Expedition to the Cloudbreak Islands

by Starglider

Core

The compact crimson aircraft shot through the sky, taking a high arc up over the floating archipelago. The kirin and earth pony were treated to an enthralling glimpse of hundreds of islands spread out below them, extending off to the horizon, before the projected display clicked off and they were left staring at the metal roof of the cabin.

"Sorry." Spyro said apologetically, "it's for your own protection. Ya know I'll be glad when we get everything up and running again, we can drop all this cloak and dagger nonsense." The purple dragon cocked his head and smiled. "Though I think Cynder gets a kick out of it. Buzz sure did, back in the day." Ahead of him the blue alidracocorn sat quietly in the pilot's seat, guiding the shuttle through a series of lazy turns.

"You do what you gotta do, I guess!" the red-ruffed kirin said, slinging her arm around Gearshift, "Hopefully we can help with whatever's keeping you down. That Core of Light thing sounds amazing. What does it do, exactly? Something about defeating evil?"

Gearshift himself remained grudgingly compliant, rolling his eyes at Nutmeg's usual enthusiasm. Nutmeg knew he'd keep her safe no matter what, though.

"Yeah! Sorta. Like you still need heroes to go out and kick evil's butt, but the core of light prevented the really huge, twisted, god-like-being-from another-dimension stuff from seeping into Skylands. Good thing too, because the couple of times that did actually happen, Skylands took a real beating. It took like an army of Skylanders and a mess of super-high-tech vehicles to defeat the darkness, and..." The dragon's voice caught, and he finished in a sad tone "...Hate to say it but all of that is gone now. Just a clawful of us left, still fighting the good fight."

"Oh, so it's like the Tree of Harmony!" Gearshift exclaimed in realization, "We have something like that too, back in Equestria!"

"Yeah, I... don't know a lot about the details," Nutmeg said unsurely, "I was only a little baby kirin at the time. But supposedly ponies like my friend here prevented this really huge, twisted, god-like-being-from-another-land from consuming all our magic, using a similar machine. Not sure why they called it a tree. Because it... had organic components, I guess?"

"Huh, I guess that makes sense!" Spyro said thoughtfully. "Powerful as it was, The Darkness loved a good monologue as much as the next villain, it was going on about conquering other worlds the whole time. I thought it was just trying to make Kaos feel better about wiping out his homeland, but who knows, maybe it tried to conquer your realm as well! I guess we have more in common than we thought." he finished with a wink.

"Now I'm excited," Nutmeg said, sitting up in the chair to look forward as they zoomed along, "I wasn't sure if I could do anything, even if I was a Tech Elemental, but if it's like that, then maybe I already have access to the technology to repair the Core of Light!"

"Yeah, I can't wait," Gearshift agreed supportively, "I hope it looks nearly as amazing as ours did."

"Oh, it used to be beautiful, before the Sky Eater." Whirlwind piped up. "So elegant and whimsical, especially for something so powerful." she said, sighing. "Magret and... Krankcase... did their best, but the replacement was much more technology and less magical."

"Hey, don't go knocking Mags & Kranky, they did a great job!" Spyro shot back. "You can't expect two techies to match The Ancients, and besides, they managed to make it work without needing the elemental sources! Don't think even the ancients could've pulled that off."

"Those two were Tech Elementals?" Nutmeg asked hopefully, "If they already engineered it to work before, maybe they left some schematics on how we could fix it."

The engineer's questions only got more technical from there. Spyro answered as best as he could, but could provide little detail on the mechanics of the device; every attempt to do so seemed to derail into a story about how the Skylanders snuck into a troll factory that one time to steal a bottle of 'extra special goo' or how close they came to dropping the steam train into a lava lake on the way to the 'eternal fire source'. Each legendary parts-acquisition escapade was more implausible than the last until even Nutmeg began to seriously wonder if he was embellishing the truth.

Finally Whirlwind spoke up: "Nearly there, beginning my approach." She reactivated the exterior display, revealing a sprawling ruin spread over and between a cluster of small islands. Perhaps it had once been something like a storybook castle, with the pointed towers, glass domes, flying buttresses and floating bridges tying everything together. The grounds around the building were dotted with statues, fountains and strange pieces of machinery.

Those past glories must have been a long time ago though, because now the domes were reduced to skeletons, the towers crumbling and much of the grounds overrun with weeds. The shuttle headed for one of the more intact courtyards, with stone paving cracked and weathered but free of rubble. "This place must have looked amazing in its time," Nutmeg said solemnly, looking around at all the crumbling destruction.

"Yeah, I'm not a stone mason, but I can see why you don't want the bad guys to find this place," Gearshift pointed out sympathetically, "If the wrong people found out about it, there'd be no way to stop them..."

"Oh yeah, the Academy was awesome!" Spyro enthused. "A lot of good memories. But hey, maybe once the core is fixed we'll be able to rebuild it. Just gotta find enough creatures who care about turning things around, not just grabbing what they can for themselves, ya know?" The shuttle slowed to a hover, extended its landing struts and settled to the ground with a barely perceptible bump. "Smooth as ever, Whirly." he grinned at the pilot.

