I had been approached by a group of oddly-dressed people about a week ago. Of course, they turned out to not be people at all, but a small coven of witches. One of them being my former friend from elementary all the way through high school. Supposedly, she had died in a house fire the year following graduation, but I now know that to not be true, that she had discovered her witchy lineage and sacrificed her human life to join a coven of witches.

"The Council finally agreed, after much discussion and watching you, that you are allowed to join me for the Olympics!" Of course, I had no idea who "The Council" was or why she would be inviting me to join her for the Olympic Games when it was the year between winter and summer Olympics. I was still trying to comprehend the fact that she was standing in front of me, alive, and it was, indeed, not a dream.

Naturally, I replied, "Okay."

Larissa, that's her name, hugged me and began jumping up and down during the embrace. "Ohhh! I'm so excited for you!" One of the others in the coven cleared his throat and Larissa took a step back. "I have to go now, but I'll be back one week from today. Be up by dawn and wear something magical." I had no idea what she meant by "magical", so when one week went by, I woke up at dawn and picked through my clothes. Nothing had screamed "magical". Larissa had burst through my bedroom door, wearing a very vibrant robe in all sorts of colors, patterned with what looked to be different types of mythical creatures' wings stitched together. "Why aren't you dressed?" she demanded, hands at her hips.

"I'm not sure what you meant by 'magical'," I replied honestly.

"Oh! I keep forgetting that we didn't get that far!" To my utter shock, Larissa reached into the depths of her magnificent robe to procure what appeared to be a twisted stick, which I soon found is truly a magic wand. She flicked it at me, and my pajamas were replaced by a similar robe to hers, my hair done up on top of my head, and my feet were covered in soft moccasins. "By the way, Myra, I'm a witch."

"I could have guessed," I replied.

Now, I sit next to Larissa on a wooden bench that stretches all the way across one side of the ginormous arena, in the midst of a cheering crowd of creatures that I always presumed myths.

"It's starting!" Larissa shouts to me over the blaring roars and cries of various creatures.

A banshee screams from somewhere far below as a group of Sirens begin singing a beautiful adaptation of the human Olympic Games opening, while a group of unicorns prance around and pegasi float through the sky.

"Creatures of land, sea, sky, and darkness," the banshee cries in a less ear-shattering voice than I would have expected, "welcome to the nine hundred eighty-second Olympic Games!" A rumbling of feet begins as a parade of creatures, giant (including actual giants) and small, begin marching through the center of The Arena, as Larissa told me is the official name of this place. "Please welcome this year's competing Olympians!"

Applause of tails smacking against benches and a roar of excitement lights up the crowd as the Olympians march in.

"Light the Torch!" the banshee shrieks as a breathtakingly humongous dragon swoops down from above, racing against what looks like a chimera flying at the front of the endless parade. Two torches stand tall at the opposite end of The Arena. Both fire-breathers light up a torch, the dragon's glowing a bright, electric blue, and the chimera's an inferno of red, orange, and yellow.

"Chimera or dragon?" the banshee asks the crowd.

It is a confusing blend of both names, but one can be heard loud and clear over the other. "Chimera!" the majority of the crowd yells, Larissa with them.

"Oh, yay!" she cries, looking at me. "It's always the dragon whose torch is presented for the Games."

Knowing it is victorious, the chimera saunters over to the dragon's torch and rises several feet to push the grand display of fire over. The torch tumbles off its pedestal, immediately extinguished by a group of water nymphs. As the dragon soars back out of the The Arena, Larissa hastily hands me a poncho made out of a fabric I can't name and holds a gleaming shield—much like what a knight in shining armor would carry—above our heads. A blaze of bright green and electric blue rains down on the stands like a tsunami of fire. I can feel the heat, but am surprised to be unscathed.

"That's uncalled for, Drago!" the banshee screams.

The dragon says nothing, just flaps its grand, iridescent, black wings and rises high above the crowd, leaving The Arena.

