Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Task 7 ★ A Siren's Call (PC)

VICTORS OF THE ARENA - SEMIFINALS 

Keep going. Keep going. Please, please, keep going.  

Take to the mantras when desperation strikes most plainly, a tip from the tongue he remembers only now. At a shuffle, hunched and derelict, he moves, an ache in every step, a sore in every breath. Vegetation gone brittle with ash tickles skin hot, and the sweat bubbles; a fresh breeze hops over the waves ecstatically to flash him with bitter chills despite the warmth.

He is the one they once called catastrophic; now they say, "Just look. He's prone to collapse any second now."

Which is why he starts over, teeth at a chatter and toes burning up; keep going, keep going, please, please, keep going.

A stumble - the last of these incessant notchings of foot on earth - finds Percy when the mud of the jungle drops off into sand, a step of two inches he isn't quite expecting once he reaches his destination. This stumble makes him swing out, trident in hand, and he's saved from face-planting purely by the catching of prongs on a salvaged tree. It doesn't hold long, however, for one of the three points simply snaps away. It disappears in the underbrush.

Percy stares at the spot for only a moment, sighing one of those exasperated sighs before moving onto bigger things. There's too much going on to be focusing on something he's nicked himself on so often already. One problem, gone. Five more, however, remain. A strain of thinking puts him in a daze as he wanders his way along the beach. (Later, he'll chastise himself for not being so grateful to this level, familiar ground.)

Eden, Hertzel, Constantine, Cadette, Ashre. I'm at this point again. Inhalation, exhilaration of achievement. I can keep going.

Cold burns through rubber soles, straight to hot heels. He lifts his foot and glances down. A dainty knife sits there, half buried in the sand, and he exits his mind to sweep eyes over (first) the shack, then the rest of the shoreline. The last name Percy'd thought up - Ashre - has no face here, despite dull hopes he'd had of finding him. Later, perhaps. If they're still on truce terms.

Nevermind that now; he bends and pockets the knife, thinking maybe he can give it as a gift when they finally meet again. A slight thrum of pain accompanies the crouch, right in the abdomen. It's ignored.

Already down, it's easier to crawl on his hands and knees to the nitty-gritty of the shack, of what supplies are left scattered. I look stupid, he thinks, and a slight smile rises until he hungrily takes up a canteen - shake-shake - and a slosh is heard. Cap, unscrewed; water, chugged. For a moment, sore throats are normal and hot flashes creep away. He is nothing feverish until the contents are sucked dry and the canteen discarded.

Then he aches all over again and things are just as miserable as they were before.

Nonetheless, Percy takes his time here, slowly combing through bags and lifting up sand in search of what he really needs: medicine, bandages, hell, a damn sock'll do. But, alas, he comes up empty. "The tide's gone and washed everything away," he says quietly. For some reason it's getting harder and harder to breathe. "Everything but all these...these fucking...things." Some small weapon with no name is flung aside with lip-curled attitude, and Percy makes a face expected of some irritated teenager, not a man of twenty-six.

Still, age is just a number - and the greatest excuse for him to grind his fingers into the damp sand, scooping up a compact handful like some delinquent that forgot a bucket. "This is bullshit." He lets it all filter to the ground, much like bullshit, before starting again, pulling sand from the earth by the fistful. "This is bullshit and I'm-" The moist clumps slop back to the earth. "-I'm tired."