Sky Tiles
Guardian Flam"Fire…" Eon spoke the solitary word almost without thinking. His even pondering mind ever walked its own paths. And right now, as he paced alone through the hallowed chambers of the Citadel's tower, the ancient Portal Master found his thoughts being drawn towards one subject: Spyro.
Only a single day had passed since he had summoned the Dragon to him, charging him with a duty: to venture out into the Outlands after a sizable Troll Shipband… and cripple it till no threat could be posed from it. It was a duty that was as Eon had said, 'one only for a soul so daring.'
It was a fact of undisputable true among many circles, that the ever-passionate Purple Dragon was many things: he was known as an utter roguish playboy in matters of his own etiquette and manner, this self-allowed attitude, as tragic as it was, extended itself all the way into his perspective of authority. Jet-Vac, former Sky War Barren, and de-facto lieutenant Skylander among Skylanders, was the first among the Dragon's own friends to berate him for over a hundred different actions and words violating just as many protocols. And yet… Spyro was the finest of all Skylanders.
Eon turned his aged, but still perceptive, eyes towards a circler plinth of well carven stones. Upon the outfacing side of every other rock, the infinitely arcane symbols of the Portal Masters could clearly be seen. Within all each and every component of the silent Realm Portal, its master could feel the raw ethereal powers that it had been baptized in, just as strongly as the day it was created.
Despite his present uncertainties, the Grand Master of the Skylander Guardian smiled. He remembered just how it had been upon the fatal day… that he had brought the Dragon into the vast Sky realm he had governed for so many millennia. He remembered the flames of frustration that had filled the chamber he now stood in, both physically and emotionally. Anger had been Spyro's first feeling, even as Eon had tried to calm his erupting frustration. Only through a prolonged period of showing the Dragon the majesty and beauty of the Skylands through the very means he had been brought in to them, did the last Portal Master finally calm the Dragon Fire, and won over his trust and, after a while, loyalty.
"And that is why you are my champion…."
This time, the words were spoken both fully intentionally and with the pure pride of a father.
"you could have asked me… or even for that matter forced me, to return you home… and I would have done it to." He spoke that part with a twinge of honest regret. "I had no right to take you in the first instance… we both knew that, and we know we both knew it as well…. But yet, you stayed, I showed you a world in need of a champion… and you stayed."
With every last fibre and impulse of his being, and as the defining bellows of almost simultaneous cannon fire filled his ears, Spyro, champion of Skylands, throw his head forwards, his jaw braking apart like the bursting summit of a new born volcano! The pure burning power of the Dragon's fire came forth as though from the skin of a sun, tearing across the open Sky into the dead centre of the Troll Battlenort's main mast.
Even as his flames, with a speed only their sheathing heat could achieve, began tearing into the solid pillar of thickened wood, Spyro, with speed, skill and confidence born of a lifetime's flying, was already disappearing over the port side of the Air vessel. As the wild, incoherent, and panicked cries of over a hundred barbaric trolls registered within the Dragon's hearing. Though they were obscured beyond the ears of most other creatures, thanks to the battering howls of wind and the bangs of cannon fire, they still drew a grin from Spyro's reptilian lips: confusion, uncertainty, chaos! That fact that he had filled the invaders' flagship with such things, along with the inevitably insuring damage born of his Dragon Fire, maid the risk of his run upon the Battlenort, directly through the fire of the lobber Cannons, more than worth the risk.
For the fleeting span of a few second, while he navigated himself into a relatively safe air zone, out of the ark and range of all the Trolls aware of him, Spyro considered what the very often uptight Jet-vac might be saying right in that moment. He would be rebuking its folly, pointing out the ugliness of what would have happened had even one cannonball so much as caught the Dragon… and then he would have complimented the result. However, much Jet-vac took it upon himself to be a leader for his fellow Skylanders, he would never deny a success when he beheld one before….
"Now is not a time to laps Spyro!"
