Soothsayer's Bones [unnamed v blighted hearts day 3]

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

m a g i

Gas, out of time, out of money
You're doing what you can, just makin' it run
(There's only so much I can)

"Were we here before?” Magi called out to Lara as they edged along the same trees and ferns they’d passed yesterday (or had hey?). Night had fallen just after breakfast, which would’ve been strange had they been anywhere but here.

Magi had first been afraid that the rolling mist that obscured the sun and shifted the blue skies to indigo was some point of poison. They failed to outrun it and in the minutes that passed, shrouded under the tree branches that hung high overhead, he had not choked to death or had his body covered in oozing sores, Magi was left to believe that this was some sort of trick being played on all of them.

Even he could put two and two together if given enough time.

There had been no cannons the first day or the second day, which meant that they were bound for some acts of bloodshed to appease the gamemaker gods. What better way to instill fear than to cast them all into a perpetual darkness and steal away the sun?

And yet he didn’t give in to the niggling fear, at least, not as much as he went about searching for what was needed. He hadn’t found any water in days, and if they didn’t find some soon, Magi knew that it wouldn’t matter whether or not they faced a single tribute or twenty-two, their bodies would revolt all on their own.

So, he’d set out from where they’d felled the deer and along the narrow path toward parts unknown. He paused now and again the stare at the symbols etched into the gnarled bark. He’d close his eyes and did his best to commit it to memory, as though the made-up language wouldn’t dissolve in his brain just as soon as he’d opened his eyes.

Whispers and giggles had echoed in every breeze. Now and again a branch would crack, and the wind would sing.

“This place is haunted.” Magi said to Lara as they came to a fork. “And ghosts only give you what you don’t need.”

When he edged left along the narrow path, he had to step over a set of roots and between bushes that craned too close. He did his best not to touch anything, no matter how slowly he had to tread through the dirt.

And then he heard it. Or, he thought he did.

A stream. The unmistakable trickle of water somewhere, not far.

“You hear that?” Magi whispered, “It sounds like – ”

But they were playing tricks on them, after all.

For no sooner had the path widened and the thicket of trees gave way to an opening did Magi come upon the girl he’d been speaking to yesterday and a boy that looked worse for wear.

“Stay back,” He said the words for Lara, arm extended as though he would do better this time than against the deer they’d faced yesterday. But also to the two in front of him. He held out his dagger as though all the courage he could muster didn’t have his heart racing.

“I didn’t want to see you today.” Another truth for Olete. She could’ve come for him and Lara if she’d wanted. At least now he knew they were even, instead of having to face three more. “But I know there’s nothing we can do about this now.”

He turned his dagger over in his hands.

“He’s gonna go before you do.” This time, he didn’t know if that was right – more what he planned to do.

When he charged forward, Magi prepared to sink his weapon into the other boy. He didn’t prepare for the fact that Olete would come between. A twist of fate that shifted him off balance.

He was beginning to understand that the truth of this place was that he could never have what he wanted. Not without violence that would leave him breathless.

[Magi Karp attacks Olete Bene with his knife]

ELEGANT

M_Ej5L2zydknife
[result:miss]

accuracy day 3
knife
[result: +3.5]knife·knife

[pogue]

G  A  M  B  L  E

He drifts between sleep and nightmare throughout the night, eyes fluttering open in the dead of the night and greeting him with an arena that has come so close to swallowing him whole. There are no deep breaths he can take to steady the way his chest is folding in on itself in silent panic throughout the night, the way every time he feels one of the newfound wounds that litter his skin ripple and bulge and seep bloody puss he knows that his own flesh is now dotted once again with a new kind of sight, eyes and a curse.

He's both a spectacle and an audience all in one, a walking freak show of a dying boy.

It's in between his third dream and his fourth nightmare that he comes to what he can only hope is a fear and not a realization, a threat but not a promise. That he was meant to die before the sun had set on the second day, that Olete was meant to leave his stammering body and let it turn to rotting corpse instead of stitching him up and sitting by his side. That the eyes that dot along the edges of torn muscle and sinew are not watching him live but merely waiting to watch him die. That he's overplayed his hand and is tempting a fate that's inevitable, that this is his punishment.

