red dead redemption — andal v. elvena, day 7

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

After the first and last Science test Andal cheated on when he was six, he thought hey, that felt bad.

It was guilt.

He hadn’t learnt the word, but it was thick in his bloodstream, hot as poison, brackish as tar. Now imagine that tenfold, hundredfold, intensified to proportions beyond proportions. He didn’t feel guilty—he was guilt. He was the boy, the monster, and the guilt, all reflecting the same person like shards of a broken glass. Whatever innocence he had left was shattered and, with the rise of the blood moon, his humanness, too.

That means patching the pieces together, arranging them to resemble cohesion again, but it’s hard to remember how to be a boy in love with history again. The memory’s like the fog underneath: there if he looks, but gone again if he reaches out for it. The thinking makes his temple painful, and the pain makes his stomach hungrier, and the hunger makes him … A wild mess. A panting, huffing, wild mess with teeth and claws. There’s so blood under his nails now, even as he transforms back, the cuticles rimmed with scarlet. He tries to rinse it off; it doesn’t happen. He stops holding the holy symbol.

He stops praying.

Instead, he walks, endlessly it seems. Where am I? Where’s Jack, Katrina, and Sliver?

He tastes blood in his mouth, smells it fresh upon the air. And then he hears the faint roaring. That answers the first question. But if the others are not here …

No. I didn’t kill them.

I should have killed them. 

What? No!

I should have torn them apart, limb by limb.

Stop. Stop. Stop-

I should have been reborn under the red moon, bathed in their blood. 

That’s it. Officially lost it.

No, you don’t understand, Searley.
I’ve always been here.

That’s not true.

Your selfishness, your ambition.
I’ve always been here.

That’s not true. 

YOUR DREAMS, YOUR PRIDE, YOUR SUPPOSED KINDNESS, AND YOUR INFLATED EGO, I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE. AND I WILL NOT BE KEPT WAITING. YOU ARE NOT THE HERO. THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A HERO-

He tosses his head back and scrapes his throat raw with another howl, the dark note piercing through his tainted soul. Then he clutches his head. His skin bulges, here and there, the wolf begging to come out, but he grunts and wrestles back for his own damned self. He is in control, the beast is in control, he is- he screams. Claws rake skin, blood pours out delightedly, he can feel the tear across his face, and it feels like fire, like pleasure, like both mingled together. And then the skin is patching itself up again, as if cauterized, hissing as cells regrow.

It’s an ugly healing. All of this is ugly.

It has always there. Perhaps whatever they injected him with had lent to shape, given it form, but the darkness has always been simmering under his skin. There is no good. There is no evil. There is only humans, and their monstrous selves they try so hard to masquerade. Even the purest soul can be defiled. Even the darkest being can be exorcised. In the twilight state of good and evil, of monster and boy, Andal welcomes both his guilt and his thrill.

The blood falls roar louder. Wind combs through lapis flowers and ruddy rocks, bringing with it the scent of a fresh carnage. He growls softly at it, takes a few, wet steps in the red mud below, and …

His ears twitch. His body freezes.

He doesn’t turn but he knows who is there behind him, putting her together by smell alone. Has she been on his trail, hunting him? Has she wandered here alone? Does she grieve? Does she feel guilty? Did she see her fall and wish to do the same to him?

These questions of grief and vengeance, ring so utterly human that it keeps him from wondering about how her flesh will taste.

“Did you kill Katrina?” he asks her, his voice considerably deeper now, the muscles making it happen pronounced in each word. Andal supposes it would be fair play, an eye for an eye, a pack mate for another. He sniffs the air, though, and doesn’t smell Katrina.

“Have you come to kill me?” he asks again, almost with a laugh. It rings like a question for penance. Something twists in Andal, a barbed hope, but the beast steps on it with its paw. Slowly, very slowly, his disked eyes turn to look at her. And she is as ferocious as him, as bloodthirsty. Her face may be composed, but it’s the eyes, it’s the mouth, it’s always those two. And he is somehow glad it’s her. He has always been fond of good full cycle moments. “Woulda’ let you do it quickly before but everyday I wake up wantin’ to live a bit more,” he exhales the word out, smirking even a little, a crescent mouth guarded by fangs as he hunkers down, like a runner readying for the gun-smoke. “So let’s give ‘em a rootin’ tootin’ show, yeah? In honor of Chiara.”

