Is it just me...or is everyone in the arena this year going off the deep end? I wonder...

Next update should be Tuesday! Hope you like this and Tryouts ends the 14th at 11:59PM EST

And thank you to the amazing nightfuries who composed the list of the dead (how they died in order of their deaths). Make sure to thank her for being so kind to help us out!


ht tp:/ /foru m. fanfiction.n e t/ forum/ Bring_Them_To_Their_Knees/109174/ Remove the spaces for Quarter Quell Try-outs!


Roy Rousseau, District 1

By Isabugg


"There is something burning in my heart,
Spreading like a forest fire.
It engulfs my body and my mind,
Taking over me, it burns me alive.
This fire is burning ever so hot
All the time.

If I ever try to put the fire out,
I know I could not,
For my heart is in too deep to be wrought
From its fiery pit which it burns aloft.
This fire burns me now
All the time.

The fire does not hurt as it burns my flesh.
In fact, I enjoy it as I burn.
For this fire is not fire,
But this fire is love,
And with love I burn
All the time."

—Alex Fischer


Tonight, we float across an empty sky.

It's so painfully bare, so harrowingly hollow and desolate, its blackness only interrupted by the synthetic stars blipping in shining spirals around the moon. They seem sharp, like shards of glass encasing us in this arena. Periodically, a tree will cut off part of its expanse from my vision, its angular branches whipping viciously in the direction of the wind like mangled limbs reaching for the night sky, grasping only at the empty air.

The empty sky.

My empty Skye.

I remember standing at the edge of the graveyard, my boots sinking into the powdery dirt and curls of my hair tousling across my hairline in the direction of the biting breeze, going completely numb, feeling the marrow of my bones turn into ice and the muscles in my stomach gnarl into enmeshed shambles the moment my eyes caught...her.

It was as if my blood had been replaced with arctic water. It was as if that arctic water was riddled with cutting slivers of ice, scraping themselves through my veins and leaving me bleeding and crippled from the inside. I must have been violently shaking because I also remember Claus insistently trying to pull me away by my wrist and widening his eyes once his fingers made contact with mine.

Skye's golden hair was easily seen, even from a distance, glinting with a sort of glossy sheen as she stumbled her way through the graveyard, ankle-deep in loose, dusty dirt. Her limbs bent in ways that made me feel sick, as if her joints had stiffened beyond repair in death, leaving her to warp and contort them as she brushed pass the gravestones, looking like a clutter of bowed and hooked body parts. Her pale skin seemed to have lost all color, leaving it ashen, her plump lips a dull shade of purple and her veins dark and enflamed, pulsing visibly at the sides of her throat. Her arena clothing was still torn where she had been attacked, leaving it to spill in tatters near her side, revealing dried, shriveled skin wreathing away from a pinkish-gray gash, dried blood dotted around it in uneven splotches.

...And she was still beautiful.

But so empty.

Cold air, pins and needles prick my lungs. It lashes against me, scouring its teeth across my skin until it sends surges of aching tingles through my bones.

I have asked myself, even interrogated myself in the dead of night, feeling numb and hollow as I stared at the empty sky, what made Skye stand out so much that she seemed like a blazing string of illumination in my otherwise black-as-pitch life. Sure, she was pretty, but other girls were pretty. She was kind, but other girls were kind.

But her—and only her—eyes were able to pierce right through my defenses. She understood me, smiled when I smiled, frowned when I frowned, laughed when I needed to hear the light, trilling sound of it the most. While the rest of humanity was corrupt—callused from where the world repeatedly struck at them, heart withered until it was a fraction of the size it was—she was preserved, innocence in its most potent form, and yet, she still decided to associate herself with me. A criminal. A villain. An insane pyromaniac.

While everyone else would look at my scars with disgust, eyes squinting and lips tightening, Skye looked at them as if they were merely painted on, an adornment on my being instead of a constant reminder of the misdeeds I had done. She had grazed her fingers lightly against my forearms, her faint touch spiraling against the scar tissue, and it sent shivers up my spine, heat flooding into my face.

Now, as I am stabbed by the persistent memory of her body laying in crumples in the graveyard, her golden hair caked with dirt and black mutt blood, I have never felt so cold in my life.