The Dragon shock his head, winced hard at the same time, his long neck rolling from left to right as the words the Sky Baron would be saying filled his mind. Spyro curst in a reptilian growl of stinging anger, his fanged teeth grinding together as he yanked his concentration back into the duty Master Eon had charged him with. Taking in all the remaining strength of the Troll Shipband, the barley strained Dragon drew a wide smile: the Gundingys that he hadn't either shattered with the physically force of his iron hard body, or burned away into the endless mists, where now pulling back towards the Battlenort. Their intent was relatively clear… the panic recovered Trolls were now either going to make a break into the heart of the Outlands, using its common place Air Tempests to lose the Skylander, who had decimated their already crude flotilla, or combine all their remaining fire upon him. Such an attempt was without speculation possible, though it would almost certainly require….
Before he could even complete his tactical analysis, Spyro spread his wings wide, and street right back towards the Troll ships, his pure warrior passion blotting out any sense of strategy. The Trolls hesitated no more than the Dragon did, seeing him coming at them like a lightning bolt of raw fire, they opened up with every cannon and firearm they had. The tide of weapons fire came down upon the Dragon. But just as before… not a single shot could strike home.
Swooping, diving and evading around each and every shot that came at him, the Dragon just kept coming, his overall course unchanging… right towards the Battlenort. Within just half the time than it had taken him to distance himself from the great vessel, Spyro was back at it, arching himself over its port side, and slamming with the force of an organic cannonball down upon the main deck.
"all right chumps!" the Dragon growled, his reptilian eyes taking in every one of the Trolls around him, "what do you say we finish this now!?"
The Trolls blind with fury, grabbed from their blades and pistols, all ready to slay their enemy. A few more combatants were even leaping over from the closest Gundingys onto their flagship. The Dragon came at them all! His claws slashing out like a scorpion's tail, cutting down Trolls with every movement. Fangs and flame to, he used them all.
He loved the danger, he loved the fury of every fight fought over the endless expanse of Sky that was his home, and he would, Never… Never! stop fighting for it and its countless inhabitants. Eon might praise him because he had made the utterly selfless sacrifice of abandoning the life he had before… but that was the one thing that both Spyro's new world and his old one had wrong about him… he didn't care where he did good. As long as he did good.
Island of Lost GatesFury, that was all that consumed the tall, muscular, and well armoured Swordsman, as he walked onwards through it. Screaming winds howled like the first sounds of a new-born, almost as defining to the lone warrior' senses as the same winds physical force was upon his body. if the figure had been someone else, even from among the same order of guardian beings he was sworn to, someone lacking the phasic, bulk, balance and focus of the Swordsman, they would have rent from the long, high steps, and carried off the drifting Island altogether, consigned to the raging elemental powers of the Air Tempest… but they were not he… they were not Skylander Sensei Wild Storm.
No, not even the frigid torrents upon torrents of near ice cold rain that came down upon the … fur covering his body, increasing his physical heft, could do anything to impede his accent. The Guardian simply ignored the furious storm entirely, his long, regimented strides just as sharp as both the Air Blade gripped within his armure right hand, the weapon by which he lived the entirety his existence, and his expression.
Not that any eyes had ever seen that face in over a hundred years. And yet no soul had ever truly needed to penetrate through the shroud of the pure silver battle helm, to read the thoughts, state or even feelings of the great Swordsman at any given time. His deep voice, that could be as sharp as his Air Blade in one instant, could be as soft as a father's guidance within the next, while his eyes, as invitingly cloud weight as they were, could be like Storm Daggers when angered.
Wild Storm faultlessly approached the summit of the stone steeps, almost torn utterly apart by the unrelenting Air Tempest that had been ripping into every inch for the entire span of time that the Skylander Sensei had been upon them.
The twinge of a hummus smile touched the Swordsman's lips, "you honestly believe this will be enough… simply curdling up some bad weather?"
Even as his amused words were uttered, and promptly drowned out by the increasing artificial chaos of elements that engulphed him, Wind Storm recalled the words of an old and ever true friend.