The dracopegacorn smiled sweetly back. "Thanks, Sypro. Look, she must have been waiting for us." The roof of the cabin retracted just in time to see a curious winged creature shoot out through a hole in the nearest tower and swoop around towards them. Draconic in overall form, it had smooth white scales, blue belly plates and oversized claws that seemed to be made of translucent purple crystal.

Instead of horns, several more of the crystals extended from the back of her head like a stylised glass mane. Most curious were her wings, which were formed of rows of long, chunky crystals set into scaly coverts. Nutmeg had no idea how that arrangement could provide lift, but the creature seemed to have no problem flying as well as the other dragons.

"Spyro, you did it! Oh and not one but two techs, magnificent!" the newcomer said in a voice that almost audibly sparkled. "Smaller than I expected... but so cute!" she added, hovering next to the shuttle and peering at the two equines still huddled in one of the rear seats.

Nutmeg and Gearshift looked at the new dragon, who was definitely also significantly bigger than both of them, for they were little equines. "Pleased to meet you heh heh," Nutmeg said nervously, stepping in for her quieter friend, "We're here to give it a shot, at least! So where is this miracle machine, anyway?"

"Yeah, I'm really curious about what Nutmeg can— I mean what we can do about it," Gearshift remarked self-consciously.

"Of course, of course, right this way!" the crystal dragon said, before flying off towards an enormous, ornate entrance at the base of the tower.

"Flashwing!" Sypro shouted after her "...no wings?" The other dragon paused to look back, nodded and then zoomed off in a different direction. "Heh, good old Flashy... don't worry, she's just super-excited to have guests. Doesn't get to show off her art much these days."

Sure enough, the white dragoness was soon back with a old step-ladder that had been recently repainted in rainbow colours. "Oh I do apologise, there you are!" she said, pushing it up against the hull of the shuttle. Whirlwind just shook her head and chuckled, flapping out of the cockpit and heading down to fuss with a refuelling pipe.

Flashwing's sing-song voice was definitely reminiscent of somepony... Gearshift fancied she sounded strangely similar to Princess Twilight: perhaps a younger, less regal version.

"No problem. We can use step-ladders just fine," Nutmeg said confidently, the similarity not really registering with her, but she had only seen the Princess a few times. Most of her exposure was through books, posters, and happy, prosperous ponies. The less happy ones made reference to the princess sometimes, but not in polite company. The two climbed down the ladder, until they stood on the ancient Skylanders HQ.

Gearshift kicked away a stone underhoof from the crumbling ruin surrounding them. "Hope it's not too broken," he said, worrying as usual.

"No idea, really." Spyro said sadly, flapping down to walk alongside the ponies. "I mean it looks right, we found new parts and put them in 'til it looked just the way it used to, but no dice. I mean no amazing wave of uplifting light! Yeah I'm pretty sure the fuzzy dice were just decoration." It seemed he couldn't be sad for more than two sentences before compulsively cracking a joke to lighten the mood. And so the three of them followed behind as the crystal dragon flapped through the castle, down halls once lined by stained glass windows and now the wind just whistled mournfully through the frames, past crumbling statues of fantastic creatures and dusty, enigmatic machines, all brass pipes and panels full of oversized unlabelled buttons.

They headed gradually down into the foundations of the structure, proceeding into a vaulted stone tunnel that ended in a great circular door. It was reminiscent of the elemental gates they'd seen at Blissful Pastures and Witchway Marsh, but the central disc was featureless save for radial grooves, and the blocky stone surround featured the symbols of all ten elements, glowing softly in their signature colours. Spyro closed his eyes and seemed to concentrate for a moment, before the light flared and the door split apart, its segments retracting out of sight to reveal a vast, dark chamber beyond.

The two guests walked in nervously, Nutmeg noting that the gate she just saw was something far beyond a mechanical lock, or anything she'd ever seen before. She wondered how many could open that door, if it required an affinity with all ten elements to do so. They were quiet mostly, somewhat in awe of the place they were entering, so much less crumbly than the rest of the island.

The space was a cylindrical shaft, perhaps thirty metres across, sunk deep into the earth. A narrow beam of sunlight shone directly down from an oculus in the roof, striking an array of sharp crystals far below, at the very bottom. The glassy crystals scattered the beam into hundreds of tiny spots of light spread all around the walls of the shaft. The doorway lead out onto a balcony of sorts, perhaps half way down the shaft.

On the far side was a curved panel bearing and array of levers, switches and gauges, and a familiar purple form. The spooky, knife-tailed dragoness stood motionless, her wings tightly folded, making a show of glaring at the ground but watching them come in out of the corner of her eye. "Cynder!" Spyro said, shock creeping into his voice. "...didn't think you'd be, uh, participating."

Nutmeg started to bound forward in wonder at the strange array of materials and parts, but she stopped cold at the sight of Cynder. Nutmeg didn't know much about that dragon, other than that she was really mean, and she'd once used a strange lightning breath to attack them, trying to capture Nutmeg and carry her here by force, when all they had to do was ask. Nutmeg was super grateful that Spyro was so nice about it, but he did say that Cynder would... be here.

