Emery

With most of the intensive Dragon-Kin training now behind them, Emery and Avuri were trying to play catch-up with the family, at least when it came to the smaller, everyday life type things.

Over the course of their almost-six-month training course, they made a very concerted effort to keep up to date with changes in the family. They had celebrated with Arek and Cyrus when they broke through to the Human Realm, and with Shara and Ritz when they began the Core Formation stage. Ieji had kept them informed with at least the broad strokes of what everyone was learning and any changes in their Cultivation techniques or specialties - of which little really changed.

However, they had missed a lot of the more day to day things that changed. Admittedly, it was mostly little things that weren't exactly important, but they were still things that made a difference.

Emery had made a mention of Kal's favorite stuffed bear toy, not knowing that he had brought it out to the animal pens with him a couple weeks prior and accidentally got it basically shredded by the chickens. He had cried for a while after she mentioned it, and she made sure to remember the next time she went to the city to get him a new stuffed bear.

Avuri had made lunch on the second day of their new resting period, including a hearty cream-based soup that ruined Wulf the rest of the day as he had become unable to have dairy without a stomach ache recently.

Little details that no one thought to mention outright had piled up while they were distracted with training, and every time she stumbled into one, Emery felt worse about it. She knew it wasn't something she could have avoided without detriment somewhere; had she endeavored to keep up to date with every little thing at home, her mental capacity would've taken a hit. Logically, she knew that she hadn't exactly done anything wrong, but she still struggled with the stupid mistakes she was making now, lacking basic knowledge about her kids.

Avuri wasn't faring much better. She had fussed over Wulf the rest of the day, but generally hid how awful she felt until she was alone with Emery that night. The lack of what she felt was basic knowledge had hurt her deeply, too.

While the two of them were able to put their feelings aside well enough to still spend the night Cultivating and spreading the dragonblood, when they exited their meditation the next day, both were resolved to make sure they wouldn't make such silly mistakes again. No matter how minor they may have been.

Their third day back home was mostly spent with Ieji in the training pavilion. Emery's sibling had done a fantastic job with training the kids, giving them all a well balanced mix of personal training and general group work. But that also meant that Emery and Avuri needed to spend some time with Ieji to get caught up on where everyone was at in their training now, and see what each child was working on.

For the most part, it wasn't too difficult to get on the same page - it just took time. Even with Ieji taking over the training, no one had really made any sweeping changes to their desired Cultivation styles, and only a few had begun focusing on entirely new techniques or skills. For the most part, Ieji had simply helped everyone stay on track.

Emery did her best to file away the actual changes that were made. Lia had decided to specialize into her water whips more instead of following her more generalized elder sister. Kaili had fully decided to pursue wood Qi as her base. Wrynn and her twin Cruz had settled fully on fire Qi. While they hadn't begun yet, Briar was considering branching out to include water Qi techniques alongside their wood Qi base. Arek had immediately begun to focus on metal Qi after broke through to the Human Realm.

Remembering the changes shouldn't have been too difficult, it was simply a matter of committing it to memory. Especially with Ieji preparing to finally depart. They had stayed far longer than they had originally planned, given the situation surrounding the Basin. Ieji seemed pleased they had been able to help as much as they had, but Emery could also see that their sibling was itching to wander again. Ieji had never been the type of person to settle into a home, after all, and Emery respected that.

Or at least she did now, after pestering them about it so much. She had always assumed Ieji kept traveling because of their aura abilities and the tendency to cause uneasiness in those around them. It took a long conversation with them to convince Emery that, no, Ieji genuinely just preferred traveling and seeing new things. While they didn't necessarily want to do it alone, the desire to travel trumped the desire for company.

Emery hoped that they would find someone to travel with. Not necessarily a romantic partner, but at least someone they could trust to have their back. She couldn't imagine spending so much time entirely alone, but at least Ieji didn't seem to mind it too much.

And then there was Talya, Gray, and their new child. It had been around five months since the new baby was born. Somewhere along they way, that had settled on a name: Mylo. Evidently, Talya wanted to keep the traditional 'y' that was always included in a dragon's name to honor Vale, and it had happened to work out nicely that both she and Gray also had a 'y' in their name.

When they had mentioned it to Vale, both Talya and Emery had given their father grief for not ever using his own full name, Veilnyr, but he had fair reasons to hide his name and draconic lineage when on the road so much. They had also taken the opportunity to ask why only Talya, Emery, and Rylie had the 'y' in their names among their group of siblings.

They got one of the most boring answers they could have expected - basically none at all. Vale simply hadn't thought about it when he had given them all names when he adopted them. And it truly did not matter this late in their lives.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Still, he was very happy to see Talya wanted to carry on the naming convention anyway.

At Emery's insistence, Talya and Gray had taken residence in one of the many separate houses in the Basin for themselves and didn't do a lot around the Basin in the five months since Mylo had been born. They mostly kept to themselves, with the kids checking in occasionally to see what they needed from the city when they were making trips.

