crown of madness | CH v WR day 3

As the day quickly fades to night, Derecho finds a place on the ground fit for a peasant king. It doesn't offer much, but it gives him a place to relax, a place to unwind, and maybe even a place to sleep. Yet going to sleep is terrifying, and it draws his attention to every little sound that surrounds him. Every snap of a twig, every rustle of a leaf, it all brings his tired eyes to focus on the world around him for just a little longer. Even as the anthem plays, Derecho can't bring himself to look because no cannons echoed throughout the arena meaning nobody died.

It's when he first closes his eyes for some much-needed rest that something changes.

Icy chills crawl up and down his spine, and no matter how many times he tries drawing the uniform closer to his skin, the chills don't go away. Instead, they become more intense like someone has dumped a bucket of ice water into his veins. Sweat drips from his brow, but it's not from the heat. For a moment, Derecho wonders if he has some sort of infection with a fever.

I just need some sleep. He tells himself over, and he tries slowing his racing heart, yet it seems impossible because it speeds up faster and faster until it feels like it'll burst through his chest at any given second. Just calm down. It's okay.

Back home, when his mind and heart were racing, Derecho would take deep breaths, and that's what he does now. A rhythmic breathing helps him fall asleep, and it gives him the comfort to slowly drift away into a slumber.

Which became a huge mistake.

---

Screams echo through the night, and he finds himself standing in front of the children at school trying to explain why he deserves a chance at the career academy, yet everyone is laughing at him, telling him he'll never make it no matter how hard he tries.

"You're weak, Derecho. You'll never succeed." Someone shouts from the growing crowd. His knees are weak, and standing becomes hard, yet he stands tall trying to fight them off with his words of how he'll be more than they can ever imagine, but it's never enough the tormenting becomes more and more until he's running away with tears falling from his face.

---

Derecho rolls over trying to get those images out of his mind. It's only a dream, and then he closes his eyes again slowing his breathing down and forces himself back to sleep because rest is needed.

---

He's standing alongside his family, but they don't see him or hear him. They don't even know he's there, and he's watching them beg for their lives to those who stand in front of them. His mother is screaming at the top of her lungs, his brother and sisters, his entire family is begging for a chance to escape.

"Follow me!" He screams at them, yet they don't hear him, they don't even acknowledge his existence, and he watches them closely as they try to escape, try to figure out a way to leave, but the doors won't open even when they pull on the knob, and the water is rising faster and faster, and it's rushing through his body, and he's screaming at the top of his lungs.

But it does no good -

---

"Hey, Derecho."

Sweat pours from his brow, and his bones are icy and cold, and it feels as though they're going to break in half with the smallest moves. His screams grow louder, and he claws at the crown, yet it doesn't move, but hearing the voice of Kaius and feeling the touch brings him back to reality for only a moment. Both Kaius and Quinn are awake, and they're looking at him, and he looks at them wondering what's going on.

A heavy heart drops into the pits of his stomach, but it doesn't matter. Nothing does.

Drifting back to sleep is incredibly difficult, and all he wants is to get some rest, but each time he closes his eyes, everything starts to fade and the icy chills return.

---

A young male stands off to the side watching Kaius and Quinn fighting for their lives, and Derecho notices that he sees himself helping them. Yet the mutts are too strong, the claws, their teeth, the weapons. All of them come raining down, and he sprints towards them trying to get them to move, to run away and retreat from the war that's upon them, and they don't move. They keep fighting, and they stumble, and the mutts faces are replaced by the faces of those he loves and cares about back home, and they're falling too, and the ground is shaking violently.

"Death. Dying. Heavy." He mutters under his breath as he keeps running trying to save those he cares about even though he wants to pretend he doesn't care. His family falls, his friends fall, and then his allies, and right now everything he ever cared about is fading away.

---

He awakes with a silent scream, and he's still clawing at the crown embedding itself into his skull, but it makes him somewhat at ease knowing he didn't wake his sleeping allies again.

Since can't go back to sleep, he watches the sky change to a brighter color for a new day.

Soon they're on their feet moving, and Derecho wants to linger a bit behind, but he can't help but think about everything that happened.

"Is anyone else having visions?" He asks while biting his lip afraid of what the others may say, and the way Kaius answers makes Derecho realize he's very much alone. Heavy eyes lock on the ground, and for a moment he decides to say nothing else until Kaius asks what's going on.

""Death. Dying. Family. Friends. You. Me. Stuck on repeat. I can't save anyone including me."" His voice is quiet and filled with dread.

For a moment silence echoes through his mind, and the distant sound of his family screaming replays through his mind, and it's hard to not to scream and try to figure out what's going on.

"You saved us today. We both saw that, Derecho."

Those words are just what he needs, yet they still don't take away the pain and confusion.

