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chimachapterbooks · 16 days

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Worriz’s Challenge

Eris perched on a rock and gazed down at the ground far below, her brow knitted with concern.

Just as she had for the last six days, she could see Wolves prowling at the base of the cliffs that the Eagles called home. Now and then, one of the Wolves would look up at her, flash a savage grin, and give a short howl. She did her best to ignore the taunts. But this was becoming a concern.

Ever since the battle for CHI had begun among the tribes, the Wolves had been encroaching on Eagle teritory.

Normally, the Wolf pack was constantly on the move. But this pack was acting like they were here to stay. They were noisy, messy, and threw loud parties late into the night so that none of the Eagles could sleep.

It might have just been a little inconvenience, except for two things: One, the Eagles needed to be able to fly down to the ground to find food, and the Wolves were making that dangerous to do. And two, it was almost time for the Eagles to get their monthly share of the powerful CHi from the Lions, and Eris was sure the Wolves were here to prevent that from happening.

if only we could find some way to make them go away, she thought. But how?

Just then, Eglor flew by. He was very excited, and kept shouting, "I've done it! 've done it!" All the Wolves looked up to see what the commotion was about.

"Shhhh!" warned Eris. "What have you done?"

But Eglor was too excited to speak quietly. "I've perfected a machine that can hurl an Eagle all the way from one end of the forest to the other, faster than any beast that runs or flies. From now on, instead of flap, flap, flap to get from one place to another, it will be zip, zip, zip!"

"Zip, zip, zip?" said one of the Wolves, laughing.

"Sounds more like flop, flop, flop to me!"

Eglor wheeled in the air and looked down at the Wolf.

"Ha! With my machine, any Eagle could outrace a Wolf by twice the speed. That's just scientific fact. There's not even the teeniest, tiniest, most microscopic room for doubt."

"Want to bet?" growled Worriz. The pack leader had wandered over to see what the rest of the Wolves were so interested in. Now he eyed Eglor with a mocking smile.

"Eglor, don't." Eris tried to hold her friend back.

"No good can come from arguing with the Wolves."

But Eglor's pride as an inventor was at stake now.

"Yes, I do want to bet!" he announced loudly.

"All right, then," said Worriz. "I'll bet you I can make it to the far end of the woods faster than any Eagle launched from your machine. If I win, you Eagles give up your share of CHI to us this month."

"And if you lose," said

Eglor, "you go away and leave our nesting area alone!"

Eris slapped a wing against her forehead. What had Eglor just gotten them into?

"Deal," said Worriz. "We race tomorrow ... That is, if you can find someone foolish enough to challenge me."

"Tomorrow?" stammered Eglor. He suddenly sounded a bit nervous. "Now, see here, the machine works— know it does—but it hasn't been fully tested yet, and there are still a few things—"

The Wolves howled with laughter. One of them said,

"You know what they say about Eagles—all flash and feathers."

"If you want to back down, bird," Worriz sneered,

"then I guess-"

"'ll do it!" Eris interrupted him. "I'll race you!"

After she had said it, she could hardly believe the words had come out of her beak. But the Wolves were getting under her feathers with all their insults, and maybe this was the one way to get them to leave their nesting grounds for good. Besides, Eglor was a great inventor. If he said his machine could make her go zip, zip, zip, then it could.

"All right then," Worriz snarled. "Tomorrow. Dawn.

Be here."

The Wolves turned to talk amongst themselves.

Suddenly, Worriz looked sharply back up at Eris. "Oh, and one more rule," he snapped. "No help from the Lions, right, Eagle? For this challenge, you fly solo."

All the Wolves laughed.

—————

"It doesn't work," said Eglor sadly. "I don't know what happened, but it's not working."

"What do you mean?" asked Eris, in shock. "You told the Wolves there wasn't the teeniest, tiniest room for doubt."

