The Land of Shadow

[Skraal]

B24: Soren Rosendahl - Start

Soren wrinkled his nose as he stood in front of a large patch of tar. The heat was unbearable, and combined with the smell, it felt like it could easily suffocate someone. He picked up a small rock and tossed it into the pit, watching as it sank. Just as he thought. Anything...or anybody...that fell down into one of those wouldn’t be getting back out.

Pulling his eyes from the sight below him, he looked over at the hard piece of metal in his hands. Its sleek metal surface gleamed in the sun, and the grip that he had been holding it with was warm and sweaty. Soren’s stomach churned. It definitely was a killing machine. The very sight of it made him want to puke.

He sighed. He knew what the terrorists want him to do. And more importantly, he knew he wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t. There was no good reason to ever take a human life, no matter what temptation lay in front of him. As the Bible said, For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?.

Soren took a step forward. He knew what he had to do. Even if he wasn’t going to use the weapon, it was too dangerous to hang on to it. Someone could steal it or even kill him fo-

No. He didn’t want to think about that. Not now. He didn’t want to think of the family he would leave behind, or the pain of shuffling off this mortal coil. He didn’t want to think about which classmate would betray him, buying into the terrorists’ game and sacrificing their humanity in the process.

It was better this way. He lifted up the revolver, preparing to toss it into the pit. His arm tensed. Stiflingly hot air filled his lungs as he took a breath, getting ready to do it. He was going to do it. Any second now.

…

Why wasn’t his arm moving?

Soren bit down hard on his lip, trying to force himself to move. He had to do this. The boy paused for a moment, putting his arm down before lifting it again as he stood before his own personal Mount Doom, getting ready to destroy the weapon in his hands for the good of everyone.

Unfortunately, as with Frodo when he stood before the flames, Soren simply was unable to do the deed required of him. Tears began to fill his eyes as he stared down at the inky blackness below.

He staggered to his knees, bile rising in his throat.

“Lord, forgive me…”

Why was he such a coward?

[Brackie]

Jason Andrews was concerned with many things at that moment.

For one, he'd realized just how many hours he'd wasted trying to get good at Genji in Overwatch when Doomfist just came out.

For two, a slightly more important reason to be concerned, he was standing precariously near the edge of several pits of tar. A wrong step and he'd probably go the way of the dinosaurs.

For three, he and most of his class had just been tossed onto an island in the middle of nowhere, in god knows what hemisphere or ocean, after being told that only one of them would come out alive.

Just like what happened with the California school. The one where Nick Reid came out alive, over everyone else at his school. A school with much more rich, popular people with so much more to offer the world, and he was the one who came out on top. Nick Reid, of all people. Yeah, he knew Nick's name. He'd even looked him up a bit years later, found out what he got up to at school. Thought about once or twice what he'd do if he was caught in the same thing.

No idea he'd been preparing for the inevitable.

The moment he woke up, Jason got to work. He checked the inside of his bag, found the handful of shit he had on him besides his phone but including some bars of his own food and a twizzler the maid's son gave him that morning (he didn't have pre-school and his mom couldn't find a babysitter), found some food bricks along with loaves of bread and a gallon of water, found a map and compass, found a flashlight, found a first aid kit he was probably never going to figure out how to use, and...nothing else. At least, until he saw the tiny piece of paper with what looked like his name on it, picked it from the ground, and realized there was a yard-long sword laying underneath his bag this entire time and he didn't notice.

That bode well for his chances, he guessed. What else was he going to miss without realizing it?

And so, sword in hand, he found himself at the giant tar pits the island said existed. Fucking weird island. Tar pits on one side, fields of flowers on the other. The estoc hung in his hand like a dagger, blade facing behind him as he held the hilt. It wasn't the safest way to do things, considering a wrong turn would probably end with stabbing himself in his own leg, but considering the precarious nature of his position, and everyone else's position, he didn't want to look like one of those maniacs.

Not yet.

He saw someone. Not someone he was friends with, although that list at his school was as dense as Mumbai, but he at least recognized him. Soren. He was on his knees by the edge of a pit of tar. Jason didn't really care why. He just noticed there was a gun in his hand. And Soren was crying.

"Hey man."

His nerves felt sharp. The grip on the hilt tightened ever so slightly. If this whole thing went south, Jason was not going south with it.

But Jason kept his eyes on Soren's gun.

