Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter of Declaration of Death, Chapter #6: Heralds of Sanguinity, or as I like to call it... the beginning of tribute intros! That's right, ladies and gentlemen, here we are with the first set of tribute intros, one out of six (six chapters of four povs) with a even split, three before train rides, and three on the train rides, which I am so excited for as these tributes are just... ugh, they're brilliant and incredible and I've been so lucky. Our last prologue was from our victor, darling Poem Cavalli, and the struggles she's facing as she started her victory tour. These intros push us months beyond that event, and all of that will be filled in, eventually. This set of intros introduces us to Ilana Wylder (D7F from LordShiro), Ren Maris (D4M from rising-balloons), Maeve Nightingale (D9F from Audmirable), and Dorian Argenti (D1M from ladyqueerfoot). It's a stacked group of kiddos, and it'll only get better from here. This set of intros is from the night before the reaping, following the same pattern as Liberty's intros. Enjoy Chapter #6: Heralds of Sanguinity.
"It takes blood, to spill blood. Is this how you will equalize every kill?" ~ Anonymous
Ilana Wylder: District 7 Female P.O.V (16)
She's bit the inside of her cheek to shreds, and although she knows it is not a good look for her skin to be all mangled up, sixteen year-old Ilana Wylder cannot stop doing so. She keeps her arms crossed, teeth clamped around the side of her mouth as she tugs and tugs and tugs, occasionally glancing at the clock every so often – it's about every ten seconds or so, because promises were made and these promises have not been kept – as she's on a tight schedule, and she doesn't have time for this.
There is a Peacekeeper in the corner of the holding room, the man impervious and tall and silent, Ilana staring at him, getting her reflection back at her instead of his stare. The tiredness in her eyes cannot be overplayed, the dark circles that are as if someone brushed swathes of dirt above the bridge of her nose. He's been most likely ordered to not look at her, which is fine, since she doesn't want to spend her time looking at him. She ponders, however, as her gaze despite Ilana's intentions to look elsewhere wanders down, if he had been someone in contact with- it doesn't matter, Ilana clamping down hard on her cheek again to stop the thought.
"Is he going to show up?" Ilana asks, her voice breaking out in a harsh stutter, a stumbling block for her to collide into. She makes a face, scowling, as the tone is not intimidating, and instead flush with annoyance. It is not just the fact that the promise has not been kept, but the walls are so boring to stare at. Grey, grey, putrid brown… if she wanted to look at those colors, she'd go back to the garden, back to tending to the fruit, but she's on business and-
"I don't get to dictate when the prisoners arrive, miss," the Peacekeeper intones, Ilana jumping at how low and gravely his voice is. It is like a voice modulator had been applied to the mask, which is silly to even think about, as Ilana knows pretty much anyone there is in District 7. Enigmas are far and few between, and if one manages to slide across her desk, that is because her team hadn't gotten the correct intel into her, but again, no matter.
"Well, I was promised-" Ilana grits her teeth together, standing up, but the Peacekeeper fully twists towards her, she stopping still in her place. This isn't Narcissus that she is looking at, her last remnant of her idiotic family still tangible to the tips of her fingers, the one who cowers under her glare or her booming voice when actions need to be done.
"I didn't make you any promises, Ilana," the Peacekeeper cuts her off, taking a step towards her. "I think what you're doing is foolish and silly, by wandering in here. We're not just looking at your father, but you and your brother and-"
"Narcissus?" Ilana tilts her head back and laughs. "The boy who spits on family," she seethes, rolling her eyes. "Empty threats," she says, patting the Peacekeeper on the arm. He's an entire foot taller than her, but Ilana Wylder casts a large shadow, and as she's heard a thousand and one times before, her reach is wide, her voice thunderous, her glare intimidating… she'll make kingdoms rise and fall one day.
The Peacekeeper takes a step back from Ilana, crossing his hands behind his back. "Perhaps," he says, coolly. Ilana narrows her gaze at the man, brushing her tongue against her battered cheek, liking the way the tatters of skin feel like the ridges of a mountain range.
"Perhaps," Ilana repeats.
He'll be added to the pile. Carolyn is going to love adding him to the list, someone who disrespects The Cultivator. The essence must grow, after all, is what her father used to tell her. With a spade and a shovel and a bloodied knife, the essence would flow into the dirt, and the cultivation would bring profit… Ilana didn't understand all of it back then, but now that's she on her own, it's become a sort of mantra.
The clock shifts over to past seven, and Ilana has missed out on dinner with Carolyn and the rest of the staff, which bugs her, but she keeps her cool. The Peacekeeper hasn't pulled out his weapon or the baton at his belt, but she doesn't want to give him any reason to. A bruise appearing under her left eye would look… unbecoming of her, of the herald, which the essence has chosen.
"Since Narcissus has abandoned every thought of it," she thinks to herself, digging her nails into her arm as the minutes tick by, "It has fallen on me. It has always fallen on me, yet Father insisted on letting him know about the business, letting him run it when he shown zero interest. But I did!"
She remembers the nights of begging, the nights where Ilana stays awake, staring up at the night sky and thinking to herself… did Heath Wylder not love her? He loved someone else enough to at the very least create her, but love her? Did he? Why did he love Narcissus, the boy who fled the life that had been silver-spooned into his mouth, the boy who prefers to dance on riverbanks than to get his hands dirty?
Ilana knows none of that matters now, for the charge is on her shoulders, and she's not planning to burn it all down if she can help it. It's all Narcissus's fault, regardless. He's the one who-
"He's here," the Peacekeeper announces, snapping Ilana out of her thoughts. It's been over an hour since she steps inside the holding room, forced to wait till the justice system decides it to do its job.
Ilana bounces eagerly on her heels, waiting, keeping her gaze positioned on the other end of the room, the door where Heath Wylder, her father, the man who has started it all, with crimson essence flowing down his face, staining his hair, dripping onto his shoes… he'll burst through the door, proud, happy, vicious…
Not… defeated…
"What have they done to you?" Ilana asks, voice in a hushed whisper, hints of terror creeping up out of her throat. There is a glass barrier between them, without any form of openings for the two to communicate with physicality, but this… this is devastating.
Ilana can feel the crop already starting to fail, the batch done from last night with one of the parents from the Redwood section of Seven simply not enough to sustain the whole field. He deserves it, Ilana will stand by that thought, the man who had gone and maimed his infant child without any good reason, so Ilana lets him feed the Earth, she allows him to keep the flow alive.
