Happy picnic weekend, guys! Who's ready for a fanfiction update? :D
You found a disclaimer!
Spyro the Dragon, both the game and all related characters (c) Insomniac. They own the Spyro that's in this story, so nyeh.
Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage / Gateway to Glimmer, as well as all related characters (c) blah-blah, same copyright.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Vamos Al Badlands
Tonk paused her hammering to stare at her hammer. It felt very hot all of a sudden, but hammers on bone didn't make fire. To test it, she brought the hammer to her head. No, definitely no fire. But why so hot?
"YEE-OWCH!" Tonk flew into the air as a sharp pain scorched her skirtcloth, catching a glimpse of a flame-head laughing at her down below. The flame-heads were just one of the horrific horrors brought into the Badlands by that nasty orange dinosaur with the fancy black cape. And as Tonk came back to the ground, she was quick to find another one - the fire-breathing catabats. The fierce flyer gave a shriek as it chased her down, flaming skirtcloth and all, so all Tonk could do was run. Run and run and run...
Until the ground ran out. Darn it.
oo00oo00oo
Spyro stretched his wings and soaked up the sunlight as he and Sparx glided into the Skelos Badlands. After the Glacier, ANY warm weather was welcome, but the Artisan-raised-Peacekeeper always had an affinity for unforgiving deserts and blazing sunlight. His scales were much better suited to fighting the heat than the cold, and dry weather just meant a better environment for torching baddies.
Yep, Spyro was right at home in the Skelos desert...though the locals didn't seem convinced.
"Badlands tougher than you think, purple dragon," Shaman Gronk tsked with a lazy stretch. "Badlands called Badlands for reason. Full of burning things that eat dragons."
"I'm not afraid of a little fire," Spyro retorted cockily.
"Not little fire," Gronk corrected. "Flame-heads and catabats, brought from the lava by the black shaman."
"Black shaman?"
"Orange dinosaur wielding shaman stick summon many flame-heads and catabats, make Badlands worse than normal," he explained. (Ripto, what a surprise.) "Badlands chew dragon up and spit dragon out. Gronk make bet with brother Glug that dragon get singed."
"Well, I think we'll be fine," Spyro shrugged, rushing off into the desert chasms. Really, he was going to take threats from someone who didn't know how to make a sentence?
oo00oo00oo
Almost immediately, though, the Skelos Badlands would prove to be trouble. Spyro could guess that by the shaman guarding the bridge to the bonebuilder village with his life. "Hey, is...there a problem here?"
"Black shaman make Lava Lizards rain from the sky!" Shaman Lumpy cried. "Lava Lizards going to eat entire village!"
Spyro stumbled for a second, unsure that he had heard correctly. "They're going to eat the locals?" Indeed, if you looked across the chasm, the bonebuilder village was littered with gigantic eggs...the first of which was shaking, ready to hatch. You could see and hear the panic of the bonebuilders, all rushing for their lives to hide from the lizard menace.
The dragonlet lowered his horns towards Lumpy. "Lower the bridge," he ordered. "I'm going over there."
Not about to argue with a dragon, the shaman dropped the bridge, allowing it to roll over to the village. Spyro rushed across it, and not a moment too soon: the second he reached the village, the first egg broke open, releasing a giant black dinosaur onto the village. (And that was just a baby, Spyro realized with a cringe.)
Spyro torched the dino, allowing one of the locals to rush inside their hut safely. As soon as they were safe, though, two more eggs burst open, allowing the newly-hatched Lava Lizards to rush after a pair of villagers. Spyro rushed to intercept, and just barely downed the dinos as they crossed paths.
Across the village, Spyro's ears perked as he heard the familiar cracking of eggs. Three more dinos had just broken loose on the mini-island, and Spyro just barely reached them in time. The third of the villagers was already airborne and plummeting straight for the Lava Lizard's mouth by the time Spyro arrived to bring it down.
With six dinos down, Spyro thought that the village was safe. ...Until he heard one more stampeding towards the bridge and the lonely villager running for safety by Shaman Lumpy. The dragon pushed his legs as fast as they would run, and with a pouncing dive, managed to knock over the Lava Lizard with just enough time for the final villager to run for safety.
The Artisan gave a heavy sigh, dropping into the sand once the village was clear. That was far too close for comfort, even for an adrenaline junkie like Spyro. But at least he saved the day: the Lava Lizards were gone, the villagers were safe...
...And there was a pack of pterodactyls overhead, dropping a fresh batch of Lava Lizard eggs into the village, sending the bonebuilders into another frightened tizzy.
Alright, Grog won - the Skelos Badlands were tough.
oo00oo00oo
The dancing Lava Toad twirled his bone, taunting the almighty dragon who didn't dare to chase him down. The creature was safely rolling in a deep pool of lava, his thick flesh unaffected by the scorching temperatures.
Spyro wasn't so defended. Dragon scales could absorb heat and sunlight, but they didn't hold up well against scalding lava. The purple dragon already knew about the pain of the black tar pits in Cliff Town; he assumed molten lava wouldn't be much more pleasant.