Even with these towering flames crackling by my side, the countless bottles of lighter fluid bundled together in my stuffed pockets, the struck match held limply between my fingers, I have never felt so cold in my life.

The fire roars in front of me, its heat slithering against my skin and its harsh light flickering sharply across the panes and angles of the trees and brush around it. It makes briskly moving shadows shudder and spasm across the treetops, their spindly branches frantically shaking as if they were trying to escape the flames licking toward them in smoldering bursts.

I hear the fluttering sound of wings whipping against the air and see clutters of birds slashing away from where they were perched, their salient caws cleaving my eardrums like hammers as they scatter into the black sky. Smoke writhes upward in sickly coils, making the mountain air thick with soot, burning as it slithers through my airways.

I blink against the fire's exhaust, the rims of my eyes stinging from it, and cough into the crook of my elbow as I turn away from the wall of flames and continue to sloppily splash lighter fluid across the rough bark of tree trunks and the kinked gnarls of leaves twisting around them.

There is something so melancholy about looking at the stars when they're drowning in wriggling clouds of smoke, when they're framed by the flailing tips of flames.

As I ram the bottle of lighter fluid back into my pocket, feeling some of the clear liquid slosh across my palms, my eyes catch a flash of blonde hair from behind the leafy thickets, and my knees almost buckle at the sight of it—how each strand seemed to be soft as silk and strung with gold as it tumbled downward in glossy curls, catching each possible trace of light and making itself radiant, even in the gloom of night.

I can already feel my mouth starting to form her name: "Sk—"

And then the word dies in my throat, my heart plunging to the pit of my stomach as I see the face that splash of yellow hair framed—a face with a pointed chin, an upturned nose, a wound on which clumps of blood is already congealing. A face that is not Skye's.

The wall of fire flaring behind me seems to act just as I feel as it erupts, white-hot splinters of the wood it had consumed slashing through the air and spattering against my back. They feel like small needle pricks before they cool and fall to the ground, crumbling into ash.

I crane my neck to see that the fire had spread in all directions while I was distracted, its reds and yellows blackening everything it touched, making the trees sway helplessly as chunks of their once sturdy wood hurtle downward and smack against the dirt. The flames from those chunks scatter in thin, fiery lines, devouring each patch of grass and entanglement of vines it could slither toward.

Usually, this would be the point where I snap out of my daze, the point where I would feel myself crash back into reality, staring at the inferno I had caused and refusing to believe that I had anything to do with it.

But as I gaze at the fire's hot, flickering luster through half-lidded eyes, its flames lighting everything around it with a sort of scorching, orange-tinted gleam, like glowing embers, I feel absolutely...nothing.

No fright, no panic, no regret, no disbelief. Nothing. Just emptiness whirling in my ribcage in freezing, haunting billows.

The soles of my boots begin to melt from the heat, making it more difficult to shuffle through the dirt as I turn my head around and rake my eyes toward the girl with the blonde hair again. Her eyes are muddled with fear, her thin eyebrows furrowed until the strip of skin between them is sternly pinched. The long, bloody gash across her cheek shines in the gleam of the flames, the clotted blood a sickly shade of maroon, and the hand she has wrapped around the shaft of her double-bladed axe is trembling. Shaky breaths tear their way through her full lips, her chest frenziedly rising and falling with each of them.

With nauseating suddenness, a figure appears behind the blonde girl's severely shaken form, looming in the shadows. I see brown hair wreathing in the breeze, sea-green District 4 eyes, thin trails of stubble lining his chiseled jaw, and a name pops into my mind: Moss. The one who left the Careers before the games even began.

He darts forward, wrapping his muscle-twined arm around the blonde girl's shoulders before pressing the blade of his sword to her throat, and she lets out a horrorstruck gasp, tilting her chin upward and making the cold sweat collecting at her collarbone glint in the fire's gleam. She swallows, and her neck visibly bulges, her pulse thudding against the blade.

It takes a moment for Moss to register who she is—her golden locks, the feel of her willowy frame against his chest—and when he does, he lets out a strained breath, his air forming one word: "Aella." He immediately releases her, his eyes wide and his lips already forming a frantic apology.