Her father looks at her from the other side of the glass in his holding cell, the glimmer and bravado she has known Heath Wylder to carry snuffed out like a candle wick, a haunting look in his eyes, his lips bruised, an open cut that hasn't been treated over his brow…
"Ilana, don't-" Heath goes to speak, but Ilana can feel the rage bubbling under the surface like a boiled stew, a stew she'd willingly throw over all the Peacekeepers in the room. Her wrath is onset, a gradual build that Ilana feels rising up her veins like magma flowing through a volcanic conduit… Heath Wylder has done so much for District 7, a pillar of the community, of their economy, and they're letting his statue stand out in an acid rain downpour to be eaten away.
"You let them do this to you?" she whispers, pressing her hands against the glass, in disbelief and shock at the look in front of her. "What happened to standing tall? What happened to- you're defeated…" Ilana spits the word out, her father's face falling at the tone. She shakes her head, scoffing. "You let them defeat you."
She's going to strangle Narcissus. She's going to put him in the ground, let him feel the flesh being teared away from his face, from the back of his heels, under his palms… she'll let the war dogs bite at him while Ilana stands above him, curling a finger through his hair, taking a token of it with her. She'll taunt him, she'll let Narcissus see her face, the woman who has done something with her life instead of running, the prodigal daughter who kicks the prodigal son off of his pedestal.
"You should've taken the opportunity," Ilana can picture herself saying this before she'd draw the knife hard and fast across his throat. "You should've anticipated that this would be your end. All of it flows back into the essence, as Father would say."
Ilana simply cannot stand to be in the same room as her father any longer, although it hasn't even been more than a few minutes. District 7 had been a constant for her a life with purpose, a life with stability. Her father, her mother, and even for all of his trouble, Narcissus had been there despite Ilana wanting nothing to do with him.
The business had been just that, business, until it's on her shoulders, and the rebellion is lost, and the Capitol is cracking down on crime, and they hate being played for fools, but it is Narcissus, it is Narcissus standing amid the smoke and the burning crop, with tears staining his face. He knew the truth far before Ilana ever did, something that he will still taunt her about in their few face-to-face meetings, which have been happening lesser and lesser as the days grow long.
Her father had made himself an empire off of self-sustenance, and when it begins to crumble, Ilana takes his place, she becomes the Atlas holding up the world, even when there is an Argonaut in the form of Narcissus stabbing her in the side in any way he sees fit.
Family, apparently, is who can be trusted.
Pathetic. Ilana knows the only person she can trust is herself, and whatever it is that the essence wishes to conjure up.
Her father is calling after her, trying to get Ilana to come back, but she's refusing to listen, biting down on the right side of her mouth this time, tearing the other cheek to shreds to stop the tears from prickling at the corners of her eyes.
She's poured her soul into making sure the harvests happen weekly, and there had been a dwindling number of suppliers, scoundrels wouldn't show their faces any longer, nor would they be so public about their actions any more, pushing Ilana into overdrive, all of it building to mean something. Any form of meaning she could divinate, whatever sort of desire Heath is to impress on her.
It all feels like it is for naught, as Ilana sees her father, where it's been a year since he's taken from her, and she's thrust into the spotlight without ever knowing if she's truly ready, and it has all amounted to nothing.
Ilana stands outside the holding block, back into the crisp District 7 air, the sun starting to fully go down from the time she spends waiting for him to show, for the opportunity to get her father to stand strong, but it already looks like he'll give into some sort of plea deal.
She runs her hands through her hair, digging her nails into her scalp. "Don't you dare do it," she hisses to herself, Ilana starting to pace, now completely left on her lonesome, the Peacekeeper presence gone. She'll remember him, or at least the voice modulator used, and the bounty that the man will provide will be larger than any other. Ilana hits herself in the face, biting back tears. "Don't even think about losing your control in front of everyone."
The holding cell, attached to one of two prisons in District 7, is located in the heart of downtown, the opposite side of the forests bordering the northern sector in Seven, and even in the hours of night that are starting to creep up over the horizon, she's surrounded by people. Making a fool of herself in public will be a PR nightmare, and trade could come to a halt, the essence could run out…
"Are you Ilana Wylder?" a voice asks her, seemingly out of nowhere.
Ilana lifts her head up from the fortress that is her knees tucked towards her chest. A faint blush of embarrassment rises to her face, she not having noticed how she slumps into the wall and nearly into the fetal position, her face wet with fresh tears. Ilana scrubs at her face with the back of her hand, furiously, leaving a torched mark left behind on her pale skin.
"Yes," she rasps. "Can I help you?"
The person asking her is someone around her age, perhaps a year older, and she doesn't recognize him – she really needs to have a conversation with intel, it looks like, if there's all these strangers wandering around District 7 that Ilana is unaware of – and extremely handsome, a boy who stands a bit taller than her. He seems to bleed of richness.
The boy holds a letter out to her, a soft smile on the person's face. "I was told to deliver this to you."
Ilana quirks an eyebrow, reaching out to grab the letter. It doesn't set her hand on fire, nor does she fall to the ground in quivering agony, so it all seems to be okay. Ilana rips the letter open, the boy watching close by as she unfurls it.
It doesn't take long for her to unleash a building scream from deep in his throat.
Dearest sister, Ilana Wylder.
We need to talk. The reapings are tomorrow, the 2nd Hunger Games are coming, and we need to prepare for the worst. You know where to find me.
Your loving brother, Narcissus.
Ilana rips the letter into multiple pieces, letting all of it crumble at her feet, before turning on the messenger, whose eyes have widened inexplicably.
"I'm going to kill him!" Ilana screams at the top of her lungs, grabbing the boy by the shoulders. He yelps out in fright, trying to break free, but Ilana's grip is that of iron. "You can go tell him that I am going to feed him to the soil! How dare he!" she screeches, pushing the boy back.
Narcissus Wylder, with his pitied stare, with his graceful limbs and melodic movement… oh the wrath he has not seen, the anger he has not witnessed as Ilana Wylder feels the bubbling tectonism beneath her skin burst over, it surmounting with Ilana tugging at her hair, tackling the messenger to the ground.
