misericorde loves company (oberon v callum v jj day 8)

[Lyn𝛿is]

o b e r o n .

He wakes with the bitter taste of disappointment clinging to his throat.

Useless, he curses himself. Worthless. If there was ever a boy in this arena he ought to have been ashamed of himself for being defeated by, it was the boy from Three. No one would fault him for losing to a Career. Kenji and that dirty little Cyro had all sorts of nasty tricks up their sleeves. Even the kid from Nine was worth some of his respect, for facing down Daemon and escaping with all his limbs intact.

After yesterday? Why, he might as well have let himself get killed by that useless one-legged Eight girl.

Oberon groans, and the sound echoes against the hallways as he blinks his eyes open into the dimly lit corridor. How many others were even in here? His fight with the Three boy had been punctuated by a seemingly endless stream of cannons, and after the second or third he'd stopped counting, too occupied by the parry-and-thrust rhythm of their duel to care about what was happening with the other tributes.

Including Kahinta. Especially Kahinta. She could go off and get her empty little skull crushed by Dom for all he cared, and if she'd come back with him in these corridors he'd show her exactly how little he thought of her now.

He examines the knife in his hand - a spiral of twisted steel that seemed designed to prevent him from making clean slices - before dragging himself into the open, his leg protesting in pain with every step. He was dizzy, and exhausted, and sore, though strangely enough no longer thirsty or hungry. When was the last time he'd even eaten? He racks his brain, but all he can remember are the cookies he'd gorged on with Kahinta and the savory pies Ezra had made for all of them, and he scowls. Not worth the trouble, he mutters as the image of Poria whatsherface pops uninvited into his head, cooing over such temptations being oh, absolutely to die for!.

No more mistakes. No more dallying. No more making a fool of himself over the sort of fight that ought to have been more like slaughtering a pig, where domination was assured and nobody watching was supposed to have a moment of doubt as to his triumph. He'd hunt down every last tribute lurking in these catacombs, slit their throat if they were too late in waking up, and climb his way out of hell to make the Three boy pay for humiliating him, pies be damned.

He almost shouts in joy when the first vulnerable figure he comes across is the lumberjack boy from Seven. Wolf-something, or whatever his name was. He'd been one of the top threats on Oberon's list since the bloodbath, both for his personal strength and for his alliance, though evidently someone had managed to send him down too. And what better way to prove himself worthy of returning than to eliminate such an opponent before he could even free himself from the stone to attack?

Oberon spots a second stone divot as he lunges forward, plunging his knife into Seven. Callum. Their brief alliance had been fraught with tension, but that was really all Kahinta's fault. Callum had even tried to tell her to calm down, but she wouldn't listen, just like she never really listened to anyone once she got all irrational and angry. No, Callum was a reasonable and pragmatic sort. He'd recognize that they both stood a better chance of getting out of this place if they teamed up against the lumberjack boy.

"Callum!" Oberon calls out as the boy stirs from his position. "Come on! Get on his other side and help me take this dude down!"

[Oberon attacks JJ with knife]
3EDvQAVWPwknife

2019 -- Stabbed in Calf -- 8.5 damage
(Knife)

knife

[pogue]

C    A    L    L    U    M

When he finally breathes again, lungs heavy within broken chest, he feels the ice cold air snake through him, flickering underneath his skin with the sting of newly granted life. It's followed closely by the taste of dirt and rubble, dust falling down into his throat and he immediately coughs it back up, cold spit clinging to his lips as his eyes finally begin to adjust to the darkness that seeps through the halls, drowning him slowly and softly. It's a realization that comes slowly, like a candle's flame battling against the winters of Twelve, and as the familiar hollow feeling of a thump, thump, thump begins to bleed into his ears he tenses and strains muscles that have been dormant for far too long, feeling them groan in protest as he attempts to move them.

The realization started slow at first, then suddenly comes all at once, crashing into him as he pushes against the coffin he's buried in. Muscles strain as he feels it push back against him, a one sided battle if he's ever seen one. They've buried him within the walls.

