The night of the bloodbath! This is basically an update chapter to show that these tributes are okay (or not okay, in...most cases... I am cruel to my characters). I used Write or Die on a couple POVs, and that was terrifying, pretty much. I got blocked in the middle of Forest's POV and had to start typing gibberish so the app would stop erasing my words.
Yes. But it all turned alright. I lost a paragraph though in the process of freaking out and losing all these words. I may not use the kamikaze mode again...
The next chapter should have some deaths. And will have either Carlyn or Krumr's POVs so we can all see who Krumr goes psycho on this time. Ahh, the loveliness of writing a psychopath.
Anyway - Announcement: I will now accept tributes for my next story. There will be forty-eight. Two males and two females of each district. There will be eight teams of six tributes, and whoever is alive from the winning team at the end will be allowed to go home as victor, so basically, there can be up to six victors. Use the tribute form on my profile (you don't have to, but I'd appreciate it if you would) and submit tributes to me over PM. I will not accept tributes submitted over reviews.
It's been a long time coming
Such a long, long time
And I can't stop running
Such a long, long time
Can you hear my heart beating?
Can you hear that sound?
'Cause I can't help thinking
And I won't stop now
"Gravity" by Coldplay
D9- 17- (Fiona Ryder)
"Sage."
It's midnight now. It's the next day. My heart is pounding and I need a drink, need a break, need anything that is not running. My head hurts, my feet hurt, my throat hurts. I want someone to tell me I can stop. I need someone to say that that is acceptable. I have done well. I am allowed a break. But no one except Sage is here to say that, and I don't think he will. Oh, my legs burn… My side aches, too, to add to this load of pain.
"Fiona," he responds. His voice is even, cool. I want to look over at him longingly. Want to give him a look that says Tell me I've done good. Let me stop. Oh please, oh please, Sage, oh please. But I don't. I hold back and run a bit more. He waits for me to say something else, not saying "What were you going to say?" or "Was that all?" He's very respectful. Very understand. That or very, very tired, like me.
"Break time?" I request hopefully. I see him out of the corner of my eye nodding, but I may just be picturing that out of this state of ache. I don't know how I've done it. My running has started to rhythmically chant Oh-please, oh-please, oh-please with each footstep. Oh please. Let it stop. He holds his hand out in front of me and I realize I've kept going. I didn't know to stop. His hand is bony and tan.
I look up at him as I stop. He's entirely tan and looks weak. It isn't just his hands that are bony; he is so bony everywhere, and lanky. His eyes are narrow and his chin pointed. His features are small; his arms are long. His eyes are the same dark brown as his shoulder-length, shaggy hair. Sage Birr is not a handsome man. I would not even consider him a man from the innocence in his eyes. Yet, he is an open, inviting person, and you can tell from just one glance. You want to speak to him. You want him to listen to you.
We have nothing to drink or eat on our break. Long, barren, open fields of endless nothingness stretch as for a while, but in the distance earlier when it was light enough to see, I saw the bluish tint of a forest's outline against the darkening sky. The ground below us ranges from cracked to barren to grassy to wet. We need a lake. I don't know if we'll find one before we dehydrate. We need sponsors. We need something that we cannot obtain in anything more than small increments: What Sage and I need is a whole load of hope.
D3- 17- (Forrest Montgomery)
I have to keep going. I can't stop at a cave or stop to look at a flower. I have chosen my course and I have decided that I must live, and so I will. I have to keep going. I have to.
There's not much for me to run to. There is the openness offered ahead of me and the death offered behind. I want to go back. I want to live in the heavenly Cornucopia. I want to go home. Openness or death, openness or death. What do I choose? Is either way a guaranteed death sentence? I can't go on forever. I'm so thirsty. I'm so tired. I'm so hungry. I want to go home. Openness or death, openness or death.
Each step I take makes a noise. "Open," one step says. "Ness," the next taunts. "Or," the third screams. "Death," the fourth mocks. Over and over. Openness or death. I want to yell at the sky and curse and scream and then curl up in a little ball, but I know that I can make it, so I can't stop. I gulp in air, but the amount of air I wanted to come in doesn't come in. I feel like I can't breathe, but my footsteps taunt me and I keep going. The chant in endless and it drives me insane. Openness or death. Openness or death.
It wouldn't be so bad if the openness weren't so ominous. I would otherwise welcome the hope it brings. The impossible hope in this bitter death trap. I tell myself to see it as an opportunity. I tell myself to stay strong and optimistic. I tell myself that all is good. All is fine. But my footsteps tell me otherwise. My head agrees with my running. This is scary. Go back. Go back. Go back. I know I can't though. No matter what, there is hope in forward. There is no hope in backward.