Cynder glanced at Nutmeg, then at Spyro, "So... It seems honey really does catch more flies than vinegar." she said, reluctantly. "But if you think I'm going to trust-"

"Cynder!" Flashwing broke in. The crystal dragoness ran into the chamber and stood between the equines and Cynder. "Why are you still being so mean?! Spyro fixed your mistake, and now you're going to ruin it again!" she accused. Cynder tensed and hissed, crouching and lashing her tail as the pair faced off. Cynder's mouth opened, ready to unleash lightning, while Flashwing's tail was arched over her back, sharp crystal tip pointed at Cynder and no doubt ready to unleash some devastating magic of her own.

"C'mon Cynder! Flashwing! Please, can we not do this?!" Spyro pleaded. Both female dragons turned to stare at him. "Like I already said, I don't blame you for what happened. It's been so long without hope, any true hope, of course we're all on edge. But... look, this is our chance, our one real chance for things to get better, at long last! So... can you please just... believe in me. Believe in them. Just for a little while." Spyro was walking slowly towards Cynder during his plea, wings folded and tail tucked back.

Nutmeg didn't know what to do. Dragons sure could be scary sometimes though. She and Gearshift just stood there quiet as lamb, hoping the dragons would get done, and maybe let her do her thing.

Cynder's maw closed and she looked away, trembling with tension, blade-tail still lashing behind her. Spyro reached out with a claw and put it gently on her neck. "Cynder, it's ok. You can let this one go."

The dark purple dragoness grabbed his claw with her own as if to pull it away, then seemed to reconsider. They stood there clasping paws for a few seconds, eyes locked, before at last the lashing stopped and Cynder relented. "You just won't give up on anyone, will you? Noble to the end, that's my Spyro."

"There's only one dragon I'll never give up on, and that's you, Cynder." he replied, smiling warmly, his eyes still staring into hers.

Embarrassed, Cynder took a step back and looked away, before finally addressing the visitors. Flashwing stepped aside, allowing her to speak freely. "Fine, I admitt, it was... a mistake. A stupid mistake. I should've asked first, I just didn't think... I didn't think there was anyone left out there, who would help us without being forced to." Glaring at the ground again, she muttered "You understand that, right?"

"You did what you had to do," Nutmeg said sympathetically, "You didn't know we were peaceful. Yeah you should have asked first, but your heart was in the right place. You were just trying to help your friends. We've all done something silly for a friend, right?"

"It's obvious that this is very important," Gearshift added solemnly, "And you've worked so hard to protect it. We can take a little roughing up if you were trying to do the right thing. Ponies are a lot tougher than we look, and kirin even more so. We'll fix your machine, and... thanks for your apology."

"Right. Apology, sure, whatever." Cynder said dismissively, turning away to face the controls. "So now that we're all friends, let's get on with it." Her claw touched a control, and with a series of beeps and flickering lights the mechanism sprang into life. Various whirrs, clicks and a deep rising humm filled the air, then the base of the pit lit up as electricity (or something that looked like it) began to arc around the forest of glassy crystals.

Finally, with a dramatic 'shooomm', a pillar of blinding light burst out of the array and shot upwards through the shaft, spearing out through the oculus in the roof. The equines had to avert their gaze to avoid temporary blindness, blinking and waiting for their eyes to adjust. When they did, the rest of the chamber fell into sharp relief; walls formed of densely packed hexagonal columns, broken by eight large stubby tubes. The open-ended tubes projected from the walls pointing directly at the central beam, and were arranged in four opposing pairs set at different heights.

"I love this part!" Flashwing enthused, staring into the shifting waves of luminance and dancing sparkles within the central beam as if transfixed. "Such radiance, so beautiful..."

"Yeah, so..." He glanced at the crystal dragon and chuckled. "...what was I saying. Oh right: that bit works fine, we just had to, uh, clear out the broken crystals and put some new traptanium in there." Spyro said. "The next few steps, not so much."

With Cynder distracted, Nutmeg whispered teasingly to Gearshift, "I think she likes you." He full on blushed at that, but both of them were captivated by the strange and beautiful display. When the light revealed the room in all its glory, Nutmeg was quite in agreement with Flashwing.

"Next few steps?" Nutmeg asked curiously, looking away from the beautiful pillar of light to the purple dragon, "Don't let it explode or anything just to show us. But what happens when you try the next few steps?"

By way of answer, Spyro took a couple of steps over to the controls and pressed another button. More mechanical noises from below and the tubes sprang into life. From one, dribbles and sputters of flame overwhelmed by a lot more smoke, spewing out and filling the shaft with haze. From a second, a roaring jet of brackish-looking water that crashed into the central beam and disappeared in a continuous spitting hiss. From a third, a rain of small gems and pebbles that barely made it out of the tube before falling in a rocky shower to clatter and shatter on the floor far below. From the fourth, nothing but a faint electrical humm. On the console, four prominent lights blinked on, first yellow, then red.

"The Elements of Substance." Cynder said, cryptically. "All showing 'non-functional'. Broken."

"But not too badly, right?" Spyro said hopefully to Nutmeg. "They're doing something. Mostly."

"Are they just... I mean of course they aren't, or you'd have fixed that," Nutmeg said, shyly approaching Cynder's console. "I can't make all those elements just appear," she puzzled, looking at the four red lights, "But they're already in place, so...can I take a look at what this console is connected to? It might be some sort of sensor malfunction."

