an awfully big adventure // Day 5 Shadow Hydra

so wait, keep your heart inside
my hands won't keep it safe
I'll just feed on dreams,
and smile as hope slowly dies

Faline wakes to an endless grey.

Within her skull, outside of it — and she blinks, trying to remember what has brought her to this place, but all she feels is stone beneath her hands and a void between her memories. It hurts too much to pick up the pieces, glass in her wounds, so she stops. One of her allies is missing, the other is confronting the boy that had murdered Ike and attempted to do the same with Wynter, and it’s all too much for the young girl to handle. A blur of thoughts and mist; she rests by Mackenzie’s side, waiting out the storm and asking him to solve the puzzle on his own.

A scarf, a gone girl, a day that didn’t happen
— and Stitch’s lost token is in her pocket.
Why is it there? When did she take it?

( Where is Wynter Rochelle? )

And then lightning splits the sky, a brief moment of light and the sensation of wings against her skin, but then she’s looking at the ground. At the shadows curling around her legs and rushing by her feet. Part of her doesn’t want to follow them, the coward that she’s tried to bury away, but something even deeper than that urges her to take chase. Because one of those dark figures is her — a cold and lonely and colorless version of herself, but still Faline. Selfishness always outweighs bravery and cowardice. Foxes learned their trickery from humans.

She runs alongside Mackenzie, not ready to reveal what she's in possession of. When he turns to make sure that she's following him, she nods with a determined expression and feels warmth flowing through her body. 'At your command, Captain Pryce. Always.' Stitch is not far behind them, and while her companion has no qualms telling him to go away, Faline doesn't want the young man to leave. Not yet. There's so much that she doesn't know, a thousand questions to ask, but she seeks only one answer from him. What role did she play in this? The thought that Wynter may have vanished because of her nearly makes her sick. The nearness of it, the fact that she doesn't fall to her knees and retch, is terrifying enough on its own.

Maybe she's a murderer — maybe she's a liar, a thief. ( Was she not all of those things already? ) Cloth connects four souls, bloodstained fabric and loose threads, and she's forced to watch as it starts to tear. She feels wind, her hair rising around her, and she sees a flash of blue eyes. A corpse is on the ground and she's standing over it. Then she shakes her head, and all that is real is the sight of tributes coming together and a swirling vortex of darkness at their center. She has to remind herself that she had been running, on the hunt for what she's been stripped of. Mackenzie tells her to hide, and she listens; to her heart, her thoughts, the shallowness of her breath. She grits her teeth and digs her nails into the rock that she's crouched behind. 'I didn't kill Wynter Rochelle. I stole nothing.' And yet. There's no memory of her innocence.

The war begins, metal clashing and a roar that rattles her bones. She's paralyzed, not by fear, but a strange numbness. She saw the conflict in Mackenzie's face, in Stitch's, and she had thought that she was fine — but she's not. Not being able to remember is affecting her, too. Especially now that she thinks that she had something to do with it, that she's the reason that only one tribute isn't in attendance. Her stomach lurches, her arms shake, and she takes advantage of the unsteady movement by pushing herself upwards. She has to fight. She grabs her glaive and runs forward, nearly tripping over herself, but she stops halfway between the warriors and the beast. Faline faces a decision.

( She'll be a hypocrite;
she'll be cruel. )

---

look, can you see behind these eyes?
can you see what isn't there?
the truth dressed up in lies

song: run, baby, run - The Rigs

florence

The monster is hanging above the child, the mark of her spear a mere scratch on its giant body. A shadow made of horrors and stormclouds - or at least that's what it looks like. It can't be real, but yet here it is, alive and crawling. This means that in the Arena many impossible things can come true. Maybe even a skinny fourteen year old can slaughter a dragon... Or whatever it is.

No. This doesn't happen even in fairy tales. But with her friends on her side, she can make unbelievable things happen. They can make it happen and the giant nightmare will fall. It is already trying to chew on some of the tributes but it is alone.

There are fifteen of them.

