Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Four clans of Dragons, each with their own subsets of categories within them. They once lived all in the Forgotten Realms thousands of years ago, but soon others wanted to harness the power of the dragons for their own nefarious purposes.

This caused the dragons to leave and move to the other side of the world in order to raise their new generations without worry. Unfortunately, they weren’t completely free from problems. Namely the Gnorcs being the biggest one, they hated the dragons and wanted them gone. Any chance they would get, they’d steal, eat and destroy any dragon eggs they came across.

The Dragon Clans are divided into the four regions of the Dragon Realms; Western, Eastern, Northern, and Southern Groups, with each having it's own leader.

-Eastern Dragons-
Artisans: Nestor
Peacekeepers: Titan
Magic Crafters: Cosmos
Beast Makers: Bruno
Dream Weavers: Lateef

-Western Dragons-
Mechans(Engineering and Machines): Seth
Hydro Vains(Steam Powered): Draize
Pyro Sparkers(Fire Powered): Blaze
Aero Divers(Wind Powered): Flurry

-Southern Dragons-
Amazonites(Female only Warriors): Calypso
Bead Tellers(Fortune and Jewels): Illia
Herbal Healers(Medicinal): Clementine

-Northern Dragons-
Strikers(Sharp and Fast hitting): Hopper
NightCrawlers(Stealth based): Nova
Javel Backs(Hard Hitting, Defense): Girder
Snipers(Sharp shooting distance): Maverick

The leaders all come together once every 5 years to mingle and catch up with each other, reporting back with news of their clans. (I'll provide images eventually of the leaders)

Nestor is Spyro’s main caretaker. He’s the one that Spyro lives with while growing up and sees Nestor as his main Father.

All the stories will Focus around Spyro when he’s between the ages of 3 and 10, all before the events of the first Game, when I believe he's about 10-12.

That should just about wrap up the setup, so Spyro's birth will be the next story!

Hope you guys Like and Stay tuned!!

Chapter Text

They should have seen this coming. They really should have.

Yet Nestor stood there frozen, staring seemingly into the void as he could barely register the other Artisan Elders slowly surveying the area.

They had nearly a hundred eggs yesterday, but this morning?

Zero.

Nestor knew who the culprit was. They all knew. Ever since they had arrived in these realms, the gnorcs have been trying to get rid of them all. Stealing their eggs was the easiest way they knew how.

They had dealt with the occasional egg thief before but nothing to this magnitude.

Every single one of their eggs were now gone. The only remnants being chipped eggshells, bringing even more dread to Nestor's conscious. They had been all over the grounds of the stone fortification they called their home, each one having been accounted for.

How had the Gnorcs been this stealthy at stealing their young? The bumbling fools had never been this efficient before. It infuriated Nestor beyond reason.

The green dragon clenched his fists so tightly that his claws began to dig into his scales, his glare being directed more at himself than anything. He was in charge of the eggs this time, and he had failed. Some leader he was.

Nestor had been so lost in the spiral of his own degrading thoughts that he didn’t notice Delbin approaching him. The painter placed a claw on the carpenter’s shoulder, snapping Nestor back to reality as his own yellow eyes met those of his friend’s pale green.

“We couldn’t… there’s nothing left, Nestor…” Delbin reported in a solemn voice, his eyes full of remorse, “They took them all…”

Nestor held the dragon’s gaze for a moment longer before turning his head down and letting out a drawn out sigh of defeat, his wings lowering in a betrayal of how distraught he was over this whole thing. He buried the heels of his palms against his face, groaning a bit, “This is a disaster… Those bastards…”

Delbin merely nodded in agreement and opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by some distant shouting.

“Why weren’t you at your post last night?!! You could have prevented all of this!!!”

“It wasn’t my shift to watch over the eggs!! You’re just throwing blame around Argus! If anything we’re all at fault!”

“Oh shove it up your ass, Tomas! I don’t want to hear any of your asinine excuses when we lost our entire future because SOMEONE thought it wouldn’t matter if they skipped their night shift!!”

Tension between the lute player and poet only grew more in size as Nestor surged forward to break up the fighting. He pushed them both away from each other, clearly growing more frustrated.

“Enough! Both of you!! I don’t want any fighting right now!” The emerald dragon snarled, using his remorse as a fuel to sound more authoritative.

Argus scoffed and returned the glare the leader was giving them, “You can’t be serious Nestor! It’s clear that we were defenseless last night! No one was awake to prevent the theft of our kin!!”

“That doesn’t mean you can pin the blame randomly, Argus! I expected more of you!” Nestor snapped back, now seeing who the original aggressor was in the fight.

The poet gaped at this, “You can’t be serious, Nestor. I have a right to be distraught at the clear betrayal of our own!”

