Chapter 29
Coordinates N 7, W 12, Sector 9
Artemis knew she was a coward. A complete, stupid, yet extremely intelligent, coward. After realizing what she had forgotten, she had chosen to continue her path back to camp. Just because she was too afraid to stand up to Caius after what had come between both of them. But you don't care about him, a dark voice said in her mind as she lay on the ground, curled up in her sleeping bag amidst the bodies of her allies. What's it to you if he dies?
And, to her private horror, she found that she did not have an answer to this. She didn't know what would happen if someone else died in the Games that she had failed to prevent.
Then she found it. The answer. If Caius died, at her hands or anyone else's, it would be her fault. The reason that fourteen children were dead was because she, Artemis, was so careless and let the only hope of their survival slip out of her grasp. She didn't think she could live with it. If any others died, she feared that she might go insane. But she couldn't bear going back to him, either. Maybe it was that long-dormant self-consciousness kicking in, or something.
She didn't think she slept. It didn't feel like it, but the next thing she knew she could hear the rustling of fabric across her camp. The sun had not risen yet, but through the leaves of the trees above Artemis could see rosy streaks of daylight spanning the blue sky. Iris was getting up already, putting on her jacket and slinging her bow and sheath of arrows over her shoulder in preparal for her morning hunt. She looked up as she was tightening her bootlaces to see Artemis, propped up by her elbow but not yet up. Artemis smiled sadly at the eleven-year-old girl, and gave her a small shooing movement. She mouthed a single word to Iris as the tiny huntress left the camp: careful. Iris nodded in understanding, and then left with her strung bow in her hands.
Artemis's stomach growled, and she got up as silently as she could. Hopping over her sleeping allies' bodies, she made her way over to the fallen tree under which they kept their backpacks. She reached under for the green one, which she knew held food, but froze when something tickled her hand. Heart pounding, Artemis drew out her hand. The remains of a spiderweb dangled down from her fingers, and hurriedly Artemis brushed it off as she tried to suppress a scream.
But when she saw the spider crawling up her arm, she abandoned all attempts of silence.
Petronius was up instantly, drawing his sword and nearly cleaving Artemis in half, who was running around shrieking at the top of her lungs, "GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!"
Cornelius also screamed, but for different reasons. His face had just been stepped on, or rather, tripped over, by a panicking child genius, and unfortunately for him, he had not been wearing his signature helmet. Artemis did not seem to care, as she was trying to get… something off her body. Then, apparently successful, she lifted her foot and stomped on whatever it was. Then she lifted her foot and stomped again. And again, and again and again and again…
A flash of movement caught her eye, and she looked back over to the log from where the spider had come. Another was skittering out from under its shady hideaway, and towards the four –– and now that Iris had heard Artemis's screams and rejoined them, five –– allies. Artemis shrieked again and dashed to Petronius, scrambling up his body with impossible speed and locking her arms and legs around his neck and body. "S –– s –– s…SPIDER!"
"Artemis?" inquired Iris cynically. "Are you okay?"
"Ow, my face," grumbled Cornelius.
"SPIDER!" Artemis squealed again, wrapping her arms around Petronius even tighter. She wasn't very heavy, but she had a surprisingly strong grip. Petronius gasped from the constricting hold around his neck.
"Oh, relax," said Romulus, rolling his eyes. He stepped forward, lifted his boot, and squashed the small black menace. Its body was about as big as his thumbnail, he noticed when he took his foot away, and it had a strange, thin red stripe down its back… where had he seen something like that before? "It's just a spider," the twelve-year-old said, turning to the wide-eyed and still off the ground Artemis. She didn't move, only whimpered once.
"Artemis," inquired Petronius dryly, "do you happen to be arachnophobic, by any chance?"
Artemis whimpered again, and nodded quickly.
"Then stay on Petronius's head," advised Romulus, lifting his boot to squash another spider, which had dared venture out into the open. But it dodged his foot with surprising speed, leapt off the ground, crawled up his leg, stopped near his thigh, and bit down through the fabric of his pants. Neither the spectators nor the victim had eyes quick enough to follow all of this, but they knew what had happened when Romulus yelped in pain, swatted the spider away, and then collapsed on the ground.
Iris, ever the healer, rushed to his side. She whipped out a knife and sliced away the fabric covering the bite, but gasped when she saw it –– where the spider had bitten was a tiny black spot the size of a pinhead, and spreading from that spot were deadly black veins running up his leg with alarming speed. Iris was the only one to see his unblinking, glittering blue eyes as they stared up at the sky, and the only one to hear the single, whispered word that escaped his lips: "Lystria…"
Then those glittering blue eyes glassed over, a cannon fired, and Romulus Darius Crown was no more.
But they had little time to mourn –– from underneath the log, from where the first three spiders had come, trickled a few more, and all with the same red stripe down their abdomens. Iris, now wary, leapt up. "Run," she said as the trickle turned into a stream, then a flood. "RUN!"
