yet in the end, we're only human // 92nd finale

[esther kim d3 {lance}]

Lonely upon a craggy cliff sits a castle worn away by time and terror. You've grown accustomed to the sight, its blackened silhouette sticking out of the horizon like a jagged blade. You've even dared to brave its halls, coated in mold and rubble. Fractured tiles groaned underfoot like a tongue flexing around squirming prey. For as long as you can remember, that castle was a corpse.

Nothing happens in the morning. You've long since grown accustomed to lucid dreams dragging you about the arena - the lake's shadowy tendrils or rivers of blood cutting through the earth to block your path. You have never really had a choice, you've always ended up exactly where the arena wants you to be. And you know that today is a very special day. You've made it this far with bloody hands - or claws, as it were.

The day stretches on, long and full of torturous anticipation. Perhaps you try to find your only remaining companion, perhaps you take this time to catch your breath.

As the sun sets, The Castle takes its first shuddering breath. From where you stand you can see it awash in golden light, orchestral music spilling out of windows thrown open in revelry. As though in a trance you see hoards of creatures trudging toward it's gaping maw. It seems the mutts have little interest in you when there's a party to attend.

Caught up in the crowd, you've no choice but to follow suit. You are the guest of honor, after all.

One of two.

---

Our two remaining tributes will find themselves guided toward a grand ballroom at the heart of the Gothic Castle. The atmosphere is lively, chittering bats hanging from the ceiling fixtures and massive wolves stalking through the tables lining either side of the room. Chandeliers hang low, slightly crooked on groaning chains and the only light they cast are the feebly flickering candles dripping wax down their blackened metal arms.

Isabella and Andal will find themselves standing on either side of an opalescent dance floor, spirits with no discernable features but vaguely familiar voices tending to their remaining wounds and attempting to make them into something presentable before the music starts in earnest.

As the first tributes steps into the ring, ominous music booms across the room.

This is your final dance.

Good luck tributes, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

[thanks to ghostly spirits, tributes will receive double healing before the finale]

---

Tribute Information:

Isabella Rodriguez, District Six -- 6.5 damage
Self-Defense

Andal Searley, District Ten -- 4 damage
Blades
Self-Defense

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

In glooming shadows, a monster awakens.

Its eyes snap open, its jaw unhinges, and with the languorous grace of a wild thing, it unfurls its spine of protruding bones, sounding a procession like tiny firecrackers, creaking low like rusted hinges, and finally — stalking forth, lumbering ahead, towards the end of it all.

The rain lashes with a cold vengeance. 

The darkness feels endless and, after a while, like home.

He used to be afraid of it. When he was young, he used to keep a candle alight by his bedside, a child’s bit of magic to ward off shadows and monsters, but against his wishes, the light always intensified the shadows in the corners for supposed monsters to hide within.

And now all the shadows gather around his body, and the only monster left is him.

He is so, so hungry.

Impossibly and infinitely starved for everything, from a meal to faith itself, it is no surprise that he trails after the scent, that sickly sweet scent of the last prey, towards a castle. Towards lights. Towards a procession of beasts and ghosts that he joins in, all giving him a wide berth as he prowls forward.

They know. It’d be so easy for him to kill them.

But with his last remaining self-control, he keeps his claws sheathed and trudges on. Only one death is necessary tonight. No more other sacrifices. No more other deaths. Limned by the vicious light of the red moon, he enters the already open doors and marks his first step into the final battleground with a bloody paw-print.

Snout expels hot breath; fangs glint as they bare themselves in the candlelight. He greets her with a snarl. He looks at her crazed. He looks at her like she is absolution. Like she is the last sin. Girl with bird bones and grave-deep cheeks, she stands between him and the redemption he has fought for, hurt for, killed for.

It is within his arm’s reach.

He drags the dulled curve of his glaive along the opalescent floor, the blade now affixed to the groove between his middle and ring finger by tightly-wrapped gauze like a giant’s claw. It has seen so much blood. It will have to see more.

A choir of music erupts, so sudden it makes him wimp like a surprised dog. He shakes his head. He can’t clear it. There is so much around him all of a sudden, lights and fur and ghosts, so many ghosts, here to haunt him, here to bring his sins to life, here to drag him down to the fiery pits of hell.

