There isn't much time spent in the darkness: she barely has three heartbeats before the earth literally drops out from underneath her. It's a little bit like -- not that she has this reference -- Like sliding through the tubes at the bottom of Cloud City, save that at the end she dumps out into what can only broadly be termed as 'hellish open space.' Surrounded by jagged rocks like half-formed, vicious mountains, she tumbles to a stop in the vivid, too-bright light, dust on her ragged clothing, and her hand lands in something wet.
Of course it's blood. Of course it is.
Caution can't keep her from shrieking on her way down. It's startling, terrifying, and doesn't seem to be sentient, so howling in fear seems reasonable. Especially when she's flung from the horrid, twisting descent into open air. Slamming to earth and rolling to a stop is a relief, if only because it means she survived, a though called into question by the red ooze she's plopped her hand into. She pales and starts to quiver, jerking her hand back and scrubbing it in the dust on the ground, if she can find any, starting to breathe faster, harder, as her eyes whip up to find out where the blood came from- and if the thing that made it be on the ground is still near.
The whole ground is dust, beaten into the air by her frantic motions.
Where did the blood come from? The blood came from the corpse. That corpse, right there, on the ground. Who was the corpse? Impossible to tell: the entire head is a ruined mess. The torso is sunburned, and looks like its body is made of ... red sandstone? Can't say. The dust gets in her eyes, blurs her vision.
In the near distance, there's the sound of metal on... metal? There's a rather fleshy, squishy sound. To the left. Not too far, no.
In her panic, the dust starts to feel like -part- of the sandstone person- she's seen stranger, recently- and she shrieks again, choking to a stop only at the metal sound. The fleshy sound. What is that? She doesn't know. Doesn't want to know. But- can she afford not to? She spends the briefest of instants looking poor Sandy over for anything she might be able to use to protect herself. A knife, something to throw, maybe- hope against hope- a gun? Then it's creeping towards the sound, trying to stay hidden, to learn without getting spotted.
There's a hilt on his waist where a knife might have been, but: first lesson, in this Arena, never let yourself give up the slightest of advantages. That damn thing is empty. Footsteps -- large, ponderous -- come through the dust, headed -- maybe toward her? It's tough to tell which way they're going. The rocks that form the edge of the Arena might give her someplace to hide, someplace to watch. Or they might flense her skin off...
Staying in the open didn't help the corpse any. The girl who would be Cordy bolts towards the stones, trying to keep quiet, slowing only at their edge to try to pull herself up into them and find an outcropping to wedge herself into.
It's an ugly, nasty place -- there's a reason why this place has no fence around it. It's ... the rocks. The rocks do all the guarding. She scrables up to the outcropping, finds a place to weddge herself in... and realizes a few seconds later that her left hand has a massive gash across the palm. The rocks are so sharp in places that she cut herself without even realizing it. Better hope whatever's stomping around out there doesn't have a really really good sense of smell.
But, on the up side, there's a spear up here. Is that an upside? Spears are two-handed weapons.
She can't fix her hand, or the scent. She doesn't even try. She notes where the spear is, but doesn't reach for it immediately. Her hand is hurt, and if grabbing the spear gives her away... she can't use it to defend herself, can she? No, not really. So she banks on staying hidden, or at least on the stones dissuading following, for the moment, listening to the stomping thuds and trying to gauge if they're getting too close or not.
The stomping sound fades after a while: either it couldn't smell her blood or figured her for too small of prey, or perhaps doesn't want to get too close to the arena's edge. The silence is overwhelming, but brief: somewhere in the distance, something else screams, horribly, loudly, in a way that only ends in death. Cordy knows those sounds far too well from the earthquake.
Her stomach rumbles once: she hasn't eaten since she was given that weird jello at the Market. Her hand stings.
Once the stomping fades into the distance, she goes for the spear. She eyes the way back down, considering her only options, then slowly starts to work her way back down, using the haft of the spear to wedge for leverage and try to avoid the nasty edges. She quivers at the ache in her belly, no idea how she'll feed herself if this is what things are like, and does her best to make it back down without hurting herself. That managed? She bolts- the way the stomping -came- from, in the hopes it's got no reason to come back.
Her hand's still bleeding, and it aches up into her arm, but at least having the spear at her side means she's not defenseless. She heads off in the direction the thing came from, and for a while, there's nothing. Just the wide open, barren Arena. There's a feeling that scratches at the back of her mind like she's being watched, but she can't find who is watching her.
Is it a minute? Is it a year? How long has she been walking? Is she even getting anywhere?
There's a soft, plaintive whining in the near distance. Something hurt.
Whining sounds like something else like her, hurt and scared. She starts in that direction, taking her time, still doing her best to stay quiet, wanting a look at the whatever before she lets it know she's there. Perhaps it will help her if she helps it. Or perhaps it's a trap. She's terrified. She's hurting in ways she thought she'd only endure once, starving, thirsty- surely things will turn up if she helps the thing. If it's not a trap. Or a monster itself.