"I had to, I couldn't just let you all die. Maybe I just had a bad dream." Everyone has bad dreams and nightmares. Everyone struggles sometimes, and right now it's not what he wants to admit. Throughout his entire life, Derecho has been called weak and told he'd never amount to anything which led to him volunteering to prove his worth and to make a legacy for himself and his family, but if those bad dreams keep coming -

Maybe they're right. Maybe I'll never succeed at anything.

"Bad dream or not, I think you're stronger than you realize." Derecho can't help but smile when Quinn speaks. Kaius quickly adds "And it's not a bad thing to want to protect everyone. I want to save everyone, too. That's called bravery." Only he doesn't feel brave.

How can I be brave when I can't even sleep through a nightmare?

"I have much to prove to myself and to everyone. I want to prove I'm not weak." Reaching for the crown, he tries removing it again, and the pain becomes unbearable, and his family's screams grow louder and louder until drops his hands at his side. "But I can't even get this damn crown off my head."

Maybe it's too much too soon because soon silence fills the air around him once more as he follows along behind Kaius holding the hammer tight in his hand. It had done amazing for him last time against the mutts, and maybe now this is the chance needed to really bring success for himself in the games.

Barely paying attention, he nearly topples into Kaius, yet he stands silently behind him watching other tributes come into view. Watching Kaius act by swinging a branch to make some room, and then watching him strike the career from one, Derecho knows what he needs to do.

Taking a breath and clearing his mind from everything up until this moment, he gets himself ready, and then he follows behind Kaius, and he raises his hammer into the air ready to prove why he's worthy of everyone knowing his name.

In the meadow, as Quinn walks, flowers wilt around her. She then finds something that frightens her more than she expected: a corpse, lying among the grass. It takes a lot of her strength not to let out a shriek of shock. It looks all too familiar, too, but she tries to brush away the thought. It couldn't be real. It had to be a trick. Anyone who died in the arena got picked up by hovercraft. This wasn't actually anyone. It couldn't be. Chrysanthemums grow and wilt on the corpse, and a few items are scattered nearby it.

A flower crown is the first thing she sees. It's made of chrysanthemums that do the same thing as the ones that were growing from the corpse: growing and wilting at random. She places it on her head gingerly and looks around at the other thing nearby. It's a bundle of plants, bound by a piece of cloth that for some reason, seems like it might have some sort of significance that Quinn can't quite place.

-----

Eventually, while in the meadow, Quinn finds another thing that spooks her. It's an old, rusted cornucopia that looks like it has to be from a previous Games. Pieces of metal are scattered about and the thing is adorned in cobwebs. Pushing them aside, Quinn builds up the courage to venture inside the run-down structure.

"Hello?" she calls out as she cautiously enters. It echoes back to her just as she spots what appears to be a blinking red eye in the middle of it all. She inspects it, trying to figure it out. As she leans over it, her necklace of coins clang against it, and she has an idea. Taking one of the coins from her necklace, she places it next to the blinking red eye.

In response, the eye blinks a couple times more, which is then followed by a strobing light, startling Quinn for a moment, but not scaring her away. She's too curious for that. Then, for a moment or so, it stops before words begin to appear across the iris of the eye.

Your fate depends upon this, and this alone: find the one who lies to you.

The one who lies to her? She wonders what it could mean… She tries not to think on it too much, but when she gets back to her alliance, doesn't say a word about either of the things that she saw. Quinn is a bit on guard, keeping her distance perhaps a bit more than before. One of them could be the liar— faking kindness. A faux form of friendship and generosity. She had to keep an eye out.

-----

Night seems to come quickly after their fight with the mutant hounds and Quinn's experience with the creepier side of the arena. She barely sleeps, though. Derecho seemed to be having some disturbances in the night, and as a result, Quinn was almost often restless that night. A scream came from Derecho at one point, and she jolted awake in response. It came from Derecho. Was he hurt?

Kaius shakes Derecho awake, saying his name. He ended up settling down, and Quinn eventually fell back to sleep, for at least a little while longer. The rest of the night is relatively quiet and calm.

-----

The group travels when they awake in the morning. Staying in one place probably wouldn't have turned out well for them. Even if it kept them away from other tributes, the Capitol would probably just send more of their monstrosities to try to kill the group of them.

As they walk, Derecho asks a question that takes Quinn a bit off-guard.

"Is anyone else having visions?"

Quinn shakes her head to say no, and Kaius asks what's going on. Derecho explains, and emotions start to come out. He says that maybe it was just a bad dream, and Quinn speaks up.

"Bad dream or not, I think you're stronger than you realize," she tells him.