Only five are trying to bring the giant mutt down but that is more than one - and it means the world to the small girl whose power lies in love and hope. There is Stitch, there is Zeke, there is Wynter's friend

(Wynter would be here too if she weren't dead... How do I know she is dead? I didn't hear the cannon...)

and even Lavina's district partner who killed Ping only a while ago is now fighting the monster by their side.

Victory never stands with one person. It lies in us.

[ scandal ]

The feeling of my axe striking into flesh, into bone, and then out the other side shudders through my arms. The boy had gone to block, but my axe had bit into his wrist instead of colliding with his weapon. Now his hand lay on the ground, fingers curling slightly and whatever blood had been in the limb now oozed out onto the ground.

I gulped, my eyes raising to look at the person I had maimed. He stared blankly, past me. Then I heard him shout. I thought he would come after me again but he moved past me, trying to block a girl from attacking a different girl. I shook my head, moving away and pressing a hand to the deep gash in my chest.

The roars of the beast finally draw my attention to it, especially when the shadowy teeth snapped at a tribute mere feet from me. The massive black shape towered over all of us, fangs dripping liquid darkness. I shrank back, freezing in place for a few moments as terror overtook my body.

Then I shake myself, clearing my head. I couldn't freeze up now. Like any creature, it could probably sense emotions, which meant it would smell my fear and come after me. I couldn't let it. I couldn't let anything terrorize me again, not like he had. This was his real form, or close enough to it that I could tell no difference, and I would kill him this time.

He is no longer in control of me.

This time I will cut the head off of the snake before it bites me.

Charlie attacks the Shadow Hydra with his axe
ARp3ol_5axe
Deep Gash on Right Calf -- 8.0 damage + 1 Mutt Tamer

{ lost on your own
in the night }

A sea of faces, shadow and flesh alike, and he tried to register which he recognized. Cassia, brave and stubborn and fighting for her life. He thought of helping her, but one glance back at Faline was enough to stop him from running to her. He'd taken his eye off her for a second and she'd been attacked by one of the many heads of the monster before them. He couldn't protect them all.

The boy from Ten, for some reason, stood out to him as well. Mackenzie couldn't remember ever having a conversation with him at the Capitol, nor had he ever been particularly intimidated by him; he was fairly tall, but thin. He had plain features but Mackenzie still, for some reason, recalled the color of his eyes.

The sound of buzzing flashed, white hot like a freshly forged blade, through his mind, scrambling his thoughts. It was only for a moment, but it was enough to blind him, and he tried in vain to blink away visions that were not there.

Belladonna and Anduril, and the boy from Three, they were there too. They were alive. Bella was alive. He felt something within his chest swell at that, knowing she'd made it this far, and then cursed himself. Her death was supposed to be a good thing for him. Everyone's was; it was twisted and cruel, but it was how this was all supposed to work. He hated that he was happy to see her standing there, he hated that he was so worried for Wynter, he hated that he cared so much about Faline, and he hated how much he wished Ike was still here.

He hated his stupid, fickle heart, and he hated its refusal to let him be cold.

Bella held her chin higher now than she had that night on the Training Center's roof; Mackenzie imagined he held his lower in shame.

If you're hiding because you think I'm someone important or dangerous, feel free to come out.

He was a liar, wasn't he? He'd looked this girl in the face once before, a girl who trusted him enough to tell him her thoughts and who even placed a kiss against his lips as goodbye, and he had lied.

I am neither.

It was not true. Not the first part; he highly doubted he would rank as someone of worthy importance, but the part about him being dangerous. That was the snake that had slithered out of his lips and made her feel comfortable enough to come out of the shadows, wasn't it? That was what had told her she was safe, if only for that moment, with some silly boy from a lower District. But he was dangerous. And perhaps the lie had not only been to Bella, but to himself as well. Perhaps he didn't know just how dangerous he was, or how dangerous he could be.

"Don't suppose you've seen the girl from Two lately?"

He called to her, dodging as one of the beast's heads swung over him. His head throbbed with more pain by the second, increasing each time his pulse hammered against his temple. It was maddening, frustrating, absolutely blinding, gone one second and back with a hunger for more in the next. He would've been an easy kill, no doubt.

