Chapter 4: Something New

"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."

- Benjamin Franklin

Joshua raised a russet hand. His palm faced a cluster of pine trees.

.

The sensation of pins and needles making stitches across his entire body.

.

He emptied his thoughts, and concentrated on his hand and those trees, nothing else.

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Complete blindness to everything and anything, save for his body, his breathing, and his target.

.

Not the heat of the sun filtering down onto his body.

Not the animals scampering out of sight.

Not the leaves slowly falling to the uneven ground.

.

And at the same time…

.

The stranded teenager envisioned the unnaturally white clouds and complemented this vision with the image of a running, out-of-control pipe, wasting gallons upon gallons of water every second.

He shut his eyes.

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…the total, conscious awareness of his self bleeding into everything and anything.

.

A few seconds passed, and Joshua hoped all this hard mental work produced something.

A few more seconds passed, and Joshua felt, no, he could imagine something wafting out of his palm like a fog machine.

He opened his eyes when it felt right to do so, and thus Joshua Renalia cast his emerald gaze forward to find…

Absolutely f*cking nothing.

He kicked the nearest tree out of frustration. "GODDAMMIT!"

Why? Did Joshua lack focus? Did he invoke the wrong images, or the wrong set of memories? What was going on here?

Why in the Dragon Realms couldn't he reproduce the "unknown element" again?

The following morning after the Death Hound incident three nights ago, Joshua woke up next to a repulsive pile of dried vomit with a decision, swirling in his head, to investigate the nature of his power. His gamer mind had postulated that what happened to the Alpha and its second-in-command could have been an extreme, uncontrolled burst. Maybe his ability—his very own element—had some utility functions beyond simply killing things outright. After all…

Fire could be used to cook, to shape and make.

Ice could be used to preserve and to provide comfort.

Electricity could be used to introduce some modern human conveniences to the Dragon Realms (only if Joshua fully remembered the Wikipedia articles about them).

Earth could be used to construct, to fortify.

If any of the traditional elements—if any of Spyro's powers had their own use in a peaceful life, then perhaps even he had some chance at being normal. He would need every help he could get, Joshua figured. Human beings were genetically related to primates—apes, an antagonistic species that had sided with the Dark Master's war during the Legend of Spyro trilogy. He simply did not know—and refused to speculate—how exactly someone like him would be treated in Warfang upon arrival, but possessing an element that had no apparent purpose except senselessly killing something was not going to help him win any favors from its citizens.

That assumes he did come into a peaceful era. For all Joshua knew, maybe there was a higher force at work. A great destiny to fulfill.

If that was truly the case, then the Chronicler was definitely not involved in this. Joshua Renalia remembered what he'd done the other morning.

An hour after waking up on the ground—alive!—from that dreadful night, the youth found three clusters of Spirit Gems. One of each type, all clustered around an empty space, as though curiously arranged by a higher power. Joshua recalled seeing Spyro's and Cynder's wondered, mystified eyes when the Chronicler pulled a trick that will be immortalized by Master Eon in Skylanders, appeared to them in the crystals as a disembodied head, and educated them of their elemental abilities.

It was a no-frills spoonfeeding, if his memories of that easily-forgettable scripted CGI event right. No fainting into an otherworldly realm that reflected a real location but existed only in a dream. No unseen voices in the head. No sudden discoveries of force majeure. Hell, there wasn't even a tutorial anymore.

And so Joshua Renalia took a seat in the middle of these three clusters and waited for Ignitus' face and his familiar voice to appear before him and…

Well, do whatever the Chronicler did, of course! How in the f*ck's name would he know before it even happened, right?

Maybe Ignitus would tell him how he was called into the Dragon Realms from Earth in a dream, swept up in an adventure to help save this world from darkness once again. Maybe he'd say the Almighty Father lent him to the Chronicler to test his faith and seek his fortune in a foreign yet familiar land. Maybe he'd even say how his "element" was one of a kind, like another face of Convexity and a person like him was just as rare as the Purple Dragon of Legend.

Joshua Renalia sat there and waited.

He waited.

Oh boy, how much he waited!

Joshua had lost track of the time, but he estimated he wasted half a morning waiting for a vision that would never appear, increasingly hungry and thirsty. When he had enough of sitting on his ass, the human got up, found another stick long and sturdy enough for walking, and used it to bash all three crystals until they splintered. "Thanks a lot, Ignitus," he grumbled morosely.

Then he went on his merry way. He took a sip from the creek—it was a small river now, actually—and pulled a couple of plants with small white flowers sprouting from its top like an inverted umbrella. He dunked the wild carrots in the creek to clean the thick, brown roots and ate them quickly, so he could detoxify at a cluster of HP gems when he found another one (and they blossomed out of the soil quite frequently).

Still, it wasn't as if he couldn't manifest the power in any way, shape, or form. Because ever since that night, Joshua Renalia realized how his body had naturally changed, became more attune to the surrounding nature.

Otherwise, there couldn't have been any explanation behind the fact he could now, by instinct, determine whether something is potentially dangerous to him, or accurately pinpoint the distance and direction of the nearest cluster of Spirit Gems and its probable type.

