Spyro the Dragon Epilogue

Spyro could see the end of the portal closing in upon him. The ordeal was over, and the world was, for the first time in Spyro's life, without Gnasty Gnorc or his servants. All of the stolen gems from the treasury had been collected and returned properly into the Dragon Kingdom's treasury. It was time to return home and reunite with all of the others as they had nearly recovered from the effects of Gnasty's imprisonment. Delbin, the leader of the dragon kingdom, was probably still in solitary confinement as he had tried to go after Gnasty in his realm twice after Spyro had recused him. Spyro hadn't needed his help anyways, but at least he tried when the others had not.

The portal's window closed in around Spyro and suddenly he was pushed back into the physical world. The wind hit his face, and the grass beneath his feet was a welcome relief after weeks of battling Gnasty's minions.

"Spyro the Dragon! You've defeated Gnasty Gnorc, collected the dragon eggs, saved all of the dragons, and recovered every bit of treasure in the dragon kingdom, how do you feel?!"

Spyro was on Dragon News Network (DNN) the second that he returned from collecting Gnasty's Loot in Gnasty's World. Evidently, the treasury had already received the remaining gems from Sparx and he was on his way to meet back up with Spyro.

"I feel fired up, Bob!" Spyro replied. Thankfully, Sparx had given Spyro his dark sun glasses before he'd left Gnasty's Realm. He hadn't expected the media to be so quick. Especially after having been frozen in crystal and off the air for so long, but alas, here they were already. Spyro wanted it that way. He loved the attention, and he knew he was cool. Especially now that he'd done everything. All of his bigger peers had failed to so much as make it near Gnasty before they were frozen in crystal, and he had to do almost all of the heavy lifting for the entire dragon kingdom. It is wasn't for Spyro, the entire kingdom would have been on its knees or worse.

Don't be too conceded, Spyro told himself. The spur of the moment interview had caught him off guard.

"And I feel happy for the dragon world, of course. I certainly wouldn't want to spend the rest of my dragon days butting heads with Gnasty Gnorc and his weird minions."

Bob seemed confused behind the microphone, "What's a minion?"

Crap, what a looser, Spyro thought. Many of the dragons had not been frozen because they were inside behind closed doors, and many of them had not ventured outside for fear of being frozen themselves, as they would have been. While Bob had been frozen, by the time he was rescued Spyro had already cleared the artisan home, and he never ventured outside of it. Bob was one of those high class office types of dragons. They wouldn't understand what Spyro had put up with. It wasn't worth the effort trying to explain it either. It would have taken away from Spyro's cool factor.

"Um, never mind. You know what they say; for every good battle, you need a good adversary, and I felt that Gnasty, in spite of his misguided nature, was a worthy opponent."

Suddenly, energy rained down from the sky. Tomas and Argus who were playing basketball with a sheep right behind the interview had been crystalized again!

"Uh, oh. Here we go again!"

Seconds later the camera dragon flipped off the red light on the front of the camera and he and Bob ran away as quickly as possible. The door on the castle slammed shut behind them. Nobody else was outside, but it was clear that the energy was coming from Gnasty's World.

Spyro quickly bounded through the night to Marco the balloonist. "Quick, Marco! I need to get to Gnasty's World. It's happening again!"

"Alright, jump right on, Spyro!"

Spyro jumped onto Marco's head and straight into the basket of the balloon. Immediately the burner started thrusting and the balloon went into the uncharted territory of the skies.

Who could be doing this? I got everything. There wasn't a stone left unturned in any of the worlds, let alone Gnasty's. This is going to KILL my reputation.

Soon enough the home platform of Gnasty's world was beneath Spyro's feet, and Hak was standing aside and at the ready. "I saw it go out of Gnasty's castle in the distance, Spyro. It's somewhere in that realm."

"I'm on it!" Spyro replied quickly as he charged through the portal to "Gnasty Gnorc". Soon, dragons would reprogram the portal to say something else, but for now it still bore Gnasty's name. The pretty dark and purple portal backdrop was fitting for Spyro he thought. If it wasn't in this old grubby junk yard, he might have considered making this place his permanent residence after a little restoration.

Directly into the center of the castle Spyro dove. This was once the home of the most elite of the dragon race, until their obsession with wealth and material items got the best of them and their gnorc workers over ran them and turned the place into the industrial scrap heap that it was when Gnasty was banished to it.

This time, all was quiet. It was dark, but the lights were still on in places. The energy that Gnasty fed into the system was beginning to fade, and it wouldn't be long until the dark of the nights shrouded the halls of this ancient castle in darkness once again. Instinctively, Spyro raced through the maze of outdoor pathways over towards the place where he had finally beaten the cowardly Gnasty Gnorc. The only problem was that the platforms which had been slowly moved into the walls by Gnasty's energy were still stuck terrifyingly close to completely inside of the wall.