Gearshift approached too, asking, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Still looking for now," Nutmeg said, an ear briefly turning his way, "It definitely looks like we've got our work cut out for us."

"Of course!" Spyro said brightly. "This is where the magic happens, but like Whirlwind said, the guts are all tech now. Follow me!" he beckoned, heading towards a much smaller door set to one side of the main entrance tunnel.

"I'll go get the guest quarters ready!" Flashwing said, finally snapping out of her trance. "Oh, you'll love them. You will be staying the night? OF course you will!" she answered her own question without waiting for a response, and dashed off back up the entrance tunnel to the academy above.

The side door led to a smaller shaft ringed by a spiral staircase, heading up and down from the entrance level. The dragon led the equines further down to a dusty sub-basement, lit by flickering old lights and chock full of old machinery. There were machine tools, tables with parts and subassemblies laid out of them and many many cabinets and lockers full of more parts and tools. Some work areas were clean showed signs of recent use but most of the space was covered in cobwebs and stains, untouched for who knew how long.

"Make yourself at home!" Spyro said, with an expansive sweep of a wing. "Go ahead and use any of this if you like, Whirly should be down with your stuff from the shuttle soon. We've got more parts upstairs, whole mess of them in the main basement. First though... see this tunnel? It kinda spirals around the main shaft, lets you get to the machinery for each element. First one's fire, right this way!"

Nutmeg's eyes got really big at all the fantastic and familiar equipment. They might really be able to make this work! She and Gearshift rushed from station to station, looking at all the half-completed parts still lying there after all these years. "Okay!" she said a lot more eagerly, hopping up to the dragon while Gearshift trotted along behind. "Let's see what this fire machine can do."

The curving, upward sloping tunnel opened out into a moderate-sized chamber filled with roaring flame, rushing liquid, whining pumps and the odd crack and creak of pressurised pipes. The far end was dominated by two massive tanks, which fed through a chaotic tangle of plumbing to terminate in a huge metal bell, hard up against the solid metal wall. Inspection ports covered in thick, soot-stained glass afforded a glimpse of the far side of the wall, where spluttering yet intense flames shot out of the bell and down the tube, no doubt exiting in the main shaft they'd seen earlier.

Nutmeg lifted a hoof to shield herself from the intense heat as she walked up to the roaring flames, but of course she was in no danger since she was protected. She looked at the flame geysering out, and at the liquid flowing in, and said, "I wonder what the pressure is on these pipes." Several hours were spent clambering up the pipes, or standing on Gearshift for a height assist, adjusting her giant wrench to the pipe sizes to work on them. The pressure gauges were busted, but there were pretty easy replacement parts, once she managed to turn off the flow of fuel long enough to install a fix in there.

Finally standing free of the pipes and looking up at it all, she concluded, "The flame could be a lot bigger if there were more air intake. I think the pipes feeding air into this thing aren't running at a high enough pressure. Where's the oxidizer pump in this thing?

One rusty oxidizer pump replaced later, Nutmeg engaged it sending a rush of air into the fire, the flame growing pure and white hot, burning more like a blowtorch than a campfire. The heated flame shot through the big pipes, and as the gang hurried outside, Cynder was looking with disbelief at the panel before her, where one of the red lights had finally turned green.

Spyro was overjoyed. "Nice! That's more progress in one afternoon than we made in a year! Great work Nutmeg... and Gearshift too!"

"Yeah." Cynder said flatly. She gestured with a claw at a silver platter sitting next to the control panel. "Flashwing left you some..." she seemed ready to gag "...'lunch'. Artisanal grasses, whatever those are, with a selection of dressings."

"Well, let's eat! I'm starved!" Nutmeg said eagerly. The two approached the platter Flashwing had luxuriously decorated, and Nutmeg was shocked to see he'd even prepared her favourite! Cynder probably had to look the other way for how ruthlessly the two equines stood there placidly chewing innocent grass into mush. Flashwing got all the compliments for knowing just what the tastiest grasses they can eat are. Soon the kirin was raring to go saying with a wiggle of her whiplike tail, "Do you think we can wow them by doing two in one day?"

"Do I?" Gearshift said, "The next one isn't even on fire. Just let me at it!"

"Love the attitude!" Spyro smiled back, ignoring Cynder's eye-roll. Soon they were heading back down to the sub-basement, then up the opposite spiral tunnel to the machinery space powering the water jet. At first glance it shared a lot with its opposite: an enormous tangle of plumbing linking numerous tanks, eventually leading into the final turbine that fed the pressure nozzle. The tanks were adorned with stirrers, heaters, coolers, magnets, sieves and other less-discernible devices, all joined by a web of cables that snaked back to a cabinet on one wall.

"Yeah, so... this is all piped in from the main reservoir." Spyro said. "A while back we drained it out and pulled the junk out of it, buuuut..." The dragon shrugged his wings. "Didn't seem to help much, the water's still full of crud."

Nutmeg and Gearshift puzzled over the plumbing, pulling open the stirrers, heaters, coolers, magnets, sieves, and just about everything to try and see where the gunk was getting in. At last, now splattered with water, Nutmeg declared, "I think there's supposed to be gunk in this machine. It's supposed to be filtering it out though, and the filters are just activating when the pumps deactivate, and the valves are opening when they need to be closed to stop backwash. If I didn't miss my guess..." as if having the same idea at once, she and Gearshift started following the wires from all the partially deconstructed devices, to where they all converged on that cabinet over there.

