et in arcadia ego [ reverse cowboys - day two ]

[heather - d2 [mylee]]

K  I  P  T  Y  N

Stumbling back from the confessional, I found Tex and Cain setting up camp for the night, belongings strewn about the ground and a rough center identifiable on closer inspection. What can I do? I’d asked them, but neither gave a direct answer, continuing to shuffle around me. Tex nodded back to where he’d neatly piled my items, and I busied myself with sorting through and organizing them, pushing them around mindlessly, stacking and sorting the cards over and over until several of them blew out into the river, picked up carelessly by the wind.

I curled up around the couple of things I couldn’t stand the thought of losing, the glaive still in my left hand and the axes strewn about my feet, bandages clumped underneath my head like a pillow. I could see the shapes of their bodies across the bank, how Tex turned and then turned over again. At some point, I saw Cain rise from the ground and wander off into the bushes. Tex turned over once more.

Then the ground shook underneath us, and the sound of a cannon cracked through the air. The current seemed startled, as if scared into shifting directions or losing its rhythm. The cannons from earlier were quieter, and seemed infinitely farther away, though from the inside of the tavern it was nearly impossible to think of distance at all.

We both sat up, on alert and shaken from the fragile sleep we were drifting toward. Tex, I’d whispered, though I wasn’t sure he’d heard. And then, Has Cain come back yet? But I didn’t hear his response, or see anything other than the once-outline of his body in the dirt. There seemed to me an understanding that it couldn’t be him, that around us now was something untouchable, perhaps created by the sound of the river behind me.

I turned over toward the water and imagined a larger current, the heads of waves swelling until they broke and fell over themselves, the shoreline continuously being eroded and drawn out.

~

When the sun crests the mountains this morning, I wish we were there instead, or anywhere the twilight could reach. As I turn over, I expect to see the two forms of the boys just beginning to stir, but there’s only Tex, a little more awake than I am. As I’m rubbing the sleep from my eyes, he points up above us, and the artificial light is only just visible against the fog.

Districts Three and Eight, wiped out in an instant. I shake my head in disbelief, then stop as Cain’s face flickers in the sky. I want to look back toward where he had been laying the night before to confirm that what I was seeing was something twisted and unreal, but I know that if I turn away now, he won't be there when I look back. So I just watch and watch, even when I’m sure everything of him is gone.

I don’t know what to say to Tex, so I don’t say anything, just silently gather my things and shove them back in my bag, tuck the loose ends of my bandage back in, and settle the glaive awkwardly in my left hand. It’s cool as we start walking, a breeze whipping off the surface of the water to swirl around us.

I can see the tree line stretched out ahead, and I know that’s where we’re headed. We’re walking side by side, yet I can hardly see Tex through the fog, so much so that when the first hint of movement rushes by my legs, I think Tex has managed to collapse the little distance between us effortlessly.

Somehow a flash of orange cuts the haze, and then the strain of fear against the muscle of my heart.

Tex, watch it. We're not alone.

[ table: pogue ]

[ kip attacks sheepish; glaive ]
JXObhcS0HVglaive
[ severed left forearm at elbow -- 9.5 ]

glaive

[pogue]

T    E    X

It's nearly evening by the time he comes back from the mountains, returning to the sight of their makeshift camp with one less ally member remaining. "Where's Kip?" He asks Cain as if the boy has an answer for him, a shrug and a point towards the river as his only answer. 

They fall into a routine before nightfall, gathering their individual supplies and polling them into their own areas as if afraid of what might be stolen. Tex follows suit, pulling his spear into his grasp and looking out once more towards the river as it slips from view, the last bits of sunlight illuminating the shards of splashing water as the current bounces against the rocks. It's not long before sleep takes him the first time, energy spent and absence of adrenaline giving way to his own exhaustion, and it's as if his bones are creaking and turning inside of tissue paper skin as he lays against the damp soil of the riverbed, feeling his heart beat slowly and ever so unsurely inside of hollow chest, the last little reminder of his own life left in him.

Interruption comes in the form of a midnight cannon, reverberating through the darkness and echoing in the clouds.

The vibrations carve into his flesh from the ground as brown eyes shoot open, adrenaline injected straight into the source and a breath catching in his lungs as he sits up. Fingertips find his spear, hopelessly pointing it into the night and met with only darkness in response. "Tex," Kip calls from the darkness and his first instinct is to point the weapon towards him in defense, quickly pulling the blade back in realization. "Has Cain come back yet?" 

"I didn't know he'd left-" he murmurs in response, but his voice is quickly swallowed up by the sounds of the river, willing himself to stay awake even as exhaustion slips back into his form. Like so many other things, he fails.

They are met with emptiness the next morning, in both heart and ally.

