But no, he's being a child by this point. And she is sick of it.
.oOo.
Milena Kovac, 17
Slavic Female
1 Kill
She's eating another one of the packs of dried nuts and raisins that they've kept secure in the yellow bag, the green bag holding everything else, when Luka marches up to her and slaps the bag out of her hand.
"W-what?" are the only words that Milena can manage, gaping at the taller boy. "Why was that necessary? I was eating, Luka! I can walk and eat at the same time! I'm starving, Luka. I haven't had anything since noon yesterday, because I was bandaging your leg so you wouldn't get it infected. Can you just let me eat?"
"You're eating the rest of our supplies, idiot. If you keep wolfing it down like a dog, you're going to starve us all to death." Luka glares at Milena, and if she looks very closely she can see the fear that's motivating his anger. She can see that he's frightened of losing it all, and he's doing whatever he can to keep them alive as long as possible.
She understands what he's trying to do.
But no, he's being a child by this point. And she is sick of it.
"So you're going to waste more food to stop me from starving you to death. Great job, idiot," she retorts. Luka flushes, but his eyes still stay angry. "Now what - you're going to stop us all because I'm wasting your energy? You might as well make us sleep in another part of the maze so you can get some sleep. You can't tell me what to do, kreten," Milena spits at Luka. "I'm done. You're being nothing but an infantile, pedantic, stupid little child."
Luka slaps her square in the face, and for the first few seconds she can't breathe. But when she can and feels the reddening, swelling flesh on her face, she screams in rage and pain and a deep, raw anger that consumes everything in sight. It's like she can't see anything but red now, anything but the fact that Luka is a despicable human being who she should have never worked with. She hates him, hates how hungry she is and how thirsty and tired she is and the fact that he's stopping her from eating. He can't do that! He can't do that!
Then she grabs the knife from the green bag.
"You're going to attack me?" Luka smirks at Milena, and she spits back at him. "Milena, you're losing your mind. We're still allies, and you're not going to let yourself attack me because I lost my temper. Don't you want to get back home to your husband? Don't you want one of us to get back to your sister? If you kill me, neither of us will get to do that."
"I won't kill you, or maybe I will," Milena says as calmly as she can possibly manage.
Then she cuts Karol's ropes, the boy rubbing his hands in shock as he realizes that he's free. His eyes meet Milena's, searching for the question he knows the answer to, and she gives him a nod. Milena turns back to Luka, and smirks. "You see, Luka, I'm not the only one who'll gladly fight you."
.oOo.
He's spellbound by the second person that he's about to kill.
.oOo.
Luka Novak, 18
Slavic Male
1 Kill
Well, well, well.
He didn't expect Milena to turn on him like this, but he should have seen it coming. He's read too many books about how fear and hunger and thirst can make the human mind do things that simply aren't rational, but he never thought he would encounter it quite like this.
He never thought that a pack of nuts and raisins would lead to something as heated as this.
"Let's talk this through like rational people," he tries to begin, but Milena shakes her head. Luka realizes that she looks just as messy as he feels - for all of the dust that covers him, it's all over her hair and coating her face. And Milena is angry - she's not going to listen to him.
She might be too far gone.
Oh, he hopes that Erika will forgive him for this.
Luka grabs his sword and backs away, shaking his head slowly. "Milena, it's me," he whispers. "I'm still Luka, and you're still the sister of the girl I love. What would Erika think of this?"
"Erika isn't here," she hurls back at him, then stabs her knife into his good knee.
He howls from the pain, grabbing his knee and trying to stop it from bleeding. "Jebemti, Milena!"
She steps back, her eyes starting to widen in realization what she's done, but Luka's had enough as well. He's done with whatever she's roped their stupid little captive into, he's done with the way that she keeps snapping at him and telling him that he's being too mean, he's done with everything about Milena.
His mind tells him that it's because he's starving as well and he's too sleep-deprived to behave rationally, but his body tells him to hurl the sword toward's Milena.
He does.