Even his attack on the monster, big and still as it was, had just skittered off the hide without causing damage. Should it, or the other tributes, choose to turn on him, well—

There was a moment when he saw her and wondered what would come next. Would she attack him? Others were doing it so freely, despite the obvious danger that towered over them all. But some people were bloodthirsty; Mackenzie was not. He had killed, and he was dangerous after all, but he did not want to be.

He hoped she didn't either.

{ don't be afraid, no
don't be afraid to lose }

song: afraid

Five days
Underwater
Near your island
Off the coast
I know

I've made a mistake.

I don't know how but somewhere along the way I've made a mistake and now it's all coming down around us, a setting in this storm. I don't know where to look, how to feel anything. It's all so overwhelming all over again, like the bloodbath when my spear made me into something that I'd never been before.

A murderer.

The title fits me loosely, I killed a girl. Her name was Ping, I only found that out later but she was dead because of me. I thought I'd be the one to die first. I'd spent the week or so in the training centre drinking and smoking, trying to go out with a goddamned bang and yet I'm still here somehow, clinging to the rocks, unable to let go.

I'm not sure what I'm even trying to accomplish here, I'm not sure why I'm working so hard. Even if I were to somehow live through the week, I'd be going home worse than before. This place is shit for my mental health actually, a goddamned nightmare.

Everyone's chopping everyone else up to bits and I'm probably next.

My spear did shit all to the hydra, it goes for bella anyway and I watch it catch at her skin, almost listless. This is a moment I need to be paying attention but I can't. I feel my gaze wandering towards the ocean, exhaustion making me melt away a bit and I wish that was my role here, that I was nothing but ether.

I need to forget about Ping but I can't.

The sound is coming again and again, amplified in the fog and the kids around me scream in pain. The clamor is almost beautiful somehow, like a stilted opera, concept too high above the clouds for it to be real. I stare upwards, wondering if I'll see some sky through the fog before I die.

I'm slipping again.

I realize it slowly, a foreign thought in a preoccupied mind. It drips down the trenches of my brain, slow as molasses but just as deadly, suffocating everything else.

You should be paying attention, Andúril.

My father's voice in my head.

A belt in his hand.

Look at me when I'm speaking to you.

I see him there in the shadows of the beast, a face formed out of smoke and mirrors. I know that he can't be here, that I'm making this shit up but it doesn't go away, I only see his features more clearly. I put a hand to my cheek, realization setting in. No makeup. I've lost my invisibility cloak.

I drop my spear, stepping back slowly on the rock.

He's made of shadow and my own insanity. I know he can't hurt me. My body doesn't, I freeze there, staring at the ghost of my father. A vein beats in his neck, a scowl, deeper than in life painted across his face and I shrink back against the rock, unable to take my eyes off the man whose genes I share.

I know he can't hurt me.

I know he isn't here.

My breathing becomes more rapid, my eyes widen. I can feel my chest start to jump, my heart beating against my skin. I feel hot, ill, like I might throw up. My father is going to belt me here, in front of everyone and god and I can't stop him, I'm not strong enough, I'm weak and tiny against the might of his fists and I feel his hot breath in my ear already, my skin tingles and I ca-

A scream.

But this one different.

It's Akira's.

"Akira," I shout into the fog, lifting my spear again, "Bella, where are you?"

I pick up my spear again, fumbling for the wooden pole, trying to figure out how to calm my breathing. I can panic later. Akira's in trouble and I'm being a piece of shit over here, too busy having a midlife crisis to help him.

I point my spear firmly at the ghost of my father, already dissipating back into the form of the beast.

"You don't fucking scare me anymore," I lie, "You're a piece of shit and always have been."

I take my spear in both hands, gripping it so tight that my hands burn.

"Just fucking die."

[Andy attacks the Hydra with spear]
XxTYpJnrspear
[Shallow Cut on Left Bicep -- 3.5 damage]

Five ways
You were my lover
Incantation
Off the tide
In rhyme

song: Islands