No Place Like Home

Part 3

"If you wanna sleep, I'll take first watch," Dan offered and stood up, looking around.

They had been talking for at least about half an hour.

Phil yawned, "Sure, just promise you won't axe me in my sleep."

Dan looked at Phil with a smirk, "Phil, what you saw about 2 hours ago is called 'saving your life'. If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it already."

Phil smiled, "Okay, I trust you."
Dan nodded and smiled lightly, before walking to a tree and sitting down, as Phil found a patch of grass and laid in it.

Dan looked around, it was a beautiful view.
But it was also terrifying, it was gorgeous from the outside, but on the inside it held vicious monsters.
And Dan wasn't talking about the animals.

Dan sometimes forgot he was in an arena, the view and the creatures and everything was so undeniably beautiful.
But the truth was, it was a killing station. Where people died, it was specifically modified so that everything in this jungle could kill you, even the people.
It was poison in a pretty bottle.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dan shot awake as he felt his head tilt.
He immediately looked around, there was no tributes around, not even Phil.

Dan felt a jolt in his gut and a clogged feeling in his throat.
No, Dan would have heard the fighting and the cannon.

As Dan started to panic, Phil emerged from the tree's.
"Hello, sleepy." He smiled.

"God," Dan breathed. "Don't scare me like that." Phil came and sat next to him.
"Where'd you go?" Dan asked.

"Well, you were asleep when I woke up, and I heard twitching in the woods. It turns out it was a hovercraft coming to take another tribute. But you can't be too careful, and I didn't hear any cannons, so I thought it would be someone waiting for an attack."

"It looks like we missed the attack," Dan looked up. "So, how many people are left in the games?"

"Well," Phil said. "There is the 6 from yesterday, I heard about 2 in the night,"
"I heard another one last night," Dan said.
"So that's three more," Phil said. "So, 9 are dead."

"That means there are 39 left," Dan stated. "And I'm betting at least 13 of them have allies."

"Any double districts?" Phil asked.
"I heard Ethan and Karen were double districts," Dan said. "The rest most likely hated their partners."

"Any pities?" Phil said.
"Probably like 6," Dan said. "Most likely the ones whose partners are dead, you're more likely to trust someone from your hometown."

"5, 12, 7 and 6 are probably pities," Phil pointed out. "Their districts are more known to be quite neutral."

"Do we know what 5, 12, 7 and 6 looks like?" Dan asked.
"I have a blurry image," Phil smirked. "But yes, we do."
"Then let's go." Dan replied.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They had been walking for no less than an hour until they heard a snap from the bushes.

Dan looked at Phil and held a finger to his lips. Phil nodded.

Dan jerked his head, silently telling Phil to stand with him. Phil notched an arrow as he slowly walked towards Dan.

They stood back to back, preparing for the tributes to attack.

"Come on out then!" Dan yelled, and Phil held his breath. "What, you scared?"

A second later, 2 people jumped out of the jungle.
A man and a women, Cameron and Alice from District 1.

They were another double district.

But the fight didn't last long, as Cameron had a trident and Alice had a bow. Dan took an axe from his belt to fight off Alice and Phil notched an arrow to fight Cameron.

Given they were from 1, they were both big and buff, born and raised fighters.

Whereas district 4, where Dan and Phil were from, were known for fishing.

But they weren't as stupid as they looked. Dan had to give it to him, Phil was a killer with a bow and arrow.

Dan refused to throw his axe this time, he wanted a blood-thirsty fight.

If he was going to win the games, he wanted to win it with honour.

Alice went down pretty quickly. She went down with a fight though, and Dan ended up pretty scratched up after it. But, Dan swung his leg at hers and she fell. He took this opportunity to axe her before her arrow flew.
A cannon went off.

Phil had a bit of struggle, but eventually won at the same time as Dan.

Cameron's trident was good, but there was one fatal flaw.
You can't slash, you can only stab.

And Phil refused to let Cameron get close enough to stab.
Cameron died seconds after Alice. Another cannon.

Needless to say, the two cannons for Alice and Cameron went off pretty quickly.

They looted the tributes' stuff - nothing interesting, Phil got Alice's arrows and Dan swiped some throwing knives.

Dan panted and chuckled, whilst he wiped the blood off his new-found knives on his leg and picked up his axes.

"You okay?" Phil asked. He saw fire in Dan's eyes, he wasn't happy.

Dan shook his head, "To be honest Phil, no. No, I am sick of this sh*t. I am sick of fighting, I have killed 4 people out of 48 and there's now less than 40 we've been in this hell for less than 12 hours."

Phil looked at him with sympathy, but was shocked when Dan started screaming at the sky, "Are you happy, Snow? Does this bring you joy, watching innocent people murder each other? Huh? Answer me, Goddammit! I thought you were supposed to be 'Snow all-mighty' huh? Why don't you come down here and show us how to play? I bet you won't want that when I come up there and nail your ass to the wall!"

Phil stared at him, mouth gaped.
"What?" Dan looked at him. "He can't hurt me."

He then finished emotionlessly, "There's no one left that I love."