It's a ballroom.
Crystal chandeliers. Tall windows. Thick, embroidered curtains. Marble floor. High, arching ceiling.
Four exits. Heavy, oak-paneled doors.
The golden Cornucopia in the center of the room. Weapons. More supplies. Not important right now.
48. 47. 46.
Twenty-four tributes on our pedestals. Girls all in evening gowns. Heels. Jewelry. Men in white tuxes. Flat shoes. They have the advantage.
Tiller. Three spots to the left. Mercury halfway down the line. Orion hidden from sight. And Citrine. Two cannon fodder tributes on either side.
35. 34. 33.
A sword twenty feet from my pedestal. Knives are closer. Gardens outside the windows. Focus.
30. 29. 28.
Finding targets. The boy from 7. The boy from 10. The girl from 9. Hera.
One girl a few spots down the line on my right. Hard face. Determined look. Tall. Kerry Rheys. Staring around with tears streaming down her face. Her district token in her hand. A small ball. Her hands shake.
Her eyes meet mine briefly and I know what she's about to do.
The ball tumbles from her hands.
The mines go off. A blast of sound. Rush of hot air. Bits of unidentifiable burning tribute raining down. A bloody, burning scorch mark on the marble floors. Smoke. Acrid. Burns.
Screams ringing through the room. A half-insane laugh. Mercury.
Twenty-two more to go.
7. 6. 5.
Declan, I promise. Pat. Maura. I promise.
4. 3. 2.
The gong rings and my mind snaps into place like a dislocated arm pops back into a socket.
The first thing to go are these damn shoes. They're looser than they should be and it only takes a couple precious seconds to kick them off. I breathe a silent thanks to Madame Lucia as I leap off the platform into the mass of yelling, running tributes. I ignore the knives scattered in front of me in favor of the short sword closer to the Cornucopia. I snatch it up and spin it in a silver arc, cutting through the girl from 5 as she totters past me. Her blood splashes across my gown. It's hot.
I was right about the shoes. The female tributes are mostly struggling to limp away on their high heels or kick them off while the males run at full sprints towards the supplies or exits. The boy from 3 dashes past me with his arms loaded with supplies. Cutting him down would be easy but I let him go in favor of the boy from 7. He's found twin hatchets and is shouting for his allies.
The boy from the lumber district barely has time to raise one of his weapons before my sword comes down. He only half blocks the blow and the blade cuts through his shoulder. One hatchet drops from his now useless arm. He screams and chops at me wildly, amped up on the fear and adrenaline. My own body responds in kind. I haven't felt this strong, this invulnerable, this alive since the massacre at the Reaver camp. The boy from 7 gets a couple more swings in but I get in close and cut through his wrist before plunging my sword through his chest.
I let the blood cover me this time. The audience gets what it wants.
There's a sharp whistle and I duck as a spear flies over my head, impaling itself in another girl. "Watch it!" I snarl at Tiller. He gives me a little wink and a wave before diving for another spear. I didn't figure him to be the one who gets cheery at child-murder. Just goes to show you never know a tribute until the gong sounds.
I spin, hunting for more cannon fodder. I see a couple fleeing through the doors and let them go. I turn towards another battle. Rob is fighting the boy from 9, spinning and lunging, the knives in his hands darting in like silver hummingbirds. But his opponent has a scythe, giving him the advantage of both strength and reach and Rob barely manages to avoid having his stomach sliced open.
I run towards my ally but Orion gets there first. He gives a massive leap, kicking the boy from 9 away from Rob before swinging a bastard sword through the air. The boy from 9's head rolls away as Rob gives a sigh of relief.
"Consider yourself rescued, damsel," my district partner says as he ruffles a bloody hand through Rob's hair. Rob gives a disgruntled grunt that turns into a shout as he pushes Orion aside and repays a debt that's only seconds old. His knife flies through the air into the shoulder of the girl from 9 who was sneaking up behind Orion with a long, serrated knife. She screams but doesn't drop the weapon, instead running as fast as she can towards one the exits.