A quick application of bolt cutters revealed the interior; a tangle of electronic components mounted on a slab of bakelite, dusty and smelling of leaking tubes and burned insulation. With a few tugs the whole control module unplugs from its housing.

"I think I saw a spare water chip on one of the workbenches back there," Gearshift said, looking at the disgustingly decrepit water filter control module with as much unease as Nutmeg, as she holds the thing 6 feet away, in her wrench's plier mode, then carefully carries it over to dump it in a wastebin. He returned triumphantly from the workbench, water chip on rump, and they went about putting all the pumps and such back together.

After replacing the wiring in the control box damaged by the old shorted control chip, they slid in the new one, and flipped off the switch keeping it in maintenance mode. The pumps started to piston in smooth synchronisation, one after the other. The machine gave a light, pleasant hum, as cool clean water emerges, then rushes out, flooding through the pipe, heading straight for the Core.

A quick trot back to the control balcony, where Cynder was staring in disbelief at a second green light. Down in the shaft, the jet of white-hot flame and jet of sparkling clean water were emerging from their respective, opposing pipes, meeting at the same point in the central beam and disappearing in a swirl of magic. Above the reaction site, the beam swelled with flares of red and blue light visible amidst the white. "Awesome. You're on fire!" Spyro said. "Well not literally, heh, but... you know what I mean." He shook his head. "You wanna take a break or shall we check out that earth pipe?"

Nutmeg and Gearshift were both wet and weary, but Nutmeg nodded, saying, "We can at least take a look."

Another trek down stairs and through tunnels, and the crew were at the appropriate chamber. Here were racks and racks holding containers of dirt, where chunks of stone seemed to be literally grown as if they were plants. A miniature, automated rock farm, as if such a thing existed in the first place. An assortment of scrapers, sorters, conveyer belts, grinders and polishers prepared the final chunks, which were dropped from chutes onto a complex array of copper bars, resting on an intricate bed of cables. The stones wobbled into the air, hovering a few centimetres above the metalwork, then sluggishly picked up speed, finally disappearing into the pipe at a leisurely pace.

"Oh, lithoculture," Gearshift mused, walking forward into the area, "My grandmother grew up on a rock farm."

"Huh, I guess you could grow rocks if you... um... planted them right," Nutmeg tentatively agreed, heading in less confidently than the stallion for once. She perked up upon spotting the wobbling rocks on bars, stepping quickly over there and saying, "Oh! I made one of these before! It used to be a lightning gun, but then I had to solder in a magnetizer and some electromagnetic rails because that dragon breathed lightning and I um... had..." Nutmeg spared a respectful glance for the big purple male dragon who was right there in the room, diplomatically concluding, "It was a really neat invention, which I was going to use to ...accelerate rocks, for earth related things!"

"Earth-related things...?" Spyro said, confused. "I guess you could plink chompies with em? Not as cool as a lightning gun though, now that's a proper techie gadget!" he smiled. "Like, you're at the All-Skylands Inventioneer Convention, and they're all 'so name all 8 million things you invented to date...' and you're all 'no need! see, lightning gun! pzaaap!' and then they nod and sagely say 'yes, this cute little dragony deer-corn is indeed a true tech elemental...'" the dragon's voice trailed off as he realised the pair were staring at him. He ducked his head and chuckled nervously "Sorry, got carried away for a moment there. So... does that mean you can fix it?"

"I can make it plink rocks a whole lot more," Nutmeg said cheerfully, "And that seems to be the ticket with these. Just need some specialized equipment, and um..." She yawned then, a half-conscious reaction that just sort of needed to happen from time to time. She wasn't sure why.

"Maybe we should sleep on it," Gearshift said, also sleepy, "We don't have to get it all done today."

"Right, right... sorry, guess I was just so excited to be making progress, that, uh... yeah." Spyro said, embarrassed but grateful. "So, you wanna check out those guest quarters?"

"That'd be nice," Nutmeg said agreeably, heading along behind with Gearshift as Spyro led the way.

They trekked back out of the Core, pausing only for Spyro to close the massive stone door, the points of its segments coming together until the disc was whole again. They proceeded through the dusty corridors and ruined halls of the academy above, until they reached a section that had been cleared and repaired to some semblance of its original condition. A cheery fire burned in a hearth, and Whirlwind looked up from her book and waved a wing at them as they proceeded up into an intact tower. Finally they reached the room itself, where Flashwing was putting the final touches on a beautiful arrangement of ornate (and probably priceless) furniture, colourful (and probably edible) flower arrangements and tasteful drapery.

Tiny crystals hung from the ceiling on threads, catching the lamplight and giving the impression of a glittering starry sky. "I hope it meets your standards." the crystal dragoness said breathlessly. "I wasn't sure what else would suit you, but we have oats, grain, potato soup seasoned with all those the herbs Cali always loved, erm..." she gestured with a claw at a table where plates lay waiting under engraved silver covers. "Is it enough? I could try to make bean enchiladas, if you insist..."

"Oh it's all perfect, and I can eat that stuff just fine!" Nutmeg said as Gearshift gazed overhead, murmuring, "Wow...."

