It is day three, after all, and there are only ten tributes left.

All dead in the bloodbath.

.oOo.

Audra Zimanski, 16
District Five Female
1 Kill

Here she is again, at the top of the mountain where she can see and hear everything that goes on in the arena.

And everyone in the arena can see her from here.

She feels for her pack protectively, making sure that the contents are still in place. She asked for subtle weapons from the game makers, promising them a show if she got close to any of the other tributes and, therefore, had a chance to dispatch them.

She hasn't yet. But she has plenty of time.

Audra flies down the mountain on a side slope, whooping like a madwoman as she soars through the pines. Even if she meets a career, she's moving too fast for them to stop her - and she saw them head into the mountain the other side of the arena a few minutes ago. She'll be safe.

Maybe she should be quieter, though. She doesn't know how many tributes are in these parts - although there aren't many left. It is day three, after all, and there are only ten tributes left.

All dead in the bloodbath.

Before she reaches the bottom of the mountain, she comes to a halt on her skis - after much practicing and a lot of scrapes, she's figured out how to stop. She's had time to practice her skills on the skis - the careers have, strangely enough, never come across her, and she's only seen one other tribute in the arena close up. The boy from Eight had no skis, but he did have a snowboard - something that he had been failing to ride on the second day in the arena.

Maybe he'll have gotten the hang of it by now.

She takes off the skis and puts them under her arm - they're easy to carry, and the ski poles strap easily to them. It's easy to move through the arena with these. Now, she just has to take off the skinny, small ski boots and put on the thick winter boots, made of some insulating fabric that she doesn't know the name of, so she can head into the woods.

She's looking for a cabin to sleep in.

She snaps off a stray tree branch, covered with bushy pine needles, and drags it behind her tracks. On second thought, she should have skied through this area - it would be easier to cover thin lines of ski tracks than the holes that her boots leave in the snow as her bodyweight sends her through the crust. It's cold, as well. Her boots are starting to fill with snow in a few minutes, and she feels the snow start to melt into moisture that will soak her socks through.

But here, she's almost at the tiny cabin. They won't find her here. Well, they shouldn't - considering that the arena has these scattered all over the mountainside, they'll hopefully start searching the other cabins first.

But she only means to stay here for a few hours. Just to rest, like she has in the other cabins she's hidden in throughout her time in the arena.

She quickly picks the lock with the hairpin that she asked to be left in the bag, and steps into the cabin. It's warm, as always, and she takes the blanket that's always in the corner before wrapping herself in purple and blue and falling into blissful, blissful sleep.

Two hours later, Audra wakes up to the beeping of a sponsor gift. Inside is a small dinner of chicken - she never has chicken back at home - and buttery peas. She relishes every bite, blowing a kiss to the cameras for whatever sponsor sent that for her.

Then, she takes the metal bowl that's under the small kitchen counter, fills it with coals from the fire that always burns in every cabin, then sets it all up on a tiny, thin stand. She places it in front of the only door inside the cabin, leaving the fluffy, dry carpet right in front of it. If anyone gets to the cabin too soon for her liking, they'll have to deal with it burning down.

She leaves through a window, off to her next destination.

.oOo.

But that's enough worrying for now.

.oOo.

Triton Clifford, 17
District Four Male
3 Kills

It's his turn today to guard the cornucopia, and he waves goodbye to the other careers as they ski into the distance and away from the chalet. They haven't used the ski lift often, first making sure that the surrounding hills are free of tributes before venturing upwards.

Soon, they'll have to change that strategy. After all, it's the third day, and they haven't found a tribute since the bloodbath.

Triton closes the door. He walks back to the cornucopia and sits down, gathering a few crates of supplies around himself. He wants to sort this all today.

It'll keep him busy.

It's easy to sort the food together, piling the packets in one crate and any other edibles in a second. He stores it all in the back of the cornucopia, filling up a few backpacks with food-shaped objects and leaving them strewn around the cornucopia. It looks messy, but if anyone comes into the cornucopia all they'll have the courage to do is grab something and run.

It'll be easier if he makes those things essentially useless.

Half an hour later, he's still sorting all of the weapons into neat piles at the back of the cornucopia when he hears a… a sort of squealing outside. He peers around the edge of the cornucopia, wondering what it could be, and sees a rabbit of all things.

