Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Death, Chapter #37: A Golden Feast of Demise, and if for someone reason it doesn't fit in the chapter title bar, just... A Feast of Demise, which I feel is less fitting. So, to the submitters, again, who have the kiddos alive in the final six, you've made it to the semi-finals, and I cannot be more hyped, as this is a chapter I have been *dying* to write, a chapter I have been *dying* to show you, for it is just one more step to the capital brilliance that is the finale. Last chapter, #35, was one final check in on all of their mental states since now Catalus, Magnus, Vesuvia, Porscha, Poem, and Camilla have to earn their right in the finale, in the end, and only one can become a victor.
Like with my bloodbath, and with other moments in my stories detailing certain... moments, there is a song for you all. I'd start it during the fourth POV of this chapter, which I'll not spoil who it is. The song I have decided to be the musical accompaniment of these words is from Two Steps From Hell, called Sonera. On YouTube there are two versions... choose the instrumental version, unless you want the one with vocals; this chapter has been designed to be without them. I hope you all are ready and have braced yourselves, though even as I say that, no one here is prepared, and I know that for a fact. Hope you all enjoy Chapter #37: A Golden Feast of Demise.
"Losing is essential to anyone's success. The more you lose, the more you want to win," ~ Brett Hull
Poem Cavalli: District 8 Female P.O.V (16)
The end is near, nigh in the sky, hidden in the clouds, blotting out the sun. Poem can tell, sitting there in the center of the half-burned down hut, that it is boiling down to the end, and whether or not it is her and Catalus as the only two who will be remaining or another story, one she doesn't know the end to it. Her entire life, she's been able to pride herself in the fact that Poem can usually see all ends, after she's put herself to work and broke her back, sweat pouring down her face. Her charm causes her to be irresistible to those that matter, but even then, she saw the end.
She saw rejection. The look is palpable in their eyes, Capitol men and women who come down from on high with their hovercrafts and chariots, perfumed faces, hands coated in pasty white powder, handing her little 'pity me' cards from their manicured hands. Poem accepts them all, accepts their wisdom and guidance, but the scissors remain in her hand as she cuts up most of her designs whenever they visit to start completely from scratch.
"And remember, tributes, at noon today, head to the cornucopia for a feast that you do not want to miss!" comes the vice president's voice for one last announcement. "May the odds be ever in your favor, and happy Hunger Games! This'll be the last announcement," and Cain's voice pops with the speaker fizzling into static.
Poem hates the expression that the man utters, it sounding so trite and trivial, resorting her to a piece of probability. "Well, I am," she shrugs her shoulders lamely, keeping her mouth level in a frown. "One out of twenty-four. Or one out of six…" the girl has to pinch herself a few times as a reminder that she's stuck in the Capitol, the place she's always wanted to go, in a death match, where once there had been twenty-four living souls, now there's six. And she killed one of them.
She looks over at Catalus who is crouched down in the grass, outside of the part of the hut that had been burned down. When he glances up at her and makes eye contact, Poem has to look away with a blush on her face. If things had been different, if she found him under- well, it doesn't matter now, when the end is near and nigh.
"They keep calling it a feast," Catalus says, wiping beads of perspiration that glisten around his ears. "You think they'll actually have food there for us to eat?"
"I imagine it won't be like a Christmas dinner," Poem quips back, keeping her smile small. Being humorous, being joyous, being filled with anything but regret and sorrow, Poem doesn't understand herself, as if every bodily inhibition is doing the opposite of what it should be doing. Freaking out is what she'd rather do. She'd rather tear her hair out, cry into a puddle of tears, and let one of the other competitors sink their blade into her side.
She'd rather have a thousand Capitolites line up in her face and tell her that the designs she produces, the creativity that pours of her head in a rainbow stream is nothing more than a brackish smog created by district trash than go out and see the others, go out and fight the others. To kill.
Catalus finishes tying the laces on his boots, righting himself up. Part of him doesn't feel real to her, whenever she looks at him, like how part of Niklaus borderlines the realm of imagination and fantasy. She never expects someone as tender as her district partner to waltz into her life, all over her wanting to save his life… let alone that his lips would be pressed against hers on the eve of the day that should've been her last. Then Catalus drops into her hiding spot, and instead of stabbing her in the gut, where that sunrise should've been the final one she ever sees, he holds out his hand and lifts her up.
He walks over to her, pressing a hand up against one of the beams that still stretches from end to end of the hut, testing its durability by applying pressure. "I want to go over the plan one more time," he says.
Poem rolls her eyes, at the same time as leaning her head to back to allow the stretch in. "I'd rather not," she replies back, trying to keep the emotion in her voice as level as possible. It is the last resort that Poem employs when she doesn't want to face her fears head on. When her parents want to ask how the next patented meeting goes, she simply turns away from the dinner table to take a bath in the tub, since her parents wouldn't intrude on her in any state of undress. When the boys at school dare her to kiss them for a quick buck, Poem slams her lunch tray into their face and is suspended for a whole month. She can tell that Catalus is glaring at her, even with her eyes shut. "I just don't see how discussing it once more is going to make us anymore prepared after we've talked about it-"
"Cause everyone we're going to run into is not going to be predictable," Catalus argues, crossing his arms over his chest. The disappointment is there, and Poem knows. All this time, and she is still giving pushback, as if she hasn't learned. She hasn't learned, and she's fighting with the guy who'll save her life. "I want something to fall back onto."
Poem gets to her feet, running a hand through her hair. "It's not like we're going to be lingering at the cornucopia to-" she turns away from him, trying her hardest to keep her arms by her side.
"Poem!" Catalus roars at her, his voice thunderous along the cabin.
She swivels on her heels towards him, eyes alit with fire. "You and I are going to head to the cornucopia precisely at quarter to noon," Poem takes a step with every sentence, lifting her head up, Catalus still having his arms crossed over his chest. "Not linger for very long, grab our bags, and split. I am going to run left, and you're going to run right, and we're gonna pray to something holy that you're the one who is pursued, and not me. And if we make it to the final two…" her shoulders deflate, the bravado slipping out of her. "We just try to put on the worst show the audience will ever see."
Catalus balls his tongue on the side of his mouth, not taking his eyes off of her. She keeps her face down on the floor, gaze directed towards his boots. His boots, which, in a few hours could be what is pressing her down into the ground to suffocate her, or break her nose or- Poem blanches, having to turn away, nestling herself in the crook of the hut's doorway.
She hates the plan, but for one reason.
"Well, not how I wanted you to do that, but whatever, it's fine," Catalus says at length, she unable to read his tone, the emotion in his voice indecipherable. She keeps her back turned; her eyes closed. The sound of his footsteps are the only background noise besides the occasional chirping of swallows above them in the trees that decorate the sky, as he makes his way around to her. A line of shadows falls on Poem's face as he stands in the doorway. "You don't like the plan, do you, Poem?"
She looks at him, mirroring his expression, slanting half of her mouth downwards. "You're turning me into a damsel again," Poem says. "I am fine with splitting up, since I don't," she swallows hard, trying to keep the vomit down from appearing on her combat boots. "I don't want to hurt you, and I know you don't want to hurt me, but…" Catalus frowns, and though his hands stay at his sides, she can read the expression on his face. "I don't like how you assume you're going to be the one to have people chase after you," A twinge of hurt ricochets in her soul, she holding the straps of her backpack tighter, her knuckles going white. "I'm not-"
"I didn't mean it like that, Poem," Catalus says, his shoulders rising and falling with each breath. He leans back and presses up against the other side of the doorway. "Diana chose me to be part of her alliance because of what my name did for me," he runs a hand through his hair, leaving his hands on his face, pressing into his cheek. "Mr. Anvil said my reputation preceded me," Poem lifts an eyebrow at his tone, it being acidic, venomous, full of scorn and regret. "Everyone has expected me to be this thing that I am not, and if it came down to it, I am going to take the fall. Not you," he rests one hand on the hilt of the sword, but Poem doesn't flinch, not feeling threatened at all. "I am just trying to protect you."
"Protect me," Poem repeats, scoffing, scowling. Catalus's features relax into a similar frown. "Protect me," she repeats once more, inhaling heavily, exhaling slowly, long enough for her lungs to hurt. "Niklaus wanted to protect me, and he ended up getting beheaded. You wanted to protect me against Camilla and Nokomis, and I ended up killing her," Poem shakes her head, unable to keep the eye contact. "Any time someone tries to protect me, something goes wrong," and this time, if she tried to hold the look, she'd burst into tears. "And I don't want something happening to you because you tried protecting me, Catalus."
Her ally crouches down to his knees, hanging his head low, a tear sliding down Poem's cheek. They stay there for a few moments, until she hears Catalus sniffling, sniffling hard, and she crouches down next to his level, pressing her head against his, hearing his breathing, his labored breathing that matches her own heartbeat.
"There are all these things I still want to do," she grits her teeth, keeping one hand over his left, which is closest to her, they linking their fingers together. "I want to go back to Eight and give some people a what-for. I have all these dreams," Poem rasps, lifting her head up, shaking her curls around. "All these dreams that I know I will be unable to accomplish if I die today. When I die today."
That breaks Catalus even harder, a faint sob escaping his lips, Poem leaning back on her heels. This is not what she means to do, trying to show off her strength, but it is what will come of her getting close to people. This is what happens when she tries to be more than the ditzy girl who volunteers out of selfishness, taking caution to the wind, leaping and not knowing where she'll land.
"My vice is taking risks," Catalus says, looking up at her, and there are tears streaming down his face, and at the sight of it, she does as well, trying to bubble up the nervous laughter that rattles her throat. "Yours sounds like the same," he shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Poem. I really wish we met under different circumstances."
Her voice is impossibly low, where even the dead would be incapable of hearing what comes next, where the blind would not be able to follow the sound of her voice to salvation.
"Me too, Catalus," she says, and she leans down and kisses him on the cheek. Without Niklaus, there could've been a chance. Without her volunteering for this stupid death tournament, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid…
The train of thought is interrupted by Catalus getting to his feet, wiping at his eyes, bloodshot, matching with the remnants of dried blood that still linger from his broken nose. Handsome in the light, devastating in the shadows, and Poem hopes that their friendship doesn't end with a blade in his chest, or a blade in hers, or… well, she can't finish the thought.