It was the middle of the night. Eglor had taken Eris to see his machine, which consisted of a catapult with a bowl at the end attached to a much bigger metal apparatus by tightly wound springs. When Eglor triggered the contraption, the bowl would be propelled forward and anything inside it would go flying... at least, in theory.

But now the inventor Eagle didn't look so sure.

"When I tested it this afternoon, it worked fine," Eglor explained. "But then I started practicing tonight with things actually in the bowl, like bunches of apples, and . .. well, look for yourself."

Eris looked. There were smashed apples splattered all over the floor of Eglor's workshop. The machine just hurled them straight down at the ground.

"So if I get in this thing tomorrow morning. . . no zip?" she asked.

"More like splat," said Eglor. "We'll have to call off the bet."

"We can't," insisted Eris. "We'll lose our CHI to the Wolves, which will hurt the balance in Chima, and the Wolves will stay down there forever! I have to win the race... somehow. I just have to."

——————

"Did you do it?" whispered Worriz.

Wilhurt, another Wolf in the pack, nodded. "It was easy. I used a bellow plant to float up the mountain and then tied it down. I got to Eglor's workshop, and broke off part of his machine. Then let the air out of the bellow plant little by little so I could float back down. That Eagle won't be zipping anywhere, boss."

"Good," Worriz said with a wicked grin. "All that Eagle CHI is practically ours. Hey, maybe we'll challenge the Bears and the Gorillas to races, too. Let the Crocs fight battles we'll get all the CHI we want the old-fashioned way: We'll cheat."

——————

By dawn, Eris had a plan ... sort of. It started with not telling Worriz the machine didn't work. The second part involved getting some help from someone she would normally stay far away from.

Skinnit the Skunk was actually a very nice animal who didn't have an enemy in the world. But no one really wanted to spend any time around him because ... well, he smelled really bad. It wasn't his fault. But no one wanted to risk keeping him company and maybe winding up smelling terribly, too. Still, Eris had always made an effort to be polite to him.

"Skinnit, can you do me a favor?" she asked, talking to him from high up in a tree.

"Me? Really? You want me to do you a favor?" Skinnit replied eagerly. No one ever asked him to do anything other than go away.

"That's right," said Eris. "It's nothing hard. I just want you to do ... that thing you do at a certain place and a certain time."

Skinnit frowned. "You mean you want me to make a stink?" he asked. That was what he did best, but it always made other animals run away. Why would Eris want him to do that?

"Just trust me," Eris reassured him. "You'll be doing something nice for all the Eagles."

"If you say so," Skinnit answered, smiling. "But you had better hold your beak—it's going to get smelly around here!"

Eris grinned. "Thanks, Skinnit," she said. "I knew I could count on you." With that, she flew off. She had a few more non-rule-breaking favors to ask of some old friends.

———————

After making a few more stops, Eris was ready for the start of the race. She perched in Eglor's lab, waiting for the signal to start. Down below, Worriz was crouched down, ready to run.

"You might as well hand over that CHI now, bird,"

Worriz called up. "It's as good as ours!"

"We'll just see about that," Eris shouted back down.

She glanced over at Eglor, and gave him a wink. The inventor Eagle looked very nervous, but he nodded back.

One of the Wolves stood at the base of the rock spire, holding a palm leaf to start the race. A moment later, he waved the leaf high in the air, and the race was on!

Eris leaped out from Eglor's lab, flying as fast as she could, so anyone looking from below would think she had been rocketed out into the sky. Worriz was running at top speed, too, hoping to put some distance between himself and the Eagle.

As she soared above the canopy of trees, Eris did her best to keep an eye on Worriz, even if she could only see him for a few seconds now and then. She knew the Wolf would would take the fastest path through the forest. In fact, she was counting on it.

In the woods, Worriz was feeling confident. The pack had blazed a new trail through the forest lately, one that made getting from one end to the other a snap. All he had to do was follow the scent the vehicles had left and he couldn't go wrong. He put his nose to the ground, took a big sniff...

