Chapter 5: Weapon of the Banned
Drizzy looked at Pbrabbit. Pbrabbit looked at Spyro. Spyro looked at Drizzy.
"So what now?" Drizzy asked first, immediately walling the two others from asking the same question.
"You're the mod, I thought you'd be the one who'd knew. After all, you're the one who led us here," Spyro said to Drizzy. Pbrabbit nodded, simply trying to shift answering that god forsaken question to someone else.
Drizzy shrugged. "I have a vague understanding of how to move through the realm of the Banned, but never once do I actually know where we are. Spacetime is distorted, everything looks weird. If we were in Pokemon, this would be the Distortion world. Except there isn't a capitalized GIRATINA running around in a linear puzzle. This is a world, one which can't be mapped the normal way, and we're trying to find a single object within it."
"The Staff of Infinite Powers," Spyro said in wonder.
"Why was it stuck here?"
Again, Drizzy shrugged.
"To be honest, I'm not so sure myself. I vaguely remember that it had been Twam who had placed the Staff down here, but even the Staff is something that he could not master. It's an artefact that exists meta of the 343i.org subspace universe, something whose history predates and preludes us. But.....I can't really remember anyway. Thinking about it hurts my head, I assume from all the paradoxes."
He gave a faraway gaze to fit the context of the scene, before snapping back to reality with a snap of his fingers.
"Anyways, lets ignore that topic for now. We have a choice - either explore this island, which may eventually turn out to be more a continent than an Island, what with the lands always moving and stuff, or we could try to fly off. But I do have a pressing issue at hand, and running away from it wouldn't help."
"What is it?" Pbrabbit asked, concerned. It wasn't every day that a staff said they had a pressing issue, even if they were banned. Although that may have been due to the fact that no staff had ever been banned. Or had issues.
Drizzy extended his palm, and began to channel his residual staff powers. White-blue energy cascaded off his fingertips like slow-mo waterfall, before he re-absorbed the energy with his other hand.
"This is the remaining energy from being staff. It's a fair fraction of what I originally had before I was banned, but now that I'm here, I'm slowly being drained of the power."
Spyro and Pbrabbit nodded. They could understand - even now, despite having moved very little, they felt like they had just taken a long hike - existing within the realm of the banned was exhausting. Drizzy was losing a lot more energy than they did.
The purple dragon looked towards Drizzy. "And your moderator ring is gone. I assume it shattered when your position was revoked. That was the key, wasn't it? It held the energy, like a recharging battery."
Drizzy nodded. "In a way, yes. I can't explain everything because that would take too long, but simplified you could say that the ring was a recharging battery of moderator energy. Now, the recharging bit is gone, and my body is the conduit for the circuit of energy. It continuously flows within me, and doesn't stop. There isn't necessarily an exit within said circuit of energy, but like an electrical circuit's energy turning into thermal energy and being lost, my energy is being lost as well. I need to place what remains into something that can hold, trap, and use the moderator powers, similar to the ring, but it won't be recharging."
"And what object will you place it into?" Pbrabbit asked, though already he could guess the answer - they had to go look for something that worked.
"I don't know," Drizzy answered as he gestured with his hand to the expanse of the forest around them, "But I hope to see what I can find in this realm. The side effects of using a weapon from the realm of the banned excites me to, which is why I suggest simply walking inland. Any objections?"
Both Spyro and Pbrabbit shook their heads.
"Well then, lets go!" Drizzy said with enthusiasm before skipping through the forest, Pbrabbit and Spyro following. Under his breath, Spyro muttered, "Wow. That took a loooong time."