Avuri

The months following Talya having her baby boy were a mess. Even if Avuri was to put aside the three weeks that followed the birth, it didn't change much.

Talya had delivered the boy just a few days before the new year, and in all of the chaos that surrounded it, the day had come and gone without much fanfare. Even the younger kids, who were usually very excited to celebrate with the typical New Year's festivities had missed it with all of the commotion surrounding the new addition to the family.

Combined with the older members of the family trying to figure out the new system for chores and work around the Basin, everyone simply forgot about the New Year.

So, more than half a month late, the family held their normal celebrations. Avuri thought it had gone better than it would have on the day of, if she was honest. The actual New Year had fallen just 4 days after the child was born, which would have been squarely in the middle of the week where everyone was about as scatterbrained as they could be.

Instead, they held the celebrations just before the Dragon-Kin group returned to training. It went perfectly - Talya was recovered enough to enjoy the festivities with her newborn slung on her chest for most of it. She was constantly surrounded by a rotating group of the kids coming to play with the boy before eventually being shooed off so he could sleep.

Honestly, choosing to have a big party right before training resumed full time was perfect, as far as Avuri was concerned. Feeling how relaxed and at peace Emery was through their bond for most of the day solidified her feelings on the matter, too. Putting aside the few mishaps like Lia accidently burning two batches of dumplings to a crisp and Jak leaving the door to the chicken coop open, which led to a multi-hour recovery operation of chasing chickens all over the basin, things went perfectly.

The following day, when Vale returned from wherever he had been to take the Dragon-Kin team to the Elders' compound, everyone was in fairly good spirits.

None of the kids were super happy about their mothers being gone for full days at a time again, but they understood the reasoning for it. And with Ieji staying to direct their training, many of the older kids were actually pretty excited. Ieji's training was strict, but they did a lot of real combat practice, when Emery and Avuri didn't focus on that as much with the younger kids.

Avuri didn't have an issue with it, she just preferred to keep actual sparring to the older kids, while only teaching the younger ones techniques. Emery had never fought her on it, so long as the kids did learn how to defend themselves.

Avuri had to admit, too, that learning how to fight had helped a lot of the younger kids process some of the things that had happened to them. She may not have liked the idea of having 7, 8, and 9 year olds sparring one another, but she never begrudged them the chance to learn to defend themselves.

For the adults, the training with the Elders resumed as if there was never even a break. They spent the morning of the first day talking with the Elders about the new baby boy and some of what they had done over the break before each pair had split to discuss what the next steps were. By the afternoon, training had resumed as if it had never stopped.

For Avuri, that meant more preparation for the Bond with Lyn.

Avuri and Emery had continued their normal Dual Cultivation during the training, and the break, too. They were intimately aware of the changes within one another's Inner Worlds and Domains. When Emery had begun to utilize Avuri's old water Qi Cultivation technique, her Inner World had begun to take on some new properties.

While it didn't change the base of Emery's blacksmithing village, it did seem like it was making the buildings more fire resistant. What had originally been huts, stalls, and buildings made of wood, cloth, and other very flammable materials, was slowly becoming stone, steel, and other more fire-resistant materials.

Neither of them had any real idea how Cultivating water and ice Qi led to the creation of stone or metal, but Vale had assured them that it was natural. For as functional as a Cultivator's Inner World was, it wasn't really a place governed by normal rules and laws. Emery was Cultivating Qi with the express purpose of protection against fire - therefore it was changing her Inner World in a way to reflect that.

Avuri's Inner World was changing too. While she wasn't practicing a new Cultivation technique or actively trying to alter her Qi in any major way, she was trying to strengthen her body for the influx of draconic water and ice Qi that Lyn would provide. For her, it manifested as strengthening Avuri's little shack on the mountain top.

For as long as she could remember, Avuri's Inner World had always been sparse and perhaps a little violent. Just a small shack on the top of a mountain in a brutal snow storm. It had always been enough for her to shelter in and meditate or do whatever it was she needed to while in her Inner World.

