For hundreds of years, he had waited deep within the darkness of Convexity. He had plotted and planned through those boring centuries, awaiting the day he would be freed by a child hatched on the Year of the Dragon. Centuries of quiet manipulation, using only the little bits of magic he could slip into the world and his natural charisma. He built an army of loyal followers, worshippers even, some of which were loyal even after his most recent defeat at the hands of the young upstart Spyro and his own servant. He was patient, and it had allowed him to recover from utter destruction.

He had lured Spyro to the Well of Souls, a feat which, had it gone poorly, would have needed another century to try again. He had fought those children to a standstill, and shrugged off their power with ease. He was master of Aether and Convexity, after all. He had waited three years for them to emerge from their time crystal, though he could have waited a hundred years longer. He was patient.

He had pushed himself just to the very edge of full corruption, to reach into the well of power that Convexity offered, but had held himself just out of its thrall. The darkness of his inner voice was always present, whispering doubts, fears, anger, aggression, and similarly negative thoughts into his ear. He kept himself strong, ignoring the allure of giving in all the way. He could not let the darkness clear his mind of his righteous goal. He was patient, after all.

He was the most powerful dragon to have ever lived; the first purple to reach a century in age. He was master of all known dragon elements and more. He could reshape reality to his every whim. He was the Dark Master, lord of the world, bringer of its purification.

And yet, he had been defeated by ancient ghosts. Ghosts he recognized.

Some he did not know, spirits so old that they were hardly even dragons any more. Their forms were blurry, but filled with so much energy that together they rivaled his own power.

Others were dragons who had fallen recently, and they all looked at him with fear or defiant hatred, on a spectrum between the two extremes.

But the worst were those he had known in his old life. They looked upon him with fear, disgust, and worst of all disappointment. He hated the last ones. Despised their very existence.

Together, all these old spirits, the Ancestors, had stripped him of his body and sealed him in with them. Locked away in a swirling miasma of raw Aether where he could not concentrate. If he could, it would be child's play to burst out of this crystalline prison and reconstitute a body for himself. But no, any time he got close to concentrating, one of the spirits would send a current of Aether through him and disrupt his focus.

But he was patient.

And because he was patient, he had a plan for when these annoying spirits inevitably dropped their guard.

It had come after fifteen years of waiting.

Something distracted the Ancestors, drawing their attention away from their scattered locations around the world and towards the area just outside the core of the world. There were fewer of his wardens, he noticed. Odd. Perhaps they had grown bored. That was a mistake they'd learn to regret.

Still, the amount of Ancestors drawn to the core was nearly as many as the day they had locked him within the massive gem. Ordinarily that would mean he was under more scrutiny than usual, but they were more focused upon the outside world than him. There were still enough to ruin his focus, but even then those were flickering their attention between him and the events outside.

He could see why. Beyond the crystal of the core was a dragon, flying down towards the core. A young one, based upon the size, and filled with Wind magic too. The youth was looking down into the core, a stupid look on its face.

With so little attention on him, he made his move. A simple enthralling spell, woven from Mind and powered by the limitless Aether around him, slipped through the Ancestors. As a spell he had performed uncountable times, he didn't even need the slightest bit of time to cast it, and by the time the Ancestors punished him for using magic, he had the dragon under his control. It wouldn't free him, in and of itself, but having another thrall in the world would be useful.

Hold on, was the thrall speaking to another? There wasn't anyone else outside of the core, was there? He couldn't detect another dragon, even if he actively searched for one. Was the young dragon mad already? There was nothing there.

Wait. Exactly. A strong aura of ambient magic, outlining a spot where there was no magic at all. He had never seen anything exactly like that before. Perhaps he could make use of it…

He issued a command to his new thrall, ordering it to bring the anomaly closer. With the order, he imbued hints of Convexity. The thrall filled with the dark magic of Convexity, wisps of dark purple mixing with his pure white wind magic. Strictly speaking, the Convexity wasn't needed, but it would allow his thrall to wreak havoc if he so wished.

It had the added benefit of causing the Ancestors to freak out and return their attention to him as well, which gave his thrall enough time to pull the magical void out of the air before the Ancestors could do anything about it.

The fools. Did they really think his plan was as straightforward as simply blasting his way out? No. He was far more cunning than they gave him credit for. A void of magic was an anomaly that would disrupt ongoing spells. Spells like his imprisonment.

The instant his thrall touched the anomaly, he felt the Mind spell wear off. A sacrifice, but one he was more than willing to make. As he had hypothesized, the anomaly's contact with the core caused the Aether to change. Instead of a chaotic storm that would disrupt any attempts to weave magic, there was a single stream, pouring raw energy into the anomaly. He seized his chance, letting out a blast of Convexity to shatter the binding spell upon him.

