The saints can't help me now, the ropes have been unbound. || Grassland Task.
The night is quiet.
The night is calm.
And then it is no longer.
There's hardly an instant to collect myself, and tell myself to get up. On the ground below me, large beasts are springing from the ground. Mutts, deadly and ready to kill me at all costs. But while they're large, they're clumsy and rear at the tree I sit in.
They can't climb, I notice, but they can jump at one throws itself into the trunk and sends me clinging to a branch for support. I can't stay here, and so I shimmy myself out onto a limb and reach for the next tree. I make it, but they're limited in the grassy plain. I know I can't make the next and I'm assured as I jump from the tree as the beast knocks it down.
A pain shoots down my shins as I land, and I stumble forward. I land among the rubble of the torn up ground and I feel a cut across the bridge of my nose and down my cheek from the brush. It's going to scare, but I can't think of these things right now because I have to move or die. And so I move, and my legs are sore from the fall, but I keep them moving and the animal charges behind me. They're clumsy like this when running, and overall fascinating.
I move swiftly through the tall grasses, and in the distance I hear them -- tributes must be nearby. The thought makes me push myself harder until I am conscious of the lungs in my chest ready to burst. But then I'm not there.
I hear his laugh behind me. I'm a child again, running through the forests of my home. I am trying to beat Augustus with all my might even though I know with his long legs he's letting me win.
And I win. But I do not beat Augustus because I realized I have beat them. They've stopped behind me as if they can go no further. I fall to my knees. I can't move. I can't make myself move. I don't want to. I want to go back to that memory. At this moment, I want them to come for me. I don't want to be here.
My wish isn't granted. They never are. But I become aware that in the horizon and the early glow of the morning that the Cornucopia sits there. I've completely retraced any progress I have made. But it's a good thing.
My legs are legs and my lungs are lungs and I am me and this is my reality.
I need to find them.
My feet rise and I take the step.
The oxygen pulses through my lungs and out again.
I move towards the Cornucopia, my old friend.
I will find them. I will find Logan and Larka.
And so I go.