Author Games: The Final War

Finals: Amphi Khios

As the third cannon goes off, Ilsa and I look at each other with disappointment in our eyes. How does someone die without being around anyone? Maybe they bled out from a previous fight or something. The cannons did all come from similar directions.

Last night, Cassidy and poor Alodia all passed away, leaving us with five people left: an Earth Strong, a Fire Strong, an Air strong, a Mind Strong and a Fighter. Out of the ten Fighters who came here, only I remain. Having that title is impressive, but I can’t help but feel guilty that both Kane and Alodia perished. Now, everyone but the Air Strong and the Fighter have fallen victim to the games.

“Well, what now?” Ilsa asks, looking me dead in the eye. “There are two of us left, and we’re supposedly allies. I heard what your uncle said: you don’t want to kill your allies, even if they aren’t Fighters. Then again, you deserve to get out of here alive.”

“So do you.” Ilsa and I haven’t been friends for long, but I am glad that we met. If this was outside of the games, I would most definitely befriend her and help her along the way. Call me an unfaithful Fighter, but friendship comes before fighting and murdering your supposed enemies. That’s what uncle taught me.

Ilsa looks like she’s about to panic; she can’t fight me with her affinity. “We have to fight; one of us has to escape.” Ilsa’s words echo around us; I’m sure Makenna is smiling maliciously as she watches us prepare to fight. “I hate to have to kill you, but we have to end this before something more painful targets us.”

Ilsa is intelligent, and I completely agree with her. “I’m so sorry about this Ilsa; I don’t want to hurt you. You’re a friend, not a foe.” Ilsa looks down at her feet; I’m pretty sure Alodia said that to her last night in some way – she repeated it but I can’t recall the exact words.

“Amphi, thanks for looking after me. You and Alodia weren’t like the Fighters that kidnapped me. You’re a good person.” She picks up a stick by her feet; I select the nearest stone. This is going to be a brutal ending. “Don’t hold back when you fight me, okay? It’s going to be painful enough as it is.”

Nodding, I try not to weep. Then, I charge straight at her and kill the emotional bond that we formed with a stone no bigger than the palm of my hand. Ilsa’s screams are deafening as she doesn’t even attempt to fight back. She looks petrified as she lies underneath me, squirming and wriggling in agony.

She isn’t the only one in agony. For every time I smash the stone against her skull, I feel my heart sink further and further. At no exact point can I determine when her cannon will go off – that leaves me on edge; I just want her torture to be over. 

As she looks up at me one last time, she lets a tear escape her face and merge with the trails of blood trickling in all different directions. Her hair, usually platinum blonde and pristine, is now dyed with the blood of her own. She closes her eyes and takes the beating as strongly as she can.

You can only be strong for so long though. She lets out a shrill scream as I target her once more. She wriggles a few times before her body becomes limp under mine. Finally, I let a tear slip out of my eye and listen to her cannon echo throughout the arena before breaking down over her body.

She didn’t deserve to die. No one deserved to die – but that’s the way these games work. “The winner of the 2001st Hunger Games: Amphi Khios!” The silence around me is all that is present; that’s until a hovercraft flies over me and takes me away to wherever I’m destined to go.

I’m not even told to sit down. The only words uttered are that I’ll see my family very soon. What are they going to do with Ilsa’s body; what about the other three tributes that haven’t been collected? Questions flood my head, but I know that I’ll never get the answers I want. Never.

It takes a few minutes maximum for the hovercraft to drop me to my location. As it drops – literally, it just falls from the sky – I’m instructed to get out. Looking at the open door, I feel like something is right, but wrong. The wrong is that I murdered a friend to get here.

The right is just around the corner. Upon stepping out of the hovercraft, I see the face of the one man who believed in me from the very start: my uncle. As I wave to the crowd in front of me, with my family at the very front, I lock eyes with him and smile. He gave me the courage to try and come home.

But will he still love me knowing that I proved him wrong and murdered a girl that considered a friend?