"Are you ready?" he asks her, offering his hand, sword in its sheath, backpack hoisted up high.
She can picture it being as if they're heading off to go camping. Poem accepts his hand, through the tears, bubbling out a reply. "Nope."
He grins, damn him, Catalus grins, and Poem realizes that in a less than perfect world, the one she is living in now, she is going to have him return to District One over her, for the world needs to see that smile one more time.
No one needs to see her designs, the designs that no one will ever buy.
"Me neither," Catalus says.
Their fates are out through the door, and out the two go into the sunrise, the clock ever approaching noon.
Porscha Watanabe: District 6 Female P.O.V (16)
She's up and stretched before Magnus even opens his eyes, Porscha down from her perch above. She waves at him when he lifts up off of his own 'bed' for the night, the soldier rubbing at his eyes blearily. The announcement is what wakes her up, it being the third reminder since around nine or so, the first trumpet sound being what gets Porscha to awake. The bitterness rests along her molars, digging into the back of her throat, for the trumpets disrupt the dreams. It is a beautiful dream, her mother dancing arm in arm with her underneath a brilliant stage of dazzling lights.
"She was a dancer," her father tells her, as he ends up shifting some blueprints into a folder. Porscha looks up from one of his contraptions, before he brings Panem to heel with his hell hawk devices, her eyes sparkling at the information. Her father hardly talks about her mother, and if she ever tries bringing her up – where she doesn't even know her name – it is just one look to get her to be quiet, to get her to shut up and carry on as if nothing had been said.
"What?" Porscha asks, setting down one of the cogs, having to catch it before it tips over and almost crashes down onto the floor. "What?" she repeats, taking a step towards his desk.
Datsun holds a hand up, stopping her from coming any further. His land, his hometown, the blueprints and the mathematic equations are a heaven that'll she never touch, a paradise she'll never understand. "Your mother danced, when she was younger," he says, not bringing his eyes up from the desk. A scratch that Porscha causes by doing pirouettes in his study, knocking into the collection of pencils and scissors in the three times too many washed out coffee mug onto the desk. "That's why you do. I figured it'd be fun for you to have something of hers since she-"
"Was she a good dancer?" Porscha interrupts him, ducking her head and standing back for he gives her a quick glance, a glare, rather, for Datsun Watanabe never does things in half.
Her father closes his eyes, and tilts his head to the side, humming under his breath. Porscha hears it, faintly, recognizing the Nutcracker Waltz immediately, a smile stretching across her face. Datsun lifts one of his arms up, the left, Porscha matching the movement, until her father opens his eyes. His voice is soft, tender, something she doesn't recognize. "Very much so, Porscha," he flits his gaze up to her, a chill sliding down her arms. "But you're better, my dear."
He's never complimented her before, tears welling up in Porscha's eyes, she rushing forward to hug him, and he doesn't even protest. After a few moments, Datsun bubbling words on the tip of his tongue, Porscha feels his hands settle down on her shoulder, keeping her close.
"Thank you, Dad," she whispers into the crook of his jacket, smelling the oil city slick and tantalizing copper droplets on her gums.
Her mother, locked arm-in-arm with her, as Porscha leaps into the woman's arms, glissading downstage right into the open embrace. Spinning, spinning, laughing, smiling, spinning, spinning, and all of it is ruined by Cain Passionia's way overly eager voice for bloodshed.
Porscha smooths out a few uneven hairs, matting her hand with her tongue to add the bit of wetness that she needs. Magnus scrunches up a frown, until he drops out of the tree in one fell swoop, swiping up his bag and the black rectangle that she sees every once in a while.
"Good morning," Porscha greets him with a smile, she leaning down to tie her laces. "Sleep well?"
"Yeah," Magnus grunts as he stretches, going into a poor backend, the girl snorting. She should do one just to show him up. "Yeah, I guess," Magnus then moves to stretching out his arms, and then as he looks over at Porscha's raised brow, "Being an athlete just makes it conditioned now," he adds.
"Same here," Porscha ducks her head, swiping a lock on the non-shaved side of her head back. She has a hard time believing that in just a few hours, potentially, for she knows that she has the tenacity to do such horrible things, she could be back in Six. Back to her father's scowl – that can change, Porscha thinks to herself, with another raised brow – and back to feeling like she'd rather be in the house with the chipping walls painted sienna. Back to being hated, double so if the Watanabe child ends up a survivor of an element of her own creation. "Not mine, dumbasses," Porscha snarks in her head, grabbing her cudgel.
The spiked club is too primitive for her, she finding it somewhat ironic that the two mainstay weapons she's had in the entire arena – aside from the hunting knife – is the same kind of weapon used against the boy in the market. She glances over at Magnus, as her newfound ally reaches into his backpack, grabbing his canteen. Porscha wonders, for a moment, what the ground will look like with his brain matter splattered over it. It'll have to happen, at some point, if one of the other four tributes alive don't do it for her. She promises to go after Poem, for the ditzy gal has suffered enough stupidity, and Porscha knows two quick blows to the head will be enough.
"And you?" she asks him before they head to sleep.
"Business with Catalus," Magnus sniffs rather disdainfully, Porscha raising a brow at him. "He just decided to abandon Diana and I when we needed him the most."
"I understand what you mean," Porscha nods her head, frowning. When she needs her father most, in the most virulent of times, to where Porscha cannot even see the sky any longer as the sun has been blotted out, the blue washed away in smoldering gray and sulfur and scarlet from the dead bodies that line the street… he is gone, locked away in his basement, killing people. "But you've killed people too, Porscha. People who haven't done anything wrong," she tells herself, unsure why she's thinking in the third person. Porscha is open to argue that the three people who've fallen by her hand, such as the boy where she doesn't even known his name after all this time, is one the philosophers can jam on about as much as they want.
Magnus hoists his backpack up, lifting his canteen up to his mouth, lowering his lips, but no water pours out. He frowns, tilting the canteen upside down.
"I'm going to use the river I saw just a bit back," he says. "And then we go, okay?" Magnus looks at her, nodding his head.
"Want me to come with?" Porscha asks, tightening the straps on her shoulders.
"I'm gonna do my business too, Porscha," the boy from Two shakes his head, keeping his hands up, a blush rising on his cheeks.
She, however, does not have the same reaction, a bit of bile rising in her throat. "Gonna pee in the river? Dude, gross," Porscha grimaces, holding her hands up in a similar fashion, turning away from him. "Don't take too long," she says, with her back turned. "Otherwise, I'm gonna leave without you."
Magnus laughs, she picturing his head being tilted back so caw at the sky. All boys are the same, Porscha deduces. Meatheads who believe they're the protagonists of whatever story they've found themselves trapped in, where Porscha knows at the center of it all, is just a man filled with insecurities, incapable of speaking on their desires.
"I'll be quick," he promises her, earnestness reflected back in his voice. Porscha waves him off, rolling her eyes.
"Pee in the river…" she mutters to herself. "Boys."
Why can't Magnus be civilized and just go on top of a bush? Why is this something she is dwelling on?
Porscha shakes her head, rubbing her face with her hands, applying warmth to the cold spots. The plan is simple, the two running in and stealing their bags. Magnus vouches to stay behind and ward off whoever would be stupid to pursue them if the fighting hasn't already started. Though it is unfair, and a twinge of discomfort sits somewhere in Porscha's head that she hasn't found yet, if there is fighting ongoing… they decide to target whoever has their back turned.
"That's… not honorable," Porscha wrinkles her nose at the thought, frowning.
"No one said that these Games had to be won honorably, Porscha," is Magnus's response, his face emotionless, she unable to read it in the dark, though his eyes glint a melancholy of sorts.
Porscha reaches into her backpack for a package of dried fruit, something she would've shared with Kai'sa had her ally not- well, it doesn't matter. Her finger barely grace the packaging when she freezes.
Footsteps behind her, in a slow, paced movement, in a deliberate fashion. There's a soft twang, and every alarm bell screams at her head to move.
The girl from Six ducks her head, hitting the ground, knocking her backpack over, the contents of it spilling it out. She looks up, hands over her head, seeing a golden arrow stick out of the tree in front of her, she following the angle to be right at her heart.
Porscha scrambles around to see Magnus standing in the mesh of the trees, his body half obscured by a large branch, but not large enough to not hide the look of pure disappointment on his face.
"What happened to being allies?" Porscha shouts back at him, a glare on her face. Shit, shit, shit. Not good, not good… the cudgel in her hands feels impossibly small.
"Like I said, Porscha," Magnus shrugs his shoulders, the same look of impasse on his face. "No one said I needed to win this like the good solider that I am," and he draws the bow again.
Porscha gets to her feet, hands around the cudgel, the other hand ripping the knife by her side out of the sheath. She leaps over a root, ducking into a roll. Magnus's next shot careens over her head, she snarling at him and flinging the knife towards him. It is batted away by the bow, as she expects, but it means he doesn't have a shot charged when Porscha leaps to her feet again, taking a running start at him.
Magnus swears something she can't hear, but Porscha takes the opportunity to throw the cudgel at him. The wooden weapon slams right into his jaw, the soldier howling, but he doesn't drop the bow. Porscha is atop him in a matter of seconds, her hands snagging onto his sleeves, bringing him down into the ground. The two of them scream at each other, she calling him an asshole, she being a trademark bitch. "My specialty!" Porscha yells at him, hands clawing at his eyes.
"Get off of me, you loyalist piece of shit!" Magnus snarls, he pushing her off of him. Porscha collides into a tree, she grunting in exertion. The soldier wrestles an arrow out of his quiver, racing forward with it. As Porscha tries to barrel into him, she misjudges the angle, the arrow embedding into her shoulder. She growls, crimson flashing across her ledger, the tips of her vision going fuzzy.
Loyalist piece of shit… hah, the boy wishes. Porscha yells again, wrapping her arms around his waist, ignoring the warm feeling of blood pouring down her shoulder, dripping on her combat boots. Using her momentum, she body slams Magnus into the ground. "You forget that I dance, idiot! I can lift guys twice your size, Magnus!" Porscha grows, trying to reach for his throat.
