The Moon Goddess' Chosen

516 Never mind... She’s here

The hunters of Brigadia were caught off guard by the sudden influx of werewolves. Most of them were at the edges of the town, dealing with the ‘rogue’ issue that had arisen in the past few weeks.

Because of this, they hadn’t prepared for an internal attack. Scratch that, there was simply no way to predict such a thing… and at a scale as large as what they witnessed. Wolves tore through the streets, attacking everything and anything that lived and breathed with no sense of purpose or intelligence.

There was nothing to explain the sudden phenomenon and thus no preparations had been made.

Anthony was caught off guard, quickly using the wolfsbane-laced throwing knives concealed within his jacket to put a stop to the wolves in his sight, naturally assuming rogues had finally chosen to attack.

This assumption was put to a stop soon, however, when he witnessed a frightened woman collapse on the sidewalk. For some reason, the rampaging wolves left her alone after that… and he witnessed her shifting, her grey human eyes quickly gaining the glow of a werewolf.

What was more was… when she completed the painful shift, she turned as murderous and irrational as the others.

The situation quickly escalated as more and more humans shifted before his eyes.

Steeling his nerves, he made sure to take the chaos that followed as his first priority. He had to stop the panic lest the hunters be hindered from carrying out their tasks.

Panic would only cause more trouble. The wolves they were fighting were more than just random rogues that they could put down like cattle. The rabid wolves were citizens of Brigadia.

.....

He blocked out the dark thoughts that threatened to throw his mind into despair. Wasn’t he the one that killed three of the wolves before witnessing a human shifting? He didn’t want to admit it…

No, he would stop the slaughter instead.

He had to deal with the chaos before there was nothing left.

But that was a lot harder than it looked.

Not everyone had come to the realisation that he had… and until that could happen, there was going to be more death… and regret.

The First shifts were happening at once and randomly. Even after rescuing a frightened group of humans that weren’t going through this process, they would quickly disband when one of them started feeling joint aches and headaches.

…and the chaos would worsen tenfold.

It was hopeless…

As a result, he let loose an order he never thought he’d ever have to.

Anthony ordered the hunters to put down any and all werewolves they came across. They were to refrain from killing them but put them down nonetheless and move on through the town.

Due to the random nature of the transformations, clearing a place of the wolves that had shifted did not mean they were completely gone. Any human could still succumb to the demands of their wolf side and begin the shift as well long after the hunters had left.

This made their situation much… much harder to deal with. The hunters were slowly succumbing to the pressure of trying to protect everyone.

The hunters couldn’t be in all places at once and yet that’s exactly what they were supposed to do. The director gritted his teeth, trying to contain the feeling of uselessness that threatened to reduce him to nothing.

All he could do was continue fighting… He’d given his orders and the hunters had moved on to carry them out, sweeping through the town as they carried out his orders.

When it became clear the panic wouldn’t easily die down, the hunters stopped trying to calm the masses and simply focused on what it was they were running from.

Anyone that showed signs of shifting was to be captured while those that had shifted would get put down with a dose of wolfsbane to keep them subdued for an extended period of time. Just enough wolfsbane to weaken them but not enough to kill them.

The hunters unleashed the full wrath of their gifts on the town, order collapsing and being replaced by a helpless attempt to protect what little humanity was left in the town.

At the rate at which things were going, it seemed as though the humans in the town were actually less than the werewolves. It became harder to predict the end result of the battle and what it meant for the future of Brigadia.

It only took a few hours…

After a few hours, the fighting came to a close with only a handful of humans gathered within the confines of the Hunter’s Agency. These were the last people under suspicion… and for good reason too.

A few of them had managed to completely fight the First Shift and buy themselves more time while others were still stuck in the early stages of the process.

“Director Anthony, we’ve gathered them all here! Now what?” Samantha called out to him.

The female had got to work helping them the moment she arrived. Anthony thought she was more distracted than usual but without any real chance to ask her why he let it slide.

What could he do though? It was a good question. Anthony didn’t really know what he was going to do with the shifting wolves. As soon as they completed their first shifts, they would attack.

That much was clear from the ones before them…

However, now that they hadn’t shifted yet, he felt there should have been an option other than putting them down.

“Let’s contain them for now… until she gets here,” a feminine voice commanded.

And then there was… her.

She’d introduced herself during the fray as Brunhilde and made quick work of the werewolves, fighting with a ferocity that reminded the man of the Mighty Warriors. She was strong… really strong.

The large warrior woman dressed in skins was helping them fight against the wolves as well. The woman had come out of nowhere and just started helping them, cursing every now and then for being left to handle everything herself…

‘The nerve of this woman!’

Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to have the sense to follow the chain of command. She did as she pleased and this was starting to get on Anthony’s nerves, ‘Who does she think she is?’

“And how do you suggest we do that?” Director Anthony asked through gritted teeth.

Brunhilde rubbed the back of her head with a baffled expression, “Barricades?! Don’t you have those? I’m assuming you use some for the highway.”

“Those are too short. They’ll leap over them with ease,” Anthony countered.

“Well, we could always stack them on top of each other or we could position hunters around the enclosure of barricades and keep throwing the escaping wolves back in. We only need to buy time,” Brunhilde explained.

“Buy time for what?”

Brunhilde opened her mouth to speak… but froze and closed it when a sudden breeze rushed through the compound. The shifting humans seemed to feel it as well, going silent along with everything.

“Never mind… She’s here.”

The warrior hunter slammed her sledgehammer into the ground and leaned against it, assuming the composure of someone bored and free of all burden.