The Dragon Games

Master Class Pupil

For our next class, we filed into a more traditional classroom. Maps and portraits hung from the walls, sandwiched between bookshelves full of ancient texts. Their cracked spines and yellowed pages reminded me of wounded forest animals, begging to be put out of their misery.  

Instructor Austen, the woman from the morning's announcements, taught the class. She had each of us write our names on a sheet of paper that spanned half the wall. I tried not to wince when I looked at the finished product. 

My handwriting stuck out like a sore thumb. It looked like a child's scribbles compared to the other's swirly calligraphy.

"Every time you answer a question correctly, I will put a tally by your name," Instructor Austen said. "Whoever has the most tallies will receive my vote for the auction." She turned, facing a Tudor named Howard. "Gordo, name one of the three pillars to success at the Blood Moon Festival."

Howard replied automatically, the answer coming as naturally as his mother's name or home address. "Strategy."

"Very good, Howard." Instructor Austen tallied a point underneath his name. "Buford, name another."

"Strength," Buford said. Even the 'dumb' pledge answered correctly without a moment's pause.

"And the last one..." Instructor Austen scanned the room, and then her eyes landed on the one pledge ducking her head, purposely avoiding eye contact. "Regan."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know."

"I'm sure you do."

My mind was blank.

"t starts with s," she prompted.

"Uh... ssssss... strive for greatness?"

"One word."

Strength?"

"Already written down."

"Soul?"

"Closer."

"Soul stone?"

Instructor Austen's eyes dimmed as if she thought I was mocking her. "Can anyone help her out?"

"Sociality," Gordo said with a pointed smirk. "As in, the ability to be liked."

As heat crawled up my face, Instructor Austen scribbled out the tally underneath my name and drew one for Gordo. Then she turned back to the class. 

"Today, we will focus on strategy. It was not always regarded so highly. For decades, the Blood Moon Festival had as much strategy as a free-for-all bloodbath. The weakest competitors left empty handed while the strongest competitors secured the best dragons. That is, until a young philosopher named Polixenes came along, claiming that if you studied the stars during the months preceding the Festival, you would find the gods leaving a bread trail to the best dragon in the arena. But the scholars of his day wrote Polixenes off as a loon, too weak and stupid to bond with so much as a drake."

Instructor Austen crossed the room, standing in front of a portrait of a rugged old man with a scar cutting across his forehead, just below his crown. 

"But when Polixenes bonded with a wyvern – the most powerful breed of all – Polixenes the loon became Polixenes the king. For every Blood Moon Festival that followed, a prophet is appointed to decipher the stars. He copies his answer in whatever form he desires – a drawing, a riddle, a symbol, a challenge, an order – then a team of scribe duplicates his findings onto individual scrolls, to be distributed on the day of the Blood Moon Festival."

Instructor Austen gestured to a bin labeled Clues 181-199, piled high with scrolls.

Howard lifted his hand. "So the prophet looks at the stars and finds a dragon?"