Hey, ladies and gentlemen, Paradigm of Writing here again with a brand new chapter for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Death, Chapter #23: Seal of the Gods, focusing completely on Arena Day II. Last chapter, #22, focused on Day/Night I without any casualties, but I can tell you that this will not be the case for forever or for very long haha... and I am uber excited about that. I was wrong with which chapter (either this one or 24) had the seventh pov for the Capitol cast, but it is actually the next POV, so I am going to remedy that previously so there's no confusion. Beyond that, this chapter then only has six tribute povs for you across a variety of characters, so let's start getting into the thick meat of the Hunger Games. Enjoy!
"I think we consider too much the luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Orion Maythorpe: District 4 Male P.O.V (18)
Never leave me, Orion. Or I will find you, and I will hurt you. You will taste your own blood as I claw your eyes out of your skull.
Orion wakes up with a startled yelp, sweat pouring down his forehead and against his shirtless back, he sitting straight up and almost hitting his head on one of the eaves jutting out in the ceiling. He leans forward, resting his head in between his knees, breathing in deeply, Alistair's wispy voice dissipating into the dawn of the new morning, floating like smoke into the air which is already clouded over. His abrupt movements has Ramses stir, the boy's arm draped over Orion's chest, where he cannot feel his left pectoral muscle, taking note of how the hand had been… positioned.
Ramses grunts some sort of word that is completely lost to the wooden floor, he not shirtless – Orion is not trying to show his muscles every chance he gets, he swears it – but curled up next to him. Lovers, perhaps, the word warm in Orion's stomach as he runs a hand through his hair. He's shaking, trembling in fact, the words icy against the nape of his neck. It is the third time in a row, the third night where the voice of his past comes to haunt him, leeching against the inner side of his thigh, suckling blood out of his ankle, or on the underside of his foot.
He did not leave anyone behind, and he did not push Alistair up to the stairs to be executed like his family believes he did… for he hadn't even been there. His father makes him stay home, something about reorganizing the linens closet – "I must be rich if we have a linens closet," Orion muses to himself – and then he sees it in the paper, a local seaside teenager executed via guillotine in the town square. Orion's voice is hoarse, depleting out by the second from all the screaming, he battering his hands into the wall… when he has the idea to go out into the surf…
Would he do that now when he inevitably loses…? Orion shakes his head, frowning. That is not a thought he wants to be thinking right now when the very person it concerns is wrapped up against him, reaching out and tugging him back to the mat, hands around his waist, precariously close to a particular body part.
Orion winces, groaning through his teeth at the movement. He is not supposed to move the leg, as Ramses instructs him, when he looks down at the wound created from Diana's arrows and Magnus's spear… the flesh has been torn open, bandaged heavily from supplies they find in the house they're encamped inside. It had been sitting on a shelf, the same shelf Orion is staring at from across the eaves, hidden away, in a spot they most likely were not supposed to find. Wrapping his leg up tight, the initial bandaging blossoms a ferocious scarlet nearly instantly, a cry of desperation rising from Orion's throat, earning a soothed kiss from Ramses. However, when he tugs back his pant leg, the cloth has dried, he lifting it up slowly. The gash hadn't been extremely deep, and he is still able to walk, but it means he is out of commission most likely.
He turns over as best he can, screwing up his posture while he stares at Ramses's sleeping form. Beautiful, evocative, stunning in every sense of the word… Orion rests his hand against his lover's skull, cradling it and stroking down towards his lips with his thumb. Ramses coos low in his throat, opening his eyes, and Orion smiles.
"Good morning, babe," Ramses greets him first, going to peck his nose.
Orion actually giggles a happy noise, stuck in this alcove in this house in the fishing village. He knows that strategy wise – something his father thought he had actually instilled in the kid's head, but as per usual, wrong – picking the central area of the arena is not a good idea, for her figures everyone and their grandson had run into the most open spot. He doesn't get more than an hour of solid sleep at a time before he is awoken again by some sort of creak in the night, but no one has happened across their house yet.
"Good morning to you too, Ramses," Orion kisses back, sitting back up to stretch his lower back as best as he can.
"How's the leg feeling?" Ramses asks, sitting up likewise, rubbing at the dreary dredges of sleep clinging onto his corneas.
Orion holds his hand for Ramses to latch onto, helping him hoist up to his own two feet. There is a lot of wobbling involved, to the point where Orion is afraid he will tip over into the sword stuck in its sheath just on a peg nestled into the wall. They had climbed into his alcove from a ladder, a hiding spot that blends into the wooden paint of the house, Ramses unsure whether or not they should strike it down before they fell asleep, looking at the anthem shining through one of the cracks.
Dead tributes, dead people, people he had seen at the Private Sessions lunch just under thirty hours ago alive and well, but not any longer. He could've been one of those statistics yesterday, he realizes with sharp clarity, tipping over into one of the pillars. Orion could've joined Alistair in the Great Beyond, wherever that place is, hopefully away from all those vicious dogs that have loved to bite into him had Diana's arrow been fired a second earlier than his reflexes can react against… or if Magnus's thrust had been straight, angled slightly higher…
Count his blessings today, for they might not be there tomorrow, Orion smiling and looking back at Ramses, heart flooded with affection. Back home, Four is full of aristocrats and surfers looking for a good time, but that's it, just a good time. While their night together had certainly been something magical and special, Orion senses it is more than just physical lust tethering the two of them together no matter how hard he'll try to deny it. He is lucky for that, as he nestles his fingers in between the space of Ramses's ribcage.
"It's better," he admits, giving it a shake, wincing in pain. Okay, not a good idea, but he knows simply staying as a lame duck in water will only have the Gamemaker eyes land on them. It is a piece of attention he does not want, a slice of pie he will not eat from no matter how edible it looks. He'll have to move, fight, explore… they cannot stay still, even if their alcove with the sun shining in through the cracks, falling on Ramses's face in beams of heaven is as inviting as it looks. "I give it another day before I can run…" Orion scratches his chin. "How are you feeling?"
Ramses stretches and yawns, pushing back the mat that he had curled up over his body. "If you're referring to my district partner almost stabbing me through the throat with one of her knives, then I am doing okay, babe," he laughs, Orion looking intently at his hand. The hand with one less finger than normal, the disability that Ramses believes would've kept them apart… It is a sign of character instead, a strength that he wants to find and have and hold, where Orion will never let it go now that he has claim.
The bloodbath, as that is what the Vice President calls it with his announcement hailing from the sky, has Orion seeing just where his own blood lands and falls, down his leg, soaking his arena uniform. Orion hobbles back over to Ramses, sitting as best he can without pressing his leg into the floor.
"Ramses, I know you're going to protest what I am about to say but-"
"I was gonna ask you," Ramses interrupts him, softly, but enough to make Orion's words backlog into his throat, his eyebrows rising gently. Alistair interrupts him all the time, but his voice never falls softly, like a floating feather into the ground… it had all been harsh echoes, booms in the night, or the snicker-snack of the guillotine blade separating the head from the rest of the body… "What you wanted to do today."
