Out of the Swarm - Andrick x Elle
Day Three had passed without a cannon sounding, and Andrick’s heart had been in one piece. But then Day Four happened. One cannon. One single, lonely, solitary cannon had sounded.
When Alayne’s face had lit up the sky…
The face that would no longer light up the room of her children. The face that would never again kiss her husband. The face Andrick had sworn to himself to send back home. It was in the sky. That face was in the sky and Andrick was still on the ground.
He hadn’t slept that night. His body quaked with tears that originated in the pit of his stomach. He had been in the arena less than a week and he had already lost. He was alive, but he was deadened. The other deaths had hurt him, of course. Fawn, Nicholey, the Mayor of Eight! So many young people dead and gone before their time. Before their prime. And he was here. He had outlived them – this was truly his hell.
The buzzing that began seemed like a physical manifestation of the blood in his veins. It was stagnant, it was annoying. But it was essentially worthless. It wasn’t until the sun seemed to darken in midday that Andrick looked out of his window. He hadn’t eaten in four days – perhaps he was hallucinating? But was a black cloud actually descending on his temple?
It didn’t take long for him to realize that this was very much real. Within moments, the buzzing was in his room. Luckily, the small window only allowed so much of the infestation in at a time, but it was enough to send his older body into fits of pain. With a groan, he began to swat at whatever he could. He retched as his hands met sizeable bodies – this was hell.
The games had been going slow  Elle was surviving, but just getting by.  At this point, she was either ready to start killing everything around her or just get killed herself, it was her own circle of hell-waiting impatiently for her fate to happen.  After leaving Alayne, she was killed, if Elle would have waited a few hours later, she might have been the face that shown in the sky.
She hadn’t stopped running since she heard Alayne’s cannon, and she finally found an area that seemed to have adequate space to hide.  Rooms and corridors made of stone stood, and she would take the time to explore every place she could. Â
However, her explorations were suddenly interrupted by the murmured buzzing that began to grow louder by the moment. Â As she turned to face the source, a black cloud of swarming insects were headed over the arena, like a blanket of darkness. Â
Quickly ducking into one of the rooms, she lunged past one of the windows and ran into something-someone. Â
"Woah…woah…"  She gasped, her hands grabbing for the axe that was attached to the pack she was carrying.  "What the hell is going on?" Â
Pulling the axe out of the pack she held it in front of her, finally getting a glimpse at the man who she had come in contact with, one of the oldest, from on outlying district. Â
"You’re not going to hurt me are you?"  She screamed through the humming of wings, her eyes lowering to meet his.