She screams when the sword enters her side, the blood taking entirely too long to come out. But when it does, Luka watches as her clothing gets stained from all of the blood. There's so much blood. He must have pierced some artery or major vein to cause it to come out like that.
It strikes him that she might be dying, but he doesn't react. It's like he can't move, he's spellbound by the sight of who he had considered being his closest ally in the maze dying in front of him.
He's spellbound by the second person that he's about to kill.
Then a body jumps at him, and suddenly the boy from Poland is on top of Luka and ripping his knife through Luka's cheek. Luka howls from the pain then pushes the boy off of himself before the psychopath takes the knife to his eye. But the Pole rolls away and turns to Milena, trying to stop the bleeding.
Milena is practically unconscious by this point, trying but failing to get back up before her eyes roll back into her head. She lets out a sigh, and Luka sees that she's suffering from blood loss. If the boy doesn't tie up the wound and hope that everyone else dies in the next hour, she's going to bleed out on them both.
But the Pole doesn't do that. Instead, he takes his knife and slits Milena's neck.
As the gunshot rings in his ears, Luka stares in disbelief at the Pole. How could have this small child… killed Milena? How could he have killed Luka's only friend here? How could he have killed someone Luka loved?
Rage takes over his body, and he stands up.
As he grabs his sword and runs after the boy, blood filling his mouth, the boy runs.
Luka follows.
But not before grabbing one more object.
.oOo.
No, there's only one way out of here.
.oOo.
Karol Karski, 15
Polish Male
1 Kill
Everything is playing into his hands.
He just needs to beg fair Lady Luck to let him have one more victory.
He had known that pitting Luka and Milena against one another would be the only way he could survive their alliance - at the rate that Luka was leading the alliance, once they decided that they could win easily he would have been executed by Luka. So instead, he gained the sympathy of Milena and tried to turn him against her friend.
Judging by the fact that he's still alive, it worked all too well.
It had hurt to kill Milena, but he needed to make sure that Luka had some sort of incentive to chase him. There was only one way he was getting out of this, and that was by getting them both to kill each other. When Milena had started dying, Karol had realized that there was no way to get her out of this.
So instead of trying to help her back up and screaming bloody murder like he would have when he was a child, he killed her instead.
He tries not to vomit at the thought. It's sickening to think that he killed someone, that he ended Milena's life.
He has to reason to himself that she was going to die anyway. He just helped her along.
It's the only way he can keep his mind from falling apart.
But he has to run now, so he sprints through the maze as quickly as he can. He doesn't try to lose Luka in the maze - the boy isn't as fast as Karol is, especially how he has to hobble along on his hurt leg, but he's smart. He won't fall for Karol trying to hide on him, and Karol doesn't want to know what Luka would do with that sword to him.
No, there's only one way out of here. There's only one way to make sure that he survives Luka's onslaught.
He has to climb the wall.
As always, the first few handholds are easy to find. His wrists burn from being used after being tied so long behind his back, and he stumbles down on his first try because his hands are screaming at him to stop. But he tries again, and they manage to calm down long enough for his fingers to haul him up the wall once more.
He's about six feet up the wall when Luka arrives, still hobbling on his good leg while his cheek continues to bleed. Karol shoots a glance back, and sees that Luka is at his wit's end - he looks exhausted, and his bad leg looks like it's in bad shape.
But he still has the packs that he and Milena carried through the maze, and when Karol sees what's in his hands, he almost falls down in shock.
Luka quickly ties the largest stone he can with the rope, then tosses it up to the top of the wall. As he tries to make it catch on something, Karol forces himself up the wall. One inch at a time, one finger at a time, he makes his way up the wall. His hands hurt like they've never hurt before, but he's not going to give up. He's not giving up because his hands are sore.
He's almost to the top, some fifteen feet above the ground when Luka finally manages to make the rock hook onto something. After giving the rope a tug, he begins to scale the wall - just as Karol's hands begin to give out.
