CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: A Monster to End All Monsters
"THAT'S IT! I've had enough!"
The Sorceress had finally reached her breaking point. ONE-HUNDRED of the dragon eggs were missing; TWO-THIRDS of their initial haul, stolen back to their homes by the infernal purple dragon, who at this very moment was rocketing towards Midnight Mountain to finish the job. And with HER rocket plans, no less! Bianca and the other guards stood back quietly, trying to stay well out of the range of her brandished staff, or any angry sparks of magic that might've spilled from it.
"That dragon has finally added the straw to break the Sorceress' back!" she continued to curse. "I'm going to make a new monster! A monster to end ALL monsters! It's going to destroy that pesky purple menace, and all of the other dragons while we're at it! Every last one, right down to those bloody hatchlings!" She cackled, hungry for vengeance. "Yes! Smash them and crush them and grind them and tear them! Smear them, smoosh them, crack them, crease them!"
Bianca swallowed heavily before approaching her mentor. "B-But, uhm...won't that...you know, kill them?"
"It doesn't MATTER, you stupid girl!" the Sorceress spat. "So long as I can get their wings, I don't care WHAT happens to the rest of them!"
"WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, WAIT," Bianca interrupted with a panicked wave of her arms. "All of this time, and you've only been after their WINGS?!"
She stepped back as the Sorceress swang her staff right into her face. It was the first time Bianca ever cared to get close enough for a good look at it. Its centerpiece pulsed with her trademark fuchsia magic, waves of dark energy that would discourage anyone from even looking at it the wrong way. She never noticed that the sparkling centerpiece was actually a dragon egg.
"Of COURSE, you ignorant girl!" she snapped. "I told you, Bianca, the magic from the Forgotten Worlds is fading fast, and so am I. With enough dragon wings, I can conjure a spell. One that will let me live forever!"
Bianca stumbled, having to hold her head as she suddenly felt faint. "Wait, what? A spell?!"
"What did you THINK I was going to do with all of those dragons? Open a zoo?!" (One guard in the back dared to laugh, but silenced quickly as both of the witches turned their dirty glares upon him.)
"Your Majesty, I don't understand!" Bianca cried. "Y-You said all we had to do was keep them here! That having them in our world would bring the magic back! You never said you had to KILL them!"
"I don't have to kill them," the Sorceress countered. "It just keeps them from wriggling around so much."
"You know what? This is where I draw the line, Your Majesty!" Bianca finally snapped, stamping her foot and tossing back her hood. "You're terrible! I can't believe I EVER made the mistake of listening to you!"
"You don't have a choice in the matter, Bianca!" the Sorceress pointed out. "I'm the only one who can teach you magic! Or do you want to go back to wizard 101 in the Crystal Islands?"
"If this is what it takes to learn magic, I will! I never wanted to hurt the dragons, and I'm not going to start now!"
"What are you going to do? Where are you going to go?!"
"I'm going to go warn Spyro!" the young apprentice snapped, just before running out of the throne room. "He'll stop you! I know he will!"
"Bianca, you come back here!" the Sorceress growled. "If you leave, I'll have you destroyed right along with them!"
She winced as Bianca slammed the door on her way out. "Stupid, insolent brat. Oh, well, she's made her choice. I'll deal with her later. First, I need to stop that pesky dragon."
She motioned towards her guards. One quickly slipped behind the other, using his Villa shield to push his partner out front. The rhynoc screamed and flailed, looking for an escape. The last two rhynocs who were gemcrafted into monsters to stop the dragon were never seen again, and he wasn't looking forward to becoming the third on that list.
Unfortunately, he didn't have a choice.
oo00oo00oo
Spyro's patience was running as thin as the Sorceress'. The rocket had suffered some last-minute difficulties, delaying their trip to Midnight Mountain even further. Every minute he spent pacing around was another minute he wasn't finding dragon eggs or searching for Hunter.
So when an egg thief appeared in the shadows, offering to show him a ground path to the Mountain, Spyro simply couldn't say no.
"Why do you guys have this path set up, anyway?" Spyro asked, trying to watch his step as he followed the robed bandit through a chilly mountain pass.
"The Sorceress is one of our biggest buyers of dragon eggs," the thief replied. "She's got one of the biggest collections of draconic artifacts on this side of the world. There are paths from everywhere that tunnel right into her base."
"She's taken dragon eggs before?"
"Since before the dragons were banished in the first place. They say the egg that sits in her scepter is over a thousand years old."
