lotus jugular / (bog boys, day 1)

[calla]

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The sand sticks to him like a second skin, itching and burning and crawling, moving over him like a thousand eyes.

Nasty.

Calamity turned the tables and disappeared first, so Karl ended up grabbing Johnny and Johnny ended up grabbing Yael (and probably got bit for it), then he chose a direction at random and took off. Karl's legs are longer than both of theirs so he has to stop every few yards, practically vibrating from the force of staying put.

It's strange to have to make himself seen like that. All he wants is to curl up somewhere dark, to hide and wait out the seven days it'll take for his body to decompose.

That's when he sees the fields. Warm and wet and waiting, just for him.

Calamity's there too, standing with their arms outstretched and the whole scene makes him tear up, just a little bit.

Climbing over the lowermost ledge feels like home. His boots sink into the mud, and if he closes his eyes and pretends hard enough, it feels just enough like his bog that he sinks to his knees. He revels in the way the dirt starts to work its way under his nails. The smell of the plants is almost the same, the earthen musk of the debris and the peat mingling into the most comforting thing in the world.

The water's only ankle-deep but he flops down anyways, landing face down before turning to breathe up hard at the sky. It's colder than he's used to, the water seeps into his clothes and laps gently at his shoulders. The sprig of a plant pokes him in the back.

When his bag bobs up beside him, he reaches inside, pulling out the stuffed cat and holding it above the water to present to Calamity.

"First sacrifice." He holds it by its little arms so it does a little dance, hoping that it'll work to tide their bloodlust over a bit, just so he doesn't wake up tomorrow morning to find Johnny trussed up on a pyre, "I think we should name it."

[fox]

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Johnny grabs her.

No –

She bristles and squeezes his hand in reflex, so hard it feels like her own fingers, barely fixed a fortnight ago, might dislocate again. It alarms her, the sudden motion of being grabbed.

The smell of blood clings to her, it covers her hands, slick like oil. She sets her jaw and yanks herself free, scowling at him.

It's easier to sit with anger than it is to sit with pain.

They move towards the ledges of emerald and jade. Karl's up ahead, running easily in the direction of the speck in the distance that's Calamity, glowing in the rice fields like they're made of moondust. She ends up with them by process of elimination – girl who doesn't speak and a man who haunts like a bungling creature, and then a cultist from Twelve, stark raving mad –

She doesn't trust either of them.

But while Calamity might speak of holiness and sacrifice with a moth-like obsession with light, a dark, jagged thing beneath their tongue, it's Karl that puts Yael most on edge. Quiet, recoiling Karl, with his bland manner of speaking. She stands near him and every part of her wants to put a knife in his chest and see what's inside.

He's like a man made from dirt, a little clay figure wearing something that looks like skin.

Her arm hangs at a strange angle, a mild protrusion in the forearm. It starts to bruise. She climbs up the ledge where Calamity is standing with some effort, blood dripping down her leg from the extertion. It takes a moment, standing ankle-deep in the cool water, to stop her head from feeling like feathers.

Then, she realizes Karl is lying down in the shallow water.

For a moment, she thinks he's dead. She thinks Calamity has killed him and she looks at tribute from twelve a bit warily, a small feeling of reluctant admiration that starts to swell beneath her lungs. He's no fighter, but he's long-limbed and bigger than either of them. And there they are, arms raised over his dead body.

But he opens his eyes, turns and splashes noisly, raises a stupid stuffed animal to the sun.

The small feeling dies.

Yael rakes her glaive in the dirt and plants it next to his head, staking the field with the blade. A fresh wave of pain rolls over her shoulders. She clutches her stomach, tilts her chin up, trying not to shake, and glares at him from above. Get up.

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

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You ran from the battle like a child might, heart racing and feet flying as if the gods had seen fit to sew wings to your feet. You let the sounds of war die out behind you, rubber boots splashing through fields of water touched by sunlight, legs wet from it long before you come to a stop.

