all my girls like to fight // nb v sc, day three.

[✨ zozo.]

The night is much the same, except there's no dancing underneath the silhouettes of dead children.

There's no dancing, and no dead children. Just intermittent sleep, shaken awake to take watch every few hours. Tune stays stoic, pressing her lips together, only making noise when necessary. She'd marched back into eyesight of Carly and Andrew that afternoon with the tankard's handle dangling loosely from her fingers, jewels sparkling in the daylight. "Found his prized cup," she'd said with a shrug. "Best head back the way we came."

She's still embarrassed, even in the morning. Still feeling exposed in more ways than one. No armour, guard down, kicking her bucket list down the path as they walk back through the forest and approach the familiar sight of the river. Tune busies herself with checking her trap - the net's caught something, but whatever - or whoever - seems to have wriggled away. That or the current took them with it, washing away any trace of bloodshed. She smirks at the thought of this dull current being powerful enough to do anything of the sort, then bites her tongue. It's not like she can swim.

Tune stays wary of the water, sitting near the bank as the faux sun rises and hides itself between grey clouds. The gentle patter of rain keeps them company, Tune eyeing Andrew and Carly nervously throughout the morning. She still doesn't know if it's worth talking about yesterday, thanking them for sticking by her and all of her stupidity. Suppose it's too late, the moment passed. Water under the bridge. Currents washing the memory away.

Eventually Tune musters up enough courage to look both of them in the eyes, even managing a smile toward Andrew and some cheerful chatter with Carly as they tend to wounds and tighten straps on armour. Tune's stomach growls - it's odd. She's always associated the feeling of hunger with the cold. With charcoal smoke, white frost, shivering in the dark. Not in fields of green grass, the endless blue of water flowing freely past them. Certainly not in good company.

"Guys?" she manages, eventually finding the courage to speak. "About yesterday. I... want to say-"

The feeling of panic sets in before she catches sight of them. Her ears prick up, sword hand tightening - instinct, the feeling of violence becoming more and more familiar with each passing day. Four of them - they're outnumbered, but Carly was right yesterday. If they could win the bloodbath's spoils, they could do anything.

A sick heat rises in Tune - half petrifying, half invigorating. Adrenaline rush, and something else. She looks at Carly and nods firm, launching ahead. They've talked this through before, over bundles of plants and night shift handovers. Go for the strong ones first. Careers. Strike before they do. The element of surprise is the best chance they've got.

So Tune doesn't think twice - she doesn't have to, Carly's the smart one. She's done it for her. Andrew will stand his own ground, she's sure of that. And if he can't, she'll kill him herself.

"Ready?" she asks her allies, her companions. Friends, even.

And herself, just quietly.

T U N E W A L K E R

tune attacks lux, saber (sword)
KzCMI6TZpqsword
9.5 + 1

sword

[tick 12a / calla]

The sun rises the same way it did before. Freyr watches one colour bleed into the next, dark becoming light, pink fading to blue.

He's slept now, at least; in fits of unrest between watching the maw of the cave and watching the horizon. War came by when the stones rumbled and Freyr bowed his head, bared his teeth at the ground and felt bloodied hands touch the sides of his face.

Later, when he sees his reflection in the river, he can see the fingerprints still stained against his skin.

The rain falls gently and ripples his face, the war paint disappears and the heavier clouds roll in and Freyr listens to the sounds of Lux still fussing over Will, three days in.

He isn't disillusioned. It's a good enough excuse to stick together. Willem is the lynchpin, even if he doesn't know it. When his lungs stutter at night, Freyr can feel the sting of Lux's blade and the solid impact of Charlie's fists.

They're sweet, in a way. Like late-summer cherries.

They feel right.

But it's that kind of violence that clings to him. It lives in him, tangling around his ribcage and moving into his chest. He's cradled it more than he's ever cradled Eirik.

