+ Big thanks again to ArtemisCarolineSnow and Dancing-Souls, who have been so awesome in reviews through this story! Time for a less expository, more bang-bang chapter.
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Heat flashed across my face.
The Gamesmakers had pulled out all the stops with the…thing…that stood atop the hill. To say it was a thing at all, a living, breathing, feeling thing, may have been too far. It had two arms, two legs, and a head like any man, but the rest defied humanity. Brown armor plate sprouted here and there from volcanic fissures in the mutt's obsidian skin. It burst out in bony protrusions that looked more like rock formations than natural growth, jabbing out at odd angles from arms, legs, and torso. Even the mutt's head was otherworldly, its mouth yawning wide with a black void that spared no room for a nose. Only two tiny white dots, huddled between that terrible gape and the crown of bony thorns atop its head, told me that the creature could see at all.
From where had the Gamesmakers birthed this thing? I'd seen ghastly, ghoulish mutts in past Games that defied explanation, but this was the icing on the hellish cake of this arena. Every bit of it turned my veins into ice, from the slate gray, ossified war hammer it wielded like a toy to the dark cloud that bubbled up all around it to the braying, spitting, hissing insect-hounds that circled the creature's feet, their six spindly legs clicking and clacking on the loose rubble of the ruins.
My fingers tightened around my new dagger. It was a whisper against the sandstorm that bore down on us.
"That's a bit of a twist," Delfin said with a grimace. "Back into the ruins. Now."
"We can't outrun that!" Tethys stammered. Her eyes were wide enough that I was afraid they'd fall out of their sockets.
Delfin's face was the color of ash. Up on the hill, the beast aimed its hammer at him and roared. It wasn't some ordinary mutt. It was a hunter, something with brains and desire, ordering its dogs down the hill to rip us limb from limb. That was what had killed Ember, I was sure of it. It was cunning enough to leave me as bait for my allies in the pit, and I had no doubt it could end us all right here.
"I don't think we have a lot of choice," said Delfin. All the bravado left his voice, leaving a scared kid in its place. For the first time, Delfin looked like a tribute.
I froze. My legs turned to stone as the hounds stormed down the hill. Only Tethys's yanking on my hand stirred me into action, as thunder boomed with the lust of onlookers eager for blood.
"Terra!" my ally screamed.
Run. I ran. I ran as the first hound reached the pack we'd left behind. It sunk its steak knife jaws into the tough fabric, shredding it into ribbons and spilling cans of beans and torn socks across the black sand. My head shrieked with the pain from the blow that had landed me in the pit, but I forced myself to run. Run.
Cracked roads, crumbling towers, and long-empty windows rushed past as we ran. They watched us with hatred and a longing for the creatures skittering and shrieking on the broken cobblestone behind us to close the distance. It wasn't just a feeling: The thought flashed across my mind for a brief second as I sprinted down the street that each stone could hide a camera, behind which sat a Gamesmaker wishing for that very thing from the safety and climate-controlled comfort of the Capitol.
No darkness there. No beasts. No sand. No ruins. Just three tributes who needed to die.
Delfin sprinted left down a narrowing alley ahead of us, sandwiched between a pair of multistory longhouses and topped by a decorative ceiling of crumbling arches. Faults split the ground apart, and I ran with a careful eye on the road. A wrong step would sprain an ankle. The hounds would like that.
"Delfin!" Tethys panted as we rounded another corner. "We can't just keep running! Where do we go?"
He didn't know. I didn't know. The hounds were stumbling and fumbling just as much as we were, but they were relentless. Hidden in the alleyway between two towering ruins ahead of us, a narrow stone doorway beckoned of a hideaway. When I looked closer, however, I saw something else. A faint green glow in the darkness whispered of nightmares below.
"That way," said Delfin, pointing to the doorway. "We don't have another option. We stay up here, they're gonna run us down."
My heart raced. "I don't think that's a good idea," I said, glancing over my shoulder. The hounds wouldn't be long. "Can we climb a building?"
"You think that's gonna stop them?" Delfin snarled at me. "We got stuck up a building and it's game over! Nowhere to go!"
Tethys intervened. "Terra, we don't have time!" she said with panic and desperation. "C'mon!"
A booming shriek from somewhere behind us made the hairs on my arm stand up. I bit my lip, squeezed my eyes tightly, and hurried after my allies. The twilight above faded into inky darkness below. This is a terrible idea.
"You have that flashlight?" Delfin said. "Tethys?"
"I – I left it. All the stuff. I'm sorry!" she said. Her voice warbled, and I had a feeling she would fall apart at any minute. The strain of watching her friend and district partner turn into a cold-hearted killer combined with the fear of an otherworldly abomination on our heels was tearing at her last vestiges of self-control.
"Let's just go slow," I said. The green luminescence grew stronger with every footstep, and my mind reeled with the memory of the things that bred down here – real or imagined.
The other two weren't helping. The glow intensified as we hurried deeper down a loose dirt hill, lighting up the dripping catacombs around us with a deathly hue. Tethys squeaked as Delfin sighed with a mixture of annoyance and panic. "This is a shit move," he said.
"You made us come down here!" Tethys shouted back.
"No, you were pushing me!"
"You don't have to shout!"
My hand trembled at Tethys's protest. She wasn't yelling at Delfin, but somewhere off to the side of him, as if another person was standing there. Delfin, too, leaned his head over his shoulder to look beyond Tethys as we jogged down the hill, his frustrations more heated and less coherent with each word.
"Would you just shut up and hurry up?" Delfin snarled.