The blonde girl—Aella—furiously whirls herself around, a small nick from Moss' sword apparent at the center of her throat, already welling thin globs of blood. "Moss?" she snaps, her voice thick with exasperation, "Why did you—"

"OhmygodIamsosorryIdidn'tknowitwasyouIswear," Moss blurts out in a single huff, the words spilling out of his mouth in frantic bundles. He directs his gaze to the slice on her cheek, then tentatively lowers it to the cut on her neck, and his expression slowly sobers—the tense line of his mouth becoming slack and his dark fringe of eyelashes lowering in front of his jade-colored irises, casting thin shadows across the brim of his cheeks.

"...You're hurt," he whispers in a soft undertone, "I hurt you."

I see him carefully raise a hand toward Aella before lightly trailing the pads of his fingers over the hollow of her cheek, moving with such slowness that it seems as if he is holding his breath. His hand dips down the side of her neck, grazing the soft curves of her jawline before landing just above the small snip on her gullet, his eyes downcast and his arms trembling. "I hurt you."

I feel myself smirk as I watch Aella's features contort with worry, her plump lips tautening and the bow of her shoulders tensing. She parts her lips, probably to say something like, Don't worry about it, or Stop being such a drama queen, but she is cut off when I intentionally rustle the leaves around me and step into their clearing.

"Look at you, Moss," I chuckle, and his head whirls in my direction so swiftly and sharply that it's a wonder how it didn't break his neck. The gentle, affectionate look he had been giving Aella quickly flares into a look of hatred once his grassy eyes lock on me, and I respond with a jeering wink. "Hurting your own allies, I see. Maybe being a Career really is in your blood."

He snarls like an animal, his eyes darkening as he brushes past Aella and pushes her small figure behind him, taking her out of my view. How valiant.

I slip my hand into my pocket, using the gloom of the night to discreetly uncap a flask of lighter fluid before I shoot him a ridiculing smile, as sharp and cutting as glass, and the muscles in my cheeks almost instantly hurt from it. "You were looking for me, yes? You...Anti-Careers, you call it? Cute."

The grip Moss has on his sword gradually tightens until his knuckles are a shade of yellow-white, the tendons in the underside of his wrist angrily jutting out.

I make sure to not let my smile waver as I keep my cat-like eyes locked on his. "You used Hyre's grief against him. Threw him a bone by showing him Aleah, open for the slaughter." I'm careful to be subtle as I slink the lighter fluid out of my pocket, my other hand instinctively reaching for the matches in my belt. "And after luring him out, you knew Elia and I would follow." My voice is dreary and bleak, like the grim melody of a caged bird as it longingly titters toward the open sky. "And after that, you were going to pick us off. One-by-one."

I straighten my spine, and I can't help but hear the sound of my fire erupting again from behind me, shooting through the foliage I had stepped out of and making my shadow briskly streak forward in its light. Moss' eyes widen at the inferno as it bursts into the clearing, wriggling around my feet and making the very tips of my hair glow with a crimson shade of red, almost as bright as the flames themselves.

I widen my grin, feeling my lips tremble from the strain of it as the fire swiftly spreads around us, leaping across the trees and making their tall, grand trunks moan as they gradually blacken, cracking down the middle and sending bright sparks swirling through the air.

"That's a good plan. Really," I slur, casually walking toward them, the thick, stinging scent of smoke starting to linger, "It's too bad that you're too dull to tell the difference between me and Blondie over there."

I see the bridge of Moss' nose crinkle, and I ready myself for him to attack, only to instead see Aella quickly snatching her axe from where it was embedded in the ground and dart around him. My eyebrows rise in surprise as she rushes toward me, her expression hard and stoney as she raises her weapon above her head and crashes it downward in a blinding, pelting arc.

It catches me off-guard, and I just barely sidestep out of the way in time to save my head from being hacked off, the blade of the axe raking a lengthy, bloody groove down my arm. I hiss out a string of curses, feeling my blood pulse out of the wound in thick, gluey streaks.

The pain is searing, stabbing up my arm and ending at my shoulder with a burning intensity, leaving my arm to hang motionlessly at my side. Gritting my teeth, I quickly shake the limb back to life, drops of blood flitting from it and flying to the dirt like red rain.

