Hey guys! This is the chapter which I had most fun writing!
Here is the link to the deviantART page with a picture of the arena -wenttothemoontoday dot deviantart dot com forward slash art forward slash The-51st-Hunger-Games-Arena-368131658?ga_submit_ne w=10%253A1367059138
Please replace the words with the actual punctuation because fanfiction doesn't like links AT ALL! ;)
Thankyou very much for all your reviews - I'm really glad you are pleased with your tribute's score and how I've written them.
*In the Blink of an Eye
...
Mylo Kingfisher, Head Gamemaker
It is complete. The final touches of the arena have been polished, checked and rechecked. The result is an arena which will cling to the minds of people for years to come. And it's mine.
Blood will be spilled, daggers thrown, arrows aimed. But ultimately, the ones who decide the tribute's fate are us, the Gamemaker
The tributes will rise into a small oval. The first thing they'll notice will be the mountain towering over them. The second will be the rapids. They will immediately write off the rapids as an escape route unless they are very mentally challenged. The frothing waters block a large portion of potential escape routes – the only other routes are to climb the mountain or to scramble over the mountainous rocks bordering the oval.
When the gong sounds, approximately two thirds of all the tributes will dash towards the brimming Cornucopia. They will soon find out that instead of food, weapons and other necessities, all there is, is wood, string and rocks. Some of the more intelligent ones will find a way to salvage the materials to make traps of various sorts. Others who didn't bother with the knot and trap section in training will be lost with the rubbish and shortly killed.
This will leave about half of the tributes left. Some will dash up the mountain side in pure panic and others will try to defeat the rocks. Lucky tributes will find the caves first.
The way that I have designed the way in which a tribute may obtain food and weapons is this: there are twenty-four packs situated around the arena. There are three different types, ranging from a small red pack with several crackers, a flask and a penknife, to a huge three sectioned camouflage pack equipped with all you need to survive. There are twelve small packs, eight medium packs and four lucky super packs.
The harder it is to find the pack, the better your reward will be. The simple packs will be almost in plain sight. The mediums will be behind or under natural recesses and bulges and the super packs will be 'outside of the box'.
A few extra parts to the arena which I commissioned myself include an underwater grotto. The rapids eventually feed into a calm lake, and it is here where you will find it. It is not so far down that it is unreachable; however a keen diver is most likely to find it. Here, one of the super packs will be found.
One other 'out of the box' brainwave I had was that the arena ends sharply in a precipice. Instead of having a force field that led Haymitch Abernathy to his victory last year, there will be a steep path which will lead down to a cave. Many tributes either will not find it, or will be too scared to attempt to scale the path. A super pack is placed there for a lucky tribute.
In the arena, there will be limited vegetation, therefore encouraging tributes to search for their packs. There are many nooks and crannies, hidden caves and visible caves. All may easily house one tribute. This would however be too simple.
I have introduced a new mutt which seems to be a cross between and snake, a lizard and a crab. Eyeless, it prowls the caves using only sense of smell to navigate. It can kill by contact, as its skin is coated in a deadly poison which can kill in minutes. These creatures cannot be eaten but can be killed by piercing between the plates of shell on its underside.
Let my Games begin.