Chapter 122 - Inter-clan Tournament! (2)

When we came out of teleportation, the scenery around me changed into that of an enormous arena, larger than even the eastern Amphitheater of Dominance.

There were no words I could use to describe it. The scale of the colosseum was grand—there was no doubt in my mind that it was an arena made not for humans, but for dragons. I estimated the length of the arena to be more than 1200 feet long and possibly more than half as wide. And that was not even counting the outer walls, which were taller than two hundred feet. The shape of the Inter-clan Tournament Colosseum seemed to form a rectangular structure, so the fighting floor was also most likely similarly fashioned.

The land which the arena stood on was a vast, flat land of rocky terrain that seemed to stretch on for miles. Beside the arena, there was a huge lake, the waters still and undisturbed except for the reflections of the sunlight. Around me, I could see that the members of my team were somewhat wide-eyed at the scale of the colosseum.

“This tournament will mark its one hundred and fourth anniversary,” Elder Kronos said.

I quickly did a mental calculation. Twenty times one hundred and four; that was a total of two thousand and eighty years since the creation of this tournament. It was even older than Elder Kronos, who was 1678 years old!

In human history, we were in Year 1121, the Age of Prosperity. Before this age was the Age of Expansion, which spanned for 450 years; prior to the Age of Expansion was the Age of Reformation, which lasted for 1500 years. In total, this made for around 3000 years of recorded human history.

Some time before the recorded 3000 years of human history was probably when the Age of Unity came to be, along with the forging of the Unity Treaty. It seemed like a good guess based on what Navra and Elder Kronos had told me of the world's history.

“Elder Kronos, how much magic does teleportation consume?” I asked. Elder Kronos had done a group teleportation twice already to and from the Driads' Enclave; this meant a total of 12 individual teleporations, and that was discounting the other trips.

“I suppose I can tell you, since it is no real secret,” Elder Kronos said. “No doubt you know this already, but the greater the distance, the more magic you use for teleportation. Teleportation is also greatly limited; you can only use it to travel to places you have been.”

I suppose that did make sense, I thought to myself. Navra—no, there was no use trying to relate teleportation magic to that ancient dragon. He defied every logic. Navra was definitely not a good model to obtain a better idea of the relativity of magic.

“How exactly does one use teleporation?” I asked. Navra had never deigned to tell me of that. He had only deemed me too weak to use it. Consequently, I also had no in-born talent for teleportation like some of the human mages I had seen.

“Hmm. Teleportation is a hard magic to learn, especially if you have no inborn-talent. You would have to wait until you become more familiar with your Animus, say, around a century of familiarity or so, before you can teleport yourself through great distances. It also consumes a fair amount of magic reserves for those with no talent for it.”

I pondered upon those words. “Then how would one teleport another dragon?”

“Well, you need only wrap your magic around that other dragon and use yourself as the main linking vessel to bring that other dragon along. Also, I am far more proficient in my magic capacity than all of you, so it is easy for my magic to overcome the resistance of your magic territories. I encounter very little resistance imposing my magic on all of you, due to your weak magic territories.”

“Then—”

I stopped my words there. I could sense a glare from Eden and a withheld sigh from Kiara. Xalanth was also giving me a strange look. It was obvious. The three of them were telling me to shut my mouth, so that we could move on.

Dull. Quite dull. I could only sigh a little at their impatience. Knowledge was the font of power.

“Let us move on now.” Elder Kronos looked up at the sky. “It is already late afternoon, and the others are no doubt waiting.”

Elder Kronos kept up a fast pace as we walked through the middle entrance of three entrances on the side of the rectangular Inter-clan Tournament Colosseum we were standing upon. As we went through the entrance, the scale of the colosseum left an even more distinct impression. The height of the entrance was for a dragon. It was more than a hundred feet tall, which was the average height of a full grown dragon.

The architecture of the colosseum consisted of curving arches proceeding to trusses at every regular intervals, and various other patterns which were pleasing to the eyes. The white and black marbled inner walls, just like its outer walls, were plain looking to the eyes, yet its noble look could not be denied. Perhaps it was just the size of it all, the varying structures, or perhaps the many materials the colosseum was made out of, but I felt as if the colosseum was a grand building.

I was also a little surprised. I would not have thought dragons would have cared that much about structures.

After passing down through the spectator seats, each section made large enough for a dragon to comfortable watch, and through another entrance, we arrived at the inner arena, the floor which we would do battle. The primary surface of the arena floor was a layer of sand on top of a solid rock layer.

“So those are our contenders,” Eden said with a glaring look, a hint of excitement in her belligerent eyes.

“I shall carve my name upon their hearts,” Xalanth silently muttered to himself. His words did not fit his kind-looking face, which was a strange look for a dragon.

I didn't bother to retort to Xalanth, since he himself knew that everything short of killing your opponents would be allowed in the Inter-clan Tournament.

“Go line up beside the others,” Elder Kronos said in a stern voice.

There were thirty young dragons our age, five from each of the six major Astlan dragon clans, lined up in a horizontal line. We quickly formed up near the left end side of the line, facing the six Elders, who were soon joined by Elder Kronos.

All thirty five participants, including me, were now facing the seven Elders, each of them from a different clan. The seven of these Elder dragons, every one of them powerful in their own rights, all in their human forms, were wearing black uniforms with golden collars that marked them as the official trainers of the seven dragon teams. On each uniform, the symbol of the clan which the Elder dragon belonged to, was also emblazoned boldly on the chest.

The Arkanan clan, which we belonged to, had the symbol of a scarlet tear wrapped around by orange flames. As for the Scorchgrasp clan, the territory upon which the colosseum was built in, had the symbol of black dragon talons of a forelimb grasping a wild, scarlet fire, which could not be contained.

“Glad you could make it, Elder Kronos. I was beginning to think you were not going to show up,” a red-haired man in his late early thirties commented. He had a steely gaze and a reddish beard dotting his strong jaw. The beard made me think that the red-haired Elder was probably close to Elder Kronos' age, perhaps even older.

“I was caught up in something unexpected, Elder Thorne.”

“Oho? And what would that something be?”

“Eldest Navra, our king, had a bit of business with Verath, his broodling,” Elder Kronos said offhandedly.

At his words, I could almost feel the tension in the arena become even more intense. There were even some dragons who tensed up, glancing and measuring the members of our team, looking for the one known as Verath—looking for me.

“Who would this Verath be?” Thorne, the oldest Elder of the territory Scorchgrasp, the host clan of the Inter-clan Tournament, asked in an intrigued voice.

Elder Kronos glance at me. That glance alone was enough for Elder Thorne, who quickly followed along, his steely gaze soon resting upon me. “So this is the infamous black dragon, the young dragon whom our king has taken an interest in, even to the point of becoming his broodkeeper? And what a coincidence that he has the same white hair as our king.”