Spyro - Hero
Ok, hi everybodies! It's been a while. So I was walkin' along yesterday, MP3 player on, no worries a'cept the sun burning my eyes from the reflected windows of a fricken' billion cars, when a song popped up, and all I could think of while I was listening was Spyro. I could imagine him, soaring around, fighting gnorcs, all to its dulcet tunes. And so I decided to write it down. And here it is.
Enjoy!
P.S. This song is, again, owned by Nickelback and not me. Don't know what it is about me, I just think Spyro has a Nickelback-y voice. If you do not have the MP3 go to this link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwkfzJP92FI
Do not worry about the actual video, just have it open in the background whilst reading.
A lonely dragon flew through the dark clouds, above a prejudiced, cruel and helpless world. His name was Spyro, and he was the last of his kind. The rest of the dragons had been hunted down, killed, poisoned, shot...murdered. His friends, the ones he considered family, his mate....gone. He was the last. The sole protector of a world that wished he was dead. It had been almost six years now, six years since the last time he had seen another dragon, alive or dead. And that had been as parched bones in the ground.
As he flew, his body, honed to a muscular weapon by his fight for survival, undulated through the air. And a thought undulated through his mind, a song that he had been composing silently, within his own thoughts, ever since his mate had left this plane. Now, everyday he made his rounds, this thought played itself out through his purple, gold finned head over and over.
'I am so high, I can hear heaven.'
He did not sing out loud to hear his own voice, he sang out loud to make sure he was still there, to keep his sanity over the incredibly lonely years. Without that, he could no longer be considered a dragon, merely an entity. Existing to no point and purpose.
'I am so high, I can hear heaven.'
Rain lashed across his face, lightning split the sky ahead of him, and the tornado force, high altitude winds battered him. He was tired, so tired, the fatigue crept into his bones every day, but he pressed on, for the humans below were doomed without him.
Movement far below caught his eye, he could hear the sounds of gunfire and cruel laughter through the thunderstorm. He looked down; he saw the lights of a town, spread out like a blanket across the pitch-black terrain. His acute hearing picked out the sounds of screams, and shouts, the tack-tack-tack of machine guns. He let out a thundering roar, momentarily silencing the storm raging around and inside him with his majesty, manifesting his anger at the gnorcs. They had phased to this realm, somehow, and easily fought back these pitiful "humans". Now the humans themselves were slaves in their own realm, with little resistance left, unable to hold out against the superior physiology and weaponry of the gnorcs. Spyro had tried to help the humans, it was his nature to help others, but with their natural fear and hatred of dragons, they had attempted to kill him too, and almost had. The scar on his chest was testimony to that.
He flipped backwards, and angled his head downward, slowly tipping over, before he was at an almost ninety degree angle to the ground, screaming down.
'Oh but heaven, no heaven, don't hear me.'
He hurtled downwards, ground rushing towards him, before he pulled up, belly scraping the dirt. He hovered in the air for a moment, wings fully spread, and surveyed the gnorc task force spread out below him, staring up at him in terror. He was a legend among them, the last dragon, known as the Purple Nightmare.
He blew a fireball out in front of him, so he was momentarily blocked from view. And then his head pushed out through the front of the stationary inferno, smoke curling from his nostrils, shouting his battle-cry from his maw.
'And they say that a hero can save us, I'm not gonna' stand here and wait.'
He hurtled forwards, the flame licking against his scales harmlessly, to the midst of the gnorcs, horns flashing, claws slashing, tail thrashing. He massacred them, cutting them down one by one by seven by two and so on, and eventually there were none left standing. And he came out a little bit worse for wear, blood trickling down one side of his face from yet another wound, there were so many of them now, singing softly to himself 'I'll hold on to the wing's of the eagles, watch as they all fly away.'
He heard curious footsteps approaching, and he heard the faint sounds of whispering. Looking up, he saw humanoid shadows against a wall, coming around a corner far off. He lifted his wings, and slammed them downwards, rocketing back up into the stratosphere.
The humans themselves didn't know what to make of the bloodied gnorc corpses, and failed to see a small dot, silhouetted against the moon, blow out a small fireball, before disappearing from view.
The next day, Spyro walked out of his cave, through the waterfall that shielded it from view, with his song still playing through his head. He looked out across the lake the waterfall flowed into, situated in a still green and pleasant valley, unlike the rest of the self-proclaimed gnorcish kingdom.
'Someone told me, love will all save us.'
He lifted off, gaining speed with a few wingbeats, before plunging into the lake. He swam through it, propelled along by his powerful tail.
Still playing, he thought "But how can that be, look what love gave us."
Gaining speed, he burst out from the water, and remained in the air. He flew through a maze of canyons and gullies, so as not to give away the position of his home, before emerging out into the desert that surrounded it. He flew off again, into the sunrise, to risk his life for people who hated him. His wanderings took him over oceans, cities, cliffs and valleys, any of which could have been hiding his enemy, the gnorcs, waiting to shoot him down, or the people he was protecting, the humans, who would probably be waiting to shoot him down too...