The sky gets darker in a flash and Freyr lifts himself from the riverbank. Charlie is there with him, the pair of them scouting ahead while the other two follow. Freyr puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him, slick from the rainwater, and tries to pinpoint the feeling of lightning along his spine.

It turns out to be Lux in the end, Lux and a girl smaller than any of them. She materializes from the clouds and pushes her sword through Lux's chest like it's nothing.

The silence breaks all at once.

The blood sets something off in Freyr, like a shark, every one of his senses seems to sharpen. His hand falls from Charlie's shoulder and rests on Death's instead. He draws the sickle and feels hands on his face.

Will is enough to keep Lux standing for now.

Freyr's veins sing.

"On me." He says to Charlie, already moving away from the water.

freyr attacks tune | sickle (glaive)
sa|KTC|oH7glaive
[+4.5]

glaive

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

The sun sets the wrong way.

Charlie is unsure on how he knows, or even notices, but the red-maroon orb does not exactly sink past the skyline in a way that is natural back home. It lacks color, is devoid of vibrancy, and most importantly, there is no sense of safety or relief that used to come from a day’s end. He hears no sheep being shepherded back home, no calves leaving the field for the day.

The absolute quiet sounds like a novelty.

It does ease, however, as the night blooms around them. The wind unbraids its hair soon after, lets it spread across the grass they’ve made their beds upon, combing through them lazily as they tend to their wounds. Dark pines sway, wearing shadows that dart in and out, and the moon is a freshly-minted coin, bright and polished enough to steal.

And under its light, Freyr’s wounds look pearlescent, moon-kissed almost. His hands are gentle when they rub the ointment on them, slathering each cut with the herbal remedy. It’s plants, roots, and water: an old recipe from Ten, back when they used to scrape their knees running through the fields. Hopefully it’s enough for dragon bites.

“You fought good, man,” he says with a chuckle, breaking the silence with it. Then Charlie frowns, shakes his head to rearrange his own words, “no, not good—

you fought like you’d done it before.”

A pause. “Have you done it before?”

Because he sees Freyr and feels an irrefutable kinship. Here is a boy, a boy whose hands are also stained red, who holds a knife like it is a part of his body and does not fear the sharpness. He feels seen, mortifyingly so, and he—does not know what to think, does not know what to say.

Charlie has never been good at both of those.

“Don’t rub it off until it crusts,” he says, nodding at the herbal paste. “And try ta’ get some sleep. I’ll do first watch.”


They wake up to grey.

The pebbles of rain pitter-patter, gently whispering behind them as they travel, and along the way Charlie has broken off a large, rotund leaf of a plant, one he now uses as an makeshift umbrella.

His spear feels too big and too small at once in his grasp, the words engraved on it easy to feel against his palm. Fate, it spells out, a word he had never truly believed and had yet to do so. There’s no such thing. If fate exists, he would be back on the porch, playing marbles with Gage or drinking spiced tea with Ma. He would be back in the fields, ankles-deep amongst spring grass, bumbling about. Fresh hay, homemade lemonade, and monsoon-colored skies. His heart aches.

But his parents raised no damn loser.

He would preserve—he had during that dragon fight. The calm that Charlie once induced in himself when he culled animals was the same calm which filled him then, the deep and frozen calm of a lake at winter. Everything in him crystallized, frosted over.

He felt unbreakable, and unreachable.

And if he wants to survive, he would have to channel that going forward.

Him and Frey move ahead, along the river. They’re a duo pack almost, the two who know the wild the best, and he wonders if that is why Lux chose them, because they’re the farthest thing from diamonds. Freyr is wild, he is calm, Willem is delicate, and Lux is all diamond: what a strange constellation they made together. And with the way Freyr keeps looking back at Will, he knows that the boy from Four is the centerpiece of it. Makes sense. He’d want to protect Willem, too. There’s a limit to that though, and Charlie doesn’t linger on what he’ll do it if it gets crossed.

The rain pauses for a second, or so he envisages it as Freyr steadies him with a hand. His ears perk up. Close.

An ambush.

