thearena | ARENA 10-Placid Hollow

ARENA 10-Placid Hollow

The Tributes are taken early in the morning, most of their support teams seeming in good cheer as they dress them in warm clothes, getting them to their tubes. There is obvious comfort in the familiar for the prep teams, and they chatter with, or in some cases, over the heads of their Tributes as they get them ready and load them up.

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18…

If the Tributes could see the area they are passed up into, they would see a deeply overgrown, dilapidated town green, with a large bandstand rotting away in the middle. The spoils of the cornucopia are not gathered in one spot, instead scattered throughout the thigh high grass and weeds around the town green.

Around the edge of the green, the old business stand a silent sentry, looming out of the fog as it thins and winds into them, providing much desired cover.

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7

6…

But the Tributes cannot see the ground around them. The fog, thicker even than it will be in the rest of the arena, makes the world small around them. The sound of the count down echoes strangely, the tributes seeming too close as the fog brings sounds of their breath, their coughing, the snap of twigs under their feet right to ears of the other Tributes. But with the fog bringing visibility down to only a few feet, it's hard to tell what is a true danger, and what is only the fog playing tricks on them,.

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2

1

The gong rings out, and the countdown's voice announces "the Arena is now open". The Games have begun.

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Similar rules, perhaps. Iskierka isn't always terribly fond of fish, and has never tried eel, but that doesn't mean she wouldn't have been willing to at least try it, assuming someone managed to convince her it was a good idea. But the point is mostly moot anyway. Although she wouldn't be surprised if there were other things in the arena with them, it's not likely that any of them have anything to do with living in water.

It's the sounds of Ruffnut's approach that get her to finally turn to look in that direction, and it's only then that the finer details of what she looks like begin to appear out of the fog. The red of her scales had already been easily enough noted, but now that she's stopped and turned it's easier to see the great pair of horns sitting atop her head at the very least, if not the shorter spines that trace a loose pattern down her neck and over her back.

She doesn't speak either. Simply fixes Ruffnut with a look that very clearly says 'I know you're there' and waits to see what will happen next.

Ruffnut froze in place making a sound like "Urk" and holding her hands up as if trying to indicate she was unarmed.

"Nice dragon, friendly dragon." She cooed in a wavering worried voice "Nothing to worry about, just a dragon rider looking for a lift."

Not for the first time in the last twenty minutes Ruffnut wished desperately for Barf and Belch or Hiccup or Tuffnut.

Unarmed definitely helps. Not that she's any less inclined to assume that it's easy for people to take her out even despite the fact that they have already, but it's so much easier to talk to people when there aren't anything like weapons involved.

"It is terribly foggy, if you had meant for it to be a flying one."

Not that she isn't willing to try, but not knowing precisely where one is does make things harder in the long run.

Ruffnut froze once again for a moment before her jaw fell open. She looked so stunned that it was likely a strong breeze would have knocked her over.

"You...you can TALK!?" She gaped and responded probably a bit too loud. She'd seen alot of dragons since she was a little viking and not a single one of them had ever used human words.

"Of course I can speak," Iskierka answered as if this should be the most obvious thing in the world. "It would be ever so inconvenient if I had to simply hope that people could understand what I wanted."

The fact that other dragons might not be able to speak is something that doesn't even cross her mind in the slightest. Even the feral dragons of her own world have something like a method of communicating, after all.

This was clearly a world shaking revelation to Ruffnut as she gaped in awe at the concept.

"Where I come from the dragons don't speak human." She explained still sounding unsure if this was some kind of trick. "But yeah, I guess it would make things easier if they did..."

Was she really having this conversation? Was Ruffnut Thorston the first Viking from Berk to ever speak the same language as a dragon? It boggled the mind to consider.

It's no trick. There's hardly anyone else around who could be seeming to speak for her, and she certainly seems to be alone. Of course, with the fog it can been hard to tell one way or the other but it does seem to be that she's actually speaking.

"Oh. They might be very different sorts of dragons, then."

Which is interesting in a mild sort of way, but any dragons she doesn't recognize are only a minor interest if they aren't actually around for her to see.

"Yeah I guess...I mean we have alot of dragons. Just none that talk." This was by far one of the strangest things she'd ever dealt with.

"Do um...you have a name?" She added deciding that on the off chance she ran into Hiccup he'd want to know something like that...plus it might be less weird if she knew what to call this dragon.

"I am Iskierka," she announces, with a not insignificant amount of pride. It's a good name, and she has no shame in being all that she ever is. Still, she's willing to grant that whatever dragons Ruffnut is familiar with might be too young to speak or not speaking in anything that would be familiar.

