The 23 Cannons Trilogy

Armageddon

For a few moments, nobody moved. Alexis, Dixie, Rose, and Xander looked back and forth, from each other, to the sky, then back to each other. Not a word passed from their lips. Dixie was the first to break the silence.

"What the hell was that?" she said. For some reason, her voice seemed to carry across the arena; the place suddenly felt very empty. As Dixie said this, she looked to the sky again at the increasing number of cracks. Like little black rivers, the sky was cracking more and more. And every now and then, an audible creak would sound out. 

"I'm not sure," Alexis replied. She was pale and shaking. "And I don't know if this is supposed to happen."

"What do you mean?" Rose said. She looked to the horizon to see a large black line shoot from a larger crack, staining the bright blue that had suddenly appeared.

"I've broken the arena," Alexis said. "Not even the Capitol can guess what'll happen next."

"Oh my god," Xander said. The air was heavy with anticipation. "Oh my god."

Alexis would have said, "That's enough talking; we should get moving," as a response, but the attention of the four tributes was drawn to the highest point in the sky as a sickening pop sounded out. At first, they had no idea what it was, but then they saw a single black spot in the sky. And a blue shard of cloud plummeting to the earth, a trail of flame and smoke coming from it. Alexis was the only one to notice the explosives. But she did not have enough time to warn the others before the piece of sky hit the woods with a powerful explosion. A cloud of smoke shot upwards from the trees in the distance. It was just for a second, but a powerful premonition of pure terror filled Alexis; she had just unleashed hell itself onto the arena.

"We have to get moving," she said. Her voice was barely steady. "Now."

"What's come over you?" Dixie said.

"The entire god damn sky is going to come down," Alexis said. "And it's going to take the arena, and us by extension, with it."

"Jesus," Dixie said in a harsh whisper.

"What about the other tributes?" Rose said. "Surely we can't leave them to die like this."

"We don't have the time," Alexis said. She spoke in a tone of desperate urgency like no other. "It'll be a matter of minutes before we're all dead." Rose's eyes went wide, and she clasped a hand to her mouth. A wave of dizziness overcame her, and she fought to keep steady. Alexis then looked up at the hole in the sky where the shard, not unlike that of a mirror, had crashed to the ground, and saw something that made the situation all the more dire: thick billowing clouds of smoke were pouring in from the hole, threatening to fill the air. And then, as if it was a trigger, the millions of cracked segments of the sky began to fall.

Like pointed daggers, the flaming shards pelted the ground, setting the grass ablaze before the explosives tore everything up around them. On the eastern edge of the arena, the house where Erika and her alliance had opted to stay before their untimely demises was helpless to escape the onslaught as a piece of the sky struck the roof. The entire building was consumed by the explosion, and ceased to exist. The woods began to burn.

From Alexis' perspective, they could see the east slowly being taken over by flame and smoke. She knew they had no time left.

"We have to go!" she screamed, grabbing Dixie's hand. "Stick together!"

"Which direction?!" Rose called as they all began to run.

"West!" Alexis yelled. She spoke with such terror that Rose felt spikes of fear as the realisation sunk in. They were all going to die within the next few minutes if they didn't escape. "We should be close to the edge of the arena! From there, we run and don't look back!"