OOC; Dream
"Now run, boy. Run for your life."
And he did. He ran because the very earth was against him, roiling under his feet and writhing like a living being. You can't have me, he thought, with a fury that nearly consumed him. I won't be buried in a foreign land.
The little grove, oak trees and all, the entire expanse that surrounded it rocked around him, a sea in a storm. Except that there was no storm. There was the high noon sun watching, and him running and stumbling, trying to get beyond the first few trees and into cover only to find himself flung back. Only his pounding heart and parched throat and the steel in his hand, the steel - the hook, the wire, the paltry strength of a boy who had drunk war with his mother's milk but was no match for this, this foreign land -
And the man in the center of the ripples. The tall, black-haired man who speared him with his eyes, treacherous eyes as blue as the sky was clear.
"Why!" he was shouting; not a question, because no answer would do. "I might've trusted - !" and he fell headlong, flat against the earth, and the man shook his head.
"Because no one cares what happens to an Ilyigan."
The fury that these words ignited in him nearly caused his heart to split. He pushed against that earth, that dirt, and rising unsteadily, cast his hook, felt its claws seize a tree securely, leapt and grabbed the wire. Without looking back, he climbed as the tree shivered, tried to cast him down. Every place he placed his foot on became his enemy. He leapt between the trees, closer to the sky, the sun. It took each of them a moment to start shaking him off, and in the meantime he snatched breath after breath and felt the boiling of his blood, felt the drums of wrath within the confines of his skull. Not here. Not in this country. That blood was too pure and proud for this dirt to swallow...
And the trees were taking a moment to start shaking because the blue-eyed man had trouble finding him when he was off the ground. He had to close his eyes and focus.
He realized this as he collapsed against one thick branch and it was like a lightning strike. He was too fast, his enemy not entirely in control of his own power. Precious split-seconds, a chance to live.
A chance to kill.
He was a blur then. Leaping, weaving a complex path, moving between, up and down the trees with greater speed than he knew was in him. His hands bled from grasping the wire and his arms were numb, and his heart was near bursting from exhaustion as well as rage, but to stop was to die. I won't give up my soul to a foreign sky. He was behind his enemy, and high up, and he leapt -
The cry of pain, dismay and shock that his enemy let out when they collided rang like benediction. They rolled once, twice, and he came out on top, face bloody, mouth full of dirt that he spat in the other's face. Forgetting that he had ever held steel, he began pounding that shocked face, these blue eyes to minced meat. Again and again and again.
The man coughed. A word. A name - it had to be a name, his name, else why would he stop? But he could not hear it. "Stop - stop - owe me your life - "
"Shut up!" It was the snarl of a blood-mad animal, and a shout of elation. "It's too late now! I won! Grandfather was right - fortune favors the bold, and I won! I'll be the first man to ever kill a Land's Own - "
Lightning.
There was a storm, but it was not in the sky. It was in him, and of him. It was his heaving human flesh and pure, proud blood. It was the unexpected, fierce and final knowledge that he had lived and he had won and he will never never never be defeated again.
The last thing he remembered was that feeling, the glorious feeling that his wrath had become pure joy, as though the flames had all frozen and cleared and turned to tongues of gold, flowering in the high noon sun.