Blades of chaos

Part 3

Inside, a woman greeted us, " Welcome to Olympia, this training center will be your home for the next week, you have five days of training time, use it well," she seemed more like a machine than a person, and we were escorted by a group of Urban Cohorts into our living quarters. The place was much more luxurious than the train, however, I had no company which would make my stay, even in a place more luxurious than I ever dreamed, seem dull. I wasted no time checking out the four-post bed and other luxuries and headed right to the training room, 'I'm quicker than anyone else' I think until I saw several tributes at the edible plants' station. The trainer immediately noticed me and told me to change, so I went into the changing room. There are full-body jumpsuits with district numbers and tribute names, most likely for the gods and spectators to recognize us. I scanned each suit and found mine, labeled 'Tribute number 104, District 26: Anastasia Lewis' I put on the suit. When I made my way towards the training room again, everyone had already come in and found their clothes, much faster than I did. I walked out and towards the combat training ring, thinking I had enough knowledge about edible plants, the trainer assessed my spearing skills with one of those fancy Olympian spears, they have a much more lightweight and sharper spearhead and a sturdier wood shaft, due to my only spearing experience from much heavier and dull spears, I couldn't throw nor spear as well as the one back home. Every other tribute seemed to master their weapons easily, they threw with the highest accuracy I've seen. Knives struck their targets from over twenty meters away, even Tiffany had no problem throwing her throwing knives, I swear she grinned when she saw me dislodge the spear from the ironwood floorboards. Three hours passed before I could use the Olympian spears as well as the one my father crafted for me, the robotic trainer congratulated me on 'Mastering the spear' she wouldn't know my life back home, so I brushed it off as a 'minor insult' and headed off to spar. I would've loved sparring with an actual person for the best results possible, but we weren't allowed to spar with actual people, only robotic imitations or the lizard mutations made for this purpose, I chose to spar with those mutations with a spear. Soon after, the floor of the center was littered with weapons, paint, dead mutations, and different foods, all sprinkled with fresh, oozing mutant blood. A cart with bowls of stew slid itself to a convenient corner away from the mess, eight tables followed suit and slid themselves in place, with cutlery set in place, facing the wall. The trainers disappeared under the floorboards, and we were left alone, to make potential allies and have lunch. I slid next to Rylie, " Do you want to ally with you and me? Just us together." "I'd love to, would you mind if we add more people, though?" I gritted my teeth, " Sure, who were you thinking of?" He points to the girl who showed off her knife-throwing skills, " Her, Ivana Chan, she's older than you and more mature," he proceeded to snicker, "Ana, if you could choose who would be a victor with you, who would it be?" I scanned the tributes, sipped another spoonful of stew, and said, "You or Tiffy over there, I can't choose," I finished my stew before he finally said, "Not surprising, you think we're equally as hot, yes?" "Rylie! What..." I retraced my steps, "Never mind that, what do you need that sort of information for?" He chuckled, " I thought you'd be smarter than this, Ana. I'm just finding your preferences on allies in a more discreet way," 'Rylie, you can be so annoying at times,' I mutter under my breath. "What was that, sweetheart?" Rylie smirked, "Anyway, I was thinking our alliance should have Ivana, Tiffany, the Jarrod guy, you, Brutus, and me, what do you think?" I sat there in absolute silence and thought about it, there are two, two of the most powerful tributes in Rylie's plan, and we would be quite safe. However, there's a large chance they would stab us in the back while we slept, and no one would or even could save us. So, I said, " Why don't we leave Brutus out? We can't afford him and Ivana in the same alliance, they might just kill us in our sleep?" He began to reply, but the lunch bell tolls, and his point wasn't heard. The robotic trainers, I have no doubt left that they were even human, ushers us to return to our training. I skipped the edible plant section, thinking my forging skills were already enough and headed to train with throwing knives. The blades are made of silvery metal, unknown to us in the districts, they are incredibly lightweight, just like a feather. I heard