However, as she was focusing on strengthening her body, that little shack was getting remade. Part of her was hurt by what she saw as an implication - her body had been as weak as a little wooden shack in a blizzard. But as she continued to train, the shack was remade into a nicer one, more like a shed. The shoddy construction had been replaced with sturdier wood and better nails. There were no gaps in the wood any more, and the singular cushion and blanket inside were of better quality.

Avuri had never considered her body weak. Sure, she wasn't up to par with Emery's raw physicality, but not many people were. She felt like that was an unfair comparison. As were the literal draconic beasts that were the Elders. And she was noticeably stronger than their kids, which was expected.

Over the years, as she and Emery had gone out and performed their rescue operations, she had never felt like she held Emery back in battle or anything. She mostly felt like she was where she had expected to be, strength wise. And most of her techniques were built on Qi strength and control, anyway, not raw power.

The training with the Elders in preparation for the Dragon-Kin bond finally made her reconsider. Yes, as a water and ice Qi user, she didn't expect to be able to hold her ground against the earth Qi fighters that her cousins were. Water was expected to bend and flow against force.

What she didn't expect was how little any of them seemed to respect her physical blows. Oh, they were terrified of getting caught by any of her Qi techniques, but in close combat? They shrugged off any attack that wasn't Qi.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The whole situation made her redouble her efforts to strengthen her body. It needed to be done to accommodate Lyn's draconic Qi either way, but now she was determined to make her physicality more noteworthy.

As the weeks of training rolled into months, everyone was making truly appreciable progress. For Avuri, it was easy to see it in herself and Emery thanks to their bond.

Avuri's Inner World had gone through multiple changes. Her little shack had gone through several iterations, and was now settled as a large log cabin. It was similar in general design to their house in the Basin, but more like a hunting cabin than a warm family home.

In addition, the constant blizzard that had raged across the mountain top had become actually dangerous. Where she could stand outside in it for long periods of time to focus her ice Qi, trying to do so now was almost painful, even for her. Instead, there was a small glass room attached to the cabin that had been seemingly made for the purpose of surrounding her in the blizzard to focus on her ice Qi. That little glass room was also where her singular cushion and blanket had ended up after the shack had fully become the cabin.

Emery's Inner World, meanwhile, was barely recognizable. The wooden shacks and stalls with the cloth overhangs were all but gone. The buildings were uniformly beautifully made stone buildings now, with just the occasional bit of cloth functioning as an awning here or there, covering a workspace. Many of the shoddier constructions had been replaced with metal or stone as well. New forges were scattered about, and the entire place now had an air of an artisan's village where they crafted masterworks instead of a simple smith's village.

When they Cultivated together, their Shared World was just as changed. The stronger blizzard would accompany Avuri, while Emery's small village would appear on a mountain side. In the center of the village, Avuri's cabin would appear, looking like a governor's mansion of sorts, overseeing the smithing operations.

Honestly, they both liked the new look. The changes looked more powerful and imposing than before, and they both appreciated that.

Everyone else's progress was clear, too. Avuri didn't pry into her children's' Inner Worlds unless they offered, so she didn't see the actual changes for herself. But they were outwardly clear regardless.

Kord's techniques had been refined to a point that was almost awe-inspiring for Avuri. He had always been a brawler, usually forging metal gauntlets and greaves during fights with metal Qi, which could then be reinforced manually, or used as conduits for other techniques.

Before the training, Kord's weapons looked simplistic and nondescript. They were functional, and nothing more. After months of Ray's tutelage, Kord's gauntlets and greaves were looking more like something Emery would forge. They were form fitting, tastefully designed, and clearly weapons. The gauntlets had small protrusions on the knuckles, that could be easily extended into claws on a whim. The greaves were equally studded, with points at the toes for kicking.