"Open." "Ness." "Or." "Death." I'm going insane.
Why did it have to be me? I wonder if all tributes have thought this before. Of course they have. How could they not? It's terrifying out here, knowing that every single one of the people in this place wants to kill me. Even sweet little Calypso, only fourteen, would just as easily stab me in the throat as she would go home. In fact, that's what it might take for her to go home: A knife in my throat. Could I put one in her throat? The worst part is, I think I could. Again: Why did it have to be me?
I finally just collapse in the emptiness. The emptiness is hilly and I think I'm safe from being spotted for the time being. I have to get to those woods. I have to get to water, to a resting area where I'm not always running. I try to make it stop, but my breath comes in ragged gasps and I feel like I might pass out. I didn't realize how much breath I needed.
What time is it, I wonder? I saw the faces in the sky earlier. One of them was Rylan.
It could have been me.
D2- 16- (Stone Zhunder)
We are leaderless. Without control, without someone to say to go here and tell the other to go there, and without someone to finalize any of our plans, we're not exactly lost, but we're definitely confused. How did Beck die? How could anyone overpower him? What are we to do? I think I'm the least-affected. Perhaps it's because I liked him the least.
"So…what about a vote?" Azaleigh suggests. She looks up at the sprawled-out lot of us. I sit in the mouth, eating an apple slowly. It's sweet and red—very red. "The people who don't want to be leader nominate two and we vote, maybe."
"Brilliant," Jackson says immediately. I resist the urge to groan and instead I overdramatically roll my eyes. Vixen catches this and elbows me, to which I send a sharp glare. "I don't want to be."
"Neither do I," pipes up Dante. His expression is amused. The humorless joke does not touch anyone else. We all stare at him blankly; because of course he would never be the leader. He is from District Six. What does he think—that we're stupid?
"I don't particularly," Adelina admits. She looks over at her sister, who opens her mouth to speak, but then doesn't.
Vixen shakes her head.
I don't like the idea. And taking pride in the fact that I am the only one who doesn't, taking pride in the fact that everyone else—even Gleam—seems to be running along merrily with this idea that we should be very wary of, I decide that I really must voice my opinion and change their minds. To make them aware of the flaws I can point out.
Actually, I just don't agree. And they're all idiots, so I'd like them to know that.
Pointed glances are thrown my way from all around the Cornucopia in my vision. I take a bite of my apple, of which I have eaten down to the core by now, and toss it backwards into the metal horn. The sun is going down, so it's not as ridiculously shiny as it was earlier in the day; shadows from the mountains are cast over it, which also help. I hear a thunk! as the apple hits metal.
"This is a stupid idea."
The others raise their eyebrows.
I shrug. "You can't decide who's—" I'm interrupted, the words the strongest by a simple vote falling away.
"So you don't want to be," Gleam snaps. "Who does that leave—Daphne and me?"
"I vote Daphne." This was Adelina. I expected nothing more.
"Gleam," Jackson votes.
"Gleam," Azaleigh agrees.
"Daphne." Vixen.
It's now up to me, as Dante doesn't get a vote. At first I refuse, and the others groan, saying I'm pathetically being overly difficult, but I shrug this insult off. We all pack up for hunting for tributes later tonight or this morning, but make no path. It's completely disorganized. I want to keep my stubbornness up, but when we're all unnecessarily packing too much food, too much everything—I cave.
"Gleam," I mumble with a short sigh. "I vote Gleam for the leader thing, alright?"
Daphne shrugs. I know she didn't want to be leader all that much, but Adelina wanted her to be. Adelina scowls for a moment before stomping off to her pack and going through the supplies. She's waiting for commands from Gleam as to what we need to bring. Gleam doesn't look smug but instead dark. She had liked Beck, I think, and must think she needs to do things as he would have done or something.
"Well, then. Well," she murmurs, close to me. She stands up and assesses all of us. "Daphne, you're leader. I'm not a strategist."
Daphne narrows her eyes thoughtfully. "You're stronger."
"I am. You're smarter. Slightly."
"Gleam—"
"As of now I am leader and I say you are!" The way Gleam snarls this is finalization: There is to be no more arguing and that is that. This is this. Daphne is the leader. No further questions are to be asked, no further ands, buts, or ors are to be uttered. She had decided this. I don't mind; I blurted her name out because she was the closest. Honestly, they're pretty equal, but Gleam is colder and Daphne has hints of occasional modesty.