"You're saying these things, and I just don't – "
Before Tethys had a chance to finish, the ground gave out under our feet. I flailed at the air and tumbled down into a pool of water below. The pool was cold and waist-high when I stood up, and patches of green lights here and there cast flickering shadows along oozing stone walls. Dread sunk over me. Not again. Not again.
Tethys cried somewhere to my right. "You don't have to hit me!" she wailed. "Delfin!"
He was off to my left, shrouded in the dark and out of sight. I heard the clack of his spearhead slamming against a wall. "Listen to me, Tethys!" he shouted to some demon from his head. "Tethys! I'm trying to keep you alive!"
They haven't been here before, I thought. Hallucinations. That's what I saw right before Ember died. That's what they're seeing now. If we lingered down here too long, Tethys and Delfin would end up killing each other – or me – out of some imaginary fright.
I didn't know what to do. How do I fight things that aren't real? How do I know I'm not seeing things, too?
I swallowed hard and called out, "Tethys? Delfin? Listen to me. Listen. We have to keeping going. We can't stay here."
"Get away from there!" Delfin replied to the rumbling air. "That's gonna hurt you. Get away from it!"
"Delfin," I pleaded, my fist still clenched around my knife. "Delfin, they're messing with your head. I'm real! We need to go! Delfin!"
Something growled behind me. Goosebumps crawled along the back of my neck, and when I turned, green light glistened off of shining fangs.
Oh, Gods.
The hound lurched at me. It tried to jump, but it was as bad as swimming as I was. I fell to the side and the mutt floundered past me, struggling to get a footing in the water and snapping at the air as it blew by. I stumbled and swallowed a mouthful of water. The pool tasted of blood and mud.
The mutt rounded on me as it got to its feet. Far off in the shadows, something else howled – something much larger, something that called the water home. Fear washed over me. I remembered that one, too.
"Wha-wait a minute," I heard Delfin say. Whether it was the arrival of the hound that spat at me as it circled or the wailing cry in the dark, something was bringing him to his senses. "Tethys? Where are you?"
Where is she? What about me? I thought as the mutt charged.
The hound was on target this time. I hesitated for a moment, and the opening gave the mutt just enough time to take me head-on. Oof! The beast headbutted me with a ton of bone and steel, driving me into the muck with a hammer blow. I fought to keep my head above the water as the mutt snapped at me, and I only just grabbed the monster's front leg as it aimed a skewer at my chest.
"Delfin!" I shouted, swinging my knife at the air and catching nothing. "Help!"
Smack! A wild swing of my knife caught the hound right in the bony carapace of its long, spindly chin. Tarry goo exploded all over me. The mutt screeched and jumped back, yelping like a wounded puppy and clawing at its gushing neck.
"Terra?" Delfin called out.
My ally emerged out of the darkness like a shadow, back reality and wielding his spear. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy in the misty darkness, but relief washed over me as he plunged his weapon into the mutt's head. The beast writhed and screamed, flailing at him with every bony point it could muster as it died.
"What the hell is going on down here?" Delfin panted. His shoulders tensed up. "This is some messed-up – "
"We have to go!" I cut in.
"No! Where's Tethys?"
"I don't know! I lost her! We have to go before the squid shows up and – "
"The what? Wait – move!"
He dragged me out of the way as another hound hurried out of the darkness. It bounded out of the water and lunged, but the mutt didn't make it more than three feet before a horrible arm reached out of the shadows. An oily, muscle-lined tentacle snared the beast by its torso and dug a thousand needles into its carapace. The hound screamed for a brief, frantic moment before it was dragged into the darkness.
Somewhere unseen, beast tore at beast.
"Ah!" Delfin yelped. He fell back into the water and scrambled away from where the water monster had dragged the hound to its doom. "Oh, this was a mistake. Oh boy. Tethys!"
Then I heard it. Somewhere in between the screaming of the dying hound and the groans of the squid, a girl cried. Looking around for the third hound, I stumbled through the water with my knife out in front of me. There: Standing amid a cloud of green dust with her forehead pressed against her wrist was Tethys. She was still locked in a battle of her mind's demons, shaking her head and sobbing wildly.
"I didn't," she said to the empty air. "I didn't. Really."
Delfin saw her too. "Tethys!" he shouted. "Hey, hey!"
We weren't the only ones who saw her. Teeth and bony legs lurched out of the darkness, and before I could say a word, the third mutt leapt forward and clamped its jaws around Tethys's shoulder.
"No!" Delfin screamed.
The mutt tossed her aside like a rag doll upon seeing Delfin dashing through the water at it, but it wasn't quick enough to fend off his spear. He impaled the beast square in the mouth. It didn't flail, but stopped moving as soon as the point dug into its carapace. Black ooze sprayed all over the three of us.
"Oh no," I breathed.
Tethys lay against a stone wall, her head just above the water line, her eyes bulging and her breaths shallow. I rushed up and pulled her as far out of the water as I could, but she shrieked in pain when I grazed her side. I could feel the damage. The beast had dug its teeth in deep.
"Get out of the way!" Delfin said, pushing me aside and grabbing Tethys. "God, no. Girl, don't you die on me."
She whimpered. Delfin forced his spear into my hands and picked Tethys up in his arms, cradling her close to his chest and glancing at me with a look like a crazed animal. "Lead us out of here."
"I don't know the way out!" I stammered. The spear felt alien in my hands, so full of danger and death. Two mutts had just died to its point.
"Find a way," Delfin growled. "I'm not letting her die down in this hellhole. Get us out."