Chapter 25: The First Task

All Stiles wanted to do was run and hide. The roar of the crowd, the weight of Kate's eyes on him, the constant barrage of support from his pack had his head throbbing, his emotions fraying. He stood in the middle of the Quidditch field, Allison and Kira standing back to back with him so they made a triangle. If he turned, would he disappear into a world that only included them? One where they could wait out the Tournament and only reemerge once the carnage had settled around them.

Fingers wrapped around both his hands, squeezing gently with nearly identical strength. It wasn't hard to tell who they belonged to, though. Kira's were small and delicate, soft from being taken care of over the years, but just like Allison's, they were strong and capable. Allison's hands were larger and warm, calloused from years of hard labor or training or a combination of the two. They tightened ever so slightly as the cheers and jeers from the crowd rose as Headmaster Deaton stepped into his box.

Stiles squeezed their fingers back reassuringly before letting them fall, his wand, cool and solid, sliding into the place of Allison's fingers from the depths of his sleeve. 'It's going to be fine. This is going to be fine. Deaton's taken precautions, and there's more people here than at the Quidditch match. Kate wouldn't dare try something after the match. You'll be fine,' he chanted to himself, wondering if he repeated the words enough times, they would eventually become true. He hoped that if he repeated them enough times, he would start to believe them.

The trio startled as Deaton's voice boomed over the stadium, quieting the crowd. "The champions as they stand before you, only equipped with a wand and their knowledge of magic, will be given thirty minutes to retrieve fifteen items from around the grounds and the castle. If all fifteen items are retrieved before the clock runs out, they will be given the chance to retrieve a sixteenth item from the Shrieking Shack. They may use any spell they know as long as it is not forbidden or an apparation charm. Spectators may not assist a champion in need. If it is determined that the champion cannot complete the task, an appointed teacher will give assistance. Champions, are you ready to begin your first task?" He locked eyes with Stiles, conveying a warning or a secret or a message that he was too encumbered, too highly strung to understand.

Raising his wand in unison with Kira and Allison, he found Derek in the stands, drawn to him as the earth was to the sun. He shot sparks the same color of Derek's eyes into he sky. Beside him, Allison sent up sparks as silver as the stars while Kira sent up sparks the exact shade of pink as newly spread cherry blossoms.

Cries of excitement and awe ran through the crowd even though it was a simple spectacle. He wasn't the only one who was highly strung, it seemed.

"The task will begin at the sound of the bell and end with two bells." Numbers, scarlet and eight feet high, appeared above their heads. "Champions, your time... starts... now!" The bell Deaton had mentioned was drowned out by the roar of a beast.

Glancing over their shoulders at one another, they each nodded to each other before darting in different directions, their minds running frantically through a list of spells that would deliver them from the stadium and away from whatever beast was clawing its way from beneath the stands. In moments, Kira sprouted huge, feathered wings the color of snow. With a gasp from the crowd, she soared over their heads, disappearing over one of the Ravenclaw stands.

Screens appeared around the clock, following her progress.

Stiles cursed beneath his breath. His mind was blank, as blank as the first time he'd ever tried to talk to Lydia. He'd been a stuttering, stumbling mess, and knew that no spell that spilled from his mouth in that moment would be articulated enough to produce a suitable outcome.

Somewhere, he couldn't pinpoint from where, he heard Scott and Isaac scream their support for Allison as a broomstick flew into her hands. She wasn't a great rider, she'd told Stiles as much when Scott and Isaac had begged her into a game of Quidditch, but she clumsily straddled the broomstick and found her way from the stadium.

Broomsticks! Why hadn't he thought of that?

He could see the exit from the stadium right ahead of him. Outside that exit, the team tents would still be set up. His broom would be waiting patiently for him, ready to steal him away to collect some prizes for himself. The moment he set foot onto the bridge, a dragon, large and horrendous and snarling, crawled into his path. It was grey as the storm clouds that pervaded mid-summer thunderstorms, its scales shimmering and flashing the bluish-green of lake water in the morning sun. If someone had stuck sapphires in its head, they would be its eyes.