Were this the Dragon Realms, Spyro would be at a total loss for ways to reach the Lava Toad and retrieve its stolen treasure. (Then again, in the Dragon Realms, there would be no Lava Toads to begin with.) However, these weren't his home Realms - this was Avalar, home to one industrious Professor and his power-up towers.
Upon hearing that Spyro was facing down the Skelos Badlands, the Professor sent over a new power-up. Where the superfly and supercharge invoked wind and the superflame invoked heat, this one had a steely chill, almost unimaginable in the Skelos heat. The invulnerability power-up, it was called. And Spyro didn't have the slightest idea how it worked.
"Alright, Spyro, so we're going to be smart about this, right?" Sparx buzzed.
"Yep."
"No doing anything stupid or dangerous, right?"
"Yep."
"We're going to think this out calmly, and then-" Shing! "Why do I bother talking if you never listen to me?!"
Of course, Spyro decided to test the power-up by...well, testing the power-up. He rushed through the gates, which landed him straight in the lava-pool that had collected in the walls of the Skelos caverns. The Artisan froze for a second, cringing as he braced himself for blinding pain, but his paws sank into the mud-like lava effortlessly. Each and every scale felt coated with a sort of cool force-field, fighting back the pain and the heat of the magma. Fighting to get his footing in the mushy substance, Spyro turned his eyes to the Lava Toad, who quickly realized he was in for a world of hurt.
Horns met Toad in a quick collision, and Spyro was free to dig up the golden bone that he had dropped. He paused, however, when he felt the heat against his snout when he lowered to pick it up. Indeed, the back corner of the lava-pool felt hotter than the front, but why would that be? His paws felt warmer, his wings felt hotter...even the drips of lava from the golden bone felt scorching hot inside of his mouth.
When Spyro looked down and saw the black char beginning to form on his paws, it finally clicked: right, temporary power-ups.
Clawing to get through the thick lava was challenging, but Spyro managed to hop out and fly to safety just as the invulnerability wore off, bouncing with pain as the remains of lava clung to his legs and had to be shaken off. Alright, so he got a little singed in the Badlands - still, not a big deal, right?
The bones, as Spyro learned seven Lava Toads later, were for Shaman Ooga, whom he found at Skelos Lake, mourning over the loss of a golden skull. His best friend, ripped to shreds and torn apart by the bloodthirsty Lava Toads, leaving nothing more than a skull and a rib-cage in its place.
So the young dragon interrupted the mourning, placing the pile of collected bones at Ooga's feet. "Were you looking for these, by chance?"
Ooga's eyes lit up. "Spyro! You find the bones! Now Shaman Ooga fix friend!" With a little help from the Artisan, Ooga reassembled the bones into a skeletal lay-out, the gold pieces glimmering in the glow of the lava lake. "Oh, Spyro, Ooga and friend forever grateful for dragon's help."
"Hey, no problem. All in a day's-"
YEAAAAAAAAAA~AH!
Suddenly, all eyes were on the skeleton, which lifted off the ground and reassembled in mid-air, giving a pleasant little shake. It burst out into a funky riff, jamming out with finger points and splits and moonwalks before breaking out into a circle of backflips. Aw, yeah! Hit it!
"...Ooga's friend likes to dance. Have great rhythm for no muscles."
oo00oo00oo
"Ha! Glug told Gronk! No bonebuilder dumb enough to bet against dragon!" Shaman Glug got a hearty laugh when he saw that Spyro had survived the Badlands. His dim-witted brother would be bringing him Lava Toad eggs for a month!
"Nice to know you had such faith in me," Spyro laughed lightly. (If this was what they considered scary, the bonebuilders had clearly never seen the Peacekeepers' realm.)
Glug pulled out a golden bone (luckily one different from the ones he had just returned to Ooga), and offered it to the dragon. "Here. Glug hear dragon looking for talismans. Dragon get reward for helping Glug win bet. Dragon welcome to Glug's hut for Lava Toad eggs anytime!"
"I'll, uh...be sure to take you up on that."
oo00oo00oo
And so, with the Badlands conquered, Tonk and Tug found the confidence to do what no other bonebuilder could - tame the mighty Lava Lizards. With Tonk's video-camera in hand, she was ready to capture Tug's attempt at soothing the savage beast. Tug gave a wave, getting one back when Tonk's camera was prepared, then held out his bone. The Lava Lizard, hungry for a bone to chew, was immediately attracted to the treat.
So Tug threw it. The Lava Lizard gave chase, steamrolling everything in its path to retrieve the alluring bone. Tonk just happened to be standing in its way.
With no evidence besides the recording, Tug swiped the camera and ran. Tonk would be fine.
Sweet, I don't have to write cavebuilders again for a good, long while. XD Anyway, thanks for reading, guys! Hope you enjoyed! See you next week! :)
§ Tucker's Mayflower, signing off! §