Dia de los Ninos / Children’s Day [1/2]

It has been several months since Isabella's and Dolores's Gift Ceremonies, the latter of which almost ending up in disaster if not for the forethought of Andres giving Dolores an enchanted pair of ice clip on earrings. The earrings are enchanted to immediately turn into earmuffs that cover the ears and either completely erase all sound from coming in, or dampen them to be a hundredth as loud.

However even with the second it took before the earrings activated, the sudden extremely loud noises from fireworks and the crowd cheering caused Dolores extreme pain and even some bleeding from her ears since they haven't been conditioned yet. With Andres hard at working trying to convince Alma to keep the gifting ceremony private, and then have a party the day after, she conceded.

From there, life continued on, with Andres creating more and larger things with his ice powers now that he was comfortable with them and mastered them to perfection, with the exception of time freeze as he wasn't ready to mess with that just yet. But finally, the day he was waiting for arrived, Halloween or Dia de los Ninos (Children's Day) as they call it here.

The previous 2 years he was too young and not allowed to leave his parents arms, plus he was still mastering his Magic. But now, now he was 3 and ready to liven this Holliday up.

Hours later, Night Time

Diego POV

"WOOHOO!!"

I could see and hear my wife Abigail shouting in exhilaration as we, along with Andres, road a massive and majestic serpentine ice dragon that was flying in the sky, performing large loops and spins under my wife's egging my son on.

Not far behind us, I can hear the Madrigals going through a similar thing I am, with Julieta and her side of the family riding a gorgeous ice Phoenix larger than a carriage, Pepa and her side of the family riding a regal white Tiger the size of a house, and Bruno with Alma calmly riding a truly titanic tortoise, with a snake wrapped around it and securing the two to the tortoise. Everybody else on their rides were secured with ice seats and what looks like a buckle belt across their torsos.

Finally, I could see our destination, a massive ice stadium our son created in the center of town, with seats already filled by most of the towns people. Andres wanted to make a huge event of the Holliday, promising to convert the massive stadium into a carnival for the town to enjoy after the opening event. What that event is, I don't know, as he wouldn't tell me, although he did promise that while epic, it would be safe.

He did drag in Abigail and Agustin into it but they also wouldn't tell me what the opening event is. Which is surprising, since Agustin normally can't keep a secret to save his life and Abigail rarely is willing to hide something from me, not since the last time she kept a secret trying to surprise me on our first anniversary, only for it to end in disaster when she gave me a cat, not knowing of my severe allergies to them, causing me to need to be rushed to Julieta for healing food.

It's why we now have Sadie actually, since she is trained to keep cats away from me and if need be, rush towards Julieta for healing food and bring it back to me. Anyways, I got side tracked again, I have been doing that a lot recently and Abigail has been teasing me about it too, making jokes about me getting old and retrospective in fatherhood.

As I was lost in my thoughts, we arrived in the center of the stadium in a grand flourish, with the four ice and snow beasts of legend landed in a synchronized fashion, gaining the awed excitement and applause from the crowd. As we made our way off of the large beasts, I could see that there were many ice humans in the crowd serving frozen drinks and other chilled confections, the most popular with the children are these 'snow cones' I believe he called them.

Finally, with everybody now off of the beasts, the four roared before shining a bright light, causing everybody to cover their eyes. Once it dimmed down, we could all see a massive ice contraption we have never seen before, it looks sort of like a raised flat rectangular arena with two small towers on opposite ends of the arena, and in the center, hovering high above all of our heads, was a massive two sided flat screen that was broadcasting a larger size version of… us? No, of Andres in my arm who was now standing on my shoulder for height… when did he do that?

"Welcome everybody, to the Ice Stadium, the starting event of the hopefully annual Winter Carnival if everybody likes it. I will keep it brief as I know we all want to get to the fun part, but I do need to explain this opening event."

Well, that was the most I've heard him talk in one sitting in a while. Didn't know he was so charismatic either, with how introverted he is normally… why is Abigail and Agustin walking up the stairs to the tower?

"For a while now, I have created a card game that is more than just a card game. Within these ice cards lies dormant a piece of my magic to create ice constructs of whatever is on them, in this case monsters for attack and defense, spell cards to help empower and enchant, and trap cards for protection and strategic maneuvering."

"This is a turned based card game i call Duel Monsters! It is turned based, with each Duelist starting off with 8000 Life Points and 5 Cards, the first turn nobody can directly attack their opponent so that it's fair, and the first person to take a turn during the duel cannot draw a card, whereas every turn afterwards during the start of their turn which is calling the Drawing Phase, they draw 1 card to add to their hand."

That is quite complicated for a child to come up with, now I am interested in seeing how this looks. Especially with Andres putting some of his Magic into these 'cards' to create ice versions of them for special effects… now I am getting excited!

It seemed I wasn't the only one either as everybody, especially the children and Bruno were starting to get very excited. Speaking of which, when did front row recliner seats pop up and when did they walk over to sit down? …. Maybe Abigail is right, i am getting lost in my thought too much.

"For this first Duel, as this is new to all, I have enlisted the help of my mom, Abigail Pena who will wield the mighty Blue Eyes White Dragon Deck! And a friend of my family and pseudo uncle, Agustin Madrigal, who will wield the mysterious Dark Magician Deck! For each phase in a Turn, they will call it out to help everybody follow along and get used to the structure of a Duel!"

"There is more to it, but I can see everybody is excited, so what do you say?! Let the match begin!"

With a wave of his hand some ice men plays trumpets and other musicians start softly playing to match the theme of the duel, then both Abigail and Agustin shout at the same time from the towers, five cards already in their hand, as the towers light up some.

"It is time to Duel!!"