"Although I cannot say I much approve of dragons that cannot speak."

Ruffnut was as usual, eternally puzzled. That was not the sort of name dragons had where she came from, but this dragon could talk so who was she to argue?

"Well it doesn't really matter if you approve or not, that's just how things are where I come from." She shrugged her boney shoulders. "It's not like we told them they can't talk. We only barely stopped fighting them a year ago...or maybe it was two years..." Time was weird.

Who were either of them to argue, when you got right down to it? True enough, Iskierka might have been inclined to argue simply on general principle, but that's simply part of life with her.

"I suppose you should know," she allows after a moment of consideration. "Although I cannot imagine it would have been at all easy to be fighting even whatever dragons you might have had. Most people at home would think twice about a fight with even a small dragon."

That was enough to make her smile with a bit of pride.

"Yeah, fighting dragons is serious business. But we didn't know any better. The Vikings of Berk have been fighting dragons for as long as we know. They try to steal our food, we fight. They burn our village down, we fight. Then one of us got the bright idea to try and ride one. Now we're all friends." She explained giving the shortest and possibly least satisfying version of her tribes history.

Given that Iskierka is only sort of tangentially interested in this set of other dragons, she doesn't mind that it's a short explanation. Beside, from what she can see it covers everything that really needs to covered.

"Of course it is serious business to fight a dragon," she offers instead. "Even back where I am from it is."

"Do your dragons fight much?" Ruffnut had apparently forgotten what it was she was supposed to be doing because...well talking dragon seemed more interesting. And she spoke so fancy! It would be more off putting to the down to earth and rough around the edges viking girl if not for the fact that Iskierka still looked perfectly capable of ripping a human apart.

"Of course we do," Isierka answers. "We would not have anything like the Aerial Corps otherwise and however is one supposed to defend against French dragons if one doesn't have dragons of one's own?"

Admittedly, she doesn't have any dragons to call her own, but she figures she can speak for the Aerial Corps in general. She is the only one of the Corps present, after all.

Ruffnut's glazed over expression declared she didn't understand.

"OK...what's an Aerial, whats a Corps and what's a French?" She listed in order starting to wonder if asking questions was going to be her main form of communication.

It seemed like there was just so much she didn't understand about this world.

It's not a bad method of communication, really. Iskierka had certainly done her fair share after she'd arrived, and she doesn't really mind answering them either. Not in this case.

"The Aerial Corps is what I am a part of," she answers. "It is like a military, a little, but we are our own group. And the French are who we are fighting, of course, along with their allies."

"Ah...right OK. I follow." Only a little. Ruffnut had a tendency to let her mind wander and even though she knew this was important she was having a hard time breaking the habit.

"But we're not fighting the french right now...like here. And we're not all part of the Aerial whatevers?" Because she needed to be sure she was doing what she thought she was doing or this was going to change alot.

"We are not," Iskierka answers. "It is only back home that I and my captain are fighting them. Here we are fighting everyone else who has been put into these Arenas. And no one else here is from the Aerial Corps, besides."

Just her, until and unless someone else shows up, and she's not certain she wants to see her Granby in the arena anyway, even as much as she misses having him around.

"Oh...sooooo I should be fighting you then."

Ruffnut shifted into a defensive sort of stance...at least that might have been what she was doing. It was sloppy and looked more like she was about to drop to the ground at a moments notice.

She hadn't fought a dragon without a dragon of her own in a long time. And she'd never actually beaten a dragon without help. Plus a talking dragon? Valhalla was sure challenging her on her first day. Then again she should have expected that.

"Oh, we do not have to. Not so early on in the Arena. They have not yet told us that we cannot make alliances, after all."

Besides, as much as she would certainly have been willing to fight with Ruffnut, the Arena only had started. And that alone would have been more than enough to get Iskierka to give people a little bit of a headstart before fighting. To say nothing of the fact that it would rather have ruined the conversation they'd been having besides.

"Alliances...yeah that's good. Let's be friends." Ruffnut had to change the big word into a smaller one she was more comfortable with. She understood what an alliance meant, but it was easier to think about it like this.

"I look out for you, you look out for me. All of Asgard knows our names before this is over." She declared pumping her fists into the air.

As long as Ruffnut has got the general idea, Iskierka isn't going to complain too much. Especially since it's better than she had barely more than a moment ago. How long it'll last ... well, no one can say that for certain. But this is a start, and that's enough for her.

"Of course they will. It is only fitting that they do so."

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ARENA 10-Placid Hollow

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Annnd, since I don't know what else for them to do shall we fade to black?

Works for me o7