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  “As you all know,” Spyro continued, “tonight marks the start of the third day since the Noctem Alliance established its presence on this island. Therefore, I, the commander of this legion of the Noctem Alliance, believe the time has come to make certain announcements. Firstly, it is my pleasure to announce that the Greater Mushroom Island will, from this day forth, no longer be an independent nation, but rather a province of the Nation of the Noctem Alliance.”

  Horrified gasps and screams erupted throughout the crowd at this announcement, and intensified as troops began to pour in from the streets leading into the plaza. These soldiers were not clad in black like the Noctem troops, but rather in a light gray.

  “The people of the Greater Mushroom Tribe,” said Spyro affectionately, gesturing to the troops now encircling the population of the city, “have been instrumental in the agenda of the Noctem Alliance, and we are now amiably considered mutual allies. In repayment for their help, the Chief of the Greater Mushroom Tribe has requested just one favor for his people. Therefore, in fulfillment of this favor, the Lesser Mushroom Island is now, and forever shall be, under the rule of the Greater Mushroom Tribe.”

  Although Stan could not see the expressions on the faces of the crowd, he could imagine that they looked absolutely terrified at the implications of this turn of events. Stan felt his heart clench. A conversation came flooding back to him . . . a secret talk between Blackraven and the Chief of the Greater Tribesmen while he himself had been feigning sleep in his jail cell on Mount Fungarus. He had to let the people of the island know of the incredible danger they were in. His mind immediately went into scheming mode as he tried desperately to think of how to warn the Lesser Tribesmen in time.

  “The people of the Greater Mushroom Tribe,” continued Spyro in an almost casual manner, “feel that you, the people of the Lesser Mushroom Tribe, have betrayed the sacred ideals of the Mushroom Tribe by living in the way that you have for the past six months. Therefore, under the new mandate, the Greater Tribesmen will see that you are put firmly back into your place.”

  Spyro gave a smug little chuckle, which caused another collective outburst of terrified cries as Stan’s stomach flooded with acid. Spyro merely continued, “The second announcement regards a matter of national security. It has come to the attention of the Noctem Alliance that Stan2012, President of the Grand Republic of Elementia and Public Enemy Number One, has escaped Fungarus and is now in hiding on this island.”

  The crowd was silent. Stan knew they must have been shocked but were far too terrified to speak out.

  “As I am sure you are aware,” Spyro continued, malice dripping from his voice, “the Noctem Alliance does not take kindly to any who work against us. This island is, as we speak, being surrounded by a heavy blockade by sea. Escape from the island will be impossible. Therefore, if anybody has any information regarding the whereabouts of Stan2012, you are to deliver it to a member of the Noctem Army immediately. Should you carry information regarding the president’s location and fail to report it, you will receive a punishment that fits your crime.

  “And now I am instating a curfew. All citizens are to return to their dwellings and are not to leave until sunrise.”

  Immediately, the citizens filed out of the plaza with surprising speed. As a wave of people filed back toward Olea’s store and toward their own houses, Stan could practically feel the cloud of dread wafting off them. Stan saw Olea break from the rabble and reenter the front door to her store. Stan turned around as she clambered up the stairs, looking disgruntled.

  “How much did you hear?” she demanded.

  “All of it,” Stan replied. “Olea, I . . .”

  “Don’t say nothin’,” Olea said, speaking quickly and with an urgent look on her face. “You gotta wait for an opening, and then get off this island. It’s a hazard to you as well as the people living here the longer you stay.”

  Stan nodded, his breathing shallow, as he walked back over to the window, looking out the corner. Olea walked over beside him to view the scene on the streets as well, and Stan could almost hear her racing heartbeat, which matched his nearly perfectly.

  The roads were now cleared. Not one person could be seen in the streets, illuminated by the redstone lamps even as the sun was vanishing behind the skyline. The only forms of life remaining outdoors came in the form of the mass of gray-armored troops standing in rows in front of the fountain and staring up at the Chief of the Greater Tribesmen.