"Fine, fine," Daphne says slowly, standing up at Gleam sinks to the ground. "Uh…to save space, we should each carry a pack with assigned materials, of course," she gets out with carefulness to each word. Adelina makes a motion with her hands that I don't understand, encouraging her sister apparently. "Yeah—so. The strongest…is probably Jackson or Dante. We ought to bring one or both of them. One or two of us has to stay behind or we have to somehow protect the supplies without a guard."
Of course no one volunteers. But Daphne takes action, and I don't like her plan, no matter how strategic it is. I don't want to be stuck back here with nothing to do during a hunt. I will not be stuck back here during a hunt, no matter what anyone says. That I will stick with. That I will stay by my stubbornness on. I won't cave.
"Well, then. Intervals it is," Daphne rationalizes. "It's sensible to take the strongest on the first night out. People will be expecting us. So…Gleam. Adelina. Jackson. Azaleigh." No, no, no. She has to say my name. I will strangle her if she sticks me on guard duty. "Dante…" One more name. She looks between Vixen and I tentatively. Me! It has to be me! "And…Stone. Sorry, Vixen. You won't mind staying back this time, will you?"
When Vixen shakes her head, she continues: "Next time will be Dante and Gleam. Keep an eye on him, yeah? Then Jackson, Azaleigh, Stone, Adelina, me, and…back to Vixen, if all works out well."
"Guard duty intervals," Dante groans, "with her?"
Gleam smirks evilly. "Don't worry, Six. You won't be here long enough to experience two turns."
"Let's get ready," Daphne says in the dimming twilight. "It's getting dark."
D9- 17- (Asher Lightwood)
We all have this humanistic survival instinct that rages in us like fire rages over a field of dry, dying grass in the hot, dry air of a drought, or the dry, waterless air of a bad winter. District Nine experiences both every once in a while, and I've seen both. I've seen a fire in one too; they were rare occurrences that I saw before I turned eleven. That fire was big and disastrous. It caused famine and poverty and pain to reside in our district for too long, too long, too long. When I was eight, just old enough to comprehend some of the worse things in my world, I would catch my mother whispering, "Too long, too long, too long, Archimedes." If I was looking, I would see my father's arms go around her as he kissed her head. "I know, Maya," he'd whisper back with a heavy sigh.
It scared me. My mother would even ask, "What about the kids? What if it lasts until they're older?"
District Nine was in a state of chaos for two years before we were able to farm again, the damage from the fire paid for through supplies and the drought long gone. I know now that that fire wasn't an accident, or the Capitol would've given us what we needed to thrive again as best we could and provide their grain much earlier. It was planned. A patch of dry grass, just big enough to rage through the fields; a matchbox conspicuously found nearby… Perhaps the Peacekeepers saw these things. Perhaps they reported it.
Beatrice was three when this happened. She needed to be fed. I did too, and my mother and father. I had started working in the fields when I was seven. When the first fire blistered, bruised, and burnt our district, I had to go out of my way to get to the other side of the district so I could still work, but this was hardly enough. The time spent getting to the other side after school was time and money wasted. My parents didn't want me to do this. They told me that I wouldn't work anymore until the fields near our house were mended when I was nine, and so I spent that year and my entire year at age ten sneaking off on the weekends when there was nothing else to do and Beatrice's four- and five-year-old gray eyes longed for nourishment.
Then when everything went back to normal, when the district finally gained a little compensation for the losses we experience in both lives and food, I worked again, and I have since, coming home late, exhausted and bruised, cut, blistered, like the fields of my youth years. All for feeding Beatrice, Jace, Ada, Mother, Father, and myself.
There was no other reason than to fuel my family and myself. And when Jace is twelve, he will do just as I did when I was seven: He will work until his hands are bloody and his mind is numb to feed them all. If I don't come back. If I come back, I will feed them still. Mother and Father will still work, but not as much. I do not care entirely for the Lightwoods; I help my parents care for all of us. I couldn't do it alone. I take a lot of tesserae, and I work a lot, but it wouldn't be enough without them.
To my dismay, I realize that Beatrice, if I die, will take loads of tesserae as well.
However, the way that all of this relates to the Games is not my working but the fire. It blazes and tears through wherever it touches, and as humans, survival is our fire. We become animals. We blaze and our worlds burn and our minds ache as we dream of the future when death isn't knocking at our door. One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. And still we don't go to the door.
"Asher?" Aeris whispers from farther into the cave we've chosen to hide at for a while. It's at the farthest mountain from the Cornucopia, and a valley dips down off to the side of our cave's entrance. The cave isn't perfectly hidden to someone who is looking, but it's ominous and innocent at once, and the roaring waters of the valley below almost sent us away from it, but Aeris thought that that would be perfect: If the fast waters below, useless to tributes basically because they race so quickly and dangerously, scare us, it might fend of others too. We can work out a way to get water later.