They soon sat together by the warm hearth on the luxurious furniture with full bellies and no hunger pangs, very grateful for these dragons and their hospitality. "I'm glad you called on us," Nutmeg said to Flashwing and Spyro, "You're all so cool, and I couldn't be happier with something great like this to do."

"Me either," Gearshift said, "I think nice ponies, I mean dragons like you really are the heroes that could save your world. The sooner we get your machine fixed, the better."

Flashwing was over the moon; finally guests that appreciated her efforts to ensure refined and civilised conditions. "Breakfast will be even better!" she beamed, before padding off, crystal claws clicking on the stone. "Oh wow, I haven't seen here that happy in... years." Spyro said, watching her go. Turning back to the equines, he thanked them profusely for their work so far. "You're too kind! Wish we could have you here indefinitely, the techies were the real unsung heroes behind the Skylanders, back in the day! Buuutt... I guess your ship needs you, and I'd never deprive them of competent engineers! So... sleep tight, and hopefully we can get that Core working tomorrow!" The charismatic purple dragon winked at Nutmeg one last time before gently closing the door, leaving the equines alone in the tower room.

Nutmeg hadn't had a chance to sleep there cuddled up with Gearshift on the bed in a very long time. It was a good chance to catch up. As their eyes drifted closed, and they drifted to sleep, the two were ready to make the next day even better than before.

---

The Equestrians woke with dawn, or rather Gearshift woke and proceeded to nudge Nutmeg awake. They spent tne minutes soaking in the impressive views and discussing the previous day's efforts before a rap on the door announced the arrival of breakfast. Flashwing had returned with porridge, freshly baked bread and a selection of fruit, taking care not to mix any of the decorative glitter into the food.

Refreshed and ready to go, the pony and kirin descended to find Spyro and Whirlwind waiting for them in the halls below. Once again they proceeded down through the basement into the enormous device they had come to repair: the Core of Light. It was an underground complex of mechanisms, each dedicated to an Element, surrounding a central shaft that housed the carrier beam.

With her tools at hoof, and a fresh new start of a brand-new day, Nutmeg was ready and raring to go. She and Gearshift travelled down the stairwell, past the thrumming, fwooshing elemental machinery that they had already repaired the day before. "The food here is really amazing," Gearshift said with a full belly and no worries that he, and especially Nutmeg, would succeed. "Yeah, I couldn't believe they had porridge. My favourite!" Nutmeg agreed. And with light chatter about their work and their experiences so far, they descended with the two dragons.

The two spent their day well, starting with the malfunctioning accelerator that was idly tossing pebbles into the shaft. A few replacement cables, some time retuning the sequencers and it was shooting a stream of high-velocity crystal straight into the central beam. Next would be the Air source; the two equines called out to each other as the mechanisms blew them around, trying to navigate the expansive complex. Finally as they both dumped an armful of dirty air filters the winds smoothed out in the ducts, growing in strength until a rushing tornado of air blasted down the final pipe to feed the Core.

The Undead source was full of nasty things that wouldn't stay dead, but Nutmeg's giant wrench took care of anything that attacked as they sealed off the otherworldly rifts, and sent and an eerie purple glow began flowing down the bones leading to the Core. The problem was immediately apparent in the Life room, with thorny vines constricting the withering plant growth struggling to survive in bone dry soil. Fixing the shunt from the mechanical Water source, as Gearshift cut back the thorns and weeds, the tropical life revived in moments, filling the room with fragrant flowers and verdant leafy greenery, until the only vines left were the green, leafy ones growing toward the core, with soft pulses of Life itself flowing down their stems.

Weary, a little thornier for their efforts, the two still worked into the evening. The Magic source seemed utterly inscrutable, a puzzle whose rules and laws made as little sense as magic does. They aligned the beams refracting through the pinkish crystals, getting themselves turned into literal sheep at one point when a glowing mandala on the ground had a few scuff marks in it. But with the mandala fixed, and their true forms restored, Nutmeg and Gearshift walked sleepily out of the magic room, even as the final crystal hummed with power in transmitting its energy down the ethereal channels to the Core.

Spyro was delighted with their progress. This time dinner would be down in the main hall; the friendly purple dragon regaled them with tales of his adventures while they ate, and even Cynder was drawn into to add a few corrections and extra details. Eventually the equines couldn't keep their eyes open any longer, and retreated to the guest room for a second night. Everycreature was in high spirits as the third day dawned, with seven sources of elemental energy feeding into the central Light beam; only the Tech chamber remained inoperable.

"Finally, a machine that makes sense!" Nutmeg declared, "This'll be a snap!" The door to the Tech chamber sparked and stuck halfway open, the two creatures peering into a cavernous, quiet ruin. Ancient robots lay quiescent and still, frozen in the process of whatever they were doing when everything failed. The only source of light in the room besides the lights they carried, beaming them around as the two ventured into the dusty mechanical tomb, were a very few, scattered, rare warning lights blinking a mournful red glow.

"A snap, huh," Gearshift remarked with a raised eyebrow at Nutmeg.

"Oh shut up," she huffed, "Get your tools. We have a lot of work to do."