"What I wanted to do today?" Orion chuckles, looking around at the shack they call home base. "I hate to break it to you, babe, but you make it sound like this arena is a tourist attraction," opening his arms wide.
"Well, to the Capitolites…" his ally's voice lowers some, darkening in tone, Orion struggling back to his feet with Ramses's help.
"To the Capitolites, we need to be the attractions," Orion points out. "And I agree with the sentiment, since I really don't want to die," Ramses chuckles back at that, morbid, but true… death would be so unbecoming to Orion, when he looks at how the light lands on his own skin. "Which is why we need to move as soon as I feel ready. To pass the time, we need to make ourselves look as interesting as possible, as desirable and lethal as possible…"
His voice lulls off as he sets his eyes on Ramses's weapon, a chic sort of battle-axe with a silver handle, and a glimmering blade that had been leaning against the same beam his sword, untainted with another corpse's blood, lies. He tosses it to Ramses, letting it fall short of him, away from his lover's outstretched legs. "What you have in mind, babe?"
"As Diana said back at the bloodbath," Orion grins cheekily, "Target practice."
Nevaeh Davoli: District 7 Female P.O.V (17)
The last remnants of the rising dawn have vanished back into the trees where Nevaeh believes the shine to have come from in the first place, for nothing in the arena seems real to her. The trees feel like plastic, the soil foamy and bouncing in place with her every single step. Sylvan falls asleep next to her with some sort of nightmare, but Nevaeh simply lets him make his own way through it, while she looks at him in the gloomy dark, listening to the land breathe beneath her. Nothing natural, nothing holy, nothing sacred, a light rain making their morning trek through the wasted forest less than spectacular.
When Sylvan awakes, which is with quite the start, sweat pooling down his forehead, she is already up, shining her axe on a rock, rubbing the coarse stone back and forth across the edge, before she goes swinging away at one of the dead stumps lying in the ground. Everything in the forest, the section they had run into since it looked the closest to home… everything seems dead. While Nevaeh knows that can't be true, for she hears the chirping of birds or the chittering of a squirrel occasionally in the brush, the ground itself is all leafy, crunching under their feet as they step forward into the unknown.
The trees themselves, for the most part, are branch and leafless, just spokes sticking out of the ground, a low hum seeming to come from them, but Nevaeh is unsure how much of that is just from the beat in her own heart. Sometimes, though it isn't the case any longer, she can feel Amos's heartbeat under her own skin, in a different spot, where a pulse usually would be, beating in sync with her own, as Nevaeh looks up at the night sky.
She half expects her brother's face to be there in the reel commemorating the dead, Nevaeh looking for his face in the slideshow when it passes from Cecelia to Zachary to Calen, skipping District 7 entirely. Sylvan is quiet, except for dinner, which is a bird that she hacks through a nest on the ground to find, curious as to why the nest would be on the ground and not up in a tree for the birds to fly away. Not that it would matter, of course, for they are cracking through eggs and having bird for dinner, some sort of avian creature that does not poison them. It is Sylvan who speaks though, after their silent run away from the cornucopia.
"It doesn't feel right…" he whispers over the dull crack of their shifted movements into the dead leaves.
Nevaeh wipes away some of the grease spilling down her chin, plucking feathers from the birds to get an easier angle at the meat. "What do you mean?" she asks.
Sylvan shrugs his shoulders, shaking his head. "You wouldn't understand," he says, before looking at her in the eyes, more serious than she's ever seen him, Nevaeh realizing in that moment as the shells and dead corpses of the birds crunch underneath her foot together that she's allied with a fourteen-year-old boy, most likely green in every sense of the world. "I lived beyond the fence for awhile during the war and…" A pause, a rippling shudder. "There were just things you didn't eat…"
"Well, I won't ask you to eat a human," Nevaeh laughs, jokingly, but Sylvan does not laugh back with her.
She asks the question aloud about most of the bird nests they find being burrowed in the ground rather than up high, and the nests themselves do not seem to be made out of twigs and branches and other tree elementals… but dirt, and all semblances of reality seem to vanish. Late that night, Sylvan answers her, while they are cuddled together for warmth, her arms around his shoulders, his head in her lap, looking at the night sky as Dill Waylon's face blends into the gloomy black.
"Perhaps the sky isn't safe…" he says, looking up reproachfully, Nevaeh mirroring his movements with parted lips. The sky not being safe, when a District 7 citizen relies on the sky… it sends goosebumps her spine.
She is looking, currently, at another moment that does so as well, turning through an outcropping, an overturned log resting against a rock blockade… rounding the bend, with Sylvan close to her, she sees just ahead of them, a tree. It is unlike the other trees currently surrounding them, dead weight and lifeless, with that heartbeat hum, but a tree. A brown trunk alit with life, the leaves gorgeous and glittering like emeralds in the sunshine, and at the top of it, she can make out the golden skin of some apples, just waiting to be plucked.
Nevaeh almost takes a head start towards the tree, nearly running, when Sylvan grabs at her hand, making her stop, she almost toppling onto the ground. "What?" she asks irritated, turning back to him, Sylvan flinching and leaping back as her axe blade gets a bit too close to comfort for his liver.
"It's like I said," he says nervously, biting on his lower lip. "What if the skies aren't safe here, and the birds are on the ground because-"
"Because the skies aren't safe, yeah, I get it," Nevaeh interrupts him, shrugging off his touch. She thinks that he forgets himself sometimes, forgets exactly who is he dealing with, and while she has always considered herself to be more passive, a leaf blowing in the wind, she saw what happened back at the cornucopia, at the start of the Games. No one hesitated, people died before her very eyes – not that she hasn't seen death, or the headless bodies in the streets, getting thrown into mass graves from Peacekeeper executions on anyone who dares mutter Nathanial Coin's name, regardless of side – and that means she must be alert… what if, when sweet Sylvan reaches out to grab her hand, it is so he can hold her back and slit her throat?
"Nevaeh, I am serious…" Sylvan frowns, she raising an eyebrow and wondering if he is about to pout. Children back home would do that, pout and stomp their feet… childish, yet amusing… would he do that?
"There are some apples up there," Nevaeh points out to Sylvan, taking his hand and leaping upwards with it. The tree isn't that tall, but she doesn't see any spots that would hold her or her body weight. Sylvan's lankiness and skinniness would be the best here, as she slides her axe into her belt. "I think you should climb up there and get some, and then climb back down."
"Why can't you do it?" Sylvan blinks in confusion, frowning. "After all, your idea."
"You're lighter," Nevaeh says, splaying her arms wide to encompass just how lithe and toothpick thin Sylvan is, which is why when she picks up a weapon for him at the cornucopia, it is not the same sort of axe blade she has hitched at her side. "And I am not about to waste our axes on getting the apples if our throws send them back down on us or into the sky for someone else to find," she nods towards the tree, pushing him slightly. "Go on, Sylvan. I am right here."
He mutters something intelligible, scowling at her, but Sylvan steps forward regardless. Nevaeh looks down around them, noticing that the ground hasn't changed at all, it still being a mesh of sticks and bramble and dead leaves, despite the tree's pristine condition. The Capitol is not just always for show; there is a meaning and a method to their madness, occasionally. The tree is special, those apples are special too.
