WHO: Ariel O'Connell [D4] & guest appearance WHEN: Day 1, during/just after the bloodbath WHERE: Cornucopia STATUS: complete
You last.
The mixed dirt and grass around the cornucopia was damp with blood; Ariel’s own face was dripping with it, and every few seconds he carefully wiped his eyes with the back of his hand to keep his vision free. Couldn’t know if another Career would go rogue, as he wished he could have. Couldn’t know if a big outlier would take their chances, rush for a fight instead of run. But the arena was flat, the only cover was thin and he could see all around, see the tributes running and the shapes of tributes—his allies—killing and rising from killing. Ariel was at the mouth of the cornucopia, red smeared on his hands, his mace held loose in his right arm. There was a peace to the carnage. Silence hits hardest when the screaming stops. Somehow, he already knew this. He was glad to remember it, to be surrounded by it.
Chances were low he could catch up to the many fleeing tributes, and he only had one throwing knife left. Ariel wanted to keep it. It was the right thing to do; an arena with maces was no place for an eelfisher’s son, though he handled the blunt weapon adequately enough. There was no heart in such things. On this he and Aramis would agree, though it was more sensation than thought, and even then difficult to express—how to crush was satisfactory for a bear, maybe, for someone who became enraged and lashed out, but for a hunter only a blade would do.
There was time still, before the cannons and the hovercrafts came for the bodies. Plenty of time, and that time stretched further with the waves of agony that surged through his half-ruined face, through even the serenity which acted like morphine to his body. Killing was exquisite; this he had always suspected, and he was glad to know it now. As always, though, there were rules. He would break most of them if he had the chance. Ariel had his own rules, and they were many and murky, like the daubed markings of the fish one found in shallow, dark waters, and they were a breed of their own and unknowable to other fish, other people.
Ariel began to walk through the blood, remembering the circle he’d drawn in the cafeteria of the training center, and his mouth moved in silent counting until he saw her.
Alive she had been slight: dead, she was little more than loose meat bound in rags. Still he came closer, needing more, his breath catching in his throat and a prickling beginning behind his eyes. She was sprawled on the ground, limbs everywhere, and he could see even before he knelt at her side that her neck was snapped and the bruises showed where she had been wrestled, where she had been strained. Her eyes were half-open still, and with the reverence he would show to the ones that came after, he gently closed them.
Ariel’s breathing was steady again, but too deep, too steady. The calm, the fulfillment he felt as he smashed Maxima’s head in, was waning as something else took its place, something dark and cloying and angry. Ariel’s hand hovered over her face after he closed her eyes. He looked at her hard, all over, to remember the way her small body lay, and that’s when he noticed the lump in her jacket. With Maxima he had been quick and he had been subtle. There was no need for that here, and he unzipped Ruth’s jacket, and held up to his face the crudely made straw doll he found there. It was scarcely bigger than his palm, and its limbs hung loose between his fingers.
A smile crept across his bloody face.
You last, he had said to her, and her to him. Kill you last, hope you last long—they were the same idea, given tongue in one phrase. But she was dead, and soon he would meet his allies at the cornucopia and her killer would be among them. They would not keep quiet. Soon he would know. And after that…
He had entered the arena a boy; he would leave it a killer. Only two people had been safe, and now Ruth was dead. Ariel slipped the doll into his backpack. He had made a promise to her; she wasn’t supposed to die. And he would find the person who had broken that promise, and he would kill them.