"You can act as my response to negotiations with him," Ilana spits out, in the midst of her fury, and she begins to pummel her fists into the poor boy. He's crying out all sorts of pleas and begs for mercy as she pounds his face into a pulp, warm blood cascading in between the grooves of her knuckles.
Her message to Narcissus, and not just the world, is all the same… they can mess with her, try and bring her down, but at the end of the day, she'll be standing imperviously, standing tall, and the foes will be battered on the ground beneath her, as the essence dictates.
All of it will flow to one precipice, one common end goal.
Buried beneath the Earth, in one continuous flow.
The Essence must grow, and Ilana will let the world die, let the forests burn, let her own heart crack in two, before it is to ever wither and die.
Ren Maris: District 4 Male P.O.V (16)
The mountains are calling his name, the skies are beckoning for him to rush from the window and break free, the seas are dancing onto the sandy beaches, their voices rising in harmony. They're all wanting, begging, pleading, even going so far as to screaming for Ren to come out and play. The response from him is always the same, to where he'll cast his eyes in the direction that the disturbance is coming from, curl his mouth into a sneer, and then, "Go away! Not now! Can't you see I'm busy?"
He's always busy, Ren Maris has not known anything other than the busy life. What is he so busy with? Homework, of course. School is the biggest priority there is, the one that weighs on his shoulders the most as he tosses and turns, muttering equations to himself under his breath where the only occupants who can hear it are the stuffed animals in the corner. They don't judge him, unlike the people who look at him in the shadows who act as if they want to help. When Ren bears to look at them in the eyes, all he sees is their hatred, their dislike and contempt for the unknown, their fear of what he is. A visionary, a boy who has been touched, so to speak, by divine forces.
"I'm lucky," he tells himself; it is a mantra he has written on his bedroom door above the entrance in dark ink, which earns him a scolding from his mother, but he isn't paying attention. Ren is focusing on what it'd be like if his mother would look like with feathered wings for hands, a beak for a nose… she'd be an ugly harpy, but Ren would never say that aloud. He instead focuses on the mantra, his lifeblood, his reason for living. "I'm a lucky boy who sees what others cannot," he hums to himself.
It is a complete sentence with a clear beginning and an end, but that is not an occurrence that happens often in Ren Maris's mind. He does not get from point A to point B in quick succession, but instead chooses to jump in the infinite zone – it is like a ball pit, multicolored spheres of various shades (he chooses periwinkle, cause what other color is there besides periwinkle?) bouncing around, sounds booming in the deep that are caused by timpani drums, the bounces full of vigor and energy and excitement – since the call is deeper there than in the logical.
Instead, however, Ren's thoughts usually dwell into something much harder to follow, a thought process that incapacitates whoever will be on the ending blow of it. Lights are made of cotton candy. Snow would act as good fuel for their rocket ship. Pirates don't eat potatoes silly, but they do like pickles.
There is no logical next step to where his mind goes to, but Ren isn't bothered by it. Blissfully unaware as he makes graphite scratches on the corners of his homework, but that is how he prefers it to be. It is impossible to ignore the plumes of smoke that rise from outside his window out towards the beach, but Ren manages to do just that. The screams of the dying around him meld into that of chirping birds, or machinery grinding together like oiled cogs in a wheel, anything to distract himself while he figures out what 13 to the 17th power is.
The stares of those who do not understand him, who think his mind is simply battered and bruised from overwork, or from some trauma, as if he knows anything about trauma. "I'm not like Orion," Ren puffs his chest, smirking at himself in the mirror as he gets dressed for the day, one morning, after the 1st Games ended. "I am nothing like Diana. They suffered, but the Magister survives, which means I survive."
He is not too deep in thought to not know what the Hunger Games are, but they're not much of a presence in his mind either way. Looking at the screens, he is fascinated by how bright the environments are, and what the mutations that bear down on the tributes look like, or how the hell hawk beast looks just like the wyvern that Ren slays in his room shortly before dinner, where he eats the beast's heart instead of the spaghetti that his mother cooks for him.
Her smile glitters with that of diamonds, and Ren comments occasionally on the pretty marigold flower she picks out to wear in her hair, but his mother only keeps an ever-present smile on her face instead, without accepting the compliment.
There isn't a flower in her. Only the blood of the dead that mark the waves, only the tears she sheds for there is one less occupant in the home that had previously been alive prior to the rebellion starting, but Ren doesn't notice. He has a math test on Tuesday, he shouldn't be focusing on where his father is and why his father is always out for work.
"Mother says he's working in the ground," Ren comments idly, as he flips the worksheet that is due during the first week of school, shortly after the 2nd Hunger Games are to end. He bunny-ears the lip of the first page, starting to work on the second. "But she's being stupid like always," he hums a warm sound in his throat. "Prairie dogs live in the ground, but angels work in trees, and Father manufactures swords made out of narwhal bones. Mom is probably just drinking again."
The beckoning call of the sea comes again, this time harsher and with more venom filled behind it than before. Ren falls back from his chair, away from his desk, hard onto his back. "Not cool!" he cries out, scrambling to his feet. He rushes to the window, muttering to himself all the while soothing the stings that come from his tailbone. Ren unlatches the top lock to swing the window open, allowing all the sounds of District 4 to pour into his gilded world.
Ren loves District 4. He cannot imagine being born anywhere else, being born in a horrible place like the smog filled skies of Eight, or the sordid ash-filled streets of Twelve – the snow angels he could make, however, there, he does not mind – or even in District 1, where those people act like they have it all. "Not my gift," Ren tattles in his mind, laughing heartily while the sea calls for him to join. Everything in Four is wonderful and beautiful, as the palm trees are starting to finally grow back after napalm scorched, but for Ren, they've always been there.
The sea is always by his side, a maiden formed by crystalline glass with the aquamarine surface of a breaking wave, golden hair filled with seashells and coral reefs, an arm outstretching towards him even from miles away, a salty sea brine filling his mouth whenever the ocean simply pops into his head.
"Not today!" he calls out, and he'll have to wait for the water to reply back to him, often in the form of a gale that has enough strength to lob a coconut all the way from the beach and onto his vanity. "I can't come out today! Check back with me tomorrow!"
That is the message Ren gives to the water yesterday when the same call hits his ears. It doesn't matter if school hasn't started yet, and the classes he is in will be the most remedial ones he's taken in his career, all Ren knows is that he's failing. Failure brings about the judged stares, failure brings about the empty dinner plates, failure brings about the lectures of how his family has sacrificed so much for him, and this is how he repays them?