someone whisper into my ear, "You've no chance there, in the games" I whipped around and nearly impaled him, "Brutus, what do you know about us in district twenty-six?" I threw the knife behind me, a soft thud signaled the knife found home in the soft flesh of the mutants. "Nothing much," he said, "only, you're skinnier than even the people of district thirty," Only then had I realized that he was stooping down to speak to me, not much, but enough to make our height difference obvious, to make me feel small. I murmured, "I'll get you in the maze, maybe sooner,". Much to my relief, he didn't bother to continue our conversation. I went from station to station in the next four hours and learned nothing, nothing at all, I gave up and only realized then, I haven't visited the edible plants' identification before. I reluctantly dragged myself over and found it only had books, piles of thick textbooks about identifying edible and inedible plants, I flipped through its worn pages and saw everything I have learned in the past three years, written in unreadable Latin, small wonder nobody else was here, only Olympia citizens could read Latin, us in the districts can't read Latin or Greek for that matter. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a thin volume of a guide in the arena. I thought to myself, ' This couldn't help at all, the arena changes every year, every game' curiosity got the better of me and I flipped through the pages. " A guide on the five rivers, Styx, Lethe, Cocytus, Acheron, Phlegethon. Styx grants the blessing/ curse of Achilles, granting immunity to those who bathe in the river with a parent's blessing, every part of their body will be impervious to damage, except a special weak spot, where any damage will result in the person's immediate death. If without a parents' blessing, the damned will slowly wither and drown in agony as they foresee the entire future of the nine worlds. Lethe will cause temporary memory loss if touched if consumed or a large portion of skin contacts the water, severe or complete loss of memory will be caused. Cocytus causes severe morale loss and temporary depression-like symptoms on contact or light consumption, if heavier consumption or contact is made, permanent depression and complete loss of morale sets in, often leaving the person to take their life. Acheron, once contacted or consumed lightly, will cause the person tremendous agony, however, if more heavily consumed or larger portions of the body makes contact, the agony will increase to such degrees, the person cannot bear it and attempts to end their own lives to end the pain, those who survive often become madmen and are left to succumb in the many holding cells outside the boundaries of Olympia. Phlegethon is a burning river of five with healing powers unsurpassed during the entire five billion years of existence, not much is known about the river, only the gods can know for sure." The book was nothing more than a single-page summary and scraps of paper, presumably to further explain the five rivers, a simple colored image showed the color of the rivers, pure white for Lethe, a greyish black for Styx, a deep blueish color for the Cocytus, a blood red color for the Acheron and, a fiery orange-red for the Phlegethon. I slammed the book in frustration, having learned nothing from the books, and stormed off. Just as I went to the emergency weapons training, for training with commonly found items in past arenas as weapons, a bell tolled, barely being heard over the sound of sword clashes. I was quite confused, it had only been a few hours after lunch and no one could have dinner at this time. My stomach seemed to not agree with my mental statement, one could almost hear it say, " You can always stuff something in me, like at any time of the day," "shut up," I told it, it wouldn't stop, though. The confusion cleared instantly when a few snacks were served, I thought 'they are spoiling us, we'd never get that again in the districts' To satisfy my cravings, I went over and had a slice of apple pie, it had been forever since I first had one back home, it seemed so unnaturally sweet yet irresistible, I told myself to stop. I stopped and headed back to my room in the training center, I went up the steps and counted them to amuse myself,...two...three...four...five... I counted to two hundred and eighty- four steps when I bumped into another tribute, headed down. I look up and said, " You're Ariana Lewis, from District nine" she replies, in a sharper tone than one associated with a friendly greeting, " Yeah, I wonder how we're even remotely related, hello, Anastasia" We shared no physical similarity other than our colorless pupils, She continues, " You