So I was pretty swamped for the longest time. I was unable to get back to this story, so this chapter might not be so good. I might be gone for a while again, so Undead chapters will probably spill into the next month again.

Chapter Six: Homecoming (Part Two)

The world had changed four years ago, back when the Core of Light was destroyed. Many parts, more than just the new situation for the Skylanders. Of that Knight Mare was sure.

It was her duty to watch over the Oracle of Stones with the other Dark Centaurs in the temple where they lived. They all saw the blue from the Core's explosion, but only a handful were pulled away from Skylands- including Knight Mare herself. They were catapulted into an island system surrounding the Poison Sea, with nothing but a black sky and a white moon to give them company. Many others became trapped in this Dark Realm as well, scared out of their wits. None of them really knew what to do.

Though instructed to watch over those in the small society that they created, Knight Mare became part of an even smaller group with strange new magic inside them. This Dark Element was a part of her, and it strengthened the powers she had in battle. Creatures would emerge from the sea to threaten their safety, and she defended the people quite easily. There was always something to do.

Without warning, a while back, everyone returned to Skylands. Things had changed while they were gone. The Light and Dark Elements had become known. The Skylanders were under some sort of curse that threatened to send them to a strange world. The Trap Masters were hunting down escaped convicts and were looking for new recruits- funny that they thought Knight Mare could help them. Oh, but the idea was too exciting to pass up.

The world had changed.

Was it even ready for their return?


Knight Mare plunged her flamberge deep into a Chompy Pod, squishing the ooze out. She always found herself enjoying this part of the job to an unnatural degree. Normally she found the thought of hurting someone sick, but she enjoyed the ooze from something like this. Maybe it was the nature of the new Dark Element that caused her to enjoy it so much.

She was certain that she didn't feel this way before the Core of Light's destruction.

Knight Mare stepped away, allowing Snap Shot to search through the bloated remains of the Chompy Pod. After scouting through Know-It-All Island several times- both as a means of clearing the area of trolls and Chompy Pods- they had collected a whole sack of goo eggs. The whole thing was very strange. Everyone on scouting missions kept collecting these strange eggs, continually coming back with more and more. It never seemed to end. Knight Mare, for one, enjoyed the collection. It kept her mind away from thoughts of the Dark Realm. Such thoughts sent shivers down her spine.

"Here she is," Snap Shot muttered, finding another egg. He handed it to Knight Mare, who set it in the sack of goo eggs with the others.

"Let's make another round through the island," Knight Mare insisted. "I'm sure there's one we missed."

"Golly, not tonight. We've already scoured every inch of this place, and I don't think our sack could hold another egg even if we did find one. Besides, aren't you getting kind of tired at this point?"

Knight Mare understood where he was coming from. The sun was beginning to set, and they'd practically spent the whole day here. She could feel the ache of a hard day's work in her own joints. But she could still feel the energy inside of her. It was pent up, pushing against her soul. She just had to find a way to let it out.

"You obviously don't know a thing about centaurs," Knight Mare scoffed. "We can run across the Skylands for several days without food or rest. We're that powerful."

"Then I guess crocagators aren't in the same category," Snap Shot laughed wearily. "I'd let you stay behind if you're wanted, but that's not how the rules work."

She was becoming familiar with the rules of the Skylander teams. All non-Core Skylanders had to pair up in twos during scouting missions, especially if they were trainees. She disliked this specific rule. Knight Mare enjoyed the solitude of her former job as a sentinel, even without the influence of this new Dark Element.

"I'll come back with someone else, then," Knight Mare proposed. "I'm sure they'll want to help me scour the island. Maybe Krypt King. Or Gearshift. Maybe even..."

Words failed her. Knight Mare knew that she couldn't get him to let her stay.

"Let's head back to the Academy," Snap Shot decided. "If you want, we can head back tomorrow."


Things went by normally when the two of them got home. The sack was delivered to the Tech Skylanders for analysis before either of them left to their dorms for bed. Knight Mare went into her dorm, sitting by the window and staring at the sky. Sleep had not been coming easy to her since coming back to Skylands, and tonight was no exception. The energy kept pulsating inside herself, begging for release. Nothing she currently did brought it back to level amounts.

She knew this energy had to be the Dark magic she'd been granted when entering the Dark Realm. However, she didn't remember ever having this problem while in the Dark Realm. The energy didn't like being idle, and her being active kept it level. There had always been something to do there, and since Knight Mare already didn't enjoy being idle, she was one of the people who solved everyone's problems. And she also didn't enjoy the pulverizing of Chompy Pods as much as she did now. It couldn't be explained.

So Knight Mare left for the training room, intending to try and quell the energy. Fighting seemed to be the only thing that did so. She walked downstairs and walked into the training room, the familiar sweat smell wafting over her as she opened the doors- a surprisingly comfortable scent. Gray slab walls surrounded her as she walked further inside, though she was surprised by the mess she found when she got in there. Training dummies were strewn about the room, destroyed in heaps as cloth and sand and hay littered the ground around them. The winged warrior Knight Light was here, and he was seen beating a dilapidated training dummy with his sword.

