Epilogue: Mark of Malefor
All Spyro Characters © AcTiViSioN
Aeros © RattleSnakeDefender on
All other characters mentioned and prose © RabidPanda1313

In the years when Malefor was young, and a symbol of hope amongst his people, he was taken in by a dragon known as Aeros. During his youth, there were not just four elements. There were the commonly known elements, Fire, Ice, Electricity and Earth, but there were also many others. Amongst them being Wind, which was Aeros' element. Aeros was the Guardian of Wind, and was overseer of the construction of the airborne homes of the Dream Weavers and his own peoples, and the magic they produced.

Over the years Aeros taught Malefor how the spells worked on the many floating islands of the Dream Weavers, and during their many visits to the islands, Malefor also learned the magic craft of dreams. He was able to see into the dreams of sleeping dragons, and many other creatures as well.

As youth gave way to young adulthood, Malefor began exploring more and more power. Soon along with Fire, Ice, Electricity and Earth, he mastered Dream Weaving, Beast Making, and the art of Wind. He became obsessed with the notion that he had to be master of all elements, and even sought out help from the dragon pariahs who lived underground for their secrets. He disappeared for decades, and life went on without the purple dragon as they awaited his return.

But his homecoming was not a happy one. With him came the apes, who wished for nothing more than the destruction of dragon kind. They were ruthless, and helped Malefor thin the ranks of the dragons during their first attacks on small sub-clans living outside of Warfang City. And beside them, under them, churned a massive force of terrible creatures, creatures of darkness and of poison and terror that would snatch hundreds of dragons from their own caves and dens while they slept, dragging them underground, never to be seen again.

Aeros, who had raised Malefor like a son, was distraught and infuriated. He ordered a small number of the Wind dragons to escape, and the rest to go with him to try and win the war against Malefor. His determination to stop what he had started inspired the other dragons, and they too rallied up against Malefor. And to even the numbers, the Beast Keepers worked tirelessly to create a new breed of creature; ones that could help preserve the memory of the dragons and help turn the tide of war. But by the time the first group had matured, it was too late. Malefor massacred the Wind dragons himself, leaving Aeros for the last.

"Why?" Aeros demanded, a bloodied, wrecked shell of himself. Malefor had smiled at his former mentor, licking the old dragon's blood off his muzzle.

"Because I'm going to end this world." And with that, he killed Aeros in a blaze of Fury, and left the rest of the Wind Dragons to die out as he turned to the rest of dragon and Avalar kind in his quest to destroy all of them.

As the years went by, the Wind dragons in the floating islands waited out the war, following their deceased Guardian's orders. Eventually, days, then months, then years turned to decades, decades to centuries, and finally, a millennia passed. Some of the Wind dragons had remained on the islands to live in peace with the Dream Weavers, while others flew down to their homes, seeking revenge for their fallen kin. By the time Malefor was trapped in Convexity, only a handful of full blooded Wind dragons lived on land….

In a remote cave in Warfang, a descendant of the Air Guardian, Gusst, was dying. She was nearly as old as the war with Malefor, a silvery blue dragon descended from a Dream Weaver. Her last egg had been laid early, a purple egg, and that egg's hatchling had disappeared many years ago, having hatched almost two hundred years ago. Their last hope was gone, and in its place, a new black egg was all that remained. Gusst turned to Ignitus, who was watching her anxiously. She beckoned with a claw, and the Fire Guardian came close.

"You have served your kin well, noble Ignitus," she said. "May you live much longer than I have, and may you live to see this war ended."

"Thank you, Lady Gusst," Ignitus said, bowing his head with a new wrinkle etched in his brow. "Madam, I implore you to remain but a year longer. We have only six months until the new batch of eggs hatches. You're the only one who knows where to keep them safely hidden in the Temple from Malefor's Army."

"Aye," Gusst said, "I am. But you and your fellow Guardians must be just as crafty as I ever was...for the hidden rookery is destroyed."

"What?"