He spits in her face, Porscha growling and punching him straight in the mouth. Magnus laughs, the sound chilling her blood cold, her fist coming away splattered in scarlet, his teeth coated in a copper grime.
"You forget that I've fought and killed way worse than you," Magnus says, the gleeful tone in his voice scaring her, though Porscha would never admit it. He knees her as hard as he can in the groin, this getting the dancer to lift her head up and gasp. That… that hurt, and then he slugs her directly in the jaw.
Porscha falls off of him, onto her stomach. Her eyes pick up the glint of her discarded knife just a bit away from her, it sticking out under an ant hill, though she can't tell if there's any of them out on the sand. Porscha gets to her feet, as she can hear Magnus swearing behind her. There's a loud hum of noise, she just about to make it, when something hot slices across her back.
She collapses down into the dirt with a scream, blood pouring warmly out of her back. Porscha lets out a ragged moan, her entire backside on fire, as if the ant hill had been dumped on her. Magnus is swearing again, cussing words she can't even string together, tears prickling and streaming down her face from the pain.
Porscha growls again, trudging herself forward, keeping her gaze on the knife. This is not the time to give up now, where she's fought and fought, and fought, and fought. This battle is nothing to her, unlike the day where her instructors make her practice the same routine of leaping in a circle like a robot for nearly seven hours straight without food, rest, or water. The stamina then is amazing, as Porscha does what she's told, and doesn't complain.
Magnus places a booted foot down on the heated wound in her back, another searing screech leeching from her lips when there's another insertion of whatever it is that he has, this time it going just above her right shoulder, slicing through the bone.
She is crying now, and Porscha knows the whole world is watching, but she will not- she cannot… her father would be so disappointed in her. Kai'sa would be so… she can't…
Porscha goes completely still as Magnus increase the pressure on the wounds, both now steadily gushing blood, as he crouches down atop her, his voice very close to her left ear.
"You do fight well for being a Capitol mouthpiece," Magnus says, his voice kept level, as Porscha snarls, trying to break free from out underneath him, towards the salvation that is just only a few feet away. "But what your father did for this country, what he did to my brothers in arms… I just can't let the sins go, Porscha. You understand," as he pets the side of her face, Porscha losing too much blood at such a rapid rate to even retort back that his policies aren't hers! Why- why can't people just… why can't they understand that? "Also, one more thing…" the boy whispers, and there's a bit of the pressure being relieved off, though it is nothing freeing, as the next words that Magnus says cause her heart to break in two. "Kileigh didn't kill Pierce, Porscha. Diana, Catalus, and I found him at the top of the tower, completely deranged, and I put him out of his misery by shooting him in the heart." She cannot stop the tears now, Porscha just hearing her father's disappointed voice coming back, round and round like an annual tradition. "You killed an innocent girl, Porscha. You said you didn't even give Kileigh a chance to defend herself, you monster."
"No…" Porscha whispers, her voice coming out in a ragged whine. "No…" More tears soak the soil below her chin.
"Besides, didn't you put two and two together when I just fired a shot at you with my bow?" Magnus says, his tone full of condensation. "May you rot in the worst hell, Watanabe."
Her legacy, a name trashed and thrown into a compactor all because of her father's mind.
Through the tears, Porscha can see it, her mother, waving at her, telling her she isn't a disappointment, that she's such a beautiful dancer. That where she is going, there is a stage that she can dance atop forever and ever, and where every show ends in applause that does not end.
It is all hers if she'll just let go.
Magnus's next slice with his saber goes right down her neck, tearing the throat open.
Porscha dies with an apology on her lips, Magnus retracting the weapon from her throat, and her cannon fires, even before she gets to dance her encore performance.
Magnus Winterthorn: District 2 Male P.O.V (18)
Magnus stands over Porscha's bloodied, broken body, her cannon fire resounding in all directions. The boy from Two looks down at her, and the first thought that comes into his mind is not that of relief, or even an odd twinge of happiness that Magnus feels when he watches the cave collapse down onto his Diana's head. There, then, is a moment of fleeting freedom, of a pressure being taken off of his shoulders.
Here, however, staring at the deceased girl from Six, Magnus is incapable of finding the same feeling in his heart. There is a sponsor from the sky, just a simple napkin to wipe the tears away from his eyes, which he nearly crumbles up and throws back from where it came from. He's entertained them for ten days straight, and they throw his obedience in his face like that.
"What more do you want from me?" Magnus shouts at the sky, before he finds Porscha dancing below him.
The sponsor gift from above is his answer, Magnus holding said tissue in his hands, and the note in the other. Blood. A good show. The Capitol needs you to step up to the plate. He cannot believe what he is staring at, heart pounding in his chest, blood roaring in his ears like a tidal wave crashing onto a stony shore. A good show. Needs him to… to step up to the plate?
"But I am!" Magnus hollers, crumbling both items in his hand, the disrespect flowing through his body, peaking at his toes, a sudden wave of warmth and anger flushing out with every breath. "I have done everything asked of me! I volunteered for this shit, and you're still not satisfied?" He gets himself out of breath by yelling, and it is insanely stupid what he is doing, but Magnus knows he's never really been a person to think things through.
He lays there atop the tree, all of his fired arrows discarded around him, Magnus not caring to go down and grab them. He lays there and waits, waits for the seconds to meld into minutes, time ticking on and on and on… until he hears footsteps, Magnus clutching his sword sponsor gift close to his chest, the hum noticeable along his sternum. In the dark, as he watches Porscha Watanabe twist and spin and under the stars. She is very good, which is the problem for him, as he watches her. He hates her, hates where she came from.
It is irrational, and he knows it, but he can't help it. If she could be replaced by her father, perhaps it'd make all the world to him, but Magnus has to work with what he has. Lying feels unlike him too, they sitting like cinderblocks on his tongue, choking the words heavily with suffused charlatan charm. He has never had to act like this before, especially not with a girl. He's always found the guys to be easier to charm the pants off of, and although he never swung that way towards any of them, the same pops up when he shakes Catalus's hand.
His former ally never questioned him, never raised a brow at something said or something done… he remembers Catalus asking if he is okay when he shot Pierce out of the tower, and for the life of him, Magnus is unsure why he wouldn't be okay. He's made plenty of those calls in the rebellion, fellow soldiers torn up to bits by shrapnel, and there is no time to get them medical attention. He grips one end of the knife and slices through their throats like they're made of wrapping paper, and he cries when the sun sets, but a new day rises, and Magnus has to move on with his life.
However, as he looks down at Porscha's body, that same feeling of duty is eradicated. There is no victory in this, as he can see the fear in the girl's eyes when his weapon slashes across her throat. Her back is soaked in blood, but the wounds have already stopped their copious spill, the lazer hot enough to cauterize the wounds, and it hasn't even been that long.
Magnus steps away from her body, going to retrieve his few missed arrows out of the trees that they landed in. It is the last sponsor gift he receives; he being told by the letter that comes with it that he's received the most gifts out of anyone in the arena, and there is a hard limit being set… it is another quiver full of arrows, dropped into his hands as he smiles, running his fingers atop the fletched tips. They are beautiful, in a golden design, sleek and thin, razor sharp when he slices his thumb across the pointed tip by mistake.
A fill-up, is what Merida claims, in the note, and that he is to go out there and make the other tributes lives a living hell.
Magnus plucks the second arrow out of the tree trunk, taking away pieces of bark with the force of his movement. He sighs, placing the arrow back in the quiver, and looks up at the trees that he and Porscha had slept in last night as allies.
"And now we end as enemies," he tells himself, frowning.
The cannon is sure to get everyone's attention, unless fighting has already begun at the cornucopia, in which it means Magnus is behind schedule. Checking the clock, however, it gives him a few minutes of peace and quiet, sanity burrowing its way back to the forefront of his mind as he sits down at the ground, near Porscha's body. There'll be a reminder soon, he figures, about getting told to leave for the hovercraft to come and do its job, but why should he move? Why give them that satisfaction?
Magnus gets to his feet, heading back to the tree. He slings himself up to the top with ease, ignoring the pain blossoming around his jawline and his mouth, hocking up globules of blood and spit down below. As he goes to nestle himself in the crooked space, where his limbs splay out awkwardly, there's an audible crack.
He frowns, looking behind him in the direction where the sound came from, and in the place where the sound emanated, there is a tree laying in the river, the river he uses as his cover-up. Magnus keeps watch as there's another crack, and the trees near it as well snap halfway from the trunk and collapse. They aren't very tall, just a foot or so more than what Magnus can say he's at now with his height, but the sight runs his blood cold.
He won't do it. He won't get down. They can't force him anymore, and if they do, he can say he had a good run.
"Not doing it," he says, shaking his head, keeping his mouth level. "I'm not heading to the cornucopia," Magnus raises his voice higher. He can picture his lieutenant snapping at him, the man who rewards him for tearing the throats open of all those traitors to the state. He can picture his family huddled around their miniature TV set hollering and screaming and begging. His mother is most likely on her knees, hands clutched in a prayer motion, though Magnus has no idea who'd answer her call.
Shame settles in his gut as the noises get louder and louder, more of the fishing village behind him starting to crumble. A tiny hut, no more than an outhouse, collapses under the weight of a tumbled boulder, as if someone had shot it at the structure with the force of firing a cannonball, said boulder smashing into the tree he is camped in.
He is no better than Portia, with what he has done to Porscha, with what he's done to Diana, how he has turned his back on Catalus when his friend needed him the most. "I'm not like her!" Magnus yells at the top of his lungs, hands going to grip his skull. "I am not like that bitch, and you can't turn me into her!"
His district partner, the girl he loathes with the ferocity of a thousand suns, a girl who he knows calls – as she admits it, she is already on a train sending her to her death, why hide the fact over gravy covered turkey? – hotlines and gives tips to political enemies of the rebellion… she gawks and crows over and over again on the night before the Games about her newfound alliance.
Suckers, Magnus deems them, for Camilla Rodriguez and Nokomis Yanaba must be pretty desperate to bring on another tribute in the fashion that they do, not to see his district partner for the loathsome, lying scum that she is.
Yet… isn't that what he's doing?