"Can't sleep, either?" Knight Mare asked him.

Knight Light stopped in his assault, his white armor heaving with his pants. "I can't. But I'm so tired at the same time!" he sighed. "I just feel this high level of energy inside, and I can't get it out no matter what I do."

"From your Light magic, you think?"

"This started a few days ago, so I think so."

Him too? "I've been feeling the same with my Dark magic."

Knight Light looked directly at her this time. A small smile grew on his face. He'd been feeling alone with this. Now it didn't have to be this way.

"Yeah, it just grows and grows inside me," Knight Mare continued. "When I try to sleep with the energy too high, this sticky black feeling prevents me from doing so."

"For me, this white light penetrates beneath my eyelids," Knight Light agreed. "It's a horrible feeling."

"Do you have any weird feelings inside you that you didn't before? Like something satisfies you that didn't before? For me, it's satisfying to watch the ooze of those Chompy Pods. Like popping pimples, but larger!"

Knight Light grimaced at the thought. "I don't have feelings specifically like that," he explained, "but one has come up. I've suddenly decided that I must have everything in my room clean and orderly. It's satisfying to get everything organized the way I want. And when someone messes with the specific order I've created, I just feel sick."

"So it's all connected with our new magic then. These Light and Dark Elements must be going haywire inside of us. The energy is yearning for something new to balance it out."

"So far fighting seems to do the trick for me. Balances the energy enough for me to sleep. But it's not a permanent solution. And if we don't have one, it might hamper our abilities in the field."

She hadn't thought of that. But now that it was here, it consumed her mind and brought fear to her. The Light and Dark Elements were new creations in Skylands, perhaps nothing that the Ancients had originally intended. What if the two of them couldn't figure this out? What would happen to them if the energy got too large to balance out?

"Maybe the two of us should have a fight. The energies might cancel each other out," Knight Light suggested.

Knight Mare paced around the room, pondering the idea. "Yeah. A fight might work," she agreed. "It would have to be big, though. Not a simple fight, but..."

"A large-scale battle, maybe?"

"Bigger. Not just a battle, but a...but a...war."

Knight Light stepped backward, alarmed by the idea. "You can't just start a war as simple as that!" he argued. "It's immoral!"

"I don't mean a real war, obviously," Knight Mare corrected herself. "Just two factions in one large clash, winner takes all."

"Still, it's something you just can't do."

"I'm not just saying it's something we do for the fun of it. You said it yourself- bad things could happen if we don't sort this problem out. I can't think of a better way to do so than a war."

Knight Light sighed. "Maybe a war is the only way we can solve this problem," he decided. "But a war consists of more than two people fighting against each other- if they're not deities, at least. Who are you going to get to join this affair? Because we're the only two people here with this problem."

A smirk grew on Knight Mare's face. "I've got an idea," she decided.


They traveled to an abandoned desert island early the next morning, marking it for their war. Knight Mare carried a clutch of the goo eggs with her, smirking as she looked at them in the bag she had them in. It was brilliant. The wind carried with it a smell of hot sand, seeming to tell a tale lost by the ages. This was a good place for a war. It also felt like a good day to hold a war as well.

"We don't know what's going to hatch out of those eggs," Knight Light stammered. "And we're breaking the rules by taking them."

"I left enough eggs behind for everyone else to study," Knight Mare insisted. "They can find the answers they need on their own."

"What if the hatchlings get loose?"

"They'll tear each other to pieces during our conflict, I'm sure. We'll be the only ones to make it back alive, I promise."

Knight Mare set a goo egg on the ground. She blew her battle horn at it, shadowy particles coming forth to crack the shell. Out came a pile of green goo, its color changing purple to match the new Dark Element. It grew larger until it reached the size of a jungle cat, hissing and spitting at them. Startled, Knight Light stumbled to the ground and backed up to a nearby rock. Knight Mare studied the blob, curious about it.

"What have you been up to, Doctor?" she muttered to herself.

"Knight Mare, we shouldn't do this! It's not right!" Knight Light begged her. "I don't want to do this!"

Neither did she. She didn't actually want to start a war. Telling war stories to children was one thing, but to actually participate in a conflict like that? To actually start a conflict like that? Of course it wasn't right. All the same...

"What else are we supposed to do?" Knight Mare asked him.

"I don't know. Just anything but this," Knight Light whimpered.

Knight Mare sighed, tossing the bag to Knight Light. "Let's go home, then," she decided.

Making sure not to leave anything behind, she sliced her flamberge through the blob, making sure it wasn't around to cause more mayhem. However, this only served to split it off into two beings, both of which spat and hissed at the two warriors. They lunged after them, but Knight Mare and Knight Light narrowly avoided this.

"Sword attacks don't work on this thing," Knight Mare realized. "What else do we have?"

"My light powers should cancel out the thing's darkness," Knight Light insisted, summoning a beam of light under an advancing blob. "See the light, creature!"