Carved into the back of his mind is all of that and more, the thought of his own mortality and the reminder that it was still real branded into his brain and his skin respectively. His own bones and body fight movement no matter how minuscule, groaning in protest as he pulls himself forward from his resting position and gasps at the way fire spreads underneath his flesh. Iron still rots on his tongue as he swallows back dry mouth and coughs on the dead air, glancing towards Olete and offering nothing more than a nod, shaken and terrified and above all else, somehow alive.

It's only when he looks back at the wounds that litter hos body, bloody bandages and threads hugging the skin tight together that he truly realizes it, swallows the threat and realizes he is the promise- that Olete should have left him to stammer and rot. That she didn't, that her humanity let him live, that he was alive because of her.

That, above anything else, he was not a person kind enough to ever repay her for it.

"Thank you." It's all he can muster up, or at least that's what he tells himself, that he should be saying so much more but simply can't. The arena takes his hand and pushes him forward as if to agree, the sky suddenly darkening and shadows bleeding and dancing across the landscape. Adrenaline courses through his veins and bites at his heartstrings as the world around him turns itself inside out, creatures pulled from the rot and the darkness screech and jump in between the trees. They're in danger, surrounded by rotting wood and grinning fangs, sharpened claws and blood lusted veins and everything in between. "Olete-" He stumbles on his own words as he pulls himself to his feet, pain cutting through the sentence, "we- we gotta get out of this forest." And to somewhere with a flattened landscape, the Cornucopia or the dying Wood or anything else.

But the point here is not safety and it's far past a warning at this point, an empty anthem and clear skies and no tribute faces carved into nothing more than a memory. The arena wants its blood and it needs its death, blood was not enough. He turns his eyes to the sky and the feels the irises that sit in the folds of his neck do the same, the twinge of newfound muscle still so foreign to his mind.

It's only when he hears the rustling of branches near that he realizes what's about to happen, grasps his spear and forces the adrenaline to let him hold it as a weapon and not a crutch, begs whatever god he needs to believe in to let him stand strong enough to fight whatever comes back. Two forms break through the brush in lilac and gold, their shadows dancing on the forest floor and Krueger's gaze narrows. He doesn't recognize them, but he also doesn't need to, only knows that he carves a smile on their throats with the tip of his spear as he points towards them.

There's familiarity that sits in the dead air as Olete comes beside him, recognition between her and one of the two, "I didn't want to see you today." And that's the cruel part, this was never about what any of them wanted, "but I know there's nothing we can do about this now." Cruelty begs for truth and finds it, a threat and a promise.

The boy before him rests his gaze on a dying form riddled with eyeballs and wounds- "he's going to go before you do.". No flight left in him, Krueger's muscles tense as he realizes what it means just a moment too late, his body fighting the movement of stepping back and out of the way. 

Instead, Olete finds grace and steps between himself and the blade, dodges once and lets a slip of red grace her skin. Don't, he wants to tell her, to scream out into the darkness and pull her back from the edge. But that's the cruel part, he doesn't, he can't.

He won't. "That a threat or a promise?" He can't help the ice that forms in his words, fangs bared and whip in hand and lashing it out towards the nearest branch and using the way it wraps around the dying wood to steady himself as he launches forward towards the boy's ally, blood for blood and all wishful thinking.

[Krueger attacks Lara ; spear]

GBKHkEmZTBspear

[8.0]

spear

[Red]

L a r a

A voice called out to you

Strange how you can't turn away

You've got someone who is true when the darkness becomes too great

Lara had been stumbling around after Magi all day. Since
losing her eye, her depth perception had gone sideways, and she was having
trouble adjusting. It didn’t help not knowing the time of day, either, and this
perpetual gloom was going to kill her. Her face and hair were covered in red-brown
splotches of dried blood, she was pretty sure they were lost and now they had a
run-in with some other tributes. This day was not looking up. Maybe we can just
talk this out, Lara was going to try, but too late, as Magi was already
starting the attack. She drew her knife and rushed in to help. Not like it
would have even worked anyway, this is the Hunger Games, after all. She felt
someone cut her ankle, gritted her teeth, lashed out with the dagger.

