+ Thanks again to Dancing-Souls for the review, and to the new faves/follows! Violence follows. Because Hunger Games.
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No more bodies lay before me. Only the burnt-out coals of the fire amid the black sand remained, the latter too dark to reveal the blood that stained it. The night watched above for my next move.
My stomach twinged. I knew it was from more than just hunger as I clenched my teeth and clamped my hand over my gut. The revulsion of seeing Acheron's fingers twitching as the boy's life spurted from his throat lingered. Squirk! I could still hear the blood sloshing in my ear when I closed my eyes.
It wasn't supposed to have felt that way. I remembered watching the Games year after year back home: Sure, the deaths were gruesome. The faces of the dying kids were always horrific. The blood disgusted me. But even killing the boy from District 7 and Glenn hadn't felt like a crime. One had struck first while the other had asked for death, a kind of mercy I hadn't understood until this arena had swallowed me up. Now, however, I could no longer defend my actions.
A strong, hot breeze dusted me with sand as I rose to my feet. I still had a job to do, and out there in the dead city, someone, one last survivor of this madness, waited for me. He could've been anyone – the remaining kid from District 1, maybe – but I couldn't wait here forever. Moping around would bring down the Gamesmakers' wrath upon me: With two tributes left, they'd want a tidy conclusion to their fun.
I couldn't take my dagger with me, however. It was stained, tainted. I felt putrid even holding it, and I threw it away into the desert without a second's hesitation. Delfin had left me a much better weapon, anyway. His spear still lay in the sand, and although it felt strange in my hands when I picked it up and curled my fingers around its steel shaft, its sharp, long blade and light weight made me feel something else, something strange and alien in the lurching darkness, yet energizing and welcome for what I knew came next. I felt powerful.
The thoughts tilted my mind back and forth as I headed off back into the city, taking with me nothing but Delfin's polearm. Killer, vanquisher, survivor. I was one of those and all of those, and through the darkness of the weight of my bloody path emerged a pinprick of strength. Was this what it was to be a victor? To hate and love the two sides of yourself until you went crazy from cognitive dissonance?
Something roared. I started and backed against the wall of a collapsed stone tower, holding the spear out in front of me and breathing hard. This walk to destiny had me on edge.
Boom. Thunder, not a cannon. The Gamesmakers wouldn't let their arena end with a slipshod death now.
The city looked a shade darker as I hiked towards a red glow in the distance, a place where I guessed the Gamesmakers' finale waited for me. Lightning flashed less often, and only the faint green glow from clusters of the hallucinogenic spores I'd encountered twice now gave much light beyond the arena's shadowy ambiance. The jagged ruins looked ready to strike out from every dark alleyway. Loose stones and blocks lurked on the street, ready to trip me and sprain an ankle. Even the air itself teased me with the sound of scurrying feet on the pavement.
Fur brushed my leg.
Dozens of rats hurried between and around my feet, scampering down the road as if fire raged behind them. The sight of them alone raised goosebumps down my neck. Rats. I'd run into them before, too, and I knew what followed.
I threw away all notions of caution. The memory of a knife sticking out of Ember's chest and the black pit made me sprint down the street, ignoring the rubble and rocks in an effort to rush as fast as I could towards the Gamesmakers' glow. The streets blended together from one cobblestone road to the next. The granite buildings I ran past looked familiar somehow, but my aching lungs and the fear in my mind overrode any recognition.
Fear caught up with me too soon.
I rushed around a bend only to stumble into a dead end. Towers and longhouses surrounded me on both sides and in front, and except for a narrow, glowing slit between two buildings before me, I couldn't see a way out. I turned around to backtrack. From down the road I'd come, he stared.
The mutt. The ghoul. Whatever it was, the thing that had killed Ember and nearly killed me – twice – cut off my escape route. Its inky maw of a mouth spoke silently of death. Its two pinprick white eyes glared at me with an animal rage.
I wasn't going that way.
A greenish glow grew in the slit in front of me as I sprinted towards it and slipped inside. It grew stronger and brighter down a low, sloping hill – and as I hurried down, a brief moment of realization broke through the panic flooding my mind. I had been here before. Horror lurked below just as it lurked behind.
But something else was down here, too.
The mutt behind me howled as I wound my way down the path. I'd lost sight of it despite numerous glances over my shoulder, but I doubted it would let me go that soon. A rock tripped me up as I ran. I stumbled, fell, and landed with both hands in front of me into cold, black, ankle-deep water. The spores thickened down here, more so than when Delfin, Tethys, and I had fought through the dark, and after just a minute stumbling about I felt woozy.