I race to intercept her but as I run past the mouth of the Cornucopia the boy from 10 burst out from inside, shoving me to the ground. I slap my hands down on the floor to break the fall but not before my head slams into the edge of the Cornucopia. I see stars and red flashes. "Take them down!" I try to scream but I have to hold down the vomit that rises in the back of my throat.
Both the field girl and the rancher boy manage to escape through the doors. I struggle to my feet as Orion gives a roar of frustration and sends a spear flying into a tribute cowering in a corner. She slams against the wall and dies without further pretense.
For one terrifying moment my head swims and vision doubles and I'm sure I'm about to get knifed in the back by some ambitious outlier. But then I find my center of gravity and steady myself. I let myself vomit and I feel a bit better.
"A lovely display, Enobaria," comes a lilting voice. "Shame you missed your dress, it would have matched your eyes."
"You would know, Citrine," I mutter as I rub my eyes. My head still throbs like a bitch but I push past it. "Was that the last of them?"
"Not quite. We saved one for dessert." Mercury's voice is cruelly amused.
The tributes from 1 are standing near the windows, twirling thin rapiers in lazy circles. Citrine hasn't even bothered to kick off her heels, Mercury's tux is immaculate. Hera is between them, backed up against one of the windows, unarmed and practically spitting in fury.
"Cowards," she hisses. "Storms take you all, you shits. Give me a weapon and fight me."
"Now, that would be stupid," drawls Citrine as she gives a fake little lunge. "This is a good look for you. Helpless and so very, very alone. You did bring it on yourself, although let's be honest. The Capitol has no use for a Victor built along the lines of a coal train." She gives a tinkling little laugh as she flips her hair over her shoulder.
"Five on one. How noble. How brave. Your districts would be so proud. They're probably saluting their heroes in the squares right now." Hera's attempts at shaming are her last defense, but she seems to be determined to wield them. "You think they're holding a party in Shantytown right now Tiller? Think your uncles and cousins are all cheering you on?"
Tiller refuses to look at his district partner. "Just kill her," he says. "Kill her and be done with it and let's move on."
"Oh no," says Mercury. "We're taking our time with this little minx. I call dibs."
"Not a chance in Twelve," says Citrine. She gives Orion a little wink. "You'll like how hot I look in red, stud." Orion makes an attempt at an approving hetero grunt.
"Give her a weapon." I say.
My allies give me looks ranging from shock to anger. Both are mingled on Hera's face.
"Did Four's pretty posturing make you swoon, Two?" Mercury leers. "I knew you were dumb, but I didn't think you were soft."
"Say that to me again and I'll fuck you with a piece of sandpaper, little boy. I'm going to kill her myself."
"Then do it," says Orion.
"I'm going to. But I'll give her the fight she wants." I look at Hera. "Get past me, and you're free to go, Four. The others will let you go, for now. You just need to get past me and through the door."
"You are soft," says Mercury in half-awed tones.
"We're here to put on a show," I snap. "And that's what I'm going to do. You want to skewer unarmed little girls, you'll have the chance, half the cannon fodder made it out. I plan to do this right. Now let her arm herself and back down."
Citrine pouts a bit and Mercury gives me a black look, but they step aside and let Hera pass. To her credit, the fisher girl doesn't make a mad dash for one of the doors, instead she walks straight to the Cornucopia and begins rummaging inside.
"I sure hope you know what you're doing," mutters Citrine as she links her arm in mine.
"You know I'm right, beautiful," I say as I squeeze her arm. "Too many got away. We need to provide a little spectacle if we don't want something black and slimy creeping up on us tonight."
"I would have made it a good show," shrugs Citrine, but she doesn't make any more protests, which I take as tacit agreement. "Try not to vomit on her, I don't think that's the spectacle they're looking for."
I slap her lightly across the face, she gives a little coo, and then Hera is standing at the mouth of the Cornucopia with knives stuck into her belt and two long pole weapons in her hands. The ugly look on her face makes me question this decision briefly, but I push the doubts down. I can beat her. And despite my open contempt for the fisher girl and her self-righteous moralizing, she deserves better than being straight out butchered.
