Avuri
The bickering continued long into the night, even while I worked on Rylie and Demi, mostly as normal.
The whole evening turned out to be quite unusual. Emery continued to berate her father, while Vale made an occasional attempt to defend his decisions. However, while he was under fire, he also kept taking the time to give me guidance on how to deal with the poison remaining in his daughters' systems.
Watching him order me around made Emery's effort to attack him redouble, despite his guidance being surprisingly useful. He explained that while he did not have any medicinal Qi, and therefore no talent for treating others, he had studied the treatments themselves so he could perform them on himself if he were ever in a bind.
Demi, who had taken her turn on the table already, seemed intrigued by the statement, which led into a very interesting conversation about the nature of healing techniques.
I had been trained in what little medicine I knew by the Frozen Mountain Sect years before. But while I still had some respect for the Sect, I had learned that they were still relatively small fish. Between being situated in the weaker Floral Hills, and their recruits, therefore, typically being of low power, the Sect took a lot of poor teaching traits under its wing.
One of those poor traits was teaching students how to do a thing, but not the why, or the underlying principles of it. For example, I had been taught about medicinal Qi, what it did in the body, and how to Cultivate it and use it. I was taught general techniques for minor healing, purification of poisons and other ailments, and a small array of other similar skills.
What I was never taught was what made medicinal Qi different - but Vale knew. The techniques for Cultivating medicinal Qi were a well-guarded secret by the various Sects that taught the skill, generally with harsh penalties for anyone found teaching the skill to others. Even I had technically signed such an agreement before I had taken part in the class where I had learned the skill.
As it turned out, Vale explained that medicinal Qi was roughly the equivalent of an almost neutral Qi, with a few particular characteristics that assisted in healing. In addition, unlike the process of adding an additional element of Qi to the body, Cultivating medicinal Qi was essentially the process of taking the Qi already in the body and scrubbing it clean of much of the Cultivator's signature for the express purpose of being able to safely enter other peoples' bodies.
The process removed as much of the Cultivator's personal Qi signature from the Qi as possible, along with the stronger portions of whatever element they used. However, such techniques, therefore, needed to be very specifically created for the type of Qi a Cultivator carried.
Vale even used me as an example for the room. I had learned from a Frozen Mountain Sect teacher, whose Cultivation technique worked specifically with water and ice Qi. Such a technique would not have worked for anyone else in the room, given I was the only water Qi user.
In addition, most spiritual doctors had certain specialities, which ended up related to their base Qi element. Most Cultivation techniques for medicinal Qi were unable to scrub the Qi entirely clean, leaving it with elemental side effects. My medicinal Qi, created from water and ice Qi, had a calming, cooling effect on people, and was particularly adept at treating conditions borne from blood or other fluids.
"That would explain Avuri's general talent for dealing with poisons." Emery said, most of her anger having subsided once Vale had started discussing the more interesting topics.
I took a deep breath, finally withdrawing my Qi entirely from Rylie's body for the night. "I just can't believe they didn't talk about any of that while teaching us." I said, annoyed. "I've not taught you any medicinal techniques mostly because of the agreement I signed, but it would've been nice to know that it wouldn't have worked anyway."
"It's good that you didn't try." Vale said. "Using a Cultivation technique designed for a different elemental affinity can cause pretty severe damage to the meridians. Water and metal aren't actively opposed, so it likely wouldn't have been too dangerous, though."
"That's good to know." I said, thinking back to the memory of my teacher from the Sect angrily.
"It's possible your teacher didn't know, either." Vale said in response to my expression. "The knowledge surrounding the skills are treated as special, so it's possible - especially for someone in the Floral Hills - to have had equally bad training."
"That doesn't make me feel better." I groused as Rylie sat up and we went to work to reset her bandages. Vale watched as we resituated everything with practiced ease, and nodded when we had finished.
"I knew I made the right decision to send them here. It's unfortunate that we don't have easy access to someone who could teach you more medicinal techniques, Avuri. I think you'd make a great doctor." Vale said.
"I'm not sure I'd want to spend all that time learning, but picking up a few more general techniques would be useful. Or at least some improved general healing techniques."
"You're already great with the kids." Emery said. "The fact that you can take care of minor scrapes and bruises is already a lifesaver."
"Still. It would've been nice to be able to do something when Cierra broke her arm." I said, thinking back to the almost three month period that saw Cierra's arm tightly wrapped with bandages and a bamboo splint. She had been incredibly unhappy about having her daily activities so thoroughly decimated, even though the broken bone seemed to barely have any lasting effect on her, thankfully.
Of course, if I had been a well-trained healer, I could have helped speed that process along much faster than the several weeks it ended up requiring.
Emery snorted. "While I'm sure she would have appreciated that, I'd much rather her learn a lesson about not jumping off high places just because we can. And Stena learned the lesson too, so honestly it wasn't a bad turn out in the end."
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I pinned Emery with a disbelieving stare. Emery and I had been patching holes in the roof of the barn and had lightly hopped off the high structure when we were finished - and it was that act that had led into Cierra's attempt at jumping off the - thankfully - lower eaves of the barn, landing poorly, and breaking a bone in her forearm. And all of it happened right in front of Stena.