Or the fact his sense of self has extended much further, and he could now pick up the pulse of life within a certain range without looking. In fact, during the hours he spent waiting for Ignitus to show his recolored muzzle, Joshua sensed a small family of wild boars and some rather large insects minding their own business, just out of sight. It sounded crazy, but he just knew they were there.

Even now, three days after the Death Hound attack, Joshua recalled how vividly the wild carrots tasted (slightly sweet with the aftertaste of petrichor), how loudly the forest had become after waking up (a cricket 100 meters off startled him, sounding like a fire truck's siren), or how sensitive his feet were (he could feel vibrations caused underneath him by a rabbit or some other small forest critter). He also noted how there hadn't been another fateful encounter with a forest predator after murdering those two wolves, especially when he detected their close proximity.

Every instinct in his body, every thought in his mind postulated his strange power granted him these passive abilities from the moment of his arrival in the Dragon Realms. Why it didn't manifest all at once, Joshua would never understand until after spending a month or two in Warfang, but it had taken its sweet time to manifest itself. Unleashing it full force must have "unlocked the gates" completely somehow, and now he walked around in the forest with a natural, God-given (he assumed) gift to survive it and no longer needed to keep a constant eye over his shoulder.

But despite this…

Everything he did to repeat what happened that night, to generate those white clouds again, or simply bring his element into being in any tangible shape or form proved utterly useless. He couldn't produce anything no matter how much he tried. Nothing! NOTHING!

Joshua Renalia had seen many an animé series, had read many a comic book, had played many a video game, but not once had he ever encountered a story where the main character had a power that couldn't be brought out after the first time around.

These fruitless endeavors and perplexing thoughts flummoxed Joshua, and the teen no longer paid attention to his destination so long as he walked in a certain direction. He did not pay attention to the closeness of the canyon beginning to stretch out in the horizon (it was a six-hour walk away). He did not notice how the City of Dragons had, very slightly, grown bigger since the Death Hound attack. How could he observe the fact Joshua gradually neared his terminus, step by step, when he was simply too busy beating himself up over his conspicuous inability to evoke his power?

Something must be wrong with him. Joshua tapped into his augmented recognition—all five senses and even the inscrutable extension of his self—without even trying. Yet when he funneled 150% into one little thing, into one super basic manifestation, he failed at it. Countless times over.

None of this made sense. A power had no use when its owner couldn't even use it in the first place. There's got to be something he needed—

"—us alone!" cried a faraway voice. It sounded male, and the pulse of life coming from it did not correspond to any of the feral species he's seen so far in this forest. "We're just passing through here. We don't mean you any harm!"

"You are trespassing on our territory," responded another male, the voice hoarse. "And we don't particularly like your kind around here."

Nervousness climbed Joshua's spine. Sentient animals at last, huh? This is something new.

As he sauntered towards the voice, nine signatures of life pulsed into his brain. He knew exactly where they were, and they weren't too far off from him. Probably 200 meters, give or take. His augmented hearing amazed him.

"Your territory?" reiterated the first, his pitch rising from incredulity. "Your territory? Don't you realize how close this is to Warfang?"

"Of course I do, but I am only carrying out the commands of my superiors, and I don't see any reason why I should reject them. The way I see it, everything on this side of the Dry Canyon is up for grabs and we are claiming it for ourselves."

Of these three pulses, three flared intermittently. They fluctuated between intense enough to pull him closer towards the group and insignificant enough as to meld with the insects and forest animals. These three were clearly distressed, and had the boy focused on it, he might have felt the rapid beating of their hearts. Might have experienced a different kind of fear rising in his chest.

But Joshua did not do that now.

For a third voice entered the conversation. Male, and just as hostile as the second. "Haha! And you walked! You walked! How stupid is that? Did'ja think you'd avoid border patrols like us?"

Joshua wanted to stay quiet, to remain unseen and unfound. The brown-skinned human crouched down and held his walking stick close to him, this time keeping an eye on anything it may hit by mistake. All right, he thought. Just a few more bushes and I can see what's going on.

"Malefor had a massive army of orcs and wyverns four years ago!" hollered the first in response. It had a twinge of youth in it. If it was human, Joshua reckoned he'd have been more or less sixteen years old. A couple years older than him. "He may be gone now, but those monsters definitely went somewhere, and we didn't want to take any chances on our way to Warfang!"

Two more shrubs. Only a little more…

The second voice retorted, "And you thought we would give you safe passage?"

A fourth voice intruded in support of the first. Male as well, but it seemed younger this time around. "Yeah, yeah!"

A fifth speaker tried to interject. "Lani," said the voice. It was female, and also as young. This one did not hurt Joshua's ears as much as the others. "Let Explodon take care of this."

Lani apparently ignored her. "Didn't the Purple Dragon save you guys anyway? Malefor cursed you all and now you're free thanks to him! You should be helping us dragons—

"Shhhh!" hushed the third voice. "Noisy little boy."

Joshua's sensitive hearing caught the almost inaudible creaking of a string, the bending of wood. An arrow swooshed in the air before anyone could react, and it struck its mark. "AHHH!"