A rabbit! They barely have any meat left in their provisions, and the sponsor gifts bring more weapons and water than food. If they take advantage of this right now, they could have a delicious stew for supper.

He grabs his trident and runs after the rabbit as fast as he can, trying not to scream and startle it before he has a chance to kill it. A vague voice in the back of his mind warns him that it won't work, that he should set up a snare or something to lure it in and ensure it's caught, but he ignores it. He's going to catch it the way a tribute from Four would. That is, he has no idea how to catch it. So he'll throw the trident at it.

The trident misses by inches, and the rabbit disappears into the snow. A chagrined Triton realizes that its fur is a mottled shade of white and grey. It must be to properly blend it in with the snow and to let itself camouflage easily in the arena: it would be hard for any tributes to find it unless it came right up to them.

But that's enough worrying for now. He tugs the trident out of the snowbank that it's stuck in, then walks back to the cornucopia. He had things to do, things to sort, and cannons to listen for. Oh, he hopes that there's a cannon soon - he wants to get this over with quickly.

He doesn't want to wait until the game makers get fed up with the careers and start sending mutts after them.

Triton shakes the thought away with a turn of his head, paying attention to the rest of the supplies instead. He has things to do, things to sort. He can't worry about what the careers are doing right now, although he hopes that they're alright.

He hopes that he'll be alright.

But then, he hears an unmistakably recognizable sound: a cannon's echo pierces the silence of the chalet.

.oOo.

So he'll stay here instead.

.oOo.

Chase Farlay, 16
District Eight Male
1 Kill

He's tired.

Chase wipes the sweat off of his brow and peels off the goggles that he's been wearing to keep the snow off of his eyes. The large, plastic goggles hang on his neck from the rubber band that makes them so easy to carry around. They're covered with snow, so he wipes it off with his glove and puts them back on.

Thank goodness they're tinted, or else he'd be blind from the sun by now.

He shivers in the cool, frosty air - his jacket and pants are completely soaked through from the past few days, and it doesn't help that he's tried sleeping outside for the past few nights. The only reason he hasn't gotten hypothermic or worse is because of the little cabin in the woods - he had walked inside, locked the door, then let his clothes dry by the fire while sleeping the sleep of the dead yesterday. Of course, he left early - he didn't want to stay the night in a place where the careers could find him, especially when he doesn't know where they are.

He doesn't know where anyone is.

But last night had been hard to sleep for Chase. It wasn't because of the temperature - the nights were blessedly warm here. No, it was too wet to get a good sleep.

So he'll have to change that.

He unclips his boots from the snowboard and puts it under his arm, walking slowly into the forest and away from the groomed trails. He's gotten better at maneuvering through the area on this board - the first day, he had spent half of his time on his back or face from falling all of the time. He's gotten better now, but he doesn't want to use it in the forest. There isn't enough of an incline for it to work well, and he doesn't want to take it off when he's knee-deep in snow.

Five minutes into his walk, he stops and looks around. Large, bushy pines surround him on every angle, with little bushes that are clear of the leaves that they bear in the fall intertwining amongst the trees. They're small, but sturdy - he'll be able to build a shelter out here for himself. With all of the cabins around the arena, the last place tributes will look for each other is in the deep woods itself.

So he'll stay here instead.

The first thing he does is clear an area on the ground of the snow. Between the two pines, chosen for the little nooks and branches that he can use to create a capable shelter, he's able to push as much snow as he can away from the area where he'll build the shelter and in large mounds that surround the clearing. It's quite noticeable, but it'll hopefully blend in with the rest of the forest's bumps and hills.

He just has to hope that the careers don't come too close. And they shouldn't - he made sure to head to a place that he couldn't see the trails through the forest from before building. And if they do find him…

He has his axe.

He reaches for the axe that he's propped up against the first pine tree, giving it a little swing through the air. He had found it in the cabin, next to the firewood that fueled the tiny fire. Instead of leaving it there, where other tributes could find and use it against him, he had taken it for himself.

After an hour, he has himself a sturdy frame of logs from the surrounding forest. It'll take a while, but he'll have a roof soon enough.

And then, he can get coals from the cabin he had found to start himself a fire.

.oOo.

She doesn't know what to do. She doesn't want to do this. She hates this. She hates this.

