Misty Swift and The Dragon's Pearl

Chapter Ten The First Challenge

Monday, 15th September 2014

"The forty eight of you have been chosen to compete in the Aerogon Tournament." Dankwood spoke up. We stood in the empty Great Hall in a giant circle waiting for Mr Kemsley to start telling us about the Tournament. The two other headmasters quietly watching from afar, they looked like they were hoping to escape.

"Now, you all know the basics of this tournament. But I will explain it further for you," he paused making sure everyone was listening, "there are separate stages to this tournament, the first and most crucial is the training of the dragons. This stage will take you until Christmas when everyone leaves for the holidays." of course Mr Kemsley was wrong because not everyone leaves for the holidays.

"Why does it take so long, Mr Kemsley?" one of the WSM boys retorted.

"Because, as you will realize, dragons are very hard to train. They have their own minds and it takes a considerable amount of trust to get them to work with you." Mr Kemsley seemed unable to take a joke.

"During this training everyone of you must still attend class." Dankwood continued.

"And all the houses will be campaigning for their house teams throughout the year,leading up to the day of the tournament." Mr Kemsley finished.

"Is that all we get to know, monsieur?" It was a girl, I recognized her slightly French accent, Danielle.

"No. Be patient, I will resume," he eyed Danielle, "After Christmas the real tournament will begin. We will start by putting all the dragons together and letting them choose an opponent. And when they have all decided the game will start; each dragon with their opponent will be one by one put into the ring and they will battle. Whichever dragon wins will earn extra points for their teams." Mr Kemsley was smiling at us as if he were excited to see what would happen. "The final stage of the tournament will be the most important. Each team member will have a partner with which they must always be with. The aim is to collect points by finding items while you search for the destination to finish the game. This entire stage is played in an open arena where there are very few rules, all players can attack each other and steal from each other to gain points. The team with the most points who gets to the final destination first will win. The one important rule is that you can't abandon your partner and you won't win if you get to the destination alone."

"This a dangerous game, so fight your hardest and avoid getting hurt." Dankwood's motivation wasn't helping. "Back to your classes then. You must all be back here after lunch." Dankwood dismissed everyone. Rushing out of the Great Hall I joined up with Poppy, Faith and Charlotte.

"It's all so confusing. I really didn't want to do this." Charlotte complained.

"I thought you said you did really want to do this because it was so much fun," Poppy told Charlotte.

"That was before Mr Kemsley started talking," Charlotte was whining.

"Stop your whining, we have to get to class." Faith was her usual self.

"Cheer up all of you!" A girl rushed up from behind us and wrapped her arms around my neck. I turned to see Alice's smiling cheerful face.

"Should we really be cheery when we have to go to Defense Against the Dark Arts? And after that I have to tutor James and then after that we have to start training dragons." Poppy moaned.

"Well your day is really poo," Alice moved toward Poppy and began to tickle her.

"Stop it!" Poppy giggled trying to escape from Alice.

"Just think, we'll get to train real dragons. It'll be so much fun. See you later then." Alice turned down a corridor and waved goodbye to us.

We hurried along to Professor Richard's class and took our seats.