They hear it too late. Gaining surprise, someone sinks a sword in Lux. Her blood commits itself onto river-stones. He draws in a fortifying breath. It’s another girl in the shadows, smaller than her, but he knows that the tiniest beasts pack the strongest punch.

"On me," Freyr breathes out, and lunges.

His sickle glints, first slick with rain and then with blood. Charlie does not wait. He grabs ahold of the other’s shoulder, uses it as a pull to vault himself over Freyr’s head, his jaw set, his spear out.

The metal-head comes whistling down.

[ Charlie attacks Tune | Spear of Fate ]

hfDZmnKSFtspear

3083 -- Block -- 0.0 damage (Spear)

[ Accuracy | Day 3 ]

spear

+3.5 damage (Spear)

spear·spear

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

Carly learns quick that quiet moments are fleeting in the arena.

The most peaceful time of day, to her knowledge, is in the early hours right before the sun starts to rise. She steps back through time, sits in the violet blur of a waking sky, washes her hair and imagines scrubbing the chaotic thoughts out of her mind. The panic, the regret, the little itch just beneath her confidence, her courage. She's only a warrior in the way that she makes her every word sound like a battle cry, a call to arms; passionate.

She's ruled by her passion.

In another lifeline, that would have been it. End of the story, top of her class and graduates with honors, marries her high school sweetheart at eighteen, fails to find a job despite her stellar resume, unravels herself and takes all her ambitions and burns them like letters that will never be read. That's always been the fear that stokes the adrenaline in her, the little burst of energy she can always manage to channel. It keeps her running. She's grateful for it.

Even when it urges her to stab a stranger in the heart.

When the historians write about her, she's not sure about whether or not she cares if they think she isn't a good person. She thinks about Aneesa, how she's walking the bloody path she left behind, how she's turning the tragedy that took her best friend way into a career move. A desperate ploy. She doesn't know how to lose, refusing to be knocked off her feet. This nation has tried to destroy her in more ways than one, and she has the scars to prove it.

And here she stands. Stepping forward through the memory, to the present moment ⁠— to the babbling river, and the way a flock of harmless birds soaring overhead. Andrew's smiling, the same charming smile that keeps flashing in her daydreams, the crush stoking the embers of her self-sabotage. The terrible thing is that it doesn't feel scary at all; the way she trusts him, trusts them. Regardless of her intention to win, none of that changes. She cares for them, she feels safe with them, the thought of losing them is the haunting she's choosing.

For her to go home, only their ghosts can follow her. Tune says something that makes her laugh, she imagines the world where they could know each other outside of their darkest moment. Lantern in the night. To keep her people safe, she will do anything. Let that be known.

It's a peaceful evening, and then the moment shifts. Figures emerging in the distance, one chance look granting Tune the advantage to strike. Carly's already given the once over of all the tributes remaining in the Games, the base stats and threat levels, and approaching like a tidal wave she watches uneven odds come to stand before them. She and the others already talked about what to do in the off chance they come across a risk without being prepared. The upper hand is not a something that should be sacrificed. She stares at Lux, the perfect starlet to join her in the finale. Of course she knows what the Capitol wants.

She's read the script in advance, made her improvisations.

There's only one choice to make, and she is proud of Tune. Charges behind her as quickly as she can manage, calling for Andrew behind her. "Watch my back and keep them off!" Unlatching the sickle from her belt, boots stomping through shallow water and midday fog, she joins the fray just as Tune takes the brunt of two attackers. She stands her ground, always, and Carly trusts her to make all the right decisions. She tries to do the same. The fabric over Lux's chest blooms scarlet, a critical wound, and there's a moment where she almost hesitates. Appearing like a wraith beside her former castmate, weapon raised and catching the pale sunlight like a beacon.

A warning.

"Take your dogs and run," she urges, just loud enough to get her attention over the chaos, "or learn what happens when you stand in my way."