A cloud passes over the blood moon, casting them in dark for a moment, and his shadow has a shadow when he charges.

- Andal slashes at Elvena | Glaive -

N4U6pspH1Dglaive

13162 -- 8.5 damage (Glaive) + 1.0 damage (Strength)

glaive

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

When she walks away from the pale tree, prowling wolves be damned, she walks away from everything.

She crouches low to the damp earth — ties her hair in a knot atop her head like a woman king preparing for manslaughter, looks through her weapons and her supplies and her ambitions organized in neat rows. The wind blows cold across the arena, frost in her soul and dead stars reflected in her eyes. This is it, she thinks calmly. The dream is coming true. For days now, she has been hungry, and she has been cruel.

But when she looks at herself in this form, and thinks of the girl she was when she first entered this place, she sees little difference. Sharper teeth, a glare that reflects light, just a little stronger and a little faster. All the same to her, a monster and a warrior, in this skin and the last and whatever form she's destined to take next. Let it be known that she volunteered for this fate; let it be known that when she envisions freedom, she's wearing a scarlet crown.

Elvena Fray will win the Hunger Games — eighteen years of wanting has lead to this. Born to waltz with death and take the lead. There's always been something off about her, a lack of concern for others and their feelings, always the indifferent stare and the harsh, flat words. Give a child a sword, and she might just sever her empathy with it. If anything, being made into a real and terrible creature of the night is convenient.

The audience doesn't have to know that this is exactly who she is. Every jagged piece of herself is sharp and true; lips to her final ally's throat, too stubborn to ask to be saved from her own fleeting mortality. She drained every ounce of blood in Chichi's body, and it tasted like melancholy. She'd never felt that before. It was a chill inside her chest, a black stone dropping into the depths, a pull on a nerve she'd never touched.

Then, always, it was cauterized.

It was like losing Kiko, like losing Mer, like watching dominoes fall and only sitting there to listen to the sound of the crash. She'd give Chichi her laurels, and in some blur between time and space the sisterhood would dance in fire light and thrive forever, but these horrors had always been inevitable. Every single person in this arena aside from herself must be felled. She rises to her feet, the dusk bleeding crimson, teetering between night and dawn and refusing to pick a side.

And when she goes into the unknown, she does it alone. There are no tethers left to pretend to be human for. No more allies, only foes. It's enough to make a quiet smile spread across her face as she walks, ignoring the sound of the anthem playing overhead and the face of her last and fondest companion staring down at her. She's dead, she held her body when her pulse finally stopped, and seeing a hologram changes nothing. There is no wound in her soul that needs stitching.

Nine tributes remain — and torch in hand, she goes hunting. Through shadows and secret paths, heightened senses honing in on every chitter, every shriek, every howl. It's comforting to know that whoever she finds in the dark, she'll be ready to snap their jaw and let them choke on their own blood. It is personal now, after all. They're not humans, not even monsters. They are simply obstacles, and she will bulldoze everything in her way to victory.

She doesn't mind being called a cliché as long as they call her victor.

The blood moon is high in the night sky when she reaches the falls. And when she steps behind the boy from Ten, skin torn and bones shifting and eyes falling on her form as if his stare is enough to flay the skin from her bones. He wants to eviscerate her, and it excites her. He's not a person anymore, just a mutt asking for mercy, snarling his eloquent drawl and pretending that he has a chance. She just tilts her head to the side, face impassive and eyes glowing, skin bathed in the red shine.

"Did you kill Katrina?"

The cicadas stop singing.

"I haven't found her yet."

He sniffs the air, anticipating the strike that will surely come. "Have you come to kill me?" There's a war in him, a shift in his features that she doesn't care to look into. Why does she need to know anything about a corpse? She'll give him to the dirt, to the worms, to time and its endless march.

"I've come to kill everyone. Don't think yourself special."

But just like Katrina, just like all the fools bold enough to speak to her like she's not capable of rearranging his skeleton, the beast in him toes the line. Threatens to tip over past the point of no return. "Woulda’ let you do it quickly before, but everyday I wake up wantin’ to live a bit more." Again, she simply looks at him, giving nothing away but the fact that she wants to crush his skull beneath her heel. "So let’s give ‘em a rootin’ tootin’ show, yeah? In honor of Chiara."

