Skylands Legends

6.1 Broken Reunions

Spyro hated mushrooms. He had always hated mushrooms. He had never tried to keep his hatred of mushrooms a secret. It was just a seemingly known fact for those around him to know that he did not like mushrooms. That was until he met Cynder.

Cynder knew he didn't like mushrooms but somehow was disillusioned to thinking that he liked the way she made mushrooms. Spyro had no idea how she came to that conclusion in the first place. And now he didn't have the heart to tell her he didn't like them. She would always remark how happy she was that he liked her various mushroom dishes and Spyro would just put on his best smile and say "Yum!"

Sometimes it felt like he was a part of some elaborate prank she was putting him through, to test what he would put up with for her. Sometimes he contemplated saying he developed an allergy for the mushrooms, but he had always been a terrible liar and knew she would see right through the lie. So, he just told himself that the happiness it brought his wife to cook mushroom-based dishes was worth the indigestion.

Thus leading to Spyro "enjoying" a bowl of mushroom soup at dinner with her and Spry. Spyro had broken out a bottle of Popagne for him and Cynder to share — Spyro mainly used it to wash down the disgusting mushrooms — as the three of them talked about their day. Spry had to tell them a story about him catching and eating a glowbug to see if it would make him glow too. He was disappointed to find that it did not make him glow but, instead, made him feel sick for the rest of the day. He claimed that was why he wasn't hungry tonight.

Spyro knew better than that but decided not to rat the lucky bastard out. Afterall, if he could get away with that excuse he would use it too. So he let it lie and began formulating his own plan to get out of mushroom soup dinner the next time Cynder made it. Maybe he could eat some glowbugs too.

Night came and they set Spry to bed. Cynder followed suit soon after while Spyro retired to his study to continue his work on Spyro's Adventure: Volume 3. Soon, the only lights from the island were the soft green glow of the drifting glowbugs and the golden light of his desk lamp.

He found himself unable to write at this point in his story. He was on the twenty-third chapter now, entitled Pirate Seas, which told the tale of when he and his team had taken on the pirate Dreadbeard. Normally, this would have been a quick write for him, but he found himself distracted by what Stealth Elf had told him the night before about the fighting in the Pirate Seas.

The more he thought about it, the more he questioned his logic he had used for the last decade. He had assumed that with all of the evil eradicated from Skylands, there could be no more bad. He had known it was a flawed perspective ten years ago, but as time wore on, it seemed increasingly true. Until now.

Now it was just a flawed speck of idealism that only dreamers believed. He wished he could still be a dreamer, but reality had this way of keeping him from it. Which could actually be a good thing. Ignorance is often said to be bliss, but it is also deadly. When in the mindset that nothing is wrong, you often tend to miss the fact that the house is on fire until the roof comes crumbling down.

Maybe last night was his awakening. His sign to return to the Skylanders and to help restore order to places like the Pirate Seas. His whole life before leaving the Skylanders had been dedicated to fighting evil, it was a fundamental part of him. And if there still was evil out there, how could he turn his back to it?

Of course, in rejoining the Skylanders he would be going out on quests again, some of which would go on for weeks, months even. That was a long time to be away from his family. He wanted to be there for them, he wanted to watch his son grow up and be a part of his life.

That was his worry. Not that he would be putting himself in harm's way fighting villains – portalers took away most of the danger – but that he would miss all of the important moments in Spry's life. Spyro hadn't had parents to be there for him growing up and he hated that. He didn't want to put his son through that too. He didn't know what to think.