"Yeah?" I respond in a hushed voice, scooting away from my perch at the edge of the cave, looking out at what part of the arena I can see. It's raining over the grassy field. The grass is dead and brown instead of a vibrant green like it is a ways off, on the other side of the Cornucopia. This is a big arena, but there are extra tributes, so I guess it makes sense. It's strategic to make these Games epic, as most things are. The Gamemakers have to put up a show for the Capitolites.
"I'm up," she says.
I look back at her with a small smile and stand up, walking so I'm across from her. I can see her in the faint light that the moon gives off and sends into our cave. If the cave is big enough, we can build a fire farther in and cook whatever animals we can find and kill on this mountain and the area around it. Surely things live in the area of the valley where the river doesn't reach, or up in the higher elevations of the mountain.
"Obviously," I reply.
She nods. Her dark, messy hair bobs in its ponytail. She takes the hair tie out and redoes her ruined hairstyle.
"Are you taking watch?" she asks. "I thought we agreed we weren't going to have a watch system."
I shrug. "I woke up earlier and it was still bright from the moon so I went to the edge."
"Fair enough."
I pull her backpack close to me and unzip it. I look in and pull out a curved-edge object: a scythe. I look up at her questioningly. She just stares at the scythe in my hand. I hold it in my hand like I would if I were working in Nine, the familiarity of the object fitting to my hand. My hand curls around its edge and I grip it. This is the weapon I wanted but couldn't get, frantic from not being able to find Aeris and the bloodbath raging around me.
"You got this for me?" I ask.
"Well, I don't want it. I'm going to use my knife."
"And your bow," I add.
Aeris shrugs indifferently. "And my bow," she agrees, "for long-distance fighting."
"We have to get one for you," I say. She wasn't able to get a bow and neither was I. She was so brave anyway, diving into the fight for her backpack and her knife and my scythe apparently. I scooped up a package of dried fruit, a water bottle, a small backpack, and then ran around wildly, completely terrified and unprepared for the horror brought by the bloodbath.
She shrugs again. "I would like it if we did, but the occasion would have to show itself, you know."
I nod. I knew. Being so close to the Cornucopia, though, we should find the occasion somehow.
"So…"
"So thanks." I look down at the scythe again before shoving it into my backpack that I've sat next to. I run my hand along the cold, hard rock floor. "I appreciate this."
D10- 16- (Leo Rivers)
To put one foot in front of the other is my only goal.
Go! Go! Get away! The Careers are coming!
Chants rampage through my mind and I have to do what they say because it's all I can possibly think of doing. Go. Run away. Fast. Faster. They must be coming. They must be gaining. I'm in danger. I can't think but to think of the obvious danger inevitably sprinting after me. "Leo!" they call from far, far behind, coming closer and closer and closer… "We're coming!"
I turn around and I can see them. I turn back and run as fast as I can. When I check behind me, they're closer. Run. Check. Closer. Run. Check. Closer. Run. Check. They're right behind me!
Oh God, oh no, oh God.
Something knocks me down, and I curl up, away from the weapon, but there it is, coming downwards, downwards, downwards. "No!" I cry. "No, please!"
The weapon is millimeters away…
I shriek as I wake up.
Sitting up as fast as I can, my hand goes over my mouth. Where did I fall asleep? My mind is swirly and confused. Light dimly throws itself at the ground as the sun rises. I rise too. I'm in a bush. Or, really, I'm next to a bush that doesn't conceal me at all. How tired was I last night? How long was I running? My head aches and my legs are sorer than they've ever been in my whole life. I let out a long groan and stifle another shriek as pain surfaces and plants its deep roots into my red leg.
"Ohhhhh…" I let out an involuntary moan. "No, no, nooooo…"
I fumble around for something before remembering I got nothing at the bloodbath. I let out another groan. I'm doomed. "No…" I can't think. I want to throw up. I think back to the horror of training and throwing up then and that now seems like nothing in comparison. I feel lightheaded. I ran on my bad leg for apparently quite a ways yesterday. The mountain I remember passing before everything went fuzzy seems a fair distance away, but I could be imagining that. Blood is pooled in the grass I lay on. A welcoming tree is nearby. Many are, in fact, splattered across the plain with no pattern. I want to climb up in it and let nature take its course but I wouldn't make it. Weaponless, injured, helpless, waterless, and foodless, I'm more than doomed. My jaw hurts. I don't know why.
"Unhhhh…"
I prefer my quick, though painful, death in the dream to this long, agonizing death to come. The sun mocks me. It is coming to life, while I fade to death.