[Cicadan]

On the Northern edge of the island a young man lay under a canopy of needly pine trees, shoulders digging into the soft, loamy earth beneath. Small tufts of grass blades stabbed into his arms where his t-shirt became skin.

((Paris Ardennes Start))

Paris stared up at the bits of sky he could see through the vast sea of green above him. He only blinked once in a while. He just stared and stared some more, and wondered if this hollow feeling in his chest was the one his dad might have felt in the screeching moments before his car had crashed.

Eventually he got up.

The sun had warmed up his body a bit by the time he'd hiked his way out of the trees. His unopened bag was slung over his shoulder. A field of grasses greeted his eyes, the summery smell of melting asphalt roads greeted his nostrils. He glanced at a jagged and crooked wooden sign that mentioned something about tar pits and danger. Paris nodded to himself and continued on, because he saw a tiny human-shape figure in the distance, and only random tree trunks and dandelions the other way.

As he got closer, he realized someone else was coming from another angle, over the gentle crest of a hill. He recognized two familiar faces, but he could only put a name to one. Paris wasn't sure why Soren was dramatically crying over what looked like a gun, but he recognized the position of piety, of knees dropped to the ground in prayer. Paris nodded solemnly to himself and got closer, close enough to talk to either of them, Soren, or the random dude with the sword that Paris wasn't going to talk to quite yet.

"Hey, Soren. It's okay dude." Paris was smiling confidently, speaking confidently. "We're not going to let them do this to us." He gently held a hand up for Soren to take.

[Skraal]

Thankfully, Soren’s wallowing in self-loathing was interrupted by two familiar faces. Paris was definitely a sight for sore eyes, and though he didn’t know Jason all too well, they had talked a couple times. He was part of that wealthy crowd that Paris hung around with. Maybe they would know each other a little better if Soren had actually taken Paris up on all those party invitations over the years, but it was a little too late to change that.

Soren sniffed as he took his friend’s hand, staggering to his feet as he tried with difficulty to regain his composure. It was a good thing Paris was here. He always knew what to do, what to say. To be completely honest, there was nobody else that Soren would have rather seen at this moment. Giving him a hug would be a little too weird, even given the situation, but darned if it wasn’t tempting.

As he stood, he took a quick glance at the revolver in his hand, its weight painfully obvious to him. He frowned before hesitantly shoving it in his pocket. The bulk of the weapon was uncomfortable, even there, but at least he didn’t have to look at it anymore. He would have to get rid of it later.

In any case, he probably should say something to Paris, rather than just staring at him dumbly.

Thanks, man.” The shaky response sounded kind of lame, he knew, but he was honestly sincere about it. Thing were definitely picking up a bit, or at least, Soren didn’t feel quite so lost anymore. Regaining a little more confidence, he continued into the question that he had asked his friend so many times in the past.

“Any idea what to do now?”

[Brackie]

It was all seeming very familiar now.

Paris Ardennes. A name that popped up relentlessly in Jason's life. Someone who made everything, every aspect of his life, from the friends to the parties to the girls, seem so effortless. He'd give Jason a taste of what it was like before thrusting him back into his own world, despite the fact they should have been one and the same. Jason's family could have bought Paris's family ten times over. Jason could run him into the ground. But in spite of all that, Jason would try to get Paris acknowledge him at school, and Paris wouldn't even remember his name.

And the other aspect of what was going on was something he'd been exposed to ever since he'd been going to preschool. He'd be in a room, or a park, or even a set of tar pits on an island of dead kids, and everyone knew each other, but Jason didn't know anybody. Unless Amanda or Kyran were there, in which case he had people to talk to. But without them, everyone already knew each other. They were friends. They had things in common. Not with Jason though, no, never with the weird quiet rich kid who nobody ever lent a chance. He just had to stand there, pretending everything was fine and he was enjoying every moment of being alone in a crowded room. Because that's what he had to do, that's what he learned to do from countless experience, and that's what was going to happen.

Or at least, until Jason had something to say about it.

He thought of turning on his heels. But a thought ran through his head. He'd wondered what it would be like to have his own gun. A brief nanosecond of a fantasy brought to mind all the first-person shooters he played, but the nanosecond after that reminded him of the teenagers of the previous version of this thing, the ones caught unawares by the firing of their guns and how much it threw them backwards. The real seconds that followed saw him look to the ground as Soren and Paris exchanged their words, exchanged their friendships. Exchanged things Jason never had, and never would have with either of them, and things that Jason was not going to put up with on the sidelines anymore.

It was time to leave. But not with his relatively empty hands.

