Ch. 7: Blinded By The Light
Bash, now about sixteen, smiled as he looked at his 'siblings'. Ever since Sonic Boom had basically adopted him, her little griffin hatchlings had always thought of him as 'their new brother'. He couldn't help but chuckle watching Alpha and Jice get into yet another play-fight. Once, a couple of years ago, Malibu, the smart one of the litter, had decided to count the number of times they got into fights like this one over the time-span of a month, and had determined that the tomboy and, well, "THE ALPHA'S GONNA CRUSH YOU LIKE A GRAPE!" Alpha shrieked, perfectly completing the train of thought. Anyway, they got into on average, three and three quarters of a fight each day.
Or, as Malibu had tactfully put it to the two of them, "One fight per week, multiplying that by seven, one for each twenty-four hour period, factoring in anger and thus multiplying it by three hundred and seventy five percent," Bash always chuckled when he thought of that.
Turning away from the forever-young griffins, the wingless Earth Dragon absent-mindedly wandered to his favourite spot. It was just past the Upgrade-A-Tron, on a small grassy bluff that overlooked the bay.
The Upgrade-A-Tron was a large, egg-shaped machine operated by Persephone, the Skylanders' fairy friend, that was designed to give Skylanders like Bash himself new powers and abilities when an artefact that every Skylander possessed called a Soul Gem, which was given to a newly recruited Skylander upon induction to the ranks and was thought of by many as their most precious possession.
Just beyond the bluff Bash was standing on, there was a rope bridge attached to it, which led to a Skyland the Skylanders had sort of annexed to the Isle of Light. It was almost bowl-shaped, with a large rocky bluff surrounding three of the sides of the island, forming a sheltered enclosure where several houses had been built to house most of the Skylanders.
The rest lived in the Castle of Light. A somewhat bleak and foreboding place that overlooked the entire island, everyone wanted it replaced but it would be too expensive to tear it down and build a new one. The Skylanders tried to brighten it up with banners and paint, but nothing really worked.
Bash took a small elevator, rigged up by his friend Drobot, to the top of the bluffs surrounding the small village. Here, at the top, there were no houses, due to the harsh, punishing wind that often blew up here. It was the one good thing about Bash's weight - he was the only person in the entire Skylander ranks who could stand up to the wind.
Bash wandered over to a small rise near the edge of the cliff. The outer edge, the one that looked into space.
Sitting down like a cat, Bash raised his head and looked up to the sky. "Star light," he whispered to himself. "Star bright," He found the star his gaze had first settled upon as he raised his head."First star I see tonight," Squinting, he focused his gaze on that one star. "Ancient Ones, with all your might, please grant me my wish tonight,"
Before Bash could finish, a great pillar of light erupted from the horizon, directly beneath the star he was wishing on. It perfectly went through the star he has been wishing on and continued going straight up through the atmosphere, and in that moment, he knew that something was going to happen.
Forgetting his whisper, Bash stood up tall and shouted to the heavens, "I wish I had wings!"
The teenage dragon watched as the pillar of light continued up into the night sky, but seemed like it was slowing down. Squinting, Bash realised that it wasn't slowing down, it was coming in his direction.
He stood tall and proud, ready to embrace the magic that was surely contained within the pillar of light and would surely finally grant him wings. Then his sensitive ears picked up the sound of air rushing past a fast-moving, solid object.
As Bash watched the pillar of light as it's flight passage curved towards him, it dimmed and he realised it wasn't pure magical light. It was something a lot more solid. A giant, amethyst, prism-shaped crystal - with a ridiculously sharp edge that looked like it was going to impale him in mere moments!
Curling into a ball, Bash speedily rolled out of the crystal's flight path as it burnt itself a trench in the top of the cliff before reaching the far edge and falling to the village below, still rushing forwards as if it were powered by rockets.
It crashed through a barrel-like wooden house occupied by Polarus and Whirlwind, unicorn-dragon hybrid twins that had come with Drobot when he was recruited (and Bash highly suspected that Whirlwind had feelings for the techno-dragon), before ricocheting off Trigger Happy's solid gold pot-shaped house with a roof made of giant coins, and continued to burst holes in several more conventional houses and ricochet off the ones made of sterner stuff until it looked like a giant destructive game of pinball, before sliding up the angled roof of the artificial cave Prism Break called home.
The temperamental stone golem stormed out of his house, instantly saw the great crystal and, pointing one of his crystallised hands at it, launched a powerful blue-green laser at it. The laser hit dead-on.