My arm feels a thousand pounds heavier than it did before, but I still manage to place my thumb on the mouth of the bottle of lighter fluid I had been clutching, leaving a small opening before I shift it forward and splatter it across Aella's side, the acidic, pungent scent of it immediately welling water in my eyes.

She barely has time to react, to wipe some of the clear droplets out of the ends of her yellow hair, before I strike a match and toss it in her direction. I hear Moss let out an animalistic sound of terror, and he darts toward her, but not before the match hits its flammable target and bursts into flames.

A bloodcurdling scream comes from the very back of Aella's throat before Moss throws his arena jacket off his shoulders with blinding quickness and slaps it across the flames, suffering burns himself as he uses his bare hands to put them out. The fire doesn't do any severe damage, but still leaves Aella's skin muddled with spirals of reddish-pink where the fire had licked up her left flank and shoulder, the burns enflamed and shining with a sickly gleam from behind the burnt scraps of her arena clothing.

Moss turns to me, his features severely contorted with rage, and he slashes his sword at me with a brisk scissoring movement, leaving me to have to stumble backward to narrowly dodge it. Aella's stifled, shaky sobs are evident in the background, and it seems to fuel Moss' deranged fury as he continues to lash his sword in my direction, making gashes across my collarbone and cheeks and I continue to clumsily evade him.

I hear a low creaking sound, like the moans of rusted machinery. My eyes widen, but before I have time to prepare myself, a massive tree wavers at my side and crashes downward with a deafening roar, showering me in bright sparks after its charcoaled surface slams against the forest floor and bursts into red-hot cinders.

I shield my eyes with my arms, leaving me uncomfortably disoriented as I feel the hot tendrils of fire fiendishly lash out at me, licking across my scars, burning what has already been burnt. My vision is obstructed by the black material of my arena jacket, leaving me in a starless world made up of only the stinging scent of smoke and the terrible, nauseating stench of charred flesh.

The muscles in my stomach tangle and my gullet contracts until waves of sickening, throbbing agony quake through my veins, leaving me trembling and coughing as I force myself to turn in a random direction and stumble away. I bring my arms down, squinting against the thick layers of smoke and feeling clouds of ash sweep across my skin. The low sound of Moss' voice is just barely audible through the crackle of the flames around me, lingering in the distance.

Everything is a blackish-gray, the once clear air now whirling in visible, foul helixes of exhaust. It squirms its way into my lungs, and I have to choke it out, my throat chafed and stinging as I am gradually withered into a mound of shivering limbs, crawling on my hands and knees, gagging and shaking.

I had expected to feel dirt on my palms, the moistness of mud gushing through my fingers, but instead, I land on a porous pillow of ash, staining my skin with soot and condensing the air until it seems almost congealed as it wriggles through my airways. My eyes sting, water collecting on the raw rims of them, and I sternly shut them against the smog, leaving me in the darkness once again.

With throttling suddenness, a rough hand snarls its way into my collar and I feel myself being hauled upward, making my head reel as I'm swiftly dragged away. My limbs weakly twitch as I struggle against it, but I'm unable to put up a fight as the heels of my shoes drag across the ground, leaving angular trails in the thick piles of ash beneath me.

The hand releases me, and before I can even hit the ground, an axe rips through the air and slams into my side with barbarous force. My eyes enlarge and my vision blurs, a raspy gasp seething through my throat in a single gurgling wheeze, and for a moment I hang there, motionless as the metal of the axe's blade is left hinged inside my flesh, the metal of it searing from the fire, leaving blistering, paralyzing quivers of hot, harrowing pain to pulse through my ribcage as it slowly slides away, slicing and tearing through me as it goes.

My mouth is gaping, a silent scream pouring through my lips as I weakly claw at the dirt, a vain attempt to get away. The air is cleaner here, making it so that the layers of smoke are translucent rather than completely blinding, and I shakily snake my gaze upward until my eyes lock on a freckled face, smeared with soot. A boy, arms corded with lean muscles and hair slicked backward with sweat, his light eyes icy and his mouth pressed tightly into a scowl.

