Spyro

"I can't believe we actually have to work together on this . . .." I jerked away from his grip. "Sparx and I have done well enough before on our own. I'll just go in this portal while you go your own away, and . . . HEY!" I stopped, just as Shadow grabbed the chain of my handcuffs.

"Do you really think you can just march into a new area handcuffed and expect anyone to give you the time of day, let alone their scroll?" He addressed me. "You can't just expect everyone to think you're some I'll-save-the-world-from-tyranny character as soon as they see you. Even if you were—"

"Which I AM . . .." I interjected.

"I highly doubt that. As I was saying . . . even if you were some heroic character, they probably wouldn't help you anyway— either because they don't believe you, or because you were obviously wanted by someone enough to end up handcuffed." Shadow glanced at me again, shifting his grip on his staff. "Now, if perhaps you were accompanied by someone who wasn't handcuffed— someone who could pretend they were escorting you, or at least be able to hide your hindrance— they maybe they would be more cooperative."

I sat down, trying to get my handcuffs in front of me instead of behind. "Are you suggesting that you help me?"

"I'm not suggesting anything. I'm demanding that we start working together. You need my help so you can have full mobility of your arms again. I need your help so I can get the scrolls. If we work together, we'll accomplish both goals." He poked his staff underneath and in between my arms, near the handcuffs. After the use of some leverage and a bit of kicking, I managed to cause a stinging pain between my legs. Again. I shrugged it off, since it didn't hurt as much as it did the first time.

"Nice — a rhyme that makes sense." I stood up "So, Shadow, where do we go first to look?"

"The closest portal to the Sushi Shores portal; a little hot spot called Fire Village. While we're searching there, maybe you have a few questions I could answer." He grabbed me by the cuffs and immediately, we fell into the portal.

After a few moments of falling through the high Umbra, We both started gliding down to the village." Well, I do have a few questions."

"And they are?"

"What's with the ADC anyway- Mmph!" I tried to speak, but Shadow kept my mouth shut.

"Watch what you say around here! I realize we're in the middle of a pause, but the townsfolk are still skittish. I'll explain what I know, but-"

I nodded. "Understood. So now will you tell me?"

"Sure." We landed on the edge of town. "You need a basic understanding of the Shadow Lands first. Draco Reaches, the landmass we're currently on, is a grounded continent. There are a few islands to the west, which make up Sushi Shores, and an island to the southeast, called Shade City. In between Shade City and the mainland is a wetland known as the Bleeding Swamp. Prisma Tors lies far to the east - three days worth of travel if you don't use any magic. The Tors are a series of floating islands in the air."

"Are you done with the geography lesson yet?" I yawned, before we whacked me again. He then proceeded to walk behind me, to hide my handcuffs.

"You asked, so you're getting your answer." He rebutted. "Yes, that's all you need to know. The Reaches were the birthplace, as far as we know, of the dragons. The Femarians originated on the Tors — they evolved from upright-walking winged primates. There are currently two different races of the Femarians. The first one, the Faeries, are tall, light-skinned, and have gossamer wings similar to those of the dragonfly. The Marians, on the other hand, are small, dark-skinned, and had wings similar to the butterfly. I say had because within the past ten thousand years or so they lost their wings to evolution."

I jumped over a small stream of lava running between two houses, while Shadow used the nearby bridge. "Okay . . . makes a little sense. So how does that tie in?"

"Well, since the Marians could no longer fly, they were always looking for new lands to migrate to where flight was not such an issue. By this point, they had invented skyboats, which could fly around and carry a large amount of people if the situation called for it. Whenever they could, a group of about five or so Marians would fly off the side of the Tors in one of those skyboats, travel a few days out, flap around, look for land, and come back. As it turns out, Draco Reaches was within range of the Tors on one particular trip. The Marians wanted more time to explore, but Prisma Tors never stayed still for long—  one day the islands would be within range, and another day they would be halfway across the planet. That problem eventually was solved by using a little magic to reset the speed of the islands, so they would be constant with the planet. Now the Prisma Tors are always three days of flight away, east of the mainland."

I glared at Shadow. "I thought you said the geography lesson was over!"

