Bloodbath Entrances

It's only when I hit the ground
It causes all the grief

— even if that first step is a fall. Instead of rising into the arena, the plate beneath your feet gives way and you are falling, bright blue sky all around. To your left a massive whale floats along aimlessly and to your right a shimmering cloud of silver stingrays is playing a game of tag with one another. When you breathe in you are quite certain it is air in your lungs... or at the very least you're quite certain you're not drowning, if only because you know you can't die yet. Not yet.

Right?

It is not the ground that halts your plummet, shapes and colors coming into focus as the ocean that is not the ocean — but the sky — finally takes its place above you. Countless small fish swoop down to help you, their mouths grabbing on to your clothes, fingers, hair. Suddenly you are descending in slow motion, a flurry of frantic fins making certain you're set down safely upon the rooftop of the mansion below.

Today a cloudless sky rains children. A girl near you has a jellyfish wrapped around her head, tentacles winding down her neck in its attempt to hold her up, while someone else is clinging to the tail of a shark because that danger seems better than the alternative. All around you your fellow tributes set foot upon not-so-solid ground, helped down by creatures that probably don't have an interest in maintaining friendship.

It is only then that you realize each of you are left precariously perched upon individual chimneys, a ring which encircles the mere illusion of a cornucopia. From where you stand it's hard to tell what the small glimmer at the center is that you'll all be fighting for. All you really know is that it looks too easy to slip off the edge of this roof and if you fall again, there won't be any need for rescue.