[attacks Olete with knife]

ELEGANT

jgIJUNrl4gknife

[Result: 3.5 damage]

knife

[ines izar d11a 🖤 cait]

olete bene

I don’t have any more answers for the world – I’ve stopped trying to find them. All I have are half-truths and it’s the most I’m allowed to hold on to: Krueger should have left me when I couldn’t land a killing blow. And I should have left Krueger for death last night.

Yet we both stayed, and I don’t know why; we don’t owe each other anything. Maybe there’s an undercurrent of use to our fragile alliance. That we’re better off with the other person still around, but I’m not so sure of that.

Or maybe it’s something as simple as the discomfort that comes with cutting the single red thread of solidarity tying us to each other. The anxiety of venturing into the unknown alone. Either way, it doesn’t change my mind about abandoning him. There’s something to be said about humanity and morals and being grateful for the way my parents raised me. If only it mattered at all.

“Thank you.”

Krueger’s lost all of the peppiness of yesterday, and it stuns me into a silence that matches his – the reality of who we are, where we are, how quickly the tides can shift. The only indication I give that I even heard him is the slightest nod of my head. Mostly, I just want to forget the last two nights. I stay close to his side, right hand ready to catch him if he falls with the foreign feeling of a new weapon hanging in my left.

The gift had come out of the darkness that’s blanketed itself over the landscape to give rise to a permanent twilight. I’d been so enmeshed in survival mode that the thought of sponsors hadn’t even crossed my mind. Thinking about it now fills me with a new, simmering rage – thinking about my face on a television screen makes me want to vomit. But I force myself to keep gratitude in my heart, replaying the simple words that had been tied to the handle of the glaive.

You’re shit with a sword. Try this.
–Avriel

The blade is sharper than anything I’ve ever seen; I’d bitten my tongue to stop myself from groaning at the thought of having to cart around another bulking weapon that I could barely hold. Surely the throwing knives I’d seen at the Cornucopia on the first day would have been a better choice. But Avriel was a good person – a good mentor. He seemed to still have some room in his heart to care about his tributes – myself, and Leonora. My mind itches at her name and the brief connection we’d made on the train. In another life, we could have been friends. Now, I’m just praying not to run into anyone else and the accompanying alternate universes I’d have to cut short.

Of course, we were never going to be so lucky.

“I didn’t want to see you today.”

Magi looks even worse than he had yesterday, but he’s the face of health standing next to Lara. The girl’s eye socket hangs loose, dried blood crusting her eyelashes, the most gruesome of sights. Even then, I can’t help but want to laugh at the irony of it all – at Krueger’s mutant ability to grow new eyeballs being exactly what the girl needs.

“He’s gonna go before you do.”

I can’t explain what happens next. Can only watch as the water rises and the world slows down and I’m left to try and wade through the deluge.

I see Magi step in front of Lara, positioning himself on her right side where the gaping hole in her eye socket festers. I feel Krueger’s body seize up beside me in response to the raised knife, bracing for impact as if that’s the only thing he knows. Like fighting isn’t an option anymore.

I know the look of fear in his eyes, see the light leave him as he begins to give up. It’s the same one I’ve seen on the streets of Nine.

My feet make the decision before my mind catches up.

“Ouch.”

My voice breaks as the knife grazes against my skin, but I can’t distinguish the emotions that lace my throat – shock, pain, disgust, malice. The second slice comes in rapid succession, but it doesn’t sting as much as the first betrayal.

I suppose that’s what I get for trying to take the higher road. But now I know the reality of humanity; it’s not a mistake I’ll make again.