"No," he shakes his head, growling, and the trees right next to him on his left crumble towards the ground. "I am not her! Portia and I are nothing alike! I volunteered and I saved someone's life!" Magnus roars, this time turning around to directly face the camera that he knows is trained on him. Every camera is trained on him, for there haven't been any cannons since Porscha's. "Mine next," Magnus intones darkly, wrapping his legs and arms tightly around the branch.
It is about a seven or so foot drop down to the ground, where Porscha's body is still laying there, Magnus not having taken his eyes off of it, even as his mind breaks down with Portia's laugh dancing along his cranium.
"Do it!" he screams, lifting his head up. "Do it, you sick fucks! I bet you won't!" Magnus keeps on shouting, sending the sound above him. They hear him, there is no way the Gamemakers do not hear him, he'd be worried about their hearing if they couldn't, even over the fishing village crumbling all around him.
There's another audible groan from beneath him, this time he feeling the vibration directly under the roots of the tree, it spiraling up like synapses firing to life. A vibration shocks Magnus's back, he yelping at the sudden jolt. The tree begins to shake, especially the branch that he is clinging onto, his quiver nearly getting knocked off his back, as a branch from higher up careens down past him, shattering below, he covering his eyes from the splinters that blast upwards.
He screams, clenching on to dear life when the branch he is on begins to dip, and instead of the entire tree tipping over and collapsing like Magnus expects, it is just the branch that goes, the soldier holding onto it, and yelling the entire way down. He closes his eyes, bracing for impact, when the branch, truthfully a log, if it is able to house him on it, slams into the ground.
His ears pop, he yelping in pain as he's flung off of the branch, the quiver and bow and the lazer-beam sword being all that flies with him as Magnus rips straight through the straps on the backpack he had been carrying. Magnus flies through the air, still audibly yelling, a feeling of dread rising in his throat as the spot to cover his fall is Porscha's body… he collapsing right on top of her.
"Gross!" Magnus yells, pushing himself off of Porscha. He gets to his feet, dusting himself off, grunting in pain as he pulls back his shirt to see the side of his chest, it dirt-smeared, irritated and red, but nothing terrible.
He looks back up at the tree, a few of the branches from up high gone, as well as the one he is perched on, but that is it for the extent of the damage. The rest of the fishing village ahead of him is mostly intact, but behind him, a wide blue expanse of sky as tree and building alike are knocked down.
"You guys just won't give up, will you?" he challenges the sky, throwing his arms out wide, the movement making him hiss.
The message is clear though, Magnus sighing in disappointment. It would be unlike him to slash his own throat open with one of his arrows, so there is only one way to go, and that is forward. Forward to trouble, forward to the fight.
And like the good little soldier he is, weapons by his side, Magnus turns on his heel, and heads to what he knows.
He heads to the conflict; fully aware he may never return.
Camilla Rodriguez: District 9 Female P.O.V (17)
The rising dawn comes with Camilla sitting in the hollowed out tree trunk, holding her arms tight to her side, shivering despite the beating waves of sunlight down atop her head. The morning dew comes with Camilla dry heaving and vomiting onto the grass in front of her, the reality of what the sun meant. Another day in the arena, this one more special than any of the others before it, as none of the other sunrises came with an invitation from the Head Gamemaker to go and kill others. She has to go, willingly, the terror colliding with her jaw as she wipes away drool and spit that dribbles down her chin.
The moon high in the sky the night before provides none of its comfort to her, the girl from Nine embracing herself tightly as the faces of those who've departed the world before her flash by. There is her father, Ryker, in his rugged glory, sewing the fields where the sun doesn't shine, the crops that they get to eat from coming to her and her brother like dust spilling through their fingers, pillars of sand that create sandcastles along their kitchen floor. Her mother is needling her eyebrows in a small mirror that she finds out in the center of town, cracked to pieces, multiple heeled imprints along the outer rim, but in the dreams, her mother plucks one thread too hard, copper spilling profusely from the wound, and Camilla can only stare at it in horror.
Her brother rides the wave next, as if he had been punched one too many times in the face, a boxing glove coming from an unseen adversary that turns the skin around his eyes a matted blue, bruises dotting his eyebrows and lower jaw. His teeth are coated in scarlet, his smiles ghastly with gaps of teeth falling out in droves, until Camilla is puking the image away. There is Gemini in the sequence as well, though his demise has never been shared with her, his arms out to embrace her neck and squeeze the life from Camilla's corpse until she pleads for his forgiveness. Forgiveness she doesn't deserve, she expects.
Camilla awakes herself with screams and curses before her district partner could morph into Nokomis, for there is fresh hell to deal with before she tries and sleeps with the demons of her past.
Lying in wait on the outer edge of the cornucopia all morning proves to be quite boring, for there is nothing happening even after Cain's second announcement hits the curvature of the dome. Precisely at noon, Camilla's body tensed up like a spring about to burst, the ground beneath her begins to shake, and before her very eyes, a table rises out of the soil, just in front of the mouth of the cornucopia, the golden horn gleaming in the bright of day.
The symbol of her hatred sits there, and Camilla can already make out her bag, a rather miniature size knapsack with the number 9 embroidered in the center, the pasty cloth of the number rather blinding when a ray of sunshine lands on it, the beam hitting her directly in the face. Camilla holds onto her karambit, the weapon tightly gripped in her left hand, while the hunting knife she's been stuck with the entire duration of the Games is on her right hip, accessible at any point should she need it.
She debates, back and forth in her head – this is where Nokomis would have usually slapped her silly across the face for being stuck in her morals and her usual indecisiveness – on whether or not staying for the fight is worth it, at the end of the day. With five other competitors on the field, she short of an ally – there is District Three, she thinks to herself, bitterly, but that felt like a sinking ship just from her looking at them – that the deck is stacked against her.
Camilla curls in on herself, hiding behind an outstretched bush that consumes a good patch of land between the fishing village and the decaying forest, as the sounds of bodies running through the land hit her from the southwest. She crouches down, keeping her karambit close, Poem and Catalus breaking through the greenery. The two of them are relatively armed to the teeth, Camilla's eyes widening in shock at the amount of supplies the two have gathered.
"We gotta get our stuff and go!" she hears Catalus tell Poem, his ally nodding her head. "There's already been one cannon and we don't know who-"
The telling of a fired cannon is news to her, Camilla raising her brow in surprise. Someone already died… which means… there's only four in her way now, and two of them are right in front of her. Targeting Poem would be too easy, and she knows Catalus by all of his honor that reeks like gouda gone five years bad, would defend her and jump into the fray. She could take him; she's already bested him once before, and she could do it again.
"I beat Diana," Camilla thinks to herself, grinning.
There is no time like the present.
Camilla rounds herself along the shrubbery, keeping her body relatively low to the ground while the duo of Catalus and Poem stop at the sponsor table, he grabbing both bags from 1 and 8 in one swipe.
She grits her teeth, Poem glancing over at the bag from 9. As if she's going to-
Her feet are on the ground, running at the duo from behind. Camilla grabs the hunting knife from her side, trying to steady her arm as she then vaults the weapon in their direction. It clangs off of the cornucopia, Camilla swearing to herself as both tributes swivel on their heels. Catalus's eyes narrow in, her blood going cold, as he draws his sword, but Poem stands ever so still, petrified fear reflecting in her stare.
Camilla swipes her blade back up again, it being discarded in just a few feet from her, and before Catalus can cry out a command, she flicks it in his direction once more. He tries parrying the blow, but his swing misses, the blade flying into his shoulder. The boy goes back with a fiery yelp, blood pouring out of the wound.
"Fuck!" Catalus swears at the top of his lungs, collapsing onto the ground, knocking into the table, both of their bags falling out of his hand. "Get her, Poem!" he orders her.
The girl from Nine cracks her knuckles, a grin on her face. It feels wrong, at its core, but these people… they hurt her, they took her sister away from her, and all Catalus did is get in the way from Camilla getting the vengeance she rightfully so deserves. No one will be allowed to walk away from the plain without ending up in a body cast or a coffin, and it is not in her plans tonight to end up in either slot.
Poem tries feigning left, the girl slow on withdrawing the knife from her belt, Camilla ducking in the same direction, barreling directly into the girl. The two fall onto the ground, Camilla trying to pin Poem into the grass. She punches her straight in the mouth, once, twice for good measure, and when she retracts her fist, the knuckles are painted red, Poem howling in pain as she goes for another swing.
The girl from Eight as her blade up for this one, Camilla's fist slicing right alongside the top of the knife. She hisses in pain, biting down on her cheek, swallowing her tongue from the agony as her skin tears right down her middle finger to knuckle. Camilla places one hand on the girl's throat, the other trying to reach for the knife. If there is one thing Kai'sa taught her, before she downed the girl is that going for the throat-
"Get off of her!" Catalus yells, and he's atop her, wrenching Camilla off of Poem. His ally rolls over, coughing, clutching at her throat, Camilla on her back in the grass as Catalus swings his sword down at her. She dives directly through his legs, reaching for her dropped knife. She picks it up, rolling out of the way again, and this time, brings the knife right through his foot. "You bitch!" the boy from One screams, he kicking his leg out, the knife flying free and into the air.
Camilla pushes Catalus into the ground, racing after the knife. Poem is still coughing, the girl, out of the corner of her eye still on her hands and knees, trying to catch her breath. Camilla holds onto her karambit, placing her hunting knife, the blade dyed a stained crimson from tip to hilt, back in its place. She presses herself into the other side of the cornucopia, the crunching of grass underneath their combat boots indicating they are just a bit behind her.
She looks up at the cornucopia, thinking back to the fearsome tornado that is Diana with her bow, standing atop the golden horn, taking potshots at whomever is deemed lucky to be in her sights. Back then, eleven days ago, the massive oak tree sprouting out of the top of the horn hadn't been there either, the smile returning back to her face. She hooks an arm up to the nearest branch, grunting in exertion as she hoists herself up to the top of the horn.
Camilla flattens herself against the slick metal, beads of sweat getting in her eyes. She can barely make out Catalus's head from her vantage point, there being Poem's voice filled with concern, but he bats it away.
"I'm fine, Poem," the boy grits out, and then, though she cannot tell what is happening, he insists harder, "I'm fine!"
