CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: Dark Magic and Shiny Things

Spyro couldn't help but shudder as they ventured into the Crystal Islands. Everything about it was eerily familiar to his least-favorite of the Dragon Realms, from the odd flows of uncontrolled magic in the air to the bright, jagged colors of crystal that shot out into the night sky. He had to pause every so often, certain that he heard the yipping of a fool around the corner. But these were once Dragon Realms, too - it just happened to be obvious where the ancient Dream Weavers once called home.

The locals, for once, weren't incredibly happy to see their dragon savior drop in from the portal. Instead, the "Marvelous Magnifico" seemed a bit frightened about his appearance, shaking with nerves and panic as he explained the situation. The crystal creatures were NOT natives, as Spyro's experiences in the Dream Weavers led him to assume, but rather a mystical mistake. Like Bianca's disasters he and Hunter saw back in the Midday Garden, the local wizards weren't particularly good at gemcrafting. But they heard that the dragon was in the area, preparing to take on the vicious Sorceress in battle, so they tried to help. They snuck into her castle and swiped as many of the ancient dragon tomes as they could get their paws on.

And instead of turning the local gems into friendly foot-soldiers, the dragon treasure morphed into a series of evil crystal tree-demons and evil crystal bears. And beavers, though Spyro couldn't quite put a claw on how THAT happened.

So Spyro set out on his quest to clear out the Crystal Islands, fighting off evil flying beavers and getting nothing but cheap magic tricks in return for his heroism. (Though he did get a satisfying chance to knock Moneybags into an octopus-infested crystal lake, which was worth all of the bad magic tricks in the world.)

Since the Crystal Islands were so broken up, only Spyro could work his way through the entire archipelago, and even then, only with the aid of a superfly power-up. With him busy exploring the great peaks of the Crystal Mountains, and Bentley busy taking up a 'prestidigitation' act by his old friend, the Great Randini, it left too many heroes with not enough ground to cover.

So Bianca decided to give Hunter a tour of her old home.

"Really? You used to live here?"

"Before I was chosen to apprentice under the Sorceress, yeah. The Crystal Islands are the only place left in the Forgotten Worlds that still really practice magic, unless you count the fairies." The apprentice smirked. "What, you thought I lived in a big, spooky castle at the top of an evil mountain or something?"

"When we first got here, probably," Hunter laughed. He stopped to admire the sparkling atmosphere as Bianca summoned a trio of floating gems to take them across one of the many unbridged chasms of the Crystal Islands. "It's nice here, though. Reminds me a little of the race-course in the Magic Crafters."

"You?" Bianca echoed, raising an eyebrow. "You've been to a dragon speedway?"

"Yeah, and I'm pretty good at 'em, too," Hunter bragged, casually brushing dust off his shoulder. "Spyro and I are the fastest racers this side of Avalar."

"Don't you need wings to fly in a dragon speedway?" Though races weren't exactly her cup of tea, Bianca had passing familiarity with the various speedways of the ancient dragon realms. Designed to train the dragonlets in flight (while still giving the full-growns something to do), she couldn't imagine how a ground creature could traverse them, much less be the racer Hunter claimed.

"Yeah, and?" Hunter countered. "I can get around it. I've got planes, jetpacks, boats...even got a pair of wings I built myself, Miss Know-it-all," he teased, playfully messing up her ears as he hopped past her on the makeshift gem bridge.

"So you're a world-class racer AND you're smarter than you look?" Bianca laughed, straightening her ears before joining Hunter on the other side.

"As a matter of fact, I am," Hunter replied sassily. "I happen to be pretty handy with a wrench and a motor."

"And you're modest, too, I see."

"Why does everyone always make that joke?"

Bianca carefully avoided that question, instead returning to another point Hunter made in his showing off. "So you're from Avalar, huh?"

"You've heard of it?"

"Only a little. It was still kind of a new thing a thousand years ago, and...well, you know, we haven't exactly been a part of the world since the dragons left. What's it like there?"

"Nice enough, just nowhere as nice as here or the Dragon Realms. When they're not being overrun by evil sorcerers and sorceresses, anyway."

Bianca fought to cover a blush slightly as a thought came to her mind. "Maybe, uhm...after all this is said and done and the Dragon Festival's over, I can come visit?"

"Who says you have to wait until AFTER the Dragon Festival?" Hunter offered. "I mean, I don't think they're having it without us, so...you could come for that and come visit Avalar after?" He stopped to chuckle at a thought. "If we don't all go to Dragon Shores afterwards. I've been pushing to make that our post-baddie invasion tradition."

"You really think they're gonna let the girl who stole all the dragon eggs just walk into the Dragon Festival?" Bianca pointed out.

