“—the hells? Hey, whoever’s up there, scram!” Lily blinked awake to a curious silence, curled up against a bale of hay, bits of straw all stuck uncomfortably into her hair. Yawning, she sat up— holding back a snicker as she saw Avyr. The barn cats had all clustered up beside him, making him look like a huge cat next to a bunch of kittens from the sheer difference in size between them.

Gently she shoved his shoulder— sending the cats scattering and making whoever was down there curse. It was barely even enough to move him, but it did the trick— he blinked awake, yawning quietly and stretching. “Yes?”

She placed a finger over her mouth, motioning for silence. “We’ve got company.” Surreptitiously, she pulled out some of her talismans, just in case. Protective ones for both of them, of course, ready to activate just in case, and also a mostly-harmless wind talisman that should be able to bowl over a Shedding level cultivator, just in case.

Carefully, she snuck up to the edge of the loft, peering down and looking at whoever had wandered in alongside them. They were wearing a hat, and rough clothes, and looking up at the loft near where they’d first pulled themselves up into it— eyes slitted suspiciously, a shotgun in his hands. Welp… she snuck back to Avyr’s side as quietly as she could. “I… don’t know if my protection talismans are enough to stop a bullet.”

“They’ll hold,” Avyr mewled back… but, uncertainly, and that was the real problem, wasn’t it? Neither of them knew just how much punishment they could actually take.

So… they just wouldn’t even try. She pulled open her bag and started rapidly pawing through all the talismans she’d written out, until she found one particular set— literally just the taiji binding formation she’d made, adapted to a talisman. Then, a stone creation formation… “I’m gonna trap him with this, and then we’re going to run as fast as we can, alright?”

Avyr glanced at the talismans for a long moment— then glanced at her

for a long moment, big eyes staring into her own… trustingly. It was a heavy burden to bear. Then, he nodded. “Very well. In… three?”

“No!” She hissed, glaring at him. “Give me a few seconds to—” she fiddled with the talismans, making sure they were in the right order and wouldn’t blow up or anything, then— a breath out. Steadying. Did this count as her first real combat experience? No— no, focus. “Alright. On three. One, two—” she slowly snuck up to the edge of the loft, fingers prepared to rip the talismans and set them off— “three!”

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Fluttering paper—

A flash of light—

And a whole mound of earth collapsed onto the farmer, and they were off. Avyr just picked her up— barrelling into her and tossing her onto his back in a move she hadn’t even been aware he could do, leaping out of the loft and landing with a jarring thud on the ground almost fifteen feet below. Then they were sprinting— and when he put effort into it, Avyr could go fast. A few seconds later, a shout rang out from inside of the barn—

Her heart thundered in her ears as the farmer sprinted out of the barn, gun in hand— covered in dirt and clearly furious

. A moment passed, and then—

A sharp crack, the retort of a gun firing and—

They were in the forest. The shot whizzed wide, tearing into the snow fifteen feet away from them as they retreated into the forest gloom. They kept running, bounding up the craggy mountain slope for a few minutes more until they were thoroughly, very, definitely far away from the far, whereupon Avyr dropped to the ground, panting with exhaustion.

That had been terrifying. She slid off Avyr’s back, panting for breath herself despite not even having done anything… turning, transforming, those heaving breaths of frigid air changing into cackling laughter, the echo of shattered snow around her. She slumped to the ground, leaning her back against some huge tree-trunk or stony protrusion or— she couldn’t even for the life of herself bring herself to care. “Heavens above. Holy—” she broke out into giggles again. “Victory! Our first combat as cultivators, and we’re victorious!”

Avyr crashed to the ground beside her, glancing around to make sure that there wasn’t anyone following them before slumping into himself even more. He looked more the image of a puddle than the proud cat he was. “I don’t think that counts as cultivator combat.”

“Why not? We’re cultivators, and we were in combat!”

“I don’t know if you qualify as a cultivator…” she punched him for that— but it was a weak thing, no vitriol behind it. “Also we weren’t fighting a cultivator. A farmer with a gun does not a combatant make, Lily.”

She pouted. “Well, it sounds a lot less impressive when you say we ran from an angry farmer because we slept in their barn overnight during a snowstorm.”

Avyr blinked slowly, a second passing in silence between them before— “congrats on your victory in your first cultivator combat.”

Lily just laughed.