Chapter One:
	Years later

	“…and that was the last we saw of him. It has been about several years now. We’ve searched for any sign of where he went but he just vanished— mush too the displeasure of Terrador,” Cynder said, finishing her story.
	“Did you ever find out why he left?” an inquisitive little ice dragoness asked. She had very light blue scales that mirrored the color of snow with blue wing-membranes and white claws and unusual transparent blue crystal-like horns and tail mace. Her tail mace was like the intersection of four crystal axes. She wore an elegant golden-jeweled necklace given to her by Cynder herself. A yellow diamond-shaped discoloration sat on the top of her head and parallel yellow stripes going diagonally down her back. 
	“Weren’t you listening? She said that was the last she saw of him,” equally young fire dragon countered. He looked like an earth dragon except for his red scale color. Curled, tan, ram-like horns hooked around his head. He had brown wing-membranes and chest scales, and black claws. A light brown club with small bumps and a large spike lay at the end of his tail.
	“Shut up, hothead!”
	“Aurora, Scorch, please stop,” Cynder said calmly. “To answer your question, Aurora, no it seemed that all evidence of him was erased.” 
	“This is stupid. He probably left to get away from you and those idiot Guardians,” piped an overly confident green earth dragon.  He was rather large for his age and had large tough brown scales on his shoulders, hips, back of his head, and around his horns.
	“That was uncalled for,” Aurora hissed.
	“Go bury your head in a book, freak!”
	“Stone, that’s enough or you will be doing extra hours of training today,” Spyro growled as he entered the room.
“Whatever,” Stone scoffed and left the room with a beautiful petite pure-black dragoness following close behind. She had silver thorns running down her back and on her horns. 
“Were there any other problems?” Spyro asked, looking over at Aurora and Scorch.
“None more than the usual,” Cynder sighed and Spyro just shook his head. 
“Go on. You’re free to play,” Spyro said to the other younglings. Most of them bolted for the door but two stay behind. Aurora collected her notes that she wrote during an elder’s story into her bag and Scorch was lazily stretching before getting up to leave. Once they left, they headed in opposite directions; Aurora headed in the direction of the balcony and Scorch scampered for the courtyard, toward the other dragons.
Aurora sat where there was ample sunlight and pulled out a book from her bag; although she had read every book in the temple library at least three times, she still found reading an enjoyable pastime. This book was one of her favorites; a highly detailed account of Avalar’s recorded past. It had been written and rewritten many times to protect it from decomposing; with each new copy, new tales of more and more amazing historic events were added.
…
In the courtyard below, the other dragons were laughing as they simply chased each other in a game of free-for-all tag. That was until Scorch bolted through, weaving past the other dragons, and Stone charging behind him, ramming into any who were unfortunate enough to be in his way.
“Come back here. I just want to ‘talk’,” Stone roared.
“Somehow I doubt a talk with you would good for my health,” Scorch responded, looking back at the following dragon.
“You’ve got that damn right, freak,” the black dragoness retorted as she quickly jumped out from behind another dragon, knocking Scorch over from the side and quickly pinning him.
“Hey sweet thing,” Scorch wheezed. The black dragoness hissed in his face. Her breath reeked of the acidic poison she favored.
“Haze, move,” Stone commanded and the black dragoness slowly backed away; a smile appeared on her face when she saw Stone. Scorch got up and shook himself off, smiling. 
“Can’t catch me yourself so you had your girlfriend fight for you.”
‘You’re dead.”
The fluttering of insectiod wings signaled the approach of the local “babysitter,” Sparx.  “You—guys—are fast…” he struggled to catch his breath. “I don’t what it is between you two, but I’m ending I…”
“Annoying pest.” Stone swung his tail club and swatted the dragonfly away. 
“That was rather cruel,” Scorch said.
“…and what of it. My Stone can do whatever he pleases,” Haze cooed.
“Quiet,” Stone hissed as he scornfully looked down at her.
“What a cute couple,” Scorch chuckled earning him a quick claw to the side of the head, knocking him onto the ground and back a few feet.
“That reminds me, I was going tear your ugly skull off.”
“What’s going on here!” boomed a pleasant voice for its very unpleasant owner. An adult fire dragoness steadily strolled outside; although her body was female, she had muscles and strength that surpassed most adult males formed in her youth from the rivalry between her and Ignitus for guardianship. She walked straight over to where Stone and Scorch stood. All other younglings quickly got out of her way and began to head inside, even Haze backed away.
“We were just talking, Lavana. Now, go away,” Stone said, not taking his eyes off Scorch.
“Funny, every time you ‘talk’ with someone, that someone gets crippled,” Lavana coldly replied. Her shadow was caste like an omen over Stone.
