The Prairie initiate gave a bark, signaling he was not dead. It was enough for Keene, who allowed his full attention to be placed on the task at hand. His heart beat slowly, the rush of reimancy was not enough to draw fourth the flames of passion that had burned so hot he could hardly remember them. Instead, his eyes burned with an icy calculation as he watched the elemental catastrophe burn through his spell. He shouted at them, his babbling broken by moments of lucidity, but the words fell on deaf ears. Keene cared little about the things wishes, its demands. He had been given a task by the wind itself to destroy what stood before him, destruction that seemed to come easier to him now than he ever thought it would. There was a word that caught and stuck like a thorn in his mind: murder. His icy core dropped another handful of degrees as he stared back at them, the ran swirling before them like vengeful dancers awaiting their actions, ever the impatient audience. Keene clenched his fists, his face remaining a slate of unfeeling cold. They knew nothing of murder, of betrayal, of mercy. They were pathetic creatures unfit for the world; whether they had been before or not, whether through their actions or another, they had lost the right to life, the right to reason. They were beyond such petty contrivances as mercy or hope, instead they were nothing. A nothing he was required to deal with.
The second figure was a child, or it appeared as such. The agony of the burning man was contrasted with the strange, almost floating aura the other creature gave off. It was unnatural, even more so than the magic Keene had grown used to. It gave him the feeling that he should be unnerved, but his mind was far too focused on deflecting the barrage of fiery missiles while attempting to employ a counter to pay her much heed. That was until she spoke. Her words drifted across the winds similar to the entity that had directed him, yet her voice was wrong. It was wrong in a way that made his skin crawl, a sensation he could feel even in the numbness of his right arm. It broke his attention and it bound it to another path of thought. The voice from before, the storm, it had desired he destroy the creatures before him. There had been little reason beyond the shortsighted atonement of his inadequacies, but now, as he stared at the pale figure beneath the flaming wreck of a man, Keene wondered if, perhaps, she were the reason instead. In his lapse, fire flew on either side, slamming into the ground around them and firmly reminding Keene of what was at hand.
Drawing his res around him, he prepared another spell. Before he could do anything, the banshee screamed. It was a sound as ubiquitous as the rolling thunder, and with came a flurry that wrapped itself around the water Keene had gathered. The wind bit into the shield as Keene wrapped it around them, creating a sizable shell that drew in the rain around them as the winds tried to break through. She was powerful, and the fire had yet to let up. He had little time to make a plan, but inaction was as dangerous as a wrong choice, and he was well aware of what would happen should he fail. With a sharp exhale of breath, Keene launched bits of res forward with a flick of his wrist, the bluish liquid carrying with it water from the shield he still maintained. As the darts flew, he snapped his fingers, transmuting them to ice and directing them mostly at the girl. She had command over the wind, and he waited for her to divert her attention to the missiles.
If she took the bait, Keene would cast fourth the shield around him, driving it into the antagonizing duo with a flood-like force before spreading his res through the waters to freeze the creatures where they stood. Regardless, Darin had not gone unnoticed. "Flank them." Keene was more than enough of a distraction to keep the creatures focused upon him, and he was prepared to sacrifice res to keep the hound safe until he was within range to attack. His mind was clear, cold, and calculating. Mistakes were inevitable, but failure was not an option. He would prevail, and there was little short of godlike intervention that would keep him from destroying those that stood before him both in that moment and in whatever moments lay ahead of him. The girl's screams still echoed on the winds, and they sickened him. Though he could not place why, her voice did not belong upon them. He could feel it in his bones, the unnatural sensation of something so terribly wrong it could not be denied. He would end her. It was a fact.
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