New chapter! I got several reviews, I'm pleased to say, so my wish for having ten before February is fulfilled!

To Madhatter: Thanks a lot for your review and I'm pleased you like the arena, which I wasn't too sure of at first, so at least you're satisfied. I accidentally deleted your review when I got it (that's me, the queen of tech) so I allowed myself to repost it by signing in as a guest. I don't know why, I just wanted you to know.

So, enjoy, remember to REVIEW, and Disclaimer: I own nothing!

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Hunting

Eragon was stiff with cold the next morning, but a few shakes of his arms and several minutes stamping his feet dispelled the frost in his limbs. He was thinking about his dream. About Saphira.

I love you too, little one.

It was almost too painful to keep in his mind, but he wanted to know whether it had been real or not. Whether his consciousness had really met his dragon. He didn't think so, but… perhaps. After all, he'd had visions of the sort before. But they had been predicting the future, not the past, or whatever time his dream had been set in.

You will find peace.

Despite the unrelenting agony of thinking about Saphira, a light of comfort shone through the pain like sunlight through the clouds. It had been her; he just knew it. No vision, no apparition could mimic her. Not that voice. Not that way of speaking. She had told him that it would be alright in the end, and he believed her. He did. She always spoke the truth.

Eragon swallowed and dragged the back of his hand across his eyes, then folded up his blanket and stuffed it in his rucksack. He couldn't think about Saphira anymore, not without breaking down completely. He'd never been seperated from her for this long before.

Breakfast resolved itself as two biscuits and a gulp of water. He needed meat today. If he didn't eat properly, his strenght would fade as surely as a candle snuffed out by the wind, never mind his extra strenght or speed or endurance. He'd be easy prey for the other tributes. So today, he was going to hunt.

The sky was bright and clear outside, a perfect unbroken blue that stretched over him for hundreds of leagues. With the white ground and the glittering frosty trees, it was a truly beautiful day, but filled with fear. Out here were fourteen tributes – well, thirteen, really – that would kill him without hesitation given the chance. Eragon kept a hand on Blödhslytha's hilt but trusted his superhuman senses to keep him relatively safe from danger.

There was one big question that Eragon had refrained from asking himself until now; how exactly was he going to bring down a deer or a hare or anything, really? Well, he reasoned, he'd managed without his elven skills when he'd been a simple farm boy in the Spine; but then again, in the Spine, he'd had a bow. Arrows. The basic necessities. What did he have now?

A sword, excellent reflexes and a growling stomach.

Great.

Eragon sighed and pulled up his muffler and hood. He was just going to have to do what he could.

As it turned out, he slipped easily back into his old hunter's habits: walking silently through the snow, watching for any signs of recent animal activity – droppings, prints, scratchmarks on trees, even an old carcass or a fresh kill. He didn't find much at first, but was reassured that his skills hadn't deserted him.

As he walked, he didn't just watch for animals – he looked for other tributes, too. He knew that they would be less skilled at hiding their passing than animals. A burned-out fire would be a good clue. Or the trampled snow and broken twigs of a deserted campsite. He didn't want to kill the other tributes – yesterday at the Cornucopia he'd just been defending himself – but any information about their activity and location he welcomed with open arms. These were the Hunger Games, after all, and just because he didn't mean any harm to them didn't mean that they didn't want to harm him. He would have to be naive to believe that.

About two hours passed before Eragon first saw a hopeful sign. He'd been wandering around in the woods, not going in any particular direction but being careful not to loop back on himself, which was perhaps the reason why he hadn't yet entered the mountains or re-entered the plain. It was a steaming pile of deer dung, recognizable because of the pellets that composed it. Excited, Eragon stopped stock-still and glanced around at the ground, his hunter's eyes quickly scanning for the signs he knew would be there. The droppings were at the edge of a resonably large clearing, the ground of which was muddied and trodden down. It was definitely the work of a herd of deer, Eragon noted as he caught sight of several cloven-hoofed prints. The excrement was still fresh so the herd had to be nearby…

He left the clearing in the most likely direction, north, where the prints led. A normal person wouldn't have been able to spot the tracks, but he was used to this and easily followed the prints. He moved swiftly but quietly, almost noiselessly in fact, and realized just how useful his elven abilities were to him on a hunt. How would he bring down his prey? Definitely with Blödslytha, he decided. He might be strong, strong enough to easily break a deer's neck, but there was the matter of first getting his hands around the animal's neck. And grabbing hold of a panicking wild animal wasn't going to be easy. Whereas a sword slid in, out, and it was over.

The tracks veered east and Eragon continued through the woods, which were thinning now. That didn't mean he was nearing an open area, though.

How far had the deer gone? They had to be near here. The dung had been fresh. He was going to find them in the next few minutes, he knew it. His hunter's senses, honed from years of tracking in the Spine, were tingling.