A girl looms behind him, her slender arms crossed tightly in front of her chest and her dark hair cascading in loose waves over her shoulders. Her full lips are tautened into a pleased smirk, her azure eyes bright as they slide over my crippled form. "Hit him again," she orders, her voice joyful and her cheeks flushed, as if the blood spurting from my wounds entertained her. "Don't kill him yet. Make him suffer."

The boy with the axe stiffens. "Aleah—"

"Now," she stresses, her spine straightening as she visibly steels herself, "Or do you forget how much...power I have over you, Araucaria?"

He winces at the word power, as if it insults him, but he dutifully raises his axe above his head without further question, pelting it downward and making it scrape roughly across my torso, deep enough to make blood spill in spindly streaks, but still leaving me breathing and living, writhing in nauseating torment at his feet.

Low groans slither their way through my throat, and even though I clamp my lips against them, they still spew their way into the air. My arena clothing is soaked through with blood, shining with a gross, wet sheen, and I am shaking so violently that it's a struggle to even lift my hands to my eyes and see the ichor slicked thickly across my palms, collecting in their centers and trickling down my wrists in red, gluey rays.

The girl steps forward, her stance held upright and proud as she brushes past Araucaria. "Hello, Pyro," she trills, her voice so venomous that it makes me blanch. "Looks like you trapped us all in your little fire. Including yourself. Your intelligence is astounding."

I swallow hard, feeling trails of blood slither down my throat and stain my tongue with its sickening tinge of rustiness, making me cough until my already sore throat feels scratched and enflamed. "A-Aleah Armani," I rasp, my voice hoarse. I struggle to smirk, imagining how beaten I must have looked—teeth stained red, skin blotched with soot, wounds so deep that it was torturous to even move. I sharply exhale, thin droplets of blood flitting out of my mouth as I slowly bring myself into a sitting position, the slash across my chest searing as I sloppily wipe away the dirt and gore smeared across my chin with the back of my hand. "I knew the Anti-Careers weren't smart enough to come up with this plan on their own."

Aleah crinkles her thin eyebrows together, her blue eyes incredulous as she slowly walks closer to my crooked frame. "You've heard of me, I see," she lilts, the corner of her mouth twirling upward, "Not that I'm surprised. Gossiping is the only thing you District 1 dolts are good at." Her eyebrows twitch upward. "That and being distracted by shiny things. 'Ooh, diamonds!'"

I let out a slight chuckle, the sound dark and croaky. "Wow. Clever. It's a damn shame you chose the Anti-Careers instead of us." I grit my teeth against the pain, struggling to soak my tone in sarcasm as I widen my smirk at her. "The Careers needed some extra hands. Little weasel ones like yours would've been perfect."

She scoffs, shrugging off my insult as if she hadn't heard it at all. "Please. I didn't choose anyone," she states with utmost certainty, as if it was just simple fact. She's only a couple feet in front of me, and she kneels so that she's at my eye-level, her icy eyes fluttering across my features. "I'm doing this simply for my own benefit."

"And how exactly is getting yourself involved in the mess between us and the Anti-Careers beneficial to you?" I ask, the sentence coming out more strained and rickety than I had hoped. "Wouldn't it be smarter to just let us kill each other off?" My voice dilutes in the air, trailing away into silence as I mischievously arch my eyebrow at her. "Or is the famous Aleah Armani losing it, just like everyone else in this wonderful arena?"

"Even I like a thrill sometimes," she smiles, her teeth as sharp and cutting as razors, "And, I do admit, you dish out a good thrill, Pyro."

I give her a smile just as poisonous. "Yes, I do rank that highly in my rather lengthy list of desirable traits," I mumble, my breaths heavy, "Right under my good looks and stunning ballroom dancing skills."

Skepticism lines Aleah's features, the corners of her full mouth capering quizzically downward. "Wh—"

Before she can finish, I tightly grip a bottle of lighter fluid in a rigid fist before smashing it on the ground, the shards cutting deep into my palm before I briskly whip a sliver of it upwards and rake it across Aleah's cheek.

She bolts to her feet with stunning speed, slapping a hand to her fresh cut and glaring at me with eyes so hard and hostile that it's a wonder how she's still able to see.

