Catacombs

These are someone else's catacombs. Lovingly fashioned, from the ornately carved pillars supporting the airy central chamber to the intricate art around the loculi dotting the walls of the meandering tunnels, this is the kind of burial place one crafts for the famous and beloved—not for tributes, all but the luckiest of whom Panem will readily forget. And yet there can be no doubt that this is still the Arena; that the gemstone eyes of creatures engraved in the walls are meant to follow you as they flicker in the light, that the statues standing sentry were designed for you to find, that the spiral staircase in the middle of that central chamber is an invitation—that the yawning maw of every empty loculus, stacked in columns stretching far past where the light gives way, is a threat. ~ WT