There was a word for people like you back home, what was it, ah... yes. Coward The Crone hisses in your ear as you bend over, hands on your knees. For all your grand talk of purifying the hearts of the other tributes, you sure made a poor show of it.

"I'll live another day," you insist to yourself, driving a balled up fist into your open palm, but not even you are quite convinced. Sixteen years old and all of this great purpose falling like rainwater always from your lips, yet you can't follow through when your time finally comes. Shame creeps up the back of your neck, makes a home in your hair and tangles you up from the inside out.

Coward, your heart beats with the word and you drop your head, guilt flooding you.

Your teammates were still there when you left and you cannot help but wonder what's become of them since you last saw them. You've heard no cannon but that hardly means much in the chaos of a Bloodbath. Some tributes die long before their life is remembered through the great booming across the horizon.

There's a small golden cat clutched in your hand, when you sit it in your palm it waves merrily, little paws moving back and forth in time. It was in front of your face when your toe found the edge of the zen garden and soft sand became hard ground, foiling you. There's an angry scrape on your knee to go along with it but it was not enough to stall you.

The sky above you has begun to change, sunlight still tries to come through and it does in small patches, shining like a highlight here and there on the shallow waters of the rice paddies. Something glimmers beneath the water, catching your steady gaze. You move forward, slower now, causing gentle ripples where you walk. The glitter is of steel, a blade, long and ornate, slightly curved lies there waiting for you.

Your mouth opens in a silent awe-filled 'Oh' and you bend down reverently to pick up the weapon by the tightly woven handle. It is perfectly balanced in your grasp. You lay it on it's side on one finger and watch as it lays there, steady. "Praise," you whisper in thanks to The Mother for you know without doubt that she must have led you here to this spot to find it.

You stick the sword in the dirt in front of you and raise both hands above your head to the sky, eyes shut as another beam of light falls from between the clouds to land on you. "Thank-you," you whisper reverently, "Thank-you for safeguarding me in my time of need, may you watch over my allies as they too are your humble servants in this war, serving as my apostles."

You stay like that for some time, mumbling spells of protection for each one of your newfound friends, if you can call them that. You left them there to bleed after all, some friend you are.

But after some time, there's splashing behind you. You don't turn to look, be it friend or foe, the katana is currently out of sight from anyone who might approach you, guarded by your body. If they get too close, well, despite your appearance and your preaching, you're better with a blade than some might think.

When you open your eyes, its only Karl beneath you, laying in the soft mud of the rice paddies. A strange fondness fills you as he offers up a wet stuffed cat. "First sacrifice," he tells you, expression ever serious. You take it, careful as your nails dig into the chest, kneading, searching.

"No heart," you answer, then hold a hand out absentmindedly to Karl in silent offering. "You'll get sick if you lie there," you tell him and then tuck the little stuffed cat into the waistband of your hakama.

Yael appears beside you before you can help Karl, looking down at him disapprovingly. She's injured, holding herself funny. Your brow dips in worry and your free hand raises, as if to search for the pain on her skin before it falls to your side again. It's difficult to remember sometimes that this isn't home and these three aren't your flock.

"It is good to see you alive," you say to her instead, "But show me your pain, I'll lift it."

[picks up katana, straw hat, rice crackers]

[lionel estrada d5 ᥫ᭡ kiah]

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We form a chain. Karl has me hooked under the elbow as we move further away from the bloodbath, my hand catching Yael's as we move past her. The gesture was supposed to be one of support. I was an idiot for thinking that she would simply allow us to guide her away from the blood stained path that she was leaving. Instead her fingers clench around my own like a vice, and I was certain she was about to break my fingers before the pressure eased and her hand was ripped from my own as though I had just offended her more than those who had tried to kill her just a few minutes ago.