Kip looks to the sky for confirmation, like he's begging what lies above to prove their fears wrong. Texas Lovell doesn't need that confirmation, brown eyes tracing the way the veins of the grass below them curl and fray at the seams, the silhouette of a boy he knew only by the sound of a cannon pressed flat into the soil and the shadows. Flattened as if the boy is still sleeping there, like his energy still clings to the earth even in the wake of a cannon. And maybe it does, because he swears he can see Cain O'Malley in the dead space when he closes his eyes, in the way the shadows stretch themselves thin with the rising sun, all twisting limbs and sharpened claws following their movements as they rise.

People die, ghosts don't.

It's a reminder that persists in the form of Cain's cannon playing over and over again in the back of his mind, even after he's seen his face and his ally's fate, after he knows he's gone. Boom, he looks towards the only tombstone left for Cain O'Malley: scattered belongings left over. Boom, he looks to his remaining ally for both guidance and confirmation, for what step to take and to make sure the boy he is seeing, missing limb and all, isn't just another spirit that's joined the fray.

Boom, Death has both of their tongues, wrapped tight with whitened knuckles and squeezed until there are no words left to throw into the coffin they leave behind, gathering what's left of their belongings and broken souls and tightening their grips on weapons neither should ever have been forced to wield. He knows what it is like to grieve someone because has done it twice before, his brother first and his sister next, skin and bone to dust and dirt, to take something living and stifle it out until there's nothing anymore but the silence.

To watch someone fade away, to have only memories left over, to watch those fade too.

That is grief, quiet and forlorn and dangerous. It strikes him then, as they make their way from the sounds of the current and towards a place promising nothing but danger, that what has settled in his gut is a feeling entirely foreign to him. It's loud, screaming against the world just to hear it scream back, every sound of the arena amplified and carved into his head and his heart. It's overwhelming and deadly all at once, dripping with red adrenaline and tearing him apart from the inside out. 

Above all else, it's entirely new.

A part of him looks towards his remaining ally for an answer, even though the fog has crawled in the space between them and arcs around their forms as if to swallow them whole. He chews on the thoughts and then chokes on his own words, feels them sting against his tongue as he bites back the questions that form on the edge of his conscience, to ask Kiptyn Nott what he thinks and what he feels, to go against any form of grieving he has ever known, to not swallow the knife and move forward a little more broken.

The arena interrupts him instead, the quick sound of movement circling around them dancing through the fog and the mist. His grip on his spear tightens in response, white-knuckles cutting through the dried black blood stains left over from bandaging Kip's stump of an arm.

"Tex, watch it. We're not alone." Kip warns, readying his glaive and striking out towards the form. There's a shriek and a howl, the sound of something spilling to the forest floor. "We never are." He mutters an observation back, pointing his spear and stepping back into Kip's shadow out of nothing but instinct, years spent watching and observing coming to blood and a boil.

"Think this is the thing that killed Cain?"

[attacks sheepish ; spear]


5oTmPOB5IFspear


[3.5]

spear

[gamemaker sloane ♕ kaяi ♕]

Sniff. Sniff. The swarm of sheepish scurry through the forrest, the pitter patter of their paws nearly silent on the leave covered the ground. They had been hunting, and they had been hungry with no luck. No prey, no nothing. It was frustrating, and they were beginning to grow restless.

Sniff. Sniff.

Finally.

Humans.

They growled a little in excitement, but still managed to keep themselves quiet. Time for their ultimate ruse. But before they even had a chance to look adorable, weapons came crashing down on their bodies. They yelped in pain before bearing their extremely sharp teeth and lunging forward.

So much for the easy way.


( sheepish heard attacks kip ; teeth? idk its a knife )
MrVUw7Av7iknife
( sc - 4.0 )


( sheepish heard attacks tex ; teeth again sure )
knife
( sc - 4.0 )

knife·knife

[heather - d2 [mylee]]

K  I  P  T  Y  N

Nothing about it feels natural, but my blade arcs neat through the air and slices clean through the leg of one of the creatures. I stagger back, surprised, not at the sight of the thin limb limp on the ground in front of me, but from the ache that immediately shoots through each muscle of my left arm. I grimace, tense and release and twist the shoulder around, but fear lodges in my throat. If the effort from one swing sapped everything out of me, what point was there in hoping to survive past nightfall?

When Tex pulled me out of the river the evening before, I remember the feeling of my bare feet against the rocks that lined the streambed, how I kicked and fought to avoid being dead weight in his arms, still I felt his strain in hauling me onto the bank, on fighting not only my body and the current but the motion I set us into, the bottom of my feet rolling along the rocks and coming up scratched and bloody.

