~\ = /~

The gentle sound of a ceramic cup being rattled with the pour of hot tea echoed in the night. It was the only thing that existed. All around him were swirls of purple and black—blotches of dark ethereal energy wisping around, hiding in the eternal shadows. It was an infinite room of empty space.

...Except for the tiny white teacup, which floated innocently in front of him. It was the only normal thing in existence, and yet it was so out of place that it was the only thing he was questioning.

With cautious talons, Spyro reached out and held the cup by its handle. He took a sip, puckered up his face, and coughed all of the tea out. The teacup innocently floated away when he let it go. "Fizz, for the last time, I told you to keep an eye on your potions!" he shouted. "I think another one managed to make its way into the kitchen. Also, what did you do to the kitchen? It's all...black and spooky now."

As he continued scraping away the rancid taste of soggy green bean juice from his tongue, the air around him began to stir. Manifestations of purple and gold dragons sprouted up in front of him, popping out from thin air. They all stared at him with solemn grimaces, their claws drooping low as they flapped up and down.

"Hallucination potion," Spyro grumbled. "Is this supposed to make me see copies of myself or something? Because it's going to need a bit of tweaking: my snout is not that big."

"We're not hallucinations, Spyro," the front dragon said with a burly baritone voice that reverberated like the call of distant thunder.

Somehow, Spyro felt like he'd expected to hear those words before they were spoken. He felt that if he were being honest with himself, he knew that these dragons were real, and not a part of his imagination. Now that that had been validated, though, he began to realize what it meant. If they were real, that could only mean one thing.

These were his ancestors.

He wasn't even in the real world right now. He was banished to the same realm that Eon had banished the rest of his race to. Did he get captured? Did he do something horrible, and force Eon to lock him up? His memory was so foggy. When did this happen? What was he doing before that teacup showed up?

"Welcome to the Shadow Realm, Spyro," the dragon in front said, clearly displeased with having to utter those words. "This is your home now...for the rest of your life."

~\ = /~

His eyes popped open. The darkness was gone—replaced by the feel of a hot, red metallic floor pressed up against his snout.

It was just a dream. Of course it was. There was no such thing as the "Shadow Realm." If only it were that easy to find out the name of his family's prison.

Spyro pushed his head up a bit. His vision was blurry, and he could feel the irreparable ache that remained from Malefor's custom remodelling of his skeletal system. "Where am I?" he groaned.

To his left was a great black cloud of energy, dusted with red flares along its border. Suddenly, a massive pair of red eyes shot open from it, sending jolts down Spyro's back. Immediately he propped up straight and skittered back, his claws sliding helplessly against the floor.

He bumped into something behind him and reared his head. Kaos was there. He was staring at him with that trademark sinister smile plastered to his face.

"Kaos?" he said, trying to keep his voice from revealing just how terrified he was. "What's going on? And what's with the whole 'floating pair of eyes' thing?"

"I am Strykore," the floating pair of eyes said, "once the most powerful being in all of Skylands." His voice came from inside the cloud of smoke, as if the entire ball were just one big mouth. It sounded like a hypnotized bullfrog—low and gurgling. "And you are here to help me become so again."

"Strykore." Yes, Spyro remembered that name. He'd heard it too many times from too many different people to ever forget it. And he had one serious bone to pick with him. "Eon told me all about you. I'll never help you."

Enchanted by his quixotic fervor, he leaped at Strykore, ready to claw at anything solid that might be hiding behind that curtain of blackness. But then the eyes...it was like they repelled him away through glare alone. He felt a burst of red energy wash all over his front, pushing him back. It didn't hurt—his scales assured him of that. But it was a strong enough force to throw him right back to the ground before he could even get close.

Kaos's maniacal cackle sounded from behind him, and suddenly he felt himself being tossed forward by another beam of evil energy.

You're not going to knock me down that easily, Spyro thought. He spouted a flamethrower at the entity, spreading his wings and rising off of his feet.