Sylvan hooks his miniature axe into his belt, hoisting himself up, Nevaeh taking a step back, shielding her eyes from the sun as he starts to climb into the thick of the tree. She can see his pale skin in the veil of green, glittering particles of golden light seeming to fall down to the ground at the base of the tree, Nevaeh squinting her eyes as it seems like the particles of light are… distorting the tree. Staring at it, it is as if the bark is turning and shapeshifting into angles of all sizes, bending around, like a vase.
Her district partner swears something that'd have Amos cuff him underneath his chin, slipping some on a shaky branch, Nevaeh unhooking her axe from her belt. They haven't seen another tribute since leaving the cornucopia bloodbath – that ghastly term from the Vice President's announcement loud and clear, four people somehow equates to a bloodbath – but that does not mean one isn't lurking…
"Hey!" Sylvan calls out, jolting Nevaeh in place, she almost hissing at him. Does he want to notify everyone to where they are? "I think I can just barely reach it…" he grunts out, reaching, his head peeking through the top of the tree.
"Yeah? Good job, Sylvan!" Nevaeh congratulates him, clapping, before tilting her head to the side with a frown.
What is that heavy flapping?
Something screeches in the air, Sylvan turning to face the sound, his face changing from jubilance with the golden apple in his hand to that of object terror. "NEVAEH!" he screams, as something dives out of the sky towards him, she rushing forward to catch him in her arms, Sylvan falling out of the tree in terror.
His axe comes loose out of his belt, she sidestepping it so the blade wouldn't land in her skull, luckily, while she holds onto Sylvan in her arms. The two of them step back, both gasping, as they stare at this… creature. If the beast has eyes, Nevaeh cannot see them, two black wings, multi feathered, waves of black imminence seeming to waft between the open space, the distortion around the trunk getting thicker and thicker.
The beast screeches at them again, wingspan rising outwards, Sylvan scrambling to pick his axe up, brandishing it at the beast. "Back, you devil!" he shouts at it, Nevaeh pushing him back behind her. The legs of the beast are scrawny, skinny almost, a very thinly, sickly, pale color… is this a half-bird/half-human creation? It certainly isn't all mortal…
Nevaeh holds out her own weapon, the two of them starting to step backwards. The creature locks eyes with them, before opening its jaw and screaming. Razor sharp teeth line the jaw of the animal-human hybrid, a white maw covered in bleeding scars and scratches, two curved blades by the creature's side. Sylvan lobs the golden apple in his hand at the creature, it missing it by a mile, but that seems to do the trick.
The beast screeches after it again, talons digging into the tree, the distortion wavering in anemic waves of light and purple light, the golden glitter falling through the leaves turning to a brackish, foul green, Nevaeh's stomach lurching as the animal flies off, after the golden apple.
She- she nearly got Sylvan killed. She… what has she done?
Neither one of them speak another word as they turn around and race the way they had come from, to put as much distance between them and the hell-hawk as possible.
Cassiopeia Grey: District 11 Female P.O.V (13)
Her stomach is rumbling again, for the tenth time in the last hour, and Cassiopeia is pretty sure only fifteen minutes have passed, if the gigantic clock up into the dome above her head is any indicator, as she looks at it from afar, below in the fishing village. Cassiopeia ducks her head in and out from under one of the eaves, careful not to smack into one of the lower hanging slots that juts out from the wall. The arena has gone eerily quiet for the last two hours, she having been awoken by hushed voices next to her, though she isn't sure just how close they had been.
Cassiopeia's hand is close to the knife she has resting up against the wall when the footsteps crunching the grass under their shoes gets closer and closer, she hearing three voices, one of them sounding like that rich, uppity kid from District One, which has her press herself further into the wooden boards. If his voice is there, then she knows who else is aside him… the soldier who scores as high as anyone can ever go, and that blonde-haired sea-witch who… well, Cassiopeia cannot even finish the thought, as she is running low on oxygen trying to hold her breath. She glances through one of the peepholes of the cabin, Magnus's back nearly pressed right against her eye, luckily blotting out any sight of her from the outside in.
The trio leaves shortly after, going north, she takes it, by how they're talking, Diana speaking on death and what it meant to take a life, but Cassiopeia is not sure what she's talking about, given the moment she witnesses Nokomis Yanaba plunge a sword into Zachary Edison's chest, it is the sign to her to leave and flee, to run as far as she can and never look back. Is she talking about Dill?
She has no idea how he died, but she knows that it means he died alone, and he must've died in the carnage, armed with one of her blades, a seed of regret digging deep into her stomach. If she hadn't given him the blade, would he not have charged into the fray and gotten his head completely hacked off? Did- did she send him to his death? A croak bubbles in her throat, blooming across her chest, as a bird chirps and flies overhead, Cassiopeia crawling out from under the crawlspace beneath the house, as using the front door would create too much noise.
No, she will not go down that path. Self-hatred only builds more self-hatred, and soon before she knows it, Cassiopeia figures herself that she is not going to want to even escape the arena and go back to her loving home, back to Amalie's arms if she is to have her… she shakes her head in defiance of the very notion; that will not be her fate, it will not be what this arena does to her.
However, in the pit of her stomach, the tension and anxiety crawls upwards through her intestines, digging and removing whatever they please, to make it easier as she bleeds out over a copper-colored rock field. An empty canteen sits in her pocket, she holding onto the blade with one hand, the canteen in the other. She emptied it last night while looking at the anthem, closing her eyes in remembrance for Dill although it is only in case there is a camera on her, for she doesn't miss him, and in the morning with breakfast, stabbing a squirrel that dares make its nest in the eaves of her cottage.
A letter came for her in the morning, out of the sky, when she crawls out of the space to see what time it is, for the windows do not give her a clear view of the arena dome. It is from Marlon as she unfurls it, frowning. The letter, scrolled up on a piece of parchment paper, in a fancy ink pen scrawl, bleeds through the page in her pocket, staining the leather in a dark smear.
You're the only one left from Eleven, Cassiopeia, and the only one to represent your district in the Games, and we're only on the second day. You had people looking at you from your training score, from your tenacity… you must perform. You must fight back, or you will die… ~ Marlon Caynes
It makes her snort, Cassiopeia looking at the letter and almost laughing, as she makes her way to small pond she found last night while looking for a place to sleep. The water hasn't killed her yet, luckily, from what she can tell. The man who just yesterday morning doesn't believe in her is now giving her a pep talk, and a shitty one at that.
She can just barely make out the edge of the pond over the hill, the land rising upwards and sloping downwards. On the other side of the pond is a drop-off, into thick brush underneath, though Cassiopeia is not sure where that goes or leads to, and she does not feel like exploring, her backpack all the way on one of those eaves in the cottage. As she makes her ascension, boots leaving marks in the dirt, she realizing that too late on the fact that someone could quite literally follow her footsteps, Cassiopeia comes to a stop. A dead stop.
A scoff, a shake of the head.