The three other tributes, or rather, two seeing as Artemis still had a death grip on Petronius, did not disobey. All around them, it seemed as if the very trees themselves seemed to shed the small but numerous arachnids, which scuttled after them with speed only possible with the hands of Gamemakers guiding them. "Come on! Keep up!" shouted Iris, who was clearly the fastest runner, to Petronius, who was lagging behind and in danger of being overtaken.
"If you haven't noticed," shouted Petronius as he tried sprinting as fast as he could, "I have a fourteen-year-old girl on my back! Exactly how much do you weigh, Artemis?"
Artemis managed to squeak out, "Forty three kilos." *
Petronius wasn't buying it.
"All right, forty eight! What's it to you?" **
"I can't carry you for too much longer. Do you think you can run?"
She looked over her shoulder at the black wave of spiders that was sweeping towards them. "If it'll make us go faster," she whimpered, "yes."
"Here, I'll set you –– " Petronius tried to offer, but Artemis was already at work. She released him unexpectedly and dropped to the ground, dangerously close to the front line of spiders. "Artemis!" shouted Petronius, but no one saw the matches in her hand or the flint in the other until she threw the former down on the dry, dead leaves and leapt away from the flames that sprang up.
"Bought us a few seconds' head start!" she shouted as she sprinted after her allies, her irrational fear of spiders driving her to a speed she didn't know she had. "Keep going!"
"Where?" asked Petronius.
"Elites' camp!"
"What?" screamed Iris. "But –– "
"They can't kill us all at once. Romulus was just the example. If all nine survivors are together, they'll have to stop the muttattions so that they don't kill us all at once and ruin the suspense." She risked a glance over her shoulder. The fires she had started were now far in the distance, but they had only hindered the pursuing arachnids for a few moments. "Now RUN!"
This command was rather unnecessary, seeing as they were already running. Petronius had the folly to point this out, but fortunately for him Artemis was in no mood, condition, or circumstance to dole out her usual tirade addressing his stupidity. All she had time to say was, "Run faster!"
And so they did. They broke through the front line of trees and into the clearing in the center of which rested the giant silver Cornucopia, also in which the four very confused-looking Elites were pointing weapons at the running tributes. Cynthia prepared to loose an arrow in Artemis's direction, but Julius held out his hand in a silent command for her to stop.
Iris was the first to reach the four Elites, and she skidded to a stop in front of Julius. "What in blazes are you doing here?" snarled Julius, grabbing the tiny girl's arm and spinning her around to face him.
She looked up –– way up, seeing as Julius was two feet taller than her –– and replied in a matter-of-fact voice, "Saving your lives."
The other three of the alliance halted in front of the Elites and swerved around to face the oncoming wave of spiders. They hadn't stopped coming, and now it seemed as if they and the Cornucopia were locked inside a perfect circle of green, surrounded by black. "What did you do?" yelled Julius to Artemis, the closest to him and, though she was young and small, clearly the leader of the alliance.
Artemis glared at her fellow tribute. "I did nothing," she snapped. "At least, not purposely. This is what I meant by the final meal before the execution," and this part was directed to not only Julius but the other tributes as well. "They plan to kill most of us, and leave two or three to fight in the end. But if we are all in one place it will be hard for them to pick us off separately and leave certain ones alive."
"What if they do plan to kill us all here? Huh?"
Artemis only inclined her chin, an action that with anyone else of similar stature would have just made them look even shorter in comparison to the hulking teen, but with her radiated an aura of domineer and control. "Then we all die here, and Caius wins. Unless he is already dead."
Before them, the front line of muttattion spiders advanced. They were barely five meters away now… no, four! As the arachnids drew closer, the eight tributes shrank back, cornered against the Cornucopia and with nowhere to run. Their predators showed no sign of slowing. In Artemis's panicked mind her percentages were staggering: 2% chance of sponsor intervention, 5% chance of Gamemaker intervention, 93% chance of death…
She didn't calculate the microscopic chance that at the last moment, the arachnids would freeze, and that a certain dark-haired boy would walk out of the forest.
Because that's what happened, and when it did, none of them could barely believe their eyes.
The blanket of spiders scuttled back a few feet, and then parted a cleared pathway straight from the forest to the eight tributes. And at the far end of that pathway was a slouching, skinny boy holding a small device in his hands. As they stared at him, he looked up, met Artemis's eyes, and said in his trademark monotone, "Someone called my name?"
But the words were not spoken in welcome or humor.
And in his eyes they all saw the light of a victor in control.
AN: Artemis's arachnophobia attack is based off a true story. Except that in the true story, no one died. And we weren't in an arena. And the spiders were (probably) not poisonous and out to get us. And there weren't a billion of them chasing us. But there were three that I counted, and I did actually climb on top of my friend in that way. I do not remember how. Fear is a powerful motive. Yes, I am arachnophobic. I am not afraid to admit it, though.
* Forty-three kilograms = Ninety-five pounds
** Forty-eight kilograms = One hundred five pounds