"It is— that was history!" Shadow glared back. "Anyway, the Marians came down here, and after a few days of exploring, found some dragons. You have to understand, of course, that dragons back then lived in small tribes, and were in touch with nature. The Marians thought the dragons were not sentient after a few days of observation, so they immediately captured one dragon to bring back to the Tors. First mistake."

"Dragon fought back at them?"

"OH yeah . . . one of the Marians was killed in the fight. By the time the explorers got back to the Tors with a dragon, however, word was out, and some bad ideas started spreading around. First thing was that they immediately wanted the dragons to abandon their religion, since the femarians did not have one. They were the ones that ended up adopting Tahlaism instead, mostly because it meshed in nicely with what was already popular opinion. First problem solved. The second and more serious problem was that they began catching a disease from the dragons that striped their skin into bands of fair and dark. They called it Ringsettia, and it was a highly contagious and fatal disease among them."

"Dragons don't have Ringsettia," I pointed out to him. 

"No, but we do have the original disease . . . ever had a case of Ranksit?"

I laughed. "Who hasn't? I caught a bad case of it from Gnasty Gnorc a few years back — turned every part of me blank white except my horns!"

"That's it." He nodded. "Anyway, Ringsettia went around for about ten years before they found a 'temporary' solution— they discovered a dormant island volcano to the Southeast of the mainland. That's where Shade City is today, but back then it was a death camp. If you had a case of the Rings, they shipped you down there so you could 'die in peace'. In actuality, they rarely sent food over there, so you would be left there to starve." Shadow walked into one building, where he looked around for a small tourist's booklet. Upon picking one up, he continued his story. "By that point, there was a young femarian girl, about 20, who was one of the new temple workers. Mostly Marian, but she had a faerie grandmother whose blood made her grow to be taller than most Marians, but shorter than most Faeries. Her name was Xoyto, and she wanted to help out on the island so that the diseased victims would be given a little decency on their way out."

"She was insane?" I followed Shadow out of the building, where he stopped at one fountain.

"No— she just had an idea that didn't sit well. No one was allowed onto the island unless they were diseased. Xoyto, in order to mimic a Rings-infected person, wore a light blue outfit with stripes of dark blue. Sound familiar yet?" He stopped for a moment. "How'd you find out about the ADC, anyhow? Reena told you? And stand on that platform in the middle of the fountain, please." He pointed to a clogged up fountain. The platform was surrounded by lava, but it was an easy glide.

"She did— some of it, anyway." I jumped onto the platform, which triggered a set of waterspouts to shoot water into the air. "Continue."

"Gladly. Xoyto spent about five years caring for the diseased on the island before she decided that she couldn't work alone. She began trying to recruit dragons, but that didn't work out for obvious reasons. She began looking for faeries who lived with the dragons, as they most likely had built up an immunity, and found Cairo on one of these trips. Cairo became her assistant— her right-wing lady, if you will— and with her help, had discovered a vaccine that would cure the diseased femarians. Xoyto was promoted to Priestess for her efforts, and started a non-temple congregation on the island."

"What happened then?"

"Well, Xoyto was not happy at the dragons for first spreading the disease through the femarian population, and then for not helping her find the cure. So she was a little vengeful . . . also, Cairo herself was quite a firestorm, even back then. I'll tell you more on her later if you like. In any case, Xoyto's stand against dragons made her the target of more than a few assassination attempts. One of them worked. When Cairo caught the killer, she discovered that it was a dragon, which only compounded to the feelings that she had picked up from Xoyto about dragons, plus her own. Cairo then took on the role of Priestess to replace Xoyto, and moved the congregation to the Prismatic Temple, in the Tors. There she began to start preaching against the dragons."

"Idiot. It was our religion to begin with— she shouldn't have preached with it." I commented, before Shadow shut my mouth.

"I told you to watch what you say around here! There are quite a few dragonflies and faeries who would take offense to that." He uncovered my mouth, standing in front of a more elaborate fountain puzzle. "Now, before you get too mad, remember that we're still talking roughly 4,300 years ago. They did stop her from preaching after a while— said she shouldn't be saying nasty things about another form of Tahla— and stopped her from preaching at the Prismatic Temple. She went back to Shade City, where she finally started up the Anti-Dragon Coalition, or ADC for short."

