The Dragon Games

The Wild Card

By the time we finally escaped the fire's range, half of the trees had burnt to the ground, and of the thrirty-two pledges that had entered the marshes, only twenty were accounted for. That large of a gathering usually created nothing but conflict, but for now, the chaos of the night had put the competition on pause. 

It was only night one, and the rules of Blood Fest had been torn up, set on fire, and pissed on. None of us had planned on Blacktooth arriving so early – much less dying – and now we were all reeling from the consequences.

The twenty of us – covered in ashes and soot, missing members and equipment – gathered in a circle in an empty clearing of grass as we attempted to understand what had just happened. A few different theories were thrown out, blaming angry gods, the tides, and any other mystic force under the sun. 

Basically, we were all grasping at straws until Atlas stepped forward.

"Isn't it obvious what's going on?" Atlas stepped into the center of the circle looking like a prince among paupers, one of the only pledges to have escaped the fire in prime condition. 

"Blacktooth was supposed to be the most powerful dragon in our Blood Fest – in the past few decades of Blood Fests – yet from the moment we heard the roar until the giant wave of fire shot across the sky, how much time passed? The fight lasted seconds. I wouldn't even call it a flight. It was a slaughter. What sort of creature is strong enough to accomplish such a feat?"

Atlas' grand speech built up like a crescendo, only to fall flat on its face. He asked the question, clearly expecting the whole circle to chime out in unison and was met with silence and blank expressions.

"Oh, come on!" Atlas said, throwing his arms out. "It's a wyvern!"

I saw the pledges' faces drop and heard a few gasps going around the group, but still, I did not understand.

"The wyvern breed is all but extinct," a pledge scoffed. "That is impossible."

"You know what else is impossible?" Elio spoke up. "A hydra showing up on day one. Blood Fest has been governed by the same rules for centuries. The only breaks in the pattern have been on the 30th, 80th, and 158th Blood Fests."

Suddenly, it clicked. Of all the dragon breeds, the instructors spoke of wyverns the least. Since no wyvern had entered Blood Fest in generations, the breed had gradually fallen out of the curriculum, until it wasn't even worth a passing remark. 

If I had only learned what the instructors had taught me, I would know nothing of them. But one night, while combing the library stacks for an assigned reading, I stumbled upon a text about wyverns.

A sketch took up the first page. A talented artist must have spent days weeks laboring over it, rendering every part of the wyvern with life like detail – from the scale on its hide to the scratches on its talons – except for the eyes. Where the eyes should have been, there were two blank holes.

Two footnotes sat at the bottom of the page. The first warned readers not to let the black ink fool them. Wyverns come in one shade, white as snow, to camouflage with the clouds. The second footnote apologized for the incomplete drawing. 

Only three people have gotten close enough to see a wyvern's eyes and live to tell the tale – Polixenes, Geralda, and Torrance the Terrible. I could have quit the book then, knowing it was not the text I was looking for, but I found myself turning page after page well into witching hours.

The 30th Blood Fest was a year of firsts. Polixenes created the first clue, bonded with the first documented wyvern, and was the first non-noble allowed to compete in Blood Fest – mainly because Court wanted to quiet his theories once and for all, and getting burnt alive by dragons seemed as effective of a method as any.