He roars rabid. It is so bright here. He sees flames and each fire-licked wound on his skin reignite. Everything burns. No light. There absolutely must be no light. And so with another seething roar, he leaps with all his mass, not at the girl, but towards the chandelier first.

As the sound of shattering glass drowns everything out, so does darkness, rushing in to fill corners the light once was.

A few, dying candles flicker, sculpt both of them with a ghostly outline of their shapes. Candlelight plays across his dark, matted fur, lit enough to show him take a hold of the toppled chandelier, lift it over his head, and—

“Die,” he decrees.

[ Andal throws the chandelier at Izzy | Glaive ]

W|Z8FsLNKOglaive

13194 -- 40 10 damage (Glaive) + 1.0 damage (Blades)

glaive

[rook]

izzy rodríguez

The rain won't wash the red from your clothes. You stand dripping, a crimson devil emerging from the wolf's den, your every step marked with a red trail that smears the grey earth. It's dark, the blackness of the night a shrinking dome, and over the cracking of thunder and the booming of a cannon, you listen for a whisper, yearning for the call of the lake.

It does not come. For days you have felt it's pull, been woken in the night by a muttering in your ear, seen a shadow of Akira just in the corner of your eye. But now? Where there was noise there is only emptiness, which means that like everything else in the arena - it's dead.

You're either going to be next, or going home.

As you trudge forwards, through the rain and the cold, the droplets seem to seep into your very bones, and the aching that already pulsates through your wounded body intensifies. Each step takes immense effort, your feet heavy like lead as you struggle to move forward. The castle appears before you again - yesterday it was gone, yet here it stands tall before you, mocking you as you approach it, broken and limping.

The grey sky above you is a mirror, in it you see all your pain and glory, mixed into one - you can't tell one from the other anymore, and so you push against the doors and head forwards. Forwards is all you have now.

As you step into the empty ballroom, you are greeted by a ghostly silence that seems to hang in the air like a thick fog. Grand chandeliers that were once glittered with a thousand jewels are now dim and lifeless, their crystals dull and tarnished. An ornate marble floor is cold and lifeless under your wet feet, the intricate patterns carved into the stone now faded and worn - while gilded mirrors that once reflected the grandeur of the room are now cracked and broken, their shattered surfaces showing you a distorted image of the past.

This room feels like a tomb, a relic of a bygone age, its once grandeur now reduced to a damp, dripping ruin. Above you, a parliament of bats hang, in audience for the end of all things, here in this forgotten place, witnesses to history.

Around you, eyes glowing like embers in the darkness, a pack of wolves circling the room, the soft padding of their paws on the marble echoes off the high ornate ceiling. You can sense the hunger in their movements, their primal desire to hunt and kill, and yet they wait patiently, afraid to act without command of their alpha - stood in the middle, the biggest wolf of them all, stood on his rear legs. Andal.

Your heart races, your chest constricting as you watch the enormous creature grip the edges of the broken chandelier and lift it over his head, as if it weighs nothing at all. You are a maelstrom of fear and panic, trying to move away, but your legs feel heavy and sluggish, and the wolves at the edges of the room snap at you as you try to navigate the ballrooom. The doors behind you are firmly shut now.

You are trapped.

Andal launches the tangle of metal and chain at full force, and as it collides with your body you are thrown backwards, off your feet and sliding across the marble, a smear of red paints the cracked surface.

You cough, a spray of blood coats the back of your hand as pain jolts through your body. You think that your right shoulder is dislocated, and your collarbone feels completely broken.

It takes everything you have to swing your glaive back at the beast in retaliation.

[izzy attacks andal, glaive]
JNpEUkVbLAglaive
[Severed Right Arm at Shoulder -- 10 damage]

You are embarrassingly, hopelessly outgunned. But you've slayed a monster like this already, and you can do it again. Your wits are your greatest weapon.

From your pocket you produce a small vial of green liquid.

"If you're gonna kill me, do it as yourself."

You roll it on the ground towards the werewolf.

"Don't hide behind this monster you've become."

glaive

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

The chandelier shatters with a thundering crash.