A bizarre mashup of man and beast -- rabbit's feet, a rabbit's snout mashed onto his face -- lies in the dust, whimpering. There's blood all around him, covering him, and he clutches one hand to his stomach. The keening sounds he makes are at once too human and too inhuman. His big, dark eyes are open and staring into nothing. He certainly doesn't look like a threat.
That's... terrifying, and reassuring, all at once. She steps closer, edging close enough to speak, quietly. "<Are- where are you hurt? Your stomach? Is it bad? Can I help? What hurt you?>" She tries desperately to keep an eye on both it, and their surroundings, unsure which to be more afraid of, hands trembling on her spear, blood slick on the haft.
The man -- it is a man, isn't it? -- focuses his eyes slowly on her, turning his face toward her. "Everything here hurts," he laughs bitterly. "You must be new." It's not said cruelly, but sort of -- distantly, a little sadly. The arena isn't busy, here, not right now. "I am hurt. It is bad -- I am dying. Can you help me? Do you have healing? Bandages? Anything?" His eyes are wide, and kind, and ever-so-sad.
"H-healing?" The girl who would be Cordy shakes her head. "I- no. No medicine or bandages. I- we could- make bandages. From clothing. The spear, it- should cut. Will that be enough?" She twitches, looking around them again, pretty hair matted to her cheeks and no thought given to fixing it.
"Oh. Oh. That's a shame." The rabbit-man looks away, very sad indeed. A fat tear rolls down one cheek. "No, I am afraid a bandage won't do it. There's only one thing to do, if you can't heal me," he sighs, making another sound almost whimpering as he draws himself a little closer to Cordy on one elbow.
She doesn't get it. "We can- I don't understand, what else could I do? I'm sorry, I don't know where we are, or- what's happening, there was... there was a man, but he was rock on the outside, and his -head-..!!!" She breaks off and shudders, quivering in place. She's startled when she realizes the rabbit is closer, letting out a tiny, strangled squeak and shifting the spear between them. "What?? What is the one thing? Don't- don't come closer..!"
Perhaps a little too late, the woman in the market's words come back to her:
Don't trust anyone. Not even me.
They come back to her when she realizes the blood is all over the rabbit-man, but she can't see where the blood is coming from. They come back to her as his whimpering ceases and his mouth opens with a vicious squeal, and she remembers reading somewhere that rabbits can beat the crap out of their owners: they can go vicious. They come back as he leaps at her, and her only hope is to either run the fuck away or get that spear up in time. And what chance does she have to outrun a rabbit?
She'd kept the spear between them for a reason. She was already terrified. Even so, she's not fully prepared for the reality of her paranoia proving -right.- As he leaps at her, she trips over her own feet, trying to back away, falling on her ass and shrieking. Her bloody hand slips rapidly down the haft of the spear as she collapses, her clean hand maintaining its deathgrip as leverage shoves the spearpoint up, her face turned away from the suddenly violent Beast as he- it?- leaps at her, prepared to tear her to pieces, no doubt!!
There's a horrible sound from down the spear, and the impact of the rabbit-man landing on the pointed end of it and sliding down it nearly wrenches the thing from her hands, and the pain that shoots up her arm is absolutely unbearable. The spear leaps from her fingers, and there's the sound that she knows to be the sound of someone dying. The blood on the ground, this time, is really his.
Before she even has time to recover from the fact that she was just responsible for the death of a living being, even if it was in self-defense, there's a sigh that seems to move the entire world in a way she'll never be able to fully explain later. Then, a voice that vibrates every bit of her bring murmurs, "Waste not, want not," and the dust kicks up around her in a terrible storm of flesh-slicing anguish.
She's never known such pain, not even when her voice was taken.
The agony is so intense that she doesn't know what happens next -- she isn't awake for all of it, only most of it. She passes out when she feels the sand tear the skin of her face away.
When she comes to, on the ground, the sand appears to have torn all the flesh from the rabbit-man's bones, and her legs are wobbly and weak, but her hand doesn't hurt any more than the rest of her does.
It's a mercy, to be spared the sight of what she did, but the girl who would be Cordy's first instinct is to clap her hands to throat, face, belly. She FELT herself torn to pieces. She felt her aorta give way, felt her flesh ripped to shreds, felt- EVERYTHING tear. She only STARTS to relax when she reassures herself she isn't in shreds.
The spear. It's still in the ribcage of ... of the skeleton. The bones clatter when she snatches at it desperately, grasping at the only thing between her and a horrid death. What did "waste not, want not" mean? What voice was that? Where WAS this? There were so many questions and so few answers.
The girl cries silently as she scrambles to her feet and starts hunting desperately for someplace safe to hide. And maybe sleep.
| 