Shepard keeps pace, stopping only once, to look back at the entrance. There's something about this that feels more dangerous than it should; but then, maybe that's just the lies instinct tells you, once you're no longer in the field anymore. Not every sudden movement is an attack, after all, just like not every door you can't watch is going to lock you in.

Or maybe it's just that they're two tributes, entering an ominous volcano cavern. The Gamemakers would have loved this, the bastards.

"It's not the kind of trick you can pull in— casually," she tells him, quietly, trying to pitch her voice so that it doesn't echo against the stony walls, and wincing at the slip. They have a liquid, bumpy shape to them, as if they were flowing magma not so long ago, and could become so again, "It kicks my metabolism into overdrive, so without the guarantee of a good meal afterwards, I'll starve."

This isn't the Hunger Games. This place is not some prebuilt arena stageplay. There are no Gamemakers here. Shut up. Shut up!

Breathe.

"What's that?" She says, looking ahead. Another chamber, beyong, pregnant with a bellyful of fire, all ruddy and warm, with the lone exception of one vivid purple spark, "Got something, there."