"Just you and me, Four," I say as I step between her and the doors leading out of the ballroom.
She grins and gives an ironic little salute. "If you had given me a choice I would've picked you." She moves.
Her spear flies through the air, straight and true. I dive and roll and the spear misses by scant inches. I roll to my feet and push down the dizziness from my head injury, and in the time it takes to find my balance Hera is on me. Her other weapon is a glaive and it darts through the air towards my throat. I spin away and slash my sword towards the wooden pole. She pulls back and regroups.
We circle each other at the mouth of the Cornucopia. Neither of us wastes our breath on insults or taunts even though the pack is cheering me on, shouting at me to drop her. Hera has the advantage of reach, and she's not unskilled; District 4 tributes are usually trained on pole arms as they're closest to the native harpoons and tridents. But she has to constantly pull back to keep me from cutting her weapon in half and rendering it a useless pole. My own weapon is shorter than I'm used to, but I've been trained on swords since I was nine.
I parry and thrust, knocking the glaive aside again and again. Hera grows more and more desperate in her attempts to gut me. She twirls the glaive in an arc, intending to cut through my neck. I bend backwards and let it soar over me. I grab the pole with my free hand and spin inwards. Hera has to release the glaive to avoid the blow and I toss it aside as she pulls out her knives.
She twists and turns, lunging at me and trying to lock my sword between her blades. Now I had both reach and skill and my sword starts drawing blood. Soon she's bleeding out from a dozen small cuts. She makes one more desperate dive and I move in for the kill.
My bare feet slip on the bloody floor and I go down hard. I twist away and her knife cuts through my back in a rope of white-hot pain. I kick out, tripping the fisher girl. We leap to our feet simultaneously and the dance resumes.
I'm slower, each movement sends more pain through my back, but Hera is drained and exhausted. I make a gamble, feinting towards her legs. She takes the bait.
I spin and go for her neck as she stumbles helplessly forward and then Mercury is there, lunging to claim the kill himself. It's too late to stop myself and we collide, falling to the ground together.
Hera takes the opportunity. She leaps over us and sprints towards the door, her bare feet slapping against the marble floor.
I shove Mercury away and hurl my sword at her fleeing back. It soars through the air, spinning in two lazy arcs before cutting through the back of Hera's neck. She drops like a broken puppet, her spine severed.
I grab Mercury by the collar, pulling him close. "Stay out of my way, One," I hiss before shoving him away, leaving bloody handprints on his coat.
Citrine starts clapping slowly. "Good show, Enobaria. Marvelously good show. Looks like you were right."
She nods her head towards the ceiling as a silver parachute falls from a panel in the ceiling. It glides right into my hands. I pull out a large bottle of ice cold water and an ice pack that I immediately press to my head. I sit against one of the walls and take a long drink, splashing a bit on my face. The ice against my head soothes the throbbing and I give an involuntary moan of relief.
Tiller sits beside me with ointment and bandages from the Cornucopia. He cuts away part of the back of my dress before dressing and bandaging my wound. He doesn't say anything, and doesn't have to. I'm aware of what District 4 honor looks like by now.
The cannons start to fire. We count them off together.
"Nine," says Orion. "Not the best, not the worst either. Looks like we're hunting tonight. But first, you know what they say." He nods towards the Cornucopia. "To the victors go the spoils."
I stand up and follow my allies to the plunder at the Cornucopia, avoiding the still warm corpses of the fallen tributes and the pools of congealing blood. I pick up a new sword at the mouth of the horn and give it a few experimental twirls. Better weight, better balance, better suited to my particular style. Besides me, Rob sticks as many knives into his coat pockets as he can fit.
"No food, no water, no additional clothes," mutters Orion as he circles the horn. "Looks like we have to make the sponsors happy."
"Or we'll have to search the grounds," says Citrine as she peers out of one of the windows. "I can see fountains from here, so water won't be a problem."
"What if it's tainted?" asks Rob.
"Then we test it with these strips," says Orion as he tosses a pack to his ally. "And then we purify it with iodine or boil it on that camp stove."