Another roar. I had to find an escape route fast.
I couldn't see more than two feet in front of me between the black and the spores. I coughed and spat up phlegm, holding up the fabric of my shirt over my mouth to breathe easier as I floundered about. Something splashed off to my left, and far ahead I heard the sound of grating metal. I rubbed my eyes to clear the fog from my vision and held back the urge to cough again. Don't let it hear you, Terra. Be quiet!
Shhhhang! I squinted my eyes at the sound of grating, as if someone where running a stone over a piece of metal. Dammit. I shook my head to clear my mind. I couldn't afford to get confused again down here. One dreamy hallucination would lead me right into my death.
"Is that what you really think?"
I stopped, stunned. I recognized that voice. In a glow of spores up ahead, someone sat cross-legged on a long, flat rock, running a whetstone over the edge of a short sword. Shhhhang! It was just a hallucination. It's just a hallucination, Terra. Terra, come on. Terra!
The man pitched his stone aside, raised his sword to eye level, and looked up. Amid the fog of spores, Daud smiled at me.
"Still got any misconceptions about this place?" he said, running a hand over his sword. Blood trickled down his bare arm. "No shiny towers and pretty dresses anymore. Just Templesmith serenading your kills to the sound of applause."
A howl in the darkness behind me drew my attention away for a moment, but Daud – the hallucination, the whatever – brought it back with a slap of his sword against the rock. Clang!
"So why don't you tell me something, girl, killer to killer," he said. "How does being a victor feel?"
I didn't get time to come up with an answer. A vise clamped down on my shoulder from behind and a catapult hurled me into the darkness. Whatever I was hallucinating broke apart as I slammed into the water, the wind knocked from my lungs and my spear flying off to my left. I gasped and lurched for my weapon, groping through the black until a hand clamped around my neck.
It had found me. I squirmed and writhed as the mutt lifted me off my feet. Pain exploded around my neck. Black skin and a yawning void of a mouth confronted me. My ears rang, and over them I heard only my tiny, frantic attempts to breathe. I struck out with my hand in a desperate attempt to push away the mutt. My fist connected against an immovable object with steel for skin and boulders for muscle.
I didn't see my life flash before my eyes. I didn't see anything but the darkness. I only smelled something oily, something foul.
The grip around my neck slackened suddenly. The mutt lurched, and its tiny white eyes widened in something approaching surprise. I fell from its grip into the water, choking and sputtering.
The mutt had more to worry about than just me.
A pale trunk had wrapped itself around its right leg. Goo oozed down the mutt's calf as it howled and slammed its fist into the tentacle, freeing itself for a moment before another visitor screeched in the void. A trio of needle-lined tentacles arrived in its place, lashing out and snaring my attacker around its waist and shoulders. The mutt struggled as the tentacles pulled it into the darkness little by little, and I took my chance. Let's go, Terra.
Off in the distance, a cluster of spores glowed brightly – and veered up. Up. Escape! I splashed my way through the water until I found my spear lying in the muck and hurried away, the cacophony of a vicious struggle behind me urging me on, faster and faster. Ahead, the ground tilted up just so slightly.
Behind me, my attacker had lost. Amid a swarm of greasy pale tendrils, a trio of petal-like flanges had closed around the mutt's head. The water monster that I'd run into twice before dragged the mutt away to the sound of muffled whimpering.
My neck throbbed as I stumbled higher and higher up the hill. Can being a victor feel any worse?
A flash of lightning shined through a slit ahead of me after a minute. But this exit wasn't the same place I'd entered: Rather than dark and full of crumbling ruins, I shuffled out into an avenue lined with color. Flickering torches hung from the sides of buildings in much better shape than the rubble I'd left behind. White limestone walls overlooked a street paved with pale red brick. I nearly fell over when I saw something along the side of the road that I figured I may never see again: A flower. All by itself, a lone purple blossom shined in the torchlight.
Ahead, sandstone columns reached high into the sky, supporting an arch bathed in bright yellow light. I gripped my spear tighter and lumbered forward. This was all out of place. None of this, the light, the color, the flower, none of it felt right in this arena that had confronted me with only blow after blow after blow so far.
A grand sight awaited me just after the archway. A half circle of stone-cut seats rose up in two decks before me, like some sort of ancient amphitheater missing its crowd. A towering edifice rose up around and behind me, with more columns arranged in a single row stretching out in both directions. Sand, not the black sand of the desert but red sand that reminded me of home, covered a small stage between the archway and the seats.