Ren prefers to eat in his room now, for his mother hardly seems to make food anymore for him, and whatever is lying in the pantry or dead outside acts as a better meal than her horrid cooking. When the master bedroom lost one of its occupants, all the care in her head went out the window, as Ren claims.
"She makes me clean up my own messes now," Ren exclaims in private, one afternoon, to the stuffed animal collection sitting in the corner of his bedroom. "Mother doesn't like paying taxes. Neither does the government," and the line gets him thinking, it causes him to sit up a bit straighter, eyes sparkling with wonder and fervor. "Is that why the scary men came with those megaphones?" he asks of Miss Tuffy, a golden bear with diamonds for eyes, but he doesn't let his companion finish the thought. "And that's why Dad left, because he loves paying his taxes like a good citizen…" Ren collapses to his knees, shaking his head back and forth. It all makes sense.
It makes so much sense.
The spirit of the seas, as Ren deems it without any sort of capitalization applied to the title, is aggressive today should the rushing storm clouds on the horizon be any indicator. In these negotiations, where the sea brews and cackles and makes demands of him, Ren knows sooner than later there'll be an envoy dispatched to his room, someone forcing him out into the world, into a place where there's pain and snark and envy and all of the things that shun imagination, compressing it into easily smashable bricks.
"I can't today!" Ren cries out again, sticking his head out of the window one last time. "Why can't you give me some peace and quiet for tonight? That's all I ask!" Another wholly formed sentence without any disruptions… Ren wonders what this power is at the precipice of his lips, strength and vigor lost on him to the salty sea breezes that coast the wind.
The wind picks up again, the palm tree nestled in their front yard under a collection of bushes slanting just a bit. Ren likens the slanting to be anything other than wind, such as a group of army ants soldiering on from the base and up to the top to get a look over the poolside sector of Four, where people prefer chlorine instead of the open-air environment.
"They'll understand when the cows get their food," Ren comments, shrugging his shoulders, going to close his window.
As his hand reaches out to touch the latch and pull it shut, a metallic hand clamps down over his, yanking him back. Ren cries out again onto the ground, he having to shunt his head to the side, so he doesn't skewer himself on the pencil in his hands.
"Close one!" he exclaims, huffing, out of breath, gathering his bearings. Ren clamors to his feet, curling his hands into fists. "You…" he hisses, narrowing his gaze. "The sea just can't handle my offer, can it?" he taunts, looking at the tall pirate standing in the center of the room.
The swashbuckler has his father's eyes and his father's hair, but the creature who has trespassed into Ren's sanctuary is anything but the Maris patriarch, for his father never smoked, unlike the pirate who is biting down ever so eagerly on the cigar stuck in his mouth. There's an eyepatch over the pirate's right eye from their last encounter, when Ren's ruby encrusted sword gouged out the organ, letting it act like a marble on his carpeted floor.
"Let's finish this, once and for all!" Ren spits out, rubbing his knuckles together, as if he were charging them up with static electricity. "And then I can say once and for all that I've conquered you! They'd speak tales about me, wouldn't they? Ren, the pirate slayer. The combatant in blood!" he proclaims, jutting a finger in the air triumphantly.
He hasn't named the pirate who appears weekly, the creature still unaware of the meaning of defeat, for no matter how many times they scuffle and fight, Ren ends up being victorious regardless of what dirty tricks end up happening in their brawl.
"Why are we doing this silly song and dance?" Ren asks, twirling a lock of his curly hair around his fingers, tightening them to feel the pain blossom in his skull. Pain fuels fire, and fire fuels vengeance, vengeance fuels action, and then the action will cause more pain, a never ending cycle. "You know you're just going to lose, dirtbag."
That may be the worst thing Ren has ever uttered, but there's no one to hear him.
The pirate grits his teeth together, snarling an unhuman noise, all conceptions of the stranger being remotely human going out the window the moment the pirate's eyes flash an illuminating seafoam blue. His right hand, which has been turned metallic from the time Ren slices it off with the fire poker from downstairs, reaches out for him first, and Ren springs into action.
He dives in between the pirate's legs, screaming all the while. The carpet melds away into ice, freezing to the touch on his bare skin, but Ren can hardly notice the chill among sensing heat that pools at his elbows and knees. Ren pushes the pirate back with a hard shove in the middle of the spine once he's to his feet, sending the creature forward.
Where the desk had been, the pirate now crashes into a glacier, one that stretches upwards to the sky to be nearly a hundred feet, Ren always wishing to crane a look at it, but he'd be on the receiving end of the pirate's blade if it were for that distraction. The pirate swivels on his heel, growling at him again, before lunging. Ren sidesteps, collapsing into a half-hearted back roll. On his feet again, he smashes his fist into the pirate's head, but the hit hurts him worse than his foe.
Ren cries out in pain as his knuckle shatters from the impact, the boy collapsing to his knees. "No!" he screams at himself. "No, this isn't how I die! I'll save the princess in the castle, and I'll get Father back, and I'll make Mother love me again… I will not be done in by this cagey beast!"
The pirate lets Ren sit in his suffering and wallow, the poor boy sputtering, tears dripping down his face, his throat spasming with the shock, before the creature reaches for the boy by the neck, lifting him up and off the glacier easily. The man's breath is rancid, of rotting onions and piss and other unsavory odors.
The pirate tilts his head back and laughs, before plunging his cutlass into Ren's stomach.
Ren Maris awakes with a start, pushing himself away from his desk, hands immediately clutching for his stomach, the other for his throat. Both areas are okay, the pulse of his beating heart soothing under his skin.
He sighs in relief, wiping at the back of his head.
"That was a close one!" he laughs, looking over at Miss Tuffy, who's stare is all but filled with disappointment. "Man, I thought he had me for sure! Oh well, we'll get a good rematch tomorrow, won't we?" Ren winks, before giggling to himself.
The pain blooms and radiates across his stomach, but Ren Maris forgets it all as he goes back to work, and the sun continues to sink beneath the sky.
The real world may be full of disappointment, but in Ren's head, it is a playground for the downtrodden, a paradise for the browbeaten, and for him, the home away from hell, the place where he belongs.