The anomaly and the dragon were gone now, having left through the same hole the dragon had entered through. A passing curiosity made him wonder what the anomaly had been, given that it was unaffected entirely by the sheer volume of Aether pumped into it, but he didn't care enough to pursue it.

Instead, he looked around at the Ancestors around him, counting and calculating carefully. Had he a face, he would have grinned as he realized that, even together, he was powerful enough to overpower them. Granted, he couldn't hurt them in any way – they were dead, after all – but they didn't seem to realize that fact.

So he ignored them, riding a crackling bolt of Convexity out of the core into the earth above. If he wanted to return to his former power, he had work to do.

He emerged from the earth in a small cave. He had no body – that would come later – but he did have a vessel for now: a crystal filled with his swirling Convexity. It wasn't much, but it was enough.

Now free from the Ancestors, he cast his senses out into the surrounding world. His location was isolated, far enough from any civilization that he could not sense it with his first sweep. Unfortunate, since that meant he would have to wait a while before he could reassert himself. No matter, he saw his opportunity in the forests nearby.

Two members of one of the lesser races, cheetahs. They were within a few miles of his cave, and heading in the right direction. He reached out, giving them a nudge to pull them closer. As the two cheetahs course corrected to head more directly towards him, he began to weave his next spell.

Pushing his consciousness into the very sharpest point of the crystal, he began to weaken the connecting point between his current vessel and the main cluster. With a snap! and an almost sickening –if he had a body to be sick with- loss of power, the pointed gemstone fell to the ground.

Just in time, too. The two cheetahs entered his cave, looking around. One pushed back its hood – a male, it appeared – and squinted. "Looks like a good enough place to spend the night. Not much… wait."

The other followed suit, removing its hood to reveal that it was female. "What is it?"

"Some sort of spirit gem, I think…" The male said, walking over. "Purple, though."

And just like that, the male picked up the sharpened shard of crystal that had been severed from the clump. The enchantment took hold immediately, and the male's eyes flooded with white. The cheetah stood up straight, stiffly, then whirled and launched itself at the female. The crystal in its hand stabbing like a dagger.

His plan went exactly as expected. How predictable.

To his surprise, the female turned out to be far more competent than expected. Not that it was too much of an issue. Despite the female managing to disable the male in seconds, he still had exactly what he had been after: a body. Not an ideal one, but a serviceable vessel to utilize. So he issued a command to his thrall.

He heard the female scream in horror as the crystal entered his thrall's heart. Convexity crackled through the cheetah's dying body, replacing blood with magic and a soul with himself. Through the cheetah's eyes he saw the female place her paw over her mouth as she backed up, her eyes wide. He gave her an unnatural grin, words slipping through the lips of his puppet.

"You should run."

And run it did, fleeing as quickly as it could. It needn't have worried. He wouldn't have followed either way. He needed more bodies, dragon bodies, and in order to do that he needed someone to escape and spread the word.

He didn't even leave the cave with his new vessel, knowing that it was only a matter of time before either cheetahs or dragons came looking for him. So instead he prepared.

The first step was to decide what he wanted to do with his puppet body. It wouldn't keep long, and already the abundance of magic behind its skin was causing the flesh to melt and disintegrate. So instead of waiting he stripped his puppet of everything he didn't need: everything except the bones. He had something… amusing planned.

The process took a day, but when he was finished his puppet was a skeleton with a dark crystal floating within its ribcage, but he had no plans to leave it like that. He was vulnerable like this, having his essence stored within a fairly fragile gemstone. All it would take was a lucky blow, and he was finished.

But he wasn't done with his puppet. With his mastery of the elements, he pulled rock from the surrounding cave to form a covering over his skeletal puppet. It was segmented, to allow the bones to be revealed at any time he needed. And he would need it, in order to properly utilize the powers he planned to endow his puppet with.

The finished product looked like a doll molded by hand, albeit with lines along certain parts of its body. With its form completed, he was ready.

The first group to attack him came ten days after his return and was composed of a mix of cheetahs and dragons. Fire dragons, to be precise. How amusing.

Their first attempt to hurt him involved a blast of fire hot enough to scorch the earth below him black, but nowhere near hot enough to damage his shell substantially. He retaliated by skewering three of the Fire dragons with spears of sharpened bone, shaped from his puppet's own skeleton. They were too scrawny for his liking, and would have been poor choices for a permanent body. So instead he pulled the bones from their bodies to add to his puppet.

The cheetahs were similarly ineffective, but far more agile than the dragons. He only killed one of them, the unlucky fool who had come too close and gotten his skull smashed for his trouble. He added its bones to his puppet as well.

The rest got away, fleeing as soon as they realized the futility of attacking a creature clothed in solid stone when their only weapons were fire and sharpened sticks.