"You have got to be fucking kidding me…" she says, out loud. Loud enough for the kid, who had completely missed her heading his way, to look up, his hands submerged under the water. The stunned face of Pierce Alversway has made up for the crappy squirrel she had for breakfast, his eyes wide and alert with fright, his entire body trembling.
"Please… please don't…" he whimpers at her again, moving back, but there isn't much room for him to go before he is to then plummet off of the side of the rock wall.
Cassiopeia grits her teeth, holding onto her blade. She has killed before, the animals she has crash-landed on while she falls out of a tree. People killed yesterday, the four dead faces showed that, and they had to have been done by people with the capacity to slay a human life. What is it that she tells Pierce as she runs away from the tower he forces her out of?
"It's what I said just yesterday, Pierce," she says, tightening her grip on the hilt of the knife in her hand. "I see you again, it wouldn't end well."
She must perform. She does not want her own face to shine in the sky because she is too scared or too wimpy to defend herself. Volatile, volatile, and violent, that are the words the doctors use to describe her, all because she had accidentally bit the doctor's hand who is getting his hand too close on her knee while he has the stethoscope pressed against her tiny heartbeat. She defends herself from a pervert, and she's the violent one who will never make friends.
Let her be the role, then. Marlon told her she needs to perform, no?
Cassiopeia lets out a bark, a cry of war, and rushes him, leaping over part of the watering hole. Pierce, however, unlike she expects him to, doesn't just stand there or fall back, instead rushing at her, though he isn't making any noise. Both tributes collide into each other, his head into her chest, her head into his, they falling into the water together.
Her cry of pain is smothered by the fact she is submerged under the water, she stunned for a second, but Pierce is atop of her already, the knife falling slack in her grip as she feels his hands scrabbling in the mess for her. Fingers dig into her neck, her own maybe, as Cassiopeia reaches for the knife, it slipping just out of reach. His fingers find her pulse, pushing upwards, painfully as she opens her mouth, swallowing an intense gulp of water. Her throat is on fire, her skull burning, she seeing him peer just out of the water, his eyes burning in black pain.
He must be a one-trick pony, though, if he only knows how to choke. Has he had a lot of practice, like Dill? Cassiopeia grits her teeth together. This will not be her end, hell to the no. She is a Grey, dammit, and she may not got to see her parents all the time, but they're fighters. Hard-workers, who make her keep her chin up, as she needs to see Amalie again, to finally ask her out and- AHA!
Cassiopeia gets her hand around the golden blade, dragging it close to her and thrusting upwards randomly. It slices across Pierce's underarm, his grip releasing immediately with a pained gasp as he jerks upward violently. She pushes him off of her, Pierce falling back against the rim of the pond, Cassiopeia rising up out of the water. She coughs out half of the pond, the burn sitting there under her chest cavity, heart pounding into her ribs.
His arm is bleeding, the knife having gone through the part right near his elbow, scarlet spilling out into the water. It is shocking, seeing this much red, as she hadn't gotten the greatest angle – not that Cassiopeia is complaining about that – during the cornucopia fight on witnessing the boy from Five die. His arm is split open, the skin flapping as more blood falls into the water. She coughs up some more, resting opposite him, for it seems Pierce has been completely stunned into silence, looking at his wound with pure shock.
He looks at her, the rage turning into misery, Cassiopeia gritting her teeth again, arm trembling and shaking as she did that to another human being. His pity won't work, Cassiopeia leaping forward again, as he tries to jerk himself up out of the pond. It is not enough, as she overshoots, wanting to stab him just right into the neck, one of the easiest ways to kill someone – a conversation she overhears some of the older kids talking about in the field – when her blade enters through his left eye.
The godawful noise that Pierce makes settles into her skin as he flails backwards, her hands falling off of the blade, her mouth falling down in horror. No… no… he's- he's suffering and… she does not get another thought left as Pierce pushes her with all of this might, still screaming at the same time. She falls back into the water, splashing about, as he rips the knife out of his face, the eye coming with.
Cassiopeia looks away, bile rising in her throat as she sees the eye disconnect from the socket, more scarlet spilling out of the open hole in his face, the eye floating somewhere around the water, but she is backing up, trying to get out of the watering hole, her empty canteen still where it had been left. Pierce is babbling something, still screaming in pain, until he's rising out of the water, backwards, away from her.
"Look what you did! Look what you did!" he is yelling at her, over and over again, but she isn't about to apologize. Pierce gets out of the water, not knowing where he is heading.
Cassiopeia yells his name, or maybe telling him to stop, she isn't quite sure, until he tips back, his foot catching on the lip of the hill. She leaps out of the water, trying to grapple onto him, her knife down by their feet, but she is too late. Pierce falls back with a scream, blood pouring down his face, she rushing forward to the edge as she sees his body get swallowed up by the green shrubbery, as if he could plummet forever and ever.
She collapses to her knees, exhausted, out of breath, her heart still pounding, lungs feeling like they've been torn open by cat claws.
Well… well she can be certain, as she looks back to see Pierce's left eye bouncing on the rippling waves, that she won't be using this pond to get water ever again…
Gemini Lennox: District 9 Male P.O.V (17)
Screams in the dark. Dead things floating upwards in the water, pale faces and dark faces, eyes gone milk-white when the blood vessels rupture and send streams of crimson cascading around the curve of their lips, mouths upward in a scream. It is what he sees, what Gemini Lennox tastes, what he hears, as he races away from the cornucopia, a bag loped around his shoulders, without a weapon in the side pocket, something he beats himself up about time and time again, swearing into the tree bark he finds. He runs in the direction of the decaying forest, for it looks the most comforting, especially as he watches the trio from One, Two, and Four occupy the fishing village, among a few others that Gemini knows he'd never be able to face head-on and survive.
He wonders just how many of the other tributes are suffering from nightmares when the sun goes down and the settling disquiet of the arena has soaked into his skin. How many of them will be fidgeting back and forth, holding their arms tight and flush to their body as the words of demons circle around their heads? How many will see the moment Calen Kinegrove's body slumps forward with a cut throat from ear-to-ear, or seeing Cecelia Blackstone have a black-feathered arrow protruding from the back of her neck?
He sleeps soundlessly, even when he sees the anthem shine in the sky, replaying all four deaths he had seen from the faces shining up there, taking comfort in the fact that for perhaps the first time in his entire life, someone else is having a worse night than he is. His dreams are that of Camilla's concerned face, while he spits at her and calls her names, snarling swear words up and out of the gutter, as if he could have ever been close to her. Regardless of the fact that she is from home, she is lying and deceitful, and since he didn't look useful to her, he is discarded… she better hope and pray she is not someone he encounters over the next few days, allies or not. He'll paint her demise, covering her body in petunia flowers while he cuts her throat from ear-to-ear.
"I'm not your therapist…" her words are an icy lance straight through the heart, Gemini clutching the organ and screaming in lucidity, greenlight and harsh halos spreading around the dead trees, sweat pouring down his face. Why is that the words she leaves him with? It might be the last few words the two of them have spoken to each other, the same words his father barks at him before he is found swinging from the ceiling fan, toes just barely brushing against the dirt.
