{ high nigh, boreas } caleb vs carbon

The fever keeps me warm. The irony of the situation of having conflicting temperatures that work well against each other plays to my favor. The cold keeps my fever at bay, while the heat keeps the cold from giving me a chill. It plays against the game maker's hope to freeze a tributes fingers and toes off but didn't expect the tribute to stave off the frigid temperatures by something meant to kill me in the end. Today, as the light rises in the sky and illuminates my path, Tux has moved quite a bit overnight. Again, the glass lake welcomes my vision as he lays over the top of me, covering most of my body as the snow falls in curtains and the wind whistles a tune of warning.

As if on cue, a gentle vibration shakes the sled I lay on. Tux lifts his head quite suddenly to the situation, whining just a little before he eyes me with curiosity. I give him a gentle scratch against his ears, and right behind his left one as he seems to melt into my touch. He drops his head against my chest and it suddenly jolts me to remember what happened the day before. What the fight ended like with yet another victim to my spiked iced weapon. It was my loyal friend through all of this. It allowed me to save myself and save Sorrel until I was forced to watch behind a opalescent wall meant to keep me away.

When she died, it didn't kill my motivation to live, it only motivated me to seek out her killer and make sure that she didn't die in vain.

The faces I remembered seeing light up in the sky told me of his name. It was Delroy Wickersham and he was from district eleven. A district much like my own where I'm sure our resources are low and I realized that I killed someone that was just that much more like me as well. However, there was nothing more I could do. I had a mission and he got in the way of it just like Luke did and they both decided the same fate by my hand and today, I no longer wondered what my siblings would think of me because I'm sure they were just ready to have me home. I'm sure my mother and my father told them that I was doing what I had to in order to survive.

"I am still me." I groan, sitting up from the sled and Tux decided to saunter off my legs and stretch from his sleep. "I will always be Carbon..."

Just with the knowledge that I killed people and barely blinked. I felt hardened and maybe that was one of the lessons that Doc was telling me I needed to do. I was too soft under his command. I needed to become stronger and not rely on my feelings and compassion so much because people will die. People will blame you for not saving their loved ones, but I was always there for the ones that could be saved and I consoled their families and everything always used to turn out okay then. So, what happened to me?

Will I be cold hearted if I'm given the chance to return home?

BOOM!

A cannon fires somewhere off in the distance right about the moment I see a shadow. I look around wondering if I got hit with something I didn't see coming. Maybe my leg finally took its moment and stopped my heart as the infection took over my blood.

But no - someone else among the arena must have died and my thoughts were trying to shift through who might be left, but the first few nights, Sorrel took watch as I slept off the injuries that acquired. Whoever was left, it could only be Piper and two others and I can only hope that I will be the one to match with the girl who killed my ally, my friend.

Sorrel, I hope you are okay wherever you are. Please - look over me. The words came without hatred laced in them because I'd not seen Piper in over a day. I was missing her gentle nature and I wanted nothing else in the world but to bring her back and have her mend my injuries which I had to tend to myself by stitches and tight bandages. It's harder to do this on your own but that meant there was only two more tributes before I could go home -

"Who am I trying to save?" I voice out in whispered form when I stand and begin to walk. I need to keep the blood flowing through my body. If I lay around any longer I'll die because I can't keep my head from spinning and my limbs need to stretch. So, soon enough a female's voice travels into my senses and for a moment, I swore it was Piper. I could see her. I could feel her presence especially when she mentioned it was me. That I got lost and I blinked a few times and coughed into my hand.

Her image straightened up and her voice changed ever so slightly and realized that this girl in front of me wasn't the one I needed. She was only someone else in my way of getting what I wanted done and she declares not seeing me.

"That would be correct because I only attend to those that are in dire need of a friend, which I tried to do back in the training center, or those that want an easy way out." Be intimidating. Be something else other than the killer two days in a roll. Maybe this girl will leave me alone?

"Leave bef-" And she comes after me without a care in the world and I unsheathed my sword and no sooner did she cut my jacketed arm, I declared back to her.

"You are not my target, just my distraction - one warning to leave. That's all I'm inclined to give -"

[Carbon Chem defends himself against Caleb with the Frostbite Sword]
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1170 -- Shallow Cut on Back -- 4.0 damage

Her freckles.

Dreads.

Her gentle features marred by the freezing cold weather is what I notice most about her. Her chapped, cracked lips that still move with purpose. She was younger than me, but so was the girl I desperately intended to find. This wasn't her and she was none better than Piper at this point. Just another person that I had to treat no differently than anyone else in this arena. It's a shame that I can't tend to her wounds, because she's limping just as I was. It kills me that I can't take her under my wing and let her rest and I tried to give her a word of warning to escape and that she wasn't my intended target but she's exhausted and hurt like the remainder of us here. How many does that make?

Four, Carbon. Four. Three - well, 2 others with that cannon. It's almost time to go home. Stay stonger a little longer. Don't fall under- I coach myself and look downward for a moment as she talks about friendships. But I don't collect her words until I see my reflection in the glass lake. I look sick... like I'm dying.

"I wasn't asking for friendship." I declare, using my radiating stump of an arm to steady the sword in my left hand and draw it upward in fear. It's so hard to imagine I've lasted this long with the numerous injuries and the icy temps that could no less kill a grown man in a few days, I've lasted a week somehow. We survived six days together. That's how.

And it ended the moment she was in my arms.

Two days alone takes it's toll on my mind. I was seeing things, brought up by the fever, no less, but Sorrel's image appears faded beside the girl and once again I blink a few times and it clears.

"I'm nosy. Who's your target?" She questions the moment she attacks again as if she won't even let me get the words out and I'm blocking the attack before she shifts her pattern and cuts my calf.