Crying out, he flung himself backwards, landing with a jarring impact on his rear. "Holy shit," he whispered, staring up at the beast as it towered over him, opening its maw wide to destroy his eardrums.

"Stiles!" Derek shouted, and he could see Derek over the dragon's head nearly crawling over the side of the stadium, his eyes burning scarlet, only Lydia's and Scott's arms keeping him at bay.

Though fear owned him, Stiles watched curiously as the dragon's jaws met and it cocked it's head, snuffling the ground around him. A purr droned along its throat. Grinning, Stiles stood, throwing Derek a cheeky grin and a thumbs up.

Derek flashed his canines irately, but settled back into his seat, clutching his wand in both fists. If he wasn't careful, he'd snap it in two like Laura had done when they were Third Years. He told him as much through their bond, and got a gab in return.

Stiles blew him a kiss before stepping closer to the purring beast. He held his arms out to his side, a smirk curling up the corners of his mouth as he felt the alpha that he'd only met over the summer rise, filling his eyes with crimson and his limbs with power. His mother's ring warmed against his skin. "Come on, I know you want to smell me," he coaxed, taking another step forward.

The dragon buried its muzzle against his belly, snuffling up and down and around his body. He ran his fingers over it's scaled skin, allowing his magic to flow out through him, easing any distrust the dragon may have harbored for him. Scratching beneath its chin for a moment, he swung himself up onto its neck. "Alright, Calcifer, let's get moving! We've got a task to win!"

"What?" Cora shouted, indignation and utter disbelief warring in her voice, "Who the fuck names a dragon Calcifer, you raving lunatic?"

"I do!" he shouted back to her, laughing widely as they took flight and his stomach dropped out from beneath him. The marker that Stiles had been too focused to notice exploded in a shower of fireworks over the stadium.

"Stiles Stilinski has secured the first out of the fifteen objects!" the student who did the announcing for the Quidditch matches called from their podium. "There are twenty-eight minutes remaining on the clock!"

Reaching down, Stiles patted the dragon on the side of the neck, spreading more of his magic over its scales. "Alright, Calcifer, time to get rocking and rolling. We've got four more items to snatch up. We'll be fair to the girls. What do you say?"

Releasing a roar of delight on the end of a tail of fire, they soared towards the castle.

…..

The second marker exploded into fireworks moments after they arrived on sight. Allison looked a little worse for wear, clutching a small crystal bottle filled with golden liquid to her chest. She'd replaced her broom, the pieces of her first lying in a pile with the writhing vines of a plant that still reached for her. When her eyes landed on Stiles, they widened before she burst into laughter. "Only you! Only you would figure out how to talk a dragon into giving you a ride!" she snorted, slipping the bottle into an inside pocket of her robes.

Stiles grinned. "You know it. Where's Kira?"

"Off getting a book, I think, from over there." Allison gestured vaguely towards the castle as another marker exploded, and Kira's burst through a window back first, flung towards Allison. They tumbled ass over teakettle through the air until Allison managed to right them. "Here she is."

"Got it," Kira huffed. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair frazzled and her ponytail falling into disarray. She glanced over him. "Is that a dragon? Is that what we heard back in the stadium?"

Suppressing a laugh, Stiles nodded. "Sure is. Named them Calcifer. I'm headed towards Laura's cabin next. What about you two?"

"Back into the castle with me," Kira muttered with a sigh, staring forlornly at the window she'd been thrown threw.

"I think I'll head towards the greenhouses," Allison said, staring at the scattered markers off in the distance.

Nodding, Stiles tried to tune out the commentators voice.

"The champions seem to be... conversing! As if they are strategizing and helping each other! What a strange turn of events! Three items have been collected with twelve items remaining and twenty-four minutes left on the clock! The champions better get moving!"

Rolling his eyes, he focused back on the girls in front of him. "We'll compete for the sixteenth, yeah?" Grinning, his companions nodded. "Let's get this task finished then, shall we?"

Patting the side of the dragons neck, they tore away, streaking through the sky.

…..