.oOo.

Ellington Lockwood, 18
District Nine Female
0 Kills

She's still in this small, tiny cabin, hoping that no one will find her in it. After all, she's seen at least three others like it in the arena so far - she's slept and hidden in them all.

There was the one cabin that had a bowl of coals right in front of the door, which she had promptly thrown back into the fire and winced as she burned her fingers. She's thankful that she didn't enter through the only door inside - after failing to open the door of the first cabin that she had come across, Elle's taken to crawling in through a back window before latching it shut. It's worked every time, and it prevented that cabin, painted in bright gold, from going up in flames. That's something else that she's noticed: every cabin has been painted in a different colour. Red, gold, green, blue, they're all varying shades of different colours.

Perhaps it's for variety.

She's still surprised she hasn't been found by any of the other tributes. She hasn't made much of an attempt to hide herself from them - she's relied on the fact that the arena is too big and there are too few tributes for anyone to find and kill her.

It's worked, so far, but she's had close calls - she saw the careers at the bottom of the mountain the other day, and took the second ski lift to the other side of the arena so she wouldn't be found by them. Now, she only stays on the side of the mountain that doesn't house the chalet where the careers are set up. She'd try to get further away from them all, but there's a river just beyond the bottom of the mountain that looks like it's freezing, and she can't find a boat. She'll never risk it.

She drifts off to sleep as she tries to think of a way to get across the river without getting herself wet, waking up sometime in the morning of the third day. It's surprising how long she sleeps here - she's too exhausted to sleep any less.

Hopefully, it doesn't hurt her in the end.

But as she yawns and gets up from the couch, still entangled in the blankets that she had found under the couch, there's a knock on the door.

Elli freezes, waiting to hear if they continue to knock. When she hears the knock again, she edges towards the fireplace. She knows that there's an axe there…

"Hello?" a boy's voice - well, it sounds more like a man's - calls gruffly. "Anyone in here?"

Elli grabs the axe, then backs away. She doesn't know if she can kill, she doesn't know what to do. She can't go out the back without making noise, and he'll see her footprints. She doesn't know what to do. She doesn't want to do this. She hates this. She hates this.

The voices are whispering in her ears, telling her to throw the axe. They only get louder and louder as the knocking continues, and the doorknob finally turns.

She throws the axe, not knowing if she meant to do that or if she's too afraid of the voices to stop, and it hurtles towards the boy from Seven. Instead of glancing off of him and into the floor, it sinks into his chest and stays there. She's thrown it hard enough to embed it in his chest.

Where all of his vital organs are.

The boy looks down, confused, then yells from the pain. Already his shirt is turning crimson from the blood that started with just a trickle, and he clutches the wound. "Why did you do that?"

"I-I-I don't know," Elli stammers. "I'm sorry - I'm sorry - I'm sorry -"

She grabs the axe and pulls it out of his chest, stumbling backwards before tripping on the carpet and letting the axe fly. It hits a window with a smash, and the boy stumbles towards it. "I - I don't know what to - I don't know."

He tries to crawl through the window, after the axe, but slumps down in the middle of the broken window frame. Elli can feel herself sobbing, and she tries to push herself off of the floor. The boy is dying, but it's taking him so long to. It's taking so long…

Full on crying now, she stumbles outside and grabs the axe. It's easy to spot from the bloody imprint in the snow, and she takes it back to the boy. "I'm sorry -"

She has to make the pain stop, the voices whisper. Make it stop, make it stop, make him stop.

Slowly, hesitantly, she brings the tip of the blade to his neck and prepares to swing. She can't do it. She can't do it.

She doesn't know how.

A minute later, she hears the cannon through her tears.

Our first arena death!

10th: Birchwood Mason, District Seven Male; Killed by Ellington Lockwood. Created by santiagoponcini20.

Birchwood was one of the quiet, dull tributes who didn't do too much or impact many things. He was an entertaining guy, but the fact that he was a bit dim and wasn't the most subtle of people meant that Elli was ready to fight him when he came close. He was fun to write, though! Thanks to Santiago for another guy I got to kill - he probably should have died in the bloodbath, but he got this instead. I hope that's alright!

Eight more to go! Who'll be the next to die? Any predictions? Share your thoughts!

Enjoy. Until next time, TheAmazingJAJ