riffraff, cave rat // [Noah vs. Cave Rats, Day 2]

One of the rats flies up and sinks its teeth deep into my arm, slicing through me and slipping red across my arm. I cry out shortly, moving to swat it away with my right hand when another hovers toward me. There's hardly a second to react as the remaining two whiz by my face, making me stumble back against one of the piles of gold. There's a quick pain in my thumb for a moment before I feel a subtle crack from within. I bite my lip hard, trying to dislodge the rats that cling to me before any more damage can be done, but then it is too late. The damage is done and there is no going back from this loss.

"You melonfucking, douchewaffling, rat with wings!" I scream, pulling my hand away from the rat with a quick swipe. I hold it to my chest, not daring to look at the bloody mess that remains of where my thumb once sat. The rat has the end of it in its mouth, looking at me with wide eyes. Its wings twitch a bit and I glare, crawling forward with a rat hanging still from my other arm. The other two buzz around with a empty-minded business. Hot tears spilling down my cheeks, I growl low in the back of my throat, and stab at the thumb-stealing rodent.

[Noah attacks Wormtail with a knife, yo.]
[dice=200+2000]
[Shallow Cut on Right Shoulder -- 3.5]

I swat at the rats viciously, hand whizzing by them in the air as I try to dislodge them from my body and keep them from doing any more damage. The blood from my thumb splatters across the gold, staining the riches red and adding color to the dizzying brightness of the wealth. I shake my arms again, waving them hard to try and remove the foul rats and am surprised when I hear a sickening suction followed by a crack and a popping noise. Then the rat is gone, flung back to the floor for an instant before flying back in for more damage. My feet slide over the gold scattered across the floor and I'm sent tumbling into the stacks again, knocking down the piles as I try to escape the assault. Two hard impacts against my left leg send me into a fit again and another strikes at my arm. I growl, swinging the knife in my hand towards the nearest rat.

[Noah attacks Wormtail with a knife, yo.]
[dice=200+2000]
[Stabbed in Bicep -- 8.5 ]

The rat that took my thumb squeals for just a moment as it dies, falling from the air to land at my feet. Upon its downfall, the other three seem to feel tiny as they are, all scurrying away and taking off with the quick flapping of wings and snapping of tails. In an instant, I sink to the level of the fallen rat, crashing among the clinking coins and curling into myself. My hand is pressed hard to my chest, curled within my other fist in an attempt to regrow what has been lost, but it is useless. The stub is all that is left. I can feel the jagged bone beneath and I feel my stomach roll in protest until I put it out of my mind. This is no different than being beaten half to death in a fight back in District Four. This is no different than picking myself up off of the dirty ground of back alleys and seaside docks. But it is and I am all the more terrified of it.

I steel myself slowly, trying to regain my composure and find the will to move. My body throbs with every movement, my muscles screaming in protest as I try to sit myself upright again. My arms are bloodied with the remnants of yesterday's bites and today's bites and they'll surely be littered with tomorrow's bites as well, should I live to see them. Is this how it ends? Bitten and chewed and spat out upon the ground for the wealthy to cherish? A martyr's death, that's what it is. Sacrificed with honor. What honor is there to being eaten by rats with fucking knives as teeth? I finally get myself upright, grumbling as I slide against the coins and back myself against a wall. My pack is beside me without me even realizing I'm moving, my body going into service at the slightest thought. I stick my hand in slowly, hissing when I feel teeth nipping at my fingertips and scaled heads colliding with my palm. Sharply, I pull myself back and stare down at the snakes inside my bag. They're tangled around the med kit I was reaching for. The noisy whispers of the snakes send the ones in my pockets wriggling as well and I frown. My eyes quickly scan the area for something, anything, but what they catch on sends my stomach swirling again.