Spyro quickly jumped over to the first platform and his feet narrowly grabbed hold on the first platform. He quickly jumped over to the second one, and then pondered his chances at making it from one side of the corridor to the other where the next ledge was located. It was far, and without Sparx the burning lava below was a certain death. He prepared to make the leap, but just then, a voice burst out.

"No, Spyro!"

Spyro turned around carefully as to avoid falling off of the ledge. Had it been Gnasty or another one of his minions Spyro would have been struck and knocked into the lake of lava. It was nearly impossible to move on this ledge. A fairy had come to Spyro's rescue. She placed a tiny key into a slot near the beginning of the corridor and the ledges began to slide back out again.

"Why didn't you do that earlier?" Spyro asked.

"I'm sorry, Spyro. I would have, but I was trapped. It took a while for Gnasty's energy to wear off and allow my cage to open. I have just now been freed."

Spyro was thankful, but he wasn't about to sit around and chit chat. He jumped the remaining platforms over to where he had defeated Gnasty and found that his scepter was gone. It alone had the power to freeze dragons into crystal. Somebody must have been using it, but the platforms had been pushed in. Nobody could have reached it in the thick air of this environment.

"hahahahahahahahah!" a voice rang out into the chambers. The sound was deep and reverberated throughout the entire chamber.

"Who is that!?"

"You don't know, me, Spyro, but you're about to learn a whole lot about me."

The floor opened up, and from that floor came an orange, single horned gnorc who was wearing a cape with a popped collar.

"Well, well, Spyro, if it wasn't for you my plans would not have been ruined like this. Now, I have to do all of this work on my own. Hello, I'm Ripto, and I'm afraid that your little fun and games are over. Gnasty was just one of my pawns, but I am his master, Spyro, and you will not stand in my way."

Ripto was holding Gnasty's scepter. Spyro charged at him, but Ripto zapped him with its energy.

Spyro was stunned. The last couple of moments had left his mind. The last thing that he remembered was finding the platform without the scepter. Spyro found the strange dragon like gnorc and stared at him.

"What, you don't like that!? Good. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be undoing everything that you've done, Spyro. Don't you dare follow me, or you'll be zapped again."

The gnorc turned around and began to leave the castle, but Spyro wasn't done. He charged again. The gnorc realized it just before the impact. He got a shot off onto Spyro. It struck him squarely between the eyes, but as Spyro's body fell forward, he also struck the gnorc directly in the head.

Both of their bodies lay motionless on the floor of the ancient castle. The fairy who had helped Spyro reach the other side of the castle by moving out the platforms looked over the scene. The fairy left and quickly brought more fairies.

"What should we do, Zoe?" asked one of the new comers to the fairy who had been locked away by Gnasty.

"Take Spyro back to Hak the Balloonist and have him send Spyro back to the Artisan Home when he comes to. He won't remember any of this, so tell Hak that he found the scepter and it was shooting off energy. Spyro threw it into the lava lake, but while doing so he was struck by its energy and I found him and got all of you."

"What about this gnorc?"

Zoe looked at him carefully. She felt something for him, but exactly what was not clear.

"I'll throw the scepter into the lava lake. I will take him to another world far from the dragon kingdom. We cannot have him staying here and wreaking havoc on the dragon kingdom like this."

Ferries. They cannot do any harm. It's impossible for them to do so. A whole lot of trouble in more than a few worlds would have been saved had Zoe been able to get rid of the threat that Ripto imposed, but that half dragon half gnorc had wormed a way into her heart while she was imprisoned, and she neither wanted to harm him, nor would have been able to if she had.

As the ferries carried Spyro away, Zoe dropped the scepter into the lava lake. There was no energy release, no explosion, nothing. The heat destroyed the scepter immediately. Gnasty was no more.

Zoe hovered over Ripto for a moment before grabbing him and leaving the castle. She flew away. As far away as she could. She never wanted to return to the dragon kingdom.

She dropped Ripto into a kingdom as far away as she dared to fly, and then she flew back towards the one nearest to the dragon kingdom, Avalar thinking she would never encounter either Spyro or Ripto again.

Only a few short years later, she would meet them both again.

A/N: I won't lie to anybody this time. No, I'm not back. I'm just dropping in to say hello. I hope you all enjoyed this short one-shot in the original Spyro. Tell me what you think in the reviews. I'm still a couple of years from finishing my novel, but I'm getting there. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed.