Blades of chaos

Part 8

That ended pretty well, I think it had been a day. Maybe the water is just weaker in the arena because it isn't really the Underworld. I believe we lost our memory for a day or two, but we're alive and kickin' so I'll take it. I don't know where we got these wounds, maybe we were attacked? These aren't serious, they don't look that deep, but that's what I said about the Swiss Army Knife that cut one of my tendons, it's not like we had any valid medical equipment so we just patched it up with a roll of gauze lying on the floor. Dropped by a tribute, maybe? While Tiffany bandaged the cut on my calf, I heard her mutter something about this being like an actual game, as if we can come back to life. But dying is the only way to test that, I don't think anyone would bother to try, at least, not me. Despite knowing each other for the entire duration of our lives, we barely even say anything to each other, unlike several pairs of allies I've seen, they might have just met. Our conversation went something like this:

I said "We got some water, not going to last long, so maybe we could think about eating other tributes?"

"No, what are you thinking about? Let's set camp at the Phlegethon first, fill up our flasks. Then maybe we do that, assuming we don't have anything else to eat other than poison."

"Fine."

Not exactly a good conversation, three sentences. We trekked through countless hills of magma, and fought off the occasional mutant bull we named "Betsy" for the fun of it. Tiff carved off a leg from the singular one we actually killed , not the best cut, but the rest was basically sheets of stone making up the hide. We rested when we're tired, no point trying to keep track of time in the Underworld, and ate raw chunks of bull, if you could call it that, when we felt like it. It was a boring repeating cycle, it was, until some manic ran at us. They did the unexpected, they asked us to kill them, then Tiffany just says " Why don't you do it..." they pull out an axe and swings it like the manic they are, catching both of us off guard. We're quite lucky that 'axe' is a crudely made blade-that-looks-like-an-axe-head strapped to a even cruder-looking branch with twine, the blade flung off when they started swinging it, sailing far above us and probably hit someone in the sparse rocky plain, leaving a branch to hit us, not very dangerous, it broke after the fourth swing. Which was actually quite disappointing, we expected more than this shit.

That, though, turned out to be a distraction and after they whacked us with that sad branch, we were prepared to end him with the dagger, then they pulled out a scythe. Not the cheap dollar store ones of course, it was like, shimmering in loads of colors, probably made of the mythological metal... um, I think it was made in the Styx, but it sucks your soul and traps it in the blade, making the blade stronger for every soul it absorbs. They proceeded to show their excellent skills in falling onto their face while trying to smite us, and Tiffy stabs him in the chest before he gets up, drags the blade along his back and sliced his heart out, a really gory scene, she grins like a psychopath, "You can take the scythe, I don't need it" I'm sickened by the blood, the cruelty behind it, and one of my friends/ enemy is consumed by bloodlust. Cameras are watching, I do have to put up an act, like a sick reality TV show, I almost lost it, the person infront of me spits out his last words "Go die like the cowards you are, not that it matters, we'll all die anyway" that hurt, and it hit hard, there's the nagging thought that pops up in the back of my head, and they, they made it much worse. I picked up their scythe anyway, and stabbed them in the heart, it feels weird, I wasn't consumed by guilt like the last time... perhaps...I was a psychopath all along...

Tiffany wipes the blood off her hands with her shirt, I stare blankly off into the distance while putting together a poorly made sling, I slip my newly found scythe in and sling it over my shoulder, I needed to say something because I couldn't take it anymore, "Doesn't the games... make you feel guilty, Tiff? Like...we killed two people...there's no way they could just resurrect..." I don't know what to say when she just said "no, not a bit, been raised to kill, I have an immeasurable amount of blood on my hands, Anastasia, just, don't" I just stare blankly again, unable to process what she just said, she is thirteen, and she's saying she killed people, and not just a few, but...loads of them. Not so luckily for me, a group of tributes ambushed us while I was half digesting what Tiff just said. They screamed like banshees and just whaled it on us, I fumbled my scythe out and swung it in the widest arc, effectively taking out one of them, cutting them clean in half, and sufficiently wounding the other three to send them running. Consumed by bloodlust, I ran after them and severed them in half, before taking their supplies. Like I let go of my reigns and chaos took place, I diced everyone, nearly severing Tiffy's head...

A/N: lol sorry for the short chapter I have schoolwork to do