Kaius nods in response as the group keeps moving. Bravery and weakness are both topics of conversation before the group is interrupted. There are other tributes nearby. Kaius is smart in the way he acts in response, though. He knows what he's doing, swinging a nearby branch in the way of the other tributes as a barrier before swinging his weapon at a nearby girl from one of the upper districts. His weapon stabs into her*, and Derecho follows suit, bringing his warhammer down with a snap.

Did he just break one of her bones*? Quinn feels a queasy feeling in her stomach, knowing this is about to be a bloody mess.

One of their foes goes to warn his alliance, only to cut himself off when the weapons start swinging. He slashes with his own blade in return, cutting Kaius. Quinn wasn't okay with that.

With her makeshift scythe in hand, she readies it at one of her newfound enemies while shouting back to Kaius.

"You alright back there, Kaius?"

There's a chance one of these guys is faking their friendship, but she isn't faking hers. Regardless of them barely knowing each other, they saved her life yesterday, and she cares about them.

Then, she swings.

A mallet pounds the bones of his skull in rhythm with his heart, and it takes every ounce of strength to push it all away as this battle begins and carries on. Yet no amount of pain and agony will hide the smile that spreads from ear to ear as the hammer crunches through another bone.

Sometimes all it takes is a simple moment for something to catch a person completely off guard, but as Derecho turns his head and finds his allies, he knows the plan is simple.

Stay alive.

It's easier said than done.

The words of his allies reach his ears, and for a moment, he can't help but wonder why they're talking to each other instead of moving on when it dawns on him before he can do anything about it. They're here to survive, here to live, here to kill.

"Don't let them find a flank! We can't let them get cover."

Every word of this is true. The moment they find a flank, the moment they find some cover, it's all over for them. Right now they're at an advantage because of the element of surprise, yet it still feels so far away.

Kaius is moving forward, and he's pushing Quinn from behind.

"We need to stick together. Don't get separated."

The first thing he learned in the training academy is to keep numbers the same and never take on a fight that has a high probability of losing, and right now as long as they keep up the work and keep pushing together, they may be able to succeed.

"We've only got one shot! We can't lose it."

Kaius lunges forward with his sword, and Derecho takes that as a moment to strikes as well. They can't attack two people at once, but they'll never see me coming.

When Quinn strikes December, she feels guilt in her heart. It doesn't feel right, hitting these people with actual, dangerous weapons. It's not like when she and Tex were sparring in the training center. Those wooden weapons likely would've done little more than bruise. These weapons were a lot more capable of killing, even if Quinn had made this scythe herself.

As attacks started coming in on her, though, the pain Quinn felt made her know she had to fight. It was fight or die, and it was far too early for her to even think about dying yet. Not that she ever even wanted that to happen. She came into this arena with the hopes of victory. It was just a lot harder than the Capitol had crafted it to seem to be.

December shouts for Quinn's allies to leave Alice alone, but that doesn't help. As soon as there's another opening, Derecho and Kaius are striking the District One girl again. Kaius reminds Quinn and Derecho that they only have "one shot" and helps guide Quinn along as she struggles in pain.

Blood is flowing, but her allies' attacks aren't as strong this time around as the first time. Derecho even ends up with his opponent blocking his attack.

“Just leave her alone already, fuck!” the one Quinn believes is Brody shouts out.

He wants to defend Alice. Quinn's sure that all the other alliance wants to do is survive, but that's what Quinn wants she and her own allies to do, too. She might've been a little uncertain on the trust portion of her things with her allies, but that didn't mean she wanted them to die. She'd protect herself and the others where she could.

Then Brody speaks again.

“Come here, will you?” he says to Kaius before driving his knife into him. Damn, that had to hurt. Quinn cringed a bit in response to Kaius's injury, but tried not to let her guard down in the process.

She looked to December again, and readied another attack.

Damn.

Missing is all he can think of as the events of the day before move rapidly through his mind. Nothing makes sense, nothing matters because right now the only thing to do is to keep pressing on. Quinn needs them.

She needs me.

Her silent screams, the ones from his dreams, echo through his mind over and over, and no matter how many times he tries he can't stop them.

Death. Dying. Unable to save them.

It hurts, every breath, every moment, and he listens as people shout to leave each other alone, but they can't. Not in a place like this where life and death hinges by possible outcomes of battles. Derecho sighs and takes a deep breath trying to figure out why he didn't even land the attack. Of course, they're all moving, trying to get a flank, trying to figure out a way to come out on top of this all.

I must save them. I can't let them die.

His head hangs, and it's hard to focus, hard to think.

But I don't know if I can.

Watching Kaius run forward, he follows behind knowing that staying on top of them and not letting them get distance is far more important than anything. He swings another branch out of his way and uses it as a shield to protect himself and hopefully protect his allies.

And then when he's ready, he launches another assault without saying a word.