Maeve Nightingale: District 9 Female P.O.V (16)
The shadows stretch over the fields of grain as the sun starts to sink beneath the sky, casting columns of shade in-between the pillars of dwindling light. District Nine is not a safe place after dark any longer, and of all people to know this, sixteen-year-old Maeve Nightingale is at the top of that list. Ever since the victor of the first games had come by, that self-made Poem Cavalli, with her Capitol entourage and all hell broke loose in the town square, the crackdown over the last eight months has been anything but freeing.
"If I am put in the stocks again because of him…" Maeve grits her teeth together, gnashing them hard as she paces back and forth under the awning of the shop she's marked as the spot for the rendezvous. "I'm putting it on his head instead," she shakes her head, frowning. "He knows better than most what it means to be late for appointments, and at this point I figure he's doing it just to mess with me."
The disquiet started with curfews, and then daily whippings in the town square where the blood of Millet Rodriguez still stains the cobblestone streets, the bloody runoff coalescing by where Maeve is standing. Anyone caught saying anything derogatory about the new Capitol sweetheart is an example to be made of. The entire district is huddled into the square or in other public places to be chided at by the mayor. How they've failed Nine, how they've all put shame on their families and their names by acting like animals and showing displeasure in the Capitol… it makes Maeve want to vomit.
She has to wait till she's back home for that, as she's certain there's some punishment for that too now, in this Panem. It hadn't always been like this, she knows, and perhaps it had been worse back then when the fire bombs fell from the sky, and everything one could touch turned to ash, but all Maeve knows is that if she's not greeted by her general courier within the next five minutes, she's reporting his ass to the nearest patrol.
He emerges from the shadows on the other side of the town square, a beam of light calling his arrival, Maeve shielding her eyes from the beam of the flashlight in his hands. She lowers her guard when he finally arrives, the burlap knapsack slung over his shoulder causing him to strain.
"You're late," Maeve says firstly, the moment Keagan Iverson makes his way to her. He grunts out a sound of disproval, hanging forward so his shoulders slump over. "We've been over this before. The later you get here after dark, the worse off it is for the both of us."
"Well excuse me for not being able to send a smoke signal," Keagan scowls, righting himself up, straining.
"Everything is in order, though?" Maeve asks, furrowing her brow. "Last time, Mac was a whole bushel and a half short, plus he missed out on two beakers."
"Mac looked over the shipment list twice over before he gave it to me," Keagan assures her, though his tone is solid. Tense. Everyone knows what happened the last time the shipments had been tampered with, some guard's mind flummoxing the packaging order, leaving people very, very dead. Maeve has tried to rein her anger in since that incident, where the entire warehouse feels her words vibrate the columns up and down, threatening to take the structure's support down with the timbre of her voice. "Everything should be there."
"Good," she nods, fishing into her pocket, pulling out two golden coins, pressing them into Keagan's hand. "Get your father something special and then get your ass out of here, okay?"
Keagan scowls at her, but it only causes Maeve to smile back at him. She prefers him to the others on the route that sometimes choose to deliver whatever supplies it is that Maeve has requested for the week. Her mother cannot go out in public anymore, not after the public eye looks at the Nightingale family in disgrace and distrust, and Maeve prefers to stick to the fringes in case someone decides to have an attitude with her. Keagan is there – "Most of the time," she teases him once, wiping frosting off of his lips – to protect her, but even then, Maeve holds her ground, curves her hands into fists, and leaves with bloodied knuckles.
"Should I get him flowers?" Keagan laughs, pocketing the money.
"The ones that spit water out at people," she suggests. "Like a gag gift."
"He'd probably fire me."
"If he did, it'd be the smartest thing he's done since opening up shop," Maeve says, leaning back, pressing the grooves of her shoulders into the spaces between the brick. The stocks are left empty today, for once, which is a surprise, but it does not settle the disquiet stirring in her shoulders. The town square is empty for only one reason… the Games are tomorrow, the second reaping, where Maeve escapes the very first with her life intact, but for others, they are not so lucky. She did not know Camilla nor the rest of her family, and she had never seen the boy, Gemini, before, but… their ends… Maeve draws her mouth into a firm line, the humor sucked out of the conversation. "But you could come work for me instead."
"Hard pass," Keagan grins back, giving Maeve a soft punch in the shoulder. He pauses, picking at his brow, causing her to absentmindedly do the same, tugging at her eyebrows, and a loose strand of dark hair over her ears. "How's your Mom?"
Maeve shakes her head, giving him a telling smile. "C'mon, Keagan, you know better than to ask me that," she shoves him, gently, but enough to get the message across. She doesn't share the vulnerable details of her life to anyone anymore, secrets and truths locked away and hidden from view for so long, collecting so much dust that the archives of the Library of Alexandra look less ancient. Maeve has forgotten some of the sentiments herself. "I don't share private details like that."
Keagan's gaze clouds over, he straightening his back. "The shipment is a bit heavier than normal. More herbs and such, a few of those healing stones that your mom requested…" he pauses, digging his thumbs into his chin, tugging at pale skin illuminated by the austere glow of the setting sun. "Just, good luck, and don't get caught, okay? I've got other runs to make."
Maeve barely has time to utter a half-hearted, "You too," before Keagan turns around and scampers the way he came. She watches him go, she always watching when her comrade leaves the meeting, regardless of who it is. She claims it is a necessary action to ensure that there won't be any tails on either end, but Keagan always bats his eyes at her, a telling smile on his face.
"Sure, Maeve. And you don't like looking at my ass at all, I bet."
She never responds to those accusations, for life and work do not overlap, firm barriers built between the two. If one levy were to collapse, and the floodwaters were to pour in… Maeve shudders at the idea, the disastrous consequences that could happen in the route is broken, if the supply chain is desecrated at one end, and the ramifications that would implode on the other end…
Maeve lugs the bag of herbs and other essentials that her mother requested earlier in the week over her shoulder, straining heavily with it, almost buckling under the weight. Keagan, for once, had not been stretching the truth.
It is not that far of a walk back to the Nightingale Apothecium, an apothecary shop run by her mother and Maeve, they not bringing enough coin to hire other workers, but also it is her mother's paranoia in that they don't hire anyone else. No one would be able to take care of the wounded and the injured and the beaten the way she can.
