We welcome all eighty-seven triathlon teams, from our amazingly frisky first-timers to our stalwart hundred-year veterans, from the Appalling Apparitions to the Zealous Vipers, let’s all give a cheer!
Despite several heartfelt petitions, we still only allow three witches or warlocks per tag team. All accessory creatures, doppelgängers, and familiars must be left with Mistress Paloma, who has gentled the most irascible rhinos and hippos with her care and charm, even if they were specifically taught to menace her by past sore losers. I’m looking at you, Mistress Beatrice. We haven’t forgotten.
As in previous years, there are three sequential sections to the race. First: swimming; second: spell-powered land-bound vehicles traveling on one-to-three wheels; and the third and final section: flight.
Same as previous years, swimming will take place in the Lugubrious Cove of Unceasing Tears, the land-bound portion will ascend from the shoreline to the edge of the Muddled Precipice of Confusing Proportions, and the flight portion will end at the edge of the Terrifying Forbidden Forest We Enter Anyways.
For the swimming portion, there is still some confusion, but we thought we made it clear on the registration form that unlike past years, there are no separately ranked categories for surface swimmers: the waterfowl, humans, snakes and the submerged: merfolk, selkie, dolphins, trout, piranhas and other piscine. You’re all together now. Cast your body-shifting shenanigans on yourself at will. However, regardless of your chosen fins, feathers, and flesh, you must remain solid enough to keep your team’s velcro timing tag affixed to your body. Take caution transforming into etherial elementals or other liquid beasts. We absolve all responsibility if you become indistinguishable from any surrounding fluids. All of us on the volunteer staff remember Mistress Oriana who had to be filtered out drop by drop from that unexpected octopus inking. We were very fortunate she could still write.
Take to heart that warning, when I remind you that spells cast on the self are allowed, but spells cast on others are not. No flesh-to-anchor spells or surround-with-ice-vortex. Once our judges detect a spell outside of your body, we will drag you out of the Lugubrious Cove into the spell identification and magic detoxification dinghy. Even Mistress Ingrid couldn’t hide her slow-all-creatures-faster-than-me-by-just-a-titchy spell.
All swimming participants must circle the luminous, witch-hatted buoy and swim to the lovely bladderwrack-demarcated section of shoreline to transfer your velcro tag to your second teammate waiting with their one-to-three wheeled, spell-powered vehicle. Unicycles, wheeled aquariums, circular and upright vacuums, and all other qualifying vehicles must have had all electricity generating parts removed or rendered nonfunctional. Any modifications made after passing yesterday’s inspection will result in immediate disqualification. Witches and warlocks, save your electricity for the cackle-off at the recovery party.
We have an emergency announcement. There is a cauldron bubbling over with a putrid tormenting emission in the back of a burgundy sedan parked near the ancient gnarled willow tree. Please quell your cauldron or move your vehicle before the willow tree tosses it into the farthest depths of the Terrifying Forbidden Forest We Enter Anyways. Also, will the owner please claim a saddled chimera, name tag “Bruce,” stuck between a Volvo and a Bugatti illusion that is manifesting from an e-bike. Please properly secure your transportation. Good catches on parking duty, Mistress Vanthe.
At the end of the land-based portion of the race, transfer your velcro tag at the amaranth-demarcated edge of the Muddled Precipice of Confusing Proportions to your third team member, who must achieve flight before reaching the bottom of the precipice. If you get caught in the swirling-cushion-that-arrests-all-plummeting, you will be alive, but immediately disqualified. Let’s give a hand to Mistress Sybil, who conjured up a spell strong enough to catch our solid steal giant participant who blanked out on her levitate metal spell.
Flight must not be mechanical. We caught you last year, jet-propelled pixies. Single creature bodily conversions to a mass of single-minded flying creatures is allowed, including a swarm of wasps, a murder of crows, and a horde of dragons. No eating of other competitors is allowed, unless you lose your team’s velcro tag before the finish line. Then you’re fair game, and that’s what we’re here for, a fair game. Now, let’s start the final countdown. All together. Four vampire fangs. Three shrieking ghosts, two swooping bats, one snickering ghoul, go!
B. Patten writes in Minnesota, U.S.A. Her short fiction has been previously published in Microfiction Monday Magazine and Spellbound: Legends of Night: Drabbles 5. She has taught English in Japan, in a town that can no longer be found on a map, helped catch bats in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador, seen the peculiarities of grocery stores in the U.S.S.R, and celebrated in Mongolia for the 800 year anniversary of the founding of Genghis Khan’s army.
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