The blood will seep into everything.

But the chaos isn't hers to clean, only to create.

"Do you think I give a shit about what you want? About honoring a dead girl?" She holds her torch like a lifeline, a dark cloud passing overhead but embers burning in the pit of her stomach. "The real show is your death. Who's rooting for the boy from Ten?" Whoever it is, it's of no concern to her. In her mind, always, all eyes are on her. The whole world holds its breath to see what choice she will make.

A dark cloud passes by, and he lunges with fangs and blade. And she doesn't move, simply stands there and watches the sharp point enter her skin, deep enough that she can hear the hot squelch. When he's this close, weapon stuck in her flesh, she gazes at him and smiles for the first time in his presence, not even a whimper on her lips. Within herself, her nerve endings catch fire, but she refuses to give him any satisfaction this soon. It's about time he learned his place.

"When I do find Katrina, I'll throw your burnt head at her feet."

Quick and bright as lightning, she swings with all her might and fury and hunger.

elvena attacks andal / torch 1 of 3

8Uj|q_4aHOblunt
3.0

1-50
0

blunt·1-50

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

He stops inches away from her, spraying mud everywhere, feeling his fur tangle with it. His weapon has made its mark. A hot puff of breath escapes through steaming nostrils. His blood is boiling, his skin is itching, and his stomach is rumbling. There’s a crimson tint to everything, like the world is soaked in blood. Like he is soaked in blood.

She doesn’t move a muscle.

Another cloud drifts across the red moon, and in the momentary darkness that befalls them once more, the transformation is instant. Andal’s spine shortens, the hair wreathing his jaw fades away, and he becomes a young man again. Someone human again, someone who once got offered to be on the school brochure for his good grades and strategic selection of extracurriculars, a pamphlet of promising youth. Or that’s what he wants to believe.

The truth is much uglier, though: matted hair, wild eyes, and dirt-streaked skin. Ugly dreams, selfish hubris. He stares at Elvena and think, there’s something wrong with you. You can be redeemed. I will redeem you.

Even now, a part of him is still dreaming of redemption, of a scenario where he and everyone else can be forgiven for what they’d done and offered penance. That he’ll wake up one day and be clean again from the graveyard dirt, the rotten blood, and the hunger for flesh. He dreams, and dreams.

The cloud passes again. The red light returns, so bright it makes his skin turn inside out.

Fur, claws, and growth spurt.

Bones breaking in quick succession like fireworks.

They all come back, even stronger somehow, a fresh spittle bubbling past his fangs. He growls. He wants to speak, but there’s only that wrangled animal sound.

"Do you think I give a shit about what you want?” she snaps. “About honoring a dead girl?"

His words come out garbled, the syllables harmonizing between a human cadence and a beast’s growl: “Wasn’t aiming for her.” Another huff of breath. ”But death takes us all in the end. Especially here. She deserved that release more than she deserved a lifetime of tryna’ forget.”

But who is he to dictate that?

That’s his architect’s flaw, that’s his darkness. Everything according to his design, the rest simply a blueprint error. That’s how he deems it, that’s how it’ll be. I’ve always been there. I’ve always been there.

“You deserve the same, too, Fray.”

Fire. It sparks out of nowhere with such high intensity that he rears back, growling a feral note and clawing red mud at it to douse it. “Hide your fires,” he says. ”We don’t needa’ a light to be cast on our darkest selves.” And again he brings his scythe up high under the red light, the edge of it like a guillotine. “This is redemption, for one of us at least.”

- Andal slashes at Elvena | Glaive -

7pkRklkOWdglaive

13168 -- 8.0 damage (Glaive) + 1.0 damage (Strength)

glaive

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

The boy reveals himself beneath the beast.

She has her fingers in the wound he carved, staring flatly at his filth and fury. Mortal or bestial, it changes nothing to her. He still has a heart that can be ruptured. All she can feel is the tear of her skin, the hot gush of blood in the palm of her hand, and it feels like all the things she's lost. Happiness, sadness, joy and fear and euphoria, too.

Try to burn a man alive, and you just might come alive yourself.

