Helping the Wolves (Madison Joshi and the Wolves series- Book 2)

|25| Madison

During evening, the next day, the four of them were called to the castle by a guard. Maddy suspected that there were more guards hidden behind a veil of illusion. Their journey to the castle was faster as they didn't have to worry about being tricked by the faeries as the queen- whose name Maddy found out to be Tatiana- had promised them that no tricks would be played. When they reached the castle, Tatiana was waiting for them along with a few soldier faeries.

Without telling anything, Tatiana turned around and started walking. The four of them had no other option except to follow her. Tatiana led them to a staircase. Maddy couldn't see where the stairs ended. They descended the stairs for a long time, too long in Maddy's opinion. Who needed that long of a staircase? It was a little dark at the bottom of the staircase but Maddy could make out the outline of the others. From there, Tatiana led them through a series of corridors and stopped right in front of a huge door.

"I'll enter first. You will enter only when your names are called," Tatiana instructed and threw open the gates.

It took a few seconds for Maddy to adjust to the sudden light. What she saw made her jaw drop open. On the other side of the door was a literal colosseum. It looked like the colosseum. You know, the one that you found at Rome where gladiator fights happened. The only difference was that the colosseum she was standing in front of wasn't broken and didn't look that old. It consisted of a huge arena and surrounding it were thousands of seats. Sitting on those seats were thousands of faeries. They all seemed to be eagerly waiting for the games to begin. There were some faeries flying over the arena as well to make sure that everyone was safe.

Suddenly, Maddy wasn't so sure about participating in the games.

"Is this going to be a gladiator fight?" Maddy whisper-asked the others.

If this was some sort of fight, the faeries had a huge advantage. Although the werewolves didn't have brute strength, the faeries had illusion powers. They could easily trick the four of them into losing.

Before she knew it, the four of them were called for. While they were walking the crowd started whispering among themselves. Looked like werewolf vs faerie games didn't happen often.

As they walked in, Maddy stared at the faeries that they would be competing against, trying to analyze them. They seemed to be older than Maddy. There were two girls and two boys. Just like Maddy, faeries too sized Maddy and the others up. As Maddy looked around, she saw that Tatania was seated in a throne among the audience.

Tatiana rose and cleared her throat. Immediately the crowd stopped murmuring. It was so silent that you could literally hear a pin drop. Maddy prayed that her stomach would stay quiet and not start growling. That would make things awkward as hell. Everyone seemed to be waiting eagerly to hear what Tatiana had to say.

"Faeries, for all of your entertainment today we our holding a competition, a competition between werewolves and faeries." Tatiana paused for a minute to let the crowd's cheer die away.

"We have got three different challenges. The team which wins the majority of the three challenges wins the game. The first challenge will take place now. I am sure all of you are eager to know what this round is about." Once again Tatiana paused to allow the crowd to cheer.

Looking at the Maddy and her team, she explained, "Here is how it will work. There are two different jars, one for the werewolves and the second for the faeries. The faerie jar contains the names of the faeries in the team, and similarly the werewolf jar contains the names of the werewolves in the team. I'll be picking two chits from each jar. The two faeries chosen will compete against the two werewolves. There will also be a goblet placed in front of me which will contain different challenges. I will pick up one scroll and whichever challenge is mentioned in the scroll, will be the challenge for that round. This game focuses more on teamwork than strength or wisdom so let me warn you- most of these competitions involve a lot of team work."

So that was why they needed her name. Early that morning, one of the guards had come up to them and had asked them to write their names. Maddy had been wary about giving her name, but she didn't want to piss the faeries off so she wrote down her name on the provided piece of paper.

Maddy hadn't exactly understood what the game was about. There were too many jars and chits involved for her to understand but she hoped to understand it as the game started.

Two maids scurried forward with two jars and one huge goblet, and placed them in a table in front of Tatiana. Maddy assumed that one jar was for Team Werewolves and the other was for Team Faeries. Although Maddy had told Tatiana about her not being a werewolf, Tatiana seemed to refer to them as Team Werewolf. Not that Maddy minded. She was more than happy to be called a werewolf. Team Werewolf did sound better as compared to Team Werewolf-with-one-human.

With a flourish of cornets, Tatiana walked up to the table. She went to one of the jars. She dramatically took out two chits and opened them. With a huge smile on her face, she announced, "From the faeries side, we have... Brigette and Cordelia!"

The crowd burst into cheers. They hollered as the two girls from Team Faerie stepped forward. The two faeries seemed pretty pleased to be chosen together.

Next, the faerie took out two chits from the other jar. She opened the chit and read out the names. "And from the werewolves' side, we have... Jeremy and Alexa!"

Once, again the crowd burst into cheers as they called out Jeremy and Alexa's names. Maddy had expected the crowd to be silent but it seemed as though the crowd was here for entertainment purposes only. They didn't give a damn about which species won.

Finally, Tatiana walked up to the huge goblet. The goblet was ten times the size of the other two jars and was intricately carved. It resembled the goblet from Hary Potter movies except the fact that it was the size of an average human. As Tatiana flew up to take one of the scrolls out, the crowd became quiet. She unrolled the script and read through it once before announcing the challenge.

"The first round is a combat challenge. The first team to bleed will lose. But, there are a few conditions. You can't use any of your magical abilities to hurt each other. That includes the usage of wings and illusion for faeries and shifting to a wolf for werewolves. The second condition is that you can't touch each other. Other than that, there are no rules."

Maddy stared at Tatiana as though she had grown two heads. How can someone possibly draw out blood without touching each other. They didn't have any weapons with them either. How were Jeremy and Alexa supposed to win the challenge without physical contact?

Even the crowd started murmuring. Everyone seemed to be thinking about how the challenge could be won.

Suddenly, numerous bells pealed signaling that the first round was about to start.