Chapter 12


Chapter 14


I had failed to notice earlier but the base camp we originally left from on the train had another rail that trailed in the opposite direction, to Will’s Mill. Due to the previous locomotive being buried under a mountain of rubble and mud we ended up spending almost two hours bringing a second locomotive from the train garage onto the rails. By this point we were all silently resigned to the hard work with the promise of a restful train ride when the toil was done. I had never rode in a train before- the only bit I knew of trains were the comments Spyro would make about the Munitions Forge which did not grant me much knowledge. The passenger boxcars were designed for the smaller furry people of Törg so I would have to reside in a freight boxcar for the time being. I did not mind however as I had a conservative amount of room. I would also be sharing this car the still unconscious Peter who was now in a medic cot and Ubuntu naturally.

We were just about to set off when the skies began to gray and another Törg rainstorm would be upon us. However this time it seemed like a natural storm and not the result of that accursed walking island.

I had taken a seat near Peter’s cot, crossed my forelegs and tucked my wings when the horn of the train blared in several loud wails. I should have been alerted but honestly the adrenaline had long since worn off and after the tedium of arranging this new train I barely had it in me to keep my head up.

“You should rest Cyndah. It will be a time until we get to Will’s Mill. We can talk when you awaken.” Ubuntu said as he prepared himself a glass of tea. He held the cup in one hand and snapped his other hand to conjure a tiny ember which he held under the cup until it began to boil. He released the spell as quickly as it came and began to take short sips.

I obliged wordlessly and laid my head on the floor of the boxcar and let the rhythmic thumps of the train on rails gently lull me to sleep.

A time later I was brought back to reality to the feeling of my paw being prodded. My eyes fluttered open and I raised my head to see it was Ubuntu that was poking me. Before I could speak he put his finger to his lips to hush me.

“Shhhh- be silent. Come- someone is following us.” He whispered and stood to his feet.

Perplexed I too rose silently with the only noise between us was the rhythmic gait of the train. Ubuntu walked to a large glass window in the boxcar and I in tow. Rain droplets hit the pane as we sped by the landscape. The once foreboding and gloomy woodlands had given way to rolling hills with knee high grass as far as the eye could see.

But alas I saw no signs of someone or something giving chase. In fact I could see no wildlife at all either.

“De sky.” Ubuntu said under his breath.

I looked up instinctively and felt my breath catch in my throat. Those untrained or those lacking the perception of dragonkinds sight would have missed it but I could see it perfectly. Against the gloom of the gray clouds I could see the unmistakable silhouette of a dragon flying in the sky.

“Faranthia.” I stated matter-of-factly.

“No doubt it is her. She’s probably wondering how one of her servants was defeated.” Ubuntu conjectured not taking his eye off the silhouette of the thin dragon that paced our train.

“Think she’ll attack?” I asked. After how much trouble Porker gave me I was admittedly scared at the prospect of her attacking right now. Even Rawhide mentioned he did not wish to go toe-to-toe with her. It was then I had not felt fear like this since before me and Spyro defeated Malefor five years ago. Together me and Spyro were invincible but now we were damaged and vulnerable and now that old trepidation of fighting these dark forces had been resurrected by the Seven and Faranthia. I was no longer the big fish in the little pond….. and that realization fell on me like a cold wet blanket.

“Let us pray she does not. You are not ready to face her. As the Seven rampage across the continent their negative emotions concentrate into her making her more powerful. All her guardians will have to fall for us to have a chance at stopping her.”

“So that’s how she knew Porker was gone.” I deduced. The car was silent and still as the grave.

“I do not tink she will attack. Most of de Seven are hopelessly insane wit their emotions driving dem but Faranthia is smart- coherent even. I tink she knows dere is more to be gained watching us than attacking…. For now.”

I took a cautious step back from the window. “So…. We just gotta leave our unwelcome observer be?”

Ubuntu sat down cross legged and interlocked his wrinkled fingers. “It would appear so. Our best hope is she decides to leave and we can survive.”

“Ride out this storm and live to fight another day….” I whispered thinking aloud to myself.

“Hmm?” Ubuntu grunted quizzically.

“Nothing. -Are you up for that whole truth now?”

