The Moon Goddess' Chosen

476 A Battle Against Odds

Lina stared dumbfounded at the video of one of her best friends dashing on the screen. Bree was weaving through the trees faster than anyone thought possible making great distances without a moment of hesitation.

And doing spectacularly so with a blindfold over her eyes.

She ducked when a branch was too low and leapt over roots with great ease and effortless foresight as she continued to make her way deeper and deeper into the manmade forest.

The carefully planted cameras in the woods kept switching at rapid speeds just to keep up with her inhuman speed. Thankfully, she wasn’t wandering aimlessly through the woods which made it a lot easier for the cameras to keep track of where she would appear next.

An algorithm that had run the recent data from the forest calculated her path and brought up a dormant camera in the distance, far ahead of her current position, her most anticipated destination.

The screen showed a large pit in the centre of a clearing. At the very bottom of it was something waving in the air… a blue ribbon, but that was not all.

This ribbon was attached firmly to something else which was also painted with blue strips… a lance planted deep in the ground. It wasn’t long after showing this item that Bree broke through the treeline and approached the pit.

There was a gasp from the audience when they saw where she was going. At that speed, she would fall straight into the pit and in the worst-case scenario, hit her head on the steel shaft of the lance.

But to everyone’s surprise, that didn’t happen. As soon as the girl broke through the treeline, she slowed down her pace and stopped at the rim of the large pit. Bree stood straight and sniffed the air for confirmation.

.....

The ribbon was blowing in her direction which explained why she was so sure of its location.

The deadly accuracy with which she had discerned its location, however, was not to be scoffed at. “Astounding, she found the item this fast and without much trouble. Who could have known there was a werewolf out there that wasn’t a royal but was this talented? Am I right, Stan?” the commentator screamed over the speakers.

“Actually, Bill. Talents like these have been heard of over the years. Once in a while, a wolf is born into this world with an astounding sense of smell and with the ability to discern their surroundings with such deadly accuracy that it’s almost like magic,” the guest speaker explained.

“Would you happen to be one of these special werewolves, Stan?”

“Unfortunately, I am not. I had a lot of training to get where I am today and I still find enigmas like the girl down there,” Stan sighed.

“There you have it folks. The Sirius team brought a trump card into the games this year. They seem determined to show us that the colour of one’s eyes does not determine how strong they can really be,” Bill announced with a well of enthusiasm that was just impossible to ignore.

Bree didn’t linger at the rim of the pit. Having grasped the nature of her new surroundings, she stepped inside and slid down the sloping wall of the pit and made her way to the bottom. However, as soon as she had, something else caught her attention.

With everyone paying attention to her, no one noticed the presence of another werewolf. Standing on the other side of the rim was a blonde man whose crimson eyes were covered with a green blindfold.

“I didn’t think she would choose you to join the Sirius pack’s three contestants. Clearly, there is something special about you since you’ve already made it this far without your sight,” Jason chuckled, staring down at the girl approaching the lance, “Now hand that over…”

The beta alpha went silent as he heard the resonating sound of metal. Bree had yanked the lance from the ground without listening to a word he had to say.

“I should have known Lycaon wouldn’t play fair.”

“Oh, but I am. There are points awarded for stealing an item and a point deducted from the opponent. I’m not the one who makes the rules,” Jason smirked.

Bree turned to him and froze in place, unmoving.

Jason stared at her for a good thirty seconds, trying to understand why she wasn’t trying to escape the bowl she was standing in, “Did you suddenly forget how to climb?”

“Nah… but if you waste the whole game trying to steal my item, then no one wins. It would be easy for you to steal this if I tried climbing out of this thing.

So, if you want the item, you will have to come and take it from me,” with that said, the girl gave the lance a good spin, wielding it like a deadly weapon and facing the alpha in a determined stance.

“Interesting…” Jason stepped onto the sloping side of the steep side of the bowl-like pit and began sliding into it. A buzzing drone high in the sky hovered above the pit to get a better view of what was going on inside.

Since both of these werewolves were blindfolded, it was hard to believe they could move around this confidently.

Still, to all that had been watching, favour had begun to tip in Bree’s favour. The young girl was handling herself far better and more smoothly than the beta alpha in the absence of sight.

As it turned out, sliding down the side of this manmade bowl was more disorienting than the alpha had initially anticipated. He first lost his sense of altitude and the mental image of his surroundings suddenly wavered.

A wave of panic threatened to get a hold of him, making his balance suffer next. While he was trying to regain his bearings and make it look as though nothing was wrong with him, he felt his instincts flare up.

The sound of rapid footsteps was the first to reach his ears, alerting him of motion coming from something in front of him, ‘Of course, she had some trick up her sleeve…’

Bree wasn’t planning on actually fighting the beta alpha of the Lycaon pack. While she believed herself to be a decent fighter, she was not ignorant of the power difference between herself, an amber-eyed werewolf and Jason, a crimson-eyed beta alpha.

If the most powerful werewolves in the world were to be ranked up, she had no doubt that Jason would end up in the top ten… And those weren’t odds she was willing to test.