Grunts and heaves of heavy breaths, intertwined with the taste of dust and iron dancing in his mouth, dried blood from his run-in with Dominic. He doesn't know how long it truly takes him to finally feel some movement in the walls of bones that are packed tight around him, hollowed faces staring at him, mocking him as he desperately begins to wriggle his way out from the bones he drowns in. A skull crashes to the ground in front of him, the soft thud echoing down and out into the endless hallways that now trap him, and as it rolls and rolls across towards the opposite wall his gaze follows, feeling the emptiness only found in the aftermath of shed tears prick and tingle behind his eyelids when he blinks.

There's a knife stuck deep into the opposite wall, the metal of its blade hardly seen amongst the bodies of the damn it rests in. It's a mockery and a punishment, he realizes, as he begins to pull himself slowly from the walls, most likely for trying to end their stupid game with the bashed skull of a girl from one.

It's not a second life for him but a second death, bloody story inked into his skin and the offer of entertainment laced into the screen of every Capitol viewer.

His teeth mash and grind together as the jagged edges of the damned begin to slice through his cloak and into his skin, the all-too-familiar feeling of his own sin dripping out from the wounds sending a shockwave through his system and into the back of his mind, ice cold and sickly as he remembers Dominic's face as he told him to make sure he couldn't come back, the sickening crunch of his kindness shattering through his chest, the soft lull of the waves pulling him under.

He remembers it all, but it comes in waves and pieces. Murky and blurred like the shadows that now twist and distort themselves against the walls, lifeless echoes of the same way he'd watched the Capitol lights glitter and dance against the walls of that room within the training center. He'd thought he'd known what was hidden within the walls of that place, but as he looks at the bones that surround him now he feels the edge of uncertainty slice softly into the back of his mind. 

To have thought, even for a second, that Bird's description of this place would have prepared him for death.

Naivety was always his achilles heel, wrapped in gold and forever bleeding.

It's with one final gasp for air that the wall that entombs him finally gives way, and he collapses forward to the ground in a heap, skulls and bones clattering down against his back and to the ground next to him and the last remnants of Dominic's bloody kindness echoing through his newly-healed chest, hollow and cold and everything he knows he should fear. He rolls onto his back, feeling the way the breaths break within his chest as he stares up at the lifeless ceiling above him, his eyes following the way the ceiling curls and falls into itself, ornate carvings betraying the bones he's crawled out from. His second life echoes the way the first ended, body pressed down into the dirt and eyes lifeless, broken as they look up above. When he blinks he feels both fire and ice shoot through him, and he sees the faces of both Bird and Kestrel billowing within the pulsating darkness behind his eyelids. The rise and fall of a once broken chest carries him through the eternity that he lays there, sprawled out in the same place that Kestrel's second life ended, where Bird had regained hers, trying desperately to find some glimmer of hope within the endless darkness that stares down at him from above. It's odd, to wish to see those same coal laced clouds that he so easily despised in Twelve, the way the shapes within them seemed so ominous and foreboding.

All that imagination he'd been so proud of as a kid, yet not once had he ever learned to listen to those same dark clouds that hung above Twelve.

He should've learned to listen, back then. Before his heart went cold and then hollow, before his chest followed suit.

It's not until he feels wetness blot the edges of his face and pool beneath him that he realizes he's crying, white hot against the skin of a dead man and writing every memory he wishes he could forget deep into his skin. He blinks them back at first, waiting for the influx of ice cold sadness to wash over him as he stares at the ceiling above. One heartbeat, two, thump heavy in a hollow chest.

That sadness never comes, no matter how many heartbeats he waits. He doesn't know if that should make him thankful or afraid.

"Stop watching Elijah... don't watch what I have to do."

The words leave his mouth as no more than a whisper, floating soft up into the air before being consumed completely by the darkness that awaits him. The tears dry on their own while he stands, ghostly pains assuring him of what he has to do to get out of here, assuring him of what awaits if he doesn't.

It feels familiar when he wraps his fingers around the hilt of the knife, wrenching it from the wall before wading into the sea of darkness around him. 

The catacombs transition gradually away from whatever ghostly chamber they'd buried him in to a place haunted by what he can only assume to be fading memories, exasperated skulls and hastily scribbled graffiti in blood, polaroids nestled within the walls and scattered amongst the floors. They're tombs to the same spirits that he'd felt call him within the walls of the training center, felt brush their hands against his skin whenever he laid himself to rest while in the arena, broken and soft and afraid and- 

alone. Alone. He knows it all too well at this point.