I bellow out a horrendous scream as the pain intensifies and throws my body onto the ground. The infected leg is the one she sliced, however minimal it was but it lit my leg on fire and I drag my leg across the snow, hoping to settle the pain with the numbing effects of the snow. If she wanted to kill me, she could. I was useless right now, trying to catch my breath while anger bubbled inside of me. She couldn't have known that was my weakest point, or did she?

"It doesn't - matter who my target was. You are my target now. You and everyone else who gets in my way of making sure SHE pays for killing Sorrel. For the game makers cruel sick joke to separate us - keep me behind a fucking wall and not being able to help her-" I used the tip of the sword as my leverage and I feel tears pooling at one of my eyes. Maybe the wind and cold was causing my eyes to water, or maybe its all the pent up feelings but I won't let my mission fail again.

[Carbon defends himself against Caleb with the Frostbite Sword]
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1064 -- Stabbed in Stomach -- 9.5 damage

The sword pierces her stomach so easily, so effortlessly with my left hand, supported by my right. I never knew that I would be able to handle it left handed but maybe a latent talent that I didn't know I had. There is no real strength to pull it from her stomach, not wanting to and hoping that it might have been that moment three days in a roll when the tribute would stop moving almost instantly, but she grips it. She handles the blade with her hands and she doesn't seem to cut herself on the edges and pulled it out. I stumble back. Watch her reel with the wound and I wonder what's going to come out of this.

My spiked blunt broke things. The swords opens things up.

A new type of power for me to behold and I don't know if I can effortlessly use it like Delroy did when he severed my arm or took my ear. He was the natural killer, it seemed. Not me. I was suppose to be the healer, the doctor people relied on. I didn't have the talent to kill?

Or maybe I did -

Maybe Sorrel's hand was on the sword keeping it steady. Maybe she was keeping me strong this entire time in spirit since her physical form was no longer viable. Sorrel, don't leave me just yet. I need you. I craved to see her image again and I blink a few times to see if she would.

But-

No-one.

"Don't be sorry - there's nothing to be sorry about unless you keep standing in my way." But when the sorry came further to the situation, I shake my head. "DON'T YOU DARE... If you even cared, you wouldn't still be attacking me. You'd leave me alone so I can find Piper -"

Acid dripped upon my tongue.

"Just stop -" I yell at her, much like I yelled at Sorrel day one to leave before she watched me do the unthinkable to the mutt. But this time, it wasn't full of a caring need to save her from witnessing something awful. It was full of anger and maybe contempt for her false sympathies.

False sympathies that drew her knife to my stump that was freshly wrapped, stained red and holding me together. With a simple slice, the heated area broke free a damn of crimson I just stopped from draining. If I pay attention to it, I lose myself.

If I stop what I'm doing, I'm dead.

If she don't stop what she's doing, I'll be dead before I can finish what I started.

"You don't even know how hard I've fought to save her life. To save just one more life and she ruined it so, I beg the question to you - what is your goal if you kill me?" And following suit like she did to me, I raised the sword again, with the painful stump to draw the answer from her living soul.

Because not many get to tell me before they die.

[Carbon fights against Caleb for answers; Sword]
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MIss

sword
1119 -- Block -- 0.0 damage

What is your goal if you kill me? The phrase seemed foreign to me, but also so familiar. I remember asking my little sister, Argon, that question one day a few years ago when she asked me how I knew what I wanted to do with my life. What my life goal was because she started questioning what she wanted out of life. What she dreamed of doing herself because in twelve, if you don't have a dream early on and work for what you wanted then you were useless and sent to the mines as a talentless waste of space. So, she wanted to work alongside me a little. She wanted to dip her feet into the pool of people caring and not surprisingly, she did fairly well -

She was another prodigy, but she lacked the compassion that one needed to listen - really listen to the patient. She saw the surface and she heard the issues but maybe she just needed time. Time that I couldn't give her since I was reaped and place into hell's kitchen and instead of flames, it's ice cold.

And her life goal was nothing but to stay alive without a purpose.

"No." I manage a response. It's scary to think that I may possibly perish to someone who's life didn't really matter after this very moment. At this very moment, I wanted nothing more than to push her out of my way and I tried but the sword misses and I wonder if the weapon is going to decide what it wants from life. The girl retaliates and her knife sinks deep into the back of my head.

So this is it. This is how it's all going to end.

The spinning pain of my head, pressure on my infected leg and fevered anger was going to be my downfall. If this is how I'm supposed to go then I won't implore her to be something she's not. Though, even with Delroy, I needed only one thing from him in the end. I needed my mission to be transferred and maybe, if she's so determined to go home, she might relish in the battle that I can not fight myself.

My body waned even more and I collapsed to my knees so suddenly in front of her. My leg jarred in pain from the sudden fall but I kept my hand gripped on the sword hoping that she'll stay close enough that it might taste her blood once more. And as I felt the trail of blood run down my back, I looked up at her and saw my ally standing there.

My mouth dropped slightly in awe.

"Sor? Have you come to help me?" My eyes go fuzzy for a moment.

"Sor - why aren't you helping me?" I blink a few times, but she doesn't seem to move but her eyes look sad, like she's watching something that pains her and I reach out to her. Caleb seems like a background now. "Sorrel, I tried to protect you. I'm sorry. I'll - make sure she pays for what she did to you."

And my head throbs. I groan before I shift my gaze to the girl and Caleb's image once again shifts. My eyes play tricks on me and she's there. It's her -

"I don't want to kill you, you know that right? I just have to." The malice in her voice confuses me. If she didn't want to kill me, why was I in so much pain?

"You're lying, Piper -" I can't get to my feet, but I swing the sword in hopes that defending myself against this monster will protect everything that I am.


[Carbon fights against Caleb for answers; Sword]
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1134 -- Miss -- 0.0 damage