WHO: Shimmer Flux [D1], Aeneas Quatermain [D2], Pompeia Clacher [D2], and Shad Simmons [D4]. WHERE: Alto, not far from the vineyards. WHEN: Day 13, nighttime. WARNINGS: The usual Hunger Games stuff. STATUS: Completed log.
Seven tributes left, and this was when the Hunger Games were starting to get really miserable.
Not, Aeneas reflected, that the arena had been a barrel of laughs before, but the Career pack was out of food, cold, wet, and exhausted. He wondered, a little bitterly, if the rain wasn't purposeful irony after water had been so hard to come by the first week in the arena. He wanted nothing more than something hot to eat and somewhere dry to lay down. Racking up kills and going home seemed meaningless compared to those simple creature comforts.
As the volunteers sat, huddled under a tree on the same island where Girl Ten had died, night fallen around them, talk had momentarily gone silent. In the distance -- though not nearly distant enough -- a creature howled.
"Should we move?" he asked, goosebumps prickling his skin. Aeneas wasn't sure if they were from the cold or unease.
Pompeia was in the middle of feebly waving the part of the fur blanket Shad had occupied so she could take up more room while he was off doing his business. It smelled foul, even in the cold rain. And god, she was glad he was far enough where they couldn't smell, see, or hear him.
The hunger and the cold made her head feel compressed; the motion was supposed to keep her warm, but she wanted to just tuck her hand back in. And as much as she wanted to just hide under the blanket until she felt warm again, she looked at Shimmer, and then Aeneas, her eyebrows raised. Pompeia clearly wanted to move, with or without Shad. Especially when more howls joined the first.
Shimmer shifted uncomfortably beneath the poor cover they’d found. The sound of the wolves didn’t bother her as much as the cold and wet did. “He picked a hell of a time to go running off,” she said unhappily with a glance in the direction Shad had disappeared in. Even though it had been pouring for days now, she was still more than ready to retreat to the Cornucopia. Little as they had left in the way of useful things or food, at least it provided a roof.
She didn’t actually make any move to go though. Leaving Shad behind was hardly in her best interest, particularly now that the tribute count was getting so low. So her return look at Pompeia mostly ended with a shrug.
Aeneas hated the way that, now that they were in the final eight, he worried about every interaction that went on between what remained of the pack. Pompeia wanted to leave, that much was clear. Shimmer wasn't moving. He'd asked so that he didn't have to decide for himself, but it looked like he would be anyway. He felt bad about the idea of just ditching Shad, especially after he'd shared food.
Instead, he picked up his spear, making sure he had a good grip on it. "Maybe we're being paranoid," he said, though he knew that was stupid. There was no such thing as being paranoid in the Games. The howling getting closer, accompanied by rustling in the brush, confirmed this. He stood.
Seriously? Pompeia had furrowed her brow and looked at Aeneas with undisguised skepticism. When she heard the sounds, she turned, throwing off the blanket (whether it was an attempt to bury Shimmer under it or inconsideration was debateable) and jumping to her feet. The wolves sounded too close to grab the gloves from the bag by her side, so she quickly drew her sword. Her left arm might have been patched up, but it was weaker than before.
Pompeia's fingers got a decent grip on it, her teeth gritted from the discomfort of yesterday's wound, when the first wolf leapt into sight.
Shimmer rolled her eyes when the blanket hit her but let it fall to the ground without comment.The tension coming off of Aeneas and Pompeia caused her to clutch her own sword readily but she still wasn’t fully prepared when the snarling wolf appeared on the horizon. Even with the mist the dark shadow that moved toward them was discernable as something large and dangerous.
Planting her feet firmly on the ground, she braced herself for the impact as its hind legs bent into a spring. She should have been terrified but all she felt was the hot trickling of adrenaline and energy as her senses honed in on the attacker.
Like Shimmer, Aeneas's weapon didn't really prepare him for the attack. Fighting people was one thing. He was trained for that. But not even District Two had the resources to teach its tributes how to fight off a furious mass of fur and teeth, bred to attack. The wolves were rushing out of the mist -- for a brief moment, Aeneas thought that they should have left when he first said something, Shad or no Shad. But the thought fled when he was forced to react to one of the mutts lunging at him.
He swung his spear, and the wolf was knocked to the ground. Unfortunately, this only served to anger it further, and it jumped up again, thus time, its teeth sinking into Aeneas's leg.
Aeneas getting attacked meant Pompeia had a little more time to prepare for the wolf that leapt at her from a further distance. She barely managed to evade it, drawing a deep gash along its side. Another one was aware nearby, biding its time, but Pompeia's attention turned to the injured wolf that was coming at her again.
This time, a claw managed to swipe her leg, and Pompeia could only lop off its tail, before it disappeared into the mist. She could see it coming in her peripheral vision, but didn't have to chance to turn towards the other wolf when it suddenly clamped onto her already injured arm. She swung her sword at its neck.
Shimmer could see Aeneas struggling with a wolf from the corner of her eye but had no time to decide if she should help him or not. The number of wolves joining the lead one was more than a distraction and only seconds later she was contending with one of her own. The first wolf that lunged at her ended up impaling itself on her outstretched sword. The second one, however, had the luxury of an occupied weapon and managed to come at her from the side. Claws and teeth ate into her hip, causing her to cry out as she yanked the sword from the first wolf and wildly batted at the second with the butt of her sword.
The wolf yelped but didn’t let go until she had managed to shove the sword’s tip into its brain. Huffing, her eyes went wild scanning the area for another lunging dog but when none came she quickly turned to face her allies, sword poised to trash through another beast.