We get a few extra seconds in the aftermath of my selflessness, or stupidity, call it what you want. Krueger wakes up from the haze, returns to form as the fire-breathing demon I saw in him in the Capitol. My golden irises flash an angry orange, the edge of my mouth dancing into a wicked smile.

“I should have killed you yesterday.” Curiously, the glaive doesn't feel as heavy anymore. “Now, I’m going to kill your friend, and you can live with the guilt of knowing it’s all your fault.”

olete attacks lara - glaive

trKyC7mc9Qglaive

13039 -- Shallow Cut on Forehead -- 4.5 damage

glaive

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

m a g i

Gas, out of time, out of money
You're doing what you can, just makin' it run
(There's only so much I can)

He hadn’t counted on Olete stepping forward. Hadn’t wanted to hurt her at all, or anyone, really.

But as much as he wanted to do the noble and good thing – whatever that was anymore – he hadn’t filled his heart to beat for anyone but himself.

He supposed that made him selfish. Did it?

Or had he grown into more of a young man, wisps of a beard growing from his face and body smelling of scalp and sweat, certain that he had to live? Fear couldn’t be the reason (it could, as not wanting to die for fear of what came after had been real enough to keep him up at night).

The boy from ten is pocked with eyes, a trick of the arena. Irony, wasn’t it, to have him face off against the girl who’d clean lost one of hers? He must’ve been something special, more than a body to keep Olete warm or fight off people like Magi, if Olete found the courage to take his knife. A little blood trickles and she’s paid her debt.

With luck she’ll be overdrawn soon.

“Call it a promise. I’ll keep it someday.” Magi drew in a breath and spoke, somehow flat and hollow despite searching for any kind of flame to become imposing. But he was not a boy that could set fire to the world or linger in bitterness. He preferred the sweat or the ordinary. A space where he could exist as he was. Warm, simple, and true.

Olete’s all poison and twisted to hate. And that would make it easier to kill her, if he believed a word of it. He didn’t see anyone particularly cruel. Someone scared. Determined. Cloaked in the heady smoke of what the game wrought, Olete surrendered to what needed doing. And so had they all, dancing past one another with their blades and spear.

Lara’s blood spilled again, and Magi stumbled back against another set of roots. How much more could she take?

“You should’ve killed me, but then,” Magi twisted the knife in his hands and readied, “You wouldn’t have got any secrets. And somehow, I think the truth is more important to you than death. And that’ll kill you.”

He hesitated if only to let her register his words, maybe even to ready for the blade that he swung. Cannon fire echoed in the distance.

She wouldn’t be the first.

He lunged.

[Magi Karp attacks Olete Bene with his knife]

ELEGANT

Jdi4JzmwLTknife
[result:+3.5]knife

[pogue]

G  A  M  B  L  E

It's half a miracle and full-on luck that his spear finds home in the girl's calf, his legs giving out halfway through the strike and adrenaline boiling over into a pained gasp for dead air. He catches himself on the branch of a nearby tree, feeling the dying bark squish and fold and bend underneath his weight, but it's only after he realizes he hasn't bitten the dust that he sees the tip of his spear has bitten something else: a wave of red pouring from Lara's leg.

It's only when he glances up to her face that he realizes he's made his first mistake, seeing the pained gasp of a scared kid just like him, acknowledging the way she only has one eye left to see her own mortality, to look at him and realize he has so many dotting the edges of his wounds. They're walking spectres, ghosts of a performance come and gone, stuck in a hell none of them deserved but all of them got anyways.

"Ouch."

It's a welcome reprieve, Olete's words laced into the stale air of the arena as it suffocates them all. He twists on his heel and uses the momentum to stagger his way back to Olete and away from the girl in front of him before she can strike back, her knife opening up a new shallow wound on his ally's skin. He catches himself watching, waiting to see if Olete grows her own audience in the opened folds of her wounds.

Or, waiting to see if she's just as cursed as him. Selfishly.