The very second Prism Break's laser hit the rocketing crystal, it stopped dead in mid-air. It rotated so the sharp, pointy front was facing straight up, and a full force laser launched itself from the tip into the heavens. The crystal shone with a great pink-white light, before dropping to the ground and embedding itself there, still shining like a pink sun.
Two lasers launched themselves from either side of the crystal, and began rotating around the crystal in a helicopter blade fashion. Luckily, they seemed to be nought but light, and didn't destroy anything. Soon they were joined by two more, then four more, and the numbers of lasers continued to double until there was simply a great circle of light emanating from the crystal. Bash watched from atop the cliff in amazement.
Then, as if in a last-ditch effort to escape, the crystal instantly cut out the light show, launched itself back into the air, and aimed itself straight towards Bash once more. For the second time in five minutes, Bash found himself rolling out of the way as a sharp amethyst crystal prism threatened to impale him.
But this time, things went differently.
The crystal bounced off the ground, landed on it's side and rolled in a circle for about two hundred and sixty degrees, stopping just short of Bash. That crystal seemed hell-bent on attacking him.
It softly bumped into his flank, before rolling back a little as the light inside it partially dimmed, reforming itself into a very distinct shape. The shape of a dragon. Its whole body looked to be made of celestial white light, making it very difficult to pick out features, but he could see the base bodily shape.
Bash moved closer, noticing that the dragon seemed to be asleep, but not in the usual way, where the dragon's body would curve into an arc, with their wings sticking out and the end of their tail almost touching their muzzle. This one had its muzzle at the top of the crystal, its legs tucked in tight against its body, and it's wings curved around its waist. Only the tail was in the usual position, curled around the unknown dragon's left flank.
Frowning, Bash raised his right forepaw, and tapped the prism, near the creature's head.
Almost immediately, a crack appeared. Bash backed away, worried. The crack spread down the length of the prism, them looped around the other end and returned to it's starting point, effectively bisecting the crystal. From there, cracks haphazardly spread over the whole thing as Bash watched in growing horror. And, after several long, agonising seconds, the whole crystal was covered in cracks.
And the prism finally shattered.
The spectral, glowing form of a dragon remained, however, as the fragments of amethyst fell to the ground and the dragon's white, glowing figure started to dim. Bash continued to watch as the light left the dragon and coalesced into a ball of glowing light suspended above her head. For the dragon revealed was obviously female. And like no other being Bash had ever seen before.
The majority of her body was covered in shimmering, white crystal scales, which lost much of their colour and became somewhat patchy around her paws. Her claws seemed to be the only normal thing about this dragoness, if they were somewhat petite. Her underbelly was formed from some kind of aquamarine-like crystal, with a white symbol of three mountains, the central one being taller than the other two. Bash looked to her tail, which, rather than tapering to a point like normal, ended in a sharp, pointed amethyst crystal.
Her head drew his attention next. There were sharp, irregular purple amethyst crystals protruding from the back of it. But, unusually, her triangular, pointed head didn't seem to have scales. Instead, the skin on her head was just that, celestial, white, flawless skin. Her eyes were closed, as she was obviously still in whatever hibernation she was trapped in. But Bash just knew they would be beautiful.
Finally, he looked to her wings. Oh, her beautiful wings that Bash had so desperately wanted - wait. They were made of aquamarine and amethyst crystals - and they didn't have membrane. They were more like giant claws, as it seemed like she would be able to move each wing rib independently. But they didn't look like they could fly.
'So she's a flightless dragon too,' Bash thought to himself. 'She looks like the most amazing thing I've ever seen,'
The ball of light above the dragoness' body, which had been all but unnoticed by Bash so far, seemed to glow brighter for a couple of seconds, sprinkled some kind of white sparks down on her body, then streaked away in a blur of light. Bash watched it go, somewhat disappointed for reasons he barely understood.
In that second, the dragoness awoke.
Her eyelids snapped open, revealing beautiful white sclera, amethyst-blue irises and black pupils. Bash could have stared at them forever.
"Waaah!" she screamed in surprise as she stood up. The dragoness looked down at her paws and screamed again. "Crystal!" she added, still somewhat in shock. Jerkily, as if she didn't quite know how to control her body properly, she turned her head and looked at her body. "Wha-? My wing? Is that? What? Where am I? What am I? Err . . . . . . Who am I?"
The stunningly beautiful crystal dragoness put a paw to her head, as if in confusion.
