Highly Commended Story - The Magical Kingdom!

“The Magical Kingdom!” by Chukwuemeka Ogbonna, RA International School, Nigeria, is the Highly Commended story in the junior category of the first biannual Short Story Contest 2020.

Chukwuemeka Ogbonna is ten years old. He has lived his whole life in Bonny Island, Nigeria. He loves reading and enjoys books by Anthony Horowitz, particularly the Alex Rider series. He really enjoys the focus on action and adventure. But he also enjoys books by Michael Morpurgo and JK Rowling. A lot of the ideas for his stories come from inspiration and things around him. In the Magical Kingdom, he really liked the fantasy and adventure genres that he used. He hopes everyone enjoys the story.

The Magical Kingdom!

A thousand years ago there was an amazing kingdom where magic was spread everywhere. It was a place for all children and adults of all ages to play. There was joy and happiness. But even so, there were some people who favored sadness over joy, sorrow over fun, darkness over light and evil over good.

Soon enough the bad got what they wanted and they figured out that the kingdom could be a powerful tool to spread evil if it was transformed; the good of course fought for what was right but the bad overpowered the good and spread dark magic across the kingdom. It was now a terrible place and only a true hero or heroine could remove the curse and bring back true good magic.

For many years the good lived in the caves and creeks of the wicked and cruel. Some even became servants of the evil. It was an unhappy and sad life and worst of all there was a leader of these evil people. He was a sorcerer and his name was Malovent. He had very little weaknesses. He was the one who started all this misery and spread all the black magic with a wave of a single wand. But there was one weakness that he had: Without his wand, he would be useless and the curse would be gone forever. But he told no-one so that he could never be conquered and have the kingdom forever.

The kingdom remained like that for five more years until one day a hero was born. He seemed normal at first, but no one knew that one day this child would be the one to save and protect the kingdom.

Ten years later the child (named Alex) grew up to be a handsome, smart boy. And the best part, with magic, Alex learnt about the curse and how it came up and could be defeated. Every day he wanted to go out, but his mum would tell him: “It’s too dangerous to go out!” and Alex would simply just murmur “Ok Mum.” until one day he decided to take matters into his own hands.

So he snuck out of the cave and went to the castle were Malovent lived. Surprisingly, there were no guards at the door so he just stepped in and still there were no traps. Alex climbed through a narrow staircase and passed through a huge hallway and then he heard a voice coming out from a room. It was some kind of language he couldn’t understand. It took him a while to find out that someone was making a magic spell and he knew who it was…… Malovent! So he burst into the room and shouted “Freeze!”

“Well, well, well…. what do we have here? A ten year old who comes into my castle!”

Alex just ignored him and said nothing and he started to make his move. Alex started by trying to get Malovent’s wand, but Malovent was too fast and nearly struck Alex with a blasting spell. So Alex decided to pick something up and whack him, but he couldn’t find anything and suddenly Malovent blasted Alex, but the spell didn’t hit him because a force field had covered him and that was when Alex found out that he had magic…

The fight was still going on when a powerful ball of fire came out of Alex’s hand and hit Malovent’s wand and a huge beam of light came out of it and then POW!!!

The kingdom was cleared from the curse. Happiness and joy came back and all the evil was kicked out. And as for Malovent… he was imprisoned forever.

And from that day on Alex has been celebrated up until today. And when you look up into the sky you see many stars twinkling reminding you about the victory of the Magical Kingdom.