Not My Pyre (A Pearl-Centric Double Life FanFic)

Chapter Seventeen: The Change You Want to See

The song in this chapter: https://youtu.be/Ux0la3yPj8g 

Joel drew the arrow back to his cheek, then let it fly. It pierced the deer through the throat. The other deer ran off, frightened, but at least he'd gotten this one. He stood up and walked over to the deer, picking it up to start hauling it back to camp.

He pushed through the trees of the Border Woods to a sight he had become accustomed to over the past two days since their escape from the Game.

Impulse was splitting wood for the fire with Martyn, Jimmy was preparing some rabbit to be cooked by BigB, Scott was laying out the kill from his hunt, Cleo was sharpening any weapons that had even been slightly dulled, Tango wasn't there, he was somewhere in their mines, gathering material for weapons, Ren was with him, Bdubs was attempting to assemble some better weaponry from the materials they had already gathered, Etho was still away on his hunt, Pearl was cataloguing and distributing what little supplies they had, and Scar was sitting on his bedroll, blankly staring at the ground.

Joel empathised with him. He remembered how he felt after Lizzie's disappearance, and he hadn't seen himself as the distraction that caused her death, or even seen her die. She had just... vanished.

But they were running out of time. The momentum from Pearl's speech would only last so long, and they'd already wasted two days.

Joel waited for Tango, Ren, and Etho to return, then began. "Guys?"

The others glanced up.

"We need to do something. Soon. Every second we wait is a chance for the Lords to cover up what we did and twist it to their own advantage. Time is a resource that we are very low on. If we lose our momentum, we either all die, or are stuck living in or outside the border woods forever. And... Grian would want us to finish what we started."

"Yeah." Pearl stood up. "We can't lose this - it might be the only chance at a better life for decades."

"Or centuries," Cleo added.

"We can't let the Lords get away with what they've done to us - to everyone!" Ren waved his arms to punctuate the sentence.

Agreement went around the camp until the only one who hadn't said anything was Scar.

The blank look in his eyes had been replaced with anger. "They will pay."

"That they will." Pearl smiled, but it reminded Joel of a wolf snarling. "Alright, there's a town a little east of here..."

~*~

It had been... a long time since Pearl had been in a city. The contestants weren't allowed to leave the area.

She couldn't imagine being Etho, who had been there for three years more than her.

This wasn't even a city. Fiindus - capital of Misharin and home of the Life Games arena - was a city. This was a little village situated dangerously close to the Border Woods.

And yet, it was teeming with people. There were so many - Pearl hadn't seen this many people since her trip through Fiindus to join the Games!

And they were so varied! Over there was a woman with black hair, a cat ear headband, and overalls with a sheep on them, but just two blocks away was a man with brown hair and an @ symbol on his shirt who, out of the corner of her eye, but not when she looked directly at him, seemed to have seven or more rainbow-coloured eyes in a halo around his head.

And there! A blond man in knight's armour - she didn't know why, but wouldn't judge - who, when he stood in the shadows, seemed to be a completely different person, wearing black armour that had flames on the helmet instead of plumes.