"I can't see her!" Poem exclaims, and when Camilla crawls forward some, arms burning up due to the friction, she has to hold in the laugh that nearly escapes her at the sight of the girl from Eight wearing the most hideous pair of glasses she's ever seen. "It just shows the inside of the cornucopia, and there's no one there!"
"Let's keep it that way," Camilla tells herself, getting to her feet. She takes a running start off of the cornucopia, leaping into the air, aiming directly for Catalus. It feels wonderful, colliding into him out of nowhere, she sticking her landing as he falls back down. Camilla has her karambit out, she jabbing towards his ribcage.
He does block this next strike, Camilla having to swallow another growl of pain as the hilt of his sword connects painfully to the back of her thighs, she barely ducking out of the way as Catalus swings his sword in a wide silver arc, Camilla embracing a form of limbo, the blade skimming over her nose. She is about to right herself again so she can charge at him, but something tugs at her scalp, and she's tugged down.
"Foul!" Camilla howls, seeing Poem's twisted expression of rage and fright, a tuft of her own hair in the volunteer's hand. "Dick move, Cavalli!" she screeches at her, and she swings her legs as hard as she can into Poem's, trapping her feet between her legs. Camilla thrusts herself backwards, slamming Poem down into the ground again.
Her father tells her that in the heat of a battle, one must always resort to the dirtiest tactics they can think of, take away someone's semblance of personality, of meaning… using someone's last name over their first, to steal identity. Camilla never uses it, unsure of it's practicality, but it is staring her directly in the face, as she brandishes her karambit, thrusting out another strike. The blade goes across Poem's cheek, a wide gash spilling blood down the girl's face, but Poem doesn't seem to react to the strike, a dazed look in her eyes.
"If you want to fight, pick on someone your own size!" Catalus yells at her, Camilla twisting her head to lock eyes with him. Fine, if he wants to play all macho-like, she'll give him a fight.
She leaves Poem sitting there to blot the stars out of her eyes, Catalus readying his sword for another strike, but Camilla leaps at him, feet first. Her eyes catch the sparkle of something silver by his side, a claw of sorts, but she doesn't get the best look at it when her feet collide into his chest, sending him back.
"Eat shit, Drachma!" she crows at him, the insult sounding rather pretty on her tongue, as Camilla winds a sucker punch towards his stomach when Catalus gets back to his feet. He grunts in pain, Camilla twirling the karambit in her hands to strike him again. He blocks it with his arms, the collision of bone on bone hurting more than what Camilla wishes to admit, as she tries pushing at him, her heels digging into the dirt.
"You first, Camilla!" Catalus grits back at her.
Camilla feels herself about to slip, and Poem is up once more, hands seizing her shoulders, flinging the girl to the ground. She lets herself roll back into a kneeled position, snarling and baring her teeth, karambit out, but something almost compels her to stay in a frozen position. Poem and Catalus are rather frozen as well, a look of utter shock and revulsion on Catalus's face, Poem's eyes wide.
"Camilla, behind you…" the girl whispers, but Camilla knows, she knows, this is bullshit.
"As if!" she shouts at them. "You're just-"
She senses the presence behind her too late as something hot and burning, as if someone threw a piece of freshly smelted metal at her, slices through the back of her leg. Camilla screams in pain, tilting her head back, trying to roll out of the way from where the strike came from. As she gets on the other side, head pressed into the grass, blotting out the sun, is Magnus Winterthorn above her.
"Fancy seeing you here, Camilla," the boy greets her, and all Camilla can see is his stupid, stupid grin that she'll break with one quick punch.
The insult works so well the first time… "Eat shit, Winterthorn," Camilla spits at him, she trying to get to her feet, karambit outstretched as she tries swiping for his neck, which is very exposed, and very pale.
It takes her a second too late to see that the boy from Two is completely covered in blood, and in his left hand, Camilla has no idea to describe it other than a photon of black light, cylindrical in design, heading her way, this next strike going straight through her side.
She drops like a rock, screaming in pain once more. As blood pours down onto her fingers, dying her tanned skin a morose burgundy, the cauterization almost makes her gag, Camilla looking down at the gaping wounds, the outer lines of flesh a charcoal black, bile rising in her throat.
Magnus reaches into the quiver on his back, withdrawing an arrow, and like a flash, he is atop her. Camilla yells in agony, hands reaching out for him, anything to stop him, but the pain is too much, and why is he drenched in blood?
"Is that what Nokomis felt when she died?" she thinks to herself, unsure whether to embrace the panic or fight it head on. Why aren't Catalus and Poem helping her? Where did they go? Where is she going to go when this over? How is she going to fight back?
Camilla still has her karambit in her hand, she slicing just across Magnus's stomach, enough to make him yell, but the cut is shallow at best. The arrowhead glints gold in the sunlight, a freshly grown stalk of wheat, followed by a black shaft like one that has been razed to the ground, the smoke rising in the sky and blotting out the sun.
Magnus thrusts the arrow into her side, and up, and something goes horribly wrong, Camilla's scream of pain dying in a wheezy gasp as something that is not supposed to pop bursts, her next breath shaky and full of tenor.
Her breathing is shallow, Camilla screaming, trying to wrench herself free, but everywhere is hurting, and her father never preps her in the art of defending yourself while dying.
"She tried helping me…" Camilla tells herself, as she tries to quell the cries of pain, even as Magnus removes the arrow from her side, her punctured lungs filling copiously with blood, as bubbles of crimson start to dot her lips in a frothed foam of scarlet. "I tried killing Poem, and she tried to warn me. She tried to save my life."
Magnus slices the arrow down into her chest, piercing her heart, and Camilla's last thought is that of regret.
The arrow enters her flesh, and Camilla Rodriguez's world goes dark, her body still.
Catalus Drachma: District 1 Male P.O.V (18)
The boom of Camilla's cannon rattles up Catalus's arms and radiates into his jaw, causing his teeth to clatter together. He can feel the horror dripping from his eye sockets at the sight of the cauterized wound down the girl's body, a gaping hole that has all but run out of fresh blood to drip, Magnus standing above her, an arrow clenched in his grip with the bow and the quiver still slung over his shoulder. A pale piece of something is stuck onto the arrow, the boy from Two flicking it away with evident disgust on his face, and from the sounds the girl makes as she passes away, Catalus has a good idea on what it is that is currently blowing away in the breeze.
Catalus bends over to dry heave, the last breakfast with Poem nearly reappearing from his throat in a cascade of puke, he reaching out to comfort her, when his hands swipe at empty air.
"Poem?" Catalus asks, lifting his head up.
She's gone, he seeing his ally vanish down the obsidian beachline, three separate bags tucked under her arms, and Catalus has to tilt his head back and laugh. This is their plan, in a way, but she's… she's going the wrong way.
Magnus puts the arrow back in the quiver, wiping at his face, Catalus unable to read the expression, eyebrows bunched together, forming creases in his former ally's forehead. He is covered, almost head to toe, in a splatter of something… most of it is blood, and other bits are pine needles, leaves, dirt, his face coming up dirty.
Catalus has zero words for what he's just witnessed, even as he opens his mouth to try and formulate words about what took place.
The soldier beats him first, eyes brightening up, a wide smile embracing his features, Magnus tilting his head back up to laugh. "She's left you, dude!" he says, as if he is happy for the current state of affairs, but all Catalus can focus on is how tired he is, how much his body is in pain from the brawl with Camilla. "Poem is halfway gone down the beach now, Cattie," he teases, Catalus's neck turning six shades of purple. "Looks like someone else left you this time."
Catalus looks back in Poem's direction, and true to Magnus's word – if there is anything to trust him with now, as he looks over the guy's general appearance – his ally is running, and she isn't stopping, and she isn't looking back. Good, this is what he wants.
"Just running away, Magnus?" Catalus makes a shit-eating grin as well, nodding to the table that held all their bags. He saw five when he had run up with Poem by his side, and Camilla's is currently clutched in the deceased girl's grip… Porscha's is still standing, but the others… "I think Poem managed to take something else with her, too," he then has to laugh, as Magnus's face turns beet red.
"Well, let her have this one then," he hisses, Magnus slinging his bow back into his grip.
Catalus is almost quick to say he is proud, but he can feel his tongue choking on the words, as this is not a conversation between allies any longer. He implored the solider to follow him, when the trees were still green, when their faces weren't covered in war scars and dripping with blood.
He looks at Magnus again, at the tears in his clothes that reveal exposed muscles, and how there is a blooming dark stain on one of his legs. "Your blood or someone else's, Magnus?" Catalus asks. He has his sword drawn, but he tries and lowers his stance in one that is more relaxing, "You the one who caused that cannon from earlier?"
There's a look of pride on Magnus's face, from the slightly raised brow, to the crease in the boy's mouth that shows a bit of teeth. "Porscha Watanabe is no more," he says, as the boy runs his fingers along the bowstring, plucking at it as if it were a lyre. "Wiped that loyalist scum off of the face of the Earth."
Catalus frowns, a seed of sorrow splitting in his gut. It had just been two days ago when he last saw the dancer, and she did help bring down the fire god… and now she's gone. By the looks on Magnus's body, he expects it hadn't been an easy fight, not a scuffle he could've easily won.
"I'm sure your family must be proud," Catalus says, his voice cracking at the words. He isn't. There is no pride in talking happily about anyone who's been killed by your hand. He is certain, back in District 7, Sylvan Adello's family must be drinking toasts to his demise.
Magnus gives him the one over, the look of disgust back. "Well, I am sure your family isn't proud of your choices, and frankly, neither am I," Catalus places his sword in the grass, eyeing him steadily. "I mean, really? Poem Cavalli as the ally you ditched Diana and I for? That idiot who volunteered without realizing what she signed up for?"
"To be fair, Magnus," Catalus keeps his voice steady, keeping his sword still low on the ground, for he knows if he pulls it out of the soil, it'll be prime time for them to attack one another. "We didn't know what we volunteered for either."
There's a pause between the two of them, Magnus's hands turned into claws, claws that'd scratch at Catalus's face and cause him to bleed when he isn't looking, the fingers twitching.
"I-" Magnus starts, but there's another question sitting on Catalus's mind that he needs to have discussed.
