the launcher, the two previous blows would have been nearly fatal.
The next time that Quarris tried to attack from a blind spot, Emery was ready for it. She was searching for the small tendril of Domain and immediately noted it when it appeared. Quarris made a slightly more dramatic motion on her next attack - Emery realized then that she had been doing a more visual flourish on each ‘hidden’ attack to keep her attention - and launched her volley. Emery positioned all of her shields perfectly to deflect each shot from the front.
And then she made a point of spinning around and catching the last projectile with her hand, which was covered in a thin layer of metal. Quarris’ attack didn’t have the power behind it to puncture that while trying to remain hidden.
Quarris laughed as Emery turned back to face her, her left arm hanging limply.
“So, you’ve figured out the trick. I suppose you’re going to tell me how good you are and how dead I am, now that you understand it?”
Emery smiled as Avuri tickled her mind. She was ready. “Actually,” Emery said, “I was going to say that your technique was very impressive. Those orbiting stones spin so fast that my weapons are basically useless. And while it was simple, your attacks are dangerous enough that you genuinely have my respect.”
Quarris blinked as Emery clearly wasn’t following her normal script. “Well. I appreciate that, but -”
“You should really put more oomph into your projectiles though.” Emery continued, still smiling. But it was slowly morphing into something more sinister. “Like this.”
There was a strange, vibrating boom. It was a strange sound that Quarris had never heard before.
But she was more preoccupied by her sudden lack of a left arm.