'A world full of killing, and blood-spilling, that world never came.'
As he flew, his thoughts turned to his mate, they often did. Her name...her name had been Ember. It took more and more effort to remember that. He could recall what she smelled like, the first dewy morning of spring. She looked like an angel in dragon form, all pink curves and beauty. And he remembered her eyes, they had been so blue, so sparkly...
'And they say that a hero can save us, I'm not gonna' stand here and wait.'
Their first night together had been amazing. He remembered her underneath him, her head craned up to look down between them, foreheads pressed together, to watch the physical manifestation of their feelings. He remembered her laboured breaths, her heated body rubbing against his own. That was the main thing he remembered about his times with her, they had always been so hot. And as soon as they were finished, they would always share their bonding fire. Always. If he thought hard, he could almost feel himself wrapped in her velvet embrace once more. She had then looked up, straight into his eyes, and she had been happy. Spyro could barely remember that...happy. He had been fourteen. Everything had changed, absolutely everything.
When she had been taken from him by the very people she died serving, a large part of him died with her. The loss of her fire, half his own, had not left him a full dragon. A single tear leaked out of the side of his eye, and flew off in the wind. He had not cryed, let alone just shown feeling, in so long.
'I'll hold on to the wing's of the eagles, watch as they all fly away.'
His mind went blank, devoid of thought, because he could never imagine what could fill this part of the song, the lament. He imagined some sort of music could, but music was something else to him, something left in a past life. A life shattered, lost...merely scraps upon the winds of memory.
His hearing picked up sound - a battle. He picked up speed, the wind whistling past him, until the city was in sight. This was this particular continent's strongest city; if it fell, this part of the world would be lost, like so many others.
Stopping just prior to entering the city, he landed on a cliff over looking the city, about three kilometres away. He directed his handsome, war-ravaged face upward, towards the sun breaking through the clouds, amethyst eyes shining with unshed tears.
'Now that the world isn't ending, it's love that I'm sending to you.'
He thought of his mate, just a picture of her face, smiling up at him. And then the picture in his mind's eye shattered, and fell away.
'It isn't the love of a hero, and that's why I fear it won't do.'
And at that, he poised into a pouncing position, and lifted his wings up. With a mighty beat, he shot off, disturbing rocks and kicking up dirt in his wake. He hurtled into the city, weaving through the buildings, and unable to care about secrecy in relation to the humans gasping, screaming, shouting and shooting at him, broad daylight as it were.
He stopped in between two skyscrapers, body vertical, wings spread out in his signature daunting position, before diving towards the incredible gnorc army beneath him, the product of the empty bases across the land, screaming, crying 'And they say that a hero can save us, I'm not gonna' stand here and wait.'
He fought like an animal, incredibly, cutting down gnorcs left and right. A gun shot pierced his tail; blood trickled out of the wound. He cried out and threw the gnorc that shot him bodily into a building, bringing it down on top of him. He could feel his victory coming, and he finished his song.
'I'll hold onto the wing's of the eagles, watch as we all fly a-'
Cut off before he could finish his lament of unimaginable sorrow, loneliness and hope, Spyro the dragon was dead. Blood flowed from the mortal wound to the back of his head, and his eyes rolled up into his skull, as he fell to the ground in front of him.
The surviving gnorcs around him screamed and beat their chests, before turning back to the humans they were fighting and pressing the attack. The city soon fell. The gnorcs moved across the oceans, enslaving and destroying as they saw fit. They destroyed the planet, eventually, demolishing and devouring, until nothing was left save for the ruin of the past world. But, some happiness can be derived from this story.
As Spyro's lonely corpse was slowly covered by fallen gnorcs and discarded weaponry, his soul lifted from his body. He stood there, looking at his dead corporeal form for some time.
Then felt a paw on his shoulder, and there, standing behind him, was his mate. Ember. She had a smile on her face.
A smile.
He reached out to her, she leaned in, and whispered something to him, the ending to his song. He could never think of it, it always ended awkwardly.
As Spyro and Ember lifted up towards the great beyond, on a single shaft of light permeating the grey clouds, he cried out...
'And they're watching us'.
Ember sang 'Watching us'.
'They're watching us.'
'Watching us.'
'As we all fly away.'
They held each other, tails entwined, Spyro's arms around Ember's hips and hers draped across his shoulders.
'And they're watching us'.
'Watching us'.
'They're watching us.'
'Watching us.'
'As we all fly away.'
'Yeah hay yeh yeah-yeah yay-yeah.'
They leaned in, foreheads touching, whispering the finish of the song, the song of the last dragon.
'And they're watching us'.
'Watching us'.
'They're watch-ing us.'
'Watching us.'
'As we all fly awaayyy, yeah, yeah, woaahhh woah.'
They flew, hand in hand, past a gate made of pearl.
And they began again.