one point perspective [qh vs. tvv; day three]

[✨ zozo.]

There's a canon fired in the distance and at its sound Slate looks up, expecting to see Penelope dead on the ground. But by some small miracle her ally prevails, blocking the other girl's swings with sharp reflexes, and the sound of metal on metal shrieks so painfully it makes Slate wince.

She watches them for a moment. Two headstrong girls in battle. It's kind of beautiful, in a sick, twisted way Slate might find other things beautiful. But then there's a scream at her throat to match the pain she feels, "Fuck off!" - this kid really wants her head.

Slate crawls backwards as fast as she can, but it's no match for their long strides and she envies their ability to step, walk, jump if the have to. Her wounded leg still aches, she's bleeding all over her chest, but Vargen's flying axes don't quite land in the center of the boy's skull and her heart starts to sink.

She looks up at the boy - who's barely a boy, all lean face and chiseled cheeks, thick locks of hair and his chin defined - and grimaces. Clenching her teeth, pressing her tongue up to the roof of her mouth and seething, she waits for a man to kill her.

I should of expected this, she thinks dryly. Useless good for nothing-

A glint of a sword and Penelope is crawling toward her, perhaps here to take one last swing and finish off the job for him. Slate wouldn't mind that so much. Killed by a beautiful, broken girl. There are worse ways to die. In Penelope's company, whoever dealt the final blow, that wouldn't be so bad, she thinks.

Kind of an honour.
A sick kind of honour.

And she laughs at that, all shaky breaths and tears, but the sound is cut short by the ringing of a bell clenched between Penelope's teeth.

"Go on, Slate. Make him regret hurting you."

She rises, all shaking legs and imbalance, "Okay," leaning all her weight on her good leg and the long blade of the handsaw stuck into the ground. "Okay."

Make him regret hurting you, says Penelope, and in his face she sees them all. The sickos. The thieves. The promises. The lies. The leaders. The criminals. The betrayers. The ones with fists and hands and mischief, blood and money and messages. The ones who promised the world and gave her nothing. The ones who took her in just to abandon her.

Sebastian.

She sees Sebastian when she swings.

slate attacks kirk with handsaw [sword]
s4WDL4wwyksword
Deep Gash on Right Thigh -- 8.0 damage

sword

[heather - d2 [mylee]]

I’ve been here before.

This hurt, this burning in the deep tissue that I cannot place. Just twenty-four hours prior, my body ached like this, like the way the moon drags itself from the sky out of obligation. I had felt myself on the brink of death and let Tommy pull me back, our steps slow and quiet, absorbed by the surrounding trees. I had doubted my ability to outlive the night, as each breath pulled at the space between my lungs.

Tommy had held me that night, his arms wrapped tightly about me in a gesture of both comfort and support. He had made a promise that I would not have believed in had it been any other night, but there was something about the way he said it, as though he actually did believe it, that caused me to buy into the sell. He had laid out the contingent logic—I couldn’t die while he was still breathing. All we had to do was keep him alive, and this was so simply within our reach.

I’ve been here before, but this moment is not then

Keeping Tommy alive seems so much more difficult now, with both of us spitting blood and losing our touch on the ground beneath us. I am finally starting to bear my own weight, though the bones of my foot seem to be healing in the wrong way, given the lack of a proper setting. It doesn’t seem to matter much, for I’m still reaching out for Tommy through the dust-speckled light, hoping that I can part this particle sea and keep my head above water.

The taste of copper and iron has settled comfortably in the back of my throat, threatening to intensify with each blade swung in my direction. A call for home rests on the tip of my tongue, but desperation hasn’t caused me to bite down.

Two more jabs gone wide, the blade flying wildly back toward me—no control. My chest heaves quicker now, a fear of what it means to trend negative. Efram follows back with a shallow strike, but it is more than I can ever see myself doing again. I turn my head to watch the follow through, but this mistake causes fire to light itself along my cheekbone, blooding dribbling down the side of my neck and shoulder.

I’ve been here before, this slow burn.

I’m so focused on the movement of Tommy and Efram and Bell that I do not notice the shape of a girl crawling toward the one I have turned my weapon against. Her name, for the first time, reaches my ear, Slate.

I almost miss the second half of the sentence before the world goes red and buzzing.

Make him regret hurting you.

I faintly see her nodding, an affirmation of all of the things I can no longer hear or string together—a deep gash across the thigh or chest would all feel the same. I try to form Tommy’s name with my tongue, but it stays jammed against the roof of my mouth, straining against the vibrating of the jaw.

My arms refuse to lift, to take the heavy weight of a sword and swing. This is nothing more than regret, than what it means to watch the body from above. I reach out toward her, try to test her name on my tongue, Slate—the syllables so strained and unnatural. It would be a pretty name in any other voice.

I do not know if she can understand me when I say it, but from my knees I reach for her, try to wrap my fingers around her wrist. Don’t be so stupid as to regret it, I say, the hint of a smirk betraying the sight of a bloody, bitten tongue.

[ghosty]

efram.

Filler, filler--just keeping this moving.

[ attacks slate with sword ]
RVtuwiCnsword
[ shallow cut on left bicep -- 3.5 ]

sword

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

The stench of blood was sharper here, I noticed with a jolt, singeing my nostrils almost with its heat. Perhaps it was the narrow, tightly-knit row of houses entrapping the smell, or perhaps we were marked with the smell, the four of us, the monsters. Blood-soaked things, stark upon a field of snow. There was a metaphor entwined to that image that my whirling head refused to reach for.

I breathed in, lungs in flourish like flowers. I breathed in the blood, the snow, the musk of the old houses, the smell of wildflowers from the forest, the cold sweat on my jaw.

Then, I exhaled sharply, letting everything drift out of me, clinging only onto that savagery, that feral essence that howled with teeth inside me, behind my ribs. 

        Death’s bride.
        Death’s spear.

Penelope’s bell was a rich shrill across the air, a siren-song that sung to the boy ahead of us. From my items, I unsheathed the spear that Penelope’s given me – a shaft of wood and iron – the spear that loosened from Cole’s grasp when he’d fallen. In it, sat the soul of a boy. Now, it shall garner another.

“When you meet Death, tell him that this is a present from his bride.” I cocked my head at the boy, studying his face, memorizing it before it lost its radiance. The spear caught the light when I armed it and held onto the said light, firmly.

        “Now, die.”

( Vargen attacks ❛ Kirk ❜ | Javelin )

yY7zdUrUoSjavelin

15118 -- SHALLOW CUT ON BACK -- 4.0 damage (Javelin)

javelin

[Deleted]

Your world shatters as the javelin cuts his back, and you feel your blood leave your face. This wasn't supposed to happen, I made a promise to him I MADE A FUCKING PROMISE. You think to yourself as you try to carry him away from your district partner and her allies, knowing that there is nothing there for you and your group anymore. You feel like a failure now, you promised that as long as you breath, you wouldn't let him die, yet here you are. Your breath staggered yet strong as his grow weaker and weaker. You failed to keep that promise, and now you feel like you have nothing to brighten your last few days here. You hope to take him away from this, to make this as painless as possible, you know it's impossible to save, him, but you can at least give him some comfort. Even if you know that you can never keep your word again.

"I'll get you next Vargen, I've already killed once, now I have a reason to kill again. Tell your bride'" that last word dripping with sarcasm at the way in which people have to force themselves into feeling special, ""that you will see here very soon."

[Tommy flees with Kirk's body]
[Does stuff in maintenance]
[Graphic Credit to Marr]