Zephyrinus Hund

Appearance
“The small people are quick and light. The strong people are powerful and stable. I’m best described as sturdy. I have neither speed nor strength, but I have the skill of dexterity. One wouldn’t believe it from looking at me, but any tree that will support my weight is my friend. I don’t have rippling muscles or a light touch, but I have the ability to rocket myself up vertical objects. It’s not a hobby of mine, but it’s perhaps my biggest physical strength. I’m a couple inches under six foot, and I haven’t grown a day since I hit sixteen. Da says I was blessed with quick growth and I didn’t stay scrawny like many of the other tributes that had gone before me from District 5. Since then, I’ve gotten stronger, though it hit a plateau once I reached twenty.

“Not much to say other than that. I have brown hair and brown eyes; I look like any other guy. But unlike many people my age from my district, I have scars to show. The biggest one is on my chin where I fell and smacked my face against a rock. I bled for three days and it nearly killed me; not the cut, but the blood I left behind. Easy trail for people to follow. I have another one on my right forearm from a rusty nail. I walk with a limp from where I shattered my leg. They fixed me up and all, but I still have this impediment. It’s not huge—it’s just there. Enough about my scars.”

Background
“I was born and raised in District 5 where I lived with one older sister, two parents and a dog. My parents were architects. Are architects. They’re not dead—not like my sister. My family wasn’t bad off, but then again, my ma always found ways to obtain extra food. Medicine, too. My sister wanted to be a scientist, and even though she was just a kid, she studied until the wee hours of the morning trying to pile so much information into her head. I wasn’t quite like that. I liked to build things, and when I wasn’t building, I was exploring. Exploring the district, exploring the streets, exploring the inner workings of my mind. Da said I was a dreamer; I said I wanted to see something different. (That one earned me a good blow to the side of my head, and I was forbidden from speaking against the government. I was ten then, but I can’t say I’ve changed my thoughts since then.)

“My education was more thorough than others’ my age, but that’s because Da decided to hammer it into my brain. He said there had to be something in there other than stars and planets. When I wasn’t learning, my sister Raughlyn and I romped through the District. No one bothered us since we didn’t bother them; we were good kids, just with too much energy. Raughlyn had a way with words and could charm even the cleverest merchant. We had a game we’d play—she would try to weasel free goods from the vendors, and I watched her back. If I decided things weren’t going well, I tossed a rock into the nearest alley. After years of this, I had good aim. I could smash open a pot at fifty feet with the flick of my wrist, thus distracting the vendor long enough for Raughlyn to slip away.

“As we grew older and Rauglyn, who was four years my senior, hit the age of thirteen, she didn’t want her kid brother following her around. She used her charm on boys to get their attention and not on vendors to get our family food. But charm can only get one so far. When my sister entered the 131st Games, she only lasted until the fourth day. I saw her die—right there on live TV. She tried to charm a boy from District 1—one of the Careers—but someone came up from behind her and smashed her head in with a river rock. It took her forty minutes to die before the cannon fire sounded. Until that point, I was indifferent about the Games. They made me nervous, but I didn’t think twice about it because it seemed like a story—so distant. Now it scared me senseless. I was thirteen, and since my thirteenth year, I’d wake up in the middle of the night crying.

“The 134th Games came around, and to my parents’ horror, my name was chosen. With the numbers against me, I knew that when they looked at me, they no longer saw their son but their dead son. What followed happened in a flurry as they took me away and I spent a week preparing for the games.

“Call me a coward, but my tactic was simple: run. At the Cornucopia, I grabbed whatever objects were in my path out of there. The 134th games were staged as urban decay. A crumbling city filled with rust and rot and buildings full of creaking planks that rotted beneath your feet. I could run, I could climb, but I could not fight. When I wanted food, I stole it from others. I relied upon their own thirst for blood to find someone else. But the numbers dwindled and my constant flight bored the viewers. They forced us into encounters by toxic gas that rounded us together in our flight away. A rusty nail to the arm reminded me that I wasn’t here for survival—I was here for entertainment. I needed antibiotics, and I was going to have to entertain the Capitol with endless bloodshed to get what I needed or else I would die. It occurred to me to give up and to walk out in the open and scream for someone to kill me. But there’s that little voice in your head and the instinct in your gut that keeps you from committing suicide. So I fought. I threw whatever projectiles that I could, and I killed a Tribute from District 9 with a giant rusty bolt accurately placed to the back of the head. But as she fell to the ground, I could only think of Raughlyn lying there on the grass of the jungle, bleeding and dying for forty minutes. I ended District 9’s life with a slice to the throat. They didn’t expect me to win, not after I fell three stories through the rotting floorboards of what appeared to be an ancient garment shop. I crashed to the ground and broke my leg in two, a clean break that left the lower half of my leg hanging without any movement. But I fought on. And in the end, I was the victor.

“Happy? No denying it. Proud? I can’t say.

“I spent the next few years living a luxurious life on a street surrounded by past winners. Nightmares plagued my nights, and I filled my days with books and architecture. I did what I could to keep myself occupied so I wouldn’t have to think about what I had done. I had secured my family sanctuary and everlasting health; but I had lost a piece of my humanity. There were other victors who helped the Tributes in the years that followed my own victory. This year, I must join them and help counsel those from District 5 that follow in my bloody footsteps.”

Personality
Zeph is quiet and hardworking. Even though he lives a life where he doesn’t need to perform manual labor to earn his way, he enjoys keeping himself occupied. He would be happy living in a cabin out in the woods away from humanity, but he never speaks these thoughts. He does have a streak of cowardice running through him—a sort of survival instinct—which acts as his better judgment and keeps him from saying his thoughts aloud. He is good-natured and easy-going—not exactly what one would suspect from someone who endured unadulterated bloodshed.

Further, he’s a forgiving person. After participating in the Games, he understands the need for killing to survive; he no longer harbors a grudge against the one who killed his older sister. He doesn’t hate the people of the Capital for enjoying his Hell. (He doesn’t their mindset, but he doesn’t hate them.)

And perhaps because of the emotional and physical stress he endured, he retains wounds which cannot be healed with time. He enjoys a bite of violence, though only a nip and not a mouthful. (Despite his better senses, drawing blood is pleasing to him; killing, on the other hand, is a horror.) The limp in his leg—despite the doctors’ healings—has not gotten better; some suspect this affliction is the result of mental torture and not physical trauma.

Likes

 * dreaming
 * working
 * studying
 * architecture
 * living

Dislikes

 * fearing
 * government