The Whipping Boy

Gonyaul wailed in pain as he felt the searing heat from the friction across his face and the warm blood from the wound. His eyes watered involuntarily as he retreated to the wall. Where had this third person come from? With all the dodging he hadn’t been able to detect their approach from behind, he scolded himself for being careless.

Yet this could work in his advantage. The shadows would make it hard for projectile weapons to be as accurate and with all the movement, even more so. And that was assuming they were consistently precise. Now if they missed, they could accidentally hit their whip companion. This train of thinking emerged because out of the three, the person with the whip was the biggest threat, a fast moving weapon at a much shorter distance would be harder to avoid. However, a whip was only optimally effective if it could remain at the proper distance, just like any punch or kick. He could use this new person as a shielding buffer between himself and the other two.

Gonyaul gasped and dropped into a splitting frog stance to narrowly avoid another whip lash across his face. He could hear it tear into the wall behind him. He fell forward on purpose onto his belly with hands catching him to cushion and control. Another rock and arrow just missing once again; he hadn’t been trying to dodge them this time he was just continually dramatically changing his orientation and got lucky.

Now in the proper position, Gonyaul placed his feet on the wall; he was already in a loaded leg position thanks to the split frog stance. While the Whipper was gathering themselves for another attack, he kicked off the wall and propelled himself like a missile towards them. Simultaneously he had pushed up with his hands, making him now horizontal about a foot off the ground as he moved. His hands repositioned themselves in the air and when they came back into contact with the ground, he went into a forward roll over his left shoulder and immediately his feet found their footing on the ground once available.

He had, unexpectedly to those targeting him having never seen this type of martial arts before, traversed the distance between the wall and the person with the whip. Instead of standing though, which would have made him a larger target, he only rose up to the other persons waist. He grappled into them, twisted, and while holding strong with his arms rotated his legs around and brought the Whipper crashing down to the ground in one motion.

As the whipper hit the ground hard, Gonyaul kept moving while continuing to keep controlling contact. He was putting them between him and the other two while locking them down. His legs piked backwards and up around the whippers head and his arms pulled hard on the arm holding the whip.

He commanded, “Drop” in Ozaniae. The Whipper started to resist. Based on the fact that they were not going to play nice, Gonyaul had no choice but to buck his hips and dislocate their weapon arm at the shoulder; it did not bring him any joy to hear the popping sound.

He felt the arm go limp with weakness. This gave him an opportunity to grab the handle of the whip, which had been released, with his right hand and he flung it as far away as he could. He then looked to the other attackers, sizing up their next actions as he held the whipper like a shield between himself and them

He shouted again, this time with more urgency. “Please stop, no fight.” In Ozaniae.