Round Two: Northern Feast

He lifts his rapier like an executioner — and the golden thread of fate is pulled taut. It is ready and willing to receive the end. He is calamity, and Mouse is time. Again and again, they will meet. This is how it feels. And he hopes that someday he will be able to find the melody to match it.

A girl smiles up at him with blood in her mouth, a halo of crimson pooling around her head as it lies on a pillow of earth. Mouse is a peaceful enemy. There is no weapon in her grasp, no cruelty leaving her tongue, only her quiet gaze reflecting his own back to him. It is a mirror image going on and on, bouncing off every surface. Wherever he looks, some semblance of his trauma stares back at him. It asks him to face the choice he has made, and the choice he is currently making.

If he had his guitar, if he could make a home for music within his lungs again, if he could uncurl his fingers around this blade — Romeo would offer her something more than what he is capable of providing. Is he a boy playing monster, or is he a monster playing boy? He is not so sure, so he will leave this question to Mouse, to be answered only in silence.

When the thunder cracks over the ocean, when he is standing on the shore of his home again, he will claim that sound in the girl’s name. Let the world be her voice. He will listen.

He closes his eyes, allows an inhale to fill his body with all the resolve he can muster. But as he goes to strike, to plunge his dagger into her heart — another drives its way through his own. For a moment, he's convinced that he has underestimated himself in a different way, that Luja took the opportunity to strike him with his back turned, that his honeyed words have played him for a fool. Gasping, screaming, hand to chest to agony.

But to his horror, what he sees is not a human standing on the edge, but a beast that looks as if it has stalked out of the abyss, the reaper come to tear him to pieces and carry the essence of him away. His feet are hovering above the ground, his breaths are shallow and panicked, he realizes now that surely his heart has not been burst, but the tail of this monstrosity has pierced him inches to the vital organ. He can taste rust in his mouth, head delirious, weightless. Its fangs are dripping with drool, hunger doesn't look so appealing in this light.

Is this what becomes of people who lose themselves to the wanting?

Somehow, his white knuckle grip has championed the blow, still grasping his rapier, still teetering like a soul being tethered up to the heavens. Swaying, swirling, and then — he can hear a cackle he can only trust is Luja, just as he feels the lurch, the pull, the exact moment the beast bores of him and tosses him to the side like a ragdoll. He howls as the tail exits his chest, using the last bit of his rationality to hold out his arm so that he does not skewer himself. He lands close to Mouse, staring at her once again.

Seconds, maybe a minute, maybe several, maybe lifetimes — he is breathless, a boy standing on a dark path leading down a long labyrinth, even in the next plane he is standing in this same place. When he comes to, he is fueled by adrenaline, and pain, and a desperation driven by a terrible and rage-fed selfishness. He cannot fathom the idea of lying here and accepting that his ambition will not be realized; he is a hypocrite as much as he is a saving grace. It all depends on the narrator, what instrument sets the score.

He crawls to Mouse, dragging his rapier alongside him, itching and burning and aching and unraveling at the seams — and then, so suddenly, looming before her, she is smiling up at him with blood in her mouth.

There is blood in his mouth, too.

How can two people share one wound?

"Peace." It is the only eulogy he can offer — before he gives in to the rage, the hunger, completely. He will not sit idly by in this cage and not be the one with the winning hand. Whatever it takes, however many fingers he has to snap out of place, Romeo will see to it that he not only survives this place, but that he does so with the favor of the Capitol on the other side. He is not a fool, he is not a dog blind to the collar around his throat. There is only one kind of show they want out of him, and it's not the doll-like face Luja is so keen to point out.

They want gore, and he wants glory.

Both of these wants will be fed.

Man, this guy really thinks he's trying something, huh? I catch his sword with mine right before it takes another inch off my already-buzzed hair — it's reflexes again. Who hasn't had to throw the handle bars that just came off their bike to deflect some well-deserved road rage? It still rattles my whole skeleton, the same way crashing my bike into a guy with a wheelbarrow full of empty paint cans did.

He's not road rage, though — the way he moves is the opposite of pure angry adrenaline, practiced and surprisingly poised. Graceful, almost — like the way swans look from the other side of the quarry lake, instead of the way swans look when they're charging you from ten feet away, hissing like hell and trying to break your neck 'cause you looked at 'em wrong. Like the platonic ideal of a swan instead of the squalid reality.

"Nothing like a feast to bring likeminded people together," he says, sardonic laughter almost sing-song.

"Never been to a feast before," I say. I ate more than one can of Fancy Feast, if that counts. "Always seemed like they'd be full of bougie assholes." That's a lie actually — you know I didn't have access to salmon. "I'll take your word for it. Were your feasts fancy, Moneybags?"

I've spent the last several years maintaining and modding the World's Shittiest Bike. I know what a little bit of grit does to an engine. It gets in just the right place and fucks everything up. I'm a little curious now, when's this guy gonna snap?