My thumb is lying on the floor a few feet away. My mouth is set in a deep scowl, lips twisted in disgust. The movement from my bag and pockets continues and I stare mournfully at what used to be a part of me. Slowly, I reach out and pluck it from the gilded floor, staring at the light scarring, the chewed nail, the twisted fingerprint. I feel sick again and force myself to look away as I drop it into the bag. My left hand moves quickly to snatch the snakes from my pockets and I wince as they scrape at me before they are dumped into the bag as well. For a moment, I wait. I can hear the movements from inside the bag as well as another sound and I really don't want to think about what they're doing to my thumb so I reach in and grab the kit. My bag is shut again in an instant.

I've patched myself up plenty of times before. I'd thrown myself in to one too many fights over the years that ended with me in bad shape and not wanting to go limping home completely hopeless to my brothers. I never wanted them to see me a mess because I wasn't. I was strong. I was the riff-raff, streetrat, scoundrel little spitfire brawler boy of District Four and no one could call me weak when I'd throw myself body and soul behind my fists and straight into some sorry bastard's face. I wonder what has become of my reputation now. Little Noah Ripley can't even go two steps without nearly killing himself. He gets bitten by every animal he comes across. He runs into walls while trying to walk forward. He can't even fucking sit up straight. I feel myself slumping against the wall and then slipping sideways until I'm resting against the mound of riches beside me. I feel my energy draining out of me with every beat of my heart and I just want to sleep, but the pain in my hand is throbbing and my body is uncomfortabley pressed against hard gold and my entire body is crying out for some kind of relief.

For a moment, all I can do is blink at the remnants of my thumb on my hand. My head is already swimming with a disorienting sickness, so the sight hardly makes a change. I lift my other hand slowly, the roll of bandages clasped in my fingers unfurling. I press it against my skin and wrap it slowly, trying to fight the angry tears that build in my eyes as I watch the stub disappear behind white cloth. I raise it slowly to my mouth, tearing at it with my teeth and tucking in the end. The rest of the cloth lays on my lap as I pick up the needle and thread instead. A sharp stab at my bicep sends my skin crawling and I fight the urge to yell or cry, but my mouth is too busy trying not to spit up acid. Again and again, I draw it through my skin until the gash on my arm is closed up and then it too is covered by white bandages. I'm still stained red and dead and my body is tired of trying to keep up with my injuries. I pull myself up gracelessly, stumbling against a tall pile and turning to scale it, trying to find something, anything, to put me to rest. There is no rest for the wicked, though, and I am surely a boy with the devil's tongue.

I've only just reached the top of the pile when I feel my hands slip and my body inch forward for just a moment. Then, I am falling in a cascade of gold, buried beneath its sands of glimmering toll-fare, and breathing in wealth. The weight is suffocating and I gasp, trying to push at all that lies atop me. I feel my stitches stretch and my ribs creak and I reach out, hand striking through the wreck of me and my greed for solace. For a moment, he is standing there with his arm outstretched and a blank look etched upon his face. There is a peace in his eyes I've never seen in all our minutes, hours, days, lifetimes together and I reach out in earnest, trying to pull him back and take it as my own. Then, he's tugged beneath the waves of flaming gold and I am left alone to drown in my delirium.

[Noah uses 5 ft of bandages and one use of his needle and thread as well as First Aid to remove 9 damage from his damage of 37.5. He is now at 28.5.]

I really shouldn't do it. The moment I see the tunnel come into existence, I know I shouldn't do it. It's a bad idea. The darkness lurks just beyond this room and dips into an inky black pool of oblivion. There is nothing more beyond this room of extravagance and excess but the eternal night of death. Everything in this Arena is constructed and trained to kill. There are fangs waiting behind every corner to sink deep into the flesh of life and suck from it all hope until it is but a rigid corpse with hardly a thought left to its name and then soon enough that is gone too. Soon enough, there is only a cold embrace of the water and what it holds there. Soon enough, there is a void of consciousness and spirit. Soon enough, there is only a grave to hold your future.