He thinks it to be another trick of the mind at first, the soft calls of ghosts meant to trick him to his death. The noises bounce and echo around him, lifeless and distant at first before he begins to follow their voices, past the ornate decorations of the walls, past stone pillars that ascend to heights he'd never reach without blood-stained fingertips, past the intricately carved statues that stare him down as he walks past them. He swears he hears their heads turn to follow him as he continues walking, but doesn't have the courage to turn and find out.

It's only when he enters the widest chamber, punctuated by ornate stone walls and a massive spiral staircase rising from its center, that the voices finally rise and crash suddenly and he recognizes the familiarity of what he knew was coming. Oberon's knife crashes down into the leg of the boy from seven, and it's only as he watches that same boy stumble backwards that he realizes he doesn't have to know his name before he kills him. He's thankful for that.

Oberon's trust bleeds heavy into his voice as he calls out a plan, blissfully unaware of what they must do if they want to truly get out of here. The boy from seven stumbles backwards out of reach as Callum approaches the fight, knife gripped tight in hand.

Cloaked in white and lines of red, hollow heart heavy in his chest. He makes his choice.

"Not a bad plan..." He says back, no more than a broken whisper as he feigns a truce with his former ally, casting a cold gaze towards him as Oberon looks forward at the boy from Seven.

"..but we have to be selfish to get out of here, Oberon.

I wish I could say I'm sorry for this."

The knife feels heavy, yet familiar as he brings it down towards his former ally.

[ Callum attacks Oberon with misericorde ]

H83CUvmOfbknife

[ Result ]

knife

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

For a long while, the only thing he could register was light. White-hot, all-consuming. Disorienting. Light.

There was no up or down, no wrong or right. Just light. And then he blinked, and he was on his back and he could feel the damp soil beneath him and he could hear the birds chirping and he could smell the pine and for a blissful moment, he was home.

He stared at the treetops, still on his back. In each palm, a mound of dirt. On his face, a smile. He would've been content to spend the rest of his life there, and he would have, until his view was interrupted by two very confused faces.

The first was hidden beneath a mound of chocolaty curls, the emeralds of his eyes wide with shock.

"You're... early?" he'd said the word early like it didn't make sense. Like he didn't have any better word to put there, so he had, but it didn't really portray what he was trying to say.

The other boy, mousy-looking and a few years younger, looked more cautious than confused.

"And quit lookin' at my trees!"

The curly-haired boy laughed.

"Relax. This one hasn't set fire to anything. Yet, at least."

The small one narrowed his eyes; JJ either couldn't move or didn't see the point.

"Lennon," the curly-haired one said, "Can you come take a look? I don't think he's, uh - " Again, he seemed to be struggling for a word. This time, the smaller of the two helped him out: "Dead. He doesn't seem dead. They sent us a live one."

For a very confusing moment, JJ began to worry. They were right. Of course they were right! Why would he be dead? Why would they? Why would anyone?

The last thing he saw was the face of a girl wearing white. She smiled at him, reached down with a single hand, and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he was still on his back. He tried to dig his fingers into the soil, to no avail. It was all stone in the one free hand. His other was holding a dagger. He sat up, a dizzying feat that he was proud of himself for managing, as reality began to set in. He remembered nothing from what came after.

But he remembered telling Perdita to hold on tight. He remembered clearing that storm, turning to see Terra was not there. He remembered knowing Perdita was going to kill him in the instant before she did.

He remembered letting her.

Speaking of- his free hand fell to his face, rubbing the spot where there should most definitely have been a missing left eye. It was there. The skin around it was sensitive and stung to his touch, but he could see. Somehow.

He remembered how long it had taken for Helle's face to appear in the sky.

He remembered how sure he'd been that Zenia was dead when they left her, only to find her walking around with a perfectly good pulse several days later.

He realized how that could possibly be, and he felt a growing pit of sickness within his stomach, a wave of nausea almost too powerful to contain. But, strangely enough, despite the physical reaction, he found himself subdued, his thoughts clouded. Everything was linear, taste in his mouth dull. Every movement felt like it was being made by someone else, almost.

