the sun may never rise again } excalibros vs 2 yetis

I do not dare question a system that works, lest it collapse before my very eyes.

I always gnashed my teeth at routine: counting the hours I could lay in bed throwing off stainless white sheets, dragging myself from weapon to weapon, wondering which walls I would try to decorate on that day. When I had an outburst it was a blessing in disguise, a chance to break from the ordinary - a chance to feel something when all my hollow heartbeat knew was ice, I secretly welcomed the chance in all honesty. I hated the system along with its games of pretend and the routine; that's no way to tame a madman.

Four seconds passing and a catalyst for for the final cold touch dances across the tip of my fingers but I do not shiver. Rationale should make me shy away from the fact my blade barely managed to open a strip of black along matted furs of grey - failure can only serve to speed up my demise. Fear cannot serve as anything but the mind killer,the reaction it should create can't possibly bring me closer to shades of red splattering across white-washed walls. Immortality; it's eternal life for a reason.

Determination refuses to fade to desperation and the chill lingering in the back of a scrambled mind is only numbing. Blood lust cannot give way to failure; I won't stop until I find the beauty in these shades of grey.

Following a fragmented logic and the dotted droplets of black blood along the way, I do not care to ask the question of 'what if there is none?' until the passing seconds between adding another thin stroke to the artistic canvas and Desimae's next wave of profanities followed by a new knife that fails to reach terminal velocity or hit the target for that matter. In the stress of the fight, I begin to wonder where the fire that so almost nearly put me on death's door has gone.

She was supposed to burn brighter than a supernova, but I question if she was ever a star in the first place.

('No one belongs here, Asha.')

No beauty, a distressing concept, but my lips curl upwards all the same. "I will gut you." Threats never fell from dry lips, only promises of bloodshed and tears. Violence became my catalyst for pleasure from the age of thirteen while red strokes became my desired form of art. If only I knew promises meant nothing to Capitol creations that could only growl and swipe. To think that they called me the feral one, possession of blood lust driven by insanity doesn't make me insane, it makes me a monster.

Or a killer, whichever came first.

One kill notched on my belt, the key to the freedom from whitewashed walls clutched in my left hand; the girl from District Four is simply a feather on the conscious I do not feel.

('What do you have to say for yourself, Asha?'

'What do you want me to say?'

'... Asha.'

'What?'

'You're supposed to say you're sorry.')

I do not apologize for not gutting it already.

"Red is more your colour."

A catalyst for reason and thought, the thief makes me wonder how a normal person can remain composed in the face of an immortality that can only be toyed with. Engineering of scientists built to withstand the rage of a career and the desperation of a maimed boy. A composure bordering the insane would almost be impressive to someone who hadn't been rotting in the corners of his own mind.

Daring to lift a foot from scythe's edge, I tear my eyes away from the beast for a split second with a smile on my face.

"Mitchell-"

And I scream.

White hot pain exploding across my midsection, I do not dare to inhale the taste of iron stained across my teeth or drop my sword to meet the wound in my stomach. My head tilts back and vision swims but I do not dare look down. Undefined on a spectrum of absolutes, it is not fear that keeps me looking up nor is it fear that causes one trembling foot after the other to step back and slowly slide from the deadly point.

Lilith would scoff in disgust at me failing to pay attention.

Desimae's screams are vaguely distinguishable through the ringing and rapidly increasing heartbeat nearing breaking point. For a split second I think it is for my sake, blacked blood spilling down my front and all but I am not a corpse

yet.

Instead, I am left to thrust the point of my sword into the ground just to stop myself collapsing and I look to the side to see Jenoah with tears staining his cheeks, screaming something incomprehensible about ripred; his false god.

Confusion masked my pain, my eyes trace the trail of black staining a grey ground all the way to the downed form of Mitchell Laws.

Mitchell-

no question asked, no flames to lick the funeral pyre; the truth is blindingly obvious even to a fragmented mind with no method to his madness. No screams to add to the bitter harmonic of my allies, I do not have the strength or the will. Black smile etched across his throat ear to ear, I do not even catch a final scream for a wound that will not close or a last laugh for a life one cannot steal back from the pockets of the reaper's cloak.