Emery was glad that she was able to provide them with an easy place to stay, surrounded by family to attend to them. Apparently, some of the older kids - mostly Fia and Karn - had offered to babysit Mylo a number of times to help let Talya and Gray get some extra rest here and there. It seemed like things had been going very well on that front.

And now that Mylo was five months old, Talya and Gray were starting to get involved around the Basin again. The baby was regularly in a cloth sling, secured to one of them during the day while they tried to stay active. Talya figured it would be another couple months before they would head back home to Green Vine City, but she was on indefinite leave from her job, so she was in no hurry to return until she was sure Mylo would be more than sturdy enough for the trip.

Emery wouldn't be surprised if her sister stayed until the boy was a year old. Maybe more. She had heard Talya talking to Gray idly about her being able to work from the Basin, but Emery wasn't sure how serious she was being. Of course, if they ended up wanting to stay longer term, Emery was perfectly fine with that. Avuri had similarly been happy about it, as she got along great with Talya.

If anything, Emery was considering giving them an upfront offer to stay, and telling Gray he could invite his family from Green Vine to come stay as well. They had the space now, and to her knowledge, his family there wasn't too large - just his parents and a single sibling.

It took several days before Emery and Avuri felt like they were on top of things again. Emery had even personally made a run to the city to replace Kal's bear. She even bought a couple extra replacement toys of the other kids' favorites, just in case something similar happened again. They would stay in a storage ring unless they were needed, though. No reason to make anyone upset by trying to replace things early. She learned that the hard way when Faye was still a little girl and she had offered her a replacement stuffed fish while trying to get the one she carried everywhere with her at the time cleaned.

At Emery's request, Ieji promised to stay an extra week or two, allowing Emery and Avuri time to observe a few days of them teaching the kids to see where everyone was at, and what they were working on. It also allowed Emery a little bit of time to put together a small party to thank Ieji for helping them so much. Of course, that 'party' was really just going to be a nice family dinner. Ieji didn't much care for the bigger, more boisterous get-togethers like their previous big barbeque party.

Once Emery and Avuri felt like they were at least on track to being on top of things again, the only remaining trouble they had to deal with was figuring out how to Cultivate with their new strength.

Using the dragonblood to strengthen their bodies was actually simple enough, especially after the Elders walked them through it a few times. Emery felt, after a few days of working with it, that the addition of the dragonblood exercises to her normal routine would become exactly that fairly quickly - routine.

The real trouble was that Emery and Avuri needed to reassess their entire Cultivation technique. The style that they had developed together for the last fifteen years had suddenly become basically obsolete. With their fundamental Qi altered by the Dragon-Kin Bond, they needed to develop a new style that took the changes into account and worked with them.

It made the first week after the training rough. During the day, they were focused on catching up with their family while every night they traded notes on what they learned during the day, then tried - and mostly failed - to Cultivate.

For Avuri, things weren't too bad. The excess of water Qi in her system was unusual, and she was working hard at trying to find a technique that would make the best use of that Qi. Given that the pair of them were in a position where they basically needed to create an entirely new Cultivation style, Avuri was struggling to come up with a technique that would allow her to transmute water Qi to ice Qi and back as quickly as possible. Instantly, if she could manage it.

Unfortunately, she was struggling against years and years of practice. Traditionally, water and ice Qi were considered related but distinct from one another. Ice was an aspect of water, but it typically took time and effort to condense water Qi into ice Qi. In Avuri's case, when she had broken through to the Sky Realm, her Qi had taken on a combination of the two aspects as her personal blizzard Qi, but the two forms often operated separately.

With her current situation and absolute abundance of raw and powerful water Qi, she desperately wanted to find a way to bridge that gap with whatever new Cultivation technique she could come up with.

In Emery's case, the sudden inclusion of fire Qi, and so much of it no less, left her scrambling to find a way to incorporate it into her techniques. Vale had given her a metaphorical volcano's worth of fire Qi to work with, but Emery had never even considered how fire Qi could be used with her techniques.

There were the obvious options, of course. Fire was a huge part of forging and tempering metal. Heat was necessary. The issue was, she already knew how to use fire Qi in that way; it just required so little, and just adding more raw power to those uses resulted in more failures than success.

Generally speaking, she saw the classical elements fully in play with her new Qi balances. When fire and metal came together, they weakened one another except under specific circumstances and in entirely unbalanced amounts. She needed to find a way to balance them somehow, beyond just using small amounts of one to strengthen the other. Otherwise, she was simply wasting too much of her potential strength.

She was confident, however, that her answer somehow lied in her connection with Avuri and her access to water and ice Qi. She knew that metal was traditionally strengthening for water while water was destructive to fire, in the same way fire was destructive to metal.

Surely, she could find some kind of balance in the three that allowed her to make the most of her potential. It was access to Avuri's Qi that had ultimately allowed her to take in the fire Qi without destroying her own metal Cultivation. But mixing the three was far more difficult than she had expected, rather than simply using water as a mediary to make handling fire and metal together safely.

Even after a week of the two of the Cultivating together, neither felt any closer to developing the new techniques they needed. Emery kept telling herself they would work it out eventually, but she continued wracking her brain for ideas even while preparing the dinner for Ieji's going away party.

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