As his fingers slip from the cracks that he jammed them into, his mind screams at them to stay. No! He can't fail now!
He can't fail now!
He can't.
He can't let pain stop him.
And as Luka keeps climbing, Karol grunts from the effort of pulling himself up to the top of the wall.
It's surprisingly warm up at the top, and there's no wind to push him off. There's only himself, the rope, and the ledge on the other side of the wall that Luka's stone is under. Karol's mind whirls, and then he fumbles in his pocket for the knife that Milena tossed him.
He's going to cut the rope.
It's unbelievably taut as he starts to cut, the knife bouncing off and almost cutting one of his fingers off the first time he tries to cut the rope. But slowly and surely, he cuts the strands of the rope loose and it grows thinner and thinner. Luka is screaming up something that sounds like a curse, but Karol pays him no attention.
He has to cut the rope.
Luka's almost at the top when Karol cuts the last strand, and Luka tumbles back down. But like in a movie, his hand clamps onto the top of the wall and he looks up at Karol, eyes filled with anger and fear and…
And regret.
Karol slams a boot as hard as he can onto Luka's fingers, and he watches the boy tumble back down to earth.
He can scarcely believe it when Luka's head hits the ground first and there's an awful bang when the rest of his body follows.
And then, a gunshot.
.oOo.
She can't let herself get thrown off guard again.
.oOo.
Juliet Acres, 13
Russian Female
1 Kill
She hears the two gunshots, both five minutes apart, and shivers. Now there's only, what, four competitors left in the maze?
And she's one of them.
She can hardly believe it.
Not even she had thought she would make it this far - her mentor had been dismissive of her on the train whenever she asked if she had a chance of winning, she barely had been given a chance to speak at whatever interviews had occurred the morning of three days ago, and she had spoken to no one but kind Abigail at the ball where they had been decked out in beautiful clothing.
Funny, she can't remember what she was wearing back at the ball. It felt like a lifetime ago since she had first come into the maze and was told that she was fighting for her life - since she was supposed to go and die politely like all of the other children her age was supposed to do.
But she didn't do that. She's going to keep going as far as she can, and the fact that she's smaller than the rest of the competitors won't stop her.
The older tributes aren't the only ones who can kill.
As she's sitting down and drinking the very last of her water - the last that she might drink for a long, long time, she thinks with regret, a sound causes her to look up and see the girl from Northern Europe standing at the corner of this path in the maze. They both freeze, slowly drawing their weapons and stepping away from each other.
Then, through some unspoken communication that only two girls who are frightened and only a few minutes away from the possible end of their lives, they run away from each other.
They won't fight.
Juliet's lungs are burning when she finally slows back down, and she wishes that she had saved the last of her water for now. "Oh, I'm a fool," she complains to the air. "I shouldn't have wasted all of that energy for nothing. What do I have, a few hours until I'm dead because I ran from my spot to here?"
Oh, she is a fool. There she was, only a few minutes ago thinking that she could possibly kill someone else in here. But when she was given the opportunity, she froze. She's not a killer, she's just a stupid little girl.
But she can fight. Even in the throes of self-pity, she knows she can kill. She did it to that boy, didn't she? She had killed him, and she can do it again.
She can't let herself get thrown off guard again. She has to stay focused, stay on goal. If she doesn't do anything but observe and react, she won't be the fool in the next encounter she has with a competitor in this maze. She's going to play it smart, next time.
But first -
What's that sound? Is that water that she hears on the other side of the wall, rushing through the maze and crashing against the sides of the maze as it looks for another place to escape?
When she sees the wave falling down into her line of vision, she realizes that it is.
And she runs for her life.
.oOo.
But maybe, just maybe, they're all gone.
.oOo.
Norman Bennet, 14
British Male
1 Kill
He's still running as fast as he can when night comes, looking in vain for somewhere he can stop. But he never does - whenever he tries to settle down for the night, some large noise scares him half to death and he gets up to keep running away from things that go bump in the night. He's being a big fool, for sure, but now that there's so few people left in the competition he just wants to keep himself alive.
