One Last Breath
By: Cornys

Chapter 1
An Unexpected Visitor

Wires and tubes surrounded me on every side pumping the fluids into me that sustained my meager existence. Every few seconds a soft "beep" rang out from a few feet beside my head signaling to everybody who was near enough to hear that I still clung to life. I knew that somewhere deep inside of this shriveled body there was that dragon who was able to liberate the world from the clasp of evil, but where it was inside of this blackened and charred body was a question best left to those of greater mind than my own.

"Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep," the machines chirped incessantly. Tracing my eye down the length of a clear, thin tube I finally arrived at a slice in my right front wrist. I moved my focus directly in front of me, and temporarily was lulled into comatose by the grey stone's absolute solidness.

I had no idea how long I had stayed like that staring at the wall before the monitor returned to the fore-front of my existence. Nothing below my neck seemed to exist, and try as I might to move my legs or tail, nothing even attempted to budge.

I had just started to trace a particular brown tube from the floor when I saw a yellow reptilian pass through the entryway to my domain. His body had an excellent hue to it even in this the darkest of rooms. His horns were pristine white, the scales that ran down his back reflected the light that escaped in from the hallway, and his underbelly even shone a little grey from the darkened floor.

He couldn't have been more than a few years out of the dragon academy, and while most of his peers would have been out on the town and making all kinds of trouble enjoying themselves, here he was visiting with this vegetable that he'd never met before in his life. It was hard for me to look too negatively upon the future when I gazed upon him.

He held me in his lively brown pupils solidly with a sort of subdued eagerness. I desired for him to speak first, but I knew that he wouldn't until I did via curtsey.

I braced myself for the horrible state of my vocal chords and allowed them to vibrate to life, "Hello, boy." He nearly jumped back at the sound, and who would blame him, it was a truly terrible sound.

"Hello, Spyro, I am General Commander of the Military, Jonathan Woodrow," he announced him self back to me. Should I have had the ability to create expression I would have looked utterly surprised.

"What the hell is the commander of our military doing in this little chicken cope?"

"Well, you see, I was looking for general guidance from the one dragon who had the most experience in high powered warfare, and other affairs."

I looked back into the recesses of my memory bank, and beheld with horror once again what had finally came to pass. I could see each tiny droplet of blood spew from the decapitated skull of a comrade where it laid upon the ground. The visions of massive forces aligned against that of me and my small force that held Warfang just after the I had defeated Malefor. I could still see the smoke drifting into the sun-set after many such battles, and the piles of ashes that would be blown away by the time the sunset again.

A vivid memory caught traction in my mind, and I knew what I was looking at: Cynder's rear end. I shut that one away and threw my head against the pillow as harshly as I could, "Fucking idiot!"

Jonathan darted backwards without looking and found his tail pushed straight up the wall directly opposite of me at the sudden out-burst. I would have laughed, but the seriousness of what I had just done had me flaming with self-anger. Everything that I had done to allow my self to exist stably over the past twenty-five years had just been entirely thrown out of the window. If I wasn't able to condone this thinking pattern quickly Cynder would be all over the front of my consciousness, and that would be bad in many ways.

"I'm sorry," I announced to him finally regaining composure, "I haven't had visitors in some time, and something new for me always brings up old ghosts."

"I, I can understand how one such as yourself could have issues with that as much as you have been through in your life. This is why I'm here you see, you have had nearly a century here in this room alone with your memories, and what ever else you bring with you to this world. If there is one person who deserves to lead us intellectually, it is you, Spyro."

At least he wasn't stupid, I had had plenty of time to ponder everything that I'd ever need to ponder as far as life, death, religion, philosophy, and social interactions. If I could write I would write a whole book on philosophy, but alas I couldn't write. "So, what is it that you were hoping to learn about exactly? I can tell you about what is going to happen in the future, I can tell you how opposing armies will react to certain movements, and I can even tell you what to do with all of your forces, and when to do it."

He shook his head back and fourth, "Though this information is of course useful, I think that it is best that you speak of the past, and everything about the past first. The future can wait for at least one night can't it?"

I was afraid that he was going to want to know about the past, the one thing that I wanted to think about the least, and he wanted to know everything that there was to know about it so that he could make his own predictions about the future, and be as good as a leader as he could be. He wouldn't believe me if I told him everything I knew about that was happening in this little sphere at the top of my disabled body. He didn't need to be a good leader, he needed to be a good listener and follower of my instructions, however, I also knew by the way he was acting and his personality that the one and only possible path of escape from this situation that Warfang was trapped in wasn't going to be executed. It was too much against the tried and true that I had followed. In my time I never would have done what I would ask him to do if I was given the time.

Just like any youngster, he thought he could do it better than those generations before him, and now that he had his chance he was bound determined, like the rest of them, to show the previous generations how right he was. Here he was at my bed side acting as though nothing was going on, when enemies were bombarding the city's opposite side as he stood before me. Of course he didn't know that I knew that.

"Well, what exactly do you want to know about as far as the past goes?"

He pondered the ceiling, "Um, I don't know. Could you give a quick recount of the day when you first realized your elemental abilities?"

I squinted automatically in response, "You want to know about something as trivial as that?"