The blade of his estoc swung around as the hilt rotated in his hand. The tip, instead of facing the dirt behind him, faced Soren Rosendahl.

"Well, I dunno what you plan to do, but you can start by handing over that gun before I turn you into a fucking shish kebab."

If the handle of his sword was anything less than smooth, it would have torn open the skin of his hand.

[Cicadan]

Soren recovered quickly and Paris was glad to see it. There was no time to waste, Paris had to shepherd them on quickly, Soren and the guy nearby if he also wanted to be involved... Jason, that was the name. Some kind of chill dude who didn't talk to many people. Something like that. Paris returned the mental focus to Soren, front and center and random gun and tear-stained face and all.

"No problem," Paris said simply. It was kind of familiar in a way, like this sort of thing had happened before. Sometime in the past when Paris and Soren had just been two guys going to a Denny's or whatever, right after church. Paris was pretty used to being the guy who made the decisions, he realized. He also realized that was going to be coming in handy. There were indeed important decisions to be made, and Paris was essentially the guy who had to make them. There wasn't really anyone else who could be trusted to make them. Either they'd be too something or too something else, like too ignoble or too the other thing.

"Well we've got to remember what we've been taught in life. None of this is really right, you know? We have to trust that this is just a test, or... huh. I dunno..."

Paris couldn't think of the rest, he needed a moment of silence. A moment of silence later Jason was saying something in the periphery of Paris' vision. Paris turned. A raised eyebrow followed, an amused chuckle and nod following.

"Yeah, good thinking Jason. I mean it's better we not need to shoot the guns or anything but, yeah. We should probably all know how to use them... A sword might not be so good for self-defense if we run into anyone with dumb ideas." Paris thought Jason was being kind of aggressive about the whole thing though. Odd sort of timbre and tone to Jason's voice. Wasn't the right time to be waving sharp things around like that and making weirdly violent jokes.

Maybe Jason had something in mind, something bad. But somehow Paris couldn't imagine that was possible. What sort of person would do that sort of thing when Paris had known them to be a good person for so many years of their life, after all. It wouldn't have added up.

[Skraal]

Oh man...

Soren's eyes bugged out of their sockets as he stared at Jason's blade, the tip of which was almost poking against his shirt. He had read in books that time seemed to slow down when one's life was in danger, but this was the first time that he had experienced it personally. To state the obvious, it was... not a pleasant experience.

He continued concentrating on the threat in front of him as Paris seemed to be trying to play it cool. That was probably a good idea, not to antagonize the guy who was threatening to kill you. It was a shame that Soren wasn't able to replicate his friend's aura of confidence. His body was clearly shaking, and his already pale face had begun to resemble that of a ghost.

Seeing no option, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the weapon. Why oh why did he not just throw it away earlier? Now he was still going to lose it, but with the added danger of it probably going to be used to hurt some of his classmates. Perhaps this was some sort of a punishment for his cowardice. He definitely deserved it, in any case.

"O-okay, you can have it. Just don't hurt us..."

He held out the revolver, waiting for the inevitable moment in which Jason would snatch it away. The metal felt painfully hot and heavy in his hands. His entire body tensed as he prayed desperately that the aggressor would be satisfied with his prize and leave them alone. He didn't think Jason was the type of guy to just turn the gun on them like that, but then again, he had already misjudged the guy's character once before.

Soren picked his lips nervously. Despite the tension, he felt a strange sense of relief, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Whatever the outcome of this situation, the gun and the temptations that it represented were no longer his concern.

[Brackie]

This entire situation was becoming painfully real.

Before he'd lifted the sword to Soren, it was all just in his head. Robbing him of his things was just a theory, like Arbitrage Pricing. Now it was real. He was really doing this. Jason adjusted his feet, held his stance stronger than before, as Soren burrowed into his pocket to find the gun and hand it over. He seemed scared. Probably appropriately enough, considering the sword at his chest.

"Yoink," Jason snapped, ripping the gun from his hands and shoving it in his own waistband. It felt light. Much lighter than he anticipated. He'd never touched a real gun before, but now seemed like the perfect opportunity. It was also becoming the opportunity to run now - he had what he needed.

Jason turned on his heels slightly, ready to dash off into a getaway, when a sudden thought struck him. He turned his sword back to Soren.

"You know, Soren, I'm pretty sure-" Jason said, keeping one hand to the sword aimed at Soren with his other reaching back to the gun he'd just recieved. He fumbled around single-handedly for a few seconds, a few tense seconds of nobody really saying anything, until the cylinder of the gun popped out, showing six empty chambers.