This is what she wants. The battle, the pageantry, this is a prologue and nothing more. But for all her strength and training, he's just quick enough to reduce the damage she's trying to inflict on his ribcage, throwing a wad of mud that douses the flame and splashes against her cheek. She blinks, feels it drip down her face, but she gives him nothing. It's just dirt, just earth, an inevitable homecoming.

"Wasn't aiming for her." Chichi's ghost stands there watching them. Beautiful specter standing at the edge of a tragedy. "But death takes us all in the end. Especially here. She deserved that release more than she deserved a lifetime of tryna forget." Elvena removes her hand from the fresh scar, gazing at the ruined torch in the other. He speaks of release and she thinks only of murder.

Not hers, but his.

"You deserve the same, Fray."

That makes her scoff, quietly and dryly. "Who are you to say what anyone deserves?" She drops her ruined weapon, chancing fate and leaving herself vulnerable once more. "I'm not fighting for a lifetime of forgetting, you stupid boy." She steps closer, risking another hard hit from him but trying to even the odds. "When I win, each and every day, I'll watch myself end your worthless lives over and over. I'll even have some popcorn and champagne."

His nightmare is her biggest dream, and soon she'll make him realize that.

"Hide your fires," Andal insists as he approaches, speaking of shadows and true selves and being vulnerable; as if a machine knows how. She's already removing another torch from her backpack, lifting flint from her pocket and sparking a new flame into existence. Holding it high, enough light is cast to halo her face. "You're mistaken. I want you to see exactly the kind of monster I am, and I want to watch you flinch."

Her feline eyes reflect the brightness, the shadows of the night and the crimson glow of the moon pool around her shoulders, she is Nyx ascending the twilight sky.

Even the king of the gods feared her.

"This is redemption, for one of us at least."

"Dead or alive, Andal, you'll never get that from me."

This is a tale of the dragon and the wolf; his blade meets her flame, and she pushes past the tearing of her flesh, the fresh spray of hot blood running down her leg, manifesting his end. She wants to hold the golden thread of his fate in her hands and break it. Severe his hopes and his regrets into tiny, insignificant pieces meant only to be blown away by the wind.

And so she shall.

elvena attacks andal / torch 2 of 3

vGl1lmCWk5blunt
2.0

1-50
0

blunt·1-50

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

Her eyes are dark smoke through a burning house.

She stands there, cast in half-light and half-shadow, and Andal’s lips curl the slightest at a distant memory. She’s like Annamarie from fifth grade. She asked him out for a midsummer dance when they were ten and young and the world was rose-tinted, but every ring he tossed and every prize he won for her did not make her smile once.

She doesn’t like me, he’d thought then.

But Annamarie didn’t like anything except her image and what she surrounded it with. Crowned may queen that year, and for all the rest to come, she loved to see herself wear that bejeweled tiara and draw all the eyes to her. There was power in that. He beheld it himself, clapping with the rest of the crowd as she walked the stage, rapt with her brilliance.

Elvena Fray is a raging fire that one cannot help but watch as it consumes everything.

Move, he urges himself. He has to. She’s not bluffing, not about incinerating him and not about taking his head for Katrina. If he is a boy trying to part from the monster, she is the girl who’s welcomed it with open arms. She wears her darkness like a mourning veil for a funeral she’s made. His funeral. He takes a step back, then another, hunching down.

She wants to hunt? He’ll oblige.

Andal slinks backwards, into the dark. Shadows pool around him. For a moment, the only sounds present are the too-familiar pouring of blood and breath. It is his, but also a stranger’s. Something else has taken over his body to breathe. It’s the moonlight. It’s filling him from the inside. It’s taking space. It’s taking him.

He’s choking on it.

“I'm not fighting for a lifetime of forgetting, you stupid boy,” she retorts. Steps forward. "When I win, each and every day, I'll watch myself end your worthless lives over and over. I'll even have some popcorn and champagne."

Her fire roars back to life. Elvena alights with an explosion of flame, her golden hair haloed by the vicious glow. The flames crackle. He flinches further back, away from the ring of light that now circles her again, letting the shadows embrace him. "You're mistaken,” she adds. “I want you to see exactly the kind of monster I am, and I want to watch you flinch.” And he does. Sees her, flinches, his heart crawling to his throat …

"Dead or alive, Andal, you'll never get that from me."

