Every footstep felt like hell, like his bones were cracking underneath his weight, grinding into dust. He couldn't stop though, he had to keep going before the water froze over and the heat mellowed into a bitter cold. The arena was an awful pen, nothing like the desert one he recalled watching when he was young, where tributes were slaughter like bugs; skulls cracking under rocks.

“Fuck, where are you-” He began, trying his damn hardest not to limp. He had been searching for Matthias for an hour now, or at least, he assumed it had been an hour. It could've been ten, for all he knew. Luckily, stumbling and grasping onto trees for support didn't seem to be a hard task anymore, considering his next footstep was his last before he was yanked up into the air.

“Fuck.” He hung from the air, the blood rushing to his head as his ankles strained, having to support his weight as he dangled from a tree. His legs hurt more, that permanent ache blossoming into a sear of pain that did not ease up, not even as he tried to relax his muscles and wiggle himself out of the vice grip the ropes had on him.

“I'm gonna kill him.”