"We had more, once…" Maeve thinks to herself, bitterly, as she slings open the front door, having heaved the sack the entire way. The usual ten minute walk has morphed into one that is nearly half an hour. He couldn't have given her a cart? Maeve reminds herself to add that to the next list, as tugging things by hand… overrated.
"Got the supplies, Mom!" Maeve calls out, waiting for the reply, but the place is silent. She pushes the bag all the way inside, still stooped on the porch. "I'll be out, don't wait up for me!" The lack of reply has Maeve frown, but she doesn't think much of it, her mother has tendencies to go to bed early and awake before dawn is even a thought in the sky. There's always work to be done, always someone whose heart needs healing, whose broken bones need to be mended. "Too bad we can't fix fractured families," Maeve scowls, as she slams the door shut.
It is one of her off weeks, when she's picking up supplies from Keagan and not the other way around, Maeve preferring these to the switch, only cause it means there are less Peacekeeper rifles trained on her back. It allows for a relaxation of sorts, and despite the curfew, Maeve knows she cannot help herself in venturing away from the sanctuary that no longer truly feels safe.
It is an inanity in her, deep down, and not even Keagan-
"It doesn't matter what Keagan thinks," Maeve bites down on her lip. Josiah didn't care either, for Maeve's troublesome tendencies, but he's not around to poke fun at her anymore for it.
Maeve ventures away from the town square, away from home, towards the wild. It had been off limits for a long time, but the war and further unrest shatters the chain link fence, power incapable of being surged back to whatever semblances of the fence remain. Few wander in, even fewer than that wander back out… thankfully, so far, Maeve is always walking back out. She's drawn to it, to the forest, not because she prefers being around nature, or hearing the chirping of the Jabberjays that have survived the sulfurous oxide gas that once tainted the blue skies above District Nine.
It is where she goes to face her fears.
The river is loud and in a vengeful mood when Maeve approaches, for the gush of water blowing past the embankment is furious, far angrier than she's seen beforehand. It is not her first stop to the riverbank, and she expects that it most likely will not be her last. She strips out of her jacket, leaving just her undershirt, but Maeve decides to keep her pants on.
All of her protection has been stripped away, where there are no lingering stares for her to feel sticking to her back, syrupy and sticky along the rivets of her spine. Maeve places a hand to the back of her head, fingers ghosting lightly over the strands that stick out from her skull. The force that had once gripped the same spot she touches now is gone, but every so often, she'll get a remembrance for it, her body going ice cold, fear seizing her throat at the memory.
"You are going to die for this, scum!" the man's voice, the complete stranger that Maeve does not recognize, is screaming in her face.
She's crying, she's kicking and screaming, anything to get out of his grasp as he drags her, drags her ever so slowly to the water's edge.
"I can do this…" she whispers to herself, letting the rise and fall of her shoulders soothe the tension that is spiraling in her stomach. The man is not there anymore, his corpse would've floated so far downstream it may have ended up in some District Four brooklet, but even if his presence is no longer around her, it does not mean the threat has but all dissipated. Maeve cracks her knuckles together. "I can do this," she repeats.
She takes a step into the river, the sudden temperature drop and thaw of the cold jostling her in place, shocking her enough that Maeve nearly falls over. She steadies herself, keeping herself upright.
"Okay…" she ventures, laughing nervously in her throat. "Progress," Maeve sets her shoulders back. "I've never made it this far before." Not much is insurmountable in her world, even after she becomes the only solid person in her mother's life when the rest of all they had ever known is torn from their hands. Even when she watches a Peacekeeper punch Keagan in the gut so hard that he vomits blood all over the tile, Maeve is able to soldier on, even when the threat advances towards her. It is the wild that has become insurmountable.
She holds her breath, sinking to her knees, so the water level has risen to her midsection before Maeve plunges her face beneath the waves. She curves her hands downwards, digging her fingers into the rocky bed, tethering her in place.
She squeezes her eyes shut, the bombardment coming downstream vicious enough to where a loose pebble could blind her if she isn't careful, but Maeve isn't sure she'd use that word to describe her anymore. Keagan is capable of taking that part of her away and flinging it into the trees.
Maeve begins counting in her head. "Eleven… twelve… thirteen…" She lifts one of her hands out of the water, and places it firmly on the back of her head, forcing herself down. She doesn't make it that much farther past thirteen.
"You are going to die, because you couldn't pick the right side," the man is snarling in her ear, and her body is covered in welts from his fists, and he's holding her down under the stream. He's drowning her, he's killing her, he's destroying her, Maeve cannot breathe… she cannot breathe, she is going to die, she will die from this…
She cannot breathe.
Maeve lifts her head up and out of the water, pushing herself back from the riverbank, gasping for breath, her lungs and chest on fire. Keagan had been there, he's the reason she's able to even make it to the riverbank and try, but… now, it is her, just her.
The girl scrambles away from the river, her clothes soaked, her body freezing as the last glimpses of the sunset vanish into a murky navy veneer. Maeve's hands are trembling, she wrapping herself tight, preserving the little bit of warmth that sits within her heart, the hidden places she refuses to give up.
Maeve sits down in the softening mud and dirt, uncaring for how it'll stain her clothes and the hours she'll spend scrubbing out the dark spots along her skin. She cannot rub out the petechiae that sit on her eyelids, no matter how long she'll try, from what happened all those weeks and months ago beneath the waves.
She gasps out a long shudder, one that the water is incapable of responding to, as Maeve sits there, huddled by the riverbank.
The water continues to flow, and Maeve Nightingale has not been able to face her fears.
Dorian Argenti: District 1 Male P.O.V (18)
"Oh, my dear darling, you look absolutely abysmal. Those bags under your eyes… those wrinkles…" Dorian Argenti chides, making a tsk-tsk noise in his throat, which then morphs into squawking laughter. "All the money you have, and you look like you're about to arrive on Death's door…" he waves off the arrival with a hand, keeping a gleeful smile stuck to his face. It is always a pleasure when the District 1 mayor decides to stop by and witness firsthand how his favorite prisoner is evolving.
The man in front of eighteen year-old Dorian Argenti is not Friedrich Calvary, long dead now, a person Dorian wouldn't miss – he does miss the chance to take a toe from the man, or perhaps see what shade of vermillion his blood would bleed into on a canvas, but the opportunity has since passed – but Theron Drachma, District 1's new mayor, appointed by the president and vice president a few months ago during Poem Cavalli's victory tour.