He thought there would've been a time when being this person, feeling this way, would have scared him. But it didn't anymore. He wasn't sure he knew how to be scared anymore.

There was a time when that would've scared him, too.

It wasn't long before he came across the other boys. War-torn; they were all just the tiniest little soldiers in such a large game. He may have felt subdued, he may not have known how to feel. He may not have known if Terra or Will were alive, or even knew if he cared to find out. But the fighting part of his brain still worked: the part that told him he was being targeted, and the guy who attacked him was being targeted, and the third guy was not. Which meant he'd get the advantage if something wasn't done about it.

"Survival isn't selfish," he said. His tone was too level, too low. He thought, I'm not Jamison Wolfram anymore.

"That's what they tell us so that when we get here, we feel guilty for valuing our lives."

At that point, they'd all lost once already. He wasn't sure about the others, but JJ had just been too tired to try anymore. But things were different now, and that voice that used to be there, telling him it was okay to go, was not there anymore. He wanted to live, even if he didn't know the person he'd just become. 

Even if he wasn't a person anymore, at all.

"I'm not sorry."

( jj attacks callum, knife )
ngJnemOLf7knife
( 2178 -- Deep Gash on Right Calf -- 8.0 damage )

knife

[Lyn𝛿is]

filler to keep things moving

- "Idiot," he snaps at Callum. "I'm not asking you to help out of some sort of generosity."
- laughs in Callum's face when it earns him a dg from JJ
- "There's a difference between self-interest and shortsightedness."
- thinks privately that maybe Callum lost all his allies by being stupid and confusing the two, but doesn't say that out loud yet
- you guys are feeling guilty rn??

[attacks JJ with knife]
PR38qWnIudknife

2194 -- Shallow Cut on Left Calf -- 3.5 damage
(Knife)knife

[pogue]

C    A    L    L    U    M

Uncertainty betrays him, with snarling fangs and bloody claws pressed deep into his muscles as he swings his knife down. It's a half a heartbeat, a near millisecond of a hesitation as he goes down to stab Oberon-

a millisecond, but it's enough.

His words still hanging heavy in the air, poison stitched into them and dripping down to the dirt and ashes they stand on, the dirt and ashes they'll be buried in.

A millisecond, and any advantage he had in surprise unravels before him, Oberon recoiling backwards and his knife carving softly against the skin of his chest. Through the darkness, he watches a thin red line flower from the sudden cut, staining Oberon's white cloak with the bloody reminder of what every one of them has to do to get out of here. He watches Oberon's face flash with shock for a brief moment, hears his heart beat softly in his chest as he realizes he's fucked himself, before anger washes over his former ally's face as he regains his composure. 

"You idiot. I'm not asking you to help out of some sort of generosity."

His lips part to spit words back at him, all venomous and cold like the harshest of winters. He never gets the chance, cut off as he's met only with fire from his own body. His teeth slam together into themselves suddenly as he feels the same fiery burn he's felt so many times before shoot into his bloodstream, dart beneath his skin and singe at the edges of his consciousness. He catches the blade as it leaves up from his skin, interlaced between the pale fingers of the boy from seven. His skin splits at the seams, muscle and flesh alike breaking apart like two armies receding at war, just as bloody and ever as painful. He gasps instinctively, stumbling backwards away from the two of them as echoes of his one-sided fight with Dominic run through his mind. Little ghosts flutter in his stomach before clawing their way to his chest, pounding at the newly mended bones and pressing bloodied fingertips into the underbellies of his skin. 

He catches his breath once, twice, feeling the ice cold death in the air swirl and fill his lungs. Fire leaks down his leg from the gash that now travels diagonal across his calf, fire turned to water turned to ice by the time it pools within his boots. Something whispers in the back of his mind, a mockery and an insult, that no matter how cold of a heart he thinks he had he'd never get used to the fire of his own skin splitting, of his blood introduced to the world and settling as ice on top of his skin. His story bleeds out of his leg and, like so many other times he's heard his heart thump in response to the world, he doesn't know if he'll have the courage no, the blind selfishness to write it again.

"Survival isn't selfish."