"Diana," he says, his voice hardly rising above a whisper. "What about her? She got 8th, yet here we are in the final three, when we were supposed to be the final three, Magnus," Catalus balls his tongue on the side of his mouth. There is one thing one doesn't do when it comes to choosing you allies and saying you'll fight by someone's side. "How'd she die? Something tells me no one got the jump at you."
A flicker of hesitation flashes on Magnus's face, Catalus sick of the games, sick of the lies that he has to perpetuate just to stay afloat, where he'd prefer to be over at a gambling den, at least in the cups, versus drinking the blood of slaughtered children.
"I did exactly what you think I did," Magnus lifts his head up defiantly. "Smashed her face in with this," the boy indicates, hefting the mallet that is resting on the ground by their feet. Catalus looks at, trying not to stare too much, for he can see, rounding the dark edges, hints of crimson. "And she didn't see it coming," Catalus makes eye contact with him again. "It was either her or me, and I wasn't going to let her just shoot me in the back and get away with it."
The boy from One nearly bursts out laughing in disbelief. Magnus Winterthorn, the boy who swears by every holy book that he is honorable, honorable and righteous, he volunteers for the good of the many, to save helpless lives that cannot defend himself… and then…
"You betrayed her," Catalus says, tone accusatory, leering at him. "You got on a pedestal with me wanting to break off the trio, and you murdered her before she could suspect it…"
"I did what I had to do, Catalus!" Magnus growls at him, advancing a step forward, flinging a pointed finger in his direction. Catalus sees his father in this mess, his younger brother doing nothing as the boy is beaten down for his mistakes, beaten down for things he never means to have happen.
"Keep telling yourself that at night, Magnus," Catalus mumbles, and this time, he does pull his sword out of the grass. He leaves it by his side, not raising it any higher.
Magnus rubs his hands along his face, pulling down his cheeks, smearing his forehead with streaks of blood. "Forget what's happened in the past," he points with his bow down the beach. "If it really is just us three left, you, me, and Poem…" Magnus trails off, a hopeful look on his face. "I suggest that you and I hunt her down, Catalus. Give Poem her just desserts and then," he sets his head back up, "Then we can fight like men."
Catalus cannot believe what he's just heard.
The… he wants to hunt Poem down like cattle.
Like she's nothing.
As if this is just a game.
"Hunt her down?" Catalus screeches, he bending his body down low. "Magnus, do you even hear yourself? She isn't-" he balks at the words, mouth lowered in horror, but by the look on Magnus's face, he can tell that the boy is serious. He's… this cannot be happening; this cannot be real. Catalus snorts, letting the disbelief radiate down his spine. "And I remember you saying you hated Portia because she was treating this whole charade like it was just a game," and then, as he can see the red returning to his neck, "Hypocrite."
That does it, as Catalus tries to keep the smirk down.
"I am not Portia!" Magnus screams at him, pointing the finger again, a glare riding out the motion. "I am nothing like that murderous, traitorous bitch! She murdered my brothers and sisters in arms! I saved lives!"
"All you're doing is ruining lives now, Magnus," Catalus shakes his head in disappointment, the boy's stance wavering as his hand falters in the air. He holds onto the sword, tighter, this time hefting it some in the air. "I don't want to fight you, Magnus. I don't want to fight someone I think of as a friend."
It is the last statement he gives him, before Catalus wanders off, back then, with Diana's spear pointed at the back of his neck, where he could've died at any moment.
Magnus returns the look of disappointment. "We were friends," he says, rubbing his jaw. "And then you decided to lose everything I knew about you when I approached you at the parade," the soldier readies an arrow into the bow. "I'm sorry, Catalus. This isn't personal, I promise you."
Catalus can smell the bullshit.
He doesn't bat an eye.
"It is for me," Catalus says, sword rising in the air.
Magnus lifts the bow, firing a shot at Catalus, who is a few yards away from him. Catalus dodges out of the way, tucking into a roll. As he rises back up, another arrow flies over his head. The boy from One swipes the grappling claw from his side, snapping it in the other boy's direction. It misses its first grab at the bow, Catalus readying another dive with it towards Magnus's face.
The soldier steps back, losing his footing as he fires another shot, this one wildly going into the air. Both boys hit the deck as the arrow plummets back into the ground, but the moment Catalus hears the twang and subsequent thump, he is back on his feet, racing at his former ally. He strikes out the sword, Magnus lifting the bow to block it, pushing him off as hard as he can.
"I know you're from a prestigious place," Magnus gets out, in between breaths, "But c'mon… a pretty rich boy against someone trained for combat?" There's that shit eating grin again. Catalus growls, swinging at Magnus's head, but the boy ducks just in time. He swings the bow back over his shoulder, ambling for the mallet buried in the grass.
Catalus barely dodges from a long strike that is aimed for his ribcage, the air whistling with the swing, but is unable to move just in time when Magnus spins and gets the back of Catalus's left thigh. The boy yells, the impact downing him to one knee. The mallet is swung at his head this time, Catalus barely catching it with his right hand, grunting in pain from the exertion. The look on his former ally's face is murderous, a deathly stare that he's never seen before.
It doesn't deter him, however, as Magnus digs his heels into the dirt, trying, pushing, for Catalus to lift his sword and strike out in any way he can. The steel slices through the boy's hip, blood flowing out of the wound, causing the dark spot on the soldier's leg to continue. Magnus growls, nostrils flaring, as he wrenches the mallet back, letting it fall into the dirt.
The movement causes Catalus to fall forward from the momentum, Magnus atop him in a flash. Both boys grunt animalistically as they wrestle in the dirt. Catalus has a hand in the other boy's mouth, digging at his lip, before the soldier bites down and there's pain, Catalus ripping his hand free. The distraction is what Magnus needs to flip Catalus over, so he is in the dirt, the two rolling over and over and over again.
Catalus yelps in pain as the back of his head connects with the cornucopia, a loud reverberation rising over the spike. He grabs a fistful of dirt and flings it in Magnus's face, the soldier closing his eyes from the attack, giving Catalus a window to sock the boy right under the jaw, he snapping his head back with the blow. Magnus growls, releasing some tension on his shoulder, he leaping off of Catalus, which leaves the boy from One empty with momentum.
The sword is slightly out of his grasp, Catalus scrambling for it. Magnus is back onto his feet, unclipping the black rectangle that is hooked to his pants, the side not currently covered in blood. The caps are shucked off, all the water in Catalus's mouth drying up instantaneously as he watches an elongated beam of dark light sprout atop what he'd consider to be the hilt. Magnus lifts the lazer beam up, a whining hum accompanying the air, as he then lashes out with a strike.
Catalus drops into another sidestep, crouching down, as Magnus gets the side of the cornucopia. There is an awful grinding crash as the lazer beam connects with the metallic side, sparks flying everywhere and into the grass. Left behind of Magnus's empty strike is a darkening burn mark that covers the entire longitude. The soldier swivels to his left, slashing again, Catalus unsure whether or not to lift his sword up and parry the hit.
He tries turning away, as he's certain his sword will just turn up like the side of the cornucopia if it connects, but Magnus feigns left, then right without even moving, the next slash going down Catalus's ribcage. He screams in pain, sinking to his knees immediately. The initial rush of blood happens, pouring down onto the grass, but despite the cascading agony that flits his entire body, the wound sits there, sizzling like a recently snuffed out cigarette.
Catalus hisses, clenching his teeth together, a triumphant look flashing on Magnus's face as he lifts his arms, the sword rising high in the air. Catalus howls, fighting through the pain as he rushes the boy from Two, dodging another strike. The lazer beam disappears with a swipe as he collides into Magnus. His hands grapple for anything, his hands coming up with the bow and quiver. He rips both of them off of Magnus's shoulders, throwing them away and to the side, not caring where they land.
He is headbutted in the face for his actions, Catalus stepping away. Magnus rushes for the quiver, as Catalus heads to the bow, flinging it away further in the grass. When both boys right themselves again, Magnus has two arrows clenched in his left hand, the right hand gripping the beam sword, he standing right by the mallet. Catalus readies his grappling claw again, aiming it for Magnus's left.
It happens as he expects, Magnus lifting his right hand instead of the left, for there is not enough time for the soldier to step back. The grappling claw encircles its metal grip around Magnus's right hand, trapping the lazer beam sword in the metallic ring. Magnus's eyes widen, he wrenching his right arm back, letting go of the beam sword.
Catalus snaps the claw back, the sword flying towards his grip. Magnus howls in protest, the boy from One holding onto what certainly must've been a sponsor weapon. He grits his teeth together… blast morals to hell, but it wouldn't be… Camilla didn't get a fair fight, he imagines Porscha didn't…
He flings the beam sword down to his feet, and with his sword, stabs straight through the black sheath, cracking the weapon in two. Magnus lets out a murderous scream, hands curling into clawed talons, the soldier vaulting both arrows at him. One skims just over his left cheek, Catalus dodging the second arrow.
Magnus hefts the mallet in the air, lumbering a hefty blow that Catalus dodges. The soldier swivels on his heels, momentum taking his strike too far. "Any idea how much that cost me?" Magnus screams hoarsely. "Diana's death fucking paid for that!"
"Should've gotten a safety deposit, Magnus," Catalus sneers, stepping away from another strike. "Or perhaps put in a down payment."
Magnus growls every insult in the book, his next swing causing Catalus to hit the ground to not have his head caved in. However, as he flattens himself into the dirt, Magnus's mallet goes soaring over his head, out of the other boy's grip. Catalus thrusts out with his sword, getting Magnus in the leg. Shallow enough to bleed, but not enough to do mainstay damage. It gets the soldier to halt in his movement, Catalus leaping to his feet, racing for the mallet.
He drops the sword, as Catalus knows he'd be unable to hold both weapons in his hand. Catalus hefts the mallet, readying a strike, as if he were winding up a golf club. Magnus's murderous look in his eyes return, the boy racing for him.
"That was mine! Give it back! That's- ahh!" Magnus readies his roar, the two connecting in mid-rush, as Catalus swings low, as if it were a nine-iron in his hands, the golf ball being Magnus's left kneecap. He can tell it shatters, just from the way the boy's leg gives out, Magnus toppling forward with a blood curdling scream.
