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She wore a thousand faces all to hide her own.
She had hesitated long enough to witness the first tribute go down, a knife sticking out of their stomach. She wouldn't let fear control her any longer, she needed to move. She knew the whole of Panem was watching her, wondering what she would do. She received a score of one on her private training session, she knew they assumed she was horrible in the arena. She needed to prove that she was deadly and capable of killing, of being a tribute worth sponsoring. Swallowing down the terrified girl from this morning, she stepped off her plate, channeling the Career she was supposed to be.
At her feet in the wavy grass was a silver square tin, and for all she knew there was nothing inside it, so she left it there. She needed a weapon, and it seemed others were thinking the same thing as they all raced toward the pile. The tribute with the knife in them was heaving on their own blood only yards away in the tall grass, the sounds as they cried out in pain made her want to throw up. But she ignored them and started running, forcing her body to go towards the one place only a fool would go to. She looked for whoever threw that knife, her head whipping around frantically as another tribute made it to the pile, grabbing as many weapons as they could carry. Cassia pushed herself to run faster.
The tribute with the bounty of weapons ran into the dense woods the second they saw everyone else racing toward the horn, disappearing from sight. Cassia ran past a backpack and slung it over her shoulders, thrusting her arms through the loops as she finally reached the pile of weapons. She didn't think, didn't hesitate as she grabbed a long, serrated knife and flung it at the first tribute that got too close to her. They fell to the ground immediately, the knife perfectly embedded into their chest. They choked on their own blood and slowly fell to the ground.
She spun back around and pulled off one of the gleaming silver spears from the rack they were on. It was light yet heavy as she held it in her hands, the tip of it meant to kill. She whipped back to the mouth of the Cornucopia to see tributes already spraying the ground with each other's blood, her braid flying at the sudden motion. Some of the charging tributes saw what she had in her grasp and started to turn away, and she let a vicious smile lace her face as she drew her arm back and threw her entire body into the launch. Her second mark was found in a young boy, the light in his eyes vanishing forever as he looked down in shock at the metal rod in his body.
Something felt wrong, however, as Cassia grabbed another knife and put another into the belt-loop of her pants. She saw some of the tributes that weren't engaged in combat still standing in the semi-circle of the field. Squinting, she watched as one tribute tugged at their legs, crying out like a wounded animal. And then, to her horror, watched as the tall grass started wrapping around their legs, crawling higher and higher as they frantically tried ripping it off their body. No one came to help them when they called for someone. There was only the sounds of metal against flesh and bone and the stench of blood in the air.