"No, of course not." Hunter traced a claw under Bianca's chin, lifting her head so their eyes could meet. "But you're not the crazy sorceress that stole all the dragon eggs. You're the cute apprentice helping us get them all back now, right?"

"Right," Bianca blushed with a nervous laugh, almost cursing herself for being such a typical girl as she turned from him and resumed their ascent to the Crystal Watchtower. Being the Sorceress' apprentice was heavy work, and she never had time for socialization, much less anything involving boys. After so many years of hiding under her hood and just being "the sorceress' apprentice", it was an odd change of pace to be treated like a person (and a cute one, at that)...odd, but nothing she couldn't get used to.

Hunter, on the other hand, was a flirt by nature. (Though he definitely had a thing for pretty and smart, which Bianca easily delivered.) He was just taking advantage of the fact that Bianca was the first girl in a long time not to throw a drink at him. "Besides, I could use a date," he joked. "Spyro's busy enough, being a dragon and all, and then he's probably gonna get cozy with Elora and all, so it'd be nice to not feel like the third wheel."

"Spyro doesn't strike me as the type to have a girlfriend."

"Don't worry, Spyro doesn't think so, either."

Finally, they reached their destination. Bianca took a seat under the outcrop that shadowed over the watchtower, motioning for Hunter to join her. "This is one of the highest points in the Crystal Islands. One that you can reach without flying, anyway. It's the best spot to get a view of everything."

Hunter, who happened to be examining an entirely different view, turned his eyes to the stars before he was noticed. "No kidding. Feels like the stars just go on forever here."

"I used to come up here with my old legend books and read under the stars," Bianca sighed, reminiscing on her memories atop the old watchtower. "I'd sit right in this spot and read about the dragons, thinking about what the Crystal Islands looked like when they were here, daydreaming about them soaring around in the stars, doing REAL magic that isn't just the cheap tricks the locals do."

"Who knows?" Hunter answered. "Maybe they'll come back after we kick out the Sorceress, and you'll get to see it."

When silence fell over their conversation, the pair seemed perfectly content with sitting and taking a long-awaited break. Bianca curled up into Hunter's side as the archer pulled her in close, and they moved in closer and closer, with no one but the glittering stars and crystals of the Islands to see them-

BONK! Bianca cried out as the blunt force of a falling dragon egg smashed her between the ears, destroying the moment for good. "OW! What the?!"

"Sorry, just reminding you guys we got dragon eggs to find and a Sorceress to take out!" Spyro laughed from up above, managing to catch an updraft of enchanted wind and soar off before Bianca and Hunter could react to his presence.

Bianca rubbed the tender bruise now forming on her head. "I get the feeling Spyro still doesn't like me very much," she groaned.

"Nah, he's warming up to ya," Hunter said, (stifling a laugh the best he could; it was pretty funny, he had to admit).

"How do you know?"

"If he still hated you, he would've dropped something a LOT heavier."

oo00oo00oo

I am a vessel without hinges, lock or lid
But within my walls, a golden treasure is hid.

Spyro's mind grinded as it struggled to make any sense of the gravekeeper's game. (Puzzles, he could figure out with enough time to wrap his head around it. Riddles were far from his forte; too much thinking, not enough hitting things.) The gravekeepers were perhaps an even bigger trouble than the rhynocs; they weren't about to give the eggs over to the Sorceress, but nor were they eager to return them to Spyro. Their eggs were reserved for true champions of the tomb, only those who could manipulate its trials and live to tell the tale.

Also, they liked telling riddles.

"Well, golden treasure, right?" he said aloud, hoping to bounce ideas off of his dragonfly. "So it's got to be, like, a safe or a chest, right?"

"Except those have hinges and locks, Spy," Sparx buzzed flatly.

"So what kind of chest doesn't have a lock?"

"One that's not going to have a treasure in it for long."

"That's what I'm thinking; who locks up a treasure without actually using a lock?"

Both dragon and dragonfly froze as the catacombs began to shake, with a familiar roar echoing through its ancient corridors. "Uhm...maybe we should work on this riddle thing later," Sparx buzzed.

Spyro frowned, trying to place the familiar call. "I've heard that growl before. But where? Doesn't sound like anything else in the Forgotten-"

BOOM! The Artisan just barely ducked in time, narrowly avoiding a smoldering magma rock as it flew straight for his head. The duo turned the corner to find their roaring suspect, a hefty Earthshaper that shook the catacombs with every one of his thunderous steps. While these were slightly smaller than the ones they found running amok in the Autumn Plains, it didn't make them any less daunting. They still stood much taller than Spyro, and were crafted from the same dense, heavy clay that made them too heavy to charge down and not flammable enough to flame.

"What's an Earthshaper doing down here?" Spyro jumped.

Sparx shoved Spyro out of the way, helping him avoid another hurling rock. "Less questions, more Earthshaper smashing, 'kay?"