I take the opportunity to struggle to my feet, my head lurching and my vision dotted with blotches of color as the pain from my wounds sears through my bones. I feel blood curdling against my skin, making the heat of the fire around me unbearable. I thrash my jacket off before throwing it on top of the shattered remains of the bottle of lighter fluid.

Araucaria rushes toward me, axe raised ominously toward the smoke-stained sky. I ferociously fumble with my box of matches, my newly torn palm making it difficult to strike one of the flammable sticks. Once the match flicks to life between my fingers, I drop it onto my arena jacket, and the pile of blood-soaked material immediately bursts into flames, the smell pungent and metallic and sickly.

Araucaria harshly halts, but not before the flames flog toward him and scourge his arm, leaving him to suck in a pained breath. His eyebrows viciously furrow as he directs his attention to the reddened welts whirling across his skin, and before he can even look up again, a blur of deep scarlet hair rushes around me with such speed and grace that I can't help but stare—Elia.

Following her are two figures hardened with rage, one with a glossy mane of blonde hair and the other with sea-green eyes, deep enough to drown in—Aella and Moss.

Elia wheels herself around before throwing a couple knives in their direction, her aim so precise that the duo has to weave to their sides with all their might in order to avoid the blades.

Hyre abruptly bursts through the foliage behind Elia, his sword tipped with blood and his usually composed features twisted with a mixture of grief and fury.

"Oh, now it's a party," Aleah grins crookedly from my side, making Hyre viciously rip his gaze toward her. Before he even has a chance to begin to raise his weapon, she shoots him a ridiculing wink and darts away, leaping over a burning branch before it erupts into a violent twister of fire.

I see Araucaria quickly scan the faces in the area, his eyes blank with terror. He mumbles one word to himself—"Nella"—before turning and following Aleah into the fiery brush.

Hyre hisses out a string of curses at Aleah's retreating form, his dark eyes pained and his grip on the hilt of his sword so tight that his knuckles stand out with a bright shade of yellow-white against his soot-covered skin. He makes a move to follow her, but Aella catches him by the shoulder before he has a chance to, swinging her double-bladed axe with resolve, her curls of golden hair swishing in front of her shoulder blades.

Hyre quickly plunges downward before the axe can make contact with him, swinging his sword at Aella's knees, only to have his blow blocked by Moss.

Obviously fighting her instinct to protect her ally, Elia swallows hard and darts toward me, her lips harshly pursed and her collarbone damp with cold sweat. "God, Roy, look at you," she whispers, using one of her throwing knives to frantically tear fabric away from the hem of her shirt before pressing the bundle of material against the slice on my chest. "It's okay. You're going to be fine. Just work with me." Her eyes are steady as she locks them on mine. "I need you to run away, let Hyre and I handle this, and I'll come back and take care of your wounds and—"

"Shhh..." I exhale softly, letting my eyes droop as I take in Elia's image. I never noticed before, but she's...quite pretty, even when her red hair is snarled with dirt, her temples caked with soot and blood. The way her pale green eyes look as they reflect the fire around us reminds me of someone, someone who had always had that fire in her eyes even when she was in the Training Center mumbling "flesh, bone, and blood" to herself.

Involuntarily, the corners of my mouth turn upward into a weak smile. "Skye," I hiccup, and water rims my eyes. I couldn't even feel shame anymore; I let the tears flit down my cheeks. I let them leave trails of wet in the ash staining my skin, my shoulders trembling as I remembered the sweet sound of her voice, the soft pink of her cheeks, the feeling of her hair as it slid between my fingers...

"Roy, listen to me," Elia stresses, her expression wild as she cranes her neck toward the battle behind her. I catch the threatening sight of Moss stepping toward us, his brown locks of hair spilling into his eyes in a way that almost makes him look menacing, but Hyre smoothly glides in front of him before the District 4 male can even get close, and their swords collide with a grating, tearing noise.