"-guns are supposed to have bullets that go with them."

He pressed the tip of the sword slightly harder into Soren's chest.

"So I'll be taking those as well."

[Cicadan]

Paris watched Soren hand over the weapon.

Then he watched Jason make another threat. Jason was right, guns were supposed to come with bullets.

But he was also wrong, because being a threat was simply not part of the plan. Paris couldn't believe this was happening. There were a lot of things he did believe in like charity and a higher purpose and calling. Things like providence. Things like doing the right thing. Paris knew before he could even think it that Jason had crossed a line, had done the wrong thing, the way the tip of his blade was skinny against Soren's chest.

Paris acted, suddenly, with a loud wordless shout and a jump forward. His legs smoothly pumped as much as they needed to, two times to close the distance between himself and Jason as he lunged for the arm holding the blade. Adrenaline left little room for higher thought, but he earnestly prayed that Soren would escape, and that Paris would be running right after him. It would happen because it had to happen.

[Skraal]

Soren’s head was spinning. He was certain that the revolver was loaded. Of course, it wasn’t like he had looked, but it was a fair assumption to make at the time, right? He was about to stammer out an apology when he noticed a blur of movement in front of him.

It was at that moment, instinct took over. Dropping everything in his hands, Soren made a run for it, weaving precariously among the patches of tar. For better or for worse, the sound of wind rushing by his ears drowned out any sound of the conflict taking place behind him, leaving him with no distractions on his way out.

Unfortunately for Soren, his run came to a halt as his foot met the surface of a smaller pit of tar, obscured by a patch of long grass. His body pitched forward, kicking up a cloud of dust as he hit the ground. He lay there for a moment, dazed, before panic began to set in. He frantically pulled to extricate his foot from the tar, and with some effort, manage to free it.

It was at this moment that he realized that he had left Paris behind. Should he go back to help him? More importantly, what sort of friend would even have to ask that question?

The answers were delivered to him by the rapidly approaching back of a sign reading “Warning! Tar Pits ahead!”

That's right.

He was a coward.

((Soren Rosendahl continued in The Sickness Unto Death))

[Brackie]

Jason only registered Soren's scared face looking back at him when he was knocked to the side by an unexpected force.

Paris. Of course it was. This flashed by in an instant as the two tumbled backwards. As they fell and rolled, Jason felt a force grab at the arm holding his sword and attempt to yank his weapon away. The more they rolled, the stronger and weaker the grip ebbed and flowed, until they came to a stop several feet away, and Jason registered exactly what was going on.

The other boy was on top of him. Holding him down, the force trying to take the sword from him becoming stronger every second. Jason, naturally, reacted.

He grabbed Paris by the collar and yanked his face down to meet the top of his scalp. He heard a crack. His jaw, his nose, whatever, the world was a throb. Paris's hand slipped from his arm.

With the momentary lapse in struggle, Jason regripped the handle of the sword, and swung the blade.

Paris needed to get off of him.

Jason needed to run.

[Cicadan]

They fell together, Paris grimly determined to not let go. He didn't know how to fight, he understood, but all the same he knew he had to. Soren was getting out of there, good. Paris had an inkling he just had to disarm Jason somehow, and make his own escape. A few more violent tugs, Paris' arm burning evenly on both sides from the effort.

It didn't work. Instead Paris was suddenly falling, grunting as the front of his nose was suddenly flattened. He no longer thought of holding onto the sword. He fell to one side, trying to hold up his arms with his knuckles pointed outward, elbows close to his body. A defensive stance. Maybe a fetal position.

The counterswing from Jason landed on the broad of Paris' shoulder. A millisecond of a wooshing metal chop, then a blinding sting. It had just broken skin, but close run. Paris grit his teeth and lashed out with as stable a kick he could manage. He engaged his core, huddled his body around his center of gravity. Paris forced himself up efficiently, into a defensive crouch, he didn't drop his eyes from Jason for a second as he began moving backward. Swift and smooth motions of front foot to rear, front foot to rear. Passe arrière.

Paris moved as fast as he could to his bag, ignoring the dampness of the thick blood trails forming over his shirt.

[Brackie]

Jason fell to the kick, rolling back. He could pretend this is what he wanted to happen, but it was nowhere near close. He had a goal, an objective, one that didn't involve being assaulted by someone he no longer gave a shit about. That goal had been achieved, what, only 20%? A gun was in his hands. But it had no bullets.