C A R L Y V O L K O V

carly attacks lux ; sickle
mmR6MnSsh9glaive
miss

accuracy | day three

glaive
block

glaive·glaive

[alex 🐺]

Complacency is a cancer here. It is a fog that tricks the mind, poisons the senses, and creates inertia. The fight that morning had been too easy, and the forest always takes back what it’s owed. No faces flash across the starry sky, no mournful anthem plays and the forest demands what it's owed.

The setting sun reflects like rubies and topazes and when the morningstar rises, it’s the pearlescent shimmer of the glass dragon that traces prisms across her eyes. Lux feels trepidation through her veins like gasoline at the prospect of another day when no one was killed the day previous.

Didn’t they know that blood demanded blood?

Lux had fallen asleep near Willem again and she watches him as she rebraids her hair, the way the warriors she had read about had done. A ritual in this place of mythology. Will had retied the sling on her arm the night previous and they traded concerns and worries as if they weren’t on a slow march to meet their maker.

Ignorance is bliss, right? Perhaps they were just out for a morning stroll.

They slow to a crawl along the river’s edge, walking in two groups of two, and the enveloping forest around them seems to become an invisible force, a living thing pressing in on them from all sides, like deep ocean water. The sketch from Will burns against Lux’s skin like a talisman, just like the five diamonds that sit upon her ribcage.

Lux follows behind Will, tracing his footsteps lest she lose her footing in the slick rocks when they find her. The wealth alliance - and darling, don’t they glitter in the morning light with all that shiny armor?

A swear breaks Lux’s lips as she spits blood, the tip of a blade sticking out of her chest. Lux slams her fist into her chest if only to dislodge the blade and limit damage to her muscles before spinning around. She paints the grass around them red with ichor, a painting fit for a warrior.

Charlie and Freyr respond like wolves to the hunt, slashing out at the girl from Twelve as Carly Volkov thinks herself a hero, vitriol dripping from her lips where sweet words had once been sung ages ago in Saturn City. She swings wildly at Lux who steps back, her weapon raised.

“And here I thought we would have a nice chat and catch up, Carly.”

She hasn’t caught Lux’s eye though, and she instead turns her sights on the boy in their group.

lux attacks andrew; sickle (glaive)

U|pMcjJjlsglaive

results - FATTY BOI MISS

accuracy - day three

glaive

13086 - +9 dmg + 1 dmg blades

glaive·glaive

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

"I'm not sure we should-"

Worst thing about playing a dumb jock? People treated him like a dumb jock. Everyone. He'd seen the curse at play his entire life, ever the gargantuan child, but since he'd made a decision to consciously lean into it in hopes that it would increase his sponsors, Andrew didn't think he'd had a single interaction since that wasn't swayed by the person h was pretending to be. It was like people had always thought the same things about them, and he'd almost given them permission to speak on it.

Even Tune and Carly, when it came time for strategy talk, acted like any of his ideas were refrigerator décor by default. He quickly resigned to nodding, watching the two hastily draw out battleplans while the three of them walked together, a stone's throw away from the river now that Tune checked her traps and Andrew speared some fish for their breakfast and Carly filled their canteens with new water. He thought the idea of Tune drinking from that chalice, that silly cup the slimey inn keeper cared so much about, hilarious. It was, after all, a cup. Andrew wondered if they could've just found any cup anywhere and brought it back and convinced him it was his. He clearly was on some sort of pre-programmed/controlled system, an avatar being played by a pair of hands miles and miles away from them now.

As Tune raced forward, he shook his head. This wasn't a good idea. They'd stumbled into the rejected career alliance- the one from Two who was on that show with Carly and the one from Four who Andrew would've killed in the bloodbath if he had gotten his hands on an axe in time. They might not have been impressive enough for the girls from 1 and 2, and they might not have been clever enough to get Derecho on their side for some added padding but they were definitely stronger than the night brigade, on their little death mission for a fucking slimeball property renter.