It sounds as if the world is being rend, torn from its center. The tinkling of glass after: a final, melancholy dirge. A blinding flash startles the room, a moment of clear sight in the dark, and it illuminates his fangs curled in a full grin. He exhales a puff of hot breath. He stalks forth, feet scratching rough against the floor as he lumbers, both eager to finish it and hungry for his next meal, the two urges mixing to create a burning, searing desire in the pit of his stomach—

Then the world goes white. Desire combusts as white-hot pain, and he staggers back screeching, his prey carving a red line of gore down his left eye. He can feel the veins there pulsing angrily. He can feel his entire being joining them in turn. The wild in those werewolf eyes intensifies, becomes more feral. Rage, hunger, instinct, kill.

Glass rolls on the floor. He watches it with frozen, surprised interest, the green in the vial flickering across slitted pupils. Words filter through him, hard to decipher, but ‘yourself’ cuts all the way down to his black core. Yourself. Memories of skin, smiles, jokes. Yourself. Language, laughter, love. Yourself. Clasped hands, bumping shoulders, kisses on the cheek. Yourself. A scream, hoarse and raw, agonized as he clutches his head, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

"Don't hide behind this monster you've become."

Monster. He gnashes his teeth, seething at her, burning with rage for the wound- both inside and out. He is so angry he could explode. He is so- everything. Every part of him is engorged, metastasizing beyond proportions, spreading on its own wild volition. He can’t stop it. But a dying part of him knows that this green vial just out of his reach, can.

He lunges. Downs it in a quick jerk of his head.

The liquid tumbles down a filthy gullet; down, down, down, and then … burn.

He hunkers over, unhinging his jaw to scream, but no sound comes as the muscles in his throat twist. They are rearranging. Every muscle in his body twists like knots in an attempt to return to their original places. And it would work, if his bones weren’t already permanent. The bones rebel. They refuse to bend, adamant on their cruel form, and he feels the strain of muscle against marrow as they press together, push on each other.

If an exorcise is to drive off a ghost,
what if it is for a haunted house?

If a cure is to reverse a curse, 

what if that curse is for eternity?

He screams. It is such a sorrowful sound, full of mourning. One of his eyes, or rather the only one left, morphs back to his — Andal’s. His left paw becomes a hand again. But the claws remain. The slit in his pupil remains.

“The boy I was,” he rasps, “I killed him first.”

He drags his spine back to its full height, towering over her, shadowing over her. The rain is pouring with rage now, with vengeance. It runs, it runs like the dark blood from him. He holds up the left hand, the rusted blade of glaive wrapped around it. The shine it gives off: pure wickedness.

“And by killing you, I will atone for myself.”

[ Andal claws at Izzy | Glaive ]

xPxlBxgIDoglaive

13169 -- 9.0 damage (Glaive) + 1.0 damage (Blades)

glaive

[rook]

izzy rodríguez

His body rejects the serum in a horrific display of contorted limbs and bone that only seems to make the beast more grotesque and enraged. Whatever is left of Andal is fast fading, and your desperate attempts to reduce him back to the boy he once was have fallen flat, leaving you staring down this behemoth alone.

Same as it ever was.

Same as it ever was.

The rain pours through the broken ceiling, soaking the floor beneath your heavy feet. The harsh winds howl through the broken halls, your wounds sting at their touch. These once proud walls mourn their own demise, and soon, they will mourn you too.

It's not just the wolves, but the darkness that surrounds that seems to be closing in. The weight of your own mortality presses down on you, and you aren't even afraid, you're ready to welcome it. You are tired, so very tired. You want to join Akira and drift beneath the lake to be born anew, some twisted black puppet tangled in inky strings.

"Oh Andal."

You breathe each breath knowing that you're close to the end now. The air in your aching lungs is some of the last you'll ever feel, and you think, as you half-kneel on the marble, surrounded on all sides, that in some sad way - it feels nice.

"You can kill me, and win this thing. Climb out of here and be restored to your human form. You can paint over all that red with gold, put a crown on your head and call yourself deserving, celebrate what you've achieved..."

You press your weight against the sword, using it to prop yourself up as the beast lumbers towards you, towering over your broken frame.