If there's a will there's a way - I refuse to allow these to become the fragments of the ravings of a madman.

('So you don't feel anything?

'No, sir, what should I be feeling?'

'Remorse, you really hurt her Asha.')

I foolishly scramble to add pressure to a wound with no one to blame but myself; in the face of arteries severed and a voice box broken, it seems foolish to be complaining.

Every pint that drains from his neck is another piece of rubble added to the ruins of the system.

"You fucker..."

('You should feel bad, Asha, you should feel something.'

'I don't.'

'So you feel nothing?'

'Did I fucking stutter?'

'How about if I slap you, then will you feel something?!')

There is no method that can restore a broken system; even insanity can recognize the truth when looking in its eyes sometimes. When I stumble forwards and strike, the only thing that holds me back are two cannons; the cannon that could have been and the cannon itching to sound.

Deep pants sound between brick walls slowly crumbling, trembling, cracking. I took the system for granted, a structure to a chaos not even my defective brain could conjure up during the night. I took it for granted, I truly did.

No rest for the wicked and no mercy to the righteous angel, a part of me was blind to the truth. Too blinded by a smokescreen thicker than the ever looming thread of death itself, too caught up on the 'here' and 'now' to cast a thought to the 'should' and 'could'; I am a man of action in the present after all. Consequences and end points are lost on me, not once have I thought to take responsibility for the actions or consider the method to the madness I was blindsided by at thirteen.

Countless numbers of incidents marked on whitewashed skin that I could never justify other than an attempt to thaw a numbing heart. The consequences of daring to look away from the target are evident from the hole in my stomach while the bitter reality of a lapse in focus is clear at the bleeding man at my feet.

No mercy for the righteous angel that clipped its wings, no rest for the wretched demon that still stands with his own blood dripping between his fingers and a corpse to blame at his feet.

But vengeance does not come full circle, yet.

I inhale and regret instantly pounds my head, weak legs almost give way to spiraling to the ground at an unthinkable slowness I cannot comprehend. Had I not thrust the point of my sword down to catch myself against dry rock, I may have tasted dirt for the first time since the detonation of tranquility at the cornucopia. "I'm not done yet." I suppress winces between words, pain is a diagnosis I'll bitterly accept but not wear proudly on crusted my sleeve.

Despite the world spinning, I still manage to catch Desimae's screams. One part horrified and one part enraged. "How dare you rip him away from me! How fucking dare you steal what little happiness I have AWAY!"

She does not wait before opening a fresh wound upon its arm. Between dull pain in my stomach and a canon that could have been, a smile still curls upon my lips at black arching through the air and spattering dry ground. I do not cast a thought that under the system I took for granted, Mitchell would have followed up with his steel sword and lighthearted words. I cannot expect much from a man without a throat, or an angel with no damaged wings.

I brace myself for another flash of white, perhaps the final one, but instead the beasts claws veer away from my trembling flesh and find themselves skewered into Jenoah's thigh and form a new scratch against Desimae's.

”I AM NOT DOING THIS FOR MY FATHER! I AM DOING THIS FOR ME!”

A cute war cry, but my grin knits into a scowl when his glaive veers far wider from the flesh of the beast than needed; vengeance snuffed out into nothing but a dream.

No rest for the wretched demon.

"Jenoah, it did this to him, it slit his fucking throat and that's the best you could do?!" I balance my sword and tighten my fingers around the hilt. Two steps and I am on the edge of an eruption that would drive me to stick the point of my sword through Jenoah's chest, just so I could show him how to hit a fucking target. The back of my mind begins to question the absence of the one who could make deals with fire like it was an old friend, manage black ravens and never clip their wing despite the fact there is no talon gripping the pole of his glaive.

He put two people on death's door but he is no monster. He's-

"a weakling Jenoah, a fucking weakling!"

The point of my sword gleams in the ashen sunlight as it arcs towards the consequences of my actions, though I barely manage to keep it on course for the vengeance my allies do not dare grasp in the palm of their hands despite thirsting for it more than the idea of life itself.