"I meant to tell you," Gusst sighed heavily. "But my mind wanders so. It is only now, moments from joining the Ancestors that I recall what must be said. Ignitus." She cupped his jaw in her gnarled paw, pushing his head up so their eyes met. "You must make sure my kind survive. There are more of us living on the last island of the Dream Weavers. Go to them when this war is ended. For it will end in your life time. Tell them they must return to the Realms, or else our kind will die out completely." She frowned deeply. "We are lucky Aeros told some of us to take refuge on those islands. Now I fear it has turned for the worse."

"I will, milady," Ignitus said solemnly.

"Keep the black egg, Ignitus," Gusst said, struggling for air now. She sagged in her nest, and all the feeling in her body slowly began to melt away. Steeling herself for another moment, she managed to gasp out, "If...Malefor discovers the egg...he will...take it...don't let them..."

"I will not, Lady Gusst," Ignitus said firmly, and she smiled vaguely at his tears.

"We will meet again," she whispered. "I am not truly dying. I am joining nature." She smiled, closing her eyes, and seeing clearly for the first time in many years. "I am...joining my mother...my family."

"May the Ancestors be with you," Ignitus said quietly.

"And...with you..." With a great breath, she let out the last of her life, and her heart stopped. It was not painful. It felt rather like falling into the deepest sleep she had ever had...and instantly waking up. She saw Ignitus sitting next to her body, his wings outstretched to hide her from the world, and smiled. Turning to her parents, she said, "There is one last thing I must do." They nodded, and she closed her eyes again, finding herself in the rookery. She found the egg she was looking for; a copper egg with a swirl of dark rust on its side. Touching her claws to it, she let out the last of her Wind magic, feeling it sink into the egg's protective outer shell, deeper, surrounding and being absorbed by the soon to hatch Earth dragon.

"Your great-grand daughter will help save us from the greatest evil we have ever known," Gusst's spirit said. The not yet born dragon inside the egg shifted slightly, and she smiled. "She will be a messenger. The greatest flier of her generation. An outcast and a princess. She will help light up the darkness." She paused and frowned for a moment, but her smile returned quickly. "But do not worry. Though the darkness will seek out to destroy all of your children's grand-children, she will not be touched by it.

"Brook Crooked-Blade will be safe from the darkest of magic. She will bear the mark of Malefor, and forever be touched by light."

%~_~_~_~%

200 Years Later...
Three eggs were sitting, unguarded, in the middle of a small clearing. They had been for almost a year now. Though the skies above churned murderously with the strongest storm this season, they remained untouched, by both the elements and egg thieves. The egg in the middle was the brightest, a nearly white-green shade. On two sides facing in exactly opposite directions, there were three darker green zigzags. It was the smallest of the eggs. On one side was a golden egg, with brown wings marking the shell, wrapping around it in a guarding embrace. The other was green as well, but a duller, darker green, with an even darker bolt of lightning curving around the shell.

Over head, a bolt of lightning crawled across the sky faster than a millisecond. The explosion of thunder that followed not even a blink after shook the very earth, and the creatures of the forest flinched. Within their shells, the unborn dragons twitched. They would hatch, and soon.

Miles away, in a dark cave lit only by a small, crackling flame, a dragoness jerked to life. Her forward sweeping upper horns scraped the wall of her cave, the lower left one catching a stray piece of hide from her meal. The dark green creature stepped over her mate silently, her eyes wide and darting as she felt her way towards the mouth of the cave. Her heart thumped violently again, once, twice, three times. She only just managed to keep from flinging herself out of the cave and flying to the clearing, turning to scramble back to her sleeping mate. Reaching out, she shook his shoulder, pressing down on the dark steel-blue shoulder guard to make sure he felt it.

"Wattsun!" she hissed. She felt a hard flutter in her stomach and let out a strangled noise. She bent down and took one of the forward hanging frills on her mate's head in her teeth, nipping sharply at him. He jerked awake, and she pulled back before he clipped her with one of his horns. A bolt of lightning cut through the night sky, lighting up the cave as her mate's blue eyes blinked open and stared up at her.

"Mmm, what is it?" he asked, opening his wedge shaped jaws to let out a huge yawn.