As the wolf's teeth tore through his leg, ripping through skin and flesh, Aeneas knew that he was in trouble. He toppled to the ground, the mutt's teeth still thrashing. The pain was immense, blinding, and for a brief moment, stars exploded in front of his eyes. When his vision came back, he drove the spear through the wolf's eye. With a whimper, it fell to the ground next to him.
Bleeding, gritting his teeth through the agony, Aeneas didn't have time to react to the second wolf before its teeth sank into his side. He managed, somehow, to thrust the spear through its side, but he knew that didn't matter. Already, he was dizzy and weak. He dared to touch his side, and his fingers came away slick and wet.
Is this really how I'm going to fucking die? he thought. He made a sound that was half hysterical laugh, half moan.
Half-concealed behind a jutting shield of rock face, Shad raised his head from between his knees. He was rotting from the inside out - or at least, it felt as if he was. His stomach and intestines had ejected everything he'd eaten and then some. He skin was pale and clammy. The noises he'd been making had been more than unpleasant, but his preoccupation with his own misery had not been so encompassing that he hadn't heard the wolves.
He'd quieted down then, gritting his teeth through howls and panting that weren't his own. It seemed like the wolves were right there with him, and then he heard shouts and action from where he and the others had set up camp for the night. He swore. Of all the times to send in mutts, of course the Gamemakers would do it while he was sick and balancing precariously on a fallen tree.
With a hoarse exhalation he pushed himself to his feet, but he was sore and tired. Various muscles protested as he bent over to pull up his pants, and then he slowly headed out to survey what was going on, reaching for both knives. He wasn't stupid. If he could stay hidden while the mutts finished off the others, that definitely benefitted him. And sick as he was, he needed all the luck he could get. Do me this one solid, he thought.
And that was when something heavy and covered in fur knocked him off of his feet.
Pompeia only freed her arm as the mutt let go to get a better grip on her, scratching at her leg. Her sword firmly lodged in the mutt's spine, she tried giving it a twist and thumping on the pommel before it finally died. Her leg wounds were relatively, though her arm had deep puncture wounds, but she had to use her injured leg as leverage against the mutt to pull her sword.
Finally freeing it, Pompeia turned towards Aeneas. He looked fucked; Shimmer had looked better, and Shad was nowhere in sight. Pompeia hesitated. She should get out now, in case more were coming. Scowling from both pain and frustration, Pompeia mouthed an expletive before she started towards Aeneas, her sword in one hand to approach the dying wolf.
Honestly, Aeneas was almost surprised that Pompeia was walking towards him and not running away. They had made a promise, and sealed it in blood. He felt guilty that a niggling part of him had sometimes wondered if she'd keep it, or if she'd stab him in the back. Not, of course, that he could blame her for leaving, if she did. Even if by some miracle, he wasn't dying, he was too fucked to win the Games, or be useful at all, really. He couldn't move his leg. Maybe, if there was only one tribute left, he could somehow manage, but...
He could feel his pulse throbbing rapidly, desperately trying to keep him alive. His heart was only a muscle, though. It didn't know that the harder it pumped, the quicker he was probably dying. His fingers were starting to feel cold and clammy. To Pompeia, he said, "You should probably get out of here." He was surprised by how weak his own voice sounded, barely audible above the whine of the animal, also dying beside him.
Pompeia was glaring at him for having the audacity to be all dying and crap. She glanced up at Shimmer again, trying to gauge how wounded the other girl was. If she could finish her off now. The mist and the low light made it hard to tell, but Shimmer was standing. And Pompeia thought she heard Shad somewhere off to the side.
Even with her district partner dying, Pompeia wasn't any good with words. Instead, she gave the wolf one more stab, to ensure it wouldn't have the chance to gnaw on Aeneas any more, though its head ended up resting against him. And she didn't even wait for the cannon before she headed off into the rain.
A part of Aeneas wished she wouldn't have listened, because he knew that Shimmer and Shad wouldn't stick around for him, and he didn't really want to die alone. He felt like he had more to say to Pompeia -- something like, "It wasn't so bad you busted that girl's kneecap," or "Try not to place second again." But she was gone, and his breath felt so weak that he probably couldn't have said it even if she was there.
Instead, he curled up instinctively, next to one of the creatures that had killed him. Killed by mutts. Only boring tributes and crazy tributes ended up killed by mutts.
Aeneas wondered what he'd done wrong so that he deserved it.
As his thoughts started to blur, he tried to think of something happy. But all Aeneas could grasp onto was that he'd come to the Games, not just for honor and justice, but to be first. At home, he'd always been second. Second born, second best, second most loved. In the Hunger Games, he wasn't even second. He was... He couldn't remember. Dimness was quickly washing over him, and then, there was nothing.
Shad’s hands were slick and hot with blood. A whiff of damp, musky fur made his stomach turn over, but he managed to push the dead wolf off of his chest. Rising onto his elbows, he surveyed the damage. Not only was the mutt bleeding from where he’d tried to gut it, he noticed it was missing a tail and had another wound to its side. He didn’t know whether he should laugh or sigh, and ended up belching as he looked to the sky. Scratches. Mere scratches.
Leaning over, he retched up bile from the bad plants he’d eaten. Being poisoned never felt so lucky.
The thud of the cannon echoed as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked towards their camp, wondering whose it was. Not only did the shot signal the death of an ally, but also the death of the alliance. He looked contemplative for a long moment, then got to his feet, a bloodied knife in each hand. As long as he could keep the contents of his stomach settled, he would find out whose cannon fire it wasn’t.