It wasn't the whole arrangement that surprised the most, however. It was who sat cross-legged at the base of the seats, digging small pits into the sand with his feet, that amazed me. It wasn't anyone from District 1 who had survived this long. It was the last person I suspected would make it this far.
I'd seen this boy before. I remembered the first thing I'd thought about him: Skinny, worried, and like me, I bet the odds are against him. It was the boy from District 3.
Forget about surviving; he didn't even look worse for wear. He was still skinny, but he didn't look half as dirty as I felt with my hair covered in the muck from the catacombs. His cheeks looked hollow, but he didn't look half as anxious as he had that first day of training. My heart sank as I saw he cradled a short sword in one hand. Yet unlike every weapon I'd carried so far – including Delfin's spear that I now clung to as if it would fly away at a moment's notice – his blade was clean.
He looked up as I walked in, but he didn't get up. All he did was say, "Hey."
I dug the butt of my spear into the sand and held my ground a few dozen feet away. What was I supposed to say to him? "Did you wait a while?"
"Not that long," he said with a shrug. "I had to hike here. Fancy place they want us to kill each other at."
I pulled up my spear and held it out, but he only smirked at me. "You really are getting eager about this whole killing thing," he said. "I'd be, what, number three for you, Terra? Or did you kill anyone before you teamed up with Ember?"
"How the hell do you know my name? Or Ember's?"
"Give me a break. I knew everyone's names. I saw what you were doing back in training, looking around and all. Watching people. You think you were the only one of us who figured we had better odds getting to know what everyone else did rather than stabbing others? By the looks of things, you just didn't know what you were good at."
He stood up and kicked sand over the pits he'd dug. "You make a lot of noise. So did everyone else. There were a couple times where I thought you'd find me, though – or at least the others you were with. Back when you and Ember were walking around the outskirts? I watched you two. He found that wrapper I'd thrown away a bit carelessly, but you two were just talking so much that you didn't even bother to look for me. I'd been scrounging off of what the two from 1 were throwing away, but I followed you two for a bit. Saw whatever the hell that thing was throw a knife into Ember's chest. Ouch. Poor kid. Seemed like a good guy."
"I bet you really care."
"More than you, I'm guessing. Nice way to kill Glenn, by the way. You just broke his head like that. I mean, ugh."
"How long were you following me?"
"Not that long. After the thing took you I ran away and started tracking Acheron. He left a trail too: Food scraps, pieces of trash, whatever. I used 'em. Guy was noisy and he never noticed me. I did think your two new buddies from 4 would get me, though," said the boy from 3 with a grimace. "My mentors parachuted in some food while I was watching you look after Tethys. Delfin, the guy from 4? Yeah, he was sniffing around when he heard that. Close shave."
I swallowed hard. The image of Tethys whimpering on the ground flashed in front of me alongside Delfin keeping watch, his face angry and depressed at the same time. I remembered Delfin snarling at me to be quiet, hunting around outside our camp right before all hell had broken loose. This kid had followed all of us that quietly and had never tried to kill us?
I frowned. "Why'd you just watch everyone, then?"
"You really aren't that bright," he scoffed. "I didn't even have to do anything but stay quiet. You bumbled about like cow, getting into all sorts of trouble. All of you did. In this place? Dumb. It's dark, bad things are prowling around. Like I was really gonna hoof it and take on the elements."
Heat rose in my face. I didn't like being called stupid by this kid. He was the last one standing in my way. I wanted to go home, and here he was mocking me. "At least I was brave enough to do it," I spat.
"Does that make you mad?" he said. His face was the coolest thing I'd seen in the arena. "Bad idea on my part, I guess. You're probably gonna stab me in my sleep next."
"Acheron wasn't asleep when that happened?"
"'When that happened.' Nice phrasing. It shifts the blame away from you."
"I didn't have a choice!"
"Sure you did. I haven't killed anyone, Terra. My hands are clean. I'm still innocent. You're the monster here."
Anger welled up in my head. He was giving me reason to kill him. I could do it. I didn't have a choice now either, really. I had to do it.
"Are we gonna fight then, or what?" I asked.
"You'd like that, huh?" he said. "Y'know, back home in 3, we have a lot of replays of the old Games on TV. I've watched a bundle. I remember watching back a re-run of the 71st Games, and winner of that one…damn, she just looked like such a coward through the first half of everything. Then she came out halfway through the arena and started murdering everything. Johanna, that was her name. Johanna Mason. You remind me a bit of her, except you actually believe you're still doing the right thing."