Well, the gun was actually off to the side, just like his bag. As he watched from the ground as Paris backed towards his own bag, he saw them laying together by the edge of a pit of tar. Taking this opportunity as the get-out-of-jail-free card it was, Jason scrambled quickly across the ground to his belongings.

He shoved the gun into his waistband. He shouldered his bag.

And with that, Jason ran faster than he'd ever remembered running in his life.

There was an old saying his dad raised him by, an alliterative one. Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance? Well that wasn't the piss poor performance he expected of himself in such a situation, but it wasn't much better. It sucked.

If I'm going to get off this island, I need to fucking plan. And not like that. Better.

Jason couldn't tell what the roaring noise in the air was as he left the pits of tar, but he didn't stop to check if it was the wind echoing in his ears or something worse.

((Jason Andrews continues for a shower))

[jimmydalad]

((Aria Samuels continued from Sad Tunes))

Aria had stopped running ages ago. It turned out that spending most of his life indoors made him really fucking ill-equipped to do well in a killing game. He was tired, he had no idea where he was going or where he was and he had just had a near-death experience. This island fucking sucked and he knew it was only gonna get worse. For one thing, the place started to reek. Oh god, it smelt like absolute shit. Aria quickly found the source of what the disgusting stench was. Oh, a fucking tar pit. Wonderful.

And wait. What the fuck was happening on the other side? He saw two people fighting, one of them with a fucking sword. Already? Did Danya slip everyone crazy pills before they got to the island? As Aria took a closer look, he realized one of the two figures.

Paris?

Ok, something had to be fucking wrong. Paris was the last person Aria would ever think about being aggressive. If anything, he was aggressively nice. Aggravatingly so. He'd been one of the only kids who would accept his apologies and was reciprocative towards mending their relations. Granted, Aria found his religiousness annoying and had been dragged out by him more than enough times to feel at least slightly perturbed by him, but he was essentially a good guy. A friendly face in a game surrounded by assholes like Adumbis and crazy girls with guns.

The other kid was running away so Aria ran towards Paris. Shit, why'd the tar pit have to be so big? By the time he reached him, he was exhausted. Still, he was greeted with an ugly sight. Blood. Everywhere.

"Oh my fucking god." Aria let out, his eyes expanding in horror as he started to take the rest of the scenery in. "Are you ok Paris? What the fuck happened? Who was that asshole?"

His mind was whirling from it all. Why was his friend injured? What the fuck was he supposed to do? He stood there paralyzed, completely lost.

Why the fuck was this all happening so quickly?

[Cicadan]

Paris went one way and the other guy went the other way. Paris didn't realize he was still in the mindset of instinctively defending himself until there was suddenly something clasped in the palm of his two hands. Heavy, cold, with a bit of a rough sharktooth groove over his palm. Paris was raising the barrel of the gun so it stared down the back of the fleeing figure.

A second passed. Then Paris let the gun fall to one side, supported by his still good arm. He'd gotten too eager for a second there. In the future, pointing guns at people wasn't the way he'd be doing things.

Paris took another minute in silence to catch his breath, alone with stinging pain and the hefty rise and fall of his chest. Then the silence was broken by someone showing up and yelling. Paris wasn't too surprised to see Aria, because he in particular was a pretty feisty dude and such.

"I'm fine," Paris nodded solemnly, drawing up as he let the gun quietly clatter to the ground beside him. He offered a smile, with a bit of gritted teeth because the pain was lowly intense, but genuine besides. "I don't go down so easy... It's a shallow wound, I think." Paris peeled the damaged sleeve of his shirt back to expose the gash, it was a shallow canyon, only skin deep. The blood was already beginning to dry.

Paris had dripped blood as he'd backed off. He'd ruined the ground and one of his favorite shirts, a Calvin Klein from his previous birthday that now had splotches of blood all down one side. Paris was a bit surprised, he hadn't expected that he'd be injured like this. It was a bit much to think about, and Paris spent a moment in silence, staring at the dull crimson still slowly bubbling and trickling out of his own body.

He remembered Aria.

"That was... Jason, I think." Everyone knew Jason, probably. "He stole Soren's gun, and I guess I've just lost both of them. Hmph. It's not good if we can't track the people who might be dangerous." Paris began to dig casually through his bag once more, back to Aria. There was a first aid kit in there as well, so Paris began to rifle around for bandages and disinfectant.