I’d laid there panting on top of him, eventually finding the strength to roll off flat onto my back beside him. Thanks, man, I’d said then, thought it came out labored and insincere.

Now I feel the same tightness in my chest, panic causing each breath to come out shallow and short. The glaive quivers, and the animal tissue still attached shakes loosely in response like streamers, droplets of blood splattering to the ground.

I can sense Tex shuffling behind me, the smalls of our backs pressed against each other, even more so when I force myself upright. We never are, he says, and I wonder for a brief moment if he’s been able to spot and identify the creatures that are swarming us, their flashes of orange rhythmic, nearly hallucinogenic. The glaive falls to my side as I watch them dance around us, and I imagine the creatures that could have visited us in the night, could have turned the lull of deep sleep into music we’d never live to hear.

But Tex interrupts the thought with the question I’ve not yet gotten close to, asks, Think this is the thing that killed Cain? And he doesn’t give me time to respond before thrusting out his spear, the tip of the blade grazing a leg of one of the creatures closest to him.

I watch their movement, the speed with which their small bodies wrap around the trees towering above us, and I spot the leg that I severed in the mouth of one of them. It struggles under the weight, its jaw stretched clean around the bone, which is visible through the torn, patchwork flesh, and each breath seems a labored exhale through its snout. There’s something in me that wants to believe this is the end that Cain met, but I can’t bring myself to believe it. It seems too neat--this all does somehow.

No, I say, shaking my head as I strain to flex the muscles of my upper arm. I can feel momentum building underneath, the gentle and heavy movement of the blade lurching into motion. I think we would have found some of Cain this morning if that was the case.

When one lunges, all I see is a tiny flash of teeth and a cracked, pink tongue that lolls beyond its lower jaw, frothy and bloodied. That doesn’t mean they won’t make quick work of us.

[ table: pogue ]

[ kip attacks sheepish; glaive ]
Wp_|0DvuaOglaive
[ shallow cut on left shoulder -- 3.5 ]

glaive

[pogue]

T    E    X

All around them the arena erupts in pain and pleasure, flashes of orange and then red cutting through the fog as Tex struggles to retain his footing. His first attack is nothing more than a graze, tip of his spear collecting red but nothing more, a paper cut against the orange skin of the beasts around them. It's salt on an exposed wound, grimace carved into his face just as it has always been, the only defense mechanism he's ever had shutting down his emotions and soul from the pain.

Dotted between the mutts laced into his reality are the ghost he's been met with all his life, threaded into the mist and the fog and the red and the black, howling at him from a distance and begging him to join them. He sees his brother first and his sister second, his mother and father standing as reminders of those that will forget him. He wonders if his face will haunt their memories like they have his, like Cain's was carved into the forefront of his memory, like when he looks at his own reflection in the river he can't help but feel like he doesn't know the person staring back. Something sinister cuts into his gut and carves its way up into his heart, curling around dying heartstrings until there is nothing left to cut, until there is nothing left but the feeling of his spear in one hand and his life in the other.

His only sense of comfort remains in the way he presses his back to Kip's, in the way they sway softly with the attacks of the mutts around them, clutching their weapons and the fear tangible between them. It's in between fending off the attacks that he steals glance's at his alliance member, brown eyes wavering on the fog and the mist that curls between them, the ghosts stepping into the dead space that presses against his shoulders.

Kiptyn Nott exists for now, tangible and real and just as afraid as he is. Texas Lovell wonders when even that will fade, when the boy will join the sky and then the ghosts, when it will be just him again.

I'm scared-" he wants to say, feels the words bounce and collect on the edge of his tongue, sitting there in the vile and the venom as he clutches his spear and points it forwards into the nothingness. But he's never been one for wasting his own words, especially on the obvious. Instead, the arena reaches forwards and grabs his tongue, an orange blur shooting forwards and leaving nothing but red in its wake. He gasps as something crimson carves down his leg, the scent of blood filling the air around them. Pain blossoms from the source in shallow waves, swaying against his lower legs as he struggles to regain his balance.

"I think we would have found some of Cain this morning if that was the case."

Kip's words are direct, cold, coated in steel and stained red when they hit the air. Tex's stomach sinks in response, the memories of an ally he never knew cutting in and out of the front of his mind, fighting to stay still against the waves of adrenaline that carve into his veins whenever he catches sight of the ghouls and the ghosts both living and dead that surround them. "Fuck-" He manages to blurt out, an instinctual reaction to the grim response. He glances back towards his ally, like he's looking at a reflection of himself and the morbidity that he has always carried . "That doesn't mean they won't make quick work of us." Kip calls out. Tex nods, brow furrowed muscles flaring. "Yeah, guess we'll have to make short work of them first." 

