The Moon Goddess' Chosen

475 Sudden... and Interesting Development

Facing off against one of them was a definite possibility. Intuitively, an alpha’s senses were much stronger than those of the average wolf… and an average wolf was exactly what Bree was.

She had the amber in her eyes to prove it.

Her mind went over her own perspective of the game at hand.

To keep the other team from stealing points, if at all they got petty, they’d most definitely pick a fight with you.

Finding an item was bound to be hard and it made sense that fully retrieving one would earn them a whole three points.

When it came down to it, stealing an item offered the opposing team fewer points. However, if the item was stolen from an enemy that was still in the process of returning the item to the Waiting Room, then the two-point gap would take on a whole new meaning.

They would have lost an item that could get them three points and the opponents would have had an easy time getting it from them. Two points, while less than three, were much easier to get… which made that strategy dangerous.

‘So, I might have to fight after all!’ A shiver went down Bree’s spine when she realised this was going to be a lot harder than she’d first thought it would be.

Going through the forest blind was starting to see like the least of her worries. Now she had to worry about fighting blind as well. Were they even capable of fighting blind, to begin with?

.....

“Have you made your choice, Ms Bree?” the short man asked her.

“Oh… I don’t know… This is so hard. If I end up meeting them when I’m in, I could… Oh no!” a loud grating sound suddenly interrupted her speech.

The three girls turned around to see the front of the Waiting room slowly lift up, letting in a stream of golden light from the other side…

The damp scent of the forest wafted into the Waiting room along with a cool breeze. Even the rhythmic chirping of birds could be heard in this man-made forest. The occasional breeze and rustle of leaves, “They really go all out with creating the environment,” Crysta exclaimed.

The timer was counting down…

The games had started and Bree hadn’t chosen what form she would take. A choice that seemed impulsive at first boiled down to reason and got buried in a mountain of worries and doubts.

Two hands grabbed the anxious girl’s shoulders and turned her away from the Great Arena.

“Hey Bree, look at me. Deep breaths. We all get nervous,” Lina cooed.

“What are you talking about? You’re perfectly calm,” the girl argued.

Lina chuckled, “Laughter and anxiety are very similar actually. If you decided to laugh right now, you would find it really easy. You don’t have to go out the moment the timer starts running. Calm down… this is a blind search after all. You have to listen to your senses better. That’s what will get you through this round. See that,” Lina pointed to a blue handkerchief that had been placed on the table.

That handkerchief is laced with the perfume that the items will be emitting. Your sense of smell will be your most important sense out there,” Lina suggested.

“Okay,” Bree picked up the cloth and brought it up to her nose. The distinct scent of the perfume that had been infused in the cloth flowed into her nose. Her tracking training kicked in and she memorized the scent with an astonishing degree of clarity.

With this small action, the nerves she significantly lessened. Bree felt ready to take on the world. “Let’s win this, Bree.”

Bree nodded and turned to the short man holding a blindfold in his hands, “I’ll go in my human form,” she announced.

‘There is too much I don’t know about the battlefield or the items we’ll be picking up. They’ve been too vague about that subject that I can’t even tell if they are talking about actual items or simply the same thing.’

There was so much the girl didn’t know, but whether she liked it or not, the games had begun and she’d already used five minutes to settle her nerves. She couldn’t afford to lose any more time… at the same time, she couldn’t afford to be careless.

The short man had her turn around while he fastened the blue blindfold over her eyes. In a moment, the world had gone completely black and the rest of her senses began to heighten.

Bree walked out through the large doors, feeling the cold air hit her once she was outside. Her ears immediately picked up on the different sounds in the forest. The birds chirping in the woods, the leaves rustling, the wind whistling, the sound of her footsteps crushing the leaves beneath her shoes.

There was so much information flowing into her mind through her senses that she couldn’t decipher anything at first. A few more steps into the forest and she collided head-first into a tree.

Lina suppressed the laughter that wanted to escape her, “Hey, Lina, I can tell you’re laughing,” Bree said through the mind link.

“Well, you bumped right into a tree,” the princess said to her in a controlled tone. Despite this tone, the waves of mirth coming from the princess were utterly unrestrained.

“Well, I wonder what you’ll be doing when I finally get out of your field of view,” the girl huffed but continued feeling her way as she walked deeper into the forest.

“Focus, Bree… Focus on the wind, sniff out the items we have to find,” Lina encouraged.

“I know what I’m supposed to do. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Yeah yeah yeah…” Lina chuckled and watched her friend cautiously advance into the woods. ‘So far so good, I guess,’ the princess thought to herself.

Lina genuinely thought everything was alright until she listened to the words the announcer was saying. Her blood ran cold…

“The contestant from the Sirius Waiting room finally came out. Wow, she certainly took her time. If I remember correctly, this girl’s name is Bree. And she is the first average werewolf to ever play in the Royal games. I don’t know what gave her the confidence to go against the most powerful werewolves in the world, but she’s here folks… and we expect a good show.