There was simply no way she could challenge him to a fair fight and she wouldn’t do so if she could help it. So, instead, she’d asked him to join her at the bottom of the somewhat deep pit for a fair battle for the item she’d found.

Just when she heard him start to slide down the smooth side of the man-made earthen bowl, she called on the accurate moving image of her surroundings and got low to the ground and gathered all the energy her legs could muster.

The girl then launched into a sprint going straight for the alpha. The crowd watched, entranced by the sudden action, as the small nimble wolf went up against a creature way out of her league.

By the time Jason realised what was happening, all he could do was bring his arms out in front of him to block her attack, “You don’t play fair either.”

The alpha grunted when two feet slammed into his forearms with enough force to throw and bury him into the side of the man-made bowl, creating a Jason-shaped depression.

Bree leapt off the beta alpha’s arms and flipped high in the air, flying in a neat arc and landing smoothly on the rim of the earthen bowl, “See you later, Jason.”

The beta alpha rolled to the bottom of the pit before rapidly standing. The man dusted himself off a bit and out of sheer amusement, threw his head back in a great peal of laughter.

This was the first time he’d ever been tricked by an average werewolf and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t intrigued by the sudden turn of events.

......….

After what Bree had just pulled, the girl had her heart pumping very fast. Whether it was from adrenaline or the fear of having attacked a beta alpha, the real reason was unknown to her and irrelevant as well.

She had only one mission alone now…

And that was to get the item back to their Waiting room which was now serving as their base. The girl dashed forward as fast as her legs could carry her. To her surprise, this was faster than her normal human running speed.

For some reason, after she’d listened to Honour’s voice in the wind, her abilities and senses had doubled allowing her to reach speeds she’d never tapped into in her human form.

Her thighs and calves screamed for relief but she couldn’t stop… not now when she was so close to victory.

Fortunately for her, the mental image that her senses projected in her mind was more than her eyes could ever offer her, for she could even see around trees in a way she couldn’t describe.

The downside of this ability soon became known to her as she picked on the presence of a werewolf pursuing her with tremendous speed. Jason was not holding back anymore and he was closing in faster than the girl could escape.

Tapping into the pack link, the girl located the Waiting Room. It was still too far and the man was coming closer. ‘What will he do to me if he finds me?’ she panicked, ‘No, there is no time for me to worry. I have to see this through… In whatever way that I can…’ she thought as she gripped the shaft of the lance even tighter.

A well of raw determination poured into her as she braced herself for the sprint of her life. With her mind no longer clouded, she gathered the facts she knew about what was happening with the hopes of finding some leverage over the beta alpha that would enable her to extend her survival time. Simply running wouldn’t get her to the Waiting room unscathed.

Jason was stronger than her in more ways than she could count, but there was something she could still use to her advantage. It was something she’d already used before back in the bowl-shaped pit.

It was that her perception of their environment was a lot sharper and even harder to shake than Jason’s. Even as he barreled towards her, she could still hear him cursing every time he tripped over a root or obstacle in his path and she heard the ruffle of leaves each time a low-lying branch struck his face and the frustrated grunt that followed.

Bree continued running through the forest, a plan beginning to take shape in her mind. Suddenly, she was no longer filled with fear and instead, she was filled with more determination to see this through.

The two tore through the forest, against all logic, rushing through it as though they hadn’t been robbed of their sight. Jason found keeping up with the girl to be a bit problematic as his mental perception of the world kept fading in and out of focus.

Each time he nearly tripped over a tree root or a rock or got hit in the face by the leaves of the oak trees, his concentration was disrupted and his mental image suffered greatly, giving way to more possibilities to trip and bump into obstacles.

But his determination to catch up with the girl was stronger than ever, ‘How is she able to move so well and at that speed? Sirius wasn’t messing around in its selection of candidates after all. They’ve got some tricks up their sleeves this year but that won’t change anything.’

With that last thought, the alpha finally caught up, flanking Bree on the left. Jason extended his claws and made a swipe to the right. With one move, he would stop her in her tracks and take the item from her with barely a fight.

It was like cornering a frightened hare, ‘There is nowhere for you to run now…”

The alpha swiped to the right with all the force he could muster and his hand took a vicious lateral path that should have hit the girl’s head even at their pace, however, to his surprise, his hand followed the path unhindered by anything.

When the mental image in his head cleared, an expression of shock replaced his former triumphant look. Bree had dropped so low to the ground at the right moment like an athlete starting a race… and completely dodged his attack.

The amber-eyed werewolf was crouched low to the ground without breaking her dash.

In the next moment, Bree shot forward, leaving the beta alpha dazed by the sudden development…

“WHAT HAVE WE JUST WITNESSED?” the announcer, Bill suddenly screamed over the speakers.

In the Sirius Waiting room, Crysta started chuckling, “I knew Bree was amazing… but even I didn’t see this coming.” The girl sprinting through the forest never once broke her concentration.

Lina scrunched her brows at the frame containing Bree’s running form. ‘Something’s different… Has Bree always been capable of a half shift?’