“You’re wrong,” his word seemingly comes from nowhere.

Everywhere.

“Even the darkest soul can be redeemed, and even the cruelest monster can repent. There’s nothing wrong with your heart that kindness and hope can’t fix.”

Not irreparable. Not irredeemable. There is a light at the end of the tunnel for them, a hope that these shall all become memories one day. That the callouses heal, and new skin regrow over old scars. That the blood is washed away, and the flesh is anointed clean.

“I hope you find the redemption in death that you scorned here in life.”

He leaps from the dark. Her torch swings, a bright and vengeful arc, but his body hunkers itself when he lands on the mud, spine bent, eyes sharp, claws out. His body, but not his own.

- Andal slashes at Elvena | Glaive -

CcNYzAWeupglaive

13022 -- 8.0 damage (Glaive) + 1.0 damage (Blades)

glaive

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

He's larger than her, stronger, faster, and yet she keeps glaring at him with the same cold, hard indifference. He steps back into the shadows, and it's all the same. Cat eyes glittering in the fire light, his drawl on the dry night air. Every swallow feels like hunger. This is the only feeling. Pain and wanting.

She's losing blood fast, but her muscles stay flexed, petite figure always with her jaw raised and her gaze set above. When she punches, she does so upward, and when she brings down her heel, she wants to hear the crunch. She is not a creature that needs redemption. She's not even a monster. Elvena Fray is a girl raised in a society that approves the annual murder of twenty-three citizens; and she has always wanted to be a victor.

The means to the end are simply that. She is mourning the loss of nothing; this is the person she was before the arena, the person she will be after. Even on the edge of death, she feels bigger than time. It cannot control her. "You're wrong. Even the darkest soul can be redeemed, and even the cruelest monster can repent. There’s nothing wrong with your heart that kindness and hope can’t fix." She'd cackle if she gave a shit, but instead she charges closer to the endless void of darkness.

His voice echoes off everything, but the sound of it isn't worth the space. She wants to shred every fiber of his being into nothingness. This has nothing to do with the red moon in the sky, or the serum running through her veins. She circles the barrier between the glow of her fire and the endless depth of his shadows, warrior queen on the rampage, unafraid of bashing her skull into pieces against a fortress she can't break down.

This is the war.

And this is the winning.

"I don't need to hear about kindness from a boy stabbing his blade into me. And, hey, what's your addiction with targeting my legs? Do you think you can subdue me?" Branches creak in the silence, leaves rustle, she holds her torch high and shows the hiding tribute who she is, proudly and deeply and brutally. "Preach to me again, and when I get out of here, I'll find anyone who so much as share your surname in Ten and burn their houses to the ground. There is only one good thing about me."

It's not tragic to her; this is an anchor and not a witch trial. This is all she had been born for. She's humble enough to accept her birthright. "I'm willing to do whatever it takes to win." Sometimes, in career training, it goes beyond talent and status. There are times when the only thing that separates the predator from the prey is tenacity. And she has this in spades, sneering at the symphony of his lone voice.

"I hope you find the redemption in death that you scorned here in death."

The wolf and the man lunge from the dark — and his filth douses her flame once again, his blade piercing her foot, daring to pin her to the ground. For the first time, she screams, raw and primal as she grabs the hilt of his own weapon and jerks the metal from her skin on her own. She shoves him backward, hopeful little idiot standing between embers dying on the wind and the shadow. She pulls her final torch from her bag as she tosses the ruined one aside. There's a ringing in her brain and a nerve that's been pinched; but it's not in her legs.

"That's the thing. You'll never know me in death." The dragon breathes what might be its final flame, and her wings unfurl behind her in tendrils of smoke. "I'm going to cremate you, and the ashes can have your soul for all I care."

elvena attacks andal / final torch

Lm7Gh2nn85blunt
6.0 + 1 strength, + 1 rivalry

1-50
+2

blunt·1-50

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

His claw is vicious, but his need for redemption is even more than that. It consumes him. There is an irony in it; hubris, even. I will unmake anything to start from scratch. It’s the only faith that’s kept him from the wolf. It’s the only thing that remains as truly and utterly his.