  “The time has come, my brothers and sisters,” the voice of the chief rang out over the plaza. “Our evil brethren have desecrated these sacred islands with their heathen ways for the last time. It is time for us to finally rid this server of the barbaric savages once and for all. We have long prepared for this day. You know what to do.”

  The Greater Tribesmen cheered and pumped their fists into the air, some empty and some clutching bows. Then they dashed out of the plaza, flooding the streets. What happened next made Stan’s stomach drop in horror.

  Half the Greater Tribesmen were sprinting down the streets, throwing small black objects into the windows of some of the street-side stores. The objects shattered the windows and were immediately followed by a burst of fire and light from within the store. As the blaze from the fire charges intensified, players burst out of the doors of their burning houses and into the streets. There they instantly fell dead to the ground, with arrows sticking out of them courtesy of the Greater Tribesmen, who were armed with bows.

  Stan whipped around to face Olea. “What in the . . . what the . . . ,” he sputtered, his mind unable to grasp what he was seeing.

  “It’s the Great Purge,” Olea breathed, glancing in awe at the fires now erupting all around them, and the countless civilians being shot to death in the streets. “They talked about it for months . . . but I never thought it’d actually happen. . . .”

  “What are you talking about?” Stan demanded.

  “The Greater Tribesmen are killing all the Lesser Tribesmen,” Olea said, her voice quavering with fury. “They talked about it before, called it the ‘Great Purge.’ We’ve always known that the Greater Tribesmen hated the Lesser Tribesmen, but we never figured that they’d go through with something like this. . . .”

  “We have to stop them!” cried Stan, looking around frantically at the carnage in the streets and drawing his sword.

  “Put that away,” growled Olea, grabbing Stan’s sword out of his hand and tossing it to the floor. “There’s nothin’ you can do to stop this, and you know it.”

  “But . . . I have to . . . ,” Stan stammered, unable to accept the truth of what she was saying.

  “Whatcha gonna do?” spat Olea cynically. “March out there by yourself and fight the entire Noctem Army? Listen, Stan. I hate what’s going on out there just as much as you do, but I know there’s nothin’ I can do to stop it.”

  “Well . . . well, what about you?” Stan shouted, trying to get her to see reason. “Won’t they come after you, too?”

  “No,” Olea replied bitterly. “They only attack the places where the Lesser Tribesmen live. They’re ignorin’ the citizens of the mainland and lettin’ ’em be. Though if they want to destroy this city in the first place, I’m not sure what the point of that is. . . .”

  “I know why,” answered Stan as the conversation in the jail cell rushed back to his head. “The Greater Tribesmen made an agreement with the Noctem Alliance. They’re going to take the republic citizens as hostages and then destroy all the buildings on the island.”

  Olea’s eyes widened and then glazed over for a moment, and Stan could see the gears whirring behind them. Then she pulled herself together and looked at Stan.

  “Stan, you gotta get out, undetected and fast,” Olea said quickly, glancing nervously out the window. “You gotta get back to Elementia if we’re gonna win this war, and save not only your people but us here on the Mushroom Islands, too.”

  Stan nodded, trying to ignore the boiling feeling in his stomach. He knew that,
as abhorrent as the massacre outside his window was, he would have to ignore it for the time being, however painful it may be for him. He was about to thank Olea for all that she had done for him when suddenly a sharp knock came from below.

  Stan and Olea held each other’s glance for an instant. Then Olea, an unnerved look on her face, hissed “Hide!” under her breath as she walked over to the stairwell, clearly trying to remain calm. Stan, meanwhile, felt his heart skip a beat as he clutched DZ’s sword and ducked into the closet, closing the door quickly yet silently behind him.

  The closet was tiny, with barely enough room for Stan to stand in. He was surrounded by chests, stacked wall-to-ceiling, on all sides. Stan spun around to face the door, feeling incredibly claustrophobic in addition to his terror of whatever had come knocking at the door. Stan tried to calm his frantic breathing so that he could hear the voices arguing downstairs.

  “Whaddaya want?” Olea’s brutal voice demanded.

  “We’re looking for President Stan,” a second voice replied aggressively. “We got a tip that he might be hiding out in here.”