"Oh," says Rob in a slightly awed voice. "Right. Yeah." He seems slightly overwhelmed to have the bounty of the bloodbath at his disposal. Not surprising, when Sixes have a reputation of going down fast and hard.
"Hey guys, guess what I found!" Tiller sticks his head out from the Cornucopia, a broad grin on his face.
"Food?" I ask.
"Toys," he says and disappears back into the horn.
The interior of the Cornucopia is a wealth of objects I can't even begin to identify. Tiller tosses me a thin black box about the size of my palm. "What's this?"
"PCD. Personal Communication Device. We use them on the fishing boats to keep in touch with the shore authorities. Turn it on. No, that button there."
I press the button and a green button lights up. I hold it to my ear and Tiller starts rattling off nonsense. I hear him beside me, but his voice chimes into my ear from the box as well.
"Enough for all of us," says Tiller. Now we'll never be out of contact."
Citrine puts on a pair of goggles. "Woah," she says. "What is this?"
I put on a similar pair and suddenly everything is a blaze of colours. Dark blues and purples for the horns, a low orange for the bodies of the tributes outside, and my allies are beacons of red, orange, yellow.
"Thermal vision glasses," says Rob in awe as he puts on his own pair. "They register heat signatures, not light, so camouflage or staying still and quiet can't hide you. The Peacekeepers in Six use them when they raid the drug dens in the Lower City."
On television, District 6 is always portrayed as a quaint, cultured city stuck in a charming sense of nostalgia. I am not surprised to hear this isn't accurate and I suddenly suspect where Rob got his knife fighting skills.
There are wires and batteries, heat lamps and binoculars, plastic jugs of chemicals and every type of electronic gadget imaginable. It's fortunate for us that neither of the tributes from 3 showed any sign of being a mad genius. Their mentors are probably cursing the air blue right now.
Mercury finds the greatest treasure, but Orion claims it right away. A small tablet, unimpressive until the center button is pushed and a pleasant female voice chimes out 'The Ballroom.' The screen shows the outline of the room we're in from above, with a red dot identifying our location at the horn. The rest of the screen is black. Orion takes the tablet through one of the doors and confirms that it's a map that will grow larger and more detailed the more of the arena we explore.
"We should get hunting," says Tiller. "The bodies will start to stink soon."
"Shouldn't one of us stay to guard the supplies?" asks Rob.
Orion shakes his head. "They won't remove the bodies until we're all gone. We have to risk it at this point. I think we're fine though. We can carry most of the weapons and I don't think any of the cannon fodder will have much use for," he squints at a jug. "Potassium nitrate. Enobaria?"
I shrug. "Might as well start. I saw some packs on the other side of the horn, so we can at least carry as much as we can. Besides, I'm hungry. Don't suppose there's a kitchen somewhere in this place."
"And clothes," says Citrine. "You all look a fright. I'm not looking forward to these rags rotting off us in a couple of weeks."
We stuff as much as we can into the packs and assemble. Mercury gives a disgusted glance towards the smear that two hours ago was Kerry Rheys. "Ugh. They'll have a great time scraping that off the floor."
I haven't spared a thought to the fact that the girl from 8 suicided herself out of the Games, but now I see Cecelia in my mind and hear her cold assertion that I wouldn't have to worry about killing her sister. There's no way I'm the only one who knows what happened and no way her family won't pay the price.
"I saw her before it happened," I say in an amused tone. "She was shaking like a broken motor. Surprised she didn't tumble off herself. Idiot."
All I can do. I put the Rheys sisters out of my mind as Orion leads us out of the ballroom.
The door leads into a circular domed atrium with more doors leading out in other directions. We pick one and end up in a long corridor lined with statues. More doors lead into galleries, closets, bedrooms, dining halls. At one point Orion pulls aside a tapestry to reveal a secret passageway.
"It's a palace," says Rob in an awed tone.
"An estate," says Citrine. "We haven't even made it outside to the gardens yet."
