"Take a deep breath." Lua instructed his teammate, Luna, who was on the verge of fighting this wolf alone. He knew he had to do something before she blew up, and recklessly killed herself doing something she shouldn't have.
Luna glanced at Lua, confused on why he was instructing her to do such a thing. She responded with fury dripping from her voice, "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Just do it." Lua insisted, trying to save his teammate from an inevitable demise. Luna wasn't stupid, although she was quite angry currently. She still had some semblance of rationality, one that told her to trust Lua in this.
Luna was an experienced veteran when it came to being a mercenary. She didn't need to think twice when it came to doing something this minor, especially when it came from a teammate. Lua's insistence only helped to convince her to follow through with his suggestion.
Luna sighed, and took deep breaths. Lua watched her as she reeled in her deep, dark emotions, her gloomy aura turning slightly less gloomy by the second. The wrinkles that had been caused by her furrowed eyebrows faded, and her expression slowly returned to normal.
Lua was glad that his suggestion had been to her benefit, returning her full rationality to her. She was back to normalcy, and it only worked to the benefit of the team.
In the absence of the leader, Victoria, Luna was the appointed leader. She was the one responsible for giving out orders, not relenting in the heat of battle. Lua had to make sure Luna was capable of keeping the team together, carrying them through this trial.
Lua moved on to Arc. Arc couldn't 'breathe' in the traditional sense, but he was still a human at his core. Even imagining breathing would help calm him down, relaxing his psyche. Lua offered the same suggestion to him, and in a short manner of time, Arc was back to normal as well. Lua could feel the chaos that was brought upon him by Arc's confused emotions quickly fade away, returning to normal. Outside, there was no change to him.
Lua, making sure the rest of the team was unaffected by the wolf's effects, quickly rushed back to Luna's side. He glanced at the bloodied Victoria, feeling a sense of anger towards the wolf. However, he refused to be consumed by it. He didn't want to end up feed for the gigantic beast, not now.
Lua glanced at Luna, waiting for the orders of the interim Captain. She glanced back at him, looking at him. Without changing her expression, not showing a hint of a smile, she simply said: "Thank you."
Lua nodded, not bothering to boast about his discovery of the wolf's affects. "It's my pleasure."
Luna returned her deep, cold gaze at the wolf, inspecting everything about it thoroughly. The first alarming thing she noticed was that the arrow wound that was inflicted by Mick. It was completely healed, a small burn mark covering the spot that was previously bleeding. This proved that the wolf could stop it's bleeding by burning the wound mercilessly.
Next, she noticed the wolf's inaction during their "waking up" process. The wolf had stayed quiet, letting Lua let everyone wake up. This only proved to convince her of one thing:
"That wolf can understand what we're saying." She revealed the horrifying truth to all of the party.
Lua looked at her, not at all surprised by what she was pointing out. He had come to the same conclusion as her, based on the wolf's inaction. He nodded his head, confirming her thought with his own opinion.
Suddenly, a deep chuckle was heard throughout the forest. This made Lua's eyes widen, as if he couldn't believe the source. It was the same chuckle he had heard from the wolf earlier - the one that had put him under great fear!
This time, however, a deep voice resounded right afterwards.
"What a shame, it appears that I have been discovered." The wolf said, grinning. Luna kept her stern expression, not showing any hint of fear towards the beast. She responded to the wolf.
"Pathetic mutt. You rely on mental games to defeat us?" Luna felt rather confident on her stance, that they had effectively removed one of the most powerful cards that the wolf was in possession. However, to that, the wolf simply laughed.
"Why do you not attack me then?"
Luna sighed, failing to get more information out of the wolf. She had attempted to play at agitate the wolf by ridiculing it, hoping to anger it and force a few more trump cards out of it. However, the wolf had called her bluff, refusing to share information.
This was precisely why Luna refrained from going on the offense. Fighting mindless beasts was one thing, however, fighting intelligent creatures was a league on it's own. Especially when said creature was much larger and stronger than them.
Lua on the other hand, was thinking of ways to lure the creature to his traps. His remaining traps had no way of being lethal, especially to this seemingly invulnerable giant. His boulder trap was only able to finish off the other wolf because it was already nearly dead, exhausted and wounded.
He had two traps remaining - one was too far to be considered a legitimate threat, while the other was a set of spikes that likely couldn't break through the mane of the wolves. It would serve as nothing more than a hindrance.
Lua felt useless, but it was true that he was. His combat relied on close quarter combat, with no weapon that would put distance between him and the opponent. The best he could do was serve as distraction, or someone to attack while the opponent was being distracted. Other than that, he would only serve as a dummy threat, someone to act as show instead of force.
He had to rely on Luna and Mick, standing as an outsider like Winston and Anthony. Perhaps his inaction would be to the benefit of the group.
Luna spoke in a whisper to Arc, using her hair to cover her mouth. It was clear she was trying to prevent the wolf from understanding what they were saying.
"I'm going to cut off a leg. Use that opportunity to punch it's skull straight to hell where it belongs."