Eragon crept into a thicket and halted, instinctively ducking his head to avoid being seen. Here they were, about twenty of them, maybe twenty-five, clustered in a glade, nibbling at the grass they had uncovered beneath the snow. Their breath was steaming in the cold air.

"Hello, my little beauties," Eragon whispered to himself. "You're going to be very useful to me." But in truth, he didn't have a clue how to proceed. If he'd had a bow, it would be now that he'd be nocking an arrow and drawing back the string. But his only weapon was Blödslytha. He couldn't exactly charge in there, slashing with his sword, and expect to come out uninjured or with a kill. They would panic, bolt, and he'd probably get a sharp hoof or an antler in the stomach for his trouble. How did he isolate only one of them…?

Eragon racked his brains. It was infuriating to have come all this way to be stuck here, within several feet of his prey, without being able to do anything.

He stayed in the thicket for several minutes, considering and discarding various plans of attack, and was just about to charge in regardless of the danger when the problem was solved for him.

A silvery blur shot through the air and struck the largest deer in the head in an explosion of blood and shards of bone. The animal screamed and was dead before it hit the ground.

The assault had come from the trees on the other side of the glade, opposite Eragon, so it was natural that the herd fled towards him. They bolted, crying out frantically, a torrent of tawny fur and wide eyes and gleaming antlers. Eragon reacted in a split second. He tensed his legs and leapt straight up in the air, and wrapped his gloved hands around the nearest branch: a thick bough that hung a little more than three meters above the ground. He deftly hoisted himself up and crouched on his perch, the metal studs on the soles of his boots making it hard to balance on the icy wood. He hunched his shoulders and tried to make himself as small as possible as the deer ran past below. Fortunately, the needles were thick here and he was surrounded by the tufty snow-laden branches of other trees, so he was all but invisible. He shifted the straps of his rucksack, adjusted Blödhslytha so that it lay flat against his leg, and held his breath as he waited for whoever had killed the deer to reveal themselves.

A figure stepped out of the woods into the clearing. Their face was hidden by hood and muffler, but their goggles were raised, and their eyes glittered the colour of ink. Only one tribute had eyes as black as that.

Sharker.

A crossbow dangled casually from his left hand, and the quiver of bolts was slung across his back. Eragon saw that he'd cut off the fingers of his outer gloves to be able to better hold and fire his weapon.

Sharker glanced around, saw nobody, and tossed the crossbow onto his shoulder; it had a strap for precisely that purpose. Then he lowered his muffler and gave a low whistle. Several seconds later, two other tributes emerged from the trees and came to stand beside him.

One of them was definitely Blaze: he stood three heads higher than Sharker and was at least twice as wide. There was a sword hanging from his belt and an enormous bulky backpack on his back; he seemed to be serving as a kind of pack animal for the group. The other one, who was smaller than her two companions, he recognized as Gaia, of District Seven, whose face was uncovered. A knife was at her waist. Eragon frowned; Katniss had said that only tributes from Districts One, Two, and Four were Careers. He got a better grip on his branch and watched the scene play out beneath him.

"Is the cloak-and-dagger secret whistle really necessary?" grumbled Blaze, wrenching down his muffle and spitting in the snow. "Seems a whole lot of bullshit to me."

Sharker didn't reply as he walked over to the deer carcass and ripped the crossbow bolt out of its head with an unpleasant crunching sound. He wiped it on his coat, leaving a thin red smear down the white fabric, and pushed it back into his quiver.

"That'll feed us for at least half a week, Sharker," remarked Gaia. "Nice catch."

"Yeah, well, who knows how much he eats?" Sharker replied sarcastically, nodding towards Blaze. Immediately, the larger tribute grabbed him by the front of his coat and hauled him towards him.

"Say that to my face if you're going to say it at all," he spat, looking on the verge of tearing out Sharker's throat, who just stared up at him impassively. Gaia placed herself between them and shoved them apart with a hand on each of their chests.

"Cool it, will you?" she said after Blaze had released Sharker. "We're supposed to be a team."

"There's no such thing as a team in the Hunger Games," said Sharker dismissively. He dusted himself down theatrically and held out his hand to Gaia. She passed him her knife, hilt first, and he knelt down and set about butchering the deer.

Eragon had already learned some very interesting things about these tributes: Sharker was a little too cocky for his own good, Blaze seemed to be some kind of psychopath – which, admittedly, he'd already guessed – and Gaia was probably the most sensible of the three. And there seemed to be some discord between them.

It was all valuable information, but he had one problem.

How was he going to get away without being seen or heard?

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Finished! Another cliffie! Sorry the chapter couldn't be longer, but my exams are tomorrow and I've had to revise. Wish me luck, hmm?

So hopefully the next one will be longer!

Read and review, as usual!

See y'all soon!