Because he knows those wounds were meant for his skin, that she is playing the role of a protector for a boy who didn't deserve to be protected, who threw himself into this as a martyr and will die as nothing but a rotting soul. And he feels it, selfish relief flood his veins as he watches red pull itself to the source on any other body but his, a whisper of "are you alright?" spat into the wind but nothing more, no protection back, no strength in the face of this massacre, choices granted and decision made.

That's the thing about Gambles: hit 'em with a choice and they'll always make the wrong one.

"Call it a promise. I'll keep it someday."

The boy's voice rings out behind him with a declaration, cutting in between the dialogue and the theatrics he shares with Olete to address him directly. Krueger feels ragged breaths claw up his throat, winces as he raises his arm and feels his own body fight back against him. There are eyeballs that scatter themselves down his right arm, poking out between the needle and thread Olete had pierced through his skin, a crusted wave of dried blood blanketing them as he feels them turn to look towards their opponent in turn with Krueger's own gaze.

His words have audience. How fitting, he thinks, and chews on the irony of how familiar it all feels.

"Making promises you don't know if you can keep?" He lobs the sentence as if its a question, as if he doesn't already know the answer, as if they don't already know the outcome. But there is toxicity and grime rooted in his veins, a Gamble through and through. He thinks of Bowie wavering slightly above Salazar's dying body, shaking wrist and soft heart and blade through eye and body to floor. He wouldn't make the same mistake, he tells himself.

"I like that." It's a return to form and a pointed blade, shit-eating grin carved across hsif ace as he glances to Olete. Keep talkin' to him, keep him distracted, his eyes say.

Adrenaline carries him forward as soon as he sees the opening, the distant sound of a cannon and the near sound of Olete's somber conversation with a boy she should have killed the day prior blurring together as he darts towards the girl in front of him.

The last thing he feels as he stabs outwards is the feeling of all of the eyes on his body closing at once, as if bracing for an impact that they can't handle-

- as if the only one who truly deserves to see this hell is him.

[Krueger attacks Lara ; spear]

CdVTM_zRvcspear

[4.0]

spear

[Red]

 

 

 

L a r a

 

A voice called out to you

Strange how you can't turn away

You've got someone who is true when the darkness becomes too great

 

Yeah, she would have much rather just talked this out. If they survived this, she was definitely going to have words with Magi about not diving into battles where the chances were slim. She took another couple of cuts to her body as she got her bearings back. Right now though, they had to scare off their opponents. She raised her arm again to lash out with her dagger.
 
 
[attacks Olete with whip]
 

 

ELEGANT

 
BTGjnjKVyRknife

[Result: 0 damage]
Accuracy roll Day 3
knife
[Result: 9.5 damage]

knife·knife

[ines izar d11a 🖤 cait]

olete bene

filer/wip!

Keep talking, even with all my exposed nerve endings on display and ripe for the picking. He’s reading me like a patient, reduced down to fickle and unstable and afraid.

My voice wobbles through the venom, I can’t help it.

“Don’t talk like you know me.”

wip wip wip

“Besides, we’re all going to die in here. Don’t think you’ll be spared.”

olete attacks lara - glaive

LPQLH1O46Fglaive

13089 -- Severed Left Hand at Wrist -- 9.0 damage

glaive

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

m a g i

Gas, out of time, out of money
You're doing what you can, just makin' it run
(There's only so much I can)

Another series of blows cut across Lara's body, but she's still standing. Her fortitude shown right through the darkness around them. Magi hadn't given up faith just yet, and apparently, neither had she.

"I never break my promises," Magi spat back, though whether he'd land a final blow was not one he could be certain of. Even here his blade kept glancing Olete as though he were willing her to stay alive. He rounded back behind the young woman as she cut deep into Lara and readied his blade.

"People show you who they are if you're paying attention." Magi said, voice drifting out between drops of blood. He'd always been good at that sort of thing, seeing exactly what someone wanted to be even when their face said something else. A skill of his for a boy that hadn't the intellect for anything else.

"No one needs to spare me." Magi stepped one foot across the other. He wasn't about to rail against how unfair it was that all of them had been caught up in this. Or, that his morals would give him some higher ground for any other reason. This game would make them all monsters after long enough. "I just want to be healthy enough to heal when it's over."