What a bloody tie to end things on. Gemini bites down on his lip, tearing away at the skin, as he rummages through the backpack he has. In his running away from the cornucopia, to put as much distance between himself and the others as possible, he finds himself at the very edge of the forest, smacked up against a rock wall that he knows he cannot climb.
He could go in either direction, from left or right, to see what the side would bleed into, or he could go back, Gemini unsure of what to do. No one will take him as an ally, he is certain on that regard, if the "Girl Power" alliance didn't want him to begin with. Girl Power. What a stupid name. He knows that Camilla has no power, he can see the ebb and flow of tragedy rinse off of her like gray smoke under the shower stall, or that Nokomis hides judgement in her stare, and from the few encounters with Portia, she's just a girl trying to make a castle out of straw, sticks, and mud. No power to be had with them, but it is the truth; if they won't take him, who will?
At the very end of the walk, at the very end of his run towards the far-side of the dead forest, where his feet make marks in the dead leaves, hugging around the trees that barely hide his caramel-skin colored flesh and spindly shoulders, Gemini has come across something the upmost peculiar. He looks at his reflection staring back at him through a mirror, a reflective surface that has three symbols protruding from the side, they in circles of their own, gone dark. He presses his fingers against its surface, they dug out and soft, as he runs his hand along the etch. They are like spirals, spirals with golden hues burning around the outer edges.
It is the same golden color that he sees in those three or four trees with the apples hanging low, different from the entire rest of the forest, danger and alarm causing all the hair on his arms to stand up on end… they are not meant to be touched. Standing next to the mirror, on a tree stump that has been sawed off jaggedly, is a totem of some kind, about his midsection, with a blue triangle dug into the wood.
On the bottom of the mirror, where his own dark eyes peer back at him through a cloudy reflection, is a button, the only true odd part of what he is looking at. Gemini crouches on his hands and knees, turning around to face where he had come from, the path having narrowed in on this mirror and this totem-tree stump. No one behind him, and he will hear them coming from a mile away due to the dead leaves on the ground.
"I've got nothing better to do," he mumbles, leaning forward and pressing his finger against the button.
The mirror shifts and begins to glow, a soft sort of humming noise seeming to rise from beneath his feet, Gemini jumping in place, hands immediately curling into fists, in a defensive position. However, his reflection dissipates into a dark background, with a single question, the text ebbing and flowing with a soft purple shadow into the black of the mirror.
He squints his eyes, scooting closer to the mirror. "Who is the Norse god of mythology based in illusion?" Gemini frowns, sitting back on his heels. What kind of dumb question is that? He looks around the arena, around the dead forest and golden trees, the dead leaves underneath his feet, to the stokes in the ground, towards the blue triangle… does it all mean something? The arena, as he had gotten a glimpse of it at the cornucopia, makes no sense to him. No cohesion, random spots and places jumbled together… but what if…?
Gemini swears, before he goes to sleep in the far back outer rim of the forest, his body facing to the right, that through an open clearing to a cave mouth, that there is something prowling out in the middle, extended past the fishing village that looks to clearly be Nordic inspired… and it is watching him. Glowing eyes, that of the deepest, most carnal red, a howl rippling through the arena around three or four in the morning, for he cannot sleep.
The scorched earth… is this based around Norse mythology?
Illusions, the ebb, and flow of time as he walks, to the dead forest beneath his feet… Gemini knows. He lifts his head up, eyes sparkling in all-knowing, as he leans forward to the mirror, pressing the button. "Valravn," he says. "Valravn is the Norse god of mythology based in illusion."
The question on the mirror disappears, Gemini stepping back as a low grinding noise shifts from the left to the right side of his head, he looking at the totem next to him. The triangle glows a serene navy color, causing him to shield his eyes, when the mouth of the totem lifts upwards, an object left behind in the open space.
Gemini lowers his hand, getting close to the totem, holding out his hand. The object does not come alive and attack him, as that is what he is worried about, as he encircles his hand around the solid white base of the object, lugging it out. It is rather light in his hand, as Gemini stands upright, turning away from the mirror and the totem, from the outer edge of the section he is in.
The base is attached to about an eight or nine-foot-long coil of rope, it extended outward, the robe bristling to the touch as he runs his hand up and down part of it, hissing as it pricks his finger. He uncoils it all the way into the ground, his eyebrows lifting upwards in surprise.
"It's a whip…" he whispers to himself, glee flooding through his voice. Looks like he has a weapon…
Gemini looks back at the base, seeing that there's another button in the center of the white handle, the same black color like that on the mirror. He looks back at the mirror, the three symbols, the circles, all lit up in a blinding pale glow. Gemini presses his finger on the button, and the whip comes alive. It hums in his hand, the dark coils lighting up to a soft halcyon sheen.
His palm bristles and itches back and forth, all the hair on his arms standing up on end, and every few inches or so down the whip, these golden circles, swirling back and forth, glow inside the whip. He takes a few steps back, holding out his arm, eying a dead tree standing just a bit away from him.
Gemini lashes out with the whip, the sizzling end piece connecting with the bark of the dead tree, and before his very eyes, it shoots up in flames, the fire burning through the tree quickly as it dissolves at the touch of the whip into cinders, piling into ash at the base. He looks at the weapon in shock, turning it off by pressing the button on the end-piece.
All he can do next is tilt his head back and laugh. He laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
He is not going to let anyone else count him out from now on.
Magnus Winterthorn: District 2 Male P.O.V (18)
While breakfast and now lunch had been relatively jovial, the tension from last night's argument settles into his bones, cracking down his spine as Magnus hoists Diana up one of the ledges in the fishing village. He turns back to Catalus, who is behind him, the boy from One shaking his head in refusal as he makes the leap himself, grunting up the ledge, though he does take Diana's outreached hand. Lunch had been tearing away some fish found on a few spits here and there around the village, Diana spotting sea-bass and some gill, and for her, a perch that she cuts up with her arrows, given that they do not have any utensils.
To cook them, as Catalus swears he saw some geysers and hot springs spotted around the scorched section of the arena, the three of them went over to one just barely meshed into the village's dirt and cobblestone pathways, holding out the spear, dipping the fish into the water to let them cook. Diana is on guard duty, her bow drawn, Magnus accepting it for the time being that she can have it, and while she swears to have seen a tribute running through the trees, looking like one of the younger ones, the shot is too far away for her to get an accurate hit. When he asks for his weapon back, there is a steely look in her eyes, but she hands it to him, no questions asked.
Catalus has been silent for the most part, besides apologizing for his behavior last night, in which all of three of them end up apologizing, as Magnus knows he said things he shouldn't have either. Their current destination in mind is anywhere and everywhere, though he knows that Diana truthfully wants to go after Portia Beninblade for reasons he is unsure about. He wants to go after her too, personally, but spending his entire time in the arena searching for his district partner will be folly given that there are another, well, now, seventeen tributes that could do the deed if he counts out Portia, Diana, Catalus, and himself.
