Blood In The Water [Pisces v Daemon v Steel] Day 6

They might have thought he was enjoying it, taking off limbs. He might almost have believed it too, for his blade once again cleaved flesh and bone. The thud of the half-arm that dropped to ground at his feet, the look of blank shock in the girl's eyes, the blood that spurted thickly from the end of her stump. She surprises him with her stoicism, though he may be mistaking the utter loss of thought for extreme control.

Behind him, Oberon is shouting. "It's a trap! They planned this out, they were waiting for us - watch out where you step!" The sound of a knife thudding into flesh, but the sound of pain is not human. The mutt was still alive, still fighting, just as he was. Though not for long, for either of them, as he glances down at the sticky dark wetness that coated his chest. The sound of the mutt screaming again rises as the third of the three girls once more attacks it.

"Well, at lest it's not broken anymore." He can almost share this girl's moment of wry humor at the situation that he had put her in. His throat hurts and he is slowing down gradually. Each motion feels like it is using more and more energy, each turn of the head is agonizing, but he forces himself to follow the action. "Bella, I need you to rip off a piece of my cloak and tie it around my arm. If you don't I'm going to bleed out in a matter of minutes." The words are ceasing to make sense, but he hears them. They aren't directed at him so why should they matter.

"... love of ... don't throw up..." His eyes go in and out of focus for a moment before he shakes himself more alert. This was not the time to pass out, not until the danger was over. "... it's your turn ... Frankenstein... better with two arms..." A sudden explosion of pain returns him briefly to complete consciousness, if only to acknowledge the fact that his leg was broken. Stumbling, he grips his sword and aims to swing it again at the girl, either of them, it didn't matter who really.

A large gray shape hurtles past him, swiping at him but missing by what looked like miles and yet must have surely only been an inch or two. The mutt had gone to attack him and somehow luck had intervened. It had to be luck because it surely hadn't been anything he had done. His knees locked and his teeth ground as he fought the monstrous wave of fear at the thought that the mutt could have killed him and he never would have been able to defend himself.

"Ripred- Fuck, come on!" Kahinta, somewhere. "Daemon, go! Get out of here! We'll meet you by the beach, somewhere, just go!" He looked for her, couldn't find her. Nodding at no one and nothing, he made to turn away and do what she had said. Her words made sense, and she hadn't led him astray yet.

He gets only a couple steps before a force punched him in the back. His broken leg gives out under him and he is sent sprawling on his front. All he can see is mud. Closing his eyes because they sting from the muck, he realizes that this was it. Even as he does so, the blood from his neck wound mixes into a scarlet halo around his head.

The world shudders. He is being pulled away but some voice is pulling back. "Dae-" Kahinta? "-amn it." Definitely Kahinta. "Meet us at the doors! We'll meet you at the doors! You better be there!" At the doors, got it. "We're not done, you're not done." He hadn't taken Kahinta for the believer type, but the thought of seeing her again was somehow a comfort and so he took it with him into the darkness.

- - - - -

Beeping wakes him, confused and discombobulated. A heavy hand slams down on his chest as he goes to rise and in seconds the darkness swallows him again.

- - - - -

Everything around him is blackness, stillness. He thought he would be on his face but instead he is on his back. He is stiff and unsure of how he is positioned, so it takes him some time to figure out how to move his arms again. In tightening his fist he finds the knife laid on his chest. Curious, he lifts it up to try and inspect it. Only as a faint glint is caught in the blade does he realize how little sense all of this makes. Instead of being face down in the muck, bleeding out, he is alive and clutching a weapon he didn't have before.

The memories of Kahinta's and Oberon's discussions rise lazily to his brain and it is only in a slow and deliberate fashion that he is able to grab at bits and pieces of them. The missing faces from the sky, the extra cannons, Kenji's face never appearing. Any of you die yet? Now he was beginning to understand.

In a moment of frantic realization he twisted his head desperately to search for the figure of Deimos who had been flickering on the edge of his vision for so long. Gone, without a trace. He groaned as it hit him, that hadn't been Deimos after all, it had been his own face and figure - a secondary version of himself. A second chance.

Crawling out of the cubby he had been stuffed into, he straightened to look around him. If this was his second chance, it was gloomy. Of course, his chances had been grim from the start. Not far from him sat a giant skull. Eerie, especially in its familiarity. As all of his revelations today, this one also came slowly. A name circled from the depths of his mind to the tip of his tongue. "Flemeth." His voice is a whisper, hoarse as though it had gone unused for some long period of time.