"But atone? Oh, no."

You laugh, but it breaks down into a cough, blood spraying onto the cracked stone floor. You compose yourself, a smile still drawn red on your face.

"You will always be a monster."




[izzy attacks andal, glaive]
tDtxlU4|suglaive
[Shallow Cut on Forehead -- 4.5 damage]

glaive

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

In what can only be deemed as some twisted idea of a gift by the Gamemakers – or, perhaps fate herself – his human thinking returns. He knows. He feels.

And his heart binds itself to knots at seeing her doused in rain and blood, a girl halfway into her grave. She is a fighter and a survivor. Nine grueling days, and Andal wonders how many of those she had done as a human, not a monster. The choice feels impossible. It makes her bravery seem almost foolish. She chose to be human. She chose to be human instead of – and his muscles twist again sharply – this.

Would he have made a similar choice?

If he knew that a cure was possible, would he have chosen it instead of letting the beast rampage on? Instead of letting it take over? Instead of letting it reap three souls?

Instead of damning his own soul?

He exhales slowly, watching his breath suspend itself in the frigid air. The wisp of it is crystal-clear. He sees the last gluts of the candles from the chandelier. He sees the rain and wind journeying past them. Wolves, hunger in their eyes, blood on their fur. Moon, a ruddy red, pulling and pulling and pulling, and behind it: an endless infinity of stars. There are leaves decaying, dead birds, and sulfur. Iron, the scent of it thick enough to fill his mouth. And, as his snout breathes in her direction, a similar scent. Musk and steel, leather and salt.

“You,” he husks. “Katrina. You killed her.”

How?

And the answer flashes in those chasm eyes, dark and clear. For all the fragility that her outward appearance suggests, the girl in front of him is a monster, too.

“We all made our choices.”

If he wasn’t the wolf, he isn’t sure if he would have won against Elvena, against Cantara. A boy with a fondness for history, Andal Searley had no heart for carnage, but he gave himself no other choice. He made that decision. He turned himself to a monster that, as Izzy says, he will always be from now on. That is the price, the toll enacted. He doesn’t know what it means to sign his soul away, but this, sharp claws and hulking form, bears an aching resemblance to it.

“And eternal, I endure it,” Andal speaks, the words surprisingly sound as they roll off his animal tongue. “Too many people leave this place haunted, but I’ll leave it with hope in my heart,” the edge of his glaive gleams, “hope to make up for the choice I made.”

[ Andal claws at Izzy | Glaive ]

TpsswObx0fglaive

13164 -- Shallow Cut on Right Bicep -- 3.5 damage (Glaive)

glaive

[rook]

izzy rodríguez

"Make up for it? Make up for it?" You laugh with your belly, losing your balance and wavering away from the hulking beast.

The wolves at the edge of the room snap at you as you wobble, the blood loss making your head spin, and the injuries to your body forcing you down to one knee as you try to regain some composure.

You sit there motionless, laughing to yourself, wincing as your wounds pulse with each breath. Andal is truly far gone if he's remotely serious about anything he has just said. Even you, monster slayer, wolfsbane, vampire hunter, are willing to admit that coming out of this alive means that no one is going to treat you like a human being ever again. He cannot surely think he can atone for what he's done, and what he is?

"How's that gonna work? You gonna go home, say that you had no choice, that they turned you into a monster and that you didn't really want to hurt anyone? What, you're just gonna rock up to all the districts and apologize for ripping their tributes limb from limb, blame it all on the wolf after the Capitol's done sticking needles into you and making you look normal again?"

You start coughing mid-way through your speech, blood painting the back of your palm once more. You feel it running heavy from your nose, your vision blotted and intermittent. Death is near again, you can feel her cold breath on the back of your neck.

"Are you gonna show your kids videos of you biting peoples arms off and mutilating their bodies between your teeth, and claim that daddy was just trying to survive? That enough years have passed for it to be okay?"

You spit a thick crimson glob, upon closer inspection most of the blood is a congealed black.

The red on the concrete, the cracks in the floor. You can almost hear the bullets flying again, hear Wisebee's voice over the shouting. You dare not even close your eyes in case you see their bodies again, ripped apart by gunfire and left for dead in the streets of Six.