Graves have been my life though and I am close enough to one now to throw myself at, as if I were home after all. I take a few hesitant steps forward, hands skimming across golden ridges and sending coins skittering to the floor. The clang of their fall rings loud in my muddled head and echoes through me, reminding me of all that is up here. It reminds me that there is light here and wealth and a future. The darkness whispers its quiet rebuke, calling me forward again with its promise of familiarity and comfort. I have lived for many years in the dark of the night, and evil has found me time and time again. It has doomed me and cast a curse about my living, that it all be thrown aside with a reckless abandon in favor of taunting the very things I fear most in this world: death. I have hidden from it in the dark of the night for so long, cowering in the shadows and throwing my every bit of force into my endeavors to cheat death time and time again. What better way to face a fear than to come closer to it with every swing of your fist, with every lurch of your gut, with every step of your foot, with every dig of your shovel? I move forward again, as if my strings are pulled taught and I am willed forward by the hand of a puppeteer. What choice do I have in this anyhow?

I am to die in just a few days time. The stupid conch shell had agreed with me on that. The sickness twists in my gut and sends my nerves fizzing in my system. There is no escape from this fear, not when she swims through my nightmares and splashes into my every waking moment. She tugs at me without relent, drawing me closer to her heart with every passing moment; encircling me in her arms and trying to seize me within the very kernel of her world: death by water. It defined her every move, the urgency of her struggle to keep her head above the water evident in every fluid strike of her harpoon at the bodies of children. It was evident in every gasping breath cried into the silence of the morning air. It was evident in her every step as she trod carefully upon land as if it were water. She'd sunk beneath the sand and waves to the deep depths and now she won't leave me be. Every breath I take gurgles through my lungs; every step I make sloshes my stomach; every day I wake suffocates me with the promise of no tomorrow. There is no world for tomorrow anymore. Now, it is live in the present or die with your ambitions stretched too far toward the future.

I'm carried silently by a whispering longing for security towards the mouth of the cave of wonders, and of darkness. The promises of blindness in the endless abyss are too strong for me to resist, my eyes catching for just a moment on my reflection in a large golden plate. I am soiled beyond recognition. My face is covered in dirt and blood, dried streaks of life scarring what remains of Noah Ripley's face, but who am I? Surely I am not one and the same. So much has twisted; so much has spilled; so much has died. I am no different, twisting and spilling and dying with every step until I am faced with just darkness. I let it take me readily and embrace the familiarity of the void of life.

It goes down, I realize, stepping carefully across slippery floors and descending ramps. The walls are colder than death and it sends a shiver through me, my skin bubbling in disgust and comfort. For just a fraction of a moment, I want to turn back, but what lies for me in the light but the dark? The shadows are easier to see when there is a source to illuminate them. Here, the shadows are simply what reign supreme. They mask all their pawns in their cloak of security and draw them close to the bosom of corruption, wanting nothing more than to stain them darker until they are subverted beyond recognition to even themselves. It's a sick process, all under the veil of safety in anonymity and I embrace it readily. Each step brings me closer to the cradle of defilement, but still I push forward, feet skipping down steep stairwells and over musty stone. I continue onward until my legs feel ready to give up, muscles aching as I take just a few more steps- and then I am sliding against stone and landing upon a mountain of coin.

I curse, bemoaning the friction burn across my heels as my sandals had fallen off during the journey down. My eyes try to bring into focus the dull light that glows, but I instantly cover them when it blazes to life before me. My lungs practically shrivel with the sheer heat of it, sucking the moisture from my cells as I gasp in shock. The fire burns at my eyes and they water as I try to pull myself away from the unstoppable force. There is nowhere to go, however, and I find myself praying that I'm not submerged in fire and bathed in flames until there is nothing more of me. I want to burn no more than I want to drown. For a moment, I can feel the heat lick at skin teasingly, too close and not close enough, and the burning in my lungs extends to the absence in my heart. I would never will Pyrian's fire to go out like I wish this one too. The burning flashes recede into gentle, illuminating light, but the beams stretch from every corner. I blink slowly in shock at what lies before my eyes.