And that is why he's doing all of this in the first place- the artistry of the kill is what makes it. A perfectly fine boy standing over a girl who bleeds at the mouth is a villain's origin story. But what happens now, what happens instead, with Romeo crawling over to her and finishing it as quickly as possible, it's a truly devastating thing to witness. The crowd's energy is electric as the little Mouse from 9 takes her final breaths.

Perhaps it is the food making them groggy, or maybe he's waited too long to feed them and now they're all useless, but he sort of feels like they're all more focused on saving themselves at this point than killing one another. Most attacks seem to be more defensive: pushing others away, creating distance, trying to run away from pursuers entirely. If not for Mouse's death and the Grief Eaters' terror-inspiring screams, Harlan has no doubt that the crowd would be growing weary with anticipation.

He looks to Link.

"Let's start wrapping up now, shall we?"

They think the Grief Eaters have been fearsome so far? They've seen nothing. A series of buttons are pressed, and both the Grief eater's breathing and the strange metallic whirring coming from within it seem to quicken pace by a large amount. Its pupils dilate. For a moment it goes entirely still, and then all at once it bursts forth. He starts with Luja, but all will feel the wrath of the monster this time.

[Grief Eater attacks Luja]
sQjTZirVY9sword
[4]

[Grief Eater attacks Romeo]
sword
[9]

[Grief Eater attacks Ullr]
sword
[4]

[Grief Eater attacks Bambam]
sword
[3.5]

[Grief Eater attacks Larkin]
sword
[9.5]

Two quick slashes — that’s what it takes to kill a mouse.

Romeo stares down at her, dead girl, memory in the making; his life has become a series of dominoes falling in the exact same spot. Endlessly, he will feel the heat of the blood that now stains his hands. His grip holds steadfast, rapier dripping scarlet and the corners of his lips stained with crimson. He’s lowered the shoulder of his toga, removed the sash around his torso and begun to tighten it around his chest like a bandage.

Even drowning in death, his only thought is to grab at life, to stay afloat on his own indomitable will. He can count four other strangers in the room with him, one monster with fangs still dripping with drool. If freedom means that each of them must fall to his blade, then that is reason enough to stand. He rises to his feet, his breaths like embers burning inside his lungs. This thing he wants to hold so closely hurts him so deeply.

He scans the space, settles on a girl he once considered attacking before — then, he had settled on talking about music, nature, pretty little distractions behind an iron wrought fence. Only there are no bars between them now, no song coming from his mouth save for the scream that the creature tore out of him. He is grateful for the chaos, for the chance to regain his footing, trying to close in on his target as the beast charges again, this time lunging at each of them in turn.

When it crashes into him, shrapnel tearing flesh, it is a quick and terrible shredding. As soon as the pain flares under his flesh, the beast has already moved towards its next victim, leaving the spray of his blood hanging in the air. When it hits the earth, it will fester there. He wonders what will grow from him, beauty or poison?

Rage is his northern star, ambition his favorite tune.

Stalking up behind Bambam, he is a boy standing so close to death that he's willing to push anyone else over the edge.

"I think,” and with an inhale, he remembers the lyrics she shared with him, ”your song suits this moment better." And he's right, and his grip on his blade is secure. He can still taste the rust on his tongue.

And he swings.

At least Moneybags knows that rich people suck. It's not like we don't, either — I wear Shear Hill Trash like a badge of honor. You know the trash part is accurate. You always wore that shit prouder than me.

"I am going to kill you," Moneybags declares, and I can tell that he wants to mean it, but I dunno about that. "No pretense, no bullshit — I am going to kill you."

The way this is going, I'm pretty sure if I had some kind of leg armor I'd be unstoppable. Leather chaps or something. If I was fancy, maybe some fringe so it would look cool blowing in the wind riding around on Death Trap.

The ten-foot-tall biomechanical mutant white rabbit bunny spider is the only thing that's clipped me anywhere else this whole time. I don't have the energy to worry about that. What would you do about that? Get the hell out of here, probably — doesn't seem like an option. Ducking under the table sure didn't work the girl who tried it. But I'm not fighting that bullshit, either — presumably they'll turn that shit off sooner or later. Hope it stops. I'm not up for troubleshooting whatever engine's running that thing. That's the kind of trouble you're better off shooting instead.

In the meantime, it's chewing up the others worse — the boy from four loses a hand, Moneybags gets speared in the stomach — and, you know, it's hard to be mad about a nick on my shoulder. As long as it doesn't get me like that, I'm doing okay.

The singer stalks up behind me, so I know what's coming before he announces it — "I think your song suits this moment better," he says, so I tell him, "No shit." Death or seagulls: which sounds more like Hunger Games? — and scramble away just enough that his sword only — you guessed it — grazes my leg.

I turn back to Moneybags. "Okay," I tell him. He wants to kill me, he can get in line. "Good luck with that." I'm not here to die. None of us are.