Someone snitched. You have to live with being a rat.

"You may trick yourself into some delusion that you're making amends, but look at yourself Andal. This is all people are going to see when they look at you." Your voice wobbles, and a fracture is drawn in your words, a moment where you maybe aren't just talking about him anymore.

Maybe things would have turned out better if you just kept your mouth shut.

Maybe people would still be alive, and you'd be sat on a rooftop watching the sun kiss the silver rooftops as you sip on a root beer and share cigarettes.

No amount of work to get guns off the streets, or putting in shifts at the hospital to help gang crime victims could ever have made you feel any better about what happened.

You look up at the beast.

"So, just don't - with the whole 'make up for my choices' bullshit."

The bravado, the insults, it all slips away, and all that's left is a sad tone in your voice and a longing in your eyes. A longing for something you can't have. Peace.

"It's not worth it, man."

You grip your blade, the drums of war still pounding in your ears, the wolves still barking and snapping at your heels.

"This is what we are now."

You come together with the beast, blade on flesh, blood on blood.

"And it's what we'll always be."



[izzy attacks andal, glaive]
XTYltikBSOglaive
[Miss -- 0.0 damage]

[accuracy reroll]
glaive
[Shallow Cut on Cheek -- 3.5 damage]

glaive·glaive

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

A boy walks through a field, parting stalks of wheat like liquid gold, summer a laughing wind behind his bare feet.

It’s bright here, and warm, too. The sunlight does not burn; it glows divine. He spits out big fat drops of pomegranate seeds onto the grass, and he imagines the trees that will grow there, the flowers that would bloom. Bees glut about, and birds, too, all crowning him a king in a lazy rhythm of humming. Boy king of the fields, he is cast in the same gold they shine with.

Something catches his feet, makes him almost stumble. He looks down. The earth is protruding, and a metallic object beckons from between dirt and grass.

Curious and wondrous, he reaches—like Arthur towards a sword’s hilt—and pulls.

It comes off so easily. Like it wanted to be found.

“Whoa!” the boy-king exclaims.

“Wonder who forgot this here.”


The rain falls angrily. It drenches the world in a coldness that can be felt even through his mangled fur. Lightning flashes, quickly followed by a cymbal crash of thunder, loud enough to rattle whatever is holding up this ballroom. Dust and rubble crackles down. Everything is in teeters here, but the two of them stands marked with the most fissures.

The scene becomes grievously clear again. Look at us. Andal stalks forth and catches glimpses reflected in the glass of the broken chandelier, but none of them belongs to him. He doesn’t know who he is, what he has become. He wonders if she feels the same. If she looks down at her own hands and doesn’t recognize the lines. If she speaks through her mouth and doesn’t recognize the words.

“Wonder who forgot us here,” he chuckles faintly. 

The girl – Isabella, he remembers – draws in one of her last few breaths and speaks upon the exhale. Her words sting. He lowers his head at them, growling softly first before snapping his teeth at her mid-way. She doesn’t stop. His fangs ache from being gnashed too hard. Monster. Normal. One thing is what he’ll remain as, and the other?

The other is what he’ll never be again.

The truth of it, and the acceptance after, strips away the fur from his skin and pulls himself back into his normal self. Once a boy-king, now he stands a cursed object, fingertips stained black, eyes still slitted even as the wolf disappears, face a mangled patchwork of wounds. He feels them being tugged, being reopened, as he whispers, “Isn’t it better to atone than to let them win? Than to let this world turn you into one of its monsters?”

Another thunder-crack splits the air, shakes the castle, and he is seven again, looking from his window as a summer storm rages beyond the glass. He is seven, and looking at a hut of the farmers who tend to his family’s lands, looking at the wind pushes and screeches and tears the hut clean, taking it apart. So many people died that night. He was safe, though. Sheltered.

The storm rages around him now and there are no walls to keep him dry, the shelter gone.

And he is a hypocrite for fighting back against the storm. He knows it. Wanting to live is such a ugly, selfish want when you truly, genuinely look at it. Does that make every survivor a monster for letting the rest die? For wanting to live? He doesn’t know. But he does want to live. He wants to live, but also to invent, to love, to rebuild, to atone, to avenge, to amend, to repair, to burn and to rise again.