know the girl with the brown hair, also from district twenty-seven?" "You mean Tiffany over there?" I pointed to Tiffany, who was coming up the stairs. "Uhh... yeah, that's her. She has more skill than she looks" Tiffany continues, "And you stand no chance, in the games" I finished the sentence for them, " provided you don't get killed by anyone else" Ariana says, " That's not the point, we want you to win, preferably with us," I'm flustered, so I say, " but how do you know it's going in your favour if I win?" "We have the Oracle, you know, we are supposed to tell that to the President but we can get away with leaving some tiny snippets of information from them, like this one," Tiffany continues, " so she told me and asked did I know any Anastasia, and that led to where we are right now" I'm confused, I ask " I still don't know why it has to be me, I have absolutely no chance of winning, you, out of all people, should know that," "I'll explain," says Ariana, " the spirit of the oracle secretly possessed me and told me to start a rebellion against Hyde, like this," she spoke in the most oracle-like voice, "Three halfbloods must answer the call, to the Sword of Chaos our world must fall, an oath to keep in a final breath," suddenly, she stopped halfway into the prophecy, "the oracle left me after that, I'm sure there's more to it," Tiffany grins, " just work on the part we got," I cut her off, " Can we slow down for a bit, I have a million questions right now, like why does your personality change that much," I pointed to Tiffany, "and why do we have this prophecy?" "Slow down? Never! Come on, we need to discuss our plan, preferably not including one of our deaths the prophecy mentioned," Ariana and Tiffany said in perfect unison. Ariana continues " but that's unavoidable, so we also discuss what to do if any of us just, umm" she draws a line over her neck with her finger, " die in the process. Oh, and we also have to find out what halfbloods are," We ended up in her room discussing what are halfbloods, " If it isn't obvious enough," I said, " halfbloods should be creatures who share blood with the gods directly, but they have mortal parents," I add "at least that's what school said" Ariana said"You blame the school in case you make a mistake, yes?" "That's not the point," said Tiffany, " how do we know if someone is a halfblood? More importantly, what is a halfblood?" "Are you stupid?" I said, "I just said it ten seconds ago," She replies, "but maybe the ones they refer to isn't what you said," We proceeded to spend the hour arguing about what a halfblood is, we settled on trying to find out who might be a halfblood after ruling out possibilities of who could be a halfblood and obtained potentially valuable information: Tiffany is bipolar. I don't know how that could help, but she could fake something to buy us time, I guess. For the next few days, we completely forgot to train and focused on finding out half-bloods, only stopping for meals.On the second day, Tiffany noticed something different, she said, "So, I sorta found out we look slightly different than the other tributes, I can see a marking of sorts on your forearm, it looks like two swords grinding against each other" She points to our forearm just below the wrist, "right there," I look and see nothing on my skin, I try focusing and saw, once again, nothing. A full minute passes before we even bother to tell her we could see nothing, she was quite surprised, and said, " Wait, you can't see it? It's right here," she points to her forearm, "Hey," says Ariana, "why don't you outline it for us?" I join in, "If it's there, outline it with a marker or something," She doesn't agree. " I'll just cast a simple incantation, you should be able to see it after that," "Wait, what did you...", before we could protest, she says the incantation, "[insert Latin here], look at your forearm now," we look down and see it, practically blinding us with the white on our wrists, underneath the symbol were the words, 'Child of the Gods' on Tiffany's wrist, 'God-spawn' on Ariana's, and 'Mortal Goddess' on mine. "So we know who are the half-bloods now," said Ariana, "But how do we know you aren't tricking us with..." she was cut off by the announcement, "All tributes, please assemble at the hall immediately," Tiffany decided then was the perfect time to let loose a few rude comments to the announcer with a blend of insults to rude to repeat.We had to follow the instructions anyway, so, we headed to the training hall. At the hall, we were sorted into groups by our district of origin. Tiffany began to act the way she does with her boyfriend, weak and vulnerable while I tried my best to hide my feelings from Rylie and Jarrod