There were more of them, for starters, half of them were trained for this scenario, and Andrew knew that of the three of them, he was the hardest target to miss. They were growing too comfortable in their successes. So was the way of youth, inevitably, he supposed. Maybe he'd been correct in designating himself the stupid, lovable oaf. He'd certainly just walked into a very, very dangerous situation all on his own accord, and that wasn't something the old Andrew would've ever done. He wouldn't have even considered it. But seeing Tune charge in so bravely, and then Carly immediately after, he couldn't leave them. Even if it meant-

"Watch my back," Carly said as she dived into the madness, right before Lux blocked her attack. Well, shit.

Like Carly, the girl was carrying a sickle, and like Carly, she was quick on the draw. Andrew barely had time to make it to them and step into her line of fire. And- "FUCK!" The blade ripped across his chest- all the way from his right shoulder to his left side. It was an all-encompassing, dreadful kind of pain, the sort that hurt in so many places that he didn't even know what to shout for in particular.

He used the only bit of sense he could muster in the moment and shoved Carly back from him enough that she could re-evaluate her attack strategy. Deep breath in. It was better that they were attacking him- he had more meat and more armor and it gave Carly and Tune some semblance of time to figure out what the fuck they were going to do here to make sure all three of them lived through it.

"That's right, eyes on me," he said to her through a slightly hoarse voice. He blew air out, pushing the pain away with it.

The boy from the bloodbath was close enough now that even if Andrew weren't only pretending to be an idiot, he would've definitely known that the boy had intention of following up what the girl had just started. Not if he had anything to say about it.

A N D R E W P R I E S T

[ andrew attacks willem, axe ]
euqm0PYQSoaxe
[3.5 +2 Colt Perk = 5.5]

axe

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

Nehalennia flies overhead, as if a minnow in the water, gliding and curling above them. He watches her, flecks of light at his steps, following in the footprints of Freyr and Charlie.

The rain comes and goes throughout the day, mist and the smell of earth soaking into his clothes. Little suns of bloodroot grow between the knots of trees on the forest floor, closing to the dew and darkening sky. It's gentle, like breaking the fever of a long summer.

But then there's a pause to the peace, something that falls out from the rhythm of the rain. He watches Freyr turn towards the trees, eyes bright. Will reaches for his sword.

Silver darts forth, buries itself in Lux.

A sharp inhale. Her fist is pressed against her chest, blood leaking between her fingers. And he can see where her pulse beats, where the knife slides out from between bones, and how close the two things are to each other. Hand on her shoulder, he steadies her as she draws her weapon, sickle humming in her hand.

"I got you," He breathes.

The war comes in a tide, rushing by him.

Freyr descends on the girl who'd been hidden in the thickets. And where Freyr is wild, Charlie is an impassive, unreadable thing – mechanical even. They're hunting. It seems no different than trapping a rabbit, no different than marooning a little dragon on land.

But it is different.

He'd touch the flat side of the blade to Vincent when they'd sparr, dulled with care. Because what he'd learned about scars was that someone could carry the memory of it longer than the hurt, that he could look at the place his wrist splintered and not remember the pain but remember the way he was nine and picking himself off the training mat, holding blood and bone and shame.

He was always careful. A sword lost its meaning.

But Will knows now. It's because of the way blood had freckled his face after he'd plunged his sword into the neck of a mutt – because of the way he stands here and feels the way it changes him, as he'd hoped, and how he hates it, the grief of it.

A feeling roots in him. But that's survival. He follows Lux, flower to the sun, unsheathing his sword. In a moment, her sickle cuts through the boy's chest, blood flowing like a declaration. Their death or mine, her blade says.

The axe sings in the air and slices through his skin.

Okay, he thinks, grip tightening, their death or mine.

willem attacks andrew | Bancroft Saber (Sword)
PHlSXfiweKsword

1033 -- Shallow Cut on Left Forearm -- 3.5 damage(Sword)

sword

[✨ zozo.]

She realises after it happens that she's smiling.