"it is an ironically tragic… thing if you think about it." The Grand Master of the Skylander had told the Swordsman, within the deep and well visited library of Skyguard Academy, "the almost perfect safe… though it easily has the potential to destroy what the caster wishes to protect."
"and let the retched fool would use it anyway…" the Sensei had replied, his voice tinged with a knowing contempt that Eon knew all too well he had for the one they spoke of, "even if it shattered his own forces?"
"yes…." The Oldest of Portal Masters had replied with even clearer regret, "which is of course whey I must say this again. Do not…."
"You know I have to." The Swordsman had stated before his friend's request had been spoken, "he cannot be allowed any form of opening or chance to act unchecked. Our vigil must be absolute. If that means enduring walking through hell to get to him…"
"you'll do it…?"
"I'll do it"
As he recalled those words of pledged duty, Wind Storm could register the feel of fleeting constriction of his muscles tensing. "I meant every word, you child of evil!" this time, the Swordsman could almost register the impossibly muffled sounds of his words, as at last… he reached the summit of the Tempest blaster steps.
Releasing all trace and feeling of tenseness from his muscular body, even as he did the same with the memory in his mind, and the anger in his heart, the Sensei flexed his entire physical form, readying for what was about to happen.
Though almost everything before the Swordsman's misty eyes were rendered utterly invisible through the pitiless and unrelenting haze of endless rain, all that the warrior could see was all he needed to.
The Island of Lost Gates was in every way just as he had been told to expect by his Grand Master… a desolate ruin of stone and mortar that, through the combined powers of millennia long abandonment, ethereal energies once bound up within the heart of a solitary chamber but now relist into the endless skies, and the merciless renting elemental fury of the Air Tempest, was rendered a symbol of both the failings of long deceased Portal Masters… and the avarice of one yet living.
But even there, in the middle of a cascading destruction that demanded that no being should be standing… one being yet stood before Wind Storm… Beast Blade: a champion warrior, and servant of the Darkness.
The Sensei's expression, though utterly impossible to tell or even read at all, did not change. He had expected this… he had expected that the lord of the Outlands would send such a combatant to resolve the matters concerning the Island of Lost Gates… he was sloppy that way. It had been the act of a fool to have conceive such a scheme in the first place, as Master Eon told Wild Storm. To try laying claim to a long-abandoned Realm Portal, one that was so greatly torn by the passing of such a long time, could only have had any chance of working… had the fool known the prices currents, levels, and qualities of gate energies that last touched it.
Not to mention, the attempt of keeping any other being, especially Guardian Warriors such as the Skylanders, with the full fury of an artificially summoned storm like an Air Tempest… ultimately only served to shatter the original intent as badly as that same tempest had the Island.
Wind Storm stared at Beast Blade… Beast Blade, Stared at Wind Storm.
Just as molecular and tall as he himself was, the Bearboar looked as though he's blood red fur, was naturally born wet. His weapons were just barely visible, glinting through the raging element that encompass them both. Two twin Broadswords, shorter than the Skylander's longer Air Blade, nor anywhere near as thick, but nevertheless a threat. They were boughless as well carved as Wind Storms's weapon, there were two of them… and most of all, the one who wielded them was, as whispered in many circles… the finest warrior of the outlands. That was a claim that even the Dragon Champion Spyro himself had once told Wind Sword. The Sensei didn't care: he was a warrior who faced evil, however strong, swift, bold, smart, or even skilled that evil was.
But now, Wind Storm could feel the raw, combat wanting, passion that burned within his opponent, and drew a second grin at it. The born warrior of evil, however consumed by the twisted wants that had delivered him into the service of the Darkness, still had reason and sanity enough to have desires beyond serving that deepest of evils, or be them violent ones. So much like his younger self it almost made Wind Blade Laugh.
For a time, neither figure moved, eyes narrowing and weapons grips tightening almost until… then the warriors charged! They charged at the same time, within the span of the very same heartbeat, their blades already brought forward in combat arcs towards their enemy.
