Something awakes me at sunset, and I know it's not the light.

There's a sinking feeling in my stomach as I sit up and survey my surroundings. Nothing seems different. The walls of the cave are still jagged, the opening is empty, and all out stuff is still beside us. Percy is still asleep underneath me, his snores echoing around the cave walls, coming at me from all sides.

Yet something is off. I can feel it in my core. Every instinct in me is telling me to run as fast as I can, but I don't know why. There's nothing I can see that could hurt me.

That's when I heard it. Sniffing, far too loud to be a mountain goat or any other animal that could be in our terrain. My entire body freezes as I listen to the sound as it gets louder and louder the closer the creature it belonged to got to our cave.

I started shaking Percy, but he was completely out of it. Just as I'm about to slap him, the creature appears in the opening.

It's a lion. A huge mane covers its neck, meaning that it was male, and its golden fur reflects the sunlight beautifully. His snout is in the air, as if he was following a scent. I haven't read much about lions, but I'd read enough to know that wasn't something lions did. They weren't hounds.

Even without that clue, however, I could tell that this lion was different. Its teeth are too big for its mouth. They hang over his bottom jaw, white and sharp, like miniature knives. They must have been about twenty centimetres long. I'd seen rulers that were shorter than those.

If that wasn't enough, its claws are as long as my forearm, and look wickedly sharp. To top it all off, it's huge; at least twice the size of a normal lion. If I were to stand next to it, it would be a good three heads taller than me.

These aren't normal lions. Why would they be? This is the gamemakers plan to end the games. Normal lions wouldn't be exciting enough. The people in the Capitol needed to be entertained, and the gamemakers were ready to deliver.

I sit completely still, scared to breathe. It doesn't seem to have spotted me yet. If I'm lucky, it won't notice us and will walk away, hopefully following a scent that isn't coming from us.

Then again, if I were lucky, I wouldn't be here in the first place.

Suddenly, it's head snaps to the right, and we're making eye contact. He doesn't move for a few seconds, and neither do I. We stare at each other, both shocked, not entirely sure what we should do.

Then a deep roar emits from its throat, powerful enough that I can feel a slight tremor in the ground, and I lunge for my backpack.

I hear its lumbering footsteps behind me, but I try to ignore them as I search for my knives. My hand closes around the hilt of one, and I allow myself to glance behind me.

The lion was too big to fit through the opening of the cave, though not by much. It didn't seem to mind pain, as it was forcing itself through, pushing with its hind legs. There were gashes on his side from where the rock was cutting him as he propelled himself forward, making streams of crimson stain his fur.

Quickly, I stand up, gripping my knife tightly. There's no way I can beat this thing if it gets all the way through. It would bite off my head before I could blink.

Taking a deep breath, I plant my feet on the ground, holding my knife above my head. It's almost in by now, its blood pooling underneath its feet. Now that it's so close to me, I can smell it; musty, metallic, and spoiled, like rotten eggs. It's enough to make me want to throw up.

I only have seconds left. Gritting my teeth, I aim up my shot and throw. My knife whizzes through the air as it sails past me and towards the beast.

If this doesn't kill it, we're screwed. Percy has woken up by now, but I can tell that's he not fully awake yet. Either that, or he's paralyzed by fear. Either way, he's useless at the moment, and even if he wasn't, there was no way that we could take this thing down without one or both of us dying. 

Time seems to slow as I watch my knife hurl towards him. All of that practice back home pays off. My knife hits the beast in its eyes, exactly as I'd planned. That was the weakest spot on his body. It had to be.

My heart stops as I study the lion's reaction, seeing if my plan worked or not. Blood runs down the lion's face, and its body slumps against the cave wall, limp. I wait a few seconds, watching, but it doesn't move. It's dead.

There's no time to celebrate. I rush over to Percy and slap him in the face, waking him up completely, before rustling through my bag for my other knives. Once I have them all, I rush over to the beast's corpse and pull my blade out of its eye socket.

"We have to go!" I yell at Percy, who has gotten out of his sleeping bag and has his sword in hand.

With the gamemakers controlling them and that lion's roar, there was no way that more weren't coming. Going outside would be dangerous, but staying in would be a death sentence.

Together, we manage to push the lion's corpse out of the entrance and run out. There's only one place to go, and neither of us have to say a word to make sure that we both go in the same direction.

There was only one way to survive. We have to end this. Now.