[Magi Karp attacks Olete Bene with his knife]

ELEGANT

koZJV8R_Z4knife
[result:miss]knife

[pogue]

G  A  M  B  L  E

Filler bc I’m out of the house! Keep it movin’ mama

”Oh, c’mon-“ Krueger points the spear out towards Magi, as if to lock onto the fallacy of keeping a problem like that in a place like this. ”That’s a heavy promise to keep. Think you’re man enough to live up to it?”

He glances back at the girl behind him, her skin split open by spear and knife alike. He avoids the words that dance on his tongue once more, only for fear of Olete hearing and seeing how much of a flimsy ally he truly was.

Promises that sacred are meant to be broken.”

He wasn’t a decent enough person to make a promise like that, let alone keep it.

[Krueger attacks Lara ; spear]

i8tRjA7hmQspear

[Result]

spear

[Red]

 

 

 

L a r a

 

My world is crumbling, can't watch and do nothing
I'm done with this panic, I'll hop into action
And save this town

 

The pain, it was going to kill her before the blades even was found her throat. How was it even possible that she was even alive after all the blood she had lost? It trickled and oozed from even more cuts than before. Some of them shallow, some of the deep. It ran out of the wound on her forehead and into her one good eye, making her almost blind. Tears mixed with blood smeared her face. She tried to wipe her eye clear but pain lanced through her arm, the impact of blade on bone. Fresh blood poured, a scream tore her throat, she lurched backward, tripped over her feet, fell to the dirt.

This was it. Lara was going to die now, it was too much. Hopefully Magi would flee, get away from these people, survive a bit longer, maybe even win the game, but Lara would go and join her mother, wherever she was. Had she been scared too? Or had she looked death in the eye, left her mother and daughter alone in the world of the living? Grandma. Grandma would be watching her now. Was she crying? Was she disappointed by how quickly she fell? No, her Grandmother was strong. She would be willing Lara to get up, fight back, not to give up. It was like she could almost hear her voice carrying across from District 8.

Growling to fight the pain, Lara rolled, got her feet beneath he and stood. Like the little deer she and Magi had battled the day before, she channelled the agony of her wounds into energy, used it to fight. She was aware of someone talking, though the specific words were blocked by the roaring in her ears. “Look at us,” she said, picturing her face zooming up on the cameras. “We are just teenagers, but we have become beasts. But you know what I believe? Embrace what you are.” The handle of her dagger felt slippery in her hand, the one that hadn’t been injured. Through the haze of red blood in her eye, she could see the dark shapes of the other tributes. She recognised Magi’s silhouette, struck out at the next closest person.

 
 
[attacks Olete with knife]
 

 

ELEGANT

 
dgfsQ9XyOgknife

[Result: 40 damage]

knife

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

m a g i

Gas, out of time, out of money
You're doing what you can, just makin' it run
(There's only so much I can)

Doubt had already started to gnaw at Magi when Olete and the boy covered in eyes set into her. He feared another cannon would sound soon, though he couldn’t have guessed what would happen next.

Lara’s blade found Olete and in an instant, it was over.

He stopped to catch his breath, his own blade having gone wide. Maybe she was more bloodthirsty than he was. Maybe she just found the will to live. Between the sounds of the wind cascaded through the trees and their heavy breathing, Magi listened for the cannon to boom.

“You better get on and get out of here,” Magi warned Krueger. He still held his knife close to his chest, ready to strike out again. Lara had managed to stave off death once, but she was worse enough for ware a gust of wind might’ve knocked her over. He stood next to her then and brought his chest out to cut a more imposing shadow.

It hadn’t set in just yet that they’d gone and killed someone. Shock had a way of numbing what was yet to come. But he imagined that by the evening time he’d have to say something to Lara. Maybe just, what now?

[Magi stays to protect Lara, does not attack]

ELEGANT

[pogue]

Filler flee!

Filler 2/3