Bash, somewhat tactlessly, decided to interject. "Err, should I leave you for a little while to sort yourself out, or, uh, are you good?"
The dragoness turned to Bash, yelped again and, acting more on instinct than anything else, flicked her tail up and launched a laser from it, straight at Bash. It was so strong that it knocked Bash straight off the edge of the cliff. The dragoness watched in surprise as he stumbled back, tripped and fell off the edge, then looked at her tail in wonder. Then the fact that Bash had fallen off the cliff fully registered. She rushed to the cliff and peered down. Luckily, Bash had fallen onto the side of the bluff that the Skylanders' village was on, and not into the eternal void of nothingness.
"Sorry!" she called down. "I'm coming to help!" she added, spreading her wings and jumping off the cliff, how she knew how to do that was beyond her.
Next thing she knew, she was falling. "Why aren't my wings working?" she hollered, before landing next to Bash with a thud. Except Bash had landed on his thick, armoured back, and was mostly okay. The dragoness had landed on her underbelly, which, despite being crystalline, was still sensitive and thus hurt a lot more than Bash's fall did.
Bash rolled over until he was the right way up, then helped her up. "Are you okay?" he asked, tenderness creeping into his voice.
"I just shot you off a cliff, and you're worried about my safety?" the crystal dragon asked, disbelief evident in her tone. Bash shrugged. "I'm a Skylander. Kinda what we do," he shrugged it away. "It's hardly the first time I've been knocked off a cliff. Thick skin, barely felt it. Question is, are you okay?"
The dragoness looked herself over. "Sore, winded, but more in shock than anything. What the heck happened to me?"
Bash thought for a second, then his muzzle lit up with an idea. "Let's go see Whirlwind and Polarus, the healers around here. We can walk and talk,"
The two dragons set off towards the two hybrids' house. The female looked around in shock. "Whoa, what happened here?"
Bash looked uncomfortable. "Er, uh, you did. Well, not really you, more the crystal you were inside,"
Suddenly Boomer bounced up to them. The dragoness winced at the sight of his robotic bodily parts, and wondered exactly how that had happened. "Hey Bash! Who's this?"
"Boomer, this is, uh," Bash realised too late that he didn't know the name of his companion. "Sorry, I didn't catch your name," he told the other dragon, kind of awkwardly.
"It's, uh, er, I don't know. I can't remember anything before Bash got me out of that crystal,"
Boomer's bearded jaw dropped open in shock. "You mean the crystal that destroyed half the town? You were in that thing? Oh, man! I've done some awesome destruction in my time, but nothing like this!" The cyborg troll dropped to his knees and started to beg. "Please, teach me your secrets, oh great one!"
Suddenly, there was a flash of light, and Master Eon, in all his stately, living glory, appeared before their eyes.
"Ssh, you three," he berated them. "How do you think the others will react if they find out she was the cause of all this destruction? Hold on to me, and we'll see if we can get this sorted out," Bash and the dragoness joined paws, and Eon held Bash's tail. In a flash of light, they were gone, leaving a clueless Boomer to wonder what all that was about.
Two silhouetted dragons that it was hard to focus on landed on the cliff, not far from where the crystal had landed earlier that evening. "I still can't believe you lost it two and a half years ago," the smaller one berated the larger one. "It vanished into time and space! You saw the scroll, whenever all this happens the stupid crystal vanishes for two and a half years, then reappears," the larger protested,
The smaller one snorted. "Whatever. There's no point in going after the one it affected, the crystal's power will be gone from them. But I should be able to track it from here. Follow me, rocks-for-brains,"
Okay, I know I kinda overdramatised Flashwing's entrance, but I find it really hard to believe that it was as simple as Bash wishing on a star, a crystal shows up out of nowhere, it cracks open like an egg, Flashwing comes out and blasts Bash off the island for no apparent reason. I had to do something to make it more entertaining. And I think I did a good job modifying 'Star Light, Star Bright'.
"Tell them about the island!"
Okay, Riley. Down, girl.
"Don't talk to me like you're talking to Julie,"
Okay, okay. Sheesh. And technically the island mentioned where the Skylanders live on at this stage in my continuosity is not part of the Lost Islands, but I did use some house designs from said app. Prism Break's was original, but everything else, just imagine them as houses from Lost Islands. Is there anything else you want me to say, Julie?
"No. And I'm Riley, okay! Humans,"
Well, you're acting like Julie. Anyhoo, peace!
