Blades of chaos

Part 9

Tiffany pov:

"Anastasia! Stop! Please!" Those might have been my last words, if Ana hadn't actually stopped swinging that scythe like a manic, just before it made contact with my neck , I might have zero remorse but I do have a sense of self-preservation and stopping people from turning into a killing machine, that's my job. I let Ana take the scythe, that little runt needs it, my dagger is doing perfectly fine right now. Anastasia just became a beast after the other tribute (to be honest, they looked male), attacked us with his crude axe and even cruder skills, it's not that hard to see a dagger in the psychopath's hand. And I'm actually quite distracted, Anastasia just-

Wait, ignore that. That's unimportant. So we were trekking through another lake of molten rock because I had enough abilities in sorcery for that, and just finding a stupid river, a fucking river that's burning, not the ideal type of water to drink. I only agreed because there's the possibility I could toss people in and burn/drown them in...umm, Phlegethon. There's this random dude who thought "hey! I can totally murder two unsuspecting thirteen year olds trekking through magma!" And ran straight into the magma, he ended up a shrivelled burnt corpse, not the most pleasant scent either, but you're probably me reading this in the future, I think so anyway. After literal days of walking in magma and fighting the occasional ambush, we reached it, the orange red flamin' river that is Phlegethon. Anastasia had this stupid urge to leap in, and I didn't find out until she was in the air, for some absurd reason, I stopped her mid-air and just about fell in myself, luckily, there's this conveniently placed rock in front of me and I just stopped because there's a rock, it's not rocket science. Just physics. "Ana! What were you thinking!?" Was the first thing I said to her in ages, she was just like "ummmmm..." and said nothing, absolutely nothing. It was just absolute silence for about a minute before she just said she felt like it, would have been enough to kill her, jumping into random rivers. She might as well just split her skull on a boulder if she were to just leap head first into that particular section, it was like, two feet deep max. Pretty stupid, if you ask me. We aren't here to learn life lessons, but Anastasia was either rambling random things and philosophy or trying to murder me, so I gave up telling her to stop, she's actually lost it, but this time...

Anastasia grabs a guy who tried to ambush us by the collar, " Trying to get us, I see. Well, I'll teach you to never mess with me and you will remember it for the rest of your life, understood!?" The poor child nods, Anastasia is running off pure adrenaline right now, and she still can sweep people right off their feet and...

Oh, she...she threw him in Phlegethon... he's burning...and drowning, swept away by the river currents... poor guy... I want to save him, but I'll die trying or not, I'm just not taking the risk, leaping into unsafe rivers for heroic acts. I just stare blankly, was I really planning to do this? To throw people in Phlegethon and let them drown and burn? To make them suffer like that? Am I really just a monster? Probably not, but it feels a lot like that, considering I was about to just shove people into burning rivers for my selfish desires. They probably deserve to live as much as I do, but I don't think I deserve the same happiness as them. I've been made to kill since I could walk, since there's no volunteering system in the stupid Games, they (my parents) just made me a killing machine, tried to strip me of remorse and stuff, and of course I get reaped with my feelings intact, it makes me wonder if those Olympia people have remorse, making mere children to fight for their lives, "Kill or be killed" is the driving principle, most of the tributes want to live, but the two victors, or should I say, victims, leave with PTSD and a Olympia citizenship, as a perfect, hollow husk of their former selves.

To be honest, I might have recited "O' Fortuna" a little too hard, I have the same mindset as the sick poet who wrote the entire thing lamenting the inescapable hand of fate. It actually is inescapable though. Does Fate plan this? To let innocent children be used in a sick reality TV show, slaughtering each other? A few centuries ago, there was Panem and its Hunger Games, there was this girl Katniss and she did all the things like being a hero and saving the world and beating their social anarchy. Now we send children to the underworld, doing the same things. Hooray! We improved! No,we did not, now we send children to face challenges like I did! As I'm trying to get my life together, the worst thing I could imagine happened...

The sound of metal striking bone has become the new normal for my ears, but there's an ear-piercing scream this time, I knew it was Ana, she...she probably got stabbed, I turn around and saw her scythe still mid swing, about to decapitate the other tribute, and a bloody dagger in her chest. 

Time seems to slow down, I scream, Anastasia screams, the other guy screams, I scream at the horror behind the situation, murder didn't really bother me much, but I can't take much in this arena, I think I stop screaming, I can't tell if it's Anastasia or the other guy screaming, then, all is quiet, I jump and plunge my dagger deep into his chest, slit his throat, tears, tears of rage and grief silently slide down my cheeks. I wasn't bothered by death before, (much despite the public image I set) but, maybe, I felt something for Anastasia, something I denied for years. Maybe... just maybe, I loved her...

I sob, Ana slumps and falls to the ground, dying, nothing can save her now... I kneel next to her, quietly sobbing "It's okay...Anastasia...I'll win for you..." probably the sappiest thing I said, but I just, I just can't lose her...

(A/NCan we ignore how weird this is?)