Theron pinches the bridge of his nose, stepping into the room. Well, Dorian wouldn't call it a room of his own any longer, more so a padded cell to stop Dorian from running up into the wall and bashing his head into the concrete overlay. He's been shifted again to a different spot in the prison, which is such a shame as Dorian grows quite attached to the water wheel that he spies outside his window from the previous cell he occupies. The last room had become too crowded, too many organs sitting out in the open, and the smell had been horrid, so he's made to move.
Not that he minds it, he prefers the sweaty palms of all the Peacekeeper guards on him versus the lankier ones of the other starved inmates. He flirts with them all whenever he passes by them in the halls, they clamoring for their king of Block A, but all he can give his subjects is a wink and a hand wave before being locked away from prying eyes.
Theron runs a hand through his hair, dark locks filled with stripes of shadow from the corner of the room he is in. It is not as if Dorian will be able to do much, as he sits up from his bed, arms conjoined by the wrists to a shackle in the middle of his hands, and then from that shackle, a chain bolted to the floor that gives him just around two or three feet of movement. He cannot even turn on his side to sleep.
"Don't sleep on your side," Celesto, his father's voice, reminds him, once, while Dorian is sitting at his desk, a paintbrush in his hand, the tip dipped in aquamarine blue, meshing over a beautiful District Four landscape. "If you do that, your back will hurt, and then it'll bleed into broken posture, and if that happens…" The threat hangs lowly in the air, but Dorian remembers how it bristles, electricity flowing amongst the words and down his spine.
Dorian had been eight years old then, during that reprimand, and he's never laid on his side since then.
"Thank you for your opinion," Theron says, his voice low, nearly pipsqueak quiet, which has Dorian quip an eyebrow at the strangeness of it all. Normally the man, who had at one time been the richest man in District One, would barge into his cell, voice thunderous like the storms brewing outside his room, ready to declare him an enemy of the state. Dorian simply thinks it is because the man likes his company, and perhaps he could become the next Argenti masterpiece. "But that's not why I'm here."
"Your face doesn't lie," Dorian smirks, getting to his feet, trailing forward away from his bunk, but stopping when the chain gives slack, and his wrists nearly break backwards from the movement. He's been in the cell for around a week and a half now, and there's hardly a red splatter to be found marking the ground. "You were missing Catalus, and you wanted to come get a look at the next best thing," he winks.
Catalus Drachma, the heir apparent to the Drachma Conglomerate in One, volunteering for the Games out of a backhanded Capitol scheme, nearly making it to the end before the vicious girl from Three disrupts those plans, and it has left Theron without a successor. Luckily for him, Dorian introduces himself on their first meet.
"I'll be your new prodigal son," Dorian greets, smiling, showing his canines as he tries to shake the new mayor's wrists. Peacekeepers force his hands behind his back instead, which leaves Theron to stare at the empty space.
"I don't need another son," is Theron's reply, which only leaves Dorian scowling and waving the dismissal away with his foot instead of his hands, underneath the table.
"Please," he scoffs. "People claw at the walls to get to me. You will too, eventually, sir."
Theron rolls his eyes, scoffing, at the audacious statement. "You still haven't learned how to properly speak to your elders, have you, Dorian?"
"Please," Dorian snorts, unable to stop the laughter from spilling out of his throat. "The only thing I've mastered is how to cut them from stem to stern." He misses his life outside of a six by six cell with only two feet of leg room at any time. Back home, before his parents vanished off the face of the nation – "Right…" Dorian drawls out a long pause, "Disappeared without a trace, left their poor son to fend for himself in a war-torn nation…" – there hadn't been exactly the lap of luxury, but there had been running water. There had been scented candles, and other colors for painting besides red.
Nothing wrong with red, however, as Dorian wishes to bite into an apple just to feel the skin flaking in between his teeth.
His parents, Celesto and Velora, the history books will mark them as the perfect caretakers, doing their hardest to provide Dorian with art supplies from their low-end jobs that were as simple as greeting people and opening doors for them. Dorian does not mind the attention, and he sees their hard work give a fruitful return as he picks up a paintbrush and magically creates a golden sky.
The paintings went back and forth between realistic landscapes and those of made up ones in his head, such as clouds of ice crystals that rained sugar plums and candied apples, juxtaposed by a snowy mountain range that his history books told him as District Twelve. And somewhere along the line, his parents saw his talent, the gorgeousness and realism in his work that Dorian sees all along the moment he begins to create, and their son is now their meal ticket.
The bombs begin to hit the moment Dorian turns fourteen, with the hailing of a dead child and a nation in tatters, where he picks up a blade instead of a paintbrush, and his parents' smiles morph into frowns that don't disappear until they do.
"Why don't you paint those beautiful landscapes like before, Dorian?" his father's prattling voice is heard over his shoulder one winter afternoon. "Instead of these…" he knows his father is trying his hardest to hold the disgust in, but Dorian simply looks at him, turning around in his chair, a pointed stare on his face. "Macabre and hideous depictions of violence and gore…"
"They are art," Dorian sniffs the air dismissively. "And you are being a cuck," That would've earned him a backhand had it been his mother. "I am making a piece of living, breathing creation…" With that, he goes back to fixing the eyebrow of a lady who is sinking to her knees in motion as half of her face burns off, the recently deployed napalm incinerating her hair.
The painting is sold to the highest bidder where, although Dorian never actually sees the end result, he knows it ended with at least five zeroes behind a sum, and the money is never placed in his hand.
"Dorian," Theron's voice cuts through the memory, derision in his voice that is impossible to mask, for Dorian sees the man for what he tries not to be. He's broken, a man who lost his child in what is supposed to be a horrible way. They – he and other prisoners in the dejected / unsavory group – are not allowed to watch the Games, and instead any talk of it is relayed through the cell bars when the night is stark, and the patrols are low. "Be serious, young man."
"On the contrary, I am always serious," Dorian proclaims, going to sit back on his bunk instead of standing in the center of the cell. His bed squeaks when he sits back down, an audible crunch being heard, the boy freezing for a split second, but if Theron noticed, the man does not react. "You came by, so I'd love to hear how I've upset you now."