He moves in tandem with Kip, like he's mirroring the attack of the boy's glaive with one of his own. His spear strikes the fog and then the air, finally coming to a rest in the belly of a beast.

[attacks sheepish ; spear]


9ovcr|ocw9spear


[Result]

spear

[gamemaker sloane ♕ kaяi ♕]

Ouch. Ouch.

These people were mean! They swished and swiped at them so they would swish and swipe right back! The swarm of sheepish did their best to get a good chunk out their arms, but these nasty tributes were just too quick. The swarm was growing hungrier and more agitated by the minute definitely not hangry.

The tributes silver weapons come crashing down. The swarm tries to move out of the way of the sharp blades, but they are just seconds too slow. A few yelp in pain as their blood spills, but the others growl louder.

Mean people!


And they attack.


( sheepish heard attacks kip ; teef )
Ru|kJ4Eb_vknife
( sc - 3.5 )


( sheepish heard attacks tex ; pocket knife )
knife
( sc - 3.5 )

knife·knife

[heather - d2 [mylee]]

K  I  P  T  Y  N

Yeah, guess we’ll have to make short work of them first.

I want it to be that easy. I want the work of this to be quick and painless, a snapped neck or severed spine. I want the world to be vibrant and life-full one moment only to be void and pitch black the next. There’s nothing I desire more than ease, less pain, fewer words. And it somehow continues to be drawn out and slow, as if time could only imagine fate when viewed with a wide lens, all the details blurred into nothing more than shapes and colors.

And with our bodies whipping around in unison, the foreground feels blurred, too. I can make out nothing but the blunt shape of the creatures’ bodies, and the flashes of orange lack any detailing. It’s as close as I can imagine to fighting a concept--fear or god or for the greater good. I want to feel my glaive sunk deep in the flesh of time, a stitch in the side of space and distance I cannot manage to collapse between myself and anyone I might possibly love.

But I’m so afraid of what happens when you work the weapon free, of the rush of blood that spills out of the body. I loved Robin--that deep, familial love that morphs and is most easily translated as loyalty, and the best I can do now is call him dead. And though I didn’t truly know what he was on about that morning, I could see the hurt in his face when I told him I couldn’t go with him, and I knew he’d loved me too.

Otherwise, why plan to go to the end of the earth and bring someone else along for the ride?

I feel Tex’s back pressed against mine, the sway of our bodies with music that knows only to howl, and I know where we’re headed. It’s a mean, mean road, and all downhill.

[ table: pogue ]

[ kip attacks sheepish; glaive ]
ui1RKJ3TLSglaive
[ deep gash on back -- 8.5 ]

glaive

[pogue]

T    E    X

They move in haphazard unison, backs pressed into one another and weapons drawn with scarlet tracing their blades, hearts pounding and muscles strained. His second attack is the same as the first: a single slice of steel to orange skin and crimson left soft in the wake, dripping slowly from the wound but not deep enough to cause the creatures to stir or slow.

When he first got on that train towards the Capitol he could sense the indifference, could tell that everyone around him looked at him like another lamb to the slaughter. His time in the Training Center proved it true, the way the Avox and the Capitolites found him true and innocent, pulled him aside and crafted his narrative into whatever they wanted. Everything in the Capitol told him to live for them, to come home for the promises they never got to prove true.

Everything was wrong.

He's not doing it for them. Maybe that's the selfish part.

He's doing this because he is so deathly afraid, fingers are so tightly wrapped around the hilt of his spear that it feels like his bones might crack and shatter under the pressure. He is doing this because he is an eighteen year old boy who has not seen enough of the world to understand it, the world has not seen enough of him to accept it. Because his brother and his sister were gone and he never fully missed him, never had the option to feel his heart grow heavy before he ripped it free from his own chest, watched it pulse and disintegrate into the smog ridden skies of twelve.

Now he stands, spear in hand and dead heart in chest, white knuckles laced into the stalagmite and footsteps pressed into the dirt as he fends off the fangs of the mutts circling around them. His trust has been ingrained into his soul only by survival, brown eyes glancing back at his ally and  hands wrapped around his weapon.

"One last wound." The words stammer from his lips as if some sort of declaration, ritual, promise. The spear in his grasp points out towards the victory lap and the final destination, orange mixed with red mixed with bared fangs and claws. Texas Lovell stares at it with resignation and instinctual aggression, a frown on his face and a heaviness on his heart. He doesn't know what his own ally is thinking, if the pain he feels is reflected in the broken reflection that is pressed against him, if the only person he should trust is looking at him not as a burden but as a brother. Doesn't know if he's worth that.

His answer thrusts forward in the blade of his own weapon, pointed desperately towards the orange fur of the mutts that swarm them.

[attacks sheepish ; spear]


up5gZLPNXospear


[3.5]

spear