an awfully big adventure // Day 5 Shadow Hydra

Always told you not to love me
Now look what you made me do
I got poison in my pocket,
told you I was bad news

h-hewwooooooo

going to be flying for like 7 hours in a t minus 5 so im movin things along

boy my arms are gonna be tired

owo.... what's this?

[attacks dove elsu -- sword]
z2cUJ6kRsword
[Deep Gash on Back -- 8.5 damage]

My demeanor made you wait,
but the consequences stayed
I killed everything we were
Baby, murder was a case

song: 27 hours

Tell them something is coming
There's blood in the water
Give them a warning
Let it all come crashing down
Burn the castle to the ground

This has happened before. You're sure of it, because when steel bites through flesh, muscle, and bone alike with zero discrimination, there is no shock nor repulsion, no surprise that you were capable of separating limb from body with a single stroke of your blade. You'd done this before, even if you were unable to remember it.

An eye for an eye, a hand for an arm, you exact vengeance where it's due, or maybe you don't. It's kind of difficult to focus right now, between blood loss from losing a limb and hunger at a level bordering on extreme.

You're vaguely sure you're correct, until the boy turns around, fear and shock on his eyes. Then you're not so certain - one boy looks just like the next in here after all - but you don't care. You've lopped off the limb of a rival nonetheless, quite literally disarming them and lowering their combat prowess by that much.

All while bleeding from a stump that used to be your hand and suffering the effects of emaciation from a lack of nutrients over the last four days. No, three days.

Your head is in the clouds, and yet you're yanked back down to earth by the pleading of a little girl.

"Please..." she pleads, and something in your chest stirs. "Please tell her...tell your friend not to hurt Dove. Please, I can’t lose her..."

She's pleading to you. Pushing you between a rock and a hard place, as if you could even hope to dare to tell Belladonna Ruze what she should and should not do. Your first plea had fallen on deaf ears clearly, and you're not so sure if there's even anything you can do, short of putting your own life on the line as well.

And you know deep down that that won't work. Bella is a Career. She's been trained for this sort of work for at least a good chunk of her life. And to her, it won't matter of the life that she's striking down is yours, Doves, or some random person that just so happened to get in the way.

There is no negotiating with her once her mind was set, and even with your brain addled by one inconvenience or another, your logic circuits haven't yet become completely fried.

"I-I..." you stammer, stumbling over the correct words to say given the situation.

Then your vision clears, and you stop dead in your tracks.

Dove is staring at you, her face oddly serene for a girl sporting a freshly severed leg and several gashes along her body. She's speaking, but you can't hear the words so much as you read them. This isn't your fault.

It has to be a hallucination. It must be a hallucination.

The girl from Five has lost so much at the hands of you and your allies - you struck down her greatest tool to survival yesterday, and Bella is doing the same to her for one reason or another - and yet she preaches forgiveness with pained gasps.

You should hate her. It was her ambush attack that tore Volkner away from the land of the living, had forced not just blood but a human soul onto your shoulders as if you were some reincarnation of the titan Atlas, and yet you can't.

You've never found it easy to wish pain and suffering on a kindred spirit.

Even as she gets hacked to pieces by Bella and, for some strange reason, the girl from Six, her first and foremost concern is that of the little girl - "Ollie!" she calls - and her second is not adding to your burden but doing what she can to alleviate it, even if only in the form of four simple words.

A crack echoes in your head, and dimly, out of the corner of your eye, you see the boy from Eleven fall at the hands of the girl from Twelve. But when the cannon sounds, you are not sure if the sound was from his chest or your own.

"I'm sorry. The words are not so much a whisper as a whimper, escaping tortured lungs with an involuntary sob as opposed to a natural exhale. "I'm sorry." Again, louder, audible to the little girl if no one else. "I'm-"

A limb whistles past your face, a spear scrapes itself across your arm, and just like that the mood is broken. Once again your vision blurs, though whether from fatigue or tears you cannot say. You blink, hot liquid dripping down your cheeks, and see the boy whose arm you had just severed. Except said arm is now in his remaining hand, as is his spear.

You think back to a Games that took place when you were merely eight years of age, where a girl by the name of Heather Tenley had smacked her opponent across the face with the severed limb of her ally. Said girl had then made it to the finale, outlasting two Careers before falling at the hands of Harbinger Rhodes from Eleven.

You're not sure why you find that information relevant right now, but you decide right then and there that you are done with being attacked with zero retaliation. There's an itch in the back of your head, coinciding with the dull ache of fresh wounds across your stomach and thigh that you can't quite remember where they came from.

One thing's for sure - they did not come from Dove or the little girl she calls ally, of that you are certain. And the wound across your good arm, so soon after losing your opposite hand, was dealt to you courtesy of the pale boy.

