The Moon Goddess' Chosen

442 Unconscious Change

Drake Sirius ran upstream trying to make the most of his day. Hunger was starting to catch up to him. He eyed the sky and realised the night would be upon him in a few hours.

Trying to estimate when next he would be too tired, the prince found that he could still press on. He also wondered where the extra energy was coming from but shrugged it off as he continued running uphill.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened and he certainly thought it wasn’t going to be the last. Lately, he’d found that he could no longer estimate the true height of his limits. When he wanted to do something he found possible at a certain point in time, he wasn’t surprised when he found that he couldn’t do it… and vice versa.

It was almost like his body was switching between different levels of power leaving him to only watch the bizarre changes he was going through. The upside was that he hadn’t gotten into trouble because of this yet…

So he didn’t mind.

Letting his mind wander, the prince tried to think about what had happened with the mountain pass, but couldn’t make a conclusion on what had happened. His thoughts wandered all over, ranging from his sister to the conversation he’d had with the king and queen… and finally wandering to Lina’s best friend, Honour.

The thought of the girl made his heart race. A feeling he was now certain wasn’t normal. The two of them had spent an abnormal amount of time in the company of each other and were oddly comfortable around each other.

He liked helping her with her errands and admired her free-spirited nature. She was the only person he’d found that could get completely lost in their work.

More times than one, she’d caught him staring at her while she worked in the flower shop and he’d diverted their conversations to her passions. As a result, she had told him a great deal about flowers and their special qualities.

.....

Honour even kept a journal where she wrote about every different kind of flower she learnt about. Drake wasn’t particularly interested in flowers but the subject got oddly interesting when Honour was talking about them.

As a result, he’d started hanging out at the flower shop, helping her about the shop when he didn’t have anything to do. When her mother took over the shop for her and Lina got deep into her training, Honour found herself seeking the prince’s company.

Everything had been going just right aside from a few magical occurrences that he’d agreed to keep secret. Everything was going just right before…

Before she revealed what she was to him. She’d tried to keep the truth about her powers a secret from him, but eventually, the secret grew too heavy for her to carry.

Honour revealed the powers she was capable of using and what she had done at the reserve. Suddenly the stories he’d heard from the students that survived the attack on the reserve made all the sense in the world.

The information still shook him to this day and had more effect on him than he’d expected. Even after telling him that she could heal others and control plants, the prince still sensed he was missing something crucial. Something about her never added up and the more he spent time with her, the more it nagged him.

When his thoughts started spiralling to the odd things he’d started experiencing, he shook his head and brought his mind to the present.

The landscape around him had completely changed. There were trees around him… the last thing he’d expected to see in the barren Sirius Mountains. He looked around and nearly panicked. The mountain was behind him now…

‘Wait, wasn’t I just running beside the stream?’ his thoughts rumbled within his mind. He couldn’t believe what had just happened to him.

No matter how many times he blinked or tried to wipe the fog from his eyes, the colossal mountain was behind him.

When had he crossed over to the other side? Wasn’t he supposed to go through the ice cap? Drake doubted he would have been able to miss the drastic temperature difference.

He would have continued to berate his mind if it hadn’t been for the dull numbness in his paws. The signs of the snow at the top of the forest were clear on his paws. And even as he noticed it, the pain vanished almost immediately.

The prince looked back up at the towering mountain still wondering when it was that he’d traversed the entirety of the mountain. The journey was also impossible to make in one day. How long had he zoned out? What kind of zoning out had he just experienced?

Nothing made sense.

Thinking only brought more confusion and it wasn’t long before the exhaustion began to kick in. The prince wasn’t thinking much when he allowed himself to rest in the woods a few hundred metres from the colossal ranges.

The marshland they were meant to travel through before they got to the city was not far, but he was sure from his memory of the map that it wasn’t a large distance to go.

Remembering his journey the last time he’d gone through the Trials also provided him with enough insight. That time, crossing the mountain hadn’t been as easy either. However, at the time, the mountain pass was still functional so he never had to face the cold at the top of the ranges.

‘I hope you do well up there, little sister,’ he thought to himself just before his ears perked up at the slightest crunch.

The wolf was on high alert almost immediately, bumping his head on a branch overhead. Drake cursed the low branches of the trees but didn’t think much about the matter. His ears picked up the sound of crunching leaves and this was enough to take his attention away from the pain in his head.

The wolf scanned the woods and soon enough, a flash of white notified him of a dashing bunny. The creatures were usually fast and difficult to catch… well, for wolves out on their first hunts.

Drake stalked the small creature as quietly as he could, watching it munch on its new score of food before pouncing on it. With teeth bared and paws outstretched, the wolf made the jump almost instantly, not giving the rabbit any time to react.

The prince bit into the rabbit’s fur, not caring for seasoning or cooking fast, ‘Hunting feels far easier today. I guess today is my day.’

With something in his belly, the exhausted royal fell unconscious, sleeping without a care for anything that could attack him. It was against all reason for him to sleep like this. Over the past few days, he’d climbed trees to keep himself from being noticed, but the call of the wild was starting to get to him.

His wolf was taking more and more of his mind, guiding him to survive as the creature of the wild he was. Drake didn’t know how long he’d spent in his wolf form… or that remarkable changes were happening to his wolf’s body.

He didn’t notice that the tree branches were not low but that his head was too high.

Sitting atop a branch not far from the royal was a single raven with an inconceivable spark of sapphire glow deep staring from within its dark eyes.