Time went on, as Nutmeg discovered the machine's inner workings, sometimes literally when she found an access panel to crawl under. Like that strange transmitter that Nutmeg repaired back on the second island, she found herself having great luck in piecing together the mysterious parts. "I don't know how you make sense of any of this," Gearshift said, following her lead in rewiring the circuit board he was at, "This is far beyond our primitive Equestrian technology."

"It's amazing, I know!" Nutmeg replied eagerly, "It's all coming clear to me now, everything working together, I can see all these... cool things that this machine can do, if we just plug this in here, and switch this with that, and..." She quickly became lost in her work again.

One by one, the red lights turned green, as they meticulously revived the broken electronics. The robots revived, they went about their duties like a steam locomotive went down its train tracks. Panels lit up and glowed, and statuses went from flashing yellow to green. At last Nutmeg and Gearshift struggled to connect two halves of a huge plug together. Electricity danced from the prongs, as Nutmeg said, "Okay... here we go!" Contact, the circuit made, the whine of a turbine spinning up, the whole chamber shuddering as pure Tech in the form of lightning went blasting down the thick wires headed to the Core, suffusing the miraculous device with the final Element.

As the two emerged from the chamber, they looked up in awe, as the Core of Light shimmered, then from its apex erupted a beacon of pure light, shining endlessly upward to the top of the sky.

"Awesome!" said Spyro, grinning widely. "Great work guys! You got it... huh... ya know, I'm sure it looked different before... but hey, let's go check the main controls!" They descended through the spiralling tunnels, emerging onto the balcony where they'd first entered. Whirlwind and Cynder were already there, backlit by the scintillating column of light swirling up through the shaft. The blue unidragosus was prancing around and fiddling with controls, while the spikey purple dragon was scowling at the status display. The lowest indicator and two rows of four above it were all green, while a final indicator at the top was still stubbornly red.

"Not to be ungrateful, but something's still broken." Cynder explained. "That's the symbol for Dark... don't ask me what that's doing in the Core of Light." she clarified, pointing a claw at the indicator.

"What?!" Nutmeg squawked, zipping over to stare at the status display, "There wasn't any Dark chamber! Don't tell me your light machine runs on Darkness too??"

"No, not... as such. I think it's got to be the deflector!" Whirlwind said, excited to be so close to getting the device online. "See, right now we're just shooting a beam straight up into the sky. Not a lot of use unless The Darkness materialises directly above us!" She giggled. "You see, the core's supposed to radiate in every direction... or even be steered to act as a weapon against manifested Darkness!"

"Huh... so something else to fix, right at the top?" Spyro suggested. The two dragonesses nodded. He sighed, "Sorry Nutmeg, Gearshift, hope you don't mind lending us your expertise one last time? No more tunnels, so I guess we'd better take a look from the outside."

Nutmeg hesitated, but nodded. Grimly she and Gearshift followed Spyro outside, Nutmeg's ears tilting down, for she feared the curse of her people, a strange, dark fire within her that she never wanted to release. Would this machine draw it out of her? How would she deal with the Dark energies within without succumbing to her own darkness within?

Spyro lead the equines back up through the basement of the semi-ruined Skylander academy, with Cynder bringing up the rear while Whirlwind remained below, watching the readouts. Upon reaching ground level they took a new turn, emerging onto what looked like a low, grassy hill. Directly ahead the coruscating beam of light shot out of the summit and pierced the clouds above, emerging from a substantial circular structure formed of silvery metal, partly recessed into the ground.

Carefully the trio approached, working their way around until Gearshift spotted a control panel sporting a prominent lever. With Spyro unable to provide guidance as to its function, Nutmeg deployed her telekinesis to pull it down while the three of them kept their distance. With a loud clack it fell into place, triggering the entire structure to unfold into an array of metal leaves, opening like a blossoming flower to expose a ring of inscrutable machinery within. Purple crystals, copper coils and wires, and a snaking mass of glass tubes and chambers encircled the hole through which the beam was escaping the Core below.

"It's... strangely beautiful," Nutmeg said faintly, "So far so good, right? You wanna... check it out, Gearshift?"

"I'll take a look," he said, while the nervous little kirin waited behind. The earth pony named Gearshift went stepping gingerly among the coils and wires, searching for anything which might be dangerous. It all seemed cold and quiescent at first glance, without any beams or clouds of darkness lurking about at all.

At an unspoken look from Gearshift, Nutmeg stepped forward, strutting among the strange machinery, like nothing she'd ever seen before. "What does it even... do?" she asked softly.

Gearshift just shrugged.

The two searched through the machine, connecting loose wires, moving parts around, exchanging tubes, but without much luck. Nutmeg looked up at the pure beam of light shooting into the sky, wondering if this was where she would fail. This shadow of a machine in such divine radiance. "Any ideas?" Gearshift asked as they sat among the dead machine's entrails.

Looking over it carefully, Nutmeg said in disbelief, "I don't think I can fix this! This might be all we can do. Unless..."

Nutmeg ventured carefully over to a glass tube wreathed in metallic circuitry, touching it with a hoof, saying, "I recognize this! It's a miniature particle accelerator!"

"A what?" Gearshift called over.

"I don't know!" she called back, "But it is. Can't you see it?" Hefting the cylinder on top of the wrench along her back, she brought it over to another part saying, "It needs to go into this centrifuge here. I don't know why it was laying all the way over there."

