Reconciliation

[Rance]

His clawed, disfigured hand had shot out to find her wrist without a moment's hesitation, and against it, he twisted his hand, and her arm twisted with it, a movement so fast, so curt, so sharp, that he could feel the bones in her wrist explode beneath his strength, could hear the elbow snapping free of its brethern bones. To her knees, the woman dropped, a choked cry held behind gritted teeth while a tear that she did not want to fall glistened in the corner of her remaining eye.

"Your immaturity defies your age," he would whisper to her in the tongue of the Moapa, applying further pressure to her wrist, and she squealed out in agony. "... you did nothing but waste your time away with Those Of The East as opposed to killing those you were sent out to kill."

"They were stronger than I thought!" She would protest, her own talon-edged hand raising upwards to attempt to pry his away. His golden stare stopped her movement, though, and she was left to wither under his hand. "They are not like regular humans! .. Phlynn m-.. makes many strong friends!"

There was another sickening twist, and her palm faced upwards in his calmly squeezing hand, but by the angle of her elbow, it should have never faced that way. She threw her head forward with a shriek.

"Who makes many strong friends?" He raised a brow whilst he corrected her.

"Ph-... Cr-.. Cries-to-Flowers! He surrounds himself with power!"

He side-stepped her as he continued to hold her wrist. The scalps hanging from his breeches -- rewards of wars he'd waged -- swayed as one as he pivoted around her. A firm arm shot upwards, and then came downwards with thunderous force against the shoulder of the hand he so twisted. There was another ear-grating snap -- he could feel her shoulder crumple under his fist like crinkling parchment. Here, with her arm twisted behind her, and Fury-of-the-Winds leaning down over her huddled frame, she was sobbing into the mud beneath her. "Very good girl. You're starting to learn," he would sneer. She could only respond with a wet gasp.

"And as quickly as I should kill you for defying the Moapa, there are still many questions to be answered," the man told her, grinding a leather moccasin between her shoulderblades and forcing her all the way down into the mud beneath.

"Stood-As-One -- he has turned on us, has he not?" His heel tapped upon her spine.

She stammered out desperately, her arm a deluge of fire and ice within where he had shattered it in various places. "He-- ... He did not take part in our mission as we h-.. had plan--" Pain exploded in her spine as a boot hammered down against her back, and the rest of her words were drowned in mud.

"Stood-As-One has turned on us. Am I right?" He teased, leaning down to whisper against her ear. The threw her head up from the mud and managed to gasp, her missing eye a glaring, black hole against the moonlight.

"Yes!" She spit. "He has sided with the boy!"

And here, Fury-of-the-Winds would slam her once more into the mud before he stood and swept away from her, bare spine rippling against the moonlight in a ridge of brown and black shadows. A chiseled chin turned over his shoulder, and that glaring, gold stare found Sings-in-the-Fall's pain rather appeasing.

"You won't fail me when they come, will you, girl?" He stared up towards the moon where it smiled at them from behind the trees. "Though you did not succeed in bringing me the scalps of those I sent you to maim, The Unseen completed his task in perfection. He has given the boy a reason to come to me of his own volition, and I am certain that reason will be quite enough to draw him, and if his foolish friends choose to tag along, them too."

Sings-in-the-Fall pushed herself upwards upon an elbow. "Why could you just ... not have gotten him yourself? Or had us return him to you? Why need to try to draw the boy here at all?" Her single-orbed gaze did not meet his, for he had turned his back. A lock of young, blonde hair was rubbed between his jagged fingertips.

"Because if I am to repent for my mistake, the elders must see that I did so respectfully," He said, chuckling. "I made that boy how he was, in essence -- he is, therefore, a child of my creation, and something they do not believe can be simply snuffed away. Besides, there is one promise he must fulfill to me."

"What did that little fool promise?" She said, cradling her shattered wrist, grimacing against her broken elbow. It felt like a thousand shards of glass beneath her flesh.

"To do as all Moapa are vowed -- to protect his tribe at every lifely cost. He has exiled himself. But he still has yet to fulfill his vow."

She furrowed her brow. "And this?" She spat, talk of the boy leaving sour presence upon her tongue. She had never liked Phlynn -- had thought him a pitiful, weak, wretched creature.

"He still must protect the Moapa," he said, sniffing at the little blonde hair, face turning up to the stars. "There is something that he must do to protect a tribe that was once his ... that only he can do for us. And once he has completed his task, I will sever our link with him, and he will be but a speck in our history."

Sings-in-the-Fall drew up upon her knees and watched the stars with her chieftan, clearing her throat while she whispered. She glanced to the gloden strands in his fingers. And then she looked up to him.

"What is it he must do for us?" She whispered indignantly, teetering upon the edge of his secret.

"It is simple." Fury-of-the-Winds would say, kissing those strands of blonde before he would part his fingers and let the winds take them where they might -- resigning to their softness rather than their fury tonight, as was his namesake. It was all a perfectly brilliant plan coming to fruition within his mind, and he spoke the words with the name the boy had been given in the East, shrugging his shoulders, golden eyes sparkling like wildfire.

"Phlynn Marion Johnford has someone to kill."