Tune stands in a daze, watching the way red blooms against Lux Bellisario's uniform - all the while, the river current runs true. She'd done it. And of course she had, element of surprise paying off. The other kids' heads snap toward her and her smile flickers - pulling the saber handle back as Lux slams the blade out of her.

Turns around, seething.

Still alive.

The smile vanishes.

Carly lunges, but her blade finds air. Lux parries it away and Andrew's at their side now - then there's red, Andrew's forehead smeared with it. The wolves descend and Tune tries to fight them off, she does, but what's a sword to a glaive just like Carly's?

She stumbles backward, trying to fight them both off. Two on one, four on three, when their blades find her skin it hurts twice as badly. De ja vu - she shouldn't have, she shouldn't have thought she could kill a Career. Tiny, malnourished girl from District Twelve - against them?

Stupid, she thinks, stupid stupid, her breath hitches with the thoughts. Red blood, dancing in the dark, Andrew, Andrew. Faster, faster, gasp, breathe, gasp, air, current, river, twirl, her hand in Andrew's, blood in his eyes, stupid stupid stupid-

Tune screams his name, "Andrew!" and launches herself at Lux once more. Rage, stupor. Rash and furious.

T U N E W A L K E R

tune attacks lux, saber (sword)
JIXlEYpdo4sword
3.5

sword

[tick 12a / calla]

Charlie gets to Lux before Freyr does, naturally, moving like an extension of himself. Another girl appears like a whirlwind, blade clashing against Lux's like that's where it belongs, against steel, in the heart.

Dogs, she says.

Mutts, wolves, bears.

They're wild.

Freyr wrenches his sickle back, but he sees them. He sees the quicks snap between them and the air that moves like a mirage and it hits him suddenly, irrevocably, they know each other.

They know each other.

And the familiarity makes something along his hackles raise. War stands and croons in his ear, forces him to watch how Lux doesn't return the attack, but pivots away and goes for their third.

If she's so attached to two of them, the blood-marks on his face say, then who's left?

Half of the group gets shaved down. If Lux won't turn her blade on Willem or this girl, then there are only so many others that it can fall to. Charlie isn't a career, isn't even a fighter, but Death seems to cling to him like the smell of smoke, seeping into his clothes and his skin and staying there. Freyr thinks, he knows, that they would be able to taker her.

Maybe she'll turn out to be like Freyja after all - a knife in one hand and a kiss in the other.

Predators; they smell weakness before they smell food.

There's screaming, yelling, wildness. There's the overcast of clouds and rain falling like mist against the surface of the river. The little one moves towards Lux's new prey and something in Freyr's chest roars. He stands like an oak, unyielding in the storm, and he bares his teeth like they're knuckle-bones, polished by blood and sinew and gore.

"Not so fast."

She rages and he returns it.

freyr attacks tune | sickle (glaive)
k9l554G3yDglaive
[+4.5]

glaive

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

Their weapons sing, two twin notes lilting as they attack the smaller girl. But she is quick, dances through their arcs of their weapons, and pulls back a square.

Something like admiration fills Charlie’s chest for a moment then. This isn’t a career trick the big districts used, this is a survival move that folks like him had to utilize back home. Dirt calls to dirt, likes call to likes. He retracts his spear, watches her next move curiously.

That’s when another girl sidles up next to her. This one, however, does not appear as a lower district. Perhaps she was once, brown eyes and sun-kissed hair, but every part of her posture is Capitol grace, unbroken and unyielding, as cold as burnished steel. She reminds him of Lux in a way, or a rather a warped reflection of her. She is Lux if she grew up in the dirt and had been pulverized into a diamond later. The sharp glint in her eyes both attract and repel him. This is a girl who plans rather than act.

It’s sort of fascinating if you think about the folks here and the ways they’d been raised. He is homegrown, kitchen table bills and living room dancing, someone who once saw hidden rebel messages and took a leak on ‘em because really, at the time, he didn’t know any better. A war could go on without him and he’d be fine, he’d be content with his beer bottles and his cows. Charlie never really enjoyed the burn of ambition.