Catalus keeps the vomit down as best he can, through his mouth twitches as well, stomach tossing and turning in nausea. He drops the mallet, picking up his sword. Magnus tries getting to his feet, the shattered leg looking all sorts of messed up and awkwardly bent, Catalus swallowing another fresh wave of bile that rises up.
"Forgive me, Magnus," he whispers.
He needs a good shot, and he knows he's got it, as Magnus lifts his head up, fear… actual fear reflected in the boy's eyes. Catalus readies the grappling claw, priming it to fire as his former ally exposes his throat.
The claw flies through the air, the claw encircling around Magnus's throat. A croak of panic rises out, but it is not enough to save him, not enough to cause Catalus to pity him either, the man who has sacrificed everything, including his soul. Catalus retracts the claw, causing Magnus to get pulled towards him, the grip death-like, and he knows there's nothing that can break it.
Magnus is now in his space, previous to the distance that used to be between them. Catalus releases the grip of the claw on the boy's throat, Magnus doubling over to cough, but he'll never get another sentence of bullshit and charm out.
Catalus raises his sword, thrusting it forward directly through the boy from Two's throat. There's an extreme spray of blood that gets all over Catalus's face, he squinting and removing his gaze as Magnus chokes out, Catalus leaving the sword in his throat. He… he can't… Magnus stays held up by the blade in his throat, unable to fall back, as the blade is stuck in the ground.
"I'm sorry…" Catalus says, lowering his head, gripping onto his former ally's hand, squeezing it tightly, even as Magnus's eyes dart around, but soon, and it doesn't take long, for the hand to slack.
A cannon fires, Catalus stepping away from the corpse, releasing his hand from Magnus's before the grip would become death-like once more. He steps back, resting down on the table, wiping at his face with the parts of his shirt not coated in blood.
"What the fuck…" he whispers, raggedly, every movement starting to settle in his bones. "What the fuck did I just do…" Catalus mutters, rubbing at his face.
However, as he looks at Magnus's dead body, kept up by his sword that he'd rather just leave there, and never touch again, the new reality that Catalus has found himself in sinks into his soles, bleeding into his gums like a mouthwash that lingers for far too long.
"No…" he lowers his body down the legs of the table. "No… no… no…" he repeats over and over again. Magnus claims he killed Porscha, with the cannon evident of that. Catalus flits his gaze over to Camilla's unmoving body in the dead center of the plain, marking her off the list. Magnus claimed that he, himself, and Poem were the last three standing, and with him gone… "I didn't actually want to," Catalus rubs his face with his hands.
It's just he and Poem left, then. And she ran away, with his bag, and hers, as they planned, where he has to actually follow up on what they discussed in the cabin. Someone told him once that the world isn't cruel, just that people with their selfishness breed a sort of resentment in life.
Catalus doesn't understand the notion, impossible to get it from his palace of gold, where his hands never toil a day in their life. The soldier in the rebellion, the Capitol peacekeeper loyalist that he has in his clutches, that should be the meat pinned into the earth.
"It's just Poem left," Catalus says with fresh horror. The table had five bags when they approached it, before Camilla rushes them from on high. "How am I supposed to hurt her now? What the fuck…"
He feels their presence before the voice whispers out his worst nightmare, but Catalus doesn't even the time to react properly, all he managing to do is gasp in a strangulated voice.
"If only you knew how to count," hisses the voice, in a sweet tone, Catalus's blood standing on end, as he backs away from the table, towards the dark mouth of the cornucopia. "How easy it'd be if you just had Poem left in this arena to worry about, wouldn't it, Catalus?"
The next thing Catalus feels is hot and fresh and real bloody pain slicing down the back of his legs, across his feet, the voice of District Three's Vesuvia Vocanova emerging from the darkness, a slithering snake, a poisonous evil, Catalus screaming at himself internally at how did he miss her, how did he miss this?
Something cold and steel-like slices through his heels, and Catalus's world goes black as the darkest night.
Vesuvia Vocanova: District 3 Female P.O.V (18)
Vesuvia's strike cannot be any more precise, she gripping the bone handle of the knife in her grip, slashing across the back of Catalus's heels, cutting and stabbing straight into the boy from One's Achilles' tendons. Catalus drops with a guttural scream, she standing above him as he falls into the grass, the new gaping wounds in the back of his feet spilling copper all over his tanned flesh. She has never seen a more beautiful sight, the rich, the bourgeoise bleeding their ichor all over their constructs.
"You forgot about me, didn't you?" she croons, looking down at him with a frown, as Catalus tries crawling away from her, bubbled gasps of surprise and pain and terror emitting from his throat. She absorbs all of them into her bloodstream, Vesuvia taking steps out of the cornucopia's mouth and onto the plain, her feet bare as she steps over a puddle of his blood. She keeps her demeanor cool, her body temperature down, as she fights against the urge to scream insults. Forget her? How could any of them forget her, especially when the idiots don't even know how to count? "I don't blame you, Catalus," Vesuvia tells him.
Vesuvia has to admit that the tributes in front of her know how to put on a good show, as she looks out at the corpses of the tributes that are there. Camilla's corpse is mainly hidden by the grass, but she has a front row seat with Magnus's, the boy's body finally slicing away through the sword as the part of the steel keeping up is slicked enough by the blood pouring from the wound. The head falls, the hole in Magnus's throat still steady spilling life, Vesuvia reminding herself to go over and stab the corpse just cause.
He had been the one to beat, in a way, with his training score being two points higher than hers, Vesuvia gritting her teeth with the results, since it means she's second, the first to lose, and second place is not in her nature. Part of her is enraged at hearing about how Diana dies to a battle of betrayal, but it is all hypocritical of her, Vesuvia knows, for what she did to Jasper just a little over twenty-four hours ago.
Hiding in the few remaining crates in the cornucopia last night takes every fiber of her being, Vesuvia never being known for her patience. It is her thinly veiled patience that stops her from backstabbing Jasper at the earliest opportunity, such as when he fails her the first time in fighting off Orion and Ramses's tag-team duo, or how a measly arena god cannot be toppled by their alliance. It is all no matter, now, for he is ash.
Ash that cannot rebuild, like how Panem cannot rebuild themselves out of the pillars of dust and bone that are left in the wake of the war, the war that Vesuvia sees waged through an iron-barred window of her cell.
She has to lay perfectly still along the back line of the cornucopia, shuddering to herself with arms tightly wrapped around her body, as the cornucopia does not retain heat inside the structure. Then, when the morning comes with Cain's two announcements about the golden feast at noon – "A golden feast of demise," Vesuvia mutters to herself in the privacy of the horn – she slips herself into a crate, throwing the useless supplies everywhere, to stay perfectly still.
She peeks her head out a few times, such as when there's the loud thump of Camilla leaping off of the cornucopia, or the guttural scream Poem emits just as Vesuvia witnesses Magnus thrust an arrow up into the girl from Nine's body, piercing a lung by the way the girl's breaths completely collapse.
It is a spectacle worthy of Panem, but Vesuvia knows she simply has to wait.
"You made it too easy," Vesuvia crows, leaning down and ruffling a hand through Catalus's hair. His hair is silky smooth, even with all of the hours and days spent in the arena, though she is unsure if she is imagining this, as if she were building him in a character creation screen from one of her video games. "Letting me just sit in the cornucopia while I watched the show you put on," Catalus keeps trying to claw himself away from her, towards Magnus's quiver full of arrows discarded on the ground. "And it was quite a show, I must say," she says, filling her chest with pride. "You fought like a beast, Catalus. Well, a caged beast, but…"
Her moment to strike, as she watches the boy glistening in bronze crumple to his knees at the idea of hunting his ally down. The very same suggestion Magnus makes that gets the two boys to brawl with one another.
The table snaps into place, where Vesuvia feels the rumbling of the earth beneath her spine as she cramps herself in the wooden box, precisely at noon, just like Cain Passionia says. She has to give it to the Gamemaker staff for being true to their word, it being a thing she can actually count on for once.
Vesuvia clambers out of the box and snatches her bag, it being the third on the table in the line of six. There is an equal amount of space for each bag, Vesuvia rearranging the others so it looks like hers wouldn't be missing. As soon as she finishes, heading back to hide in her wooden box, is when she sees the glimmering silver beam of Catalus's sword as he and Poem emerged onto the plain. Vesuvia knows she's cutting it close as she hides again, keeping herself flush against the crates, but her luck pays off, for there's not even one word of her or her bag.
She could've been the cannon that booms prematurely, before all the fighting begins, but only idiots and simpletons, not savants of her caliber, would actually believe a Vocanova to die off before the fireworks are even lit.
"You and Poem almost caught me stealing my bag," Vesuvia says, she standing up, twirling her knife back and forth as Catalus is still whining, occasionally trying to get to his feet, but there's no way, with the damage she's done to the tendons, that he'd be able to stand. He'd need a wheelchair at this point. "I haven't seen what is in it yet, since I have it in the crate I hid in," Vesuvia looks back at the darkness of the horn. "But I imagine it'll come in handy for when I go and give Poem my best."
At the mention of his ally, Catalus's efforts to crawl away from her turn to her in a glowering growl. His voice is weak, at best, but there is still some sort of desperation leaking out of him. "If you so as much touch her…"
"Y'know," she interrupts him, crouching down low to his face, holding the bloodstained blade over his eyes. She could just… scratch them, blind him forever, would he even know what is happening to him after that? Catalus's bravado disappears with a swallow, the lights dimming in his eyes. "I hate her. I hate your ally, that she volunteered for this shit," Vesuvia spits on Catalus's face, hitting him in the hair, he grimacing through the pain, "And I got reaped like I hadn't already paid my dues in society…" she runs the blade through her shirt, wiping off the blood. It might be a waste, since she has more damage to do before the day is up, but she likes to see her reflection glinting back at her. "I told Jasper, my district partner, that if I ever got hands on that stupid bitch, I'd cut her sternum open," Catalus snarls viciously, snapping his teeth at her. "Looks like it's my lucky day!" Vesuvia exclaims, happily, clapping her hands together.
Catalus tries clawing away from her again, a feverish speed to his movements, for as fast as he can walk. "You're insane!" he gasps out, but he isn't even looking at her, isn't looking death in the face. "You're a stupid, crazy bitch!"
