Emery

Emery and Avuri spent the rest of the night essentially limit testing. If their Qi and Domains had changed so spectacularly, they would need to know exactly how it changed and where their new strengths, weaknesses, and limits were. And they needed to learn it quickly, too, before anything had a chance to go wrong somehow.

Their first move was to test their new Domains. While Domains were powerful, far more so than base Qi, they were also much quieter to the senses. A rush of power through a Domain wouldn't be as obvious to an observer as a large expenditure of Qi for a technique, for example, and neither of them were looking to wake up the entire Basin by launching off a huge technique of some kind.

Avuri had begun playing around with her Domain, running through all of her normal skills. She avoided stretching it over a huge area, unwilling to pass over Vale with her new Qi signature. It would get his attention for sure. Instead, she focused on her Domain's flexibility and reach instead, funneling it into a far-reaching ellipse shape, seeing how far she could stretch it.

Despite the foundational changes to the Domain, her reach and command over its shape and movement seemed basically unchanged. The distance she could reach changed a bit day by day, but her first attempt landed squarely within her normal expectations.

"My reach hasn't changed much at all. Or my control." Avuri whispered. "It's very strange," she continued, "despite the Domain itself feeling entirely different, the way it moves and reacts to my whims feels the same. Like so much changed, but also nothing changed." She scrunched up her nose and added, "It's a little off-putting."

"Similar to the way our Qi felt in our meridians, then." Emery said. "Let me see how…mine…goes…" Emery had trailed off as she moved to run a similar exercise, stretching her Domain out in a single direction. She trailed off, however, when her Domain just kept going. And going.

Emery felt her mouth go dry as her Domain stretched nearly as far as Avuri's had - and that was tens of times further than Emery's Domain had ever been able to reach before. Her jaw was slack when her concentration finally slipped, and she let the Domain return to her. "Uh."

"What was that?" Avuri asked, mildly panicked. "Em, your Domain has always been on the smaller side of average in area. You just casually expanded it as far as mine without blinking."

Emery worked her mouth, trying to speak despite how dry it felt. "I'm mildly terrified that that's the key, Ri. I casually expanded it as far as yours." Emery's mind raced with potential explanations, as she was sure Avuri's did as well. All at once, she felt Avuri pull her Domain back into herself, separating the two of them. The lack of any meaningful feeling of unlatching the puzzle pieces was still unnerving for Emery as she watched her wife's expression grow serious.

"I have an idea. Hang on." Ri said, and Emery watched as she dropped quickly into meditation. It took only moments before she could see, even in the dark, as Avuri's face went pale and clearly nervous. She returned a moment later, almost fearful.

"Em. Enter your Inner World and tell me what you see." She breathed.

Emery didn't say a word as she did as she was asked. It took just a moment for her to focus and drop herself into her Inner World. She appeared where she had been just a little while ago - between the two massive peaks in that little slice of heaven. Her smithing workshops were a little ways before her, and their home was behind them.

It took a minute for her to piece together what had disturbed Avuri. Their Domains weren't currently connected, given Avuri had entirely reigned hers in. Before, when they weren't connected, their Inner Worlds were just their own, without the manifestations from the other. Avuri's icy peak and their home being in Emery's Inner World didn't make sense.

"How?"

It was exactly what Emery had been thinking, but she wasn't the one that said it. Half terrified, she turned slowly to see Avuri standing there, in front of the doors to the lovely house.

"What?"

"Em, our Domains still aren't connected. Why are we both here? I'm not even touching you in the physical world right now."

"That's…concerning." Emery said, immediately focused on the new problem. "We already only had a minimal working understanding of how our combined Domain worked." She rubbed at her forehead between her eyes. "Vale is going to flip on us."

"Have you ever heard of two people actually sharing a single Inner World and Domain? It's new to me, but I can't say I've researched the topics very much." Avuri said, looking around the area.