The boy speaks in the same knightly tongues he's so used to in the fairy tales he so proudly, naively memorized as a kid. Bloody armor dipped in gold and placed on a pedestal, dripping with the every bit of poison and uncertainty and ice that laces itself through his skin now. He nearly laughs at the prospect, if his lungs weren't choking on the breaths caught in it in between waves of fire from his bleeding leg. 

Scrub it clean and paint it gold, pretend the indecencies don't exist but they do. Bloodied armor will always keep that red hue deep down. He sees it as the boy speaks.

"That's what they tell us so that when we get here, we feel guilty for valuing our own lives."

Distractions run abundant in his head as he hears the words, stories he'd never realized he'd written flipping rapidly through their pages. In the empty space between a heartbeat and a breath he feels the coal-riddled warmth of the sun on a Summer day back in Twelve, when the clouds would part and the rays of light would shine like daggers into the earth. He smells the District Square on a sunday morning, pastries he'd never gotten to have, ones he'll never get to have, tempting him as he looks through the bakery windows, leaving coal-stained fingertips on the glass. He hears it, faintly, the crash of a glass bottle and footsteps too heavy to sleep through making their way through the kitchen, drunken and sloppy in their delivery. Back then, he would've felt anger punch him in the gut, spread like wildfire as it smoldered in his own ignorance.

All that time as a kid, looking to find his own kingdom. 

Never realizing he'd had one all along.

Maybe he'd known selfishness for a lot longer than he gave himself credit for.

"It's not a bad thing to be selfish." His voice drips heavy from his lips, every broken scattered and lost memory carried with it, bleeding out into the coffin he'll rest in. 

"Feels a lot easier to tell myself I'm selfish than to tell myself I'm alone, to question why I'm still alive when everyone else isn't."

His body reminds him of the bloodied knife that's laced between thin fingers, white knuckles burning as he grips the weapon.

"I'm glad you're not sorry. It'd hurt a lot more if you were."

Oberon's voice finally rings out through the darkness they drown in, still laced with the same anger that he'd heard just moments prior. His mind registers that his former ally is still much closer than the other boy he's spoken to, having backed away out of reach after carving into his calf.

"There's a difference between self-interest and shortsightedness."

But he can't find that difference anymore, not as the darkness swallows him whole and he lunges forward, aiming the tip of his blade towards Oberon once more.

[ Callum attacks Oberon with misericorde ]

C2m7iBrRxlknife

[ Stabbed in calf - 8.5 ]

knife

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

Those Wolfram boys always grew up, which was truly an unfair thing. To be born with such fiery youth. To be so very, very alive.

To live long enough to feel the flames grow more and more weak, reduced to the burning end of a candle's wick. A strong gust of wind away from an end.

JJ hadn't ever questioned why they said it was so sad to see a Wolfram grow old. Until now, until the opportunity to grow old had been taken from him once and now quite possibly again. Who would want to die young, after all? He may have felt different, now: comfortably numb, but even he knew that was an unfair thing to ask. No one wanted to die young. So then, why was it such a terrible, awful thing for someone of his blood to do?

Forest fires dread the day when rain comes. The power they've built, the inferno empire of flaming masses: a kingdom of destruction. Gone. In such a small amount of time, an embarrassing amount of time. All that power that had been built treetop by treetop, brush pile by brush pile: gone. Until it was reduced to a smoldering little flicker of light to be stomped out by a boot.

A Wolfram's youth was his strength. Living long enough to see it disappear meant dying weak.

He thought that was interesting. Unbearably stupid, of course, but interesting.

"I'm glad you're not sorry. It'd hurt a lot more if you were."

He thought that was about the same amount of interesting. He'd felt physical pain enough times in his life to know that it didn't really make much of a fucking difference if the person holding the gun that had just shot you was in tears or not. Remorse wasn't a cure or a poison. It was entirely irrelevant. It was a byproduct of the action. Whether they felt bad or didn't, whether they wanted to do it or not didn't matter in the grand picture. There was the gun, the person holding it, and the bullet hole. Those were the things that mattered. At least, he thought those were the things that should matter.

He was struck with the overwhelming feeling that, maybe, nothing mattered at all anymore. Maybe it couldn't The only thing he cared about was making sure he didn't have to see that darkness he'd just woken from ever again, fucking Wolfram boy or not.