The eyes fled, but Strykore's laughter rang as the fire blasted into him. Spyro stopped: it clearly wasn't working. There had to be something he could do. Something that could actually—

Another beam of energy ejected from Strykore's eyes, but this one was different. This one didn't knock him back. Instead, it surrounded him. It coiled itself up around his body and then blobbed up into a thick, mucusy red bubble.

It trapped him in a fetal position—the same position baby dragons are in when they rest in their eggs. And he couldn't move. It was like a sphere of rubber encased around him: every struggle he made was met with tension. He hardly had the strength to wiggle.

Strykore was speaking to Kaos as he tried to break himself out. Spyro didn't hear everything that he had said, but he overheard something about ingesting Light. He finally started questioning what was going on. Why was he here? Why was Kaos so intent on taking him away from Malefor? Was Strykore just going to kill him off? Or was he going to—?

It suddenly hit him. Strykore was about to do to Spyro the same thing he had done to all of his other ancestors.

"They call me the Lighteater," Strykore said, "and once I consume all the good within you, I will finally be freed from my prison."

"Let me know if that Light needs any extra seasoning," Kaos added snarkily. Fitting: he used a joke about seasoning in order to rub salt in the wound.

"That's it, Spyro!" Strykore yelled. "Give your Light to me!"

Another blast of light shot at him. This time, it pierced through his scales and dug deep into his psyche. Spyro pushed it away as much as he could, mentally exhausting himself as he battled the intruders. Resist it, Spyro! Don't...give anything up! He realized all too quickly, though, that it was hopeless. He felt the tendrils of Strykore's spell seeping into his mind, and there was no stopping them. He was going to become a monster. He was going to become a horrible monster and there was nothing that he could do about it.

Something turned off in his mind. His muscles stopped putting up resistance, and his eyes bowed shut. He felt something ejecting from his mouth—it wasn't anything solid or physical, but it was something that gave him structure and peace of mind. His Light.

It happened in a flash, and before he knew it, Spyro's energy slipped away, and he fell to the ground with a murmur.

With the Light leached out of his soul, he could already feel the darkness setting in. But the momentum of his previous memories and thoughts allowed him a bit of time to say sorry to himself.

He never should have went to Malefor. He never should have left the Academy. He should have stayed with his teammates where he'd have been safe. He should have pouted away until Eruptor complained about how overbearing he was being, or until Jet-Vac gave him a lecture on forgiveness, or until Elf told him that he needed to stop focusing so much on himself. He should have let his friends whack him back into the place as per the usual, because he was always wrong and they were always right, and he was always stubborn and they were always sensible, and he was always stupid and they were always smart. But no: he was Spyro the Impenetrable. Nothing could ever go wrong for him.

Why couldn't he learn? No matter how many times that mentality got him into miserable situation after miserable situation, he never learned his lesson. And this time, his failure to learn cost him the one redeeming quality that he had: the good in his heart.

He deserved this. This was all his fault.

...Actually, you know what? No. Not this time. He was done blaming himself. He didn't ask for Strykore to consume his Light. He didn't ask for Kaos to knock him unconscious and drag him to his castle. He didn't ask for Malefor to be unreasonable and give him up in exchange for a few good words with this horrible demonspawn. He didn't ask for his entire race to be brainwashed into evil tyrants and tossed aside to rot. He didn't ask to be lied to his entire life by someone he thought he'd trusted.

He meant what he'd said when he left the Academy. He could never forgive Eon for that. Leaving that place behind was the right choice. If staying there meant letting Eon be his "Master," then he didn't want to be a Skylander anymore. He was better off on his own.

His entire life, he'd tried so hard to make him proud. Eon had given him so much praise, so much confidence. Spyro really thought that he meant everything to him. He thought that Eon would have trusted him by now. Hadn't he proved himself worthy? Hadn't he proved himself a good Skylander with a good heart?