He glanced down at his sword and sighed. "But y'know, I do want to go home. I have people I care about. I swore stepping in here that I wouldn't kill anyone, but given what I've seen you do…I'm just gonna swallow my pride this one time. Bet you don't know how to use that spear."
I bit my lip. "Bet you don't know how to use that sword, either."
"You're right. Let's play."
I lowered my stance, held out my spear, and moved in on him. He really didn't know how to wield that sword: The boy from 3 twisted it in one hand, keeping the other behind his back as I crept closer. I could probably knock it away and finish this quickly.
When I moved just outside of my spear's range, however, he flung his hand forward and threw a cloud of sand at my eyes. I stumbled back, rubbing at them frantically and coughing. I raised my spear just in time to block a wide, wild swipe with his sword.
Clang!
I jumped back and squared off. His eyes weren't so clear now. A pale shade of anxiety crossed his face. Fighting was uncharted territory for this boy. He couldn't just watch me anymore.
Clang! I stabbed at him with my spear and missed as he dodged aside by inches. The boy swung at me in an overhead arc. I ducked and hit his knee with the back of my spear. He grunted, spun, and blocked my spearhead just as I aimed for a killing blow at his chest.
We danced back and forth in a bumbling, slashing waltz with death. It was probably an eyesore for the audience after Delfin and Acheron's fight, but I panted as I stepped in and out of the boy's range as I tried to hit him. I swept my spear along the ground at his feet, and he just narrowly jumped over my blade, the metal clipping the very edge of his boots.
He swung again, and I countered. This time though, rather than rearing back on defense, he lurched forward and grabbed my spear shaft with one hand. I tugged at it back, but as he swung his sword with his free hand, I let go and jumped back.
Just like that he'd disarmed me. The boy tossed aside my spear and advanced with his sword, his eyes reddening with bloody lines. My heart throbbed.
"I can see how you got used to this," he huffed. "But I wanna go home. Sorry."
He pulled back his sword for a killing blow. In a moment of idiotic bravery, I rushed at him and tackled him around his chest, driving both of us to the ground. The boy lost control of his sword. It clattered out of reach against a column behind us.
We both froze for a split second. He moved first, jumping to his feet and kicking my square in the gut. I oomphed in pain, winced, and swung wildly. My fist connected with something fleshy. The boy staggered back, clutching his groin with both hands and biting his lip.
In that moment I spotted a loose stone to my left. As I reached over to pick it up, however, the boy landed back on top of me, holding one arm down while punching my neck with the other. I coughed and reacted just in time as he drove his thumb down towards my eye.
It wasn't a moment too soon. I held his wrist with my free hand as he struggled to drive it forward. He strained. Veins bulged on his forehead. Panic surged through me as I felt him winning the battle. Little by little, the skinny boy from 3 overpowered me.
Instinct took over. I drove my knee into his stomach and turned my head at the last second. He grunted and fell on top of me, giving me just the time to reach out the extra inch and grab the stone.
Wham!
I smashed it straight into his temple. He cried in pain and staggered to his feet, but I wasn't going to let him go. Anger surged through my veins. It was more than anger. It was hatred.
Wham!
I screamed and slammed the rock into his head again, driving him to the ground.
Wham!
Another blow. Another scream. Another cry of pain.
Wham!
I howled like a crazed banshee as I hit him again and again. He rolled over onto his side, blood streaming down his temple, his arms shaking, his body quivering. I barely saw it. Rage tinted everything.
Wham!
I struck him one last time. My last opponent lay still.
Boom!
I didn't comprehend what the cannon meant at first. The boy's dead body didn't make me retch and cry like with Glenn and Acheron and the boy from 7. He had dared me to attack him, and I had. Justified? I felt more than justified by this. I felt stronger than I ever had in this arena.
It took Cicero Templesmith's voice calling out across the arena to drown out the rushing in my ears. A light shined in the darkness of the sky, and a sleek silver wedge, a hovercraft, cut through the clouds. Then it hit me. I had done more than satisfy my anger.
I'd won.
I pitched aside my bloody rock and looked one more time at the boy's body. Maybe he hadn't meant what he'd said. Maybe I'd regret this later, but I didn't have room for regret now. My neck throbbed in pain and my stomach ached, but I was going home. I could leave this all behind.
Consequences be damned.