Theron balls his tongue up to the side of his mouth, stepping into the singular beam of light that falls from above. Dorian's old cell had a perfect shot of the outside, and now he's lucky to get a glimpse of sunlight. "All for my sins, apparently," Dorian thinks to himself, rolling his eyes. "But I don't sin. I only know how to create. Create, destroy, pleasure, please, find, birth…"
The mayor fits the bowtie that is up against his neck, a plain and relatively tasteless crème color that Dorian knows needs a splash of cardinal to accentuate its vanilla state. "Tomorrow is Reaping Day, for the 2nd Hunger Games. You are expected to be there."
"Ah, yes, the Games…" Dorian lifts his heels up in the air, standing on the tips of his toes. It makes him taller than the mayor, a sight that makes him nearly giggle aloud. "I'm eighteen, so once I survive this, I'll be out of the Capitol's clutches forever," Dorian tilts his head down closer to his hands so he can get a scratch that has been bothering him. "Besides, killing children is so gauche," he sneers. "Adults are where it's at."
"Well, Dorian, you might not be out of the clear just yet," Theron coughs, clearing his throat, standing upright.
Dorian's gaze flicks to the mayor, keeping his mouth level. "What do you mean?"
"Well, the word in the courts is, now that you're going to be phasing out of the system as an adult and no longer a minor," Theron pauses, rubbing the back of his neck. "It looks like the president is going to be pushing you in the direction of the death punishment."
Dorian's lips lose their color, a soft sigh escaping his lips. That had been a possibility, even back then, when he's fifteen and taken away in irons. The crimes he's committed, regardless of age – "Please," he pauses again, to himself, laughing in his head, "I am still committing atrocities. I've never stopped, darlings." – are heinous enough that the court proceedings are restricted by age, and no one that isn't put on a special invite list is allowed to attend. "I see," he says, at length, trying to not show the displeasure on his face. It has been a long time since that date when a gavel sentences his fate, but Theron often reminds him of his potential endpoint since the man clearly has no love for life any longer, looking to find pain in people's sadness.
Not that Dorian is sad nor upset, however. Even locked away behind cold cell bars his talent comes with him, the squeaking and crunching of his mattress nearly giving it away. The stains are starting to disappear off of his jumpsuit, finally.
He cannot believe it. The prison system places an Argenti, a man of the people – no, even better, a man of the gods – in… he nearly throws up at the idea, in sunburst orange. An orange jumpsuit when navy would be much more ravishing.
"There is a loophole however," Theron says, causing Dorian to look back at the man. "With the Games."
"Which would be… what?" Dorian asks, cocking his head, begging for the mayor to elaborate. He never finishes his sentences, his eyes in a muddled puddle of misery, blocks of jade searching for completion that Theron Drachma will never find.
"You volunteering," is the mayor's response, and all Dorian knows to do is laugh. It is an incredible laugh, and if he were not placed in solitary confinement – Theron's been breaking the rules, Dorian Argenti is to have absolutely zero contact with the outside world – the rest of the cell block would laugh too. It is a different laugh than Dorian's first kill that sits in his home with their throat cut to the bone. It is a different sort of cackle than when he creates his first morbid creation, The Downed Sparrow, a bird in a black and white chrome pattern where the only vibrancy to the painting is the blood spilling out of the sparrow's midsection. He laughs because the statement is pure lunacy.
"Oh, my dear mayor," Dorian admonishes the man, reaching his hands up as high as they can go, to signify him placing them on his chest. "You seriously cannot expect me to volunteer for the Games, can you?" Theron doesn't flinch under the questioning, nor at the haughty tone in the boy's voice. "You cannot think of me as stupid to be like Catalus and whisk myself off to the Capitol," the boy shakes his head. "I mean, unlike your dear departed boy, I would be coming back to District One since I'd have zero qualms on knocking children into the dirt and crushing their skulls but…" he leans forward, holding onto a pause for emphasis. "It's a stretch, even for me to take."
Theron lifts his head up, now fully sheathed in the pillar of light, Dorian getting a good look at the newly instituted mayor. He's decked out in Drachma gold, with golden eyeliner at his eyes, accentuating his dark hair perfectly, but the unspeakable tragedy has stuck to his features, the morose sorrow in the curvature of his lips thick on Dorian's tongue like a sphere of sugar.
"You don't know that, Dorian," Theron hisses, his voice dangerously low.
"I wouldn't be so sure of that, darling," Dorian smirks, shrugging his shoulders. "But I do have to refuse your offer, my dear. There are other places I'd rather be."
"If you refuse, you know you're going to be dead instead, Dorian," the mayor warns, but there's hardly an ounce of warmth in the man's voice.
"I'll risk it," the boy leans forward, smiling, showing his teeth again. Theron scoffs, rolling his eyes, turning on his heel. He's heading for the exit, the coward, the man who lets a pompous and pampered boy get the best of him… weakling. Dorian leans forward off of his bed, the grin remaining on his face. "That was fun, Mr. Mayor! Come again! Let's do it again sometime!"
With that, Dorian sits back on his bed, kicking his feet out to be kept in the pillar of light, laughing at the notion of him ever being in the Games.
It is a thought that has crossed his mind, but he'd much rather create his art here, where he at least knows it'll get to be finished.
The sun sinks beneath the sky, the pillar of light darkening until it vanishes as the day goes long before Dorian decides it is late enough to fall asleep.
The heralds of sanguinity are unsure what they're a herald to, but they'll find out soon enough as the dawn, and with it, the eve of the 2nd Hunger Games approaches.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, there we are! We have the first set of intros done, Chapter #6: Heralds of Sanguinity, done with the night before the reapings, showcasing the tributes: Ilana Wylder from D7 by LordShiro, Ren Maris from D4 by rising-balloons, Maeve Nightingale from D9 by Audmirable, and Dorian Argenti from D1 by ladyqueerfoot. I did say that this cast was special, and I truly did mean this. Something about the first set of intros in a story I do just always carry this special energy, and I think I've nailed that here, as I really enjoyed writing these, and we can always go up from here.
Next set of intros is going to be the morning of the reaping, Chapter #7: Conspirators of Sorrow, featuring the wonderful group of Philip Woodacre, Azalea Oleander, Velimir Novotny, and Jasione Byun... they are all stellar knockouts and I cannot wait for you to meet them. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts about these incredible tributes, and I hope to see you guys in the next ten days (max is my goal, every ten days) for the next set of intros. I hope you all have a great day! Love you so much! Bye!
~ Paradigm