This body isn’t his. He knows it. Lips that do not belong to him curl and grin at her from the dark, baring a mouthful of fangs. He smells blood. It’s such an enticing scent, metal and copper, rich upon the air and as it lands on his senses. He- no, it wants blood. It wants to be showered in it, soaked through the skin with it. Beautiful carnage, a bountiful feast. It hungers so much, so much. It needs to sunder, to eat, to taste …

The red moonlight is softened by a passing cloud.

And he’s a human again, or rather a silver of it. He heaves a few breaths, standing at the edge of her light with a sharp edge within himself. The hunger is still there. And it needs to go. It isn’t his, it doesn’t belong to him. None of it does. His bones feel out of place, his skin inside-out. Also the smell. He can smell the wolf’s breath. It’s fresh death and new rot lingering inside his cavernous mouth. He has a graveyard behind his bloodied rows of teeth.

And there’s the itch.

It starts like a wildfire does, so sudden in its outburst and so metastatic in its growth that it crawls up his legs, to his calves, to his torso, to his throat, towards the air, the sky, the—

Moon.

The screaming isn’t of his throat alone.

It’s every fiber of him. Every bone, every muscle, cartilage, tendon, and organs. A terrible, dark choir of bone and flesh. 

He falls over on his back, thrashing. The fur returns, matted and grayish, and there’s a slow, calculated agony as his teeth fall out like marbles onto the ground and new ones grow.

Or rather, pierce through. Sharper fangs. He can feel the places they’d stabbed through on his gums and leave his mouth bloody. He flips over on his stomach, sits up on all fours. Everything is tinted crimson, the thing in front of him the brightest. It- no, she speaks.

"Preach to me again, and when I get out of here, I'll find anyone who so much as share your surname in Ten and burn their houses to the ground."

Burning. Houses. The smell of oil and fire makes him snarl, arid in his nostrils. Yes, he knows what burning is. He’s seen warehouses burn down in Ten, the plumes of dark smoke that linger on like dark fingers across the sky for days. Ash. Embers. He won’t let her, won’t let her.

Like death, Andal pounces with no warning. He claws. Blood. It sprays on his muzzle and a scream that sounds foreign to his ears joins in as she screams. It’s his. He harmonizes with her scream, her agony. Lips split in another grin, this one more delighted, more deranged. It- no, he likes it. The moonlight is so bright here, and so warm under his skin. Under his claws, ribs, and bones.

His scream is replaced by a cry of pain.

Heat. Cleansing fire. The scent of singed fur and burnt flesh. She pushes the torch into his side, and twists. Andal bolts back, but this time he doesn’t leave her light, her fire. One half of his face deforms back to human features, but the other snarls, wolven still, feral and deranged.

"I'm going to cremate you, and the ashes can have your soul for all I care."

“You were made this way, Elvena,” he snarls. ”You’re a product of your upbringing. You were made cruel.” In a way, they all were. In this arena. Made to become monstrous echoes of their old selves. “There’s an end to this. I will redeem you, and all of us, by force if necessary.”

Redemption is bathing in holy water, anointing yourself with oil. But his. His will be new. Rip and tear, until it is all done and forgotten, the curse lifted and the sun back in the sky.

- Andal slashes at Elvena | Glaive -

dXyh5927eiglaive

13107 -- Miss -- 0.0 damage (Glaive)

[ Accuracy | Day 7 ]

glaive

13159 -- 8.5 damage (Glaive) + 1.0 damage (Blades)

glaive·glaive

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

She watches a boy battle with the beast within, writhing on the ground and shedding the very essence of himself. It should be traumatizing, but she only tilts her head, looks at him like he's a howling puppy that needs to be kicked. Silenced. When she tells him that she is cruel, she's not being metaphorical.

"You went and let them turn you into a mutt." Her hand is slick with blood, but she rests her fingers against the pale skin of her cheek, tracing a nail down to her lips and the canines peeking out like thorns behind petals. In the fire light, her eyes reflect his torment back to him, and she wishes him to feel this pain for eternity. "I'm going to make a pelt of you, and I'll wear you into my next fight."

Viciously, coldly and calmly, she spits at the earth in front of his shifting paws. Every ounce of her being is bleeding out; girl who aspired for greatness buckling under the weight of it. She refuses to look at herself and not see Atlas standing there. Even now, even at these odds, she glares at the wolf mauling her and gnashes her teeth right back. "All you are is a rat that needs exterminated."