Elia brings her gaze back to me, and she moves the wad of cloth away from my chest and pushes it into my hand. "Run. I need you to run. You're in no condition to fight, you would only get in the way—"

I steady myself by grabbing onto the trunk of a tree, the shards of glass still wriggling in my palm and leaving droplets of red to drip from my fingers. The blood loss is making me dizzy, making my vision blur and my head pound with a stinging, thrumming sort of pain. I cast my gaze away from Elia to the blazing fire I had made with my jacket earlier, the blood from my arena clothing somehow making the flames seem redder, more sinister.

My cat-like eyes slink back toward Elia, and I smirk at her, a dark, evil smirk, and I can feel a rush of blood spurt through my teeth. "Of course," I croak, "I'm hopeless, after all."

She gives me a look flooded with incredulity, her eyebrows furrowing and her eyes squinting, and as I let myself study it, my stance turns weak and crooked.

"Thank you," I say on an exhale, my voice a soft, barely audible undertone, "May the bridges I burn light the way."

And then, without thinking, before Elia can even think of stopping me, I bolt away from her and throw myself into my own flames.

The heat is immediate; it laps against my skin, sizzles the blood dripping down my sides, plants soft, deadly kisses across my jawline. I had expected to scream, to feel a pain so unimaginably potent and extraordinary that my last memories would consist of nothing but pure agony, but instead I felt...at peace.

In all my years, in all the incidents I have had with fire, I have never experienced a burn so strong and terrible and—beautiful.

My hair immediately sears away, my skin melting, and I'm pushed far beyond the barrier of pain. I can't feel anything. Instead, I'm floating—I'm floating beyond everyone else, beyond Elia screaming my name, beyond Hyre staring wide-eyed at what was once my body, beyond Aella gasping and Moss pulling her trembling frame closer into the warmth of his chest.

I've lived through life regretting everything I've done. This—diving into my fiery creation, finally getting rid of my presence in the world—is the one thing I am completely and utterly sure about. The one thing I don't regret.

I carry you with me
Into the world,
Into the blinding smoke,
And the words that dance between darkened crowds...

I know I'm already blinded—the fire liquifying my eyes and burning me into an unrecognizable mass of flesh before the life even begins to leave my charred body—but I can still see one image perfectly clear in my mind.

It's beautiful, completely beautiful, and for the first time in what felt like ten eternities, it wasn't empty. My heart wasn't empty. It was filled to the rim with emotion, and if the muscles in my face still worked, I would be smiling.

Skye. My beautiful, beautiful Skye.

And, for me,
It will always be this way:

Walking into the light,
Whispering, "Je t'aime,"
Remembering being alive together.


Thank you to the AMAZING nightfuries who made this list for me to give to all of you. Make sure to thank her!

Sapphire Tree, District 9 Female: knife stabbed into throat by Hyre Fletching

Relk Stein, District 6 Male: spear thrust into stomach by himself

Vaughn Shumway, District 11 Male: spear to the chest by Boston Williams

Skye Azurite, District 1 Female: knife stabbed into stomach by Lilly Cross

Maia Spring, District 8 Female: dagger flung into back by Aleah Armani

Clude Miller, District 12 Male: knife thrown into stomach by Onyx Marshal

Onyx Marshal, District 2 Female: knife stabbed into stomach by Hyre Fletching/herself. Counted as Hyre Fletching's kill.

Rena Sage, District 6 Female: knife to the head by Elia Zervakos

Mack Tully, District 3 Male: torn apart with knife by Claus Hendall

Tara Tremain, District 12 Female: sword through chest, hammer to head by Boston Williams

Oak Loaker, District 8 Male: suffocated by Boston Williams

Boston Williams, District 10 Male: trident to the chest by Elia Zervakos

Lilly Cross, District 11 Female: died from infection of wound given to her by Skye Azurite

Roy Rousseau, District 1 Male: died from stepping into fire set by himself, could count as killed by Aspen Checkov

Summary of tributes still alive:

District 1 – None

District 2 – Hyre Fletching

District 3 – Jules Surket

District 4 – Elia Zervakos, Moss Dorian

District 5 – Claus Hendall, Aella Dekas

District 6 – none

District 7 – Aspen Chekhov, Nella Burchalyn

District 8 – none

District 9 – Ari Locus

District 10 – Aleah Armani

District 11 – none

District 12 - none