She speaks and it sounds like the hut being torn apart by a storm. He is the hut; they both are.

“Perhaps if they look at you and see a monster already, you don’t need to do monstrous things,” he says; the lie of it makes his throat constrict. “It’s too late for that, though, yeah? Too late to go back to before.”

With a low, grinding noise, he pulls his glaive up and rests it over left shoulder using both of his bloodied hands. But he doesn't swing, not yet. 

“I won’t let them win. For every monstrous deed I’ve done, I’ll replace it with one act of kindness, and I’ll start with you.” Andal stares at her, stands in the space where they have been forgotten.

“Isabella, how do ya' wanna die?”

[ Andal attacks Izzy mechanically, but for narrative purposes, it is reflavored as waiting for her answer | Glaive ]

UOV7HoxTTrglaive

13149 -- 8.5 damage (Glaive) + 1.0 damage (Blades)

glaive

[rook]

izzy rodríguez

You're trapped in this never-ending cycle of regret, blame, shame, fear - round and around you go, stuck in this vortex. The world around you is a blur of colours and sounds, a chaotic maelstrom of sensation. The wolves gnash their teeth, the wind howls through the halls, and all the while you kneel there, panting, eyes scanning, trying to find one thing to focus on.

[izzy attacks andal, glaive]

leME1A_bJ1glaive

[Shallow Cut on Right Hip -- 3.5 damage]

You have known panic and fear your whole life, it's what kept you alive, what kept you moving. You used them as drugs, got you to do things you didn't think you were capable of. You've been washed by shock before, too - familiar with it's cold touch as you stared at Wisebee ragdolled on the concrete, his limbs ripped apart by bulletfire. You think there is little left that can shock you.

That is, until the boy-turned-beast speaks again, offering a small solace in something as simple and humane as a choice.

It's a slow burn that starts in your gut and spreads outward, burning at your wounds and flaring your nostrils. You try to push it down at first, swallowing your pride, but a scowl turns your face sour, and your knuckles are white at the grip of your glaive.

"Oh, that's just so kind of you." You grind your teeth.

The dark turns red, and your eyes sting as you try to stand, facing down the monster before you, your face twisting as he tries to paint himself as a saint, tries to promise atonement for his sins, lays out his plan for redemption.

But he will never be redeemed - and you are done with trying to explain that to him.

"Thank you for this incredible act of kindness, Andal, for letting me choose how to die. I'm truly humbled."

His delusions are too far gone, so you do the only thing you can do now. You laugh, or try to - a weak cough is all you can manage as you slump back down to your side, the horrific gash down your torso seeping blood and muscle tissue over what's left of your clothing.

"Fuck you. I will never give you the satisfaction of thinking you're doing me any act of kindness here. You've killed me Andal, you're a fucking murderer - and that will always haunt you. When you walk down the street, when you close your eyes, when you go to sleep-"

You see them. You can't shake them. Their twisted, malformed limbs. The sounds of machine gun fire, the cries of your friends - their lifeless, soulless faces.

"It will never go away."

Even the wolves around you fall silent, listening as you try to speak, your mouth full of blood and your breaths shaky and violent.

"So, fuck you, man. Just..."

You fight back the tears, but the tears win.

"Fuck you."

It's a sad, and it's a shaky fuck you, but it's all you can manage as you slump there, bleeding into the marble, the rain washing away the red, looking no worse than your friends did when they were gunned down in the streets after you snitched on them.

Trapped, alone, scared, screaming.

You want to die like the rat you are.

glaive

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

The wind keens through eyeless windows, singing a lonely lament for them.

One of them will live. It will be him. He feels it, knows it as she bleeds profusely from every wound in her body, but that does not go to say that he isn’t dead, too. There is a terrible line between life and death, a perversion of vitality, where Andal has found himself. He has let the monster win. He has let the darkness take root and infest his very depths.

He has killed himself.

They are all killers, and their first victims were themselves. Something, somewhere had to die so that they could survive. And this cycle of bloodshed and violence, of self-destruction and wreckage, is cursed to repeat ad infinitum. The lesson of history that no one truly learns Humans took about two thousand years to invent the wheel, but they knew how to cause havoc from the start.

