Emery yawned as she flew back toward their home carried by Vale. She glanced back toward the others, spread out among the easier to ride spots on his body. Avuri looked mentally exhausted as she stared ahead vacantly, while Mica, Cove, and Glenn looked half way between exhilarated and terrified.
Their reactions upon seeing Vale take his dragon shape had been a treat. Eiry had offered to let the small group stay in a nice hotel in the City, but when Emery and Avuri offered their house, all three jumped at it.
Of course, without Eiry making the trip to help them fly with Qi, they had to travel the same way Emery and Avuri did - by dragon back.
It did take a while for them to all get over the fear of climbing up on Vale’s back and get settled, but the whole ordeal had been very entertaining for everyone involved. Other than the three that were struggling, of course.
Thankfully, they were on track to get back home before the sun went down, but it would be fairly close. Emery didn’t want to make their first time traveling by dragon a recurring nightmare, and being on a dragon in the sky after dark wasn’t a pleasant first experience.
It didn’t take too long before they were cresting the top of the cliffside that led to the basin. Vale landed just outside the Arrays to allow everyone to dismount. This had become something of a standard procedure for them by this point, as Vale didn’t want to fly over the basin too often. The sight of a dragon flying overhead would invariably cause some kind of uproar among the kids, whether it was fear or - more likely - excitement. And disturbing the peace like that wasn’t high on his list of priorities.
Once everyone was back on solid ground and Vale shifted back to his human shape, the group was off. With less than an hour of sunlight left, the group didn’t make too much smalltalk as they wanted to get at least to the houses before nightfall. Emery mentally acknowledged that it shouldn’t really take that long, but better safe than sorry, she supposed.
It didn’t take too long for the group to cross the various Arrays set up as defensive barriers. With Emery, Avuri, and Vale among the group they didn’t need to worry about setting anything off which was nice. It allowed them to keep up the speed.
They eventually made it inside the inner alarm Array, and then the stealth Array set up beside it that was designed to keep sound from escaping. Immediately, they could hear all kinds of noise coming from the housing area; all kinds of screams and shouts were echoing around the basin.
Emery and Avuri shot off toward the house immediately at max speed. It took seconds for them to cross the basin and see what was causing the commotion. As they slid to a halt around the empty playground, Emery sighed and rubbed her forehead while Avuri tried to hold back laughter.
The small courtyard-like area in front of the main house looked like a battlefield. There was water everywhere. The ground was saturated enough that puddles sat scattered around the ground, unable to sink into the dirt. The trees and plant life was all soaked, and there was even a slight rainbow from the moisture in the air.
There were bodies scattered about the ground, mostly lying face up and breathing heavily. Some were laughing. In the middle of it all, there was currently a three way standoff.
With her back to the house, Fia looked absolutely resplendent while hovering using a mass of water to keep herself aloft. She had a bright smile on her face, but her pose showed she was ready to attack at the drop of a hat. Lia stood on the ground beside her in a prepared fighting stance of her own, water spread out behind her like wings. She also held a whip made of water, staring down their apparent opponents.
The second team was Stena and Enrik. Enrik had seemingly raised up a section of earth as a breakwater at one point, and the two stood in the middle of their raised earthen walls. Stena had added to them with plant growth that looked like ivy, but it grew up without any sort of structure to climb. The plants were wet, but looked like they were doing their presumed job of soaking up the water. In fact, there were flowers near most of the puddles on the battleground that looked as though they were greedily soaking up the excess water.
The last team in the standoff was just Cierra. She looked poised to fight as well, and was completely surrounded by jagged shapes of ice. It looked like she had frozen a number of water-based attacks thrown at her mid-flight. The appearance was threatening, but most of the sharp points were pointed toward her, not toward her opponents. Her expression, however, dared the others to attack her.
“What do you think, Ri?” Emery asked, running her fingers back through her hair.
Avuri hid a smile as she looked on. “Honestly? I want to see what happens.” She whispered back. “Other than everything being soaked, they’ve not really caused a lot of damage.” Her eyes scanned the battlefield, assessing. “Well. Other than the ‘dead bodies’.” She added with a giggle, looking over all of the absolutely soaked kids that were scattered about.
“Yeah,” Emery agreed, looking everyone over, “looks like we missed quite the spectacle.” She eventually met eyes with Talya, who was watching the whole thing from a third story window in the house. “They’ve had supervision it looks like, too.” Emery said, pointing her out.
Avuri followed the nudge and waved to Talya, who returned the gesture.
“Get ‘em, Fia!” Jak shouted from the ground, raising his fist into the air in a salute. “Avenge me!”
“I took a shot for you two, you better win!” Cruz said from his spot by Stena and Enrik.
Other cheers and shouts of support rang out over the battlefield as Vale, Glenn, Cove, and Mica all finally ran up behind Emery and Avuri.
“What’s going on? Is everything ok?” Glenn asked as he took in the scene. “Was there…an attack…?” He trailed off and tilted his head as what was before him started to actually click.
Stolen story; please report.
“I know you tried to prepare us for how many kids you said would be here but seeing this is…something else.” Mica muttered.
Avuri chuckled. “They’re apparently in the middle of a - “
Fia made her move. She directed the huge mass of water behind her in a volley of smaller water darts toward Stena and Enrik. Cierra’s Qi reached out and froze several of the darts from one side of the volley. Once frozen, she was able to direct the darts away from their intended target, grounding them.