"Easier said than done," Spyro groaned, keeping a careful eye on the Earthshaper so that he could think back to his trip through Avalar. The Earthshapers in Fracture Hills, he could take out by shoving them off the cliffs and into their own magma pools, but they were deep underground in the ancient dragon tombs; he wasn't expecting to find much lava down here. The ones in Magma Cone didn't care to hang around convenient death-pools either, but that's why he had the local fauns, hiding around every corner with giant boulders and jackhammers. Even in the Fracture Hills, he had Hunter's help from above with a quiver of arrows. He just needed another friend in high places, someone that could hide out and fire-

PEWPEWPEW! The Earthshaper exploded into a shower of debris.

"I need to ask for stuff like that more often," Spyro whistled to himself.

Agent 9 slid down from the upper catacombs, blowing the smoke off of his laser. "Hey-ya, Spyro! Fancy runnin' inta you here! Well, I mean, guess you wouldn't REALLY want to find your new dragon buddy down in the depths of the dragon GRAVEYARDS, but hey, you know what I mean. Say, how goes the egg-hunting? I hear some of those gravekeepers have some of the eggs around here, but man, those riddles can be a brain-buster, am I right?"

"Yeah, no kidding," Spyro said with a groan and an eye-roll. "So what are you doing?"

"Oh, me?" Agent 9 giggled nervously. "Oh, y'know, just takin' a stroll through the catacombs, playin' 20 Questions with the gravekeepers, just typical-A-YEEP!"

The hyperactive chimp jumped with a yelp, turning around and blasting behind him. "You alright, 9?" Spyro asked.

"Oh, I'm fine, just peachy!" Agent 9 laughed, trying to hide his target from view. "Sorry, Mr. Laser Blaster thought he heard a noise, and you know how Mr. Laser Blaster likes to shoot 'em up first and ask questions, never, right?"

HISSSSSSSSSS! Spyro jumped back as what looked like a green, hooded Agent 9's tail shot out from behind him, wriggling like a cobra as it reared back and flashed its newly-grown fangs. "Hey! Bad tail, down!" Agent 9 snapped, firing another shot and crying out as he took the damage from his own gun.

"Why is your tail a snake?!" Spyro jumped.

"What, that ol' thing?" Agent 9 laughed nervously, dropping his squirming snake-tail and grinding its hood under his foot. "Yea~ah, funny story about that! You know, these gravekeepers aren't the friendliest little things, even though you'd THINK it's hard to be sneaky with those giant funny gold hats of theirs, right? Anyway, I'm just mindin' my own business, and WHAM! One sneaks up behind me! I think he's a rhynoc, right, so BAM!, Mr. Laser Blaster took care of that re~al quick! Well, Mr. Funny Hat didn't like being blasted in the butt, so he put this curse on me and-"

A scream interrupted his story when the tail-cobra sprang to life once more, digging its fangs into his foot. Spyro blasted the rogue curse with his flame-breath, causing it to lay down once more (though Agent 9's foot was collateral damage). "Yeah, nice story, give me the quick version."

"Funny hats, curse, tail, snake, 5 Trials of Death, I gotta go, see ya!" Agent 9 yelped, running off into the catacombs with his hissing, writhing snake-tail behind him.

"Seriously, I think we should've left him in the cage," Sparx buzzed.

"Ah, he'll be fine," Spyro laughed. "Come on, let's go. I want to ride that giant slide up there, but first we have to find the rest of the dragon e-"

The purple dragon stumbled over his own paws, skidding to a halt. "What?"

"Sparx, that's it!" he gasped. "Eggshells are a container without a door or a lock, and what's inside of an egg? A golden yolk! The answer to the riddle is an egg!"

oo00oo00oo

Once Agent 9 braved the five deadly trials of King Rover and had his tail-curse removed, he rushed out of the catacombs before anyone ELSE could turn his tail into a reptile, meeting Spyro, Hunter, and Bianca back at the entrance to the Sorceress' castle. "Your tail's looking better, 9," Spyro laughed.

"Yeah, and it only took me fighting through FIVE TRIALS of snakes and mummies to get fixed," the chimp grumbled, meticulously petting his tail (and making sure the fur wouldn't turn back into scales). "Not to mention another one of those stupid riddles; took me an HOUR to figure out, and I only got it 'cause I started pacing around and still had soot all over my shoes from the tank-off. Stupid footprints."

"Is that it, then?" Bianca asked. "Are we ready?"

"We're ready if you are," Spyro answered, sharpening his claws on the marble of the Midnight walkways. "Let's go show that Sorceress what for."

Uh-oh, sounds like go time. D: Thanks for reading, guys, hope you enjoyed! Make sure to turn in next week when all of the cool fight scenes happen! I promise my final fight's way cooler than either of the lame ones we got in the game! :D