In addition, Kord's actual Qi techniques had been refined, too. Before, he would typically just shove metal Qi through his attacks, leading to raw power in his swings, that would often feel like getting hit with a hammer to those unprepared. Ray had helped him develop that simple technique into something more resembling his mother's attacks. He could make the Qi sharp and cut or bludgeon as he pleased. It was also far more concentrated, meaning what had been large hammer blows before were now more akin to being hit with a high speed vehicle.

Stena was also seeing massive improvements. While she had initially been the slowest to truly begin the physical portion of her training, her nearly daily talks with Vyne seemed to be doing her good. Avuri could tell that while she still had the same type of partially fake, happy exterior, she was loosening up more often. In the course of the months of training, she had even opened up to Emery and Avuri more than once about how she truly felt.

Once her training with Vyne had really gotten moving, her improvements happened quickly. Avuri wasn't sure if she had simply been held back by her mentality for so long, or if Vyne was some kind of teaching god, but Stena's control over her wood Qi and exploded. She could always make and control vines and flowering plants before, in addition to the more common general wood shaping skills that came with wood Qi, but the strength of her techniques was suddenly on another level.

Her vines were thicker, becoming more like tree roots than simply green vines. She had often employed flowering techniques that manipulated plants with dangerous pollens, and those were suddenly more potent than ever before. She had even, with Vyne's instruction, devised a new technique that utilized a pollen that was dangerous to the touch, no longer requiring someone to breathe it in.

Given Cultivators could easily hold their breath, such techniques were generally thought of as pointless once one entered the Sky Realm, and contact poisons were far more common. But it was uncommon to create such a technique before breaking through to the Sky Realm.

Cierra was making good progress with Cyril as well, but her training was coming along in strange ways. It was rare that a Cultivator was primed for working with three primary elemental bases. Two was rare enough, but the time and effort needed to properly Cultivate three was basically reserved for the hidden master types who would lock themselves away for hundreds of years to take the time to work with three disparate elements.

In Cierra's case, she was already split between water and metal Qi, trying to follow in both of her mothers' footsteps. Following a split path like that was uncommon but well-known. Adding the fire Qi from the Bond with Cyril would essentially be a shortcut for her to integrate a third element - assuming she could prepare her body for it.

Her training was going very well, though, because with her water base she had basically already had the answer. While Avuri didn't have intimate knowledge of Cierra's Inner World, she imagined her daughter was going through a similar process to Emery - using her water Qi to prepare herself for the coming influx of fire and protect her metal Qi.

And finally were Avuri's cousins. In the few months since they had begun training under Eiry, the dragon had shocked them all by offering the bond to Cove and Glenn in addition to Mica. All three had been taken in by Eiry as personal guards and attendants, but none of them had expected that all three would be offered the Bond.

Avuri wasn't sure if Glenn and Cove had simply impressed Eiry in some way or if the de facto leader of the Elders was actually just a big softie at heart. Avuri honestly leaned toward the latter herself, but that wasn't to say Cove and Glenn were slacking.

All three of her cousins had been working to improve their earth Qi foundation under Eiry while simultaneously bettering their Qi control. They had each done exactly that, and while they hadn't necessarily developed new techniques or even refined the ones they had, each of them had significantly boosted the amount of Qi they held, as well as their ability to manipulate the earth. Even their Domains had grown, which was typically very hard to do between Breakthroughs.

Avuri had also heard her cousins murmuring among themselves about some weird bits of teaching that Eiry had imparted - certain mantras and weird Cultivation routes that they didn't understand. Avuri was pretty sure that Eiry was preparing all three of them to learn the secret behind her aerial control techniques, which were apparently branched off from earth Qi ones. It was fascinating to Avuri, and she was really hoping that Eiry wouldn't swear them to secrecy.

While she may not be able to utilize the exact same techniques, applying the theory to her own techniques could turn out very interesting. She wasn't sure what the thematic opposite to water and ice was, but the idea was more than intriguing.

With three solid months of training under their collective belts, Avuri was growing more and more curious exactly how long it would take before the group of them were prepared for the Bonding ceremony.

She felt ready, though she had to admit she wasn't sure that she had the knowledge to make that call.

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