Contest of Champions

31

I leave the Gauntlet behind me as I sprint through the woods, dodging through the oak and pine trees. Kasady's roar follows me as he wreaks carnage on those contenders left by the Gauntlet and I hear shouting as others seem to realize what I already know: it is time to retreat.

I've got to run. Got to get as far away as possible from the Gauntlet. From the Avenger pack, from Kasady, from everyone else. I need to figure out my game plan, now that I've seen the arena and know a symbiote is involved in this Contest.

I don't know how long I run before I reach the bottom of a cliff. It's so unexpected, I almost run right into the face of it, skidding to a halt at the last minute with my hands braced in front of me to ensure I don't smack into it. As it is, I end up falling back as the shock from my palms impacting with the rock face mixes with pain and ricochets through my bones, my shoulder hurting most of all.

Without even giving pause to think, I draw my legs up underneath me, spinning around to face the way I'd come. No one is there, no one is threatening me.

Yet.

I rise, slowly, daggers in my hands. Still nothing.

It's quiet; too quiet, I feel. But I'll allow myself the respite regardless. And that's when I remember I have an arrow in my shoulder.

I study the foreign object for a moment, trying to figure out how I should deal with it. In my haste to escape Kasady, I'd forgotten it was even there. I place my pack down, wincing, and glance inside it to see a roll of bandages, beside the water and food.

Curling my fingers around the shaft, I tug on it, gritting my teeth against the sharp streaks of pain. I try wiggling it, to see if that would help, and discover quickly that the pain only increases when I do that. For a solid fifteen minutes I sit there, attempting to carefully dislodge it, before I grow fed up with being gentle.

I hiss between my teeth as I recklessly yank the arrow from my shoulder. Searing pain explodes through my shoulder as the flesh tears and blood starts to pour from the wound. I toss the projectile to one side and slash off a strip of bandage to staunch the blood flow.

Wrapping the fabric over the wound and underneath my arm to keep it in place, I reposition my sash to better hold the bandages on. I then unhook my Yggdrasil pin and fix it on the underside, pinning the bandage to my tunic. Fortunately, I'm a fast healer, so the bandages shouldn't be needed long.

Stiffly, I rise and grab my pack. I need to move on, I need to figure out where the best places are. So I toss my pack over my good shoulder, kick the arrow on the ground in irritation, and start out, following along the face of the cliff to keep one side protected from attack. It also means I can be cornered easier.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Three cannons. Three deaths.

Only three? Hmm. With Kasady, I would have thought there'd be more. I know for a fact Helen Cho is one of those cannons, but I won't know until later who the other two are. I keep moving, glancing around constantly to make sure I haven't been seen.

As I walk, I try to figure out the arena. Leading up to this morning, I wasn't sure what to expect, but this, this is definitely not it. This is a Space Games. There should be some element of space involved, not a field and forest.

I think back to last year, the year Shuri Udaku of District 1 won. There had been several different locations, connected by portals. Shuri had won by ambushing the portal travelers and shooting them when they landed. After thinning the herd that way, she had then gone hunting for the others through the portals, using some kind of monitor she had rigged to track their shock devices.

Thor's, Wanda Maximoff's, Hope Van Dyne's, and Steve Rogers' Contests had all involved portals in some capacity as well. There had also been a good bit of space locations. I'm sure I can expect something similar now.

But how will the portals be arranged?

Shuri's were established structures, Wanda's needed to be created by a contender, Steve's were similar to Wanda's but the portal structure was more complex in crossing through – unpredictable with where you would land, if I remember correctly, Hope's actually were constructed within tunnels that needed to be powered up under specific circumstances to work, and Thor's had established portals that occasionally winked out and left a contender stranded. I remember one particularly humorous moment of Thor's Contest when he dove through a portal after a contender, struck her down within a moment, and turned around to find the portal gone.

"Open the portal!" he had bellowed, shaking his hammer furiously. I almost fell off the sofa laughing at that, as Thor threatened an empty sky with his rage.

It feels like forever before the sky begins to darken. I'm still walking alongside the cliff face, which has softened until it has become a climbable slope, although still steep. Not wanting to be trekking while it is dark, I turn aside and move up the slope, ducking behind some thick, tall rocks as the slight path curves. Moving until I feel like I'm in a relatively safe – for the arena, anyway – and defensible position, I then drop my pack and settle down, my back against a solid rock.

Music floods the arena and I look up, expectantly. Finally, I will see who all died today, beside Helen Cho. The familiar strains of what we call the Contender Anthem play, the suspenseful beat raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

"Avenge the Fallen" appears in the sky, and underneath appears an image of the female contender from Jotunheim. Her name and District 6 are inscribed beneath her picture, and for a moment, the image is frozen in the sky before her portrait crumbles into ash and blows away on an invisible wind.

Helen Cho's photo appears next, accompanied by District 7. Her face also vanishes into ash as it is replaced with the female from Vanaheim before the Avenge the Fallen sign turns black and disappears, the anthem finishing.

Silence falls on the arena again. I lean my head back against the rock and sigh. Three down. Too many left to go.