"Abort! Abort!" Stiles shouted, throwing spells left and right as they popped into his mind, scrambling onto Calcifer's neck once more. "Up, up, and away! Second star to the right and straight on till morning!" He was spewing nonsense, he knew that, but as they burst into the sky, circling Laura's cabin, he couldn't help his verbal diarrhea. "Seriously, a clutch of pissed off blast ended skrewts? Who thought that was a good idea? Are they trying to kill us? Fuck, I think my eyebrows are gone. Calcifer, are my eyebrows gone?"

The dragon snorted, giving him no answer to his dilemma.

"No help," he grumbled. He could see the object he'd been aiming for clear as day. A book sat on Laura's old table, leather cover glistening as if it were brand new, and the blast ended skrewts were scurrying all over it. They were scurrying over everything! The moment his foot had touched ground, they'd literally popped out of the woodwork, well, what was left of it after the cabin had been subjected to the Hales' fury.

To say he'd made a noise that he would have been embarrassed by later would have been an understatement if he hadn't been so terrified. "What are we going to do, Calcifer? Do you think a stunning charm would work?" Muttering the spell under his breath, Calficer veered wildly to avoid the deflection off the skrewts' shells. "Oh, come on! Is that even legal? Why do these things exist?" His wand spat a tongue of agitated fire from the tip, flicking through the air like a whip of blue.

The skrewts paused in their scurrying, staring up at the flame, even as it dissipated.

Raising an eyebrows, Stiles let the tongue of flame spill out, dipping towards the creatures below him. They scrambled over each other, reaching for it, fascinated by the flame. "Oh, I know your game now, little jerks. Drop me right over the book, Calcifer." Focusing his attention on a poor tree right on the edge of the forest, he lit it up like a roman candle, the blue flames consuming it in a spectacular display of destruction, the skrewts forming a ring around it. "I'm sorry about that, tree. Nothing personal."

Scooping the book into his arms, he clambered back onto Calcifer, dousing the flames before they could spread and consume more of the forest.

…..

"Let's see what that marker out there on the edge of the Forbidden Forest is," Stiles told Calcifer, pointing out the marker that nearly bordered the edge of the grounds. "What do you think it is? I'm going to say a magical sword passed down through generations that has to find you worthy before you can pull it from its sheath."

What the marker actually was was... nothing. It was nothing. It marked nothing. It showed the placement of nothing except the stupid tree that it levitated right over, and Stiles was not about to try and uproot a tree as his fucking object. What were the judges smoking when they set out these objects? First a dragon, then the skrewts. Place a book in the direct line of fire to become incinerated? Not the judges' smartest choice. Now this empty ass tree at the edge of the grounds. He could have slapped Deaton.

He felt a nudge along his and Lydia's connection, a spell slipped into his mind like money exchanging hands during a drug deal. It was a 'simple' revealing charm, something they'd found in one of the forbidden books in the library when they were Fourth Years. "What is that supposed to do?" Another more insistent, less requesting nudge shoved at him. Rolling his eyes, he muttered the spell, pointing his wand at the tree.

Nothing. Just like he'd expected. "Come on, Calcifer, le-" he started to say, turning the dragon from the marker, but a shimmer on one of the highest branches caught his eye. A flutter, a ripple in the air, a slight shimmer. "Is that a...?" Leaning down as far as his fingers would reached, he slipped them over thin, iridescent fabric. "Holy hell, it's an invisibility cloak!"

The marker above them exploded. "There are six items left to be collected with fifteen minutes left on the clock!"

…..

Calcifer slammed muzzle first into a force field only a few inches away from their next item, a bottle with glass tainted black by either paint or magic, obscuring the identity of the potion. They flew at the very top of the Divination Tower, the potion bottle balanced on the very tip of the tower roof. The dragon snorted, rearing back and spewing fire into the air in an act of sheer rage.

Calming the dragon absentmindedly with a burst of magic, Stiles stared at the bottle. "This... this can't be a simple as I'm think it is, right?" he asked Calcifer, sliding up the dragon's neck. He ran his hands along the invisible barrier.