"And that's the end of the story?" I asked, as I jumped from platform to platform to solve the puzzle. 

He shook his head, waited for me to start the fountain back up, and then finished up his story. "That's the end of the beginning— Spyro, the ADC still exists, even to this day. Recently, we haven't had much trouble with them. Everyone thinks that the ADC has broken up, but most of the adults are sure it's just a pause. As for my opinion . . . well, I'm just not sure. As long as they don't try to run another one of their raids and lynch another dozen dragons, they can be playing 'what's under my skirt' for all I care."

"If you say so. AH!" I slipped and landed on some of the lava, sending me a few feet into the air before I started gliding back for Shadow. "That hurt." I snarled at him, rubbing my butt for a few moments to amke the pain go away. Sparx would heal it up quick, but not quick enough to make the pain go away.

"Not my fault— you slipped." He smirked.

Reena

I decided to fly through Orient Raceway before I went anywhere else— I needed to get my mind off of both my Spyro and Spyro Prime. I decided that a little easy flying in the high umbra would do the trick. Flying through rings, torching down paper lanterns, racing paper dragons . . . very soothing.

I approached a series of marble columns when I noticed what looked to be a green moss at the bottom of one column. As I flew closer, I noticed it was a dragonfly and not green moss. I stopped flying the course and instead went to go see what was wrong with the dragonfly.

With a quick drop to the ground, a whimpering buzz passed my ear slits. I perked up. "Sparx?!"

"I see we both decided to do some joy flying." Sparx eeked out. He was strapped up against the column in his large form, with the wrist straps piercing his upper wings. Not only did that make the immobility painful, but it also prevented Sparx from shifting down to his small form to escape. "Help?"

"Certainly." I dug my claws in under one of the wrist straps, and tugged, beating my wings for extra force. I frowned. "AGH . . . these things are stuck tight! Whoever did this to you was either very strong, very pissed off, or maybe even both. So... who did do this to you?"

"A bunch of rather strong, very pissed off dragonflies, apparently." He spoke, trying to keep a smile on his face as I was no doubt scratching him up further. "I flew in on a group of them, and they didn't mind for a while; or at least until they found out I didn't have an armband on."

I stopped. "First that speeding dragonfly with Blue Line Weave at Sushi Shores . . . now there's a whole group of them?! The ADC must be getting busy on something." I grabbed a hold of the right wrist strap again. "Tahla, ge domix Miu! (Mistress of Nature, give me Strength!)" I chanted as I tugged on the strap.

POP!

The strap finally gave way, sending me sprawling onto the floor. I looked at the strap, and then at Sparx. "Well?"

"Me and my right set of limbs thank you. Now, if you could do the rest of these straps . . .?"

After about five more minutes of tugging, more minor prayers, and three straps propping, Sparx was free of the column. I suggested that we leave the Raceway immediately and head to somewhere better known for having butterflies.

As soon as Sparx was back to full health, I began to question him. "Did you overhear anything?"

"Not much... they were talking about finishing up some big project. They were about to draw straws to volunteer for something, but one of the others said that Cairo had already picked someone to do the job."

"Anything else?"

He shook his head. "By that point, they had found me out. Didn't get much of anything but a lot of pain afterwards."

"Not good." I sighed, and then looked over at the temple doors. "Mai'ko is probably inside. She'll let me in, and maybe she knows more about this than we do." I pushed on the door first, and then tried to tug on it again. "Damn. Still locked."

"No . . . sealed." Look in between the doors." Sparx shifted down to small and pointed to the seam between the doors. "Usually, I can see light through the cracks. I don't see light."

"Hmm. You're right . . . I saw light through the door earlier today as well. The doors have been sealed, but it doesn't look like any sort of wax I've- what the?!" I looked at my coat, where the pocket holding three scrolls was being attracted to the door, as if they were magnets. I took one scroll out of the pocket, and barely had a chance to hold it before it flew onto the door and unfurled. I grabbed the scroll, rolled it back up again, and put it back.

"Something new's been done to this door while I was searching around . . . this reeks of a setup." I shook my head. "We've got to keep going after those scrolls." I turned on my toes towards the Rose Garden portal. Sparx was right behind me as I jumped in.