According to Larissa, the benches turn into beds, where the crowd can sleep overnight once the opening ceremony is concluded. I can hardly sleep through the disbelief and adrenaline coursing through my veins.

"Welcome to Day One of the nine hundred eighty-second Olympics! The Council of Fantastic Creatures welcomes you to the first day of competitive events!" the banshee announces. "This year, we're kicking off with synchronized flying!"

Standing in groups of seven around the edges of The Arena are hippogriffs, griffins, phoenixes, pegasi, harpies, manticores, even a collection of angels, and other creatures I can't name by sight. The hippogriff team goes first, taking off elegantly into the sky. Everything about them is in sync, even down to the flapping of their wings. It's a beautiful dance through the air that lasts roughly eight minutes. They land gracefully as the team of harpies prepares for their flight and the judging panel of a sphinx, a leprechaun, an aswang, a pixie, and a mermaid—who sits on a throne of water provided by the water nymphs—discuss the scoring.

By the end of the event, it turns out the best synchronized flying team was that of the lightning birds. Their team scored almost a perfect eleven.

"Now for archery!" the banshee announces over the cheering.

It would seem that the centaurs and elves tend to dominate this event, but there is still a representative of giants, cyclopes, mermen, trolls, fairies, and several others. The targets are very colorful, with nine rings, each of a different color, around the black bullseye in the center. The troll begins, hitting the target on the three outermost rings, closer with each shot. The cyclops entirely missed until his third shot, but even that barely snags the edge of the target. One of the the stray arrows impales a yeti in the audience, causing a collective gasp and silence to fill the entire arena, and a caladrius is sent to heal the poor fellow. The merman does a little better than either, even bobbing in his pool of water. The giant hits all three arrows in the fourth ring from the bullseye, making her in first place so far.

It is not until the centaur goes that the bullseye is touched. All three arrows stick in what would seem to be the center of the target, each leaning just a breath closer than the last. The third has to be right in the middle, even though the shot was from at least one hundred meters away. When the elf, a girl with long dark hair and fair skin, pulls back the bowstring, I am dumbfounded to find that all three of her arrows land in the exact same place, each splitting the last, protruding from what is measured out to be the the same distance from any point around the edge of the target. The elven girl did as none other had done in history, Larissa tells me, she shot every arrow in the perfect center of the target.

Instead of medals, the top three Olympians of each event are presented with gold, silver, and bronze banners, courtesy of Larissa's coven, that will change any building into the respective color scheme and play the Siren's Olympic song, when placed on a wall, until the next Underground Olympic Games, in which the banner will still be kept by the champion, but will lose the power to play music and turn a building's color.

"This is amazing!" I shout to Larissa.

"I thought you would enjoy it!"

Several other events take place the first day, and then it is back to sleep for the audience. This time, I find myself so exhausted from all the excitement, that I fall right to sleep. Larissa tells me she has to leave briefly the next morning. She and her coven make their way to the center of The Arena to shoot different colored lights from each of their wands, moving the streams up in a dome in front of the crowd. When she returns to her seat, which has changed back into a bench, the area below changed into a pool.

"Swimming?" I ask.

She smirks. "Yes, but better than they do it in the human world."

"This is surreal," I say as mermaids, hippocampi, sea serpents, hydras, even a Capricorn (apparently there is a whole community of each zodiac poster-child in existence), and dozens of other water creatures take their place in a pool four times as long as the average Olympic size.

"Basically, the goal is to race across the pool six times, while splashing water at targets that pop up along the way," Larissa explains.

"I hope they don't have the same guy for the mermen that did archery."

"Of course not. In the mer-race, mermaids are notably faster than mermen. Besides, Coralus, the merman archery competitor, had a disadvantage because mer-people live underwater and, therefore, have to practice underwater."

"That's true," I reply.