Their destination is a tower that Diana spots looming out over the trees and one of the cabins they had nestled themselves in for the night, she running on ahead and over one of those ledges. Magnus pushes himself away from the outcropping, taking a running head start, as it is about three or so feet which should be easy for him to take. He won't need a hand up for that, he is strong enough, if all those sports he had played in his past had been any indicator, this is going to be no problem.
Magnus leaps off the ground as he gets close, bow in hand, quiver around his back, launching off and landing a few feet ahead of Diana, surprising Catalus who falls to the ground in shock. He laughs airily, unafraid of the consequences; they're the strongest, most appealing alliance in the Games, he holds no fear in his heart, for what he feels emotionally is made up for by the draw of the bowstring, of the strength he holds in his hands.
Diana rolls her eyes, swinging the spear so the sharp point is facing the ground, digging into the dirt. "Show-off," she mutters, rolling his eyes, as he cheekily grins back at her. He does love watching her squirm so, thinking she is the queen of the arena, but if that had been the case, she'd have the golden 12 shining above her head and not his, but his ego is satisfied enough. Magnus knows he is talented and lethal without needing to call himself the King of the Arena, though if someone does want to give him that title, he is not against it in the slightest.
Catalus gets to his feet, looking at Magnus in amazement. "I know you said that you played sports when you were younger, before you enlisted, but not that well," His voice is a lot more friendly, compared to Diana's, which makes Magnus laugh even harder. The guy just gets him, which is why he might've sought him out during the chariots and training, from what his parents tell him in the mayor's office during their goodbyes.
He will never forget how his mother pushes him in the chest, Magnus nearly knocking over an expensive looking vase that a Peacekeeper would surely whip him for – "Would like to see them try," he grumbles to himself, full of snark – and having to catch it, even as she yells at him. How he has betrayed them, how he has an entire life ahead of him now that the rebellion is over, and had he not volunteered, he'd be living until he is old and of age to have kids and grandkids of his own…
"I don't want them, Mom," he tells her, his voice pained from the strike, as his mother is no wilting flower on a kitchen windowsill. "I don't want that life, and I don't need that life. I need my life to mean something."
"It does mean something!" she barks back in his face, pointing to his siblings all huddled in the corner, crying themselves, where the only dry eyes in the whole room are Magnus's, even with the hugs he gives them when their time is up. "It means something to the people who love you, and-"
He disrupts the memory in his head by drawing an arrow, smirking back at Catalus. "Yeah; I stuck with track and field the most," Sticking with track and field makes him the operative in the war to be the one who'd go ahead and set all the mines first, where from afar the snipers could shoot them in the heart of battle… Magnus Winterthorn is the ideal soldier, the soldier who does not cry, the soldier who takes his orders without a second thought… "Not a jack-of-all-trades, I promise. Just someone who likes to work out."
"Someone who likes to eat, by the looks of you," Diana mocks, brushing past him towards the tower. He swivels on his heel, unable to think of a comeback, even as he looks down at his stomach, which has lost some of the muscle he earned while having his fellow officers hold his feet while doing crunches.
The three of them reach the base of the tower, Diana's reasoning having been that it wouldn't be built or placed in the arena if there is no reason at all for its existence. From what Magnus can see, there is a single staircase, though it is quite thin, and they'd have to go person by person to get to the top, and while he knows he is good, he is not that good to climb all the way up there to the small window he can see. As a matter of fact, he might not be even able to fit in it.
"Well, who's going?" he asks, to break the silence, arms crossed, bow on his shoulder.
"Catalus," Diana volunteers, looking over at him as her ponytail swishes from side to side.
"Why me?" the boy from One protests, throwing his free hand up, the sword from the cornucopia strapped to his side. Before Diana can answer as to why, in which Magnus is all of a sudden happy to be the one standing in-between them as before, Catalus overrides her. "I figure it is going to be because I am the most expendable out of the three of us, so if I die, you don't lose much," he shakes his head. "I was going to offer, but for different reasoning…"
Magnus raises an eyebrow in concern at his ally. That is not his way of thinking, but rather, "Well, I volunteer Diana," he says, smirking. "Technically, Di, you're the most expendable out of the three of us. Sure, you got a kill, but it wasn't a threat like Orion or Vesuvia. You're not rich and have rich parents like Catalus, and you didn't get a twelve like me," Magnus almost widens his smirk at the way Diana's eyes light up, balls of fire incinerating anything in their path.
She opens her mouth, shutting it immediately, without a word. "Or we can all go up there and then we'll all get killed…"
Catalus shrugs, beaming from ear to ear. "Works for me," he grins, pushing past Magnus, already making his way to the staircase. Magnus locks eyes with Diana, again shrugging, though the look in her eyes has yet to smolder past his words, but he knows that she knows he is right… he usually is, and he always speaks the truth.
He has never been one to mince words.
The two of them follow in line behind Catalus, who is ambling up to the top, sword clattering occasionally against the brick wall of the tower. Magnus keeps himself relatively flushed to the side, as the tower ascends into the sky, enough to be seen from pretty much any vantage point in the fishing village, and a fall will certainly break his neck. He sees Diana look over, her face turning several shades of green while she ambles towards the edge. Afraid of heights, huh? Magnus smirks, filing away the information for later, extending an arm back to keep her from falling.
He opens his mouth to say a joke as Catalus's voice is overwhelming his with a frightened yelp. "Hey, uh, guys? You might want to come see this!" their ally shouts, his tone that of concern.
Magnus doesn't hesitate, leaving Diana behind as he makes his way to the top of the tower, almost bumping into Catalus who is frozen in the doorway. She joins them shortly, as Catalus reaches out and points with his left hand towards the far corner of the tower room. Magnus's eyes adjust to the shadow level, searching, searching, following the extended hand, before his throat catches on a croak of surprise.
"Oh… that's… okay, that's messed up, even for me…" Diana whispers, catching her breath.
The three of them stare at Pierce Alversway huddled in the corner, he holding… Magnus isn't exactly sure, but it looks like his own eye in his left hand, cradling it with his right, the fish lunch threatening to reappear out of his throat any second now the longer he watches.
"He's saying something too…" Catalus whispers. "I- I don't think he even sees us, but-"
They all go quiet, Magnus taking a brave step forward into the rest of the tower. Pierce is indeed mumbling something hushed over and over again. "She did this to us… she maimed us. She did this to us… she hurt us. That… that bitch. Zachary must've told her to do this…" he snarls, before turning his face to them, Catalus screaming, Magnus steeling himself into the ground, even as Diana gags, turning her head away from the sight.
His other eye is gone too, his right eye and left eye sockets both empty, and while Magnus is not sure what did or didn't do this to him, he already has a hand on an arrow, tugging it into the bowstring. Whoever he is talking about, it doesn't matter, as he stares at the carnal gore swamping the floor of the tower. Pierce is blinded, snarling another mumble of words.
He does not need to suffer any longer, even if he inflicted this pain in on himself…
Magnus lets the arrow fly, it connecting directly into Pierce's heart. The boy rights himself straight up, the eyeball falling onto the floor and bouncing, Magnus looking at it for a second even as Pierce is screaming again, but no sound comes out, mouth wide open with silence, before he is flushed against the window, falling backwards.
