☢︎ Day Three: Eight Tributes, Four Mutts, One Exit ☢︎
May 26, 2024 0:57:35 GMT -5
Post by d8a lucia ✃ valentine ✁ tris on May 26, 2024 0:57:35 GMT -5
If you've never heard the echoing of a cannon down a long tunnel, count yourself lucky.
And if you've never heard the sound of them ricocheting, one after the other, all at once — then you are not Amber Bosch. You are not alone and afraid in the depths of Panem's sewers, seconds away from your very fate being decided. The smell of rust does not make you dry heave, and your eyes do not start to water. You do not feel as if your very soul is splitting into two distinct halves.
For Amber, for our doomed heroine, this does not feel all too unfamiliar. She has always felt as if she was torn between two versions of herself, the reality and the dream. If you waste enough years of your life fantasizing about all the things you could have, it becomes all the more difficult to stand and stare at all the things you don't have. She will never know what it's like the wear the prettiest dress at the party. She will never know what happened to Fraser, or October — and the fact that she cannot find them anywhere amongst the chaos, fleeing for the exit, only confirms her most anxious fears.
She left them to die in the dark.
As much as Amber wanted to save her companions, she never proved herself to be a protector worth her weight in salt. And as much as she claimed she was ready to prove herself capable of killing, of digging her heels into the earth and refusing to be moved, of surviving — she has struggled deeply with the trauma of the events that have transpired over the last few days. Her drumming heart sounds just like Napoleon's face crunching beneath her knuckles, pounding inside her ears. Even after all this time, she is still holding fast to her weapon. She knows she is too far away to make it to the exit in time — ever the envious bird as she gazes forward at a blur of red hair, a girl racing into the future she so desperately wanted for herself.
This feels like losing even before her own cannon has fired. It's hard to be jealous of the stranger, who spares not even a single pitiful glance over her retreating shoulder. And how can Amber blame her for any of it? She would have done the very same if luck had been on her side, if her role in the story hadn't already been scripted and finalized. This is who she was always meant to be, a puppet tangled in the threads of fate, golden scissors held to her throat. There are worse endings than this one.
As she stands there, watching the doors seal shut and being powerless to stop it from happening, she thinks of hearing a boy plea for mercy, to live, his fists banging against a hard, finite truth. The sadness in his voice sounds so deeply like the sadness she feels inside her own body. And on the walls, there are red stains seeping into the concrete, splatters of waste and decay scattered around like a terrible scavenger hunt. A chunk of flesh, a finger, a bone. The sound of the feasting never stops once it begins.
The cannons are the only lapse between the tear, the squelch, the crack, the gulp. And as much as she wished to live, living this long after the doors have thudded shut is not proving to be a kindness. She was slow enough, and just lucky enough, that she managed to position herself behind the majority of the muttations before coming up on the exit. Like an esteemed guest at a macabre production, Amber was given a front row seat to the carnage that awaited her. She could hear the stragglers coming up behind her, stomping like thunder and roaring like trees catching fire, and her wide eyes were trained on the other beasts that blocked off the one route to freedom she had.
It all felt impossible.
But within that, there was a certain kind of freedom that came to her. She dropped her supplies to the ground, shrugged off her bandaged sling and her now useless bag. She stood at the eye of the storm, just a girl who was nearly torn apart holding a glaive she had absolutely no experience with. But she did not beg for mercy, and she did not claw at the doors. Amber is not foolish enough to think she could ever outrun or out-survive these monsters, but she is just brave enough to think she could walk into her own death with unbridled ferocity.
If this is what she is left with, if these creatures want nothing more than to rip a girl and her dreams apart — then let them swallow Amber Bosch whole. Every toxic, stubborn, endlessly hopeful piece of herself. With a roar cry of her own, accepting that the next few moments will be her last on this earth, she willingly charges right at the closest turtle, and she makes a vow to wound each of them in turn before they manage to pull her apart at the seams.
Consider this her parting gift.
ThdiWrVaFaglaive
8.5
filler paragraph for what happens with Amber's interaction with turtle #1.
glaive
8.0
filler paragraph for what happens with Amber's interaction with turtle #2.
glaive
3.5
filler paragraph for what happens with Amber's interaction with turtle #3.
glaive
8.5
filler paragraph for what happens with Amber's interaction with turtle #4 & death.
forgoes 1-100 roll
distance traveled: 094/200
failed
glaive·glaive·glaive·glaivedistance traveled: 094/200
failed