  Stan nearly gave a squeal of panic, but managed to suppress it. How did anybody know that he was here? He had made sure he wasn’t followed!

  “Well, whoever told you that was a no-good liar!” retorted Olea, her voice confident and bearing no hint that she was misleading them. “I know better than to risk my life by protectin’ that fugitive, even against you cretins.”

  “Well, then how do you explain the fact that your neighbor saw two heads looking out your window? We know that you live alone.”

  “Who told you somethin’ as ridiculous as that?” Olea inquired, sounding outraged, as a fist of ice clenched Stan’s heart. “And how do you know that I live alone?”

  “Well, let’s just say that if your best friend’s house is engulfed in flames, and you’re talking to a man with a fire charge in his hand, you’re willing to hand over information a bit easier.”

  “You are the lowest of the low . . . ,” seethed Olea. Stan could envision the almost inhuman snarl of disgust on her face.

  “Oh, how wrong you are, little girl.” The guard snickered. “If you want to see the lowest of the low, just take a look at who your good friend President Stan has pledged his life to defending. Come on, search the house.”

  “Whaddaya think you’re doing?” shouted Olea, and Stan could hear the scuffle downstairs as the soldiers ransacked her shop. “If you don’t stop right now, I will kill you!”

  “He’s not here,” the second voice grunted. “Search upstairs.”

  “Stop that right now!” bellowed Olea, as Stan heard the clomping of footsteps growing rapidly louder. “This is breakin’ and enterin’! What are you . . . this is my bedroom! I demand that you leave right now! What the . . . ? Oh, no, don’t you dare open that . . .”

  Stan was prepared. Just as the wooden door in front of him was flung open, flooding his eyes with light, Stan surged forward with a battle cry, thrusting DZ’s sword forward and directly into the stomach of the soldier. The Greater Tribesman gave a yell of anguish as the diamond sword tore through his gray leather armor and came out his back.

  Olea whipped out a diamond sword of her own and slashed into the soldier nearest her as the Knockback enchantment on DZ’s sword took effect, sending Stan’s soldier flying across the room and into the wood-plank wall, his items bursting into a ring around him as he landed. Olea quickly gained the upper hand on the second soldier as the third and final soldier in the room rushed into Stan.

  Stan was able to repel the soldier reasonably well, countering the blows and jabs of his opponent, but Stan’s skill with a sword was only rudimentary, and he found himself unable to connect a blow of his own. One well-placed hit later, and Stan found DZ’s diamond sword spiraling across the attic and landing in a corner with a clattering sound. Stan frantically dived to avoid the following strike from the soldier’s iron sword and landed flat on his face. He rolled onto his back and tried to scuttle over and retrieve his sword.

  Right as he reached the weapon, the soldier was upon him, leaving no time to arm himself. The soldier’s sword didn’t hit, however. Before the soldier could deliver a blow, two diamond swords poked point-first out of his stomach, and the soldier collapsed at Stan’s feet, a ring of items bursting from around him. Stan looked up and saw Olea, pulling her two swords out of the soldier’s back and latching them onto her hips.

  “You okay?” Olea asked, not breathing heavily in the slightest as she reached a hand down to pull Stan to his feet.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Stan panted in response. He was too shell-shocked to think and just grasped Olea’s hand and let her pull him to his feet.

  “I swear . . . when I find out which of those disgustin’ vermin ratted us out . . . ,” hissed Olea under her breath, but she stopped when she noticed Stan. He was staring at the floor, where the items of one of the three dead players lay—namely, the player who had died at Stan’s hand. He stared, almost uncomprehendingly, at those items.

  Stan found himself unable to speak. For the first time in his life, Stan2012 had killed another player.

  “Hey, don’t dwell on it,” Olea said, walking up beside Stan and turning her blocky head to face him. “You didn’t have a choice. It was either him or you.”

  Stan sighed. “Yeah, I know,” he replied, his voice sounding almost meek. “It’s just . . .”

  “Just nothin’,” Olea replied firmly. “It had to be done, and you know it, so it’s not worth thinkin’ about no more. You can’t waste no more time, Stan.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Stan said, looking at Olea and a bit disturbed with himself as he found that, despite the fact that he had just ended another life for the first time since he had joined Elementia, he was able to put the conflict within him aside relatively easily. “Okay, I’ll head out now.”

