drift(er) away <> ander

"Drifter, hey, man."

He can barely turn his head in time to see Mario looking on to Ander's side.

One. His sword clashed in front of his feet and the rest of his body rushed to clutch his leg.

Two. The animal, a type of bird he didn't know the name of, talons and beak and bulky body, knocked him in the chest, pushing him down onto the ground. He rested on his back as pain surged all over, as if his brain was on verge of explosion and toes were being cracked and crushed.

Three. Any thought of rising back up had disappeared when the slimy reptile chomped down at his leg.

"DRIFTER!" Mario screamed out again. Ander wished that he wouldn't do that. Holding the line, that was supposed to be their job. Ander failed, but Coal, Paloma, Mario, they still could do it.

He rolled to his side, pushing away all the sandy ash away from his mouth with heavy, uncontrolled breath. He saw Paloma's legs slowly shift back to him, she leaned down, and removed her cape, pushing down on his leg. He tried to shake her off, but all his thigh could do was twitch every now and again, trying to maintain some sort of presence.

The sun's bright rays drowned out the raised arms and applause from the people above. Morons. He wanted to yell at them to do something better with their lives, come down into the arena floor and see how they like it, but words were a luxury and his throat reasoned that borrowed time was not meant to be spent arguing with ignorance. He resisted the urge to look at Paloma trying to tend to his wounds with a delusion of thinking he'd ever get back up on his feet to keep fighting.

"and.." he said, trying his best to drag himself further away from Paloma, and Coal and Mario, who were still fighting the oncoming beasts. He sought to curl up at the walls of the colosseum, far away where no animal would dare to go out of their way to get him. The laughs and cheers from above became distorted like a scratched record player.

"And-" the syllable was a little bit more defined this time, but he couldn't think straight, and the mutter couldn't escape his lips with any more complexity than that. "And-" his back rested up against the colosseum wall now, but his words grew shakier. It wasn't worth the time, whatever little of that he had left. It wasn't worth the pain or distraction that it could bring to the three of them that were still left standing. As he said earlier, it might just be better not to know.

"And-" none of his family was left, though. There was nobody left that he loved who would carry on his name, carry on his humanity and infatuation with exploring the world.

"And…"

And? And what?

He couldn't take another breath to bring on the rest.

He was dead, half-closed and mouth half-opened.

And nothing.

A Drifter through and through.