We search the palace for hours and come up with nothing. Orion frequently checks the electronic map and doubles back so we can check every nook and cranny. There's nothing but endless halls and staircases and old-fashioned furniture.
My stomach is rumbling when we come across a bathroom on one of the upper floors. Citrine gives a shriek of delight at the sight of the working toilet and sink with hot running water.
"You know, I have to say, they've set us up with quite a spread this year," says Citrine as she wrings out her hair and motions forward. I start washing the dried blood off my arms as she continues. "After the last couple of years I was a little worried, but look at this! Five star accommodations!"
Last year's arena was a stinking jungle swarming with bloodsucking insects and poisonous reptiles. The year before was a scorching ruined city where the only water was sewage and acid rains. The Capitol converts arenas to vacation resorts after the Games. I'm guessing there have been complaints.
"Well, don't get used to it," mutter as I towel off. "The Gamemakers give, and the Gamemakers take away." The most beautiful arenas have always had the most inventive traps, and I have no desire to go tumbling through a trapdoor into a mutt den because the Gamemakers think we have it too easy.
The sun is setting through the arched windows when we make another discovery in one of the empty bedrooms. A large walk-in closet with stacks of clothes on the shelves. Citrine gives another sigh of relief and I almost walk straight inside until Orion grabs my arm and nods towards the floor. My breath leaves me in a huff when I see the crisscross of red lights.
"Booby-trapped," says Rob, once again displaying his talent of stating the blatantly obvious.
"Not for me," says Citrine as she tugs her dress from her shoulders, letting it pool around her ankles. She steps out in just her panties and begins a series of quite frankly astonishing gymnastics through the lines of light. She pulls down various articles of clothing, a shirt here, a pair of trousers there, until her arms are overflowing and she makes her way out. She loses her balance at the very end and stumbles forward but Rob catches her. Conveniently on her breasts.
"Naughty boy," she says, but she hands him a shirt and trousers anyway and he strips out of his bloody tux. "And a pair for Mercury, and a pair for Tiller, and of course a pair for Enobaria. And none for Orion. You'll have to just go naked, stud."
Orion gives her a look, strips down to his underwear and walks straight into the closet. I wait for the sound of mutts or smashing wood or sirens, but in a minute Orion steps back out with a shirt and trousers. He gives Citrine a wink as she pouts. But he sticks the shirt in his back pocket anyway.
Citrine flicks a knife out and my filthy dress falls from my shoulders, leaving me as naked as she is. I know what's expected of me and help her dress as she does the same for me with many winks and accidental brushes of skin. Unfortunately there were no shoes so I have to continue barefoot until I find a shoe closet or a sponsor feels particularly generous.
The sound of the national anthem rings through the palace. We look around until Tiller sticks his head out a window and motions us to join him.
The screen with the seal of Panem hovers over the grounds. The faces start to appear. The girl from 3. Hera. The girls from 5 and 6. Both from 7. Kerry. The boy from 9. The girl from 11.
"Seven girls out, two boys," says Mercury with a slight smirk.
"Let's put you in pumps and see you try to survive a bloodbath," mutters Citrine.
Mercury immediately swaps his shoes for his partners and totters around the room, doing an accurate impression of Citrine's interview. We laugh and applaud and even Citrine rolls her eyes and chucks one of her crystal bracelets at him.
Nothing comes soaring down to us. No parachutes. No food.
"Rob and I take first watch," says Orion. "So get some sleep, boys and girls. Looks like tomorrow will be a fun, fun day."
I find a soft patch on the floor and pull out one of the sleeping bags I found at the Cornucopia. I huddle down in the polyester and close my eyes.
I don't think I sleep but it seems like only minutes until Citrine is whispering that it's our watch. We take our positions in the hall outside as the dawn light breaks through the windows, announcing the start of another fun, fun day.
AN: Going from the pre-Games chapters to the Arena is always a bit of a jolt, so thanks for your patience waiting for this one. Also, I know I'm behind in replying for reviews, but know that I'm still appreciating each one.
Any big surprises in the bloodbath? Be sure there are going to be some down the line for Enobaria and her erstwhile friends.