Test Drive #3

[magicademymods]

Test Drive #3



Lightning Crash

The weather over the floating island of Ascelion during spring months is best described as "hellacious"; its elevation puts it right among the worst of stormclouds and fuels their thunderous fire as they sweep past it and electrically scrape against its sides. Rain is frequent, but lightning is almost constant, along with thunderous rumbles that roll across the city and the open spaces of the Magicademy like waves.

But today is particularly bad. Webs of electricity crackle through the sky, jumping from cloud to cloud or grounding themselves on towers of the Magicademy angrily. None of them seem to endanger the students, but there's a first time for everything, isn't there? As titanic fury threatens to tear the sky in half, do you risk stepping into the outside? Does the infrasonic rumbling trigger fear or terror in your gut, as such deep waves are known to do? Perhaps you've learned a spell that will protect you. Or perhaps you've poorly learned a spell that may or may not protect you...

Wand Wrong Way

The rumors around campus speak of a small and musty store deep in the Merchant District, on a side road to a side road, where only those in-know go to find items that would surely draw too much notice if displayed publicly. Powdered dragon tail, eye of sphinx, swords Forged with magic-cutting spells, and most valuable of all, the Gateway Wand. Surely this legendary wand, in which the full power of Sundering hums, could get you and your friends back home.

Rumors are pretty lousy with directions, though. The Merchant District offers ample chance to get lost, to get distracted, or to stumble down the wrong alley and find hoodlums all too eager to extract "tolls" from the lost and seemingly helpless. Does your adventure become disaster? Does this rumored shop even exist?

Pantalones Giganticus

At its heart, Modification seems like the most simple of schools. What could be more simple than arithmetic? Therefore, Modification also has the steepest and most shocking learning curve of all, as it rapidly balloons to more complicated mathematical expressions, more variables in the formulae, and above all more chance for error.

So really, the mistake is an honest one. Any hurried student, probably in their third or fourth year of study, could accidentally introduce an unnecessary factor into their equation. That is probably why your pants are now sized for someone four times large than you. (Not four sizes. Four times.) Worse, this has happened to EVERYONE -- the entire population of the Magicademy, student and staff and faculty alike, are trundling around in blown-up bloomers, too-large trousers, not-conveniently-sized knickers... you get the idea.

Now the bad news: to fix the error in formula and restore your pants to normal size, someone else has to get in them with you.

Labwork

Not every magical disaster is caused by some wayward student you don't know. Many of them are caused by you instead. To wit: you're on the spot in one of the magical labs, being called on to demonstrate a technique more advanced than others you've mastered so far. Failure is expected, and the wards should prevent any injury to others from a miscast spell. But will the sparks of your magic just sputter out and die? Or will you inadvertently mispronounce, misform, misshape, or miscalculate in a way that brings chaos to you and your lab partner?

(You could also manage to succeed in casting the spell, but that isn't very fun.)

Comments

[holdyourhorns]

Yeah no, he's decided he would like nothing else to do with the crazy lady now. None of those names ring any more familiarly to him.

"Look, I'm a long way from home and I have plenty of better things to do that's not helping you figure out that most of us must be from different places- okay? This is me assuming you haven't totally lost all your marbles."

Man, this makes him miss having Sparx around.

[kaossandra]

"Me? Lost MY marbles? You're the one acting like you've never even heard of the Skylands!" Malefor. this had to have been the work of Malefor.

Unless... Oh there was an evil thought. Unless the Spyro that had come back to the academy was only half of Spyro. Had he somehow become split in his battle with Malefor? But if so.... one of them was likely good and the other evil. But... which was which? Oh, she did not like this line of thinking at all. Master Eon's current pet favorite, split into polarized halves?

[holdyourhorns]

Yep, it's far too easy for Spyro to tell that he's not being listened to one bit. And one wonders why he occasionally has a hard time remembering to respect his elders.

"And I'm outta here." announces the young dragon, turning around to do exactly that. Perhaps what happens to be interesting is his preferred method of travel- this Spyro turns his back on her and walks instead of say... flying off on his small yet striking gold and red wings.

[kaossandra]

"Wait... Spyro is it possible... that you're...." How how to even say this? Where was Eon when his student needed him? Well blast his beard anyway!

"I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot, Spyro, how about we try this again, shall we?"

[holdyourhorns]

That he's what? It reminds him of the cryptic statements a choice few of the Peacekeeper elders would say and to this day he still wonders what it all meant. So he pauses and against his better judgment turns his head back around...

"You know, my enemies only ever call me 'dragon'. But anyone on my side will use my name. So it sounds like who I am means something to you."

[kaossandra]

"To me...? Ah.. well.... " That was a hard one.

"I'm not your enemy," she finally said. Because that she could say.

[holdyourhorns]

"Huh. It was getting hard to tell when you were going on about spending a decade being 'evil' and tossing insults."

Well sure he tossed back his own, but she started it.

"Anyway, the Skylands sound like a nice place, but I'm pretty sure I would've heard of it from one of the elder dragons." He pauses. "But if Astor was telling it, I might've missed it..."

[kaossandra]

"Used to be evil. Used to be." Worse then Eruptor, wasn't he? "Wait.... did you just say... Elder Dragons...?"

Just what had Malefore DONE?!

[holdyourhorns]

"Yeah! It's not really a dragon kingdom without a whole bunch of dragons obviously!"

Which might accidentally sound far more sinister than it actually is.

"There are different groups of us though. The Artisans- that's what I am even if I haven't found my special talent yet... Then the Peace Keepers, Magic Crafters, Beast Makers, and Dream Weavers."

Right answer, wrong path.

[kaossandra]

She found a rock to sit on and put her long fingers to her face lightly. "all this time, we thought that Malefor had..." she shook her head. "But no, what he did was to split you into extremes. Good Dragons, who presumably he banished... and the evil creatures that we thought were all that was left of your race. That means that the Spyro back at Skylands..." she stood up, alarmed.

what a story it would be tho

[holdyourhorns]

"Hate to butt into your theories, but I have another question- who's Malefor?"

Because he's not that far into the OG timeline to have tangled with Red or The Sorceror, if that'll ever get reignited too.

"Does he have something to do with Ripto- black cape, kinda looks like a dinosaur, can't use magic without a scepter?"

Would be an epic answer to tie the stories together ::nods::

[kaossandra]

"Ah.... no. Malefor is a Dragon from a different race, he works for Strykore. His daughter Cynder ran away to try to be a Skylander. The two of them, and, well, you... are just about the only Dragons left in Skylands. Though they are of a different breed. During the war, Strykore turned all the Dragons of your breed evil, save for one unhatched egg that he missed. Or so we thought.But if all this time all he did was split the types, your race would have been able to live and grow somewhere, unaware of what Eon had to do to stop their evil counterparts."

[holdyourhorns]

Spyro's expression still looks skeptical probably because there's still plot holes yet at the same time intrigued by and sympathetic to such a bittersweet tale.

"Wow. That's... quite a story." He's not entirely sure what to think of it really. "But I wasn't hatched yesterday either. I guess my next question should be: what was that you were going on about with me being purple 'again'?"

[kaossandra]

"The Spyro I know, the Skylander... used to be purple. Orange horns." Ego the size of the Skylands. "Recently he vanished, fighting Malefor, trying to bring Cynder back or something. Sometimes when Eon talks it is hard to stay awake." Sorry, Eon, but that bobbing beard is like a sleep spell some days... "When he returned, he was dark and... well now I'm wondering just which side he's on."

After all of Eruptor certainty that she was the mole... she would have to approach this carefully...