But then there’s Lux – bright Lux, brash Lux, as sharp and as hard as the diamond she’s known as. Her facets glimmer, cut, and astonish, each one carefully curated like the rest of her is. Who raised Lux? Who instilled the mantle in heart spine and the iciness in her heart? It’s surely different from the person who raised Willem, gentle and delicate, a lamb taught to bite. But there’s also turbulence under his seemingly calm waters, a hidden riptide. If you don’t look, you may very well get carried away by his current.

And it’s a gamble to guess who raised Freyr. For all he knows, the earth may very well have. He is wild, unabashed, and feral, more animal than boy, more instinct than thought, and Charlie watches him awed for a moment. Deadly. Ready. He is poised for the kill.

They’d all been raised by something. The girl in front of him, the girl next to her—who were their parents, their roots? They all had history, a place to retrace their origins back to even after they’re gone.

Charlie plans to do that alive and breathing, though. Because if you retrace his roots, rewind his paths, they lead back to a wild hills and open fields, to plants growing despite scorching heat or storming rain. Back to resilience, to the fortitude of a boy who learned how to butcher at age eleven.

Back to grit.

“Run,” he tells her up-close, his last act of mercy.

She stands determined.

He nods. He respects her wish.

[ Charlie attacks Tune | Spear of Fate ]

LasW26ybH0spear

3091 -- Stabbed in Chest -- 9.5 damage (Spear) + 1.0 damage (Strength)

spear

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

Her bravado meets Lux Bellisario head-on.

Blade whistling through the air, clashing harmlessly against the career's own sickle like a thunder clap. The knight charges into the castle gate and is thrown from her horse before she can even face the dragon. "And here I thought we would have a nice chat and catch up, Carly." Flames licking up the length of her back, she watches the enemy she challenged take out her revenge on Andrew. It doesn't feel fair. How quickly the odds shift out of their favor. When she looks at her friends, all she sees is blood.

And it doesn't belong to her.

Her courage runs as deep as the scar along Andrew's chest — her desperation, her inability to back down, the way that she doesn't know how to handle not having the winning hand. They did everything right. Tune took the advantage, Carly and Andrew were right behind, it should have been the perfect ambush to level the playing field. And now here she stands, shut out to the side, forced to watch the bigger alliance corner her allies. Maybe it's karma.

Or maybe it's her own foolish bleeding heart, the way that even as bleak as their chances seem, nothing in her knows how to leave them to face it alone. Even if it means suffering with them. If it's the price, she'll pay it. And if saving her friends means killing one of them...

quick wip but will fill this in after my work shift!!

C A R L Y V O L K O V

carly attacks lux ; sickle
VPngYXt1iiglaive
miss

glaive

[alex 🐺]

Maybe she’s always been more comfortable in chaos. Even as a child, trailing behind Love and his silver tongued lies that spilled from lips like smoke from a damp fire, she always reveled in the damage and the danger.

Even at Career Camp when they would play as gods, their weapons blunted leaving bruises rather than blood, she had swapped a wooden sword for one with a pointed tip, and had been sent to the quarry for isolation.

Maybe she’s more comfortable in chaos, where war can rear its angry head and boys and girls can unleash hell.

And even now, as her allies stand tall with her, like towering redwood trees against the tempest that is the wealth alliance, she’s comforted in the chaos. Freyr is anger, Charlie is discord, Willem is cautious vengeance, and Lux is predatory chaos.

She slashes at the boy from Ten, Andrew, catching him deep in the chest before she pulls back, blood splashing across her face like a baptism, and instantly Will and Freyr follow suit. They dance with their steel and their blades sing of the promise of victory.

She had chosen her allies well. Freyr and Charlie are born of the land and Willem is the tie that binds. She’d kill for all of them, ten thousand times over.

Carly tries to catch Lux again, and the screeching of blade against blade quiets the din around them. It could be only them alongside this river.