Beast Blade's shorter Broadswords came in fastest, both slashing around from the left towards Wind Storm's waist… but the Skylander was ready, knowing he would not have got the first blow in. his Air Blade block both of the slashes as though there was just one enemy sword making the attack. The Broadswords were thrown backwards by the stronger strength of what they struck, almost flying out of the Bearboar's clawed hands, but he managed to keep hold, pulled them back into his chest, and thrust both towards Wild Storm's chest. the Sensei sprang with pure warrior instinct to the left, out of the path of the twin thrusts, while in the same instant, brought his Air Blade around with him in an arc that would carry it across Beast Blade's chest. The Bearboar throw his upper body backwards, barley keeping the great blade centimetres away from his frontal fur covered ab fur swung his Broadswords, in downward sweeping cuts, one from over his right shoulder, the other, his left. But these blows, were not simultaneous. The Skylander brought his blade up, rebuffing the right-side blow, and then the left. As the second blow went wide, Wild Storm brought his own blade back downwards with the skill of a lifetime's training. But he wasn't the only one of the two to have such an upbringing. Beast Blade brought both his twin swords upwards, caught the steal of the descending weapon, and spiralled it away to the right. Now with an opening, the Bearboar took it, bringing his left elbow upwards and towards the Sensei's face. Before the joint hit its mark, Wild Storm brought his right leg up, kicking out with a level of force akin to that of a hammer blow. Beast Blade was sent staggering backwards, still keeping his footing, a low bestial growl on his lips.
Both Swordsmen fought with all they had, neither one making any form of mistake, even as the pure intensity of the Air Tempest… seemed to raged with even greater fury. Beast Blade was faster, his identical Broadswords darting around and in towards his enemy from every direction, searching for a wide enough gap in his defence, Wind Storm was noticeably slower, but his balance upon the drenched rock was better kept, and his razor sharp focus surpass that of the wild, almost crazed love of the combat that his opponent possessed.
The Bearboar drew back out of blade retch, aimed the tips of both Broadswords at the Skylander's neck, and lunged. Wind Storm swung his own weapon around like a copter blade, knocking both the oncoming Broadswords.
The Bearboar drew his swords back again then thrust again, and again after that, his weapons were lighter, faster, all he would need was one opening with them, even just a minute one, and if he could keep the Skylander off balance, he would have it eventually. And yet Wild Storm kept his Air Blade spinning, keeping every Broadsword thrust away from his chest. Every deflection was maid where it needed to be, when it needed to be. But as long as he spun his weapon so, the Sensei could not make any form of attack himself… unless.
Wind Storm took a backwards step, his right leg, back onto the penultimate step, doing something no warrior, especially one akin to Beast Blade, would do in their controlling arrogance and pride. For a split moment, Wild Storms opponent froze, his expression, or as much of it as the Sensei could possible tell amid the chaos of the Air Tempest, contorting into victorious glee.
"one step dose not decide a combat, Bearboar!" Wind Storm shouted out, his voice, though vented with all the volume he could muster. No louder than normal speech… but it was still enough to do its task, Beast Blade was perfectly distracted. And one of the only teachings of combat the Sensei still valued, even in his utter dedication to battling the greater battle against the forces of the Darkness, was that any warrior who was distracted… was at their end!
Before the Bearboar could regain any level of focus, much less the amount he would need… Skylander Sensei Wild Storm, brought his Air Blade up high, over the summit of his head… and right down into his opponent.
Even as Beast Blade fell before him… the Sensei drew a long, taxed breath one he not drawn since his younger days… the combat had been like that, like those he had fought through years of warrior training. He had taken a step backwards… that was something his childhood self would never have excepted. But he was more than a warrior now… he was a Skylander, sworn enemy of the Darkness… and those who served it, most of all, the Dark Portal Master… Kaos.
Wind Storm found himself smirking: that little fool was the one who had brought him from warrior, all the way to Skylander Sensei. Perhaps where they next came face to face, he might even thank him. "Perhaps… I'll will."
As this joke, and, by extension, its undeniable irony, maid Wind Storm laughed loud and long, the Air Tempest, finally began to fade.