While the Skylanders fended off Kaos's minions, Master Eon gazed over them with attentive eyes from his balcony. His hands turned clammy with fear, but his heart pounded with a different kind of emotion, the nature of which was invisible to all but him.

Oh, if only I were younger than I am now, Master Eon lamented as his mouth dipped into a frown. I loathe leaving all this work to them, but my body just isn't what it used to be, and neither is my magic.

Master Eon looked up from his lamentations... And just then, his heart stopped.

In the moments he had spent sulking, a giant shadow sneaked up from Kaos's fortress and eyed the Core of Light before it unveiled itself from the shadows. This creature seemed to be one of the most evil things at the time, with four long, snake-like heads that all bore draconic fangs and beady eyes. The first head was a chromatic aqua, the second green, the third whitish and skeletal, and the final a bright red, but all were equally fear-inducing in nature. Worse yet, each one had a large beam of magic energy formed in its mouth with all of beams aimed straight towards the center of the Core!

"No, not the Core!" Master Eon pleaded, his voice cracked and strained.

However, Master Eon's plea fell on uncaring ears as this hydra shot a brilliant beam of light from one of its four heads and hit the Core straight in its center! It all happened so fast! One moment, everybody was in the heat of battle, and the next, the very thing they defended was shot down right before their eyes and blown to tiny bits!

The Skylanders stopped dead in their tracks and fixed their eyes on the Core, breaths bated and hearts refrained from beating.

Spyro himself dropped the tiny cyclops he battered in moments, and his eyes became so engrossed with the scene that he didn't even notice its getaway. He only stared at the Core, his expression fallen while fear crossed his face.

"NO!" Spyro screamed, his voice strained as he reached out in some vain attempt to stop the explosion.

But he failed. The Core flew to bits, and his vision went black as the explosion caught him in its claws.

As Spyro fell unconscious, the other Skylanders followed suit. One by one, something came over them all and they all collapsed as cages made of raw, orange magic wrapped tight around them. These cages shot off into the air, never to be seen again with only one witness to this awful defeat.

As the Skylanders disappeared into the stratosphere right before his eyes, Master Eon's body shuddered with pain so intense it made everything completely numb. His body slunk against a now-collapsed wall in his citadel, and laid in such pain that he couldn’t even bring himself to cry. Everything around him turned blurry and unreal, and it seemed like every moment that passed sapped the life from his weakened body. With a resounding cough that shook every part of his body, Master Eon’s heart sank.

It was over. The Skylanders were gone, and he knew that he was soon to follow. His fears really had come to life right in front of his eyes. But as he felt his soul leave his body, Master Eon sent out one last prayer, in some kind of vain clutch to one last string of hope.

If I am leaving Skylands now, Master Eon thought as his eyelids bobbed up and down over blurry eyes. May someone else defend it in my place.

§

Hugo peeked up from a rock and tried to look around, but he couldn't see a thing. The world was completely dark.

"Master Eon? Spyro? Anyone?" he whimpered, but there was no response.

Hugo went outside of hole with barely-mustered courage. His heart pounded with fear every step of the way as he struggled to navigate through the thick dark clouds. Everything around him seemed so hopeless, so lonesome. So… Evil.

"What happened?" Hugo asked out loud, but no response was said.

Hugo trembled, then he ran as fast as his stubby legs could take him until he arrived inside the stone walls of the citadel.

"Be brave, Hugo. I'm sure there's an explanation for all this. Maybe it's just a bad dream?" Hugo bit his lip as he tugged on the lapel of his jacket. "But if it was a dream, then why does it feel so real?"

Hugo's train of thought soon left the station as he tripped over… Something. He couldn't have told what, as his glasses had fallen off and rendered him unable to see.

"What in Skylands did I just trip over?" Hugo sat back up and put his glasses back on.

He looked down and his heart sank to his feet while his breath stopped momentarily. There in front of his was a pale, feeble corpse. However, the corpse itself wasn't what scared him, surprisingly enough—it was of who the corpse was of. His eyes fell on the corpse’s torn and tattered blue robes, and the broken helmet that laid in its lap, and he knew immediately whose corpse it was.

Now, it really was hopeless.

§

Meanwhile, the Skylanders propelled through all space in these orange cages of energy as slowly, surely, they woke up. They had no idea where they were, but they definitely weren't in Skylands anymore.

Spyro opened his eyes as his head pounded and his entire body ached. He tried to flex out his paw, but found that he couldn't even move a muscle.

"We need to get out!" Spyro shouted.

"But, I can't move!" shouted another one of the Skylanders, voices noticeably higher than before.

"Neither can I!"

"Wait, are we shrinking?!"

Voices of all kinds sounded off all around as the Skylanders froze in their very positions, with only their eyes able to move. But, they didn't pay much mind to this, as they were focused more on where they were headed—a giant blue, white, and green planet…