Vesuvia takes slow steps towards him, cooing again in a low tone. "Aww… look at you, scurrying away like a little roach?" she leans down, running a hand atop his head, sliding it down to the small of his back. "Did I say you could get away, Catalus?
Using the same blade, she stabs him directly in the spine. Catalus tilts his head back in a raw scream, Vesuvia twisting the knife this way and that, blood spurting onto her kissed by fire hair, onto her pale hands, onto the handle of the knife. She rips her weapon free, out of his back, a piece of bone going with.
"Trying standing up from that, Catalus," she sneers at him, kicking him hard in the upper side. Catalus is screaming incoherently now, but Vesuvia doesn't care. There are other things to look forward to in life, such as letting Poem Cavalli know the worst sin she ever did is sign up for a death match without reading the rules.
Her mind is a brilliant thing, she knows. She's always been lauded for it.
"The stuff I come up with…" Vesuvia scoffs, shaking her head, looking down at the boy from One, who despite what he's been through, still tries to crawl away. Bless his dumb as rocks soul, he won't do anything, even when he reaches the quiver. "The stuff I had planned for you, the stuff I had planned for Poem and Magnus and Diana and everyone else in this arena if I got to get my hands on them," she laughs, tilting her head up to the sky. "I burned Jasper alive at the stake, just because I could," Vesuvia encircles Catalus, crouching down low so they make eye contact, even as the boy starts to bleed out. She admires the fight he has; however, she will give him that. "He begged, even after I sucked his dick, but…" she shrugs. "The people need to be fed, no? I mean, you know what I mean, since you did in your poor brother-in-arms Magnus like he was nothing."
She drops Catalus's head, walking around him again, even as the boy keeps crawling forward. Vesuvia heads towards the quiver, picking it up, then dropping it on his head.
"I expected great things from you, Catalus," Vesuvia says. "Anyone who lives in Panem knew what your family did, what your family stood for…" she smiles, giving him a kiss on the cheek, unsure if he can even feel anything at this point. "And you did prove me right, that you'd fight till the bitter end. It's admirable, but not enough."
She grabs Catalus by the heel, tugging and pulling at the boy, away from the arrows, away from the quiver, away from any lifeline. He has to know where he's going, has to know that he is going to die now, and Vesuvia is not going to let this moment be ended by Poem just waltzing in on her parade.
She has center stage now. Her video games make everyone pay attention to her; her showmanship gets viewers to change the channel.
Vesuvia Vocanova is the Hunger Games incarnate.
The girl from Three places Catalus right along the cornucopia wall, near the burnt and blackened bits of the side that were sliced open by Magnus's beam sword.
She sits right atop his shoulders, her combat boots crushing his hands into the dirt, and he is still screaming, still incoherent… he is getting boring, now.
"You fought well, Catalus," she tells him, leaning her head over to look him in the eyes. "You fought as well as anyone else could, I suppose. Where I come from, where I've been, fighting is how people respect you," Vesuvia notes, swiping a lock of hair behind her ear, sheathing her bloodstained knife. All that comes out of the boy now is mutters and gasps, blood spilling from his tongue and gums, drool and spit and desperation that tastes like cotton candy and gasoline. "This is what I excel at."
Her uncle, for all the good he never did, for all the hatred he makes Vesuvia feel in her heart, did one thing right.
"Fuck you, Vesuvia," Catalus gets out one last gasp of rage, though each letter, each syllable, is pained, drawn out.
"I think you're the one who is rightfully fucked, Catalus," Vesuvia tells him, threading his hair through her fingers. "In my book, Catalus, I consider myself to be an apex predator," she imagines herself as a dog who gets to eat every night, or a leopard stalking through the savannah grass. Everyone is a doe. Jasper. Poem. Catalus. Magnus. Diana. Dill. Her uncle. Everyone is her prey, fattened up to be devoured. She leans right into his face, whispering over his ear. "It is a dog eats dog world, and in this world, I never go hungry."
Catalus's eyes widen in fear, through whatever semblance of feeling he can feel, but she never lets him speak. Vesuvia digs her hands into his hair, into his scalp, hoisting his head above the ground.
She slams his head into the side of the cornucopia, smashing his perfect face and perfect nose and perfect teeth and perfect everything into the wall. She does it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and Catalus may be saying something, he may be speaking, he may be screaming, but all Vesuvia hears is the squelching, all she can pick out is the sound of her overcoming another obstacle.
The cornucopia wall starts to slick with the blood, Vesuvia keeping her death grip on the boy's skull as she mashes his face and head into the cornucopia.
On the tenth smash, there's several audible cracks, a cannon firing as if it were right over her head.
Vesuvia holds onto Catalus's head, smashing it just one more time, letting the blood drip off of her fingers. This is it, her moment.
A golden feast, as Cain Passionia promises, inviting everyone to dine and die. The final six reduced down to a final two.
Vesuvia Vocanova of District Three, and Poem Cavalli of District 8. A technological empress, and a velveteen queen.
The end is near, and Vesuvia can only laugh, laugh, and laugh.
6th: Porscha Watanabe, 16, District 6 Female. Killed by Magnus Winterthorn via multiple stab wounds to the neck and back. Submitted by thornehub. Porscha, my dancing darling, words do not do enough justice for how much I loved your character. Thorne, you gave me a wonderful character with so much passion, bitterness, anger, sadness... a well I could take from constantly, and I put her through so much, made her feel so much, and though she tried to fight like she was used to, it became too much for her in the end. She was in such a unique position, brought on such a journey... and I wanted to make every moment with her count. Thank you for letting me give life to her.
5th: Camilla Rodriguez, 17, District 9 Female. Killed by Magnus Winterthorn via arrow through the lungs. Submitted by Reign of Winter. Well, Reign, I think the investment in your heart-rate monitor paid off, haha. On a much more serious note, in a sea of kiddos like Poem, Vesuvia, Portia, Ramses, and others... Camilla was a breath of fresh air. A piece of solid ground I could rely on to give me what I thought the story was missing, and lord almighty wasn't she a fighter? She was a fighter from her first breath to last, and if it is some comfort in her death, Reign, I did consider her a victor once upon a time. Thank you, I loved her so much.
4th: Magnus Winterthorn, 18, District 2 Male. Killed by Catalus Drachma via sword to the throat. Submitted by Audmirable. Magnus was someone I recall not being too privy to, about having a "Career" in a 1st Games, until AJ told me what I'd be given, and then I saw his name and truthfully fell in love. Magnus was someone who grew on me more and more as the story developed, until he was a character I had to come love - truly, top five in this cast - where he evolved from what I had initially. He was a soldier, with so much depth that I never anticipated to find, and played the game well. AJ, I can't express my gratitude enough.
3rd: Catalus Drachma, 18, District 1 Male. Killed by Vesuvia Vocanova via head bashed in against the cornucopia. Submitted by Manny Siliezar. Catalus was a death I planned from the beginning, the demise I couldn't wait to share with the world. Just like Camilla, I had him as my victor for a little while, but I knew that he'd just *not* make it up to the final battle. I knew great things would come from him, just on premise alone when Manny described his idea to me, and I never knew how much fun I'd actually have, for he was by far my favorite male tribute in the cast. Manny, I am honored to have brought him to completion.
Tribute List (Boy - Girl)
District 3: Vesuvia Vocanova [Submitted by Platrium]
District 8: Poem Cavalli [Submitted by LordShiro]
…
ALLIANCE LIST
Empress of Technology: Vesuvia Vocanova (D3F)
Velveteen Queen: Poem Cavalli (D8F)
…
Kill Leaderboard:
Catalus Drachma (D1M): II
Magnus Winterthorn (D2M): III
Portia Beninblade (D2F): I
Jasper Overheart (D3M): I
Vesuvia Vocanova (D3F): III
Orion Maythorpe (D4M): I
Diana Kratovska (D4F): II
Porscha Watanabe (D6F): II
Poem Cavalli (D8F): I
Gemini Lennox (D9M): I
Camilla Rodriguez (D9F): I
Nokomis Yanaba (D10F): I
Cassiopeia Grey (D11F): I
Arena/Mutts: II
So... I can only imagine the screaming and the love and whatever else reactions people might be doing right now in reaching the end of this chapter, but lemme just say firsthand, the buzz I am feeling is incomparable, and I have only felt it a few times beforehand over the time I've been writing. I am insanely proud of this chapter, of these characters and the journey I have pushed them through, and I again, am humbled and honored to have the support of the people that I do that have been on the ride.
For the four submitters who lost their tributes in this long semi-final rush, I am so sorry. I loved Porscha, Camilla, Magnus, and Catalus all in their own ways, as if they were tributes I submitted to someone, cause they were all special. However, to Plat and Shiro, the submitters of the electric Vesuvia Vocanova and the bombastic Poem Cavalli, I must say congratulations to you two in having your ladies make the finale. I know that there are ruminations of similarities between Slaughter's finale (both ladies, one of Shiro's girls lol, gross betrayals and gory deaths in the semi-finals), but honestly, with what I have set up here, I wouldn't have it any other way. These two ladies were by far the most original and wonderful tributes I had in the cast, and it feels right to have the two extremes fend off here. Plat, I know you've been here before more and more recently, and Shiro, I can only hold your hand and tell you to take deep breaths.
This chapter is the longest I have ever written, and I am happy for that, since I wanted this to be an experience unlike any other. If you didn't read the chapter with the suggested soundtrack at the first AN, I do suggest you play it, and start it off when Camilla sees Catalus and Poem rush out onto the plain for the feast. The finale between Vesuvia and Poem will also have its own soundtrack, but we'll get there first. Chapter #38: Ascension to Victory, will be posted this upcoming Friday, September 17th, and after that, the epilogues. In fairness, both final girls will have POVs, but Cain, in the Capitol cast does also have one... (just won't say where), and I cannot wait to show you what is coming.
I know this chapter is rather large - to be expected of me, no? - but I value your commentary and reactions and support immensely, especially for something of this magnitude. Deep breaths, ladies and gentlemen, let's finish this arena out strong. I love you all so much! I hope you all have a great day! Bye!
~ Paradigm