That's all he wants.
And now it's the third day, and Norman is exhausted.
Two more gunshots have echoed through the air this morning, and he's a bit nervous about what that means. How many people were left, he had wondered while he stood still and tried not to breathe. How many competitors were going to have to die until one of them could leave?
He just wants it to be over by this point.
He looks yet again into the red pack, knowing that inside there will be nothing but wrappers and crumbs. He's eaten all of his food by this point, and there's only a few sips of water left in the water bottle. If the rest don't die by this point, he's going to starve before having a chance to fight.
He wonders which one would be worse.
Norman keeps walking, then comes to a crossroads in what must be the middle of the labyrinth. Every time he reaches a turn, he seems to get more worried about how it will impact him, how one wrong turn could lead to his death.
Who's even left in the competition? He knows that at least one of the three that he had spotted yesterday are around, they have to be unless a gunshot managed to escape his attention last night. Who else would be left? The tall, massive boy from Afrikka? The guy from the Baltic region, or the one from France? He has no grasp anymore on who's left, and he's imagined just the strongest competitors left in the competition.
But maybe, just maybe, they're all gone.
But as he ponders the possibility of someone like Caoimhe still being alive - he doesn't know how she fared in the first five minutes, and hasn't seen one trace of her in the competition - he hears the sound of rushing water.
Norman's legs are faster than his mind, propelling him away from the sound and towards the safer end of this section of the labyrinth. But for every turn he rounds, he hears more and more water, and soon he sees the first wave of water that's crashing into the labyrinth and flooding out the remaining competitors.
When he realizes that there's no point in running, he knows that there's only one way to not let himself get swept away by the wave. He's heard stories at home about those being caught in waves who died not because of drowning, but because of being smashed against the rocks that hid under the surface, so he holds onto the wall as best as he can and prays.
When the water hits him, his head is pressed against the stone wall and he simply tries not to die.
He can't breathe.
He can't breathe.
He can't breathe.
Until he surfaces and realizes that the labyrinth is being flooded out.
Yep.
Also, Karol finally made it up the wall :o I hope y'all noticed what I did with that but if not that is perfectly fine lololol
6th: Milena Kovac, Slavic Female; Killed by Karol Karski. Created by David12341.
Milena was one of the most determined competitors in the competition - the main reason that she lost was because of stress, very little sleep, and the fact that Karol was doing the absolute MOST to tear herself and Luka apart. Milena was strong, determined, cunning, and honestly a really good person who didn't get the chance to shine in the competition. If Luka hadn't been so stressed and naturally antagonistic to begin with, they might have had enough sense to get rid of Karol in the beginning and help them get into the final five - together. But Karol outplayed them, and he got rid of Milena first - a hard decision, but something that finally ended Milena's run. Thank you, David12341, for this lovely girl. Sorry about the spectacular implosion of the strongest alliance left D:
5th: Luka Novak, Slavic Male; Killed by Karol Karski. Created by David12341.
Luka was another guy who was just completely messed up by the competition - ever since the beginning, he had to deal with the fact that he had killed someone and the knowledge that he would have to do it again. It definitely messed with his psyche, making him more irritable and prickly than he was before. Luka's form had specified that he was a bit antagonistic - something that I pounced on as arc material as I re-planned the competition. Originally, he and Milena were in the running to make it to the very end, but then Karol had a lot of reworking for his arc and I went this way instead. I really enjoyed these two, and I'm going to miss their dynamic a lot. Thanks, David, for watching both of your children go out like this. I'm sorry ;-;
And we're in the final four! You'll be getting yet another short interlude tomorrow because I am horrible and want to let you know a few details, but then we'll find out who will win Et Vici Mundum! Are y'all excited? I am :D
Anyways, have fun! Read, share thoughts, everything I normally say. Y'all are awesome for accompanying me this far and I hope you'll be satisfied with the ending of EVM. Three more chapters to go!
Enjoy. Until next time, TheAmazingJAJ