The fast paced race is filled with too much splashing for me to see the winner. Water nymphs pull water up from the pool to create disc-shaped targets above the racing creature's heads, which they splash away as they go. By the end of the race, the mermaid comes in first, having missed only one target and finished far ahead of the silver bannerist, the sea serpent.

Larissa claps gleefully, cheering so ferociously that her mess of red curls fall out of the up-do she had done. "Yes! Yes! Yes! I love Isla!"

Isla happens to be the swimming champion and, according to Larissa, an old friend to the Valentaron Coven (that's Larissa's coven).

The day flies by, full of many more water events like synchronized swimming, water-manipulation (in which creatures that have the ability to control water make wondrous displays in the pool—this is the only competition the water nymphs partake in, and their three competitors took gold), high jump (where the creature that can jump the highest out of the water is the winner, winged water creatures are disqualified, and the hippocampus won for their first time in one hundred games), and many more.

Day three consists of minotaurs and giants clashing for the gold in the boulder-throwing version of human shot-put. I wasn't certain who won, but Larissa tells me the minotaurs were victorious with the giants winning silver and ogres achieving bronze. The speediest mythical creatures raced around the track that the witches created for today. A unicorn, kitsune, and surprisingly fast satyr practically tie, but the sphinx announces that the kitsune earned gold, unicorn silver, and inugami—who I hadn't even noticed in the outside lane—bronze, much to the fourth-place satyr's disdain.

Days four and five consist of a grand tournament where The Arena floats high up and a chasm without a floor separates the the two competitors at a time from the spectators. Only one champion is recognized. The final round, on day five, is a battle between a fierce manticore and a small witch.

"That's Estell. She's the youngest competitor in the history of the Olympic Games," Larissa says. "She's from the Tyronian Coven, one of the three major covens that form the Magycked Alliance, along with my coven—the Valentaron Coven—and the Kaironan Coven."

"How old is she?" I ask, scrutinizing the little girl that has proven to be very powerful the past three rounds she dominated in.

"Seven."

I blink. "Wow."

"I know. Not only is she full of raw power, but she also has one of the most brilliant minds in here, and she knows how to control all the magic inside her."

"Wow," I repeat.

Though the manticore puts up a vicious fight, Estell reigns victorious and becomes, not only the youngest competitor in history, but also the youngest champion. The powerful child had leaped gracefully away from every attack the manticore threw at her, and every time tossed back something of her own. In the end, Estell trapped the beast in a circle of earth, ringed with fire, a wall of ice around it, and wind blowing through the entire arena.

"That manticore has been the reigning champion the past twenty-two Olympics, I was told," Larissa says eagerly. "Even powerful witches before Estell couldn't control that much at once to keep the manticore trapped."

I whistle out my held breath. "That. Was. Intense."

Larissa nods at me with a huge grin. "I know!"

Day seven, the final day, was simply a beauty pageant for the most alluring creatures to compete for the title. A Siren, by the name of Kilonami, sings to the hearts of every member of the audience—admittedly, including me. An angel enchants everyone with her wings for second place. Third place goes to a jorōgumo, which walked up to the stage on eight legs as a spider, but quickly changed into a beautiful woman.

"They seriously had a beauty pageant," I mutter.

"Yup. I think we can blame the Sirens for this one. They sang into the miss of the Council members for a chance to flaunt their attractiveness."

"I guess opening for the Olympics wasn't enough."

For the closing event, champions of all events the past week parade back onto the giant stage in the center, which has three levels, each as big as an American football field, for the gold, silver, and bronze Olympians to stand on, reminding everyone who dominated this year's Olympics.

We leave through a teleportation spiral, which are glowing blue and purple spirals of sparkling light located in eighty-seven different places on each level of The Arena for creatures to quickly return home. Larissa pushes me through and we end up sprawled out on my bed.

"What did you think?" she asks.

"It was amazing!"

"I'm really sorry, but I have to wipe your memory of it."

"What?"

She places a finger to her lips. "Don't tell." And then vanishes.