"They're ready," she said. Wattsun's eyes popped open to their fullest, making the light scars on his face seem just that much bolder. "We have to go. That spell will wear off when the first one breaks through the shell."

"Gale, you're sure?" he asked her gently, getting up despite his quiet doubt. The two of them made their way to the entrance to the cave, unfolding their wings and watching at the storm for a moment. "You're absolutely sure?"

"They're coming," Gale nodded firmly, and took to the skies without another word.

%~_~_~_~%

Somewhere, Deep Underground...
"Enos...Enos!"

"What is it?"

"The eggs are hatching."

"Hmph. What do I care about traitor's eggs hatching?"

"Two of them are the eggs, Enos. From Gusst's Final Prophecy."

"Ahhh. Well then."

"I'll wake the troops, then?"

"No, not yet. I can teach nothing to the green about Wind in the caves. Let them remain with their kind, until they're teenagers. That should give them enough time to gain wills of their own and power to back it up."

"Enos, won't that make breaking them that much harder?"

"Oh, yes. But breaking something without a strong spirit isn't nearly as much fun. I want them to take as long as possible. I want them to realize that because they were born, they will eventually be turned into monsters for it. And they'll never see the light of day."

"Yes, Enos."

"But keep an eye on them. Send up that new recruit and his prized Lizeed...Sheila. Yes. Send little Krauss and Sheila up to watch them. But first, send them to take a message to someone. I want at least one creature to know of my plans...and be completely unable to stop them."

%~_~_~_~%

Sixty Years Later...
Music. Music was always drifting through the forest. The forest which, despite its beauty, despite its tranquility and it's safety, was the biggest pain in the ass. And the music makers were just as bad, if not more so.

Kreekin recognized that tune. It was the song played at the festivals for the beginning of Spring, written and designed by the Pans and Fauns to stir and arouse positive emotion, positive thoughts. Positive bodily reactions. Hypnotic, heady, light and frivolous, it was true testament to all that the Faun and Pans were. He thumped his tail in quiet irritation, wishing the music wasn't sticking to his ear drums as it was. The last thing he needed was an insatiable distraction to keep him from doing his job.

Tonight was his first night on guard duty. It had been a year since the underground entrance had caved in, and in the last six months, smoke had been crawling out of the jagged cracks, the tiny crevices that were once a huge thirty foot long, fifty foot high archway. It had been designed by the ManWeerSmalls, the Moles, but they had long ago left behind their lives underground. Without them it was only a matter of time before the underground entrances and exits crumbled, but the acrid smoke...that was something new.

Quite a few leaps behind him, two creatures were frowning in disappointment. The Faun let out a disgruntled, feminine snort, wrinkling her dark brown nose in frustration.

"He's ignoring us," Pippa said. Crook shot her a look, shaking her head slightly.

"No reason to give up," she whispered. "And don't talk so loud. You know we'll catch all kinds of hell if someone hears us."

"Which is why I'm surprised you talked me into this," Pippa said. "You and I both know your brother will knock us silly if he catches us."

"Catches you," Crook corrected her with a cheeky grin. The light green dragoness preened for a second. "No one can out fly me. You, however, are stuck with those hooves."

"And this weight, which I'll use to slow you down when I grab you by the leg and pull you down if you run for it," Pippa hissed. She lifted her instrument to her lips again, shooting Crook a glare with narrowed brown eyes. "Now be quiet. I've got to concentrate. Tell me what it is we're doing this for again?"

"So my brother has to sit there and be incredibly uncomfortable for the next six hours and twelve minutes," Crook mumbled, "now play."

"You're lucky this only works on males," Pippa replied.

"You know it."

Not even one note had been uttered before something popped loudly from the side, nearly deafening. Crook saw Pippa's lute fly out of her hands, part of it burning with a dark blue fire. Alarm shot through her and she opened her wings to shield them both from the next shot, feeling it sting harshly against the leathery hide before jerking it sharply, sending the majority of the spell flying back to the caster. A shriek and she was on her feet, catching Pippa in one arm.

Churning through the forest to the lookout outcrop, she skidded to a halt in a second, gasping for breath and confused.

