three's a crowd. [ brody v. tex v. andrew ]

The caves weren't glamorous by anyone's definition- drips of viscous liquid bleeding down the walls, which were heaped with clumps of root and plant rot and holes for the rats to get around better. But, at least at first, it seemed like a smarter decision than staying in the tavern another night. Something told him that the three of them were on the verge of overextending their stay- their success was their undoing, as it always was in these situations. Three lower district kids didn't get to win wealth and take up residence in the cornucopia. That's why the gamemakers had tossed them into the lion's den, and even still, they'd taken the most lethal weapon in this arena and run it through and left it to float down the river, accompanied by the sound of cannon fire.

The Capitol never took too well to their darlings dying in favor of people like Andrew Priest.


After a few hours' travel, he was exhausted. They all were. Cookie had grown tired of walking and had fluttered up to his shoulders, tucked her head into the crook of his neck, and drifted blissfully off to sleep. He wanted nothing more than to join her, but Tune kept looking at the walls of the cave like they might collapse around her at any point, and Carly kept looking ahead like she expected to see the light of the end at any moment. Neither was right. Eventually, Andrew's light suggestion to stop and set up camp was repeated enough for one of them to acknowledge it over the thought waging war in their own heads, and they did just that. There was a nice little section of cave floor situated on an incline, spindly gray-black vines crept along the walls like veins, but the ground wasn't saturated and the chittering sounds of the rats in the walls sounded decently far away, so it was good enough. He closed his eyes and let the steady dripping noise lull him into a sleep.

---

He could tell something felt off from the moment his eyes fluttered open. The air seemed... brighter, somehow, some kind of tangible somethingness in front of him other than the darkness. He wiped at the air with his hands to be sure, watched as streaks of purple broke through the black curtain that enveloped the cave. Still half asleep, he tried turning to his left to wake Tune, only to find that she wasn't there. Well, more accurately, Andrew himself was not where he'd been when he fell asleep. This realization, this inkling of confusion, is what finally woke him fully. He was already standing, which must've meant he'd been-

"Sleepwalking?"

He froze.

Andrew knew that voice. The brassiness from the cigars, the slurred syllables from the whiskey.

"You're dead." He couldn't be here. He couldn't be. But Andrew squinted at the darkness, and swore he could see a shadow within the purple incoming purple swirls of smoke. It was getting harder and harder to see by the moment as more fog seemed to start rolling in behind him.

"Maybe. What's that say about you, then?"

This was quickly followed by the signature cruel sound of his father's laughter. No. no, that- that didn't make any sense.

"You died. I saw it. I saw it. I-"

"Say it right, boy! I was killed! Murdered by my own family. My own wife and son." Andrew felt a wave of nausea washing over him as flashes of his father's strained purple face, staring straight up through the ceiling and on to nothing as he breathed his last with my mother's belt pressed against his windpipe only loosening long after his mother was absolutely certain she wouldn't have to use the knife sat next to her on the floor instead.

Andrew'd buried him beneath the peaches before the sun was up. He couldn't be here. Ender Priest was a dead man. He couldn't hurt his family anymore, and yet-

"Your mother did this to me!"

Andrew fell to his knees.

"I have to find my friends. I have to warn them about the fog. I have to-"

"YOU did this to me."

"I didn't."

"You did."

"I didn't!"

"YOU KILLED YOUR FATHER!"

He tried to run further up, to get to Tune and Carly before it was too late, but a vine wrapped around his ankle and yanked him free of his footing. He fought against it as others began to follow suit, some aiming at his ankles like the first while others grabbed at his hands like impatient children, wrapped around his waist like serpents on the hunt. He was pulled into the air by them as he struggled, pulled up agains the wall as the vines began to slowly encase him. One made it around his neck. His chest began to heave, his diaphragm struggling to expand his chest, windpipe struggling to suck in air. He opened his mouth to scream and one of the inky black tendrils slipped into his mouth, through his teeth, and down his throat. He gagged at it, bit and clawed and chewed in helpless horror, virtually helpless and forced to watch the encroaching fog grow thicker and thicker until all he could see was the lilac clouds that had swallowed him all up. The vines began to pulse with purple light and in the final moments before he lost consciousness, he heard his father's laugh again.

"What does that say about you?" he'd asked.

Andrew thought he might know the answer.

---

He woke with a gag, falling to the ground in a heap. His left eye glowed with flashes of purple, veins in his face strained and filled with the same purple substance. He stared forward for a long time once he finally righted himself, stared right in the direction where he knew Tune and Carly would be waiting for him. If they were even alive- the one time. it was left up to Andrew to save them, and he'd gone and gotten himself swallowed by a giant ivy with a blacklight kink. He could feel the seedling of rage building within him already, taking his first step toward them. Then another, and another, only to find them exactly where he'd left them. Up this far, there were still some wisps of smoke, and Tune wasn't awake yet, but Carly seemed to recognize that something wasn't right either.

Andrew opened his mouth to ask her if she knew what this was, or what it would do to them, and this came out instead: "Hey."

He sat next to her, still in a bizarre state of confusion. It probably wasn't good of them to be sitting in this, but Andrew'd been forced to face the entire cloud of it as it passed him by while he was against the wall, he figured whatever was going to happen to him would already happen at that point.

He felt something else in those last moments of lucid sanity, before the purple took him: fear. It was almost like he could feel it coming on, the darkness, and once it was there it stayed and when he he came back to, Tune was running in the other direction and he was chasing her.

He told himself it was because he was worried for her. Now that he was thinking about it, he was pretty sure he'd been worried that she was going to get a kill before him.

"Wh-"

He stopped dead in his tracks.

He didn't want to kill anyone. Right? He hadn't ever wanted it before. not even with his dad. Not ever. Right? Well, maybe not then. But here... it was a little okay, right? It was okay to kill here, because that was the point.




Right?



His feet were carrying him forward before his mind was even made up, and then his face melted from confusion, for the first time, and dissolved into something far more sinister: hunger.

Tune was gone by now, long gone, but there were others. He cackled maniacally, purple sludge leaking from his left nostril. He wiped it away and showed it to them, giggling.

"I think they fucked me up. Got trapped in back there! Whole cloud had to pass through." he dissolved into laughter, but he didn't know what was funny. His tears looked like oil spills, smears of color pouring down his cheeks and mixing with the purple of the glow.

"Oh well! Am I right?"

Time to have fun, at least, he figured.