Chapter 3

A few centuries later

Odette POV

People walk to move from point A to B.

I don't.

I run.

And that was what I had been doing since my brain began to store memories.

I run whenever I can. To climb stairs, to go to the market, to go to school. 

I never take the carriage. I "run" my dog to the park, not "walk".

Every day after school, I train. I'm the fastest, faster than the boys.

The funny thing?

I was never a fan of the activity. 

I was only sixteen when my sister was forced to participate and never returned. I was four months old last time my mother kissed me. Or at least I was hoping she did it, before she left for the Games ... and so, I grew up without remembering the feel of her caresses or the memory of her bright smiles.

"Odette, can you go to the market to pick up some milk and eggs?" Dad's head popped from the door of his office.

"Sure, anything else?"

"No, darling. Unless you need more bananas or beans for your proteins." He knew me and my habits well.

There was a certain eerie aura at the market. It looked more like a funeral. People crowded into small groups, quiet chats instead of the typical ferment and cheerful shouts.

It was that time indeed... The Games.

An interesting way to put it. A sarcastic, bad joke.

Because I would have called it: nightmare, a sentence to death, a ticket without return. A jump into a black hole.

All I was left with was a father and a younger brother.

And I intended to come back to them. Alive.

"Have you heard? Some of them were spotted this morning on the outskirts of Saint Winifred," Old Fred, whose wife was taken away many moons ago, when I was just energy in the universe, commented from his shrimp stall.

"What do they want? Mate with our cattle too?"

"Won't be a surprise!"

"Yeah, they are disgusting beasts!"

"I told you to keep the guns loaded and buy more garlic."

"Isn't it enough that they already destroy our families every six years?" Uncle Craig grunted from his own stand, selling terracotta. At least his wife had managed to escape and not got caught.

But she had died sometime after her return. Heartache, they said. After The Games, she was no longer the same, for some inexplicable cosmic reasons.

She kept muttering and moaning a strange name.

A strange symbol was found on her forehead.

Signs of sexual assault too, though she never confirmed it...

Our village was located on a small valley on the edge of the Cantata Silvam, which consisted of acres and acres of untouched forest. The forest thinned more and more until it became a land where nothing grew, where not even the earth itself wanted to be, and then, as you continued further west, you found the gates of Molten Land. Nobody ever went there; it would have been weeks of walking from here.

Funny how Molten Land was in the west, the most westerly land of all ... where the sun sets, where life ends and darkness reigns. Quite fitting, and not only geographically speaking.

The aim of The Games was simple: us, the humans, had to cross a specific section of Molten Land. The humans that were not taken and that made it to the end, won.

What did they win? Just the freedom to return back home!

What a game...right!?

"The Games" was a pact to keep peace between us and them. Nobody really knew what they were; the only certainty that they were not human.

People that made it back, only told of large shadows and orange eyes. Of voices and growls in the fog.

Nobody wanted to be the next Lea, or the baker's wife. Even Timothy - the little guy who delivered milk to every door on Sunday or collected donations at mass - had never returned.

Boys also had to participate, even if mostly girls were taken.

Some believed they were blood suckers, that when they got to the last drop, if they weren't full, they would start to eat your flesh. And if that wasn't enough, they drank your soul too. So, this explains the presence of garlic all over the place! On doorposts, under the beds, and even in the hair. Hair clips and headbands with pieces of garlic were sold everywhere. We all stank of garlic so much that we got used to the pungent smell.

Others believed they came from an ancient lizard civilization that could shift into something akin to humans. The elders, on the other hand, proclaimed that they were flying monsters, unable to stay too low on the ground, due to their sizes. That back in the days of their great grandparents, they fed on meat, cooking humans in their cauldrons of boiling fire that they breathed.

What was I doing with all this information? A big ball that I threw away in my imaginary rubbish bin.

The only details we knew for sure were few. Molten Land was a vast, complicated place. Sometimes angry magma popped out forming new houses for the monsters, then there was the infamous Valley of Temples, with several gigantic statues of gods and ancient ruins. That was a known fact, since we had to go through it during the Games.

The humans who managed to make it to the end said that there were cracks and landslides, that a black fog made of dust from the raging volcanos was perennial, making the visibility hard.

"Girls get caught more because they are slower," The new milk guy said to the farmer and his cow.

"As if," I scoffed, paying for the bottle of milk and going over to Mrs. Benna, selling fresh eggs. Pia, her daughter, was excited about the Games.

And do you know why? Romance!

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AN/ I don't know about you, but I have a thing for villains lately

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