Catalus tries rushing forward, to grab the kid's hand, but Diana holds him back, he swearing all the while. Magnus keeps his head up, as he knows he just took a life, watching Pierce fall from the tower, and when the kid will land, he knows.
He will be dead, and the cannon fire proves it, he supposes, when the body hits the ground.
Porscha Watanabe: District 6 Female P.O.V (16)
She wipes the cobwebs out of her hair, spitting pieces of gravel out of her mouth, digging her head out of the dirt. Kai'sa plops next to her on a much more graceful landing, though she still does stumble and collapse into an unceremonious heap at the bottom of the shale slide. Porscha gets to her feet, shaking the dust off of her body, looking over at her ally with a sneer. "Nice going, Kai'sa. Let's just jump off of the cliff and not know what is down there…" Porscha manages to not get injured, as she looks at her body, but Kai'sa's knee is skinned, spilling some light copper onto the gravel, mixing in with the black coal dust rising into their lungs. She grabs a bandage out of the backpack that she throws before taking the leap of faith.
There's a roll of gauze inside, but it had not been the backpack they take with them away from the cornucopia. It is inside the cave system they had just come out of, though Porscha is not exactly sure where that is. It is her idea to go rushing into an unknown land, into an unknown territory after pulling that gorgeous sword from the stone. The cave system had spawned underneath the arena land, she is certain, where it is verifiably fifteen to twenty degrees colder than normal above ground, but Porscha is dead set on seeing what is up ahead, even if it kills them. They cuddle together when they fall asleep, flushed against the wall where Porscha finds a warm spot, the two falling into dreams for the night.
Kai'sa awakes with a few night terrors, Porscha rising in alarm and shaking the girl from Twelve back into reality, staring at those soft eyes peering for sanctuary in the darkness, holding the girl tight with her grip, rocking back and forth and soothing her. In the cave, there is nothing it seems but the stalagmites and stalactites in between, or the occasional dripping sound from condensation above, Porscha careful to not step in any puddles. Halfway through, or what she surmises to be halfway through, they find the bag full of medical supplies, but there isn't any food inside it. The meager portion of apple and cheese is to hold them over till they escape out of the cave system.
Kai'sa grabs the piece of gauze that Porscha extends, wrapping it tightly around her leg. "Will you shut up for just two seconds, Porsche?" the girl from Six sticks her tongue out, while Kai'sa bandages herself up. "Besides, you were the one who decided to take the long way around."
Porscha ties her hair back into a ponytail, using one of the pieces of ribbon she finds in the medical bag, perhaps used to tie off circulation to limbs that need amputation, the thought chilling her down to the bone. "I wanted to put as much distance between ourselves and that drum as possible," she says, finishing her handiwork. A golden drum, with a spotlight of sunlight sitting on top of it, just in front of the cavemouth that the two girls crawl out of, and a mallet to hit the drum with sitting inside a velvet adorned box… there is no way she is going to go bang the drum, no matter how hard Kai'sa insists it'd bring them fortune.
"Well, it has led us to here…" the other dancer frowns, handing the gauze back to her ally. For a second, Porscha catches the sunlight falling onto her lips, tilting her head to the side, and smiling. Another thorn in Datsun Watanabe's side, the fact that his gilded little daughter in the music box is a deviant, a sycophant, a murderer, someone who will no longer pirouette to his poisonous tune… and she has managed to ally with the prettiest person Porscha has ever seen… "Wherever here is," Kai'sa mutters, brushing a lock of hair out of her face.
Porscha looks down at the ground, seeing that it is dried clay under their feet, mud, and the occasional cobblestone. The scorched earth is black soil, and warm, very warm. Their pathway last night had been this smooth sandstone, with the occasional precious jewel pressed into the ground, and from what she could tell, the decaying forest is full of dead life and dead trees, leaves crunching under the soles of her boots like fingers breaking by the handful…
"I think we're in the fishing village," Porscha says, smearing her shoe back and forth. If she were to peer just a bit further down her line of sight, she can barely make out the tower that is seen from the cornucopia and the outer edge of the ruined forest. "It looks like that tower we saw last night, as well," she pauses, as there is the chirping of birds. The song of life, a song that her mother used to sing, Datsun tells her, before she… before she split the woman of the world open, to have her bleed out, and that sienna door turns to burnt charcoal while Porscha is dragged, kicking, and screaming, from it. She frowns, biting on her lower lip. "I hear a bird; that could be our lunch, maybe."
"Or it could pluck our eyes out…" Kai'sa mutters under her breath. As if her words had brought some sort of magical power to them, two blue jays flew by, just above Porscha's head. She looks back at Kai'sa, who flinches from the sudden blur of movement past her face, and then the girl from Six is off on a run. "Wait-" Kai'sa chokes on her words, holding out one of her knives. "Porscha, wait! We- we can't just start climbing trees!" she calls, taking off as well.
Kai'sa is a much faster runner than Porscha is, starting to already overtake her as the two girls begin to run, Porscha's arm swinging back and forth with the heavy mace in her hands, feet colliding into the earth. She keeps her eyes peeled for tributes, though no one seems to be jumping out at them, or they're all resting, before the tower appears closer and closer to them, the blue jays flying away even as Kai'sa launches one of her knives at them.
Porscha tilts her head back to laugh when the silver blade arcs in the sky, missing their lunch by a country mile, even if it means they're going to go without food, not realizing that Kai'sa has skidded to a stop, the girl from Six colliding into her ally again. Both girls let out cries of pain as they topple over one another onto the ground again.
"Kai'sa!" Porscha barks out through gritted teeth, getting off of her, ready to spew more vitriol again, until Kai'sa leaps over to her and presses a hand over her mouth, blocking her speech. Porscha's eyes widen, confusion filling her gaze, as her ally points behind them, to the base of the tower. She looks around Kai'sa's form, gasping when the girl lets go of her mouth.
A body.
Porscha runs forward, seeing a curl of dark hair that looks… that looks too oddly familiar for her, Kai'sa close behind as she falls to her knees. "Oh… oh god…" she chokes on her own spit, her chest rising and falling rapidly with her breaths coming quicker and quicker. "P- Pierce!" Porscha cries out, hands unsure of what to do as she reaches forward, to his body. She flips his body over, knowing it is him by the fact that his back is turned towards the girls, the number 6 in a cursive emerald green font shining in the sun with a ray directly on him.
Kai'sa gags at the sight. "Oh… fuck me, Porscha, his eyes are gone!" Porscha is glad they didn't catch those blue jays, as her stomach trembles in fright and disgust, looking down at her ally's corpse, his eyes gone, the sockets still leaking blood from them, but she feels no heartbeat… he's- he's gone.
"Who…" her lower lip quivers in shock and… and rage. "Who would've done this to him… he-" she blabs through a sob. She never liked him, truly, never found herself close to the kid, yet she can only focus on the fact that he is gone, that this is his body laying in front of her, heavy in her arms. "Who would've gouged out his eyes?" That is the extra mile, that perhaps he'd been pushed, Porscha lifting her head up to see that the fall is matched directly with the upper window that she sees he must've fallen from, for there is blunt trauma to his head, he covered with dust.
