7th Games - The Penultimate Showdowns

[lance]

One by one, more tributes fell. One by one, the bisected sections of the arena flickered and once again became solid - one once again burning red, one returning to its deep, dark blue, while the remaining half shines a bright warm yellow. Across the stands, those decked out in green groan in disappointment and defeat as the last of their six representatives fall in battle - their bets, at least this time around, have failed to yield any fruit.

Once again, the tributes are called to the underground, to have their armor washed clean and their wounds hastily patched up. But nothing can mask the heavy weight of fatigue, the lightheaded nature of blood loss, for though combat started only earlier that day, each of the four remaining has suffered enough wounds and inflicted enough battle wounds to weigh on them for years.

It is even quicker than the halftime show that the tributes are thrust back out onto the dirt, quick enough that at first, it seems that it may have been done too fast - for the obsidian walls still remain, the pairs of drones - carrying the face of the victor and their defeated foe alike - are still circling, and the crowd is still murmuring, temporarily sated from the blood of four more unlucky children.

Then, a shout rings out. Then another. And suddenly the entire stadium is once again in an uproar, because once again there's flames - but unlike the flickering, smoky bonfire that set the walls alight just a few moments prior, this is altogether greater - for as one, the four drones carrying the faces of the deceased go up in a splendid inferno, quadruplet torches burning like a set of miniature suns in the sky, until one by one, they crash into the dirt in smoldering heaps.

For a moment, there's only silence. And then, a rumbling. More shouts. More screams.

And, as one, the walls begin to sink into the ground. Parts of it, any way - one line, from north to south, bisecting the twin yellow sections and separating red and blue - remains stable and unmoving. But its perpendicular twin, separating each of the remaining colors, and their tributes by extension, are seemingly swallowed up into the dirt. In minutes, it's as if that particular section of the wall had never existed in the first place.

The roar of the crowd, for the third time, reaches a fever pitch. The four remaining drones unfreeze as one and pair off, resuming their tango around each other. And as one, the four remaining tributes look into the eyes of their next opponent, only the second to last one they must kill to return home. To survive. To live and breathe another day and escape the fate that so many had already been consigned to.

Let the penultimate round begin.

~~

Round three will work much the same way round two did - all tributes with a damage above 30 have had it lowered to such to ensure more even fights and potentially a more development-heavy fight. Aesthetically, the tributes remain the same as they did beginning round two, with clean, if useless, armor, makeshift bandages designed to slow their bleeding but not stop it altogether, and weapons stained with the blood of their foes.