Swallowing, he looks further. There on the wall hangs a rabbit's foot, a grim mockery of luck in a luckless place. Other trinkets and memories of the past lay scattered around and he would love to look at each as he passes but something pulls him to the center where the majority of the light is cast.

His grip on the dagger never slacks. Even so, he is not prepared for the sight of two other people that emerge from the shadows with him. One is unfamiliar but the other is a face he recognized immediately. "You..." He coughs and in this moment the boy fills the silence that he had broken, "Who are you?" Daemon doesn't answer, simply staring at the girl whose leg he had cut off - the first time he had severed a limb, how far he had fallen since then.

"My name is Pisces Gem, I'm from District Nine." The introduction is as necessary feeling as it is useless. Knowing names, districts, faces, it meant nothing beyond another way to reference someone. They would be just as dead or just as involved in killing you either way. Kahinta had always gritted her teeth at names and knowledge of other tributes and he understood that more in this moment than any previously.

In his introspection, the boy - Pisces - had come closer, weapon at the ready. "I'm sorry, but I think I've figured out why we're here, and I can't just not try, I'm sorry."

Foolish him, thinking the fighting might be over now that he had died once. If anything, his struggle was only just beginning. Pain was just as potent, proven by the biting fire carved in a line up his arm by the boy's knife. The quick glimpse of the weapon showed him that it appeared to be the same style of knife that he clutched.

Brushing the boy off, he turned toward the girl. "You." His voice was more stable now, but still a little forced. "What happened to your pet?" He cared mostly because he couldn't stand the thought of the boy managing to squeak out of his grasp and then outliving him. If either of them could really be considered living at this point.

Besides, if he could have gotten back to the surface to find this girl again then maybe he really could meet Kahinta and Oberon again. Meet us at the doors. Had Kahinta figured out already what all of this meant, and what tricks the Capitol had in store for them this time? What a bittersweet surprise to know you had another chance, but only if you stole it from someone else's hands... twice.

If that was what he had to do, though, he would do it. He had done the same coming this far, and if he could steal limbs from four people then he could steal the life from two. Flicking his eyes toward her legs, he noticed with a dark twist of his lips that she had her leg back. That was okay, it wouldn't do her much good anyway.

[Daemon attacks Steel with Knife]
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Deep Gash on Left Forearm -- 8.0 damage

We'll never get free
Lamb to the slaughter
What you gon' do
When there's blood in the water?

The boy ignores my words as another tribute comes into view: a girl about my own age, holding a knife just like this boy and myself. He even ignored the gash I put into his arm, as if it's nothing. Perhaps it's due to his displeasure upon seeing this girl. His greeting to her was definitely far from 'it's great to see you'.

When his words meet the girl's ears, she retorts, and to be entirely honest, I have no idea what it is that they're talking about right then. I have no better guess than to assume that they fought each other in the arena prior to now, and this is a bit of an unwelcome reunion.

Despite her apparent anger toward this guy, however, she decides to strike me, and before I can react, she'd cut my thumb clean off.

"Son of a-" I yell, then cursing in a chain of words I'd rather not repeat.

Now isn't the time for this, Pisces, I had to remind myself. I needed to be fighting, not acting like a wimp. I mean, I suppose it's not really acting like a wimp if someone just severed part of your body from you, but I still needed to focus. I had to remember why I was fighting. I was fighting so that I could go back out in that arena and continue to protect Dominic.

The reason that I was here was to protect him, and only that reason, but right now, that meant protecting myself, too. I wasn't used to defending myself. In the past, I'd always stood up for those around me, and just let any bullying aimed at me gloss off my shoulders. I typically didn't stand up for myself, but in here, I had to, or I was dead for good this time.

Luckily, losing my right thumb didn't affect my dominant hand. I still held a firm grip on my knife at that moment, and I was going to keep on fighting, despite the pain.

"Alright, ignore me, that's fine, dude, really," I said to the guy. Then I spoke to the girl. "If you're gonna cut my thumb off, though, maybe a name would be nice to share? I'd like to know who to remember for it later."

---

She is faced away from him when he attacks. Even so, something seems to warn her and she moves at the last possible moment to lessen the blow. The carve of his knife across the back of her head cuts some locks from her scalp and opens a red line behind it. She hisses but doesn't acknowledge him yet. Instead, she looks toward Pisces.