His hand pushed through a hole in the barrier the size of his palm. Wrapping his fingers around the bottle, he barrier dissolved around his wrist. "On to our last, buddy," Stiles told the dragon.

He grinned at the announcer shouted, "Despite the vast diversity of challenges the champions have faced, they've each managed to collect four items each before the clock has even reached ten minutes! Looks like we're going to need to use that bonus object as a tie breaker instead of an extra!"

…..

"What the fuck is this?" Stiles groaned, standing in the doorway to the greenhouse. Allison had missed the last marker over the greenhouses, or had entered and immediately said, "Fuck this," because that was exactly the reaction he wanted to give in that moment. Calcifer had left him to his own devices, backing out of the greenhouse on first look.

The greenhouse had been transformed into the nightmare that would be produced if an apple orchard and a jungle produced a hybrid forest. It was dark and muggy, thick green vines creeping along the glass and the ground and around the trunks of apple trees laden with fruit, tangling around Stiles' ankles, tugging him deeper into the darkness. Droplets of moisture pattered all around him. If creatures hid in the foliage, he wouldn't have been able to hear them over the drone of the ever present dripping.

Swallowing thickly, he allowed the vines to drag him deeper into the greenhouse. It seemed to have grown in size, like the tent Laura liked to bring when they went camping at the beach, holding much more than it ever had. It was nearly pitch black when he was brought to a halt in the middle of the forest/jungle/orchard nightmare baby.

"What am I even looking for?" he whispered, squinting into the gloom.

"This," a voice hissed.

Shouting out his surprise, he stumbled back as a snake's tail, wrapped securely around an apple glowing as gold as Scott's eyes did when he shifted, uncoiled in front of him. "Who are you?" he stammered, taking another step back, "What's so great about an apple?"

The voice made a noise that seemed to be a wheezing breath, but Stiles realized, was just laughter mixed with an unnecessary amount of hissing that he was highly uncomfortable with. "What's so special about this apple, you ask? Why, it holds all the information you could ever want to know. It holds."

"Right," Stiles said, dragging out the word doubtfully though his mind instantly darted to his mother and the strange effect his magic seemed to have on certain people and creatures, "And who are you again?"

"Why, I'm the keeper of the apple, don't you know?" A snake's head dropped down beside the apple, it's tongue flicking out, its mouth spread wide as if in a smile. It's eyes drifted through every shade and hue possible until all Stiles' brain could comprehend were two black holes. "I'm very well known in some circles."

Rubbing his fingers along his wand, nodding slightly, he stared off into the darkness. "Right, sure, right. I think I know who you are now. Any chance you'll give me that apple without a fuss?"

The hiss turned threatening. "Why would I do that? That's ridiculous. I would, though, consider giving it to you for a price." The snake stretched out its tale.

Stiles extended his hand until the tips of his fingers brushed the crisp surface of the apple. "Yeah, and what's that price? Maybe we can work something out. I kind of need this apple."

He thought the snake's grin was widening, but after a moment, he realized that it was unhinging its jaws. "Why, your soul, of course!" it shouted, lunging forward.

…..

Calcifer sneezed, wrinkling his nose as Stiles stepped from the greenhouse, clutching the apple for dear life in one hand and his wand in the other. He flicked the end of the snake's tail, still squirming and writhing, from the apple's skin, grimacing as it steamed on the grass. He was covered in stinking, black blood. Poison of the kind that's only lethal if it enters the blood was matted and congealing in his hair.

"I feel you, Calcifer. I smell disgusting. I look disgusting. Who is going to want to kiss my pretty face after this mess, huh? I sure wouldn't." He laughed lightly as the connections with his pack tickled delightedly at him, and the marker over the greenhouse shot golden fireworks into the sky.

The grounds fell eerily silent, and Stiles quieted to listen to the announcer.

"All fifteen items have been successfully collected by the champions with each having collected five. Champions, please assemble before the Whomping Willow to begin your hunt for the bonus object!"

Obviously, this could have gone on forever, but I like where I ended it for now. That bonus item needs a chapter all its own for what I'm planning on.