"Where's Kreekin?"

"There!" Pippa said, pointing down. They peered over the edge to see her brother in the middle of a skirmish. Crook didn't even bother counting them. She hauled Pippa up and tossed her onto her back, taking off only to drop down about twenty feet. She caught the edge of another outcrop and helped Pippa climb up to the small cave hidden by a small tree and some bushes.

"Stay here," Crook said firmly.

"Be careful," Pippa said, her voice shaking a bit. The dark toned Faun ducked into the darkest part of the cave, and Crook let the bushes and tree branch swing back into place. When she heard the 'all clear' whistle from her best friend, she pushed off of the side of the cliff, and spiraled down to the bottom of the ravine.

She landed, and not a second later she dodged when she heard something lumbering behind her. She swung around to see a giant monster raising one arm up, but not to pummel her with a fist. Where a wrist and then a palm and fingers would have been, there was a cluster of dark energy crystals, and Crook felt a shudder of terror ripple through her. They were incredibly powerful, shrieking with energy, and the giant was going to slash at her with them. Ducking and weaving round him, she wrapped the thicker part of her tail around one of its stubby legs, yanking hard. It fell with an abrupt thud, and she jumped over its length to land on its head squarely, smacking it back into the hard rock ground of the ravine's bottom.

"Help!" Kreekin shouted out. Crook charged forward, her wings open and catching the smaller ones, bowling them over as she rushed to her brother's aid.

He was pushing at what looked like a wingless, shore four armed dragon, it's head unadorned with horns or a frill, with a small little monster on its back. Huge middle claws on the little terror's back legs dug deep into the attacking monster's neck, and it shrilled and waved one small, two-clawed fist with fierce gusto. The smaller one's steed was equipped with even nastier back claws, and one of them was digging into the hide of the inside of Kreekin's back leg, ripping it open and gushing blood.

Catching it round the middle, Crook snapped her jaws around the smaller creature's throat, throttling it like a dog shaking a rat before tossing it. When she landed she slashed at the false-dragon's muzzle, chest and neck, goring it, feeling her claws catch and wrench out an eye as she let out a war cry that built and built until she was roaring incoherently. A weight on her back made her turn, and she found another smaller false-dragon on her back. Its claws dug into her hide and she shrieked like a banshee, twisting round to clamp her jaws down on the top of its skull, wrenching it off.

Around her the battle raged. Eventually she became aware of more dragons around her, and the fire of the local Fire dragon turned the air to smoldering around her from time to time. Her wounds began to add up at an alarming rate, but she didn't care as she defended her stunned brother.

"Crook, get out of here," Kreekin hissed. "You're going to get yourself killed!"

Ignoring him, Crook took on another wave of false-dragons, slashing and snapping, reserving her strength for a final attack if need be. For the moment, behaving more like a rabid animal was working, keeping the vicious, ruthless creatures back for minutes at a time as they tried to find a way around her, to get at her weak spots.

The battle went still for a moment when an explosive roar shook the earth. As one, both sides looked up, as six figures cut through the sky and dived down. A dragon the size of two of the giants landed on a whole group of the false-dragons, crushing them easily under his stone-copper weight. The battle began anew as the strange new creatures turned all their attention to the newcomer, especially the largest, a gigantic Earth dragon that wielded a force of magic to be reckoned with.

"Can you get up?" Crook gasped out. Only a few more of the smallest creatures and their steeds remained, pacing a good six leaps away from them, as if waiting. She heard her brother grunt and sidled back towards him, keeping her eyes on their adversaries. Eventually she felt his huge paw on her shoulder as he pulled himself up, and she leaned back against him when he found his footing.

"Let's get out of here," Kreekin insisted.

Crook nodded. She turned to look for the cave Pippa was hiding in when she heard a rustling of grass, and two more of the false-dragons were charging them. Their mounts nowhere to be seen, Crook whipped around to charge back, snarling. Rearing up, she swiped at one, but it feinted at the last second. She heard the minute grunt of another one beside her and caught its tail before it cracked over her eye, lifting it with little effort to slice at its stomach.

"CROOK!"