There’s a moment where his fingers loosen on the grip of his glaive, where every sinew in his body relaxes and inches towards surrender. It would be so easy. And isn’t that what everyone wants? A kinder beginning? A gentler end?

But that’s not what I chose.

He hears her words with the rawness they’re spoken in, the tears and the fear and the defiance and the anger. A raging, righteous anger. If he was in her place, he would feel the same way. He isn’t, though. He stands with both feet on the rain-slick stones, his fingers slowly regaining their grip on the glaive, strength bleeding back into them as they lift it up, and up.

There is no way to paint over this with a beautiful image. How do you poetize a girl meeting her end at the hands of a monster? How do you make that monster less monstrous?

“I know,” Andal says, despite the pain it causes to speak.

A boy finds an artifact in a field and brings it home.

“I don’t plan on it to go away.”

A boy reads history books, researches rigorously.

“I don’t plan on all of this to fade.”

A boy becomes a man, but remains soft-hearted.

“I don’t plan on letting the guilt go.”

A boy gets his name pulled, and a boy—

“But I chose this,” he confesses in an onrush of breath, leaving him winded once it escapes him. It feels incredible to say it. To cut off the rind of his preachings and show the rotten pulp underneath. He has always been good at pretending, at making polite smiles and polite banter, at masquerading himself. The truth is much uglier. “I chose to let the monster in, and I used it to win. If it isn’t my kindness you want, then take my truth. It’s ugly,” so ugly, twisted and deformed, “but it’s mine.”

There’s no going back / there’s no before.

There is only the aftermath, the aftershock.

He has a challenge up ahead, a lifetime’s challenge of redeeming himself, but he chooses to do so rather than die in this forsaken place. No matter how long it takes, he’ll do it. He won’t die here, under a blood moon, not with only the lake to bury his body in. not with another sun-mottled day, another autumn evening, another snowfall on Ten's hills ahead of him. He won't die here, not with such a broken world out there to repair.

The stars, they are so close.

He shows her mercy, the kind of mercy that exists in this place. He does it by running the edge of his glaive across her throat in one quick, butcher’s swipe.

[ Andal attacks Izzy | Glaive ]

RvquH5zrimglaive

13070 -- Shallow Cut on Left Hip -- 3.5 damage (Glaive)

glaive

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

The last cannon sounds like a whimper. 

Isabella dies, and she steals every sound in the world with her death, leaving him stranded in a deadly calm. 

It is so, so terrifyingly quiet. 

And in this quiet, the castle around him becomes darkened too, draped with shadows, garlanded by inky tendrils. The lake. It has come to crown its victor. It has come and brought its whole body along, swimming towards rotten stonewalls, climbing up twisted spires, and dousing everything in its wake with liquid darkness. He doesn’t move. He cannot move. He stands there watching her crumpled body, and doesn’t stop until darkness crawls up her skin and takes her  too. 

And still he stands. Shadows pool around him, gathering close. The silence is slowly cracked by whispers, small threads of sound at first, little remnants in the air that grows more speculative, more inquisitive, more ecstatic. You killed her, croons a woman approvingly. Redeemed, a man’s timbre says. Murderer, a child’s voice accuses. You redeemed them. You killed them. You killed them all. 

You killed them all.

The darkness parts a few inches then, only to show the pack of wolves in the hall. Their animal eyes on him are reverent. He watches them muted as they stalk forth with the unerring grace of wild creatures, paws ghost-soft on wet cobblestones. One of the wolves have something in between their jaw. It bleeds. The moonlight catches the fur a second later, and it’s a wolf head, freshly torn, mouth jaw. The wolf drops it before him as a sort of offering. That is when threads of deepest black rise from the ground, that of the lake, raising the wolf head high to put it over his face. 

And one by one, in almost rehearsed unison, all of the wolves lower their bodies in a bow.

 

He can feel the blood of the animal mingle with the blood of his wounds, become one altogether. It feels like sacrilege. It feels like divinity. It feels as though he has died and has rebirth in a new body, with a redder, hotter kind of blood. 