Spyro bit back a growl. Not only was she an egg-napper, but a repeat offender. His temper flared at the thought, a weeping couple left alone at the end of the Dragon Festival, lost without their egg because some Sorceress on the other side of the world had it petrified and glued into her staff like a power crystal. Sickening.
"I have to say, dragon, you're pretty brave," the egg thief complimented. "There aren't many who would butt horns with the Sorceress. And the few who have didn't last quite as long as you."
"I'm just doing what I have to. ...Why are you helping me, anyway?"
The egg thief spun around, his twisted grin shining from under his robes. "I'm not."
The cloaked speedster tripped a hidden switch in the pass, causing the floor to shudder and collapse beneath them. He managed to dart off before it was too late, but Spyro couldn't find footing fast enough to follow. Dragon and dragonfly plummeted to the mountainous bases, with Sparx throwing an "I told you so" fit the entire way down.
They crashed onto a platform, another of Midnight Mountain's natural arenas. They were greeted with a loud screech as another of the Sorceress' creatures flew down to greet them. He was a titanic beast, even bigger than the previous two, if it were possible. His slobbering fangs dripped down from up above as his mighty wings kept him suspended in the air, far out of Spyro's reach.
It gave a shriek, unleashing a mighty barrage of fire blasts with a thunderous pound of its wings. Spyro got to his feet as quick as he could, then watched the ground carefully to avoid the shadows of the fiery impacts. "Man, looks like the Sorceress really turned up the heat," he sneered.
"Spyro, this is not the time for you and your puns!" Sparx buzzed harshly, still in a tizzy about how Spyro completely ignored his ten-minute rant about not wandering into traps with egg thieves and falling for it anyway.
"That one wasn't really a pun," Spyro argued, searching the arena for something to give him an edge over the airborne atrocity. "More of a bad joke. Could've been a lot punnier, you know?"
Groanworthy jokes aside, the Artisan did notice quite a problem. The rest of the mountains were too far and blocked off by a ring of Felinian ooze, meaning escape wasn't likely. And as usual, his wings were failing him once again - he'd have to find something he could shoot up, or find a way to make Scorch come down.
"Hey, hot-shot, you missed!" Spyro taunted, waving his tail around in hopes of enticing a ground attack. "Come on, you can do better! Show me what you've got!"
Scorch gave a cackling call, then reared back and spit a trio of eggs into the arena. The eggs shook and cracked, then split into a trio of hungry crabs, all three of which chased the dragon down. Spyro easily butted two of them aside, but winced with a yelp as the third one caught his tail, right where it was still kinked slightly from the first time it was clawed up in Aquaria Towers.
Spyro shook off the attack and scanned the field again. Clearly, Scorch wasn't coming down, so he needed to find a way to get the attacks up to him before the arena was overrun by crabs and fireballs. But on the second pass, he still couldn't find a thing. The mountains would surely provide something he could use, but they were all so far away. If only he had somebody up above to cause a rock-slide and fire down something he could use as a projectile.
"Spyro, look out below!"
The dragon jumped back as a sudden storm of rocks fell from the mountains above, raining down a pile of debris, including a small pile of glowing red magma rocks."Well, that sure was convenient." He rushed towards the pile and chewed up one of the magma rocks, taking a few quick breaths to stoke his flame. He reared back his head and fired, the pieces of magma rock shooting out of his mouth like a blaze of machine-gun fire. The charged projectile battered into Scorch's chest, knocking the creature back...though to Spyro's chagrin, not knocking him out of the sky.
He rushed back to the pile to dig for another magma rock, which blinded him to the quartet of eggs Scorch dropped behind him. It wasn't until their shells shattered and he heard the piercing laughter of the TNT rats from Icy Peak did he turn around, but by then, the creatures were rushing towards him, lit boxes of explosives in their grimy hands. With nowhere to run and not enough time to escape, he simply braced himself for the oncoming firestorm.
Which was prevented via a lucky shot from Bentley, who stormed down from the mountains just in time to smash the lead TNT rat in the head with a stalagmite he grabbed on his way. The lead rat went up in a shattering kaboom, causing the rest of his gang to quickly follow suit. "Be more vigilant, Spyro! You can't afford to let your guard down like that!"
"Thanks for the save, Bentley," Spyro panted, returning to his search for a magma rock, but this time keeping a better eye on Scorch, who was circling the arena and waiting for his chance to strike. "Where'd you come from?"
"I came out to join you on your expedition to the Midnight Mountain, but Greta informed me that you had departed early and without notice." He grabbed a hefty piece of rock, larger than Spyro himself, and smacked it towards the beast with his club like it were a mere baseball. "I presumed you left for the Mountain early and took a shortcut pass to search for you."
