Avuri

Avuri felt like she was able to breathe again when she saw the door to the little ceremonial chamber begin to open with Emery standing right behind the door. She looked perfectly fine. If anything, Avuri would've said she was really quite happy. But having to keep their Qi and Domains separated meant she didn't know for sure.

She was actually surprised by how much the feeling of being disconnected like that made her skin crawl. It felt wrong.

But she still greeted Emery's smile with one of her own as the door finally opened up enough for Emery and her father to step out of the room. As Emery reached up with a hand to steady herself as she slipped through the oddly shaped doorway, Avuri's eyes caught on her wife's forearm.

"Em, what happened?" She asked, eyeing what looked like a burnt and bloody limb.

"Huh? What do you - oh." Emery's eyes went wide when she looked at her own arm, evidently only now noticing the bloody mess it was. She was clearly moving it perfectly well, though, so there didn't appear to be much significant damage. And Avuri had to admit that their bodies would heal those sorts of injuries quickly, too.

"I think it looks much worse than it is." Emery stepped into the sitting room that was between all the others, shaking out her arms, both of which looked like they had been chewed on by an animal. "If nothing else, they don't hurt." She shrugged.

"Avuri, if you'd like to clean up her arms, I think it might help." Vale said, stepping in behind Emery. "That's where her Mark of Bonding was made. I am sorry it got as gruesome in appearance as it did, but there won't be any lasting damage, or pain. Everything should be already healed, actually."

Avuri and Emery both looked at each other and tilted their heads briefly before turning to look straight at Kord, who was sitting quietly in meditation in another room. Apparently, even without their connection, their thoughts matched as they both quickly stepped in his direction.

Kord's eyes popped open as he felt them moving toward him, and he looked monumentally confused. "Mom? Momri? What's wrong?"

After Avuri had initially drenched him to try to remove as much of the gunk that had clung to his body after his Breakthrough, Kord had excused himself to go wash up in a nearby room. They hadn't even thought to examine his body because he was acting normally, despite clearly being covered in the dirt, grime, and general nastiness that came from Breakthroughs. Which also meant that they had not noticed his Mark.

As Emery approached, she held up an arm to show its mangled appearance. "Your Mark. Where is it? Are you alright?"

"Oh. It's on my back. I haven't actually seen it." The boy shrugged, as pragmatic as ever. With the ordeal itself behind him and successful, the nervous air that had clung to him earlier in the morning had all but evaporated. As his mothers stomped into the room, Kord removed the loose shirt that he had put on after his scrubbing and turned for them to see.

Avuri and Emery both stopped dead in their tracks. Kord's back now bore an absolutely beautiful image of a partially coiled dragon, claws and fangs bared, stretched across most of the boy's back. It looked as though the image had been carved into his body and then filled with a reflective material.

"Is that metal? And is that safe?" Emery asked, directing the question to Ray, who was admiring his work from another corner of the room.

"It's metal Qi, yes. And yes, it's perfectly safe." He smiled. "Looks damn good, too, doesn't it?"

"It's stunning." Avuri let out a breath. "It's too bad there aren't any mirrors in here anywhere. I think you'd like it, Kord."

"Really? That's good to hear. I can still feel it a little bit, but Ray said that feeling will pass as my body grows accustomed to it being there." He rolled his shoulders a bit, out of sync with one another, and the motion pulled the image a bit in different directions. The metal appeared to bend and flow naturally with his skin, despite it clearly looking like someone had jammed strips of metal into deep cuts on his back.

"How do your arms feel?" Avuri asked, turning to Emery. Before she could even respond, Avuri was beckoning Emery to hold out her arms so she could wash them with her water Qi.

"They itch a little, but that's all, really." Emery said, offering her arms. Avuri immediately went to work, using a pressurized stream of lukewarm water to scrape away the large amounts of dried, encrusted blood that had been scorched onto her skin by fire. As she did her work, they both sighed in relief, seeing that what had appeared to be charred skin was only cauterized blood that had turned a darker color from the immense heat.

It didn't take long for Avuri's water jet to clear away most of the blood from Emery's arms, leaving the intricate design and pattern to emerge from the bloody plaster.

"Wow." Avuri said, as the cleared away bits of blood revealed the etching into Emery's skin to be softly glowing with an internal light reminiscent of flowing lava. It stood out brilliantly against Emery's pale skin, the image shimmering in the light.

"Damn, that looks awesome." Emery said, admiring her cleaned arms.

"Show Avuri what it looks like together." Vale said with a huge grin.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Oh, right." Emery said, then lifted her arms to put her forearms together before her, facing Avuri. She couldn't see the completed image herself, given the way it was laid out, without a mirror but the sigh that Avuri let out was enough to tell her it looked good.

Avuri, on the other hand, simply admired Vale's handiwork. With her arms apart, the design looked archaic and a bit tribal, leaving Emery's arms looking interesting but not impactful on their own. Together, though, the image of a dragon breathing a brilliant jet of flame came together, leaving Avuri in awe of the image.

"Looks good?" Emery asked with a grin, but Avuri snatched her by the wrists to separate the image into it's parts again to look at the etchings.