  “Good,” Olea replied, “You can slip out the back door.”

  Stan grabbed his sword, took a deep breath, and marched downstairs. Stan was totally floored to see the complete devastation of the shop that the soldiers had managed in just a few seconds. It looked like they had checked around the few pieces of furniture in the most destructive way possible.

  Various picture frames sat on the floor, which was sprinkled with shattered glass from the busted-out windows. The glass dust was twinkling with radiant red light, and Stan looked out at the blaze now engulfing the city. The fire was spreading to the houses of the other citizens as well, and the streets were flooded with people desperately trying to extinguish the fires and protect their livelihoods from being lost in the inferno.

  Stan could hardly take in what he was seeing. He remembered, just days ago, when he had stood in the center of this great city, on tour with a guide named Danny, and was blown away by the brilliant displays of lights and lively players bustling through the streets like blood through the veins of a magnificent living being. At the rate the flames were spreading, the city would all be gone by morning.

  What Stan did next was without thinking. It was without logic. It was without any form of common sense whatsoever. Stan burst out of the front door of Olea’s shop and into the streets. He was acting on raw, unbridled emotion, wanting to do everything he could to draw the Noctem Alliance, these harbingers of destruction and pain, as far away from this city as possible. Stan raised his arms, still clutching DZ’s sword and, with a vein pulsing in his forehead, he opened his mouth and gave a mighty roar.

  “HEY! SPYRO! COME AND GET ME!”

  Immediately, hundreds of heads, civilian and military, whipped toward him. There was a moment when time seemed to freeze as the entire populace of the burning metropolis locked their eyes simultaneously on to Stan. Then chaos reigned.

  From all across the streets, dozens of soldiers, clad in black and gray, started charging toward him, some releasing a battle cry and some firing off arrows. Stan spun around and sprinted as fast as he could through the alleyway of the city and onto the mycelium shore
line, barely noticing the shower of arrows falling just short of him. He only glanced over his shoulder once, and his eyes locked not on the wave of troops pouring after him, but on Olea poking her head out the back door of her shop. The look on her face was a mix of surprise, fury, gratitude, and trying to comprehend what in the world he was thinking.

  Stan didn’t look for long, though. He sprinted down the mycelium-covered hill that led to the water’s edge, where he noticed a patrol boat quite close to the shore. The black-suited pilot of the dinghy barely had time to turn his head when Stan sent him careening into the ocean via a shockwave of Knockback energy from DZ’s sword. Stan landed haphazardly in the boat, and by the time he had seated himself properly, the Noctem soldiers were already splashing into the bay, just blocks away from him. Before the troops could destroy his boat with their weapons, however, Stan had desperately willed the boat to fly forward like a rocket, leaving the Noctem soldiers in a trail of bubbles behind him.

  Stan quickly glanced up at the white rectangle that was the nearly full moon and aligned himself to face east, toward Element City. As he turned the boat, Stan noticed something black poking out from under the boat’s seat. He investigated further, and found a black leather tunic and cap, presumably one that the piloting Noctem soldier had had as a backup. Stan gratefully pulled them on; a little extra protection never hurt.

  Finally, Stan gave one last glance behind him. He saw no other boats following him, and he noticed a swarm of dark forms scuffling around the shoreline, preparing to follow him. Though he knew that he ought to be thankful that the Noctem troops hadn’t been fully organized and ready to pursue him yet, Stan hardly noticed this in comparison to the city. From this distance, the tallest skyscrapers of the Lesser Mushroom Island still stood proud and tall, even amid the scarlet blaze that illuminated the night from beneath them.

  As Stan stared in awe at the downfall of this great city, a single tear rolled down his cheek. Stan’s mind began to flood with the memory of all the death, slaughter, and betrayal that he had witnessed in the city, but he forced himself to tune it out. All he had to remember, he told himself, was that it was all because of the Noctem Alliance. And the only way that he stood even the slightest chance of taking them down, once and for all, was to return to Element City.