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“All of it,” Merine said, and I groaned before finishing it. The cheetah growled back at me.
When we were done, Merine collected the cauldrons and handed them back to the kids behind him. “The rule here is simple. There are no rules. You do whatever it takes to hunt down the cheetah and bring us its head.”
“Is that really necessary?” Luke asked. “You just saw the cave accept our blood and give us the key. Obviously, we are what we claim to be. Why the need for more tests?”
“You are what you claim to be. But what you are doesn’t make you entitled to the stone. If you want it, you will have to earn it.”
“What if we die out there? It’s a cheetah, not a chimp.”
“If you are what you think you are, then you have nothing to fear. Your ancestors hunted cheetahs for sport.”
With no more objection from Luke or me, Merine turned to leave. “The cage won’t open until we are far from here.”
I watched them all go, and soon it was just me, Luke, and the growling beast that looked ready to tear us into pieces. Merinesaid we needed to capture it, but the cheetah looked like it wanted to fight us. It kept growling at us, its black eyes scanning the environment behind us and then settling on me. I could see the intent behind them. They were those of a murderer prepared to leave with no regret.
I had killed scores of hunters that people had described as dangerous, but looking at the cheetah, I knew this would be the hardest job I had done yet.
Merine and the others were gone, and we waited patiently for the cheetah,
“We attack once it comes out,” Luke said.
He looked eager and wanted to be done with this. I wanted to be too, but I felt wary about this cheetah. It wasn’t an animal I had ever come up against. I have not come up against so many animals, just deer, but I had a feeling they don’t think like humans. They attack just because they are predators, and there aren’t any complexities to their thought process. That would make them utterly dangerous, which was disturbing for me.
The gate of the cage creaked, and slowly, it lifted. I couldn’t tell if they did that by magic or if there were some kind of mechanics in place to open the cage after a while.
Luke and I didn’t have to talk to communicate. We knew what must be done. We flanked the cheetah, each of us ready to attack it from the side once it stepped out. The gate was all the way up now, and the cheetah took the first step out of it and smelled the air. It moved back into the cage as though it was disappointed with what it found in the air. I watched it intently, not taking my eyes off its black eyes, so that I could be able to tell what it would do next.
But I wasn’t ready for it when it happened. Neither of us was. The cheetah leaped out of the cage suddenly and dashed at me. It was unbelievably fast, and I only had time to push myself upward to avoid its attack. But it moved up with me, its movement so fluid, it felt like I was fighting with the air. It snapped at me, its heavy jaws looking to clasp down on my arm. But I moved out of the way just in time, stumbling to the ground about two feet away from it, and Luke was at my side immediately.
We were both ready, but we weren’t ready for that. The cheetah turned to look at us for a while, but then it yapped and started towards the woods, right in the direction where the tribe village was.
I was up immediately, and we started after it. It was fast, almost faster than Luke and I, but we kept at it. It would take a while to get back to the clan, and Merine and the others had to have made a good distance. So, we might catch up to it before it hurt anyone.
This is a stupid test, I thought as I grabbed on to the tree closest to me and used it to lunge myself forward. The push was the longest I had ever done, and I felt a sudden surge of energy in my limbs and veins. The potion Merine had us drink had started working.
I was stronger than ever, and there was no sign of fatigue settling in any time soon. I continued using the tree to lunge myself forward, and Luke was doing the same thing. We were catching up to the cheetah, which was just a blur in front of us. The only other option we had was to flank it and attack it from either side, so it would be indecisive about who to attack first. It had come at me back there because I was closest to the cage. That must bewhat it had moved back into the cage to observe. We had slacked for a moment there, and it was making us pay.
Besides the strength in my body, I was acutely aware of my environment. Even though I was running so fast and everything seemed almost like a blur, I could tell where I was going to land next and was calculating my next ten moves before I even made them. The analytical portion of my mind was working harder than ever.
We were just a couple of feet from the cheetah now, and we moved apart to give ourselves a better advantage. I was going to get it from the right and Luke from the left. But as we started to move, the cheetah found a tree with a long hanging branch and jumped into it. The speed at which it did that was so impressive that I barely saw it happen.
“Can they do that?” I asked Luke.
“Yes. For trees with branches hanging low.”
“What do we do now?”
“We go after it.”
It was sealed then. We started after the cheetah, and our plan of flanking it from the sides flew out of the window. I used a tree close to me to lob myself onto the tree it climbed, using my claws to hang on to the trunk and then pulling myself further up until I was just inches from the cheetah. Climbing up the tree had slowed its progress, and it was obviously not a good climber. It came at me when it saw it had made a wrong decision, leaping at me with such strength and power that had I not moved out of the way and it had knocked me down, it would have taken a limb from me. I let go of the tree, pushing myself against it butbalancing in the air and jumping down at it, tackling it to the ground.
I had my hands around its neck, but it shook itself free. And stood before Luke and me.
There was no running anymore. It was time to fight.
It growled at us, looking menacing and daring. It attacked first before we could even make a charge. It struck with its jaws, snapping at Luke first, who ducked and shifted to his left to evade the attack. Luke was fast enough to turn around before the cheetah started its dash at me and delivered a punch to its neck. It fell to the ground whimpering but was up again. It came at me next. I stood my ground and didn’t move out of the way. It was strong, it was fast, but so was I. And I was one thing better than it. I was human, and the punch Luke just gave it weakened it. I could see the fear in its eyes. I punched it in the neck as it came for me again.
It stumbled to the ground, whimpering harder than before. This time when it stood up, it didn’t come back. It turned around to run, but Luke jumped in front of it. It turned around to find another way out, but I was there too, waiting for it, and it made its decision then.