Carly’s posture speaks of wrath, a score to settle, but Lux is content to play along with her, her teeth glinting in the sunlight as it sparkles off of Carly’s armor. She’s a diamond - facets and points, barbs and spikes.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Lux teases, aiming a lazy strike at Andrew. It means nothing to hurt Carly physically, but the emotional angst of an ally torn down - there’s the chaos.

And Lux’ll live in that chaos, festering like a wound as it swirls all around, drawing them deeper and deeper.

lux attacks andrew; sickle (glaive)

uk|I5Oe6rnglaive

+3.5 dmg

glaive

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

ig we filler! will fill when other fillers fill, you feel?

- :ohno:
- The Ramblings of a Boy Who Does Not Matter, by Andrew Priest, conceptualized and produced entirely within his mind only moments after realizing he or someone he cares very deeply for is going to die very soon

A N D R E W P R I E S T

[ andrew attacks willem, axe ]
YiPY5CN9Nlaxe
[ 3.5 ]

axe

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

She calls for the boy, she calls for Andrew.

The cry hangs in the air and it's like a thing in an unfinished painting, just a sound that goes nowhere, not cradled by the washes of blue sky, or lent trees to cling onto, no landscape to give it shape.

Because Freyr stops her from reaching them, sickle slashing through the air and it cuts her off as her blade barely brushes against Lux. They corner her again, and Charlie's spear digs deep into her chest, the empty space filling with shades of vermillion and cadmium red.

He looks away, back to the two others – a girl Lux knows, Carly, and Andrew.

It's like a different kind of game now – how Carly tries to stop the sickle from touching Andrew, how Lux teases her, just out of her grasp as she lands another wound across him. They go back and forth, pushing the other to bend first, and maybe that's what makes someone steel-like and sharp.

But he is not that.

He just wants this to end.

Andrew's axe makes another cut, a sharp sting and he wants to recoil.

But there is something to prove here, when his sword falls short. There has always been something to prove, and it feels like he's layers of a person, painted over and over again. Here is Willem of House Vanas, but his hands tremble and he becomes Willem of garden beds and books. He points a sword at another boy and the blood's like paint, another coat he puts on and he's the youngest son of a family burned from salt and ash again.

He dies again when he strikes, a new face, another layer, all loss and grief for the person he was only a moment ago.

The blade finds a home in flesh. He does not unpaint himself this time. The weight of his name lingers and grounds him.

willem attacks andrew | Bancroft Saber (Sword)
RAuMbDRISzsword

miss

accuracy, day 3
sword

1027 -- Deep Gash on Left Bicep -- 8.0 damage(Sword) + 1 blades

sword·sword

[✨ zozo.]

"Run."

But Tune has always been a defiant one.

And maybe it is her twisted way of punishing herself for yesterday's actions, today's - but she stands her ground, despite the aches in her to save herself. The warning shots, old wounds re-opening. The grandeur of this boy, twice her size, lifting his spear upwards.

The skin on Andrew's arm bursts red, and then there's a blade in her chest.

When she gasps, pain blooms. It is nothing she has ever felt before, and yet the impact feels familiar. Yesterday - her armour left in tatters on the forest floors. Impact that could have been, should have been.

And now it is, and she feels it with a cry - paralysing.

Tune does not want to cry but cannot stop it.

Tune does not want to die, but perhaps she can prolong it.

What had Lux done? Pull the spear out, quick - something in the back of her head tells her you should never do that but it worked for a Career, right? Her hands, thick with blood, scramble for the weapon but it's already being pulled out of her core and somehow that hurts more than it did going in.

A groan, wail, something in-between, Tune tries to breathe and find she can't. Has he punctured a lung? Ruptured an artery? Possibly. Probably. No time to check, matching circles of red pooling dark against the green fabric of her clothes.

Run, an echo. So she does, but not in the direction she should.

Tune's always been a defiant one.

T U N E W A L K E R

tune attacks lux, saber (sword)
qJswJkLlCxsword
miss

accuracy day 3
sword
lmao

sword·sword