In less than a few seconds, it seemed that a hundred things happened. The air around Crook suddenly turned cold. Her head whipped around. There was a huge black fireball careening towards her. Thunder churned, rumbled and roared behind her. She heard the shrills of dying creatures and the crash of boulders. And abruptly, she felt an explosion of pain in the left side of her face. Throwing her head back, rearing up, she let out a guttural scream, as the pain shot through her face, eye, skull, through her blood stream, across her scales, into her flesh, muscle and bone, into something in her chest that went from warm to scalding in an instant. Nothing made sense. She wanted to kill something, she wanted Kreekin to die, and she wanted to kill all of these worthless dragons. She wanted Spyro, the one purple dragon, dying at her claws, wanted Cynder to see her do it, wanted all of dragon kind to die slow, painful deaths of starvation, thirst and loneliness. Blood, so much blood, and slivers of her flesh and bone melted off her face, and she blamed her clan, blamed her kin, blamed Pippa and all the Fauns, Pans, the Cheetahs.

And just as abruptly, all was black.

Darkness...so much...too much...no, not enough...! What was holding us back? Dragons! Filthy bloody wastes of flesh and magic! Kill them all, they don't deserve to live. Only we may exist, only us, we whom they dubbed 'outcasts, defects, little wasted prits!

A light faded in front of the dragoness's consciousness. Hissing, she cringed away from it, but it only build up, imploding like a Spark no longer under control. Snarling, whining, clawing the ground, with saliva and blood dripping from her red-coated face, she arched and thrashed her wings in a threat.

"Peace, young dragonelle," a hundred whispering, calm voices urged. "Peace. List, little green sprite. Peace now." But Crook could hardly do as they asked. She felt the sickly warm-and-cold spreading further down her neck, creeping towards her frantically beating heart. When she lifted a paw, aiming to claw at the gaping circular wound over her left eye, a much larger, white-and-silver paw shot out of the cloud of light, stopping her.

"Peace," its owner said, a noticeable lisp to his otherwise strong voice. It echoed with the hissing, lyrical whispers of the hundred voices before, but the huge dragon that suddenly materialized before her had the most presence.

Somewhere in the marrow of her very bones Crook recognized him as a Wind Dragon, despite having only heard one story in her life time about the extinct drakes. Like the legend said, he had long, thick mustachios that grew from his chin-griff, and wing-like spines, shoulder-guards, and leg spurs. His wingspan was enormous. The part of Crook's mind that still had some sense felt a little twinge of sympathy, knowing that during the dragon's living days, those wings had been a hassle.

"Y-you...Ances...tor?" she grated out, past the poison and the fear and the fury and the hatred.

"I am," the dragon said with a minute nod. His mustachios moved with a haunted grace, billowed by a breeze Crook neither felt nor heard. The dragon leaned down until their eyes were level, and Crook saw that his were blank, glowing fields of gold. "Young Brook, daughter of Gale and Wattsun," he said after a pause, lifting one large paw close to her forehead. He extended a fore claw and Crook leaned forward when she felt a cool light coming from him. "Listen closely, dragonelle. You will from this day forward be marked by Malefor's Malice. But do not worry. My people have been preparing for this a long time now. By the divine will of the All-Mother and the All-Father, I give you this resistance to all of the pariah's spells, and release you from her hold."

Crook gasped, coming to herself as the poison backtracked the way it had seemed to trickle, and she heard the hollow swoosh as if a dragon had taken in breath. But other than herself, no dragon was breathing. She lifted her paw to her face again, and felt the hot, wet curtain that still flowed down her face.

"It will heal," the Ancestor said, "but a scar will always remain. Brook. The Ancestors and I have a task for you. Do you wish to accept it?"

"That depends," Crook said, narrowing her eyes. "What is the task?" For the first time emotion flickered across the dragon's muzzle: bemusement.

"Wise," the dragon said, and his people echoed him, the deceased Wind Drakes and Dragonelles praising her, their mists swirling around her. "You were born without any power other than your vast wings, Brook Crooked-Blade. But over the next turning of the All-Mother, of the moon, you shall be given a gift no other dragon will be given." The dragon opened his wings to their fullest length, the silvery-white webbing catching the ethereal light and blinding Crook for a moment. "No other dragon yet exists that has the full power to control Wind. But by His and Her divine will, you are to be given this power. You, Brook, are the only one.