( jj attacks callum, knife )
IxRVGfpvpPknife
( 2105 -- Deep Gash on Left Thigh -- 8.0 damage )

knife

[Lyn𝛿is]

He thought Callum was supposed to be reasonable.

Here was a boy who Oberon thought knew that you couldn't just go off blindly doing and saying whatever you wanted, someone who was just about the opposite of Kahinta running off her mouth about the government in the middle of the games.

He'd admit it was clever of Callum, Oberon thinks as his injured leg buckles under the weight of Callum's blow and he falls forward, crashing to the hard stone floor of the catacombs, knife hilt digging ridges into his hand. A foolishly clever move, for Wolfwood is quick to punish Callum for leaving himself undefended. Oberon can see bubbles of fat and ridges of muscle poking out from the boy's bloody trousers, half looking like the edges of an inferior cut of steak.

Maybe Callum wasn't so different from Kahinta after all.

"You want an answer to that question, Callum?" he picks himself up, limping towards Wolfpine to put some distance between himself and the unstable boy. He doesn't know Bird, or Pissy (Ripred, District Nine had the weirdest names), or whoever else the boy's allies had been. He doesn't even know Callum. He just knows he wants his words to hurt.

"They died allll for you to angst over," he continues mockingly, "because you keep looking for an excuse to make yourself into a victim. Because you wanted a reason to carry your guilt like some sort of hero instead of just another weak, pathetic boy."

Callum was the sort of boy you could probably just leave in here. Put him in a corner somewhere and let him just sit there and cry until he dies of dehydration or whatever. The Gamemakers wouldn't even have had to set up a fight like this one.

Oberon ducks to one side and pushes off against one wall of the labyrinth, driving his knife at Wolftree.

"Don't worry," he smirks. "I won't feel guilty for killing you. Now go find Helle for me, will ya? Tell her I called back."

[Oberon attacks JJ with knife]

1SdkSzrc|Cknife

2119 -- Stabbed in Forearm -- 8.5 damage
(Knife)
knife

[pogue]

C    A    L    L    U    M

He twists the blade before he rips it from Oberon's leg, feeling the skin and muscle grip to the metal as he writes his name in the boy's calf, red spilling out of the wound as trembling hand whips backwards and he regains his footing. He hears oberon gasp in pain, hears the soft thud of his knee dropping to the dirt floor below, but he's a half a second too early and a lifetime too late to notice the way the boy from Seven lunges forward.

His body burns for a second time, again from his leg, and as the boy from Seven carves another smile into his thigh it's all he can do but to scream in the agony that comes a half-second after the blade writes itself into his skin. His gasp, filled with blood and steel and fire and ice, echoes and travels deep into the veins of the catacombs they are dying in, rolling and bouncing until finally he hears it drown in the darkness. The searing pain clashes with his own adrenaline, and he feels his heart bang against his chest as his vision pulses and his legs beginning to buckle. It's only when he slams an open palm into the wall to his right that he's able to steady himself, feeling his skin split and leak his sins onto the jagged rocks that he's now using to balance himself. He'd told the boy from Seven that it'd hurt a lot more if he'd said he was sorry for what he was doing and the boy had taken it as a challenge, his own words now leaking from his thigh and embedding themselves into every fiery breath he takes, ice cold voice in the back of his head reminding him that they could be his last. 

He digs his fingertips into the rocks, feeling the pain hiss and sear as the skin rips from the tips of his fingers and leaves itself on the wall, and as he raises his vision up from the ground he wills the pain and whatever adrenaline he has left in him to let him think clearly again, even if only for one more hit, even if only for one more heartbeat.

The dying say crazy things.

Go ahead. Show me how kind you are. The words seem so dramatic now as they flicker inside his head, against a backdrop of the whispers of the red waves against his skin, of the sickening crunch that came with Dominic's weapon buried into his chest. He knows what it's like, to spit poison as your last attack, desperate hopes of tearing an opponent down with you. A bleeding heart will always want to make another heart bleed, Oberon's no exception.

"You want an answer to that, Callum?"

The words take too long to register as the boy from Seven falls to the ground, Oberon's blade ripped from his arm. His life bleeds into the soil for a second time, white cloak stained red and his own words echoing in the back of Callum's mind. "I'm not sorry."