"Not a thing. Even when I was researching our Paired Domains, there wasn't a lot of information on them. And this? I didn't see any mention of anything like this."

They both fell quiet, contemplating what any of their situation added up to.

"So, what are you thinking?" Emery asked idly.

"I'm not sure. Obviously we've triggered some other new, weird thing. Just next in line, I suppose. You?"

"Can you suspend your sense of disbelief for a minute?'

Avuri raised an eyebrow quizzically. "Sure?"

"Now, I'm not saying this makes logical sense. But the only thing I can think of that makes even a lick of sense is that, in the process of trying to balance our individual Qi against each other's, we've somehow made our Qi the same?"

Avuri looked at Emery like she had multiple heads. "...what?"

"I don't know, Ri, but it's the only thing that makes any sense to me at all. It's leap after leap of logic, but I think it works out in my head. We're sharing a Domain and Inner World because we are truly sharing our Qi now as well. All three are intrinsically connected - just even more so than we thought."

"How does that make any sense?"

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"I don't know!" Emery said with a laugh. It sounded tinged with a bit of mania, because she wasn't sure even she believed what she was saying. "Look at what we're doing, Ri. We're not in contact in any way, and somehow we've ended up in the same Domain. If you can explain to me how we're here, then I will happily lay off the nonsensical theories."

Avuri remained quiet, unable to really refute what Emery said, so Emery simply continued spouting nonsense.

"I'm more than simplifying things, but I think what might have happened is this - in the last several days of Cultivating, you and I were using each other's Qi to help balance out the suddenly changed nature of our original Qi. In the process, we managed to blend our Qi in such a way that it has become a single, fully balanced whole. Rather than 'Emery's Qi' and 'Avuri's Qi', which we've both been working with until now, we've ended up with 'Emery's and Avuri's Qi'."

"So we both have the same Qi signature flowing through each of our meridians." Avuri said, accepting that much. "Sure, I can buy that. Especially given how our Qi has been interacting since yesterday."

"Great." Emery said, nodding. "So, the extension of that - and my first big leap in logic here - is that because we have the same Qi flowing through each of us, our Domains are no longer 'bonded' but…I don't know, 'fused'? Obviously I don't know if there's a proper term, but Ri, I don't think we're a pair of 'Bonded Cultivators' any more. I think we are, for all intents and purposes, a single Cultivator with a two-part body. And therefore -"

"A single Domain." Avuri breathed out heavily. She sat down right there, in front of their house, and dropped her head into her hands in exasperation. "What does that even mean?" She whined.

"Hell if I know." Emery chuckled and sat next to her. Trying not to overthink it too much, because she already had passing thoughts that were existential nightmares, Emery simply tried to think about the gains this could offer.

"Hey, we know from experience that cycling Qi through two bodies is far more efficient for Cultivation than one. The growth we've had up until now had been head and shoulders above what's natural. Just think about what this could do for our strength."

Emery figured that if they continued to Cultivate the way they had been, the new change could only be a huge boon for them. Having the exact same Qi flow through two entire bodies, with essentially two tailor-made Cultivation techniques could be exponentially more powerful than anything they had ever even thought was possible.

In fact, Emery's mind immediately began thinking about the possibilities of what they could do with two full bodies' worth of meridians. If they were so intrinsically connected that they could now function as a single body and rework their meridian pathways with that in mind, eschewing their individual Cultivation techniques for a single technique that utilized two bodies…well, Emery wasn't sure how it work, but it would certainly be something never seen before.

Avuri had curled up a little, pulling her knees up to her chest so her arms could rest across them, where she also let her forehead rest. Despite the exhausted and tired posture, it seemed her mind was similarly whirling with possibilities. "Don't dragons and spirit beasts use specific Cultivation techniques to make proper use of their bodies and physical forms?"