There, in the center of the room, lies a large disk of gold. It's almost a foot tall of solid metal, gleaming in the glow of the fire that burns at its core like a bonfire mountain. The pedestal is engraved with strange markings and symbols, as if it's a writing trying to tell a story, but my mind is oblivious to its secrets. It's not like they taught us any pre-Panem languages in school. We were kept practically in the dark about the true history of the world and its people, to my knowledge. We are ignorant of our past, no matter how much we try to better ourselves. That will never change. It's not the disk that truly astounds me, though. It's the people that stand atop it, proud and strong in their gilded state.

They're shorter than me by a foot or so, each one with a tiny hand outstretched toward the flames that burn at the center of their platform. Their clothes are in tattered state, loose gold-leafing hung upon their frames. Some of them look bent and broken, legs misshapen and bodies practically begging to be released from agony. I get up carefully, legs unsteady as I drop my bag from my back and make my way around the circle. Their faces are burning with intensity and drive and I want to step up onto the gold disk to look them in the eyes, but the fire burns to hot to even dare it. I feel sick, however, when I see my own face staring at me from across the fire, eyes drowning with fear and mouth open in a silent scream. The hand extended is dripping from where a thumb used to be. My heart races in my chest as the faces all begin to clear in my head- River, Pyrian, Emerald, Ivy, all of them- and then there is a loud hiss. A bubbling erupts across the skin of the girl from twelve and then her face sinks into a grisly deformation and sloughs off altogether, dropping to the base with a sickening slosh. Her limbs melt away in the same fashion, boiling down to pure gold until she has fallen completely, no recognizable trace of what she was existing any longer. I stare in shock as she spills over the side, a puddle of her existence trailing across the floor. There are eight other remains pooled in the same fashion and I feel my stomach flip. I have just watched a girl die from a ways away, saw her reduced to nothing in the wake of her demise.

I stare down at the puddle with a sickening fascination, watching the sparkling liquid slip across grey stone and coat it with beauty. I reach out hesitantly, letting the tip of my finger dip into it before pulling back and cursing, wiping off the burning metal quickly against the stone. My finger throbs anyway and I curse at my own curiosity, grumbling to myself as I reach for my belt and tug out my knife. It's a dull silver, hardly anything worthy of note, and I glance down at the molten gold once more. Gently, I lower the knife against the liquid metal and coat it from the hilt upwards so the blade is bathed in gold. When I stand and shake the excess off, I cannot help the small smirk that builds on my lips. It's a knife fit for a king. A Snake King should have such a knife, and I, being the Snake King, claim it as my own. Half of me wonders if the citizens of District Twelve will be offended; the other half doesn't quite care. I look back up at my own eyes, staring from across the distance and frowning when I realize there's something there that doesn't look quite right. Is it my nose? I reach up to feel at the feature, judging it to be sound, and cross over to my golden likeness. I stare for another few moments before I actually realize the difference.

There, in my tiny hand, is a normal sized crown of gold. It's a simple circle, glittering prettily in the light of the fire, but what catches me is not its material, but it's make. The 'simple circle' is made of snakes. I laugh low, reaching out to touch it and am surprised to find it quite cool, as it the rest of the statuette. I feel at the mark against the golden back and frown when my own tingles as if being touched as well. A shudder rips through my system and I pull the crown from my twin's hand, examining it a little more carefully before lifting it to nestle in my hair. It fits perfectly and I cannot help the amusement that shoots through me. I give a small salute up to the ceiling, knowing that a camera will be on me somewhere, and smirk into the heavens.

"Thanks for the gift. I suppose a king really should have a crown, yeah?" I call out, letting out a light chuckle into the crackling silence. My smile falls bit by bit as I am hit with the realization that I am really, truly alone. There is no one here to laugh with me, to joke with me, to be with me. There is only myself and the statuettes of gold, replicas of those still alive out there somewhere beyond my sight and reach. My eyes flit between them quickly, trying to gather who is left. I'm not sure whether to be pleased or horrified that Pyrian, River, and Ivy are all still in the Arena, whole and unscathed, from what I can tell. I hardly have a moment to think before I'm brought out of myself by a distant call, high pitched and melodious. It sends a chill down my spine as I turn to the only route out; a steep staircase of stone, leading right up to the noise beyond.