Oh my, looks like she’s still having trouble finding her way through the forest. While she’s having trouble going through the forest, Alpha Jason seems to be moving through it just fine. In fact, it’s almost like he’s running with his eyes open…”

“WAIT… RUNNING?” Lina nearly screamed at the screen.

But she couldn’t deny what her eyes were showing her. On the screen in the waiting room, one of the frames showed a clear video of King Cole’s beta alpha running through the woods with a green blindfold around his eyes.

He was clearly blind but that didn’t slow him down one bit. He was jogging through the woods like it was nothing, dodging all the trees without a single problem in search of their items.

The commentator’s voice came again through the Waiting Room speakers, “I’m here with Stan. An expert tracker from the Lycaon empire. He’s also an informant for the Hunter’s Organisation and a member of the Royal Games Organising committee this year. Stan, tell us what inspired you to come up with this… unorthodox game that seems to have the royals at the edges of their seats.”

“Well, Bill, this is one of those games you just sit down and only dream about. When I first mentioned this to the committee, I had expected them to turn it down but… pfft, here we are. I guess dreams do come true.”

“Yes, Stan. They certainly do. Tell us about what we are supposed to expect from this. Speaking personally, I find this game bloody impossible to win,” Bill asked.

“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Bill. For werewolves, this is a different matter. Our kind picks up so much at a single time that there is almost no way to distinguish these pieces of information without practice. And with that control comes the power of tracking. The best trackers out there will tell you that they barely need their eyes anymore. They’ve got all the senses they need to find their prey.”

“Fascinating, Stan. I had no idea the simple idea of tracking could hold so much information…” there was a momentary pause, “What’s this? Could he have…”

“Yes… yes, he has. I applaud that beta alpha’s unique talent,” Stan replied fondly, as though he’d known the contestant once before.

Lina tensed up when she noticed the alpha tip his head to the sky, scrunching his nose a bit. In the corner of the screen, she could see a waving green ribbon.

Jason had found his first item…

‘Not good,’ the princess felt her stomach turn. The beta alpha turned his head directly at the ribbon swaying in the air. It was high up in an oak tree and he would clearly need to climb to find it.

He thought for a bit before smirking… with that, he turned his head away from the ribbon and started jogging deeper into the forest.

“Jason just abandoned one of the items he’d clearly found. What is he thinking?” Lina gawked at the screen.

“That idiot… I didn’t think he was the petty type,” Crysta yelled at the monitor.

“Calm down, Crysta. Jason is not breaking any rules. Besides, this competition is about having fun. How you win, no matter how underhanded and as long as it doesn’t break the rules, is all a part of the game,” the princess chuckled.

“You can’t be fine with this, Lina. Can you?” Crysta argued.

“There is not much I can do about it. I’m just hoping Bree will be fine. That’s all I’m hoping for. If she can find our item and bring it back, then nothing will really matter. Stealing another person’s item would only get them one point and remove one from us. Even if Jason was able to get an item that belongs to us, we would still be ahead of him as long as we retrieved our own items,” Lina explained, switching her attention to the monitor showing Bree.

......…..

Bree was moving shakily through the woods, her world glitching in and out of her perception. The information flowing into her mind wasn’t slowing down… No, instead, it was increasing. The more she spent without her eyes, the more her other senses heightened.

The sound of the birds, the sound of woodpeckers… even the shuffle of a cricket’s wings and the sound of falling leaves were things she was becoming aware of. Her wolf forced its way forward, but the girl forced the urges to shift to the back of her mind.

Shifting would only get her turn cancelled and they would even lose points for it because the ribbon covering her eyes would be no more.

‘Breathe in… Breathe out…’ a voice suddenly wafted into her ears through the wind, interrupting her chaotic thoughts. With this voice’s invasion came a powerful sense of calmness.

This voice sounded a lot like one she’d come to know. However, the way she heard it was alien compared to what she was used to.

Instead of coming through her mind link, Honour’s voice was echoing through the wind and viciously cut through the storm in her mind instead of adding to it.

‘Clear your mind, Bree… Relax your shoulders… This is no different from the training you’ve gone through…’ the voice came again.

‘Don’t fight your senses… Embrace them, Bree. You’re a werewolf, not a human. Allow your senses to take over you. Let them be your eyes…’

The girl took in a deep breath once again, listening to the words in the wind. As she did, the little panic left suddenly vanished. Her fangs extended within her mouth and her ears grew longer, sharpening into tips with grey fur sprouting from the top of her head.

Surprisingly, he found that she wasn’t afraid of the transformation at all.

With the sudden change, her senses rose even higher and higher, letting in every little detail, overwhelming her mind so much that she was starting to feel the world spin.

Right when she was about to doubt the voice in the wind, the most unexpected thing happened.

A monochromatic image of her surroundings suddenly became clear to her, revealing everything that was around her, almost like she had never needed her eyes to see.

“Folks, there has been a shocking new development… Is she…

“Yes, Bill… That girl right there… is she sprinting?”

The crowd gasped before erupting into a chaotic uproar…

Bree was zipping through the woods at top speed, making a beeline for something that had caught her attention.