The fifth cried out, "Ancestors!"

"Kilat," commanded Explodon. "Stay back! Lani, don't move, I'll come and—

Joshua had one more bush to go, and he moved more slowly than ever. An arrow like that could kill him before much, much quicker than he could figure out how to jizz the "glowing, white clouds of doom" out of his arms.

"Take another step and we will kill him," warned the second voice. It was clearly the ringleader of the six pulses, standing still without the trademark volatility of distress or anxiety. "Take this to heart, reptile," he addressed Lani. "We hate your kind more than ever after the Dark Master fell."

The human put a hand on the bush. Now or never…

"We sided with Malefor to cleanse this world of you lizards." The speaker hawked a glob of phlegm and spat it out; the spittle landed close—too close to Joshua's hand, and the crouching human froze in place. "We believed he was different, that he respected our free will. But then he cursed us for our service, and we were freed only because our most infamous enemy destroyed the Dark Master.

"The Apes do not bear a grudge against the Purple Dragon himself for restoring our bodies and our minds, but that does not mean we bear any less animosity for you lot."

Joshua Renalia slowly parted the last bush to reveal the small clearing beyond, and the sight within astounded him.

Three dragons and six apes, as he conjectured. But the finer details beyond that stunned the human.

The three dragons stood at one end of the clearing. A green one was slumped on the grass, panting, quivering as red ichor drizzled out of its foreleg thanks to the arrow impaled on it. This one must be Lani. A dragon born with the characteristic gold of the Electricity element had curled into the grass, ogling the scene unfolding before it, shivering from what Joshua experienced firsthand as dread and the rising disquiet of failure. Kilat. The last was a red dragon, wings flared out in full, unbridled hostility and claws starting to radiate the telltale auburn of flame. And Explodon.

The six apes surrounding them terrified Joshua. Two of them were colorless silhouettes camouflaged by the forest, barely visible due to some power of invisibility. Ape Commanders, taken straight out of Eternal Night. The other three bore a machete, a spear, and a bow, all gleaming from expert craftsmanship and made more intimidating by the light and the way these gray-furred mandrills twirled them skillfully.

Joshua's heart went out to the three dragons at once. The two Earth and Electric dragons were far younger than he imagined them to be. They seemed even smaller than Spyro had been during A New Beginning, and he bet they sported none of the moves, none of the agility, none of the skill the Dragon of Convexity possessed in the video games. In his green eyes, Explodon was the only one capable of fighting, yet the fire dragon stood as tall and proud as Spyro only could in Dawn of the Dragon as though the terrible odds did not exist.

Explodon looked like an adolescent in over his head, facing enemies with more experience and more skill than him. Surely the fire dragon knew this, yet he still bore his burgundy horns and claws in a defiant yet prideful stance. All for the two kids.

"At least spare Kilat and Lani. They are innocent. Ancestors, they're just children! They've seen no more than ten winters, twelve at the most! I beg you, let them continue on to Warfang in peace. They… they haven't been near other dragons their age since the Terror of the Skies—

Kilat opened her gold muzzle, her girlish voice protesting. "But Explodon! We can't—

The fire dragon drowned her voice out. "I PROMISE YOU!" He shouted. "I promise by the Ancestors I'll let you do anything you want with me."

"I do not care for your promises, dragon," stated the sixth and final ape, walking into view to glare down at the adolescent reptile. Joshua barely withheld his gasp at the fearsome power that throbbed from the massive war hammer in this ape's hand, swathed in azure flames. Then Joshua Renalia discovered something new, a detail that never existed in the Legend of Spyro trilogy. "We will bring you to our city."

This last ape had the black fur and muscular body of a gorilla…

"My friends back home will want you to suffer." It revealed its sharp canines at the three dragons.

…and the bare face of a male human.

"All of you."

Author's notes:

Clearly the time was right to escalate matters in the pre-Warfang section of the story. What, you thought Joshua was only going to start running into other sentient species when he gets to Warfang? Nope. Nosiree. The rich diversity of the Spyro series (both the original and Legend trilogies) and the fact the Dragon Realms is mostly unexplored in-game drastically raises the probability of other species entering the mix.

And yes, I am aware that the Dragon Temple was ransacked in an act of genocide during the Year of the Dragon. (I assume Spyro was 12 years old when he set out of the swamp in A New Beginning. I did not see anything referencing his age, and I think it would be quite poetic if he showed up during the very next YotD.) But consider that the Dragon Realms were not fully explored. So once variances in regional characteristics are accounted for, there should be a high probability that: (1) the YotD was merely a species tradition that more or less tracked the gestation period of dragonkind; and (2) not all dragons had their eggs in literally one place in the entire planet.

Oh, there's also a real life warning for those reading this story. If you happen to be hiking somewhere, you're hungry, and you do find a plant with a white flower shaped like an upside-down umbrella, do not automatically assume it is edible because it may not be a wild carrot. The wild carrot bears a very striking resemblance to a water hemlock, the most poisonous plant in North America, and they are unfortunately commonplace, if I understood my research correctly.