Emery thought back to some of her early lessons from Vale. "They do." She said, "Typically, dragons won't - or can't - teach their specific Cultivation styles to humans, because their bodies are too different to make their styles work. I mean, I'm almost positive that Eiry's techniques probably heavily involve passing her Qi through her wings, which obviously wouldn't work for humans. So anything that she's teaching your cousins is no doubt altered in some way."

Avuri raised her head, propping her chin on her arms instead of her forehead. "If your crazy idea is right, I wonder what we could do with two bodies?"

Emery chuckled. "Ri, just wait. If I'm right, I think you and I are about to have a sudden and thrilling Cultivation change."

"Hm?"

"Did you forget? We're also in the middle of the Dragon-Kin changes, and those are supposedly almost entirely physical now that we've incorporated the Qi we were gifted. If I'm right, we're about to have two full draconic-human bodies at our disposal. I don't think anyone has any idea what we might be capable of, even if people somewhere have done the whole two-bodies-one-Qi thing before."

Avuri groaned, and while Emery didn't do the same, she did agree with the sound.

"We need to talk to Vale about this. Maybe all the Elders." Avuri said weakly.

"Nope. Not doing that." Emery said petulantly. "Vale, fine, maybe. But we're finally free of the Elders - I'm not going back to their compound for more training. If they're interested, they can come see us here."

"Fine. At least Vale, then. He's the one who nudged us down the Paired Cultivation route to begin with. Maybe he's heard of whatever it is that we did."

"Fine, fine." Emery sighed, idly toying with her Qi. She held up a single hand, focusing her new Qi into the palm before creating a small floating knife above it. On a whim, she flexed different parts of her Qi through it. The metal weapon melted into a molten liquid form before turning entirely into fire. That fire solidified back into a steel weapon, which then froze over from the outside, where the ice slowly consumed the metal until the whole thing was crystal clear ice. And then the ice melted into water, but held its shape.

"Could you-"

"Always do that? No." Emery laughed. "Whatever we did to our Qi is incredible. It's like the Qi is able to change to whichever aspect I want. Before, if I wanted to make an ice weapon, I'd need to pull on reserves of your Qi from wherever it was in my body, draw it to the surface, then use it. Now, the Qi centered in my hand can just bring its ice aspects to the fore and cover that purpose."

Avuri raised her own hand in front of her, copying Emery's pose. She crafted a little flower of ice, holding it in the air above her palm. With a slight twist of her fingers, she made the little bundle of ice spin neatly in the air. Then, like Emery had done, she morphed the ice flower into water, then steel, then into fire and back again.

"That's…unreal. The Qi is so responsive."

"Right? As long as you don't need to channel a technique, the Qi is just there, right below the surface, ready to be whatever you need. It's so strange." Emery mused, letting the knife melt away. "We're going to have so much work to do from here, I bet."

Avuri let her flower fall away and looked up to the sky of their Domain. "We literally just finished making entirely new Cultivation techniques and now we have to do it again?"

Emery shrugged. "At least we'll get to do the next bit entirely together."

"Oh, yes, because working with two bodies is so much easier than one." Avuri joked.

"We should probably finish adapting our bodies to the dragonblood first." Emery added. "That'll change everything just as much, I think."

"Em, why can't we just be normal?"

Emery snickered. "You knew what you signed up for when you chose to stay here."

"No, I didn't." Avuri stated flatly. "I definitely didn't."

Emery shifted closer to Avuri on the ground so they were touching shoulders. When her shoulder bumped into Avuri's and she turned to face her, Emery pouted. "Do you regret it?"

Avuri rolled her eyes, playing along. "I don't know." She teased. "On one hand, there was the standard, every day Sect Cultivator life. On the other hand, whatever -" she motioned to Emery, "this is."

Emery leaned back, looking every bit the affronted noble, one hand over her heart, and gasped. "Fine, if that's how it is, I can just leave!"

"Except you can't." Avuri said, her tone still teasing. "You're stuck here with me. Probably forever."

Emery laughed and resettled into her spot, leaning her head against Avuri's shoulder. "Hopefully forever."

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