thearena | Arena 14: A Grimm Age

The morning breaks to a familiar routine for most of you. Bright and early the Tributes are roused by their escorts and stylists, escorted from their rooms and to the waiting hovercraft. The flight takes them a few hours out from the Capitol and after landing they are escorted quickly into an underground complex to be prepped. Tributes will find to their dismay that their outfits are a little less practical and a little more costume this time around, the ratio of which depends entirely on the whims of their stylist. Peacekeepers will appear almost immediately after they've finished dressing to put them in the waiting launch tubes.

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They rise up from the ground and -- phew, what's that smell? The Tribute's look around them to see a full-on medieval village, constructed entirely from wood and thatch. There are empty pens that might have once held pigs and chickens attached to the houses and a well is visible down the street. What commands attention though is what's in the centre of the village square where the Tribute's are standing; a pyre built around a tall wooden stake. Those who look amongst the piles of twigs and wood will see the gleam of weapons, as well as backpacks containing survival supplies. This is your Cornucopia, Tributes.

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Anyone who tries to look further afield, over the roofs of the houses, will see the main feature of this arena looming above them. The castle stands tall and forbidding, a monstrous sized building of stone with flags bearing the emblem of the Capitol flying from its parapets. From here, if they squint, they can see the drawbridge is down and the portcullis is open. For now.

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A triumphant sounding of trumpets is what signals this arena's beginning and with it those Tribute's with powers may feel a sudden tingling in their bones, a rush of energy as those powers are restored to them. Any with constantly active abilities will find a light illuminates immediately over their head, signalling that something about this powered arena is going to be a little different from the last. For those who try to use their powers right off the bat... well, they'll be in for a nasty shock.

[[OOC: A mod reminder that this arena is designed to punish Tribute's for using powers. If your character will attempt to use powers at any time in week 1 of the arena it needs to be reported here to be RNG'd by the mods for chances of success or injury.

There will be a thread on Death Roll posts for subsequent weeks power usage to be reported.]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

On Jamie's name, Roland gives Alain a distinctly odd look, almost a disturbed one. Here's another name he hasn't heard in years and years, must be, hasn't thought of in some time, and he has to take a moment to slot Jamie into the portion of his mind which is 'now'. It is, for Alain, isn't it? Has he realized yet that he is never going to see Jamie or any of the others again?

Roland ought to know. In the old days, the days in which the two of them were bound by brotherhood and fate, he would have.

Getting too caught up in the old days here and now may well get Roland killed. He takes a breath, then slides carefully down to kneel in front of Alain's leg again. "Aye, we'll grab something on the way out. Take this stick for me, hold it about here. And this other one, here. Once I finish tying- shit, can't do that either. Not like this. You'll have to hold one end of this too. And then something to lean on for you, I think. Maybe out of that door."

Alain meets that look steadily, holding the wood in place as best he can. It isn't easy, with his hands numbly aching from the burns, but he does it.

"I know he's dead," he says, in answer to the question Roland hasn't asked, and pins the ribbon against the wood with one finger, so Roland can work with it easier. "And that I'm like not to live to see him again, in any event. Still, can't help but wish for him here, when we could use both gunslingers and surgeons." Not that Jamie had ever been a surgeon, truly, but he was a damn sight better at field medicine than most of them. And he might at least have had two working hands, which Roland and Alain barely have between them at the moment.

Still, between them, they can just about get the work done, and that's what counts. Alain grits his teeth against the pain and, when the leg's splinted, turns to haul at the stupid wire-and-gauze wings on his back. Some of them can be salvaged - wire's nothing to be sniffed at in a place like this, and the gauze he stuffs into his pocket, along with Homilies and Meditations, to use as bandages later - but mostly he just wants the bedamned things gone.

