The Bloodbath

always kept quiet
clenching my teeth
find me fighting the floor
raise me from my bones once more
you're way past praying for

There is nothing left at the core of her other than the unquenchable will to survive and a bone-deep rage that tears away at the very fabric of her substance. Kiera’s presence in this Arena might be a result of her own selfless sacrifice, but anyone who has the audacity to think they can snatch victory from her hands will be struck down before they have time to think twice about it. She’s a Dempsey and survival is inherent in her blood along with her status above the mundane masses, and the idea of failure is something so foreign and unthinkable that she plunges blindly ahead toward the Cornucopia with pure malice rolling off her skin in waves.

The air is thick, salty with sweat and blood and the tears she is too strong to shed but others are too weak to conceal. It drags through Kiera’s lungs like her feet through the mud beneath her feet, sluggish and stubborn as the last threads of her fragile grip on reality fray to mere fibers. Kaelen never said that divine perception would drive her insane, but maybe that’s because his sanity was long gone by the time he began to shape her into his successor. Her world has shrunk down to the circumference of the Cornucopia, everything spiraling inward with a single-minded desire to claim both the riches within and unspoken but still irrefutable dominion over the miniature world of the Games.

”It’s mine!” she shrieks, swiping an encroaching tribute away from her prize with a fierce rage that her body can’t hold, spilling out of her lungs in another animalistic snarl-screech that could make the bravest warrior’s blood run cold. ”Out of the way, peasants! This Arena is mine!”

{Kiera attacks Naveen Casovnik with her Xiphos}
[dice=200+1000]
{Block -- 0.0 damage}

always kept quiet
clenching my teeth
find me fighting the floor
raise me from my bones once more
you're way past praying for

A feral, malicious laugh rips past her lips when the blood of the District Six boy bathes her skin, painting her canvas a decadent crimson. This is what she’s trained to do, what she has transcended her humanity for – to destroy. The bodies of the fallen – most of them dead at her alliance’s hands – litter the area, and there’s a sort of beauty in their demise that Kiera appreciates with a dark humor.

Only one stays, the little girl from ten, and Kiera feels a snarl ripple over her features, vicious and territorial like a jungle cat as she strikes out at her. ”Get out!”

{Kiera attacks Lydie Mansonna unarmed}
[dice=200+5000]
{Broken Left Wrist -- 6.5 damage and apparently 8 damage to Ki}

The structure of her wrist cracks beneath Kiera's powerful blow, and the Lady of the Lake grins as the girl from Ten runs, the curvature of her lips only falling when she spies Atlas' bloody form among the carnage. Something close to sadness sits in her veins alongside the carnage as she walks over to kneel in the red-stained water beside him, closing his one remaining eye gently and petting the clotted hair back from his forehead. ”Be at peace, Atlas Cornell.”

Similarly, she wades to each fallen tribute in turn, from the boy from Three that shot two arrows into her to the boy from Six who fell at her own hands, arranging their bodies into to something more dignified, closing their eyes and chanting rites of absolution to help their souls to the next world, hands uplifted even though the action pulls at her own wounds and makes more blood flow to stain her toga a shocking scarlet.

The sky overhead is strikingly pale against the blood in the water as she stands to survey her alliance members and the wealth before them. Sighing heavily, the exhaustion finally sinks into her bones as she fishes the med kit out of her backpack and begins to patch herself up. ”Looks like we did it.”

{uses needle/thread, 5ft bandages and first aid for -9 damage}