"Lucky you found me. The Sorceress likes trying to jump me between the worlds."
"I blame her not. With you in such close proximity to her lair, I surmise she'll be planning to destroy every iota of her opposition, starting right here and right now with us."
Spyro, mouth full of a new charge of magma rock, plowed through another sea of crabs before firing another line of fire straight into Scorch's chest. "Then we'll just have to do something about that, won't we?"
Both heroes scrambled to duck as another rain of fireballs fell from the sky. "I endeavor to deliver no effort less than my best, Spyro!" Bentley charged forward to dismiss another of the eggs, this one oddly alone. However, a green blob of a creature greeted him when the shell peeled back, and with a familiar growl that caught Spyro's ear, it knocked him back across the arena, nearly sending him tumbling into the ooze.
"Bentley, you dig up something we can use to ground the big guy!" Spyro shouted, charging into battle. "I can take care of this one!"
Buzz gave a throaty laugh as Spyro scratched his claws against the dirt, face to face with an old foe yet again. This time, he didn't have Sheila to assist him, but the timid lava was now a toxic ooze, which evened the score. He lowered his horns and drove forward, and their second round of dragon-sumo was on.
Bentley, on the other hand, rushed back to the rock pile, spinning his club to deflect Scorch's treacherous fire blasts. He knew that the local deposits of phosphorous triberyllium would react well to Spyro's dragon-fire, but the Sorceress seemed to know that just as well; it barely scratched the creature, much less knock it out of the sky where the flightless allies could reach it. They needed something with more punch, something even more volatile.
That's when he saw it; a vein of green throughout the phosphorous deposits. Biphosimate diryllium. "Spyro, catch!"
Spyro looked up, just after plowing Buzz back into the depths where he belonged, and managed to catch Bentley's toss in his jaws. Unlike the magma rocks, this substance was an eerie green, and it burned the inside of his mouth, heat-resistant as fire-breaths were. He struggled to keep a hold of it, not daring to chew it into pieces, but trusted Bentley's judgement as the yeti waved to him to hold his fire.
He readied a large rock of his own, then rushed over to join Spyro. "Aim carefully, Spyro, we've only got one good shot at this." Spyro nodded and the yeti counted it down: Three...Two...
"ONE, FIRE!" Bentley struck first, cracking the heavy projectile with his club and clocking Scorch in the head, dizzying the creature and causing it to waver, having to fight harder to maintain its altitude.
Shortly after, Spyro reared back and fired. The green projectile flew farther and faster than the magma rock debris, whistling as it soared through the sky. It struck Scorch straight in the chest, just as the beast came up from Bentley's prior blow. Unable to maintain his flaps under such an assault, Scorch fell, if only for a moment.
One moment just long enough to spiral into the ooze, screeching and squirming to a slow, melted death alongside its once-fallen companion, Buzz.
oo00oo00oo
Trapped in a cage, unaware of the rest of the story, Hunter found himself with a discomforting lack of things to do. He was a cheetah, meant to run around in the open, to see and experience the world. Sitting in a small metal box was the furthest from his idea of a good time.
So the wildcat jumped to the door when he heard Bianca run in to see him. "Hey, Bianca! Say, you bring any food with ya? I'm starving."
Bianca rolled her eyes. "There's no time for that, Hunter! We have to stop the Sorceress! She's going to kill Spyro and the rest of the dragon hatchlings!"
Hunter raised an eyebrow. The Sorceress' right-hand, suddenly on their side? It didn't add up. "And why should I trust you? How do I know this isn't another trap?"
The apprentice was stunned by Hunter's baffling thought process. "You're already in a cage, you furry numbskull! How can I trap you by letting you out?!"
"...I don't know. You sorceress-types can be sneaky like that."
Bianca groaned, waving her hand to enchant the tumblers of the lock and swing the door open. "Alright, I'm sorry. I never wanted to hurt the dragons, but the Sorceress had her own plans. Now I'm going to stop her, and I need you and Spyro's help. Come on, we don't have a lot of time, let's go!"
Before Hunter could argue, she grabbed him by the paw and dragged him out, up to the Midnight Mountains above them. She just hoped Spyro would survive to meet them there.
One level left to go, guys! (Probably not exciting, considering the Spyro games' penchant for getting lazy in the last world and not giving me much to work with.) Make sure to tune in next week for another abnormally-long chapter, brought to you by awkward pacing! :D Hope you guys enjoyed; thanks for reading!