They installed it, and Nutmeg looked elsewhere saying, "Look! It's an antimatter beam splitter!"

"What—" Gearshift started to ask, but Nutmeg barked out,

"I don't know! But it splits... not matter things? And it needs to go over here! This machine is totally trashed. Come on, let's get to work!"

Nutmeg's zeal for repair only increased as things started glowing and lighting up on the machine. One would think a machine of darkness wouldn't be very bright, but all the glass tubes began glowing in strange colours, like the opposite of a rainbow. "Pull that lever!" Nutmeg shouted.

"Got it, boss!" Gearshift replied.

They pulled levers, and put the pieces back together again, and at last with a clunk, the machine began to hum to life. Nutmeg felt the call within her, the call of darkness and shouted, "Get back! I don't know what it's gonna do!" They scrambled out of the apparatus, as the unearthly hues began coruscating in a ring all around it, like ephemeral flames. As they grew, the Darkness appeared in the middle of it all. It abruptly closed into a sphere capturing the beam of light, which immediately started to pour into the sphere instead of shooting upwards. No matter what angle you looked, the centre of the sphere was black as pitch, only the edges coruscating with those strange colours.

Then the dragons, the earth pony and the kirin began falling into it. The dragons picked up and flew in surprise as upward became inward toward the sphere. The wind began to howl, as everything nearby was being drawn into it. Gearshift and Nutmeg had to leap forward to cling to the edges of the metal petals of the apparatus, to keep from plummeting into it.

"Holy blazing firestorm, this is incredible!" Nutmeg called out as they hung on for their lives.

"I don't think you're appreciating the gravity of the situation!" Gearshift shouted back in exasperation.

"Don't worry, Gearshift!" Nutmeg assured him, looking back, or, down at the sphere, "Look!"

A tiny sparkle of white began growing in the centre of the sphere. Its immense pull stilled, and with a shocking impulse, they were all thrown forward as a sphere of pure, white light expanded from the sphere in all directions.

Spyro and Cynder dropped to the ground, staring upwards in awe, before the former rushed over to check on Nutmeg. "Hey, hey, are you ok there? Nothing broken?" Seeing the kirin scramble to her feet, he relaxed a little "Wow, that was intense! It looks just like it used to, all those years ago... I think you've done it! You two are awesome." The purple dragon gathered up Nutmeg into a quick hug, before awkwardly backing off, looking away in embarrassment. "So, yeah, guess we're both in the 'saviour of Skylands' club now. Wanna... uh... go down and check... with Whirly I mean, that it's all running ok?"

Meanwhile Cynder had grabbed the toppled Gearshift and with a few quick flaps set him on his hooves before landing again. "Yeah, that was... pretty amazing. I mean, for a tiny horse and all." she allowed.

"You bet!" Nutmeg declared excitedly, running down together with Spyro as Gearshift hung back a moment, gave Cynder a thoughtful look and simply said, "Glad we could be of service." He went trotting off too, after the sounds of excitement below and within, as Cynder shook her head in amazement, before flying smooth and silently after.

All of the indicators were indeed green, and Whirlwind was quick to inform them that all the gauges were showing normal operation. The Core of Light had at long last been restored, and Skylands was once again protected against the extradimensional incursions that had ravaged it in the past. "You know you're welcome to stay as long as you like!" Spyro said hopefully. "There's so much that still needs fixing around here... ugh, what am I saying, I can't ask for more. You just pulled off the most amazing repair job ever, and your friends are still stuck out there on a broken airship. They must be missing you already."

"You'll find a way, I'm sure," Nutmeg assured him, "Who knows? We might end up working together again some day! But for now I need to get these parts back to my little ponies so that we can finally get about repairing that engine, and aren't as much of a sitting duck as we are now."

"How many parts can we have?" Gearshift asked hopefully.

"As many as you can carry!" Spyro replied very generously.

So they loaded up with all sorts of valuable supplies, things that could never have been found at the bottom of some mere dirt shark's pocketbook. With heightened optimism and a new friendship made, the triumphant engineers made ready to return home.

The sun was dipping towards the horizon by the time the shuttle was fully loaded. Much as he wanted to see the ponies again, Spyro had to stay behind, to make room for both the pile of spare parts and the many tools that the equines had brought with them. With Whirlwind at the controls and Nutmeg & Gearshift sitting behind, the golden aircraft lifted off, wheeled around and smoothly accelerated away, heading for the distant Blissful Pastures where the EAS Harmony lay waiting. The two wondered if the rest of their company would believe them when they described everything they'd encountered here.

Author's Note:

This is the output of our roleplaying session, formatted as a text narrative. I hope you will agree it was a good and exciting quest for Nutmeg Inferno and Gearshift! They went to see the home of the brave and heroic Skylander dragons, and helped them solve a very important engineering problem! Now Skylands is safe and Nutmeg Inferno and Gearshift learned a lot and they can rejoin their happy pony friends bearing generous gifts of new machine parts.

Visualisation was rendered by ValcyeNegative : it depicts Nutmeg Inferno and Gearshift and Spyro arriving at the Skylanders Academy (Whirlwind is out of frame refuelling the shuttle). Flashwing flew out to greet them, isn't she pretty?