HEART OF GOLD | CORIOLANUS SNOW

𝘾𝙃𝘼𝙋𝙏𝙀𝙍 99

Day seven of the Games did not register any deaths. Although Ash and Leigh had changed their strategy to hunting rather than just surviving after refueling at the expense of Harlequin, they were not adept at tracking. With an arena this large and offering unlimited concealment options, it was fortuitous that they stumbled upon Otho's tracks at all, even though they had to be the easiest to spot.

When Beryl never returned, and her face grayed out in the sky, Otho almost lost it. It was patent now that he had been attempting to go after her, but his knee had refused to carry him. The wooden stick he had been relying on as a staff was too unsteady without someone to support him on the other side, so he fashioned a crutch and added more splints around his leg. Combined with the fact that he was lugging their entire stash—consisting of a tent, sleeping bags, a number of weapons, other miscellaneous articles from their bloodbath haul, and a dwindling supply of food and water—his movements were not the speediest or the stealthiest.

Aided by a pair of night goggles from the backpack he'd picked up on the first day, he traveled through the night, miraculously not encountering any forms of danger, human or otherwise. His mangled limb forced him into several pitstops, but the playback revealed that he never slept.

He reached the starting point at dawn on Saturday, ostensibly confused by the barren landscape. Snow had ordered the bodies be removed the moment Heron, who gave up his pursuit of 11, had finished retrieving whatever he wanted and disappeared north. The only traces left from the battle were the dried blood and stew, an overturned pot, and an empty crate.

While Otho noticed the slight porthole in the turf and avoided it, he didn't seem to make sense of it. How could he imagine that there was where his district partner's head had created a depression as her face was pummeled over and over and over?

Torturous as it must be, he dragged himself halfway around the circle. Huffing and puffing from the effort, he leaned heavily on his crutch and placed his good foot onto the first step. His attempt to climb was quickly stymied by the toe of his other shoe catching on the corner, and he toppled forward, filling the clearing with the clatter of his sword and howls of agony. For about five minutes, he just lay there, eyes streaming, breaths ragged, victim to the pain. Ash and Leigh were in the trees, watching, but for some reason, they didn't attack.

Slowly, carefully, hindered by the sword tied to his waist, Otho managed to flip himself over. He abandoned the crutch and crawled up and back on his three functioning albeit tired limbs, resting more often than not until he finally heaved himself onto the top ring. There, inexplicably, he lifted his wounded leg with gritted teeth and turned so that he sat facing inward. When he recovered from the exertion, he started digging in his pack.

The remaining of his edible provisions were two packets of crackers—badly and irreversibly crushed in their transparent wrappers—and a bottle of water. It wasn't until he set one packet onto the pink disc labeled with the number 1 that Lilith realized he was sitting on his own plate.

Pouring the pulverized contents of the other packet into his mouth, he washed it down with a gulp of water. Then he checked the level of the liquid. Repeating this process until the bottle was half consumed, he screwed the cap on and left it on Beryl's plate, next to the crackers. He didn't touch them again, didn't even look at them. He just sat, the bulk of his bundled leg stretched out before him, and stared ahead into space as the sun rose over the arena.

This behaviour bewildered the Gamemakers and unnerved the District 7 tributes, who retreated deeper into the woods. The broadcast showed them gathering berries, nuts, and such while trying to follow a trail. Unbeknownst to them, it was a fake one planted by Poppy to mislead. The morning was split evenly between the five groups, revealing Poppy and Oliver rationing out their provisions from the feast, Seth and Clementine cleaning out a rabbit, and Heron conserving his strength.