... and he almost fell over! His nose was full of an incredibly horrible smell, so bad it made his eyes water.

He shook his head, trying to make the odor go away. But it didn't. It was so overpowering that now he couldn't smell anything else. Worriz knew there was only one animal in the forest who could make a smell that bad.

"Skinnit!" he howled.

Off to the side of the path, the little skunk ran away, disappearing into the trees.

"All right, I don't need my nose," Worriz

grumbled to himself. "I can remember the path .. sort of. I know there were trees ... and a big rock... and some dirt... hmm...

Worriz picked a direction that looked right and started to run again. At one point, he glanced up and spotted Eris through the trees. The Eagle was falling behind.

All he needed to do was put on an extra burst of speed and he was sure to win.

Just then, he heard an enormous rustling in the woods ahead. It sounded like a huge herd of creatures on the move. But there were no sounds of foliage tearing or ground being ripped up the way he would have expected. As he rounded a bend, he discovered why: It was a tribe of Gorillas in their massive Gorilla Machines. But instead of smashing through the jungle the way the Wolf Vehicles did, the Gorillas were being extra careful not to disturb anything as they passed.

The Gorillas' respect for nature meant that they had to move very slowly in their huge machines so they didn't accidentally trample any flowers or even weeds.

"Come on!" Worriz growled. "Hurry it up!"

Three of the Gorillas stopped right in Worriz's path.

"Hey, Wolf, why are you in such a hurry?" said the first Gorilla, looking down from the cockpit of his huge vehicle.

"Yeah, you have to savor every minute of life, the way you do a really good banana," said the second.

"Maybe you just don't see it," said the third. "You Wolves always have your noses to the ground, and you don't look up to see the sky!"

Over Worriz's protests, the Gorillas proceeded to tell him all about how much better life was when you were in tune with all of nature. Even worse, all the other Gorillas stopped to listen, nodding their heads and smiling. It felt like forever before they finally finished and moved on, their machines going even slower than before.

When the Gorillas had finally passed, Worriz ran faster than he ever had in his life. He was heading for the quick-moving river that flowed through this part of the forest. If he dove in and let the waters carry him, he could still beat Eris. Sure, he wouldn't technically be racing. But so what? The only thing that mattered to him was winning!

He was just about to dive into the river when, from behind the trees, a bunch of small figures appeared in his path. Worriz nearly skidded to a halt. He couldn't believe his eyes. Nearly two dozen teenage foxes were blocking him, all smiling and yipping and jumping up and down. Because as everyone in Chima knew, teenage foxes thought that the Wolves were the coolest animals in the forest. Especially the Wolf Pack leader, Worriz.

"Look, it's Worriz!" cried one.

"I told you he was coming!" squealed another.

"Wow, look how cool he is!"

"I just have to get his autograph! I have to!" Before Worriz knew what was happening, he was being mobbed by the teenage foxes! They were tugging at his fur, running back and forth in front of him, and begging for his signature.

"We're your biggest fans," said one of the foxes breathlessly. "You're the coolest Wolf in Chima!"

"I won," said the Eagle. "So pack up your pack and move on."

But Worriz sneered. "Ha!" he said. "That's what you think. Your Lion pals aren't here, so you can't prove you won the race. Looks like your CHI for this month is ours. Hand it over!"

Eris shook her head, a knowing grin crossing her face. She pointed up at the sky. A whole flock of sparrows was circling overhead, cheering wildly for Eris.

"I don't need the Lions to prove I beat you," she said.

"Those sparrows saw the entire race. It's over, Worriz."

Worriz smacked his head and groaned. Even with cheating, he had still lost to the Eagles! "Fine," he grumbled. "You got lucky this time. But next time, mark my words, you won't be so lucky!"

Eris chuckled. "It wasn't luck," she said as a sparrow came and landed on her hand. "Don't you know by now? I have lots of friends."

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