❝ it is sometimes an
appropriate response to
reality to go insane ❞
──⭒─⭑─⭒──
In which an innocent girl finds herself
trapped in an arena with monsters and
her only hope is to claw her way out.
──...
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𝕬t quarter-to-ten, Thresh and I found ourselves in an elevator with Aurelia. The training rooms were below ground level of the building, though the ride was less than a minute. When we arrived, the doors opened into a large gymnasium, filled with an obstacle course and more weapons than you could get your hands on.
Luckily, Thresh and I were not the last people to arrive, and we took that time to join the others around the head trainer. Someone pinned 11 onto the back of my gold tunic, doing the same to Thresh's black shirt, before we joined them.
The Careers were already here, chatting quietly to their partners, and I shot a quick glance at Cato, my eyes narrowed as I thought about our encounter the night before. But when I looked up at him, I found his eyes already on me, his lips twisting into a smirk, before I turned back to Thresh.
A few more people arrived, before the final tributes from District 12 made their appearance. They were dressed the exact same as one another and I scrunched my nose before looking forward once more. I couldn't dwell on it now.
The head trainer stepped forward, a cold look on her face.
"In two weeks, twenty-three of you will be dead." She looked out across all of us. "One of you will be alive. Who that is depends on how well you pay attention over the next three days. Particularly over the next three days."
I looked up, catching eyes with District 12's tribute, Katniss Everdeen. Her eyebrows were furrowed as she watched me, but I turned back to the trainer before I could decipher the look.
"First, no fighting with the other Tributes. You'll have plenty of time for that in the Arena," She laughed like it was a funny joke that most of us were going to be killed. "There are four compulsory exercises, the rest will be individual training. My advice is don't ignore the survival skills. Everybody wants to grab a sword but most of you will die from natural causes. 10 percent from infection. 20 percent from dehydration. Exposure can kill as easily as a knife."
She dismissed us and I turned to Thresh.
"Where to first?"
"The survival skills look quite empty." He muttered as I hummed, both of us heading over to the empty skill stations. We spend about an hour at the snares, making them in relative silence with the instructor telling us what to do, though Thresh and I were already pretty good at it. Then we moved onto knots, how to start a fire and making shelter.
A life of growing up in District Eleven had left the both of us with fairly decent survival skills and most of the things they were teaching us was stuff we already knew from time spent in the fields, or on the farm.