Porscha scrabbles away from his body, rubbing her hands back and forth, trying to scrub some of his blood on her skin off, crying furiously as she only seems to smear it across her apricot-colored skin. Kai'sa presses a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it for comfort. "Look, Porscha…" the girl points, she following her line of sight to… to the arrow protruding from his heart. "Someone shot him in the heart, out of the tower, and once he landed, removed his eyes…"
She almost pukes at the fact, feeling her stomach churn, liquid hot. "I- I don't…"
"Who uses a bow?" Kai'sa looks back at her, frowning, her brow furrowed together.
Porscha searches her brain for an answer. "Well, there's Diana, but… Diana wouldn't have need to-" she knows the girl can kill, for she saw it, sink an arrow into poor Cecelia Blackstone's head, but not like this, the tenacity to shoot from the front.
Kai'sa's grip on her shoulder tightens further, digging into the bone. "And Kileigh, Porsche," she says. "We know she has a bow and a quiver full of arrows… she took one at the cornucopia, when you pushed her off of-"
"When I pushed her off of Pierce…" Porscha finishes the statement for her, getting to her feet instantly. She saw it, the hate in the girl from Five's eyes, her brown hair wrapped around her ears, blowing in the wind… she saw it, the metallic bow clenched in between her knuckles, corpse-light white, as if she were never going to drop the weapon again. Had her pacifism been a complete pretense? A complete falsehood, or…? "She did this, didn't she?" Porscha looks at Kai'sa, mouth dropping open in shock.
"I don't know, Porsche, but it's a guess."
"Pierce attacks Zachary in the training center…" Porscha stumbles back, tightening her grip around the mace in her hands. "She sees Zachary dead during the beginning of the Games, thinking that Pierce did it. He gets away from her, and she follows, and when she got him right where she wanted him," her heartbeat roars in her ears, she closing her eyes as nausea threatens to take over. "She got her vengeance and wrongfully killed him…" A scoff, as if people could somehow, after all she has seen, still surprise her. "Never would expect that sort of violence out of a pacifist."
Kai'sa approaches her slowly, shuffling her feet against the ground, careful to pick up her thrown knife that had missed the blue jay she targeted, it near Pierce's body. "What are you going to do?"
Porscha locks eyes with her ally, with her fated dancer as they balance on a tightrope of thread and silk. "I'm going to get my rightfully due vengeance," she smiles, grinning.
The dead boy in the market, his head smashed to pieces with a rack of lamb… it will look like a painting of copper and flesh once she gets her hands on Kileigh Katsaras, and her lying façade, her lying face, and how she cannot wait to hear the girl scream for mercy, the mercy that will never come.
People's actions have consequences, as Porscha has learned, and Kileigh has made the most grave of all errors.
20th: Pierce Alversway, 15, District 6 Male. Killed by Magnus Winterthorn of District 2 via arrow to the heart. Submitted by Merlin's Brown Jacket. Oh boy, Pierce, where do I begin with you? Usually it is just the curse of the younger tributes in my stories always getting the short end of the stick, but at the end of the day I just simply did not really know where to push your storyline without Zachary and the run-ins with Cassiopeia. Writing your pov over time got easier, eventually, and your broken heart and mind added something to the story for sure, but it was time to go, kiddo.
Tribute List (Boy - Girl)
District 1: Catalus Drachma [Submitted by Manny Siliezar]
District 2: Magnus Winterthorn [Submitted by Audmirable] / Portia Beninblade [Submitted by WhateverIsOpen]
District 3: Jasper Overheart [Submitted by ParanoidSylph] / Vesuvia Vocanova [Submitted by Platrium]
District 4: Orion Maythorpe [Submitted by jimster920] / Diana Kratovska [Submitted by Firedawn'd]
District 5: Kileigh Katsaras [Submitted by LiveFreeOrDie]
District 6: Porscha Watanabe [Submitted by thornehub]
District 7: Sylvan Adello [Submitted by In Writing] / Nevaeh Davoli [Submitted by dyloccupy]
District 8: Niklaus Peverell [Submitted by timesphobic] / Poem Cavalli [Submitted by LordShiro]
District 9: Gemini Lennox [Submitted by Apple1230] / Camilla Rodriguez [Submitted by Reign of Winter]
District 10: Nokomis Yanaba [Submitted by Ripple237]
District 11: Cassiopeia Grey [Submitted by ZeroIsANumber]
District 12: Ramses Boskov [Submitted by Guesttwelve] / Kai'sa Shadow [Submitted by SetFiresJust2WatchThemBurn]
...
ALLIANCE LIST
The Mini Careers: Catalus Drachma (D1M), Magnus Winterthorn (D2M), Diana Kratovska (D4F)
Girl Power: Portia Beninblade (D2F), Camilla Rodriguez (D9F), Nokomis Yanaba (D10F)
Brutal Technology: Jasper Overheart (D3M), Vesuvia Vocanova (D3F)
Respect for the Principal: Orion Maythorpe (D4M), Ramses Boskov (D12M)
The Dancing Queens: Porscha Watanabe (D6F), Kai'sa Shadow (D12F)
Woodland Family: Sylvan Adello (D7M), Nevaeh Davoli (D7F)
Wax Poetica: Niklaus Peverell (D8M), Poem Cavalli (D8F)
Loners: Kileigh Katsaras (D5F), Gemini Lennox (D9M), Cassiopeia Grey (D11F)
...
Kill Leaderboard:
Magnus Winterthorn (D2M): I
Portia Beninblade (D2F): I
Vesuvia Vocanova (D3F): I
Diana Kratovska (D4F): I
Nokomis Yanaba (D9F): I
Well everyone, that was Chapter #23: Seal of the Gods, focusing on Arena Day III. Orion has a game plan, Nevaeh and Sylvan have come across one of the arena gods, Cassiopeia crossed a line she can no longer return from, Gemini has received a gift, Magnus made sure he shot straight, and Porscha seeks vengeance. I had a blast writing this chapter, and it is such a relief to be back in the normal swing of things; this is just but a taste of what the arena has to offer, and what these tributes have to offer. Pierce is dead, but that just means there's another 18 tributes left to off before we reach a victor. Beyond that, I will say that this arena is a slow burn, where it is longer than Slaughter, and especially Bombs and Bullets' plots, as the finale is aimed for Chapter 38, which is still a longways away.
In other good news, the first prologue for my collaboration story with Thorne98, an amazing author who deserves all the love, Red Silence has been posted. The partial SYOT is OPEN, and can be found on my profile, where the submission forms and rules can be found on both of our profiles. We've got a great story planned, and want an amazing cast, so don't be shy and go submit! Beyond that, Chapter #24: Mistakes of the Many, focusing on Arena Day III, will be out sometime next week headlong into December, and it is going to be seven povs: six tribute ones, and Emrick to close off the chapter. I love you all so much! Your support means the world; have a great day! Bye!
~ Paradigm