For goodness sake, that was how he had felt towards him. He had trusted Eon with everything. When did Spyro ever keep his own secrets? Maybe he should count the time when he stole the dragon book from his chamber, but that wasn't until after he'd started growing suspicious that there was something he was trying to hide. He always made sure that Eon could rely on him, and he always thought that he could rely on Eon.

So why didn't he tell him?

Hold on. No, he knew why. He knew perfectly well the reason why. It was because that smelly old geezer regretted it. It was because for all the good he had in him, he was still able to do something so unspeakable that it wrecked him with remorse ever since he'd done it.

His entire family...his entire race...his entire heritage...his entire culture...banished to a dark and isolated realm. And Eon didn't even know where he'd sent them. How could he have been so reckless? How could he have been so insensitive?

Of course he never told Spyro about what he had done. There was only one valid way to respond to something so cruel and sickening: with complete and utter scorn.

So, what was raising him supposed to be? Some sort of apology? Some sort of feeble attempt at redeeming himself? "Hey, Spyro's race, I'm really sorry for locking you away into a horrible and desolate realm. If it means anything to you, I'll raise the last of your kind by myself, because I certainly know how to raise a dragon and be attentive to all of its needs. To keep him from learning about what I did, I'm going to have to wipe you from the history books and make your entire existence a closely guarded secret that nobody will ever know about. But hey: I'll make him a Skylander. I'll make him the most arrogant and self-centered hero that the world has ever seen by singing endless praises to him, and then I'll abruptly stop treating him like someone special the moment he actually starts being useful to the world. That sounds fair. We're cool, right?"

That was all Spyro was to him, wasn't it? He was just a tool—a mechanism that Eon used to help him stop feeling guilty. He raised him out of obligation, not out of care. He didn't actually love him.

He didn't actually love him.

And he obliterated everyone that did.

Well, fine. If he didn't care about Spyro, then Spyro was through with caring about him. No longer would he obligate himself to his commands. Now he was independent, and he was validated by no one but himself, and he was free, and h-h-he was free. Free from that accursed Light that brainwashed him into obedience. Now that his mind was finally cleared, he realized just how much he'd been lied to this entire time.

"Good" and "evil." What sorts of names were those? It gave you the impression that evil is bad and that good is...well, good. But that couldn't be the case. The world needed evil. He'd found that out the hard way when he used the Evil Scope to stop it before it manifested itself. And yet, for some strange reason, he continued to commit himself to eradicating it.

It all made sense now. Chaos was a natural element of the world, and it needed to be spread. Evil wasn't bad. It was beautiful. It was necessary in this rigid and boring system. And without the Light infesting his bones and rotting his mind, he was now able to understand that he was always meant to propagate it, not to snuff it out.

Yes, he could feel it. Exciting thoughts and urges of malevolence flooded his mind. He rose to his feet, lingering on this new mindset of his. He wanted to eat a large bowl of beans and then fart in a crowded area. He wanted to pirate a bunch of video games made by starving, impoverished indie developers, and then not seed the files. He wanted to leave his headlights on at night while there were others driving on the other side of the road.

"How do you feel, Spyro?" he heard Strykore ask.

"I'm not sure," Spyro answered. It was a strange mixture of exhilaration and enlightenment. "But I have an inescapable urge to take up two parking spaces at once."

"Daang. He truly is evil now," Kaos remarked.

And those were just his urges. Those were his fleeting wishes that he instinctively felt inclined to bestow upon the world. His true desires rested in testing to see just how far his malevolence could go. Ending lives, tormenting the innocent, burning towns and civilizations to the ground—the thought of doing these things left him simply elated.

"And the Skylanders, Spyro: how do you feel about them?" Strykore asked calmly.

The Skylanders? A team that dedicated themselves to the side of good? Ha, what good was good? What did it ever do for him except make him blind to how things truly were and how they were truly meant to be? Perhaps the Skylanders were confused and misguided just like he had been, but that didn't mean that they were on his side.

But moreover, the Skylanders were obedient to Eon. The Skylanders still considered him to be their master. Anyone who followed someone so despicable could only be one thing to Spyro.

"They are...my enemies."