D8- 13- (Alicia Ludwig)
Alicia can't see far. Everything's all blurry and she's not walking in a straight line. After a while, she realizes she's tired. Hungry. Thirsty. Her head aches and her stomach gurgles; there is a sharp burning sensation roaring in her arm that she doesn't understand. Her mouth is dry. She blinks. No pretty flowers. She thought there would be pretty flowers. Isn't she wandering through a meadow? What's going on? Where is her mother and father?
She drops to the ground and sobs because she doesn't understand. She fumbles around with her hair, which is straightened, brushed, combed, cleaned, cut, and smooth. It was in such a state before that the stylists had to completely redo it. They washed it several times, they brushed it until the tangles were mostly gone and she was crying, but it was so ratty and messy that they had to cut it and style it. They gave her bangs that swept to the side but wouldn't get in her face.
The ground is nothing but brown dirt, a lighter brown than her silky hair. She pulls a strand of her once shoulder-length and now chin-length brown hair as far as she can get it and looks at it. Why did they do all of that to her hair before? It made her head ache all over for so long, and they did absolutely nothing to it as she saw things. She always saw it as the pretty softness it was in reality now, instead of its tangled heap of brown that it was before.
Her crying had stopped as her mind wandered to her hair, away from the pain. She used her good arm to examine her hair, running her hands over it and over it. Her other arm rose to her head to and Alicia yelped. Pain! There was the pain again! Oh, what was that? she wondered. Why wasn't her mouth nice and wet like it always had been? Why was her arm all red with blood that flowed from it? Why did it hurt to move her arm?
She sobbed again, crying out as she sunk to the ground on her good arm. Gibberish that only she understood flowed through her sobs. There was no one to explode off onto, so she was left confused in her sparkly glitter world, not understanding what all of this was: the pain, the hunger, the thirst. Why, why, why? It wouldn't stop; none of it would stop.
Alicia Ludwig, broken by the Capitol's greed, was waking up, and consciousness was painful.
Tributes whose names are in bold are alive:
D1- (Luxuries)
1. Gleam Diode, 18, female. Megalor9
2. Adelina Summerfield, 17, female. CapitolRules
3. Daphne Summerfield, 17, female. CapitolRules
D2- (Masonry)
1. Azaleigh Rommel, 16, female. Araka-chan
2. Beck Ferrari, 18, male. WhyNotDream
3. Stonesia "Stone" Zhunder, 16, female. XOXOFutureFame
D3- (Technology)
1. Forrest Montgomery, 17, WhyNotDream
2. Calypso Oswald, 14, female. WhyNotDream
3. Rylan "Ry" Ashmore, 14, male. the epic bookworm
D4- (Fishing)
1. Vixen Payne, 17, female. jblonde123
2. Nelly Carter, 13, female. Bowserboy129
3. Jackson Brothel, 17, male. Araka-chan
D5- (Power)
1. Anya Saitov, 18, female. the epic bookworm
2. Allegra Ride, 12, female. WhyNotDream
3. Tenne Bradhe, 18, male. BlueYoshGuy
D6- (Transportation)
1. Dante Kyanide, 17, male. Megalor9
2. Cade Allens, 17, male. bijtjen
3. Phoenix Grant, 18, male. the epic bookworm
D7- (Lumber)
1. Decon Crow, 17, male. Bowserboy129
2. Jaelyn "Jae" Nicole Analetto, 15, female. SpunkyFun
3. Damien Andrews, 16, male. Jammerock2000
D8- (Textiles)
1. Damon Grey, 18, male. sportygirl123
2. Dan Axton, 17, male. Jammerock2000
3. Alicia Ludwig, 13, female. the epic bookworm
D9- (Grain)
1. Asher Lightwood, 17, male. Rikachan101
2. Aeris Lockhart, 15, female. Rikachan101
3. Fiona Ryder, 17, female. sportygirl123
D10- (Livestock)
1. Nick DiLaurnetis, 16, male. CallingMeFakeWontMakeYouReal
2. Jak Crenshaw, 17, male. Jammerock2000
3. Leo Rivers, 16, male. WhyNotDream
D11- (Agriculture)
1. Skylar Mitchell, 14, female. Jammerock2000
2. Kayla Baker, 16, female. Jammerock2000
3. Sage Birr, 17, male. the epic bookworm
D12- (Mining)
1. Krumr Strongthews, 18, male. CapitolRules
2. Carlyn Hansen, 17, female. CapitolRules
3. Astrid Levine, 15/16, female. CallingMeFakeWontMakeYouReal