DAY 2
The Alliance
In the Arena
The first major event that was planned for the arena was a fire sometime during the second day.
Officially no one within the arena knew that.
Still, there was plenty they could do to prepare—especially because the tools found in each cornucopia made the general plan of the Games very obvious.
"For them to provide us with gear to live anywhere from this rainforest to a desert… I have to imagine they're going to burn everything down." Oliver said.
"I agree." Neville said.
"Alright, then let's prepare for that." Ron said.
The thing was, this wasn't the first time they'd dealt with fire.
Fiendfyre was a monstrous thing. Imagery of fire as a living, breathing organism with thoughts of its own and a will to live was pervasive in the wizarding world, but it was only really those who saw the fire curse in action that believed it. The fire from the spell looked a bit like giant beasts, most claimed, like a sort of evil group of patronuses that proliferated beyond belief.
But it wouldn't go on forever.
Water couldn't stop it, that was true, and fire couldn't either, but fiendfyre, like any living thing, needed sustenance. It would use—would destroy—nearly everything, but there were some substances that even the curse couldn't get through; metal, chiefly, a sharp contrast to the effects of a more normal blaze on the stuff.
It had been Neville who'd caught sight of the Fiendfyre, nearly completely wild as its master's hand twitched erratically like someone holding onto the leash of a dog they know they can't control, heading towards the Forbidden Forest.
He'd had to act fast.
He'd grabbed everyone out of the battle for medical reasons who could still cast, had lined them up, and had made them conjure huge boxes of steel and iron and whatever they could most easily imagine.
They'd trapped the animals, one by one, then trapped the flames lapping at the outside of the boxes.
Neville had told them to trap part of the dirt and grass too; it was most important that everything was sealed.
Fiendfyre was a powerful spell, but it was hard to control and magically exhausting and incredibly difficult to stop using.
When they killed the fire in such a manner, the man casting it didn't bother casting another.
But someone in the castle had.
The steps to kill it had spread by then—entrapment and suffocation—and despite there no doubt being better ways (between seeing the fire and putting it into practice Neville had only had four minutes, minutes he'd only gotten because its caster was trying desperately to bring it back under control) it worked.
Fiendfyre could, if it tried had enough, spread through the castle walls, so in mere minutes the entire school was covered by metal instead.
Some of the students—those who knew they couldn't battle, who couldn't even help in the care of wounds—raced from hallway to hallway, conjuring metal slabs and parts of metal boxes wherever they went, so that anyone who spotted Fiendfyre after them could use the existing tools to put an end to it.
The rest of the student body did just that.
After the battle of Hogwarts, when the fight spread to the rest of the British Magical World (and to the rest of Britain, too) the practice had kept. In alleys metal barriers spanning 3 or 4 meters were placed to trap the fire, thin steel walls added inside the walls of those that could afford it, and metal transfiguration spells taught to anyone old enough to carry a wand.
The Fire still killed almost a third of those who died in the war, not including animals, but the defenses did their job, and protected most who the spell was used against until its caster, worn out from the effort, either forcefully canceled the spell or passed out.
Neville grunted. "We should… fire barriers, right?" He said.
Oliver nodded. "We've got control lines in District 7, to keep the fire's spread intact. Rocks and rivers or just clearing out brush."
"Okay, let's get Teams 11 and 12 on that, then."
"What else?"
"Digging up dirt, to tamp down on fire that gets too close or jumps the line."
"Yeah, okay."
"And we'll have to send groups out, to tamp out any remaining embers after the fire's done."
"I dunno if that'll be necessary." Ron said. "I think they're trying to keep most of us alive for a while, and constant fires can get boring and deadly. Still, no harm."
-
The fire came just before dinner time.
That was likely on purpose.
It's primary purpose (along with destroying the trees and the like) seemed to be forcing another confrontation, on the heels of the probably quite disappointing lack of bloodbath.
The Alliance's fire protections had neatly sidestepped the issue.
They'd dug huge control lines of dirt and gotten several District 7 volunteers to use the six smoke masks provided in the tent to stand watch.
Sener, the fourteen-year-old, swore he heard voices coming from the 'south' (based on the sun's position the day before, but no one actually knew if that was the real sun—the lattice work could be seen sometimes, stretched far above them, and in the 90th the Gamemaker had intentionally made each day last twenty six hours, slowly driving its inhabitants mad), but no one had appeared.
The former magic users suspected that they'd made the Alliance too well prepared, that the collision didn't look interesting enough so the teams were allowed to stay away, to find other solace.
Still, two cannons sounded.
The rest of the day was spent dealing with the extreme heat, and the evening was spent watching the sky: Renny, the Team 15's twelfth member, and Borden, Team 17's eighth.
The Alliance took the day as a win, but knew it wasn't to last. They might be interesting, but the Capitol expected blood.
"Two days." Hermione whispered—her best guess for when somebody had to die at the hands of another.
They would try to spread out those deaths as long as they could, but the citizens were starved for violence, and one way or another they'd get it.