Chapter 51.3- Doom Days

XXXXX

The welcoming ceremony was unlike anything I had seen before. In bothy lives. Firstly, there was the dragon made of fireworks that flew about the stadium, making complex dives, twirls, banks, and ascents every which way in a pattern that was as mesmerizing as it was impressive. And then every few seconds or so, it would stop and breathe out a torrent of fireworks that exploded into all sorts of magical creatures that lasated a few seconds before dissipating. And that was only the pre-show. We had everything from duels to speeches coming our way, and if this was the splendor of the U17 tournament then I could just imagine how the real world championships would look like.

“Welcome, Welcome, Wizards, Witches, Magical Creatures, members of the Wizarding World one and all” A voice said grandly. It was difficult to see where the voice was coming from until the dragon rose in the air, spreading its wings as it flew until it was covering much of the stadium, and then it turned in a perfect Senna Reversal— a quidditch move that involved flying straight up, and then sharply u-turning into a dive— hurtling itself at the ground with even more speed than it had risen.

There were screams, yells, and they died out quickly once the dragon hit the ground and exploded revealing a stage with a single man standing atop it.

“I am Julian Russo, Chief Planning Officer of this year’s Under-17 World Duelling Championship, and I have the great pleasure of welcoming you to what is slated to be the biggest, baddest, most competitive, most thrilling Duelling tournament ever.” He said, hyping up the tournament and the crowd seemed to be eating it all up, clapping with abandon and displaying obvious enthusiasm.

“Well, these things have definitely gotten more showy” Sirius whispered in my ear, when there was a brief lull in the noise.

“Now tell me, are you ready to be entertained?” He screamed the last part out, and the crowd was roaring again.

“Good, good. Before we get into the entertainment, some housekeeping. This year, we received One thousand two hundred and thirteen unique applications. Only five of those ended up being ineligible after scrutiny from our best minds. So I can see the smart ones among us doing the math. One thousand two hundred and eight contestants remain. Of course, we wouldn’t do those one at a time, so our team of scryers and soothsayers have done their best to divide all the contestants into blocks. Altogether, we expect to have thirty-two blocks. Twenty four with thirty eight contestants and eight with thirty seven. Every hopeful contestant will get the chance to strut their stuff in nine duels from within their block. The best two from each block will proceed to the Round of Sixty-four.” He began, laying out the format while I tried to cram as much of it into my mind as possible.