“Hey, I thought I told you to leave, damn skank.” Stone could not have moved fast enough to avoid Lavana’s foot slamming down on top of him, pushing his face into the dirt.
“What was that you little brat! I am a Guardian! You WILL show me respect! I worked hard to become a Guardian and I will not put up with a disrespectful, snot-nosed, punk-ass child like you!” Every time she finished a sentence, she stepped a little harder on Stone.
“Enough, Lavana,” Terrador said as he wearingly walked outside. “You know that we don’t hurt younglings.” 
“I keep hearing that Stone wants to be treated like an adult; he’s almost big enough. I thought we should oblige him. I would love to make something of himself with his charming attitude,” Lavana smirked as she pushed down on Stone one more time and Stone gave a quick pathetic high-pitch yelp.
“I suppose you would but it is not our place to judge. Now, get off him,” Terrador responded tiredly.
Lavana grit her teeth in frustration and slowly backed off of Stone.  Stone quickly stood, whipped around, and hissed, “I’m not through with you yet, bitch.”
Terrador sighed and bent down to pick up Stone by the tail with his teeth. “I will deal with him.”
“Put me down you overgrown toad,” Stone hissed as he bit down on Terrador shoulder. Stone gave another pitiful yelp when Terrador reinforced his grip on Stone’s tail. Terrador sighed again as he carried Stone inside. After they disappeared from sight, Haze slowly and silently followed after Terrador and her beloved Stone.
“Well—I guess I should be going too…” Scorch said after a long uncomfortable pause. He started head toward the hallway inside.
“Stop,” Lavana said abruptly. She turned to face Scorch before she continued, “Scorch, you need to learn to leave Stone alone. He’s bad enough without you antagonizing him.”
“He won’t leave me alone and I don’t antagonize him,” Scorch said somewhat proudly and with a smile. “—what does antagonize mean?” he asked cluelessly.
Lavana gave a frustrated sigh. “It means to provoke. Please, at least try not to ‘provoke’ him during elemental training—you can go now.” She watched Scorch dash into the temple to cause whatever trouble followed him.
Scorch dashed off to where he thought Sparx had fallen but he could not find him.
“I’m get to old for this— help,” said a voice from overhead.
Scorch looked up to see yellow glow coming large, old crack in the upper wall. “Sparx, is that you?”
“Who else would it be?”
“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“No, I’ve fared worse in my adventures with Spyro, but— I’m stuck,” Sparx said embarrassed.
 Scorch backed away from the wall slowly, before charging faster than break-neck-speed into the wall. The crack doubled, then tripled in size as the wall shook. Sparx quickly popped out of the wall and dropped disoriented to the ground.
“You could have warned me, hardhead,” Sparx yelled but stopped his scolding when he saw the sizable hole Scorch made with his head. “You know the Guardians are going to kill you, don’t you?”
“Yeah… hey, if anyone is looking for me, I’ll be in the usual place,” Scorch said, running off again.
“oh, they will be looking for you alright,” Sparx yelled after the troublesome child. He didn’t understand why Scorch was so fond of the rofftops. Truthfully Scorch was one of the reasons Sparx  would never have children.
…
Having the ruckus downstairs disturb her reading, Aurora sighed, packed up her things, and decided to head back to her room. Scorch’s idiotic actions always seemed to disturb her peaceful and relaxing readings. She swore that simpleton had no intellectual consciousness to begin with. The Guardians were just wasting their time training one as talentless and dimwitted as him.
After a short time berating Scorch, Aurora arrived at her room. The door was neatly decorated with ice cut into precise geometric triangles and diamonds, which she constructed herself, each equally spaced and equal in size. These ice gems formed a 9-pointed star overlapping a depiction of a Pentakis dodecahedron, a complex design of equilateral triangle that form a sphere. As she opened the door, a light shined through almost as bright as it was outside.  
Her room was adorned with ice pendants that reflected what little light that came through her window, keeping her room well lit regardless of time of day. She had frost-covered bookshelves lined from floor to ceiling, most containing a few of her favorite books and others held the various gifts given to her by the elders. Everything in her room sparkled in the light and nothing was even slightly out of place. Even though there was frost nearly everywhere, she kept her room at a comfortable cool temperature to protect some of the older antiques and even older books she owned.
She unhurriedly pulled her books out of her bag, and flew up to the top shelf; her wing beats dusted the frost off the bookshelves, which fell like glitter. She started to slide the books gently back into place as she descended. When she reached the ground, she calmly aligned her charcoal back into their proper orderly arrangement on her desk. Afterward, she folded her bag crisply into a perfect square and tucked it in neatly with the rest of her weekly supply of bags in her desk drawer. With everything back in its proper place, Aurora unceremoniously flopped onto her bed; with her bed being as soft as powder snow, she quickly fell asleep.