The old ape stroked his beard. “I suppose dis as a good a time as ever. Where should I start?”

“The beginning. I want to know everything, about you, the Seven, Faranthia.”

“Well. I guess we have de time and I did make you a promise. Just let me preface this Cyndah- I never lied to you. I did not trek to Warfang to deceive you- Just, what I tell you I only omitted because I thought it was unnecessary to our current task. So what better place to start than the beginning……

Ubuntu spoke and gave me his whole unadulterated story while we rested and recuperated our wounds on the quiet train ride. I had finally deemed he had indeed told me the truth in the first place. He could have omitted or even outright lied to me about being one of the mages that enchanted Malefor into me but after hearing his tale I really came to respect him for being forthright.

Ubuntu had been born to a family of traveling ape merchants. During this time Gaul and Malefor were not even in the public consciousness. Gaul was simply a successful warlord who brought many ape clans under his banner by promising them a true homeland for apekind- clans who were ignorant of the tyrant just waiting beneath the surface.

Ubuntu spent his childhood traveling with his parents up and down the Iron Coast until the day they discovered he had magical powers. The people of Törg en mass were extremely distrustful of people with magics- even hated in some circles. His parents were no exception. They elected to have young Ubuntu sent away to the Kulic Tower- a large university on Kulic Island off the coast near Anvil. Ubuntu regaled me with his tales of growing up in the Tower. University was a generous title I learned. Kulic Tower was just as much for keeping mages IN as they were for keeping them out of the general public.

“Do you hate them? -Your parents I mean. For sending you away?” I asked somberly.

Ubuntu shook his head and answered plainly. “No- I do not hate dem. People fear what dey do not understand and dey hate what dey fear.”

Ubuntu would go on to tell me about how he would get in trouble with the master mages for being out past curfew, turning classmates into frogs and even drawing crude graffiti on scrolls. I internally chuckled at the idea of Ubuntu being a hellraiser in his youth- perhaps a younger Ubuntu would have been friends with Spyro and Sparx…. Sparx.

Ubuntu continued on into his teenage years at the Tower. Typically a mage could spend their entire life behind the walls of Kulic Tower and that was often the case. Anvil would pay lots of gold to keep the mages away from society. Mages did escape however from time to time and in time Ubuntu became determined to escape.

Then he met a girl.

Another ape sorceress named Helenka had caught his eye and they quickly teamed up to escape Kulic Tower. They only had one chance as mages caught trying to escape were turned into stone and placed in the courtyard or thrown into the ocean. Through luck and cunning and little bit of magic they were able to sneak out by hiding in the laundry cart that came every month to deliver new linens. They destroyed cart and turned the driver into stone- a fitting end as he explained. From there they lived masterless and free as highwaymen raiding travelers and towns with the lack of self reflection only found in feckless teens.

A few years they began to want something with more longevity than the simple reveling after a good days raid. By then Gaul had secretly made his pact with Malefor and began laying waste to his neighbors and slowly but surely the world was beginning to go to war with Gaul. Knowing what I do now, I know Gaul was slowly making his way to Avalar to raid the Dragon Temple and steal the egg of the dragon capable of opening the Convexity- my egg. Ubuntu and Helenka soon threw their support in for the ape king and unwittingly, the Dark Master. They left Törg to find Gaul and pledge their support for him. They would not meet Gaul at first- instead serving under this general and that lieutenant but would eventually garner the attention of this self-proclaimed ape king. And Ubuntu would become one of his trusted mage advisers.

Not long after the raid on the Dragon Temple where my egg was stolen and Ignitus sent Spyro’s egg into the swamp, Helenka became with-child.

“It should have been de happiest day of my life but even by den I was beginning to lose myself to dark magic. I only cared about de powah….”

Not long later Helenka would give birth to a healthy baby boy named…… well, Ubuntu could not recall. But Helenka would not survive the birthing process.

“I was that far gone that I did not even know my son’s name…. And Helenka was gone. Everything fell apart.”

Ubuntu’s son had no magical powers whatsoever- a common happening when two mages have offspring- like a double negative. In his lust for power Ubuntu found his son more of an inconvenience and even admittedly an embarrassment. Ubuntu rarely saw his son and usually left him to the care of slaves Gaul had given him.

