On a patch of grass within an evergreen forest, the breeze spread the scent of iron into the air, sending the equivalent of a flare in the middle of the night through air to everything that lurked around these parts.
Despite this, no furry, or scaled or feathered organism took even a single step towards the origin of the scent.
For good reason as around the source of the scent there were a multitude of damaged trees, some felled, some marked by claws and others devastated by sword marks laid haphazardly on the landscape.
At the epicentre of all this commotion stood two contrasting figures, one short, obese female, currently heaving while hunched over sparking a stark contrast with the young male's individual's tall, lean and upright figure.
A pair of vivid silver globes bore down at the heaving figure ''how can a champion even be this weak?, completely inefficient use of your abilities, zero proficiency with your own weapon and ridiculously low durability."
A wet cough echoed out as a splotch of blood fell onto the ground ''Hard to stay active and fit when I'm busy training mutts.''
The young man showed no response, still calmly hovering over her 'Nice to see you can still speak; guess your champion status isn't fake?''
A smirk sprung itself on her face as she said ''Oh, you would have already found that out by looking at your parents' graves They left something for you before they croaked, you want to know where it is?''
He shook his head "Parents is a strong word. People who made me is better, and i know they'd never leave me anything."
his fingers clicked together as he said ''And the reinforcements you've been stalling for aren't going to arrive.
Aaand right then, as her face paled, he loosed a claw right across her jugular vein.
He lazily waved the blood off of his claw with a bored expression on his face "All that for work this underwhelming conclusion, what was the point of me coming here myself? Should've just let aone slit her throat''
Loeto then sighed and sat down on the damp grass beneath him in the clearing, enjoying the breeze and absentmindedly staring at the sky, completely ignoring the growing pool of blood due to its previous vessel somehow managing to be obese despite being awakened.
As he exhaled a frosty breath Loeto further contemplated how this land whale beside him had managed to find and capture their tribe.
...
A young man with a lean frame, a head of unruly coily hair that drooped over their eyes and concealed the figures of his diamond shaped face was sitting on the edge of a hill tossing stones down into the depths of the clouds.
He let out a frosty breath ''Fucking hypocrites, willing to have me ingest poison and unknown mixtures but unwilling to let out a whisper about some tribe tradition, I mean come on, they're gambling with my life here.''
He grabbed and tossed another stone ''and I won't even try and ask any other tribe members; the only reason they tolerate my existence at all is cause of the old geezer and biddy. If not for those two the rest of the tribe would've tossed me to the wolves.''
He let out a long sigh ''come one mate, I heard there's about 50 percent of all adolescents die during this ritual, and they still won't help me out.''
he took a few deep breaths to calm himself and said ''There's no way those two will let me die without their part of the bargain, they've spent way too much to just let me die.''
He stood up and shook the dust of his loincloth ''So there has to be some sort of fall back, some sort of safe measure, I just need to figure it out''
The people he kept on referring two is an eccentric old couple who'd cared and fed him after his parents abandoned him due to his sickly build, unlike the rest of his litter, who were all several times stronger and faster than him due to their werewolf heritage, unlike Loeto who was an anomaly in the clan as everyone except him were burly and huge easily reaching 2 meters tall and 110 kilograms of pure muscle (187 pounds for the Americans.)with the freaks amongst them reaching 2.6 metres tall and 190 kg's of dense muscle and
A startling difference between him and them was his 1.8 meter height in comparison to his 2 meter plus tall agemates, this along with the fact that despite eating as much as the rest of them he couldn't put on any muscle caused him to become the runt of the pack, pushed around by anyone larger than him which unfortunately enough included anyone considered an adolescent(older than 12 but younger than 18).
The fact that I am completely physically outclassed by everyone that had gone through puberty, including the females didn't help me in any way, shape or form.
My lack of triangular, upright and furred ears also caused me to have much worse hearing than the rest of the tribe.
My lack of a snout caused me to be a dunce in anything tracking related in comparison.
My lack of a short bushy tail caused me to be slower and less agile than my tribes' mates along with causing me to become ostracized.
All these factors culminated in me basically being a chihuahua in front of rottweiler.
And that same Chihuahua was now being forced to go through the same trials that shaved off half the rottweilers.
So, in simple words I stand no chance of surviving without preparation, the main problem is, I can't prepare for the unknown!