"That's unreal, Vale." Avuri said, looking over the designs. "The etchings extend past where the image does on both arms, so each individual arm looks satisfying on its own, with the design reaching basically all the way around from the elbow down. But the way it makes an actual picture when viewed together from a certain angle? It's practically genius…"

Vale's grin widened. "Glad you like it. I hope Em does, too."

Emery chuckled. "I think my arms look cool. I'm excited to see the full piece though." She tugged her arms from Avuri to hold them up toward Kord, displaying the full picture. The boy's eyes went comically wide.

"Holy shit. Does mine look like that?" He said, suddenly very interested in trying to get a visual of his back. Most of the room laughed at the suddenly very child-like behavior.

"It's similar in vibe, at least." Emery said. "Instead of the fire-like glow of mine, though, yours looks like metal embedded in your skin."

"What? Oh man, when do we get to go home? I need a mirror."

Emery grinned, the same way her father did when he was teasing someone. The likeness was actually uncanny, given they weren't actually related by blood.

"Well, Momri still has to take her turn."

Avuri's easy grin slipped from her face. "Right. I do, don't I?" She asked no one in particular. In all the excitement, she had thankfully forgotten her nerves, but they all came rushing back now.

"You'll be fine." Emery said, almost dismissively. "The process was quite a bit easier than I thought it would be. Uncomfortable, but not too bad. And you'll be working with a matching type of Qi. So I think you'll be fine."

Avuri turned to Lyn, who nodded. Avuri took a deep, steadying breath, and nodded as well. "Right. Just gotta do it."

Emery stepped in and gave her a solid hug, squeezing tight. While pleasant at first, the hug quickly got too tight.

"Em. You're squeezing too tight." Avuri managed to squeak out. Her voice was clearly under stress.

"What? Oh!" Emery quickly backed off from the hug, looking a little unnerved. "Am I really that much stronger?"

"Yes." Vale chuckled. "I'm not sure there's ever been a gap this large between your physical abilities before, actually."

Avuri and Emery stared at one another and laughed. "Well, hopefully there won't be for much longer, either. It's weird." Emery said.

Avuri lightly connected against Emery's shoulder with a punch. "Alright. I'll catch up shortly, don't worry."

"Go get it done." Emery said, then stepped in for a much more controlled hug and quick kiss, before lightly shoving Avuri off toward the door to the ceremonial room. "We'll be here when you're done."

"You better be." Avuri said with a warm smile as she moved into the room.

Lyn, who had been perfectly content to watch the family quietly until then, stepped into the room behind Avuri and triggered the door to close.

"Are you ready?"

Avuri smiled; Lyn certainly didn't feel like wasting any time. That suited her and her nerves just fine. "Yes, I think so."

"Good." Lyn said brightly. "Now, you've seen their Marks. Where would you like yours? Have you decided?"

"Is around my shoulders an option?"

"Anywhere you'd like, dear. While I do need to 'draw' the image, most of it is built into the Bonding technique itself. Short of putting it in an awkward spot, the technique should guide my hand through it anyway."

Avuri nodded. "Then on my shoulders, like a mantle."

"How far down your back would you like it to go? Or should I stick entirely to your shoulders?"

"I'd say no further than my shoulder blades, please."

"I can do that. Are you ready?" Lyn asked once again, then motioned to the cushion, where Avuri had yet to settle. She was still standing and pacing.

Avuri paused and looked at the cushion for a moment, then nodded. Despite moving a little stilted, she did sit down on the cushion in a comfortable meditative position.

"Can you turn the other way, Avuri?" Lyn chuckled, as if she was dealing with a child at their first hair cut. "I need to work on your shoulders and back, remember?"

"Oh. Right." Avuri chuckled a little, inwardly berating herself for being so nervous and awkward about this. Emery had done fine, so she would too. It was simple, really. She suspected that spending so much time spiritually separated from Emery had frayed her nerves somewhat, and that was something they would need to work on.

They spent so little time without their connection active these days that actively cutting it off felt so internally wrong that it immediately spiked her anxiety. It was a difficult situation for her to wrap her mind around, because while they were certainly two different people and should be more than fine being apart, their 'souls' were also irrevocably intertwined. They were about as close to being a singular whole while together as two people could be.

Deciding not to dwell on any sort of questions like that, Avuri took a deep breath and focused. Maybe one day they would need to reckon with their bond, but other things needed Avuri's attention now.

She could feel when Lyn began to call forth her Qi, which was closely followed by mutterings in a language that Avuri didn't understand. Emery had taught her a few words and phrases in draconic to mess with Vale here and there, so she recognized the language, but couldn't pick out any words she knew for sure.

Lyn's Qi coalesced into a claw at the tip of her finger, the pressurized water tightly controlled into a spinning saw blade of water. It was a technique that Avuri had seen before to make swords from water Qi, but she had never seen the technique applied so exactingly.

"Focus, Avuri. Once we start, you'll need to guide and control the Qi." Lyn said, offering her one more smile before they truly began.

Avuri said nothing but nodded, then faced forward again to focus, pulling her thoughts inward and lulling into meditation.

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