"Son of a bitch," I mumble under my breath as I shake the pain from my hand, holding it to my chest as the aches swiftly left me, leaving me staring daggers at Yael as she pulls ahead of me, strutting after Karl who must have spotted something as he was quickly pushing ahead. I assumed it was Calamity because in the distance I saw a person silhouetted against the sky line, arms raised like the holy statue they had built in front of the abandoned church back home.

It doesn't take long for me to catch up, but when I do I find Karl face first in the shallows of the field we were in. Calamity stands beside him, arms raised and muttered prayers an endless loop from their lips. What the fuck was happening? Was this some kind of ceremony where Karl was being sworn into what ever crack job cult Calamity was running back in Twelve? And whatever it was how the hell was I going to get myself out of this?

Suddenly Karl rolls over, a stuffed animal raised above his head extended towards Calamity, "first sacrifice."

Hell, fucking, no.

A sacrafice? What the hell was I doing here? I could leave. I could try to do this on my own. But for how long could I survive? How many games had I watched, had Flynn made me study, and how many of those games had a soloist made it through? I needed these guys-

Calamity has the doll now, fingers pressing into its chest, looking for something- "No heart."

The words make my skin crawl.

I had a heart.

And there was no fucking WAY Calamity was getting near it.

It was Karl's turn to be at the end of Yael's glare and Calamity is staring at Yael, at her injuries. She offers to help. I don't. I was pretty sure that the next time I touched Yael she would bite my fingers off. Instead I squat down near Karl's head, watching him silently for a moment. He was soaked, bits of dirt clued to his cheeks, mattered his hair. "You should probably get up before that one-" I just my chin towards Yael- "tries to kill you, the girl has no patience."

[calla]

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Yael's glaive lands beside Karl's head with a splash and he blinks up at her, placidly. The force of it makes some of the water splash into his face, and the weapon jabs into the mud close enough that it stays hovering in his peripheral.

She must not have seen him lying there.

Karl shifts in the water, looking up at Yael as she looks down, haloed by the sky. It's a little like looking into the jaws of a wolf. If that wolf was also on fire and glaring at you like you'd just doused them in gasoline. He waits for her to blink first, something along the back of his neck rising higher and higher.

Calamity deems the sacrifice unfit as Karl finally looks away from Yael, staring at the sun until it's all he can see when he blinks. "No heart." Calamity says, offering a hand, and by the time Karl finally goes to take it, half propped and half blind, reaching, it's already gone. He flops back a little, returning to the water with a dull CRACK that makes him freeze.

He's like prey that's just heard something in the underbrush. The others keep talking above him while something continues to dig into his back. He settles his weight to the side instead, slipping a hand down to the mud and feeling the rust of metal.

He'd probably been close to impaling himself, then. He studiously avoids looking at Yael again.

He turns to his stomach to dig his fingers into the muck, pushing away peat and clouding the water until he pries up the remains of an old scythe blade. The neck of it ends jaggedly, he runs his thumb against it under the mud and feels the splinters of the wood. It must've broken when he landed on it.

"You should probably get up." Johnny says from right nearby, and Karl jumps, shoving the scythe back in the water like he's been caught with something he shouldn't have.

But it's useless, something purely instinctual, because Johnny and the others are right there. Karl tries to be casual when he pulls the blade out again, holding it in his lap and using the sleeve of his hakama to wipe the grime off. He ignores the way that he can feel Yael's eyes burning a dozen little holes through him and uses Johnny's shoulder to hoist himself up out of the water.

That's when the sky starts to change. Dark clouds creep their way across the horizon, moving faster than any natural storm he's seen. It's like whole dome of the sky fogs over, like there's a swath of cotton draped over them. It peeks through the treeline up ahead and clings to the cliff face behind them, thick and swirling like rising steam. In a matter of minutes, the air itself seems to change.

Then, very lightly, it starts to rain.

Karl squints across the fields, then back over to Calamity where their chants are still echoing, "Are you doing this?"