But the blob absorbed the light, changing its color from purple to white. The blob produced a strobe light from it's body, glaring at Knight Light and blinding him. Knight Mare swooped in to protect him, blowing her horn at the creature- only causing it to absorb more of her dark magic. The blobs merged back into one being, this time becoming larger with its colors shifting from purple and white with these counteracting opposites. Its outer skin hardened into a sort of crystal, trapping it inside as it tried to free itself.

"Knight Light, can you see?" Knight Mare asked him.

"The spots are starting to leave my vision. I think I'm alright," Knight Light replied. "Oh man, that thing can absorb Elemental magic. Imagine if the Chompy Worms sprouted with those goo eggs inside them."

"They'd be unstoppable for sure."

Something whizzed through the air, breaking the crystalline case. A blue Traptanium arrow with water dripping on it landed on the ground behind them, and Knight Mare looked up to see Snap Shot standing on a high rock above them. The blob lowered itself, becoming more fluid as its color changed to a dark blue.

"Is there something you blokes would like to tell me?" Snap Shot said as he hopped off the rock, frowning as he looked at them.

"Yeah- you shouldn't have done that," Knight Light replied timidly.

The blob wrapped around their feet, trapping them in place. Knight Mare couldn't lift her hooves up, and was unable to move her legs. Knight Light tried flying away, but the blob stretched up to grab his wings and pin him to the ground. Snap Shot attempted to create a whirlpool to wash the blob away, but this only made it stretch across the whole island. They were trapped, and the blob wanted to see an end to them.

"So this was the old Doctor's game, eh?" Snap Shot muttered. "Trap us with this if we meddled in their plans? I'm calling for more backup so we can get out of here."

"There's no reason to endanger anyone else," Knight Mare argued. "Knight Light, we can mix our magic again to overwhelm it. That's what happened last time, right?"

She blew her horn at the blob, its color changing back to purple. Knight Light summoned another beam of light, and the blob tried changing its color to white. It kept shifting from Dark magic to Light magic, and the two of them wouldn't relent. The blob hardened into crystal and shattered around them, freeing them once and for all.

"It absorbs elemental magic," Knight Light told Snap Shot. "Adding more power from a single element causes it to grow stronger. That same kind of creature is in those goo eggs. I'm guessing Doctor Krankcase had a plan to do us all in. It could potentially destroy the world. So we should..."

Snap Shot kept his angry frown.

"I'm sorry. We know the rules, Snap Shot. We just thought..."

"You two weren't thinking. You didn't know how dangerous those eggs could be. You didn't know what you were going to do if you got into any danger out here alone. You didn't think of anything, and you came out here anyway."

That speech kept grinding at Knight Mare's soul, ticking her off. He didn't know what they were going through. He didn't know how desperate they had been to come out here with those eggs. He could never know what having these strange elements was like for them. But that speech made him sound elitist, as if he had all the answers and they had been stupid not to listen to him- but what did he know about any of this!?

"We were coming right back...," Knight Light muttered, the fatigue of the situation getting to him.

"But this happened anyway," Snap Shot continued. "We have rules so that no one gets hurt on the job, and you two have broken them. I'm in a position to lay out a heavy punishment to you two for what you've done-"

Knight Mare's temper reached fever pitch. "Shut up! You're just as in the dark as the two of us are, so stop acting smarter than you really are!" she yelled. "We weren't going to do anything with the eggs! We weren't going to let that thing leave this area! We thought we'd come here to control the energy from our new elements before things got out of hand! You don't know what to do about it! You didn't know what the danger was any more than we did! Heck, you even rushed in here without thinking! What are you doing scolding us!?"

"You two broke the rules! That's what I'm doing!" Snap Shot insisted.

Knight Mare rushed away from the two of them, needing to release her anger without harming anyone. She found the bag next to the rock where Knight Light had left it, and began beating it with her flamberge. Harder and harder she hit it, listening to the cracking of the shells and watching the goo seep out. It didn't bring her pleasure like she thought it might- in fact, the idea of watching this ooze now sickened her. She leaned on her sword, pouting, her energy now spent. She knew her argument to Snap Shot didn't have much to stand on, but it felt like it just needed to come out.

"We had to figure this out on our own," she whimpered in conclusion. "That was our purpose for coming here."

She heard a sigh come from Snap Shot as he replied, "You two are right. I don't know what I'm doing, and that's why I follow the rules. And we don't know much about these two new Elements. But we're trying to figure it out- so you two don't have to feel like you're alone. You need to listen to me better, because you're part of our team now. Understand?"

Knight Mare nodded. She wanted desperately for this new Skylands to understand them. If anyone could make that happen, it was the Skylanders. Perhaps the world was indeed ready for them after all.

"Your punishment will be bathroom duty for the next week," Snap Shot decided. "Neither of you can go on any more egg hunts until the punishment is up. I won't make you scrub toilets with toothbrushes, but you can't use your powers to assist you."

"Just that?" Knight Light asked. "I was worried that you were going to kick us out"

"For this? There's much worse that we kick people out for."