Sword and Snow

Emery

I couldn't help but look at Demi's bandaged arm, then pointedly toward Rylie's flank before saying, "Embarrassing? The first word that comes to mind for what happened was embarrassing?"

My sisters exchanged glances then shrugged to one another. "Yeah, more or less." Demi said.

"The short version of the story is that we let our guards down too early and paid for it." Rylie explained. "If we had been serious to the end, this wouldn't have happened. So, yes, it's embarrassing."

"And it happened in front of Dad." Demi added.

"That too." Rylie agreed.

I rolled my eyes. "So, what happened, then? Go for a real explanation this time, please."

Once again, they exchanged looks, evidently trying to decide who wanted to tell the full story. Demi seemed to be the defacto speaker between the two, and was the one to start the tale. "When we left after your wedding, we just sorta went wandering," she began. "Just went south from the province and kept going. Some of it is really nice, too. Meteor Lake was gorgeous, and the Deposits looked really neat, although we didn't actually stop there. We spent some time in Green Valley, which was lovely. Their wine fields are spectacular."

"In any case, we went as far South as the Razortooth Gulf, but didn't go around it to go further south, instead turning back to go north east. The plan was to swing wide around the Blooming Wilds, probably cut through the Emerald Expanse, and then head back up north. But we got a little off track…in the Riotlands."

I resisted the urge to rub my forehead as I felt the beginnings of a headache coming on.

"You didn't." Avuri said, half sounding like she was going to laugh, but half disappointed.

"We did. I told you it was embarrassing…" Demi said.

I had a decent suspicion from that knowledge alone how the rest of the story was likely to go. The Riotlands were a wide swath of mostly empty desert-like wastes with a few surprisingly massive cities scattered about, built around the few sources of underground water in the otherwise arid desert.

It was unclear what had caused them to end up so desolate when they bordered on the southern side of the Floral Hills, separated from them only by the Onyx Palisades, an unnatural mountain range. It was always assumed that whatever great battle had created the Palisades had also created the Riotlands, but it wasn't entirely a known fact.

But, in either case, the most noteworthy part of the Riotlands were their relative lawlessness. The major cities found scattered around the sands were a refuge for many petty criminals. The people in charge there wouldn't allow rampant murder or other such crimes in their cities, but they did allow all sorts of thugs and thieves to stay in the cities, so long as they didn't cause any massive trouble.

And this sort of half-lawlessness was held together by the absolutely massive arenas that the cities ran. The threat of being dropped into an arena, stuck in a fight to the death against a Cultivator far out of your league was enough of a threat to keep the vast majority of people in line. But more than that, the amount of money that the arenas made was a large part of it, too.

In fact, the Riotlands were one of the only provinces where people could go to watch or take part in such brutal fights. Sure, there were official and unofficial Cultivator tournaments all over the place in other provinces. They happened constantly. But they were also heavily restricted for safety, and those who took part in them did so honestly and with honor - and if you chose to ignore those rules, it was often the last mistake you made as a Cultivator, before being exiled or sometimes worse.

The Riotlands arenas tossed all those rules and honor out. They were brutal fights for large amounts of prize money, so long as you weren't being tossed into them as a lawbreaker. And as the premier money-making force in the cities, they were beyond heavily regulated in many ways, just not for safety.

The relative combat potential of fighters was meticulously noted and measured before they were allowed to fight, and then re-measured regularly. Outside of the one-sided slaughters used as punishment for crime, the fights were carefully matched up to be brutal and fair, with both sides being of as equal strength as could possibly be measured.

"Tell me you two didn't join the arenas as prize fighters." I sighed. The silence in response was answer enough.

"Look, we weren't planning on staying that long!" Rylie argued. "And we were careful not to join any fighter Sects or stables or anything. We only fought under pseudonyms, and did so as independents!"

"And? You can't tell me you thought that it'd be safe just because you didn't use your names or get involved with the gangs that take part under the guise of legitimate Sects." I said flatly.

Demi put her hands up in surrender, her bandaged arm drawing my eye. "We had a solid idea what we were getting up to, Em. We weren't planning on staying long, and only having a few matches each to make some extra money for our traveling."

"Oh yeah? Then how, exactly, did you get so injured?" I asked snidely. Avuri put a hand on my arm to try to calm me down. Which I honestly didn't think I needed - I was annoyed that they had gotten into something dangerous, but not really angry with them.

Rylie scratched her head awkwardly. "That's…the embarrassing part."

Even Demi looked down and away, like she didn't want to admit what happened.

"Yes?" I said, prodding them again.

Demi sighed. "We were in the middle of a tag team match."

"It was actually our first one, too. We had been fighting in duels until then." Rylie added.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"The fight was against a pair of brothers. It was one of the bigger matches that day, and they had even gone as far as to advertise it as a big sibling match, when we admitted to being sisters." Demi said, getting excited by the memory. "It was actually pretty cool, Em. They made a big deal about it being a pair of non-blood sisters against blood-related brothers. Made for a big turn out, and a big payday for the winner."

"Oh yeah?"

Demi shrank a little under my gaze. "It was cool…" She insisted before continuing. "Both sides knew what to expect from the other. The brothers were like us a bit in that way - two fighters with very different fighting styles. One was a very talented spear fighter that implemented water Qi into his techniques, making precise strikes from floating balls of water using high pressures."