Beyond eyeless windows, the red moon flares again, sending its devilish light across the arena to celebrate. A winner has been crowned. Under its ruddy light, a monster – a true monster – has been born. 

He tilts his head back, closes his eyes, and lets his victory rip through his entire body. The sound reigns over the night. It comes from all of him. All his rage, all his pain, all his hope. The wolves bray too, polishing the sound, amplifying it to a single, eerily beautiful note. It sings of all things he has become and lost, of all things he has destroyed and survived. 

It sings of a boy, a once kind-hearted boy who ultimately chose to become a monster to live. 

Well, that was quite a transformative journey! I am still a little shell-shocked, but am extremely grateful for the story I have been able to tell through Andal. It’s been almost four years since my last finale, six since I joined the site, but I continue to be in awe of the prose and the poetry written by each and every one of you. I relish every line of dialogue with greed, and I pore over each biography with child-like wonder.

 

To win with Andal was to have created a constellation of beautiful narratives and be rewarded for it by having the chance to make more. His story is a tragedy, a tale of innocence lost, of softness tarnished, of all the magic in the world becoming curses, but writing here is the opposite of that. I’ve never had such a magical place to come every day and tell stories.

Now for the thank you’s:

Calla — I always knew I had to keep you at the top. You are my eternal supporter. You have been there since the beginning, and you’ve never left. Thank you forever for all the kindness, the memes, and the unwavering companionship.

Kari — Every message from you has me smiling ear to ear. Your enthusiasm is as boundless as your kindness, and I am so grateful to have had your sweet messages along the way through writing Andal.

Fox — God, your writing eviscerates me. Fenrir’s story was hauntingly beautiful, and Helena mourns him forever. You have also been there as a helping hand in some of my lowest moments, and I can’t thank you enough for it.

Dars — I know we used to joke about me having a district seven victor but now look at me in district ten :’) Jokes aside, I owe most of my growth there to you. All my graphics I started by shadowing yours, and you have taught me countless lessons on how to be a better writer, and always looked after me, and I have the greatest gratitude for all of that.

Tris — I remember being fifteen and mesmerized by your writing. I still am. You use words in such a way that transcends the ordinary prose. Elvena was fierce and fiery, but I know your eventual victor will shine the brightest. Thank you for your grace and patience during our fight, and thank you for always being a light on the site, too.

Kay — As I’ve previously mentioned, the consistency you deployed in writing Cantara was nothing short of a masterpiece. Your writing is like finely aged wine: it has experience and gravitas, all indicative of your own character. Thank you for always taking care of this place, queen.

Rook — What a finale, and what raw writing you produced with Isabella. Her prose felt fully fleshed out, so vivid in its brutality, but can we expect anything less from someone who wrote Patricia? You’re a masterclass in voice, dude.

Python — Not to be gay, but I am so, so glad to have grown closer to you through D&D. You’re a kindhearted, wonderful soul who also happens to be really hilarious all the time. Thank you for Bones, and for orchestrating these gothic games.

Charade — Man, I haven’t properly mourned for Katrina, but that death post may be one of the rawest pieces of writing I’ve ever read. You have a knack at creating characters and, of course, playing them through. Thank you for the story you told through her, and also thank you for being the best dungeon master ever. We shall murder Strahd soon.

Sidney — My dragon queen! Last year I was kind of intimidated by you but now I long to hear you crackle as Farrah every Saturday. I am so glad to have known you a tad better because you are a riot. Thank you for Jack and her relentless spirit; Andal shall remember her as his other sister for eternity.

Rave — You’re a treasure. I could spew countless thank you’s about your constant support and kindness and I am doing it now – thank you! You brighten every chat you’re in, and make every conversation ten times funnier with a single comment. Thank you for your tenacity when it comes to the site and its members, too.

Ele — My baby. We don’t talk often, and I wish we do, but that doesn’t mean I have forgotten about you are one of the kindest souls on here. Thank you for what you did to help me during my darkest moments, and for always sharing your light with others. I hope Avriel and Andal become friends, too.

All the tributes and gamemakers — Thank you for the stories you’ve told, for the all blood-suckling and the howls in the night. We had a spooky kooky time together, didn’t we?