"The fallen angel" and "the devil in disguise"
Two names Ares Aristo was known for, a boy who had more to him than originally met the eye. Charming the capital with his kind facade, it was only in the games did they realized just how far an angel ca...
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𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧.
(the fall )
▃▃▃▃▃▃▃
The sword in Ares' hand thrummed with a new kind of energy, vibrations running up the steel of the blade to the handle, tingling up his fingers wrapped firmly around the hilt and reverberating through his sluggish veins, branching out across his entire body.
Although many were dead because of him, and two lay at his feet as a recent testimony, he'd never felt more alive. Anger and fury finally washed over him from the injustice of it all, erasing any other fickle emotion. Before, he'd spent so much energy teetering on the edge of something broken, running the pads of his fingertips over the cracks in his soul, letting his skin catch and bleed on every new fissure because that was what he thought he deserved. But now, there was no place for any grief or turmoil to cloud his head and make his mind fuzzy. He needed to think clearly. He needed to see clearly as Fox made his way over with the slowness of a predator circling its prey.
Ares needed to let everything go and just fall into the vapid currents of anger, recognizing it as an unknown blessing he would have never been able to experience if he hadn't taken Pandora and Ebony's lives. If they hadn't allowed him to kill them so he could fully indulge himself in the darkness that was soon to come.
It was exhilarating, all-encompassing, euphoric, and so inherently addicting.
Ares held his sword in a light grip and jumped over the chasm of flowing lava, feeling the heat chase his every move. He landed with firm feet on the ground that had to be the center of the entire arena, exactly where the icy glacier pillar that held the supplies during their first forage into the games had previously been.
Except rather than looking out to an expansive frozen canvas, painting a scene of desolation. They were now standing on unsteady ground, lava freely taking up the space around them in a fiery display of chaos nobody could even begin to imagine. There were no large pine trees and nothing else except the volcanoes in the distance over a vast expanse of lava. It left the platform he was now standing on and a few others nearby as the only places left untouched for them to roam across.
This was where he'd made his first kill. This was where he'd make his last.
The zone of the final battle.
And even with all the newfound energy and single-minded focus, Ares stood impassively still amongst the ruins.
Like a marble pillar or a magnificent statue, he stood fast and waited with a patience he'd never managed before as Fox Craverse closed the distance and leaped across the chasm separating them, his own feet landing hard and kicking up gravel. His clothing was darkened by soot and by the blood of the other tributes he'd mutilated for the past six days. He looked like a demon prowling, ready to meet the Angel.