With a far denser puppet, filled to the brim with ammunition, he was ready when the next attack party came for him three days later. This squadron was composed entirely of earth dragons. Five of them, helmed by an impressively large individual whose tail ended in a mace. He had his target.

He heard the dragons land outside his cave, though he had seen them coming from miles away. His magic-sense had picked up on them, but only now could he hear them.

"Remember, strip the armor and use it to defend yourself. We don't know what we're up against here, so if things start to go wrong we want to be ready to take defensive positions. Don't retreat unless I give the order. Remember your training."

A chorus of voices responded with "Yes sir!"

How cute. They were strategizing.

The leader entered the cave first, and he didn't strike immediately. If the fools didn't notice his puppet with their Earth affinity, they would all die simultaneously. It would be rather boring.

Fortunately, the leader called all of them to a halt. "Wait."

He felt the leader's energy wash through the cave, and the leader continued, "Back out of the cave. We're collapsing it on this thing."

What a surprise. They weren't completely braindead.

As the group turned around to leave the cave, he waited. When the cave collapsed upon him, he waited. He waited for one of the dragons to come close enough to reach out and touch him.

That's when he made his move.

His fist erupted from the rubble, catching the dragon on the underside of the jaw with a crunch of bone. The dragon didn't even have a chance to cry out before he reshaped his armor into a spike, skewering the Earth drake's skull in an instant.

He had to give them credit, these dragons reacted faster than he had expected those of the Earth element to do so. He immediately felt his arm be ripped from its socket, leaving him with only one arm. No matter. It didn't make him any less dangerous.

He emerged from the rubble in a different spot, beneath a different dragon. This one had been paying attention, though, and avoided the spiked arm by mere inches. Not that it worked, since he simply launched the spike of earth through the air towards the dragon and impaled it through the chest with his projectile.

At this point the leader and the two remaining lesser dragons put their full effort into pulling the armor from his puppet, managing to pull a plate of stone from his side to reveal the edge of his ribcage.

He decided that he had let them have their minor victory. He was almost done playing now. Almost. The rocky helmet around the puppet's skull pulled back, and he let loose a scream filled with pulses of scarlet.

Fear magic filled the air, and the dragons froze, each affected by different degrees. He swept his arm in an arc, releasing a spray of bone shards. One dragon dodged, flying upwards just in time before turning tail and fleeing. He let that one leave. Another was petrified, and the bone shards entered the drake's skill through his eyes.

The leader, though, reacted differently.

A wall of earth erupted from the ground, blocking the shards before hurtling towards him in chunks. One hit the side of his skull, shattering the bone and pulverizing his shell.

Only now did it seem as though he was in any real danger.

He leaped over the rest of the barrage, using a substantial boost from both Wind and Earth magic to catapult his puppet's unwieldy body towards the dragon. He landed face to face with the Earth dragon, releasing another scream of Fear magic directly into the drake's face.

Much to his surprise, the drake retaliated by headbutting his puppet. The force was enough to cave in his puppet's skull without doing more than bruising the dragon.

He'd had enough at this point. This pest deserved nothing less than his full attention.

Convexity arced out from the puppet, wrapping around the dragon's limbs and lifting the drake into the air. He stepped forward, using a pittance of his magic to create two glowing yellow orbs in the emptiness of his puppet's face. As the dragon struggled, he decided to strike true fear into his foe's heart.

All it took was a simple illusion of purple scales and two words.

"I'm back.

The dragon thrashed, roaring protests and screaming about the impossibility of his return, but he ignored it. The center of his puppet's chest opened, a circular aperture just large enough for the dark crystal that powered it and housed him to slip through.

The gem pierced the earth dragon's scales with ease, and entered his heart almost immediately.

The swap was disorienting for the briefest of moments, but when it was over the puppet stood stiff. It had no face, no glowing yellow eyes, and not hint of a mind in its body.

Just as planned.

The Dark Master examined his new body. It would take a while to shape it into his true form, but he was patient. Patience had been how he was so successful, after all.

He sent the Revenant off, to rebuild itself with the bodies of the Earth dragons who he had slain. He had no further use for it, but he couldn't simply leave without a parting gift to the dragons and cheetahs of this area. Besides, he wanted to keep his return a secret for as long as possible. The longer the people thought he was dead, the longer he would have without the purple whelp coming after him. Leaving the obvious killer of these dragons here would facilitate that.

Now, where to base himself…

He was sentimental, not that he would admit it to anyone. That was why he had used the dragon temple, his old training ground and the home of his greatest foes, as his central base of operations. Now that he thought about it, the old temple had fallen into the volcano and should still be there. Yes, a perfectly isolated place to prepare.

When he was ready, he'd let the world know that Malefor had returned.