There are no more words that spill from your mouth. There is nothing you have to say that would make this right, no matter how many times Dove might say it or how many worthless apologies fall from your lips.

But you do not care. Your survival must come first, even if it means the expense of Andy, Bella, Dove, and the little girl in the process.

And right now, you'll start with what's directly in front of you. One step at a time, you will carve through your opposition or die in the process.

You've been there before, and even with the burden that comes with it, you can say without hesitation that you would rather be the killer than the killed.

So when the blade flies towards the pale boy with as much strength as your form can muster, all you can think of are three little words.

I'm not sorry.

Hang the lies, no disguise
It's our time
Let it all come down,
Down, down

song: Gallows - Katie Garfield

{ lost on your own
in the night }

Blood fell, no reign left for Districts Eleven and Twelve.

He couldn't have cared less about the boy; a nameless face he'd forget about just as soon as it disappeared in the sky that night. But Cassia... He could not recall where Wynter was, he could not recall why he'd woken up next to the enemy, he could not recall a great deal of things, but Cassia mattered. He remembered that much.

And he knew he could not protect her anymore than he could protect anyone, and at this point it was just dealing with the realization of it all that he found most difficult. He hated himself for continuing to convince himself that somehow, it would all work out. As if he could take everyone to the finale with him and the Capitol would just let them walk out; as if, because he tried, they would reward him. This wasn't a contest that allowed anyone to win: not truly. Survive, yes, and he was beginning to realize that if he wanted that person to be him, he could not protect everyone.

Maybe it would have been better if he just ran away in the night, when Faline was asleep. Maybe she would have lived and he would have died and she wouldn't have had to carry the same burden he carried for Ike's death and Wynter's disappearance.

He glanced over at Faline, hating himself for even having the thought. How could he ever considering something like that. He knew she was his weakness, his little mouse, but there was little he could do about it. He wanted to survive, yes, but he wanted her to live, and there was a difference.

With crushing heart break, he realized it might not be a possibility for her to leave this arena. Not as the girl she came in as. Not as someone who would ever sleep well again. He'd watched over her during the night enough to know she already feared the dark.

And as Cassia's cannon fired, he trembled, head screeching with thoughts and noise, and he willed it all to stop, once and for all.

I take control of my own mind, he thought, his palm was already burning again—

Thank you, Friend.

He repeated the words once more, so loudly in his head that he wondered if he had spoken them out loud: I take control of my own mind! and he prayed for it to listen.

{ 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 find Akira in the fog. He looks like shit, so I tell him.

"Akira, you look like shit."

There.

I catch myself on autopilot even as a canon booms too close for comfort. I don't flinch. This is a different sort of panic attack, a stupid kind. I just feel oddly good, serene. Like I'm doing everything I'm supposed to right now and that's just how it is. I don't hurt. I think it might be the adrenaline but I'm also acutely aware that I'm not Andy anymore.

I'm a stoner kid having an identity crisis. If I'm not smoking weed, then who the fuck am I when I'm sober. I'm someone else, I guess. I'm a person with too many issues to be useful to anyone, a broken piece of pottery that someone keeps, thinking they'll make something with it someday but it just sits there on the craft shelf, collecting dust.

the wolves will come again.

I focus on the voice. It's not even directed at me but I can't help but hear the words across the rocks. She stands there bleeding, looking near death. I'm not even sure what's that supposed to mean. But I insert myself into the conversation anyway, piping up like I might have at school. I lean on my spear, watching as she loses yet another limb. For the first time in a few days I've gotten by in this battle, pretty much ignored except for the few who help me try and fight the bigger problem instead of poking at each other.

I should learn to stay silent but I pipe up anyway, "I mean, wolves have sex all the time. So I'd sure hope so for their sakes, y'know?"

But it's more just a message to Violet.

Hey Idiot, I'm doing fine. Don't cry for me right now.

But I always act tough when I'm not.

A cannon sounds again as the wolf girl falls and I look towards the breakfast table, stomach rumbling. I can't remember ever being this fucking hungry. A boy, I think his name is Stitch, lunges forward and deals a hard hit.

He wrapped a bandage carefully around my leg. His fingers were rough on my skin but gentle. Lavina lay in the grass beside us, hand on her chest where I'd left it. I couldn't look away from her. I felt his fingers on my chin, directing my gaze away. "Just look somewhere else, Andúril."

My gay fantasy feels more like a memory. I blink, the softness in his eyes staying in my head, too strong to forget.

But I've never even spoken to the guy.

I shake my head, trying to get the image out. Now isn't really the time to be a slut.

[Andy attacks the Hydra with spear]
Jc9WLzL3spear
[ Shallow Cut on Right Calf -- 3.5 damage]

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

song: Islands