"The other," Rylie said, "was a metal Cultivator very proficient with poisons. So we knew from the outset we needed to be wary of that, and prepared accordingly. We both entered the fight with various antidotes ready to go at a moment's notice."

"Smart." Avuri said, trying to keep things positive.

"We thought so." Rylie said.

"For what it's worth," Demi said, picking up the story again, "we basically danced around those guys. They weren't prepared for the amount of teamwork we were prepared with, being so used to fighting as a unit. It was our first team match in the arena, afterall."

"Okay, so you won the match, then?" I asked impatiently.

"Well…"

"We were winning." Rylie chuckled wryly.

"I guess the advertisements that the arena had been putting out in preparation for the match had been pretty…prolific? The arena matches are for entertainment, so part of the match is playing to the crowd a bit. If you do it right, you get paid a bit more than just for the win. So when we thought we had the match as good as won…"

I narrowed my eyes. "Tell me you let your guards down to show off."

Demi took a breath to explain, then buried her face in her hands. "Em, you don't understand."

"What? That you took time out of a fight, potentially to the death, to show off?"

"No. Dad was there." Demi squeaked out. "He apparently saw the advertisements around the city and came to watch. And we were about to win…"

"He shouted so loud that completely overshadowed all of the noise from the rest of the stands." Rylie said, similarly holding her hand over her eyes. "Emery, it was mortifying."

"He sounded so excited that his girls were doing so well, he might as well have been bragging to everyone in the stands." Demi continued. "It was awful."

I had no response to that. Despite my own thoughts on the entire arena scene in those terrible cities, I could easily imagine Vale getting overly excited and being the most embarrassing kind of parent. He had done similar to me when I took part in a few tournaments while traveling with him, and his boasts were incredibly embarrassing even then.

"We didn't even know he was in the city, let alone in the stands." Demi continued. "It stopped us both dead in our tracks, which gave the brothers their chance to try to even the odds."

"Just to be perfectly clear," Rylie said, "they failed. They hit us hard, but we ended the fight quickly in response. Lost the bonus for the crowdwork, too, thanks to Dad."

I rolled my eyes that that was even a concern.

"The issue was that their big turn-it-around attack was a really nasty one that relied on a brutal concoction of poisons." Demi said. "And our attack to end the fight…well. It didn't kill them, but they were messed up badly enough that they weren't able to offer any sort of antidote for the poisons. Even if they had wanted to, which I'm not sure they would have."

"To wrap it up," Demi continued, "Dad helped us treat what we could, but none of us are great at dealing with poisons. He managed to find some talismans that would effectively stop the poisons' progress," she held up her arm again, specifically calling attention to the paper talismans woven through the bandages, "but they're really just a stopgap measure until we could get actually treated."

"And that's why Dad sent us here." Rylie said, eyeing Avuri. "He thinks that Avuri should be more than capable of removing them."

"And then he told us to rest up and heal while we're here." Demi added. "That's about the whole story, I think."

I leaned forward onto the table with a sigh, then turned my head enough to look at my lovely wife, who hardly deserved to be sent work like this. "What do you think, Ri?"

She looked at me and shrugged. "I'd have to see exactly what I'm dealing with. If those talismans are designed to stop the spread of the poison, it's likely some form of stasis caused through Qi manipulation, so we'd have to remove the bandages for me to get a good look. Which is a risk if I can't do anything about it."

Demi nodded. "That's what Dad said, too. But he also said that he was confident it would be within your level of skill."

"Are the poisons actually fully held in check right now?" I asked.

"As far as we can tell, yes." Rylie said, lightly rubbing her flank. "If they weren't, I don't think I would've been able to make the trek."

I eyed the two of them, the headache that had started earlier beginning to grow worse. "Right, right." I said venomously. "Dad bandaged the two of you up and sent you our way on a multiple week trip with your bodies ravaged with poison."

Demi looked like she was about to argue, but I saw Avuri give her a miniscule headshake, trying to tell her not to retort. I took that in stride, and tried to calm myself down a bit. At the minute, I was more annoyed with our father than my sisters, who had simply believed in our Dad.

"If you've been alright this long, let's get you some sleep first. We can take a look at the damage tomorrow." I said. "It's late enough and we don't know how long it would take Avuri to do anything. Let alone how dangerous the poisons will be once we remove the bandages to inspect things."

Avuri nodded. "I'm in agreement there. I'd rather have most of the day to examine and work on you than only a few hours before it's the middle of the night."

"I'm okay with that." Demi said.

"Same here." Rylie agreed.

I nodded, feeling a strong urging of support and comfort from Avuri as she flooded our link with the positive feelings. It honestly did help me keep an even keel as we ushered my sisters up to the second floor. With all the kids sleeping on the third floor, we were safe to put Demi and Rylie up in an extra room that was furnished but usually went unused.

"You two can sleep here. When the kids get up, we'll do introductions, eat breakfast, then take a look at the two of you." I said.

Demi and Rylie both nodded, clutching blankets and pillows that we had shoved into their arms after pulling them from storage. There was a slight bit of awkward silence in the room, as they stood there, eyeing the two soft but smaller beds.

With a sigh, I stepped in to give each of them a hug. Knowing they were both hurt, I avoided squeezing too tightly despite my desire to do so, instead lingering for a longer embrace, hoping to get across that I was glad they were at least mostly safe and there with us.

After they both had turns, I stepped back and motioned toward the beds. "Good night."

"Night, Sis."