"You'll live." The words come out with more force than Roland expected them to, and he wraps the last knot on the ribbon around itself a little more tightly than he'd meant. It'll be a little harder to untie now, but it'll hold. He lets Alain go at his outfit, heading instead to take better stock of the place. There's wood long enough to make a fair cane here, maybe even a crutch, but he'll need to take it from either the support beams over the walls or from the door, as he'd been thinking earlier. That will have to be done last.

So here he is, pacing around the walls of the little cottage. Sorry, taking stock. Totally not pacing. "Maybe not in Gilead again, but Panem- it isn't so bad. I'll show you." Again, more emotion than Roland expected has entered his voice here, but this time he does not notice the desperation that begins to creep in near the end.

"What did you see when you reached out?" He turns to Alain, realizing he should have asked this earlier. Should have helped Alain's hands dismantle those wings, too, so as Roland talks he starts over to do so. "Anything about this arena, or the people in it? Do you remember?"

Alain's hands slow on the wings for a moment. Roland's force, his desperation, would be striking enough even in the hollow, Touch-less confines of the Tribute Center. Here, they strike him full force, and leave an ache of understanding. He doesn't fully know why, though he can guess - knowing that Bert was here, knowing he no longer is - but he feels his dinh's worry.

He refuses to let it worry him in turn. Nodding a little, he holds out one of the wings, goes back to stripping the wire from the other. "Animals that aren't animals," he says, after a moment. "The rats. They're wrong. They're ill. Other creatures like... I don't know. Their minds aren't minds. And there's something in the woods, I don't recognise the shape of it." He frowns, deep and worried. "Most of it I didn't understand. And it's all wrapped up in fear and anger and determination from the others, much as you'd expect. Except for a couple. They weren't frightened at all. They'll be the dangerous ones, I think, if we can figure who they were." That was the trouble with the Touch. Like any sense, it could only pick up so much - and Alain had only been able to quest out with it for a few seconds.

At least one of them now is aware of Roland's emotions - and in that way he does have a little of their old childhood khef back, if only Roland was aware of it.

His mind, instead, is on Alain's words. He does not comment on what Alain's seen, and certainly does not guess at what any of it might mean. That would be foolish, and barely occurs to him. He only takes it in, his fingers - all ten of them, looking oddly identical in these thin gloves - moving steadily over the material of Alain's 'wings'. "We'll stay away from the rats. And the rest, of course, much as we can help it. Same of the other tributes. Most of 'em may not shoot first if you don't, but those few others you felt make the caution worth it."

Does Alain need this little talk? Surely he's had at least one arena how-to in the time leading up to this one. Well. He's getting it anyway. "We'll grab a few supplies here, maybe tie them up in this sash around my waist, if we can manage the knot. A crutch for you. But let's make it quick. We need to move, spent too much time here already."

Alain nods, winding the wires from his wings into a loop he can shove into the pocket of his vest, and levers himself gingerly to his feet. Well, foot. "There's living stock out in the fields. Doubt they're threaded, but they might be edible. Worth heading there, maybe, if we have aught to butcher them with?" As he speaks, he's casting around the room, looking for anything they can use. The hook over the fire could be a good weapon, if they find nothing else. And where there's fire, maybe there's matches, a tinderbox...

It's hard to take stock properly, when he can't walk, but only essay something between a shuffle and a hop. Using the edge of the bed for support, he manages to make his way over to a chest of drawers, wincing as he pulls it open with blistered fingers and rifles through the contents. "Where do we head?" he asks after a moment, not looking up.

"Out." He walks on the opposite side of the place, briefly looking through for anything likely. "Don't know the land yet. Got to look around a little. Not much. The first place out of sight will do, though those lights over us might make some trouble. Might have to keep moving. Nothing for that yet. I'd like to bring a pot along, boil the mold out from some of these rags, but that'll have to wait. For now we'll find some weapons, break that door down so you have something to lean on, then we'll be gone. You remember how to use a staff, I hope."

Arena 14: A Grimm Age

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And this or your next one can fade it?