The beast leaps from the shadows, claws and blade and hunger meeting her exposed form. This time, she succeeds in dodging the splash of mud by swinging her torch out of the way, opening herself to another deep cut and listening as the terrible sound that leaves her throat is echoed back to her. All the pain, all the hatred, the creature mocks every fleeting emotion she has ownership of. She sneers at it, pressing her flame into the bare skin on its side, listening to the sizzle.

But then a cloud passes overhead, the boy and the beast stand side by side in refractions, blood red moonlight casting shadows, the darkest night and the reddest dawn all in the same patch of sky.

"You were made this way, Elvena," Andal insists, and she takes great care to make certain her expression is giving him nothing. It's all he deserves, all he will ever receive from this world, and she wills it so. "You're a product of your upbringing. You were made cruel." She shoves forward, pushing past the tears in her skin and the flash grenades of pain going off with each step.

"I made me. I've never been anyone but the person I already am." Fire and fury in hand, never let it be said that Elvena ever viewed herself as anything less than a champion. "There is an end to this. I will redeem you, and all of us, by force if necessary." She swings, and the force of it makes the wind cackle in response to him.

"I don't need saving, you stupid dog. I only need a crown."

elvena attacks andal / final torch

no7iDSWUQoblunt
7.5 / +1 strength, +1 rivalry

1-50
+8

blunt·1-50

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

Mutt and boy, human and wolf.

It's hard to sever all of these selves now.

Instead they are all arrayed together, shards of a broken mirror, with dull and sharp edges at the random. He is unmade, and made again, then unmade.

The moon flares.

Its light roves down his throat, twists through his ears, up his nostrils. It’s underneath every claw, every toenail, peeling them up and off slowly. The place where they put the needle—that’s the worse, the tomb of his agony. It pulses with white-hot pain and sizzles on its own, making him let loose another cry. He coughs up blood, and something else. A tail of a creature he’s eaten yesterday.

He shakes his head, trying his best to clear its daze. It’s hard to see anything but red now; the world is crimson-tinted and drenched in blood. Fire and blood. There is movement, there is heat, and there is the tsk of Elvena’s voice as she speaks. “I made me. I’ve never been anyone but the person I already am.” Andal’s jaw clenches as he forces himself to keep his eyes on the girl. Even on the precipice of losing control, he holds onto his conviction. Faith is an anchor; it won’t let him drown.

“Then let yourself be reborn, Fray,” he rasps. “You’re too far gone.” Is he still talking about her? “You’re too far gone, and if you refuse to seek redemption here, then I hope you seek it in your next.”

"I don't need saving, you stupid dog,” her snarl burns with its own embers. “I only need a crown."

They both charge.

Time crawls to a standstill for a moment: he has his claws out, ready to rip and tear, the moon glowing vermillion under his back, and she is in mid-swing, her eyes colored in by the firelight, her face a whorl of flames—

Crash. The burn is instantaneous. It cooks his flesh with a white-hot vengeance, burns away the scream in his throat before it can even leave. He’s being burned alive. Flames spread on fur, dancing across his back, and he is wreathed in it. An thousand hot irons stamped against his skin, fire on open wounds. He feels them being cauterized. But Andal doesn’t back away. Instead he lets loose an inhuman scream, pushes against her torch to try and sink his claws into her.

This is it. This is the end.

This is redemption, for whoever is the first to fall.

- Andal slashes at Elvena | Glaive -

82ogAkTyZkglaive

13116 -- Block -- 0.0 damage (Glaive)

glaive

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

Quick as a forest fire / flames on a boy too stubborn to admit he's burning — that's how fast the odds can change.

She steps calmly forward, his blood and her own painted across her skin, matted in her blonde hair, shapes and fortunes drawn across her clothes. In all things, she will come out victorious. This is what she has always manifested for herself. Little terror becoming a big terror; she only gets crueler, but the apathy was always there. No deity had any say in her brain's development, and she will smash Andal's head into brain matter to make him realize that.

The chemicals made her a killing machine — she's making herself a celebrity.