Years would pass and soon Gaul was marching on Törg again but this time with Cynder, the black scourge of the sky. By now the war was in full swing and the valiant alliance forces led by Ignitus and the other guardians were coming to bear on Gaul but now this was when I began to kidnap them to steal their power for open the way to Convexity.

“I don’t know how- we had captured Anvil- around the same time you met Faranthia. But somehow- in de fighting..” Ubuntu’s typically rocky grumble began to weaken and I could tell he would cry if there were any tears left in the old man. “… somehow my son was killed- I was not there- I never was but he was gone. Snuffed from this world like a candle. I had lost everything.”

After his son’s death, Ubuntu was broken. Dark or light, good or evil meant nothing anymore. Losing everything freed him from his path in life in a way.

“I thought of the son I lost- I tink about him everyday but back den- I thought of him and thought of what me and the other mages had done to you- an infant no less. I finally saw what monster I had turned into. I became the very thing that scared people most about mages. In dat moment I finally looked at everything Gaul and I had wrought and only den did I see the horrors. The dream of an ape nation had become a nightmare of slaughter for nothing but the whims of the Dark Master. I did not care if I lived or died anymore but I promised myself that I would at least free you before dis was over.”

But Ubuntu would not get the chance to save me. Not long after his son’s death and his change of heart I would soon be saved by Spyro and the Guardians and far from Gaul’s reach. With me in better hands and Gaul residing at the Well of Souls, Ubuntu then resolved to bring his fellow mages to justice for their crimes. One by one he would track down Gaul’s inner circle of witches and warlocks and end them. But there was a price for his betrayal.

“Using such black magics is intense and straining on de body and to turn away from those magics ravages de body. My body aged doubly fast the more I rejected the dark magic. Dat is why you see an old man before you today. Giving up the dark powers aged me severely but it was a price I had to pay- to begin to atone.”

Ubuntu would assist the people of Törg in training and organizing to resist Malefor’s armies for the next few years while me and Spyro were frozen in the Well of Souls and up to the day we stopped Malefor for good.

“And den the Seven arrived and well… you know de rest.” Ubuntu finished and took a somber sip of his tea. “You know everything now.”

I looked out the window to see the sun was setting. We had been speaking for hours apparently. It would be night by the time we reached Will’s Mill. I sat back down and unfolded my hind legs to stretch them.

“I…. didn’t know you had a son.” Was all I managed to comment. It was strange, Ubuntu had committed terrible crimes but he had turned it around- or at least he was trying but now all I saw sitting across from me on the floor of the train car was a broken old man who was trying to atone for a crime before his end. I did not feel anger for him but pity. He had lost everything. This mission was the last thing he had to hold on to. To save Törg from the Seven and to heal me. I felt sorry for him in a way. I don’t know if I can sympathize with him however and part of me thinks he does not want me to. Our mistakes are our mistakes and we have to shoulder them by ourselves with or without sympathy from others.

“I hardly imagine he would care to call me his father…..”

It was then a real question came to the forefront of my mind. “Ubuntu… what will you do once we stop the Seven?”

Ubuntu exhaled through his simian nose. “I do not know. I will have nothing left to be. I suppose I will throw myself to your judgment. It is only fitting that you decide my final fate seeing as you were my worst victim and the other mages are dead. Will you execute me for my crimes or show me mercy at the end.”

It was almost rhetorical. “Ubuntu, you know I won’t execute you.”

“Yes I figured as such. Will you banish me from Avalar and Törg to wander the far away places until de gods call me for their judgement?”

If I had been a simpler dragoness I might have spared him to have him live out the rest of his days helping others but realistically- it would be a miracle if he survived the next few months. And if I sent him away he would have nothing and be nothing without a mission. Perhaps the most merciful thing I could do is let him be something before he ends instead of being nothing.

“What if me and Spyro locked you up in the jail at the new Temple.” I answered, curious as to his reaction.

The faintest glimpse of a smile graced his lips for a second. “Ha ha Cyndah. You are wise beyond your years. I can see it in you- you will be a great and fair leader one day.”