"Do you accept it?"

"Yes," Crook answered instantly, knowing that this was bigger than herself, bigger than her family, her clan. This was no hallucination. As she had known what he was in an instant, she also knew this was her destined path. Whatever remnants of Earth Magic was left in her blood left her as the poison and dark magic had, and Aeros the late Wind Guardian rumbled his approval.

"Then let your training begin, young dragonelle."

%~_~_~_~%

Higher than any living creature had ever traveled, beyond Convexity and Nirvana, beyond Apollo and Luna, there was a faltering and shuddering of breath that did not belong in empty space. The Star Crafter clutched at his chest with his hand, feeling raw energy charge through him. He only just managed to hold in the raw power of the small dwarf star he was creating, compelled to stop and turn towards the Realms, his favorite galaxies next to the world called 'Earth.'

His mind raced across the distance of two galaxies, and he witnessed a battle there. These were the banished creatures, those who had turned against his treasured dragons, goat-folk and feline-folk, his goats and his moles, murdering millions during a time when the Purple Dragon of Lore hadn't even started. They attacked the dragons in a ravine, where the moles had all come out from underground to seek friendship amongst others besides their own kind. But it wasn't the number of dragons being attacked that startled him. It was the one that was attacked, the mint-green she-dragon who fiercely protected one of her two twin brothers that nearly made his metaphorical heart stop.

It had been a few centuries since the well being of an individual dragon had caught his interest. But this time was far different, alarmingly so. As one of the Greater Gnacks flung a huge ball of black at her face, he felt his energy, every piece of him strewn out across the galaxies, flare with rage and desperate fear. Crook was her name. And this Gnack, this little demon, was trying to turn her into a husk, a hive-mind. His mind raced to finish the motions of the dwarf's creation, which would take many years. Years did not matter to him. They did not pass quickly, nor did they drag on. But for the first time in his one millennia of life, he could not finish quickly enough.

"You know we cannot become attached to them," his brother's mind said as his corporeal body rushed to join his mind. "None of them. We are above them. We may watch, but we may never interfere. Father would not-"

"Hold your tongue while speaking of Father's rules to me, brother," he snapped, cutting off the younger Star Crafter. He felt his brother's disdain and fury building, and ignored it. "I cannot ignore this. The very balance of this world depends on this dragon, and many others. But if one of them should fall, all of them would be doomed to something worse than Convexity."

"You take too much interest in the welfare of your dragons," his brother replied thoughtfully. "I wonder sometimes whether you're truly loyal to your own kind. Or if you would rather side with those little wyrms."

"They are a kindly sort," Luna said, her voice husky and dark with contentment. "Galaxis, you are so harsh on our Lord. Leave him to his business."

"Galaxis is right, Wife," Apollo said firmly. "Star Crafters may not dabble in the affairs of the mortals."

"Silence!" the Higher Star Crafter roared. He felt the stillness of the universes around him, the absolute quiet as for a moment, time stood still for all things, though they did not know. Cosmos cupped Realms in his hands and found the fallen dragoness again. He had stopped her not a moment too soon; the magic had already set in, staining her bright green sides with a black and purple sheen that was frozen halfway down her back and sides. "Aeros," he said. From the Well, the deceased Wind dragon stirred and awoke, the late Guardian's spirit rising at his call. "Warn her. I can only keep it this way for a moment."

"Yes, sire," Aeros said. He oversaw the relaying of message to Crook as he reversed the affect of the Gnack's spell. He was draining his own purging magic from her when he felt something that made him forget everything; in an instant, he realized it was pain. He shrieked, taking on his favored form to twist round and grapple with the wielder of the shadowed weapon. In the next instant he felt all of his born magic drain out of him; he was stuck in this form, and as the spell of the blade completed itself, he felt something else...the lack of air.

He was mortal.

"Go join your little pets, brother."