Her cuts are still gushing blood, her eyes a heavy lidded glare, but she clenches her jaw tight and sneers down at the yelping dog. For every flash, every red moonbeam, each shift between man and howling wolf — she sees only an obstacle that needs to be destroyed. And she's more than capable of that. War machine of a girl, she crouches down to glower at death and shows the reaper nothing. Only her glowing eyes, and her impassive, fanged mouth. Not even the Capitol can create a monster out of another monster.

In every cruel act, she feels distinctly and wholly herself.

Carnage / her.

"Then let yourself be reborn, Fray. You're too far gone." She'd laugh in his face if she really cared.

"Aw, but I like me. And are you kidding? This isn't anything!" She spreads her arms out wide, flames still dancing on the wind with every swing of her arm. The dragon is igniting an inferno — if he insists upon a trial of faith, she will see it done by fire. "There's at least two more people I'm going to have to kill after you. Do you really think this is all I'm capable of? All that I have to show to the Capitol?"

He babbles on, golden boy so encased in his own shining that he is dooming himself to melt in it. "You’re too far gone, and if you refuse to seek redemption here, then I hope you seek it in your next." If he cannot choose between man or wolf, she will make the choice for him. Forge herself a crown out of his remains. When he goes in for the kill, she anticipates it, heightened senses giving her ample time to catch his blow. She holds him like a mewing kitten, and she thinks about shaking him to death.

"You're not worth my sweat."

She pushes him forward and onto the ground, hoisting her torch upward with both hands and glaring daggers into his skull. All from above, always above. All the synapses in her brain are telling her that she deserves this. This moment will be a highlight in her footage for years to come, and for all time, in everything, she will reduce Andal's suffering into her own selfish pride. There will never be redemption for Elvena Fray.

She got everything right on the first try.

"If there is faith, Andal, then I am its god."

The executioner brings the torch crashing down / makes her gamble in the dark.

elvena attacks andal / final torch

nS9sdaQddSblunt
2.0

1-50
+2.0

blunt·1-50

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

She holds him in place, nails dug into his throat, a leash around his wildness. And he sags. Allows her the power.

The fire cleanses. It has a searing, white-hot clarity that shoots through him, burning away the fur, sending the beast up in smoke. His gasp deforms to a human’s. His pain break downs to a boy’s. And his entire body aches. The flames crackle, now reflected in the dull blue of Andal’s eyes as they meet Elvena’s.

Is this redemption? Is this what it feels to be absolved of guilt and become only a body?

He once swore he’d become a chapter in the pages of history, but looking back on the past few days, most of them are mere footnotes and careless postscripts. The history of these will be overshadowed by the red moon. They will write of wolves and blood, of sacrifices and altars. And the rest, they will erase. Everyone that falls: only a statistic, only a number, only a tombstone.

I can’t let that happen. His redemption, his faith, will make sure all of them are redeemed in the unflinching face of history. Elvena now wears that face. She's a twin image of it. Wreathed in flames, he understands that she will gather her chosen spoils of war close and put the torch to everything else.

He is so, so convicted.

Her hand lets go, and the world falls underneath him. As his head tilts back, his eyes drift skyward and for a moment, he swears he can see stars.

But they vanish in a flash of red. Fur wraps itself around him like a dark armor. His fangs unsheathe in a burst of pain. Claws pierce through and catches the torch-head mid-way, the wolf within him growling when the flames lick its paws. Flesh sizzles; the scent of cooked meat flares up between him. He doesn’t flinch this time.

Her words, her embers on the wind.

"If there is faith, Andal, then I am its god."

“Ain’t my place to judge you; that’d be the sin of pride,” he snarls. Pushes the torch-head away, twists his body on the body, lands on his legs. “But if you are its god, then maybe you’ll excuse me from redeeming myself for this act.” Breath escapes him, hot enough to singe like her fire. They are so close, almost there. If the blood moon is to be a metaphor for this battle, it is nearly full. “There's a bad ...” another heaved breath, “bad moon rising.” And he has to save everyone from its light. He has to. Him. 

As the moon turns, lurching rapidly into its final phase, he lets out a growl and pounces with all his might.

- Andal slashes at Elvena | Glaive -

ygxVcUnZLBglaive

13152 -- Stabbed in Forearm -- 8.5 damage (Glaive) + 1.0 damage (Blades)

glaive