Prologue:
The lost history
Long ago, in the center of the universe, there was nothing but a void, until an explosion of magical energy, called mind magic created a vast realm tied to all corners of the universe, known as skylands, and birthed a race of great creators who could wield this mind magic to make their ideas a reality, and turn the realm into a utopia. We were those creators...we are the ancients...wise creators...the mothers and fathers of skylands...although, perhaps we overestimated our own "wisdom". Time after time, we have made mistake after mistake, and yet we are supposed to be beings of "perfection", gods of creation, meant to forge realms and mold them into glorious worlds. However, one of us became drunk on that power and sought to control the very creations we brought life to. With no choice, we sealed away our corrupted brother and kept working on our various realms. What fools we were not to realize...the rebellion of our brother should have been a wake up call, that any of us could be overcome by pride and sloth. But we continued our work unphased...only for our pride to once again threaten the worlds we forged.
Though we have great abilities, we were still limited by the materials available to us. As such, we began to scour the vast universe using the power of our newest creation, the rift engine. Using these devices we traveled to various worlds in our universe and discovered primeval forces, not native to our realm. These forces were then brought back to skylands and shared amongst everyone who inhabited our worlds, and became the elements we know today. Air, Water, Earth, Fire, Life, Tech, Undead, Magic, Light, and Dark. These ten elements became the foundation of skylands and gave birth to various unique creatures and places.
Two of the most unique of these elements were the light and dark elements. Both were unlike any other element that existed, and so we began to experiment with them. We discovered that light and dark were strong against each other, yet weak to no element. From this we determined that these two elements were opposites to each other, like fire and water, or magic and tech. Wanting to learn more about their properties, one of our number created a more powerful rift engine to delve deeper into the realm of darkness than ever before. When activated, a massive rift was torn in the sky, and our colleague believed this to be a success. How wrong he was. From the rift came an eldritch being of pure darkness and evil. The only name that seemed appropriate for such a being was just that, "The Darkness". Despite our power, the darkness ravaged skylands for many eons, leaving our people in danger. Fortunately, from this emerged heroes across the land, each of different elements. First came the giants who toppled the tyrannical arkeyan empire who promised protection in exchange for supreme rule, and who fully discovered the power of the tech element. These giants were then banished from this realm, but their actions inspired others to take to the fight, creating the skylanders, and portal masters who fight alongside the skylanders.
To fix our mistakes, we called upon the heroes of the light realm for assistance in creating a weapon strong enough to defeat the darkness, The core of light. We combined all ten elements along with an artifact imbued with our own power and supercharged by the power of the people of the realm of light. With its power, we successfully defeated the darkness, but it would still linger in our realm, corrupting people and even turning portal masters to his side, creating dark portal masters. Though dark element portal masters already did exist, these dark portal masters were warriors who fought on behalf of the darkness, using massive vile creatures. Every Time however, they were stopped by the good portal masters and their skylanders. But one day, tensions between the realms of light and darkness flared, with the light realm blaming the dark realm for the darkness being let loose. The skylanders and portal masters of both light and dark tried to reason with the ambassadors of the realms, but it was no use, and a great war between the realms broke out, that not even the skylanders could stop. Soon enough, those with light and dark abilities stood against one another, even those not native of the two realms. Realizing that their power could destroy all of Skylands, we stepped in and used our powers to end the war. We realized that perhaps the world wasn't yet ready for these two elements, and as such we separated the realms light and dark and hid them in the farthest corners of skylands, removing their components, including the eternal light source and eternal dark source, from the core of light and hiding them within the realms as well. As for the people of the other realms, as well as the portal masters and their skylanders, we wiped their memories of the light and dark elements ever existing, leaving only eight elements known. Despite this, the people of the light and dark realms still retained their memories, and chose to remain hidden until the day the power of these elements is rediscovered and the light and dark realms can rejoin skylands once more.
I truly wish there was another way to resolve this, but my brothers and sisters agree that this was the best course of action. The two elements are too powerful and our creations are still young. They can not handle the power these elements bring. But I still believe one day, the people of skylands will rediscover these elements and learn to control them better than they did in the past, and perhaps even mend the broken peace between the light and dark realms.