"Yeah, I'd like to. I've set aside three hours every day this week to speak with you if you don't mind me doing so. I can easily make different arrangements if you don't wish to or aren't in good enough condition."

"No, I don't mind, and I should be stable enough, but why that?"

"I just want to know everything that there is to know about you being who you are so I know where your opinions are coming from."

"Ok, I see, well, it was around my thirteenth birthday when..."

The thick stalks of towering mushrooms shrouded the long walkways around the place that had been home to me my entire life. I actively turned my head about back and fourth looking for that pesky little dragon fly who'd just flown out of my view. "You know this is getting a little boring…"

My peripheral vision suddenly was shrouded into a long streak, and before I could thrust my claws out towards the unseen attacker Sparx was being taken away from me just as soon as I caught a glimpse of his yellow body.

I finished the story without interruption, and from the look on his face I could see some conflicting feelings turn about his cerebrum, "I've heard that story before, but.." It was quite painful to watch his fumble around with his politically correct wording.

"But, you didn't know that I was raised by Dragonflies? Yes, I'm quite aware of the joke, and yes, I thought that I was a dragon fly in the first twelve years of my life. It's quite funny in retrospect I'dn't it?"

He frowned, I knew he'd hate to be corrected, but I really couldn't care less, "Well, yes, but why isn't this ever mentioned in our texts books? They always speak of how you grew up in Warfang and then moved out with the guardians so that…"

I already knew what he was going to say; I'd never talked to an outsider like him at length like I was, but I knew what I'd ask in this situation, "They are afraid that you may start asking questions about my stability, or start asking about Malefor. They believe that if nobody knows about the evil, then nobody will have any desire to become evil, but they just don't understand, and they probably never will as long.."

"Whoa, who's they?"

I suddenly felt the urge to move my right leg, and my mind commanded it to move, but all that happened in the end was a massive tremor through out my facial muscles, "They actually are calling themselves 'Them'"

"Them! Come on dude, stop screwing with my head. I'm just here to hopefully carry on your knowledge, and help dragon kind."

"I am trying to help you, but you must be patient with me; I haven't had a serious social interaction like this in a century you know?"

He bobbed his head, but I could see anger bubbling up beneath the surface of his scales, "I'm sorry."

"Well, anyways," I continued, "The 'Them' is actually The Hatred Elimination Mission crew, and they have stopped at nothing to destroy things that might suggest that evil has ever existed, or ever will. Actually, I'm surprised that you're not a member being in the position that you are."

"No, I've never really wanted to join 'Them,'" he stopped and laughed to himself for a few brief seconds, "In fact, I think that they are highly stuck-up and hard headed despite what they lead the masses to believe. I feel like all they want is power, and power for the sake of power, rather than power to right the wrongs in our society," the yellow dragon explained.

"You aren't too far off the truth really," I began, but was suddenly taken from the current and thrust back into a powerful memory.

The back of sky blue paws filled my entire line of sight as they rest directly in front of my face. Immediately I was aware that my legs were fully underneath me and my stomach panged in self-pity knowing that I wouldn't have much longer to enjoy them. Beams that extended from hundreds of pupils stuck me solidly in the back, and reminded me of the scrutiny that I was under. Of course it was all effectively deflected from my mind with the shield of knowing this was only a dream and had came to pass already.

My neck lurched upward progressively only to be jolted to a stop by a cold force on my neck, "You will not be able to go anywhere, Spyro, so don't try anything stupid," The familiar blue dragon uttered.

"We love you, Spyro! We will never forget!" screamed a high pitch in the background causing a general unrest in the crowd. It brought m pride to know that somebody cared that much, but what an unadvisable thing to do, heaven's knows what horrors came to her on this accord. I shook my head up and down gently to thank her for that so that maybe she would have some comfort in the prison she was about to be trusted into. It was all that I could do for her now.

The dragon directly in front of me bellowed, "They court, is now in session!"

The hall went silent.

"Good, now, to attend to the first issue on the plate: The prisoner has properly requested to have a fair trial, and I believe that it is only fair that we give him what he would have given us if he was in power, don't you think?"

I gasped back into my current paralyzed state, and was immediately reminded that I was more of an electronic than a life form, "I'm sorry, I do not have much control over my self any more. I hope that you knew live to know what this is like, Jonathan, I pray that you never know what this is like.

A/N: No, I'm not back in the traditional sense in that I'm going to be writing a chapter a week or more. Actually I'm doubling my chapter length, and seeing how much I can write with still continuing work on my novel. I'll likely do this until the time that "Spyro's Kingdom" is released, and I can play it. Then I may return 100% for a month or so before returning to working on the novel. Depending on where the novel is then I'll decide what needs to be done.

I hope that you all enjoy this, while I get to work on drawing out my explanations and conversations as such to better prepare myself for the middle portions of my novel. Hopefully this thrown together plot is as interesting as I think it is going to be.

Please Review!

Also, this hasn't been edited, and is "hotfingered" as I like to say. As I typed it I auto-spellchecked it and nothing else. I'm sure there are errors, so when you find some please let me know in a review or P.M., This is much appreciated.

Thanks for reading, without you guys none of this would have been possible,
Cornys