Emery and I had both mildly panicked at the scene, when Stena came running to get us, terrified and crying. Her dismissing the whole thing as a learning experience for the girls didn't quite line up with my mental image of her crouched beside Cierra, gingerly holding the girl's arm, filled with mental panic that the entire event was her fault.
Emery looked away before I could call her out directly in front of her family.
"I'm not sure she would want to take a full-on apprentice, but if you just want to learn a few more useful techniques, you could try asking Lyn." Vale offered. "She's a talented healer in her own right, and matches well with you Qi-wise."
I considered that and nodded. "Thank you, I'll keep that in mind."
Once Rylie had been rebandaged, we moved about the room putting everything back into storage. The supplies we used each night didn't really amount to much, but we still wanted the downstairs area clean just in case we wanted to use it during the day.
"You know, Dad, you never actually said if you figured out what was going on." Demi said as the last chair was laid back into its place.
"I came up with nothing." He said, leaning against the door to the stairs as we finished up. "I came back here because the trails all went cold. Not that there was much to follow in the first place."
"Do you have a lot of enemies?" I asked, not really ever having received a true breakdown of Vale's draconic relationships.
His head bounced left and right, searching for an answer. "It's difficult to say. I don't have a lot of personal enemies, exactly, but I've made some tangential ones by associating with the Elders here. They aren't well-liked by everyone."
"Enough for someone to make a move this obvious against you?"
"It's…not outside the realm of possibility, unfortunately." Vale sighed. "There are at least five or six other dragons that likely hate me enough to try to pull something like this. Someone willing to act through a third party with poison, though, cuts that number down to perhaps two."
"So…we could track those two down and get to the bottom of this?" Rylie said, a fire lit within her now that there was something of a target to point it at.
"We could, but it wouldn't go the way you're thinking." Vale said, patting his daughter on the head as the whole group moved up the stairs. "None of you stand much of a chance against a true dragon in a fight as you are. And since we have no proof of what happened other than a guess…well. Things would go poorly for us."
"They really cleaned up their tracks that well, then?" I asked, seeing Vale's annoyed expression.
"They did," he confirmed. "The brothers you two fought have seemed to simply vanish. And while there is certainly some draconic Qi mixed into the toxins in your bodies, there's not enough to discern much beyond it being draconic in origin. Beyond that -"
"What about the doctor?" Demi asked.
"What about him?"
"You said that he didn't tell you anything other than the brothers distinctly did not die from their injuries. Wouldn't that imply that he knows what happened?"
"Well, I suspect he saw something he shouldn't have. Whether it was anything useful, I have no idea." Vale had to pause to hold up a hand in front of Demi's face before she asked another question. "I have no intention of scaring the poor man into telling me. And because we don't know what he knows, I can't exactly just say 'I'm a dragon too, I'll protect you from whatever you saw,' because he may have just seen the brothers walk away with someone and turn up dead later."
Demi looked frustrated, grinding her teeth and looking angrily at the ground.
"More than that, if he did see something that he really shouldn't have, he could be a genuine loose-end that our dragon friend doesn't know about. I don't want to put the doctor in danger of being killed."
"You do know your own daughters are in danger of being killed, don't you?" Rylie asked, sounding more sarcastic than angry.
"You're not in any real danger anymore." Vale declared. "You're under the care of my best daughter-in-law, after all."
I rolled my eyes at the not-compliment, which caused Emery to giggle at least.
"But more than that, I think the would-be assassin has simply left the failure as is. I'm sure they know that I know what happened, and they clearly don't want to bring the whole debacle into the light."
"So, what you're saying…" Demi began, only for Rylie to pick up the statement.
"...is that we're basically just going to ignore what happened."
Vale turned to give his daughters a flat stare. "Girls, I didn't ignore it. I spent the last month digging into it. But the culprit appears to have vanished into the proverbial night, and I think trying to track him or her down might land us in more danger than we're equipped to handle."
When Rylie moved to argue, Vale just spoke over her and continued. "And let me be clear. Once you two are actually healed, I expect you both to leave well enough alone. You're alive. That's all that matters. And if you go after whoever is responsible, you'll probably end up not alive. Take the win." He said, sounding genuinely concerned. "Please." More than that, though, what had me most concerned was his expression that seemed to imply he might have an idea of what was going on, because he clearly looked like he was prepared to beg all of us to leave the attacker be.
Rylie and Demi traded serious looks, considering what to do. It didn't take them long to make a decision, apparently, as they nodded in just a few seconds.
"Fine, Dad." Rylie said.
"And that's the last time we use your name for anything." Demi added.
Vale smiled, satisfied with that and nodded in agreement.
"You never should've used his name to begin with." Emery muttered to the side as we all moved into the living room. "There's a reason I barely ever even call him 'Dad'."
Emery's sisters chuckled at the complaints that we had all heard before while she went off on a tangent about even being associated with the man had been a near mortal danger on more than one occasion.