Enrik swung a hand up and dirt rose to meet the remaining darts. While it wasn’t a solid wall of stone like he usually preferred, the mud was thick enough to stop the water darts. Stena, in turn, took care of the rest of the attack. The ivy growing in front of the pair grew buds and then bloomed with beautiful flowers. The petals seemed to expand unnaturally fast, covering them both from the water. As soon as the active flow of darts stopped, the petals closed up, drinking in the water.
“That’s not going to work, Fia.” Stena said, glaring at her younger sister through the gaps in the vines. With the flowering petals closing up, she once again had clear sightlines to her opponent.
“No?”
“Stena!” Cierra shouted just in time for a whip of water to crash into the back of her head. The last few feet of the whip splashed over her, drenching her further. As she spun to face Lia, who had dashed around behind them while their defensive techniques blocked sight, she took a second swing of water to the face. Stena spluttered, trying to clear her face of water.
As Enrik quickly tried to leverage some earth to throw puddles at Lia, the girl beat her liquid wings and was gone before anything could land. She didn’t fly, so much as glide just above the ground, but her speed was impressive.
As Enrik turned back around to face the center of the field again, he went pale. In the moments that Lia was harassing them, Fia had built up a solid wave of water to throw at them.
“Well shit.” He said weakly. Stena turned back, her face clear of water, just in time for the pair to get completely overrun by the wave. The muddy walls that Enrik had constructed simply melted under the amount of water, being dragged away like sand in undertow. Stena’s ivy didn’t fare much better, bending under the current, unable to halt the attack.
With the pair’s defenses breached, the force of the water, combined with a pull of undertow swept them off their feet, depositing them neatly on the ground, face up. Stena covered her face with the crook of her arm and sighed, a bit of laughter mixed in. “Damn.”
Enrik, for his part, stretched out his limbs on the ground and groaned. “It’s all up to Cierra now.”
Fia, in a deliberate show of strength, gathered another huge mass of water from around her. She collected many of the puddles around, and even drew some of the water that was saturating the dirt. Lia, in turn, siphoned off some of Fia’s water to reconstitute her whip, as well as add a little to her wings.
Cierra stared them down, clearly fighting an internal battle as to whether she should move first or wait defensively. While deciding, she gathered up a mass of the water around her and froze it in large sheets, creating the equivalent of floating shields.
Avuri watched on with interest. When it came to raw elemental Qi control like this, whichever Qi contacted the substance first would typically have jurisdiction over that material, unless one Cultivator clearly outranked the other. In this case, as Fia and Cierra were both in the Earth Realm, they would be fighting for control over the water that scattered the field.
Lia would be relegated to a support role here, and it looked like she knew it. Cierra, being a Realm above her, could likely force her Qi out of her whip and wings and freeze them. She would have to coordinate well with her sister to stop Cierra from taking her out of the fight in an instant.
With both Earth Realm combatants surrounded by rotating rings of their chosen elements, this fight was really anyone’s to take.
“If Lia supports her well, Fia should have this, easy.” Emery said, thoughtfully. “If Cierra jumps Lia early though, and removes her, I think she’ll take it.”
Avuri nodded. “I think you have the right of it. This whole thing might just come down to how well Lia can support Fia.”
Cierra evidently decided on making the first move, because she dashed in first. With a quick swing of a hand, several needles of ice flew ahead of her. The sisters fended off the attack easily, but it still created enough of a gap for Cierra to get into a more middle range.
Fia retaliated by spreading her large mass of water out into large tentacle-like appendages. They lashed out like whips, striking the area around Cierra, trying to box her in. While Cierra danced around the strikes well, there were simply too many attacks for her to keep control. Fia rather masterfully struck at specific angles to block off routes to retreat or the more advantageous angles for Cierra, leaving her trapped.
Cierra did very well in avoiding and blocking the strikes actually aimed at her, however. Her ice shields were deflecting a majority of the strikes with relative ease. For the few attacks that got too close, Cierra was able to overwhelm Fia’s control with raw focus, because Fia’s focus was split among so many water tentacles.
Once Cierra was trapped, she switched her focus to a counterattack. She had the sheets of ice she was using as shields spin. It took just a moment for them to gain speed, and then they began to rip through the water tentacles the way a saw would.
Fia gathered more water to keep up her assault, but as Cierra’s shields-turned-blades cut pieces off of the whips, the dissected pieces froze and added to her arsenal.
The exchange went on for almost a minute, with the control of the water and ice in the air changing hands more than once.
Lia had spent the time slowly inching forward in an effort to turn the tide. Fia had managed to keep her mostly concealed with her water during her approach, after dropping her wings. Once she felt like she was in range of striking with her whip, she made her move.
With a glance and a nod between them, Fia and Lia coordinated the attack. Fia struck with some of her own water, hiding Lia’s whip behind it. Cierra, as she had been doing for the last minute, forced Fia’s Qi out of the water and froze it.
What should have happened, in Cierra’s mind, was the water in that area freezing as she blanketed it with her own Qi, and the attack should have stopped. However, Lia’s water whip, which was controlled with her full attention, was not frozen. And while it did very little in the end, the tip of the whip sloshed over Cierra’s cheek, wetting the whole right side of her face.
And then everything got really, really cold.
“Alright you, that’s enough.” Avuri said over the din. Her Domain blanketed the entire area, drastically cooling everything. All of the water being used for the fight had frozen in an instant.
Emery stepped up beside her wife, rubbing her forehead before a headache could set in. “Can someone please explain to me what the hell is going on?”