"Steel, my name is Steel." Now he had another name, another curse to whisper to himself in whatever end he met. Either of these people could end him now, or he might kill either or both. He hoped that when he died for real he wouldn't see any of the people he had helped to kill, or actually killed, again. Only as he held that hope he also felt a tinge of sadness that he might not see Kahinta or Oberon again. They had started simply as additional weapons at his side and turned into something so much more. Might he dare to call them friends? No, that was too much even now.

Pisces had fallen silent as well, and aside from their heavy breathing there was only the quiet ambiance of the crypt around them. Seemingly, the boy had realized that questions would not bring any peace to any of them, especially the survivor. The less they knew about one another, the easier they would be able to continue after the terrors of this burial chamber. They were fighting for one last shot at life - or at least, one last shot at one last shot - and none of them were willing to give up. Even after this they would still not necessarily have any hope tomorrow, let alone the next few days. At this point, trapped down here and weakened as they all were, surely none of them had any hope of making it home.

Being truthful with himself, he wasn't sure he wanted to go home. If by some miracle - or perhaps curse - he made it out of here alive, he would opt as some victors have to remain within the Capitol because the thought of seeing District six and his family again was not a pleasant one. More than likely, he would end up face down in the mud once more, a bloody halo around his head. He felt a sense of calm at that thought. When it came to it, he wouldn't be afraid of his own death, but he would still fight until the bitter end. He owed it to Kahinta and Oberon. If he could take out a competitor of theirs, he would. Of any of them, Kahinta should go home to her sister.

First he would have to make it out of here, out of the dark mausoleum and into the light of the main arena again. Meet us at the doors! He would try to do that. The only way to the doors and outside was through the two people who were in here with him.

Pisces came at him again, apparently of the same mind. He moved at him faster than he expected and though he should have known better, he had inadvertently left himself open to the boy's attack. With a hiss and a grimace, he felt the boy's knife bite into his hip. He pushed himself away, pressing a couple fingers to his newest wound and glaring back at Pisces.

Steel had wounded the boy quite severely, showing that she was as much of a threat of either of them. They were all bleeding rather freely and each felt the tug of death on their cloak tails. There was the bleak certainty that at least one of them would be claimed soon, and the second would be sure to follow. There was also an understanding that only one would get out alive.

For Kahinta's sake, it had to be him.

"I'll tell your pet you tried to come back for him."

[Daemon attacks Steel with Knife]
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Stabbed in Bicep -- 8.5 damage

She doesn't have the chance to respond, either to his words or to his attack. He moves too fast for her to stop him and so he sinks the blade deep into the flesh of her arm. The wound is bad, one of the worst he had wrought, and the blood flows much too fast from it. He hit something vital, some major blood vessel that was now spewing blood forth like a small jet. It splattered over his face and he briskly wiped it away.

She sank before him, dropping as the life ebbed out of her. He knew that she was bound to die now and so he could finally turn his attention to the only other person standing between him and his allies. Pisces, aware of this shift and the position he was now in, had taken his moments of distraction at watching Steel fade away to come in close. "Goodbye, Steel." The words came from just behind him, making him jump. He hadn't expected the boy to be so near.

Of course, he had been underestimating this boy from the start and now, facing a final battle with him, he really needed to learn to not do that.

Facing off with his final opponent, the two boys squared themselves up. Each carried a knife, each knew how to use it. This last moment would come down to skill and not a little luck. Daemon felt ready, ready to fight and ready to die should he lose. Still, he clung to the thought that he might just be able to best this boy and get himself out of here, claw his way back to the surface and to the sunlight - false as it might be.

Out there, beyond the doors, Kahinta and Oberon waited for him. He knew that beyond a doubt. For the briefest moment he wondered if anyone was waiting for Pisces, and who they might be. No matter what, some of the waiting people would be disappointed.

"Are you ready?" The question is posed as though checking to make sure they were on fair ground. A courtesy offered in a duel that gave a sense of honour to both who partook. Instead, it was a guise and a false start. The boy came forward, slashing with all of the desperation he could muster, but it wasn't enough to end him. The blow connected, but weakly, skittering off his hip and drawing a red line that barely wept. Even so, in his weakened state the impact sent him somewhat off balance and he had to take a step back to keep standing.

They were both on the edge of this, both waiting for the final moment to fall. It came down to every attack, every stroke of the blade. This would end soon, but how it would end was still very much in question.

"I am, but are you?"

Now was the time to accept the end was coming.

[Daemon attacks Pisces with Knife]
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Shallow Cut on Back of Head -- 4.5 damage