I'm not sorry, either. He thinks to himself, thoughts all ice and frost, an unheard acknowledgement to a dead boy he'd never know. 

It's only when he casts his gaze back to Oberon that the boy across from him speaks again. He's hardly standing, wobbling and swaying in the darkness as blood pours from his open leg. It's like he's looking in a mirror, and it dawns on him finally that the two of them really only have one or two attacks at most left before one's story flickers and burns out. 

"They died all for you to angst over. Because you keep looking for an excuse to make yourself into a victim.

Because you wanted a reason to carry your guilt like some sort of hero instead of just another weak, pathetic boy."

He knows stings and he knows jabs, eighteen years of experience baring his fangs at his older brother out of teenage naivety and hopeless ignorance. He knows poison and he knows venom, his first death and last words to Dominic dripping with the both of them. Oberon's words don't come as a surprise to him, but just like everything else that he expects in this arena they still come with the same fire and ice and burn and fury that he'd never been able to become accustomed to. 

His words are no different, and he feels his heart sink heavy in his chest as the cold stare on his face breaks for the smallest fraction of a moment, pain and loss and hopeless childhood innocence making its final stand to come back to the world.

He chokes it down with the taste of blood, driving his teeth into his lip until it splits and the unmistakeable taste of iron and sin fills his mouth. His fingers tighten around the knife in his hands, hilt pressing itself hard into his palm. Oberon's right, of course, but it's too late in the game for him to fall to his knees at the hands of a boy just as broken as him, to let himself shatter when the cracks in his armor are already so easily visible.

Every argument he'd ever had with his older brother echoes in the back of his mind, every creaking floorboard and slammed door and curled up fists slammed against the pillow, tears blinked back before pouring from his eyes anyways. He remembers them having felt like fire, molten and smoldering in his bloodstream. Now, they all feel so cold, so far away, so lost. With one final, broken breath he lets them sink into the darkness, steeling his gaze once more.

A laugh, no more than a single breath of air, leaves his mouth. It feels foreign to him, but at the same time so familiar.

"Carry myself like some sort of hero, huh? Maybe you're right."

He finds his balance as his palm leaves the rocky walls, breaths heavy in his chest as he feels Death carve its name into his skin. Not yet, he thinks. Soon.

"Took me a whole life to realize-" He begins, pain cutting off his sentence as a sharp breath cuts into his lungs.

"Heroes don't exist in here, Oberon. Not me, not you, not any fucking tribute in this arena."

Fairy tale to reality, his life turns backwards on itself and the pages reverse, once memorized stories turning bloody in his mind.

"Just kids playing the game, like I said before."

Adrenaline, a final wave, courses through him as he grips his knife.

"Now let's get this over with so that we can both leave this place. Dead or alive."

[ Callum attacks Oberon with misericorde ]

G2n6sGpFOPknife

[ Block ]


[ Accuracy ]

knife

[ SC on left calf - 3.5]

knife·knife

[Lyn𝛿is]

Another cannon. He wonders who else will trace his footsteps in here tomorrow. Who's died for good. Who else might be fighting just one corridor over.

He wonders if he'll turn a corner and come face-to-face with Kahinta again. It would be more than a little satisfying to come across her after she'd cursed him with her wish for him to die.

Something doesn't feel right.

Oberon had half expected Callum to retort with some sort of witty comeback, or to snarl in rage and start swinging wildly at him with his knife. It would be more satisfying to decide once and for all that Callum was an enemy, and not a boy whose worth constantly shifted in Oberon's mind with insightful remarks in one direction and stupid decisions in another.

"Heroes don't exist in here, Oberon. Not me, not you, not any fucking tribute in this arena."

wip:
- thinks about Kahinta and rebellion and stuff

- "Just kids playing the game," he agrees
- trying not to sound sad?? maybe Oberon is having feelings??
- "It's a shame, how we only learn these things when we're on the verge of death."

[Oberon attacks Callum with knife]
UhU7D1TGKpknife

2097 -- Deep Gash on Back of Head -- 9.0 damage
(Knife)
operation badass death - stabbed in throat (by request of Pogue)knife