“The only ‘betrayal’, Argus, that I see here,” The carpenter turned to face the shorter dragon, “Is you turing on one of your own. You’ve known Tomas for hundreds of years and now you’re content in just throwing it all away? We are supposed to band together as a clan. Now more than ever, so I will not tolerate any animosity between any of you at this time, understood?” Nestor leaned down, his snout mere centimeters away from Argus’, his hardened glare piercing through any walls of confidence the lilac dragon had.

Argus’ posture visibly deflated in defeat, “Right… My apologies Nestor…”

Nestor exhaled and straightened back up, rubbing the back of his neck. He was already exhausted from today, emotionally and physically. What were they going to do? What would he tell the other factions? The other leaders? He didn’t even know how to begin to explain this to-

“NESTOR!!!!”

Nestor’s eyes snapped open and whipped his head in the direction of his name.

He saw one of their historians, Oswin, crouched next to a dense bush, his eyes wide and just as frantic.

The artisan leader hurried over to the tall dragon, being joined by a couple of the other dragons as well, "What is it, Oswin?”

“Why’d you scream, Os?” Their resident brewer, Gavin, questioned.

“One survived.” Was all the historian said in response, looking Nestor dead in the eyes, clear hints of relief in his voice.

Before Nestor could register what the burnt yellow dragon had said, Oswin pulled out a small purple egg that was speckled with dark purple spots.

The atmosphere around them suddenly grew tense as Nestor slowly took the egg into his own hands.

The leader never took his eyes off the small egg, a part of him was terrified he’d break it right then, but regardless, he still inspected the egg carefully.

The egg itself was in relatively decent condition, only having a few various smudges of dirt that indicated the egg had been pushed into the bush. Either by accident or an animal mistook it for something else, it was clear that was the only reason it had survived the initial swindle of eggs.

The relief Nestor had felt when Oswin handed him the egg was short-lived when the green dragon finally noticed a hair-line crack in the shell.

The crack wasn't very large, around the size of the top portion of Nestor's index finger. It was more so the fact that the egg wasn't exactly large to begin with that made Nestor worried about the crack's existence.

"Is it… is it alright?" The sound of Gavin's voice pulled Nestor out of his thoughts and turned his attention to the cluster of Artisan Dragons that were now surrounding him.

Each dragon holding their breath and anxious dripping in each stiff wing twitch, each tail shift, each clench of their claws.

In all his years of being the head elder, Nestor had never seen the lot of them THIS gut wrenchingly tense. It felt like a knife stabbed in his gut to see his clan like this. They shouldn't have to act like this, but these eggs were their future. They would have to wait another 15 years for another clutch of eggs, and even then they wouldn’t be guaranteed more than 4.

This was supposed to be their biggest year. It only happened once every 500 years for a clutch of more than 10 eggs. And everyone else knew it as well.

Their enemies knew it as well.

Nestor finally let out an exhale of slight relief, his wings lowering a tad as he raised his head to be a bit more confident, “It looks fine… aside from a small crack, it’s still warm, which means that it’s still alive and healthy.”

As the green dragon gave the verdict of the situation, there was a visible ease of stress that could be seen from all of the dragons.

“Do you think the crack could be harmful in any way?” Alvar asked cautiously, anxious smoke teased out of his nostrils as he wrung his hands together.

Before Nestor could even think about the question, the oldest dragon among them stepped forward. The pale yellow dragon, Thor, made his way forward and pulled Nestor’s hands low enough for it to be eye level with the pottery maker.

A sound of approval came from the yellow dragon as he stepped back and adjusted his glasses, “A small crack like that won’t affect the hatching of the young one. I’ve seen eggs hatch in much more damaged states than that and be perfectly fine!” As he spoke, he stole a glance over towards one of the younger elder dragons, Nils.

Said dragon raised an eyebrow before rolling his eyes, “Yes… As you can clearly see, I survived hatching.”

Darius couldn’t help but chuckle which earned him a side glance from the painter, “Is that the reason you’re so skinny?”

Nils scoffed, “That is neither here nor there you melodramatic thespian…” The artist straightened his neck scarf, turning his nose down as he couldn’t fully hide his snide retort, “Clearly all the food that was meant for me found its home in your lower gut.”

The actor couldn’t help but chuckle even more at the remark, not entirely offended by the retaliation, “Ah, you got me there, Nils! But alas, at least I have the restraint to not be as gluttonous as Argus.”

That earned a stifled snort from the slender dragon, “You’ve got a point!”

“I am standing right here with you two!!” The purple scarfed dragon angrily snapped, which only caused the pair to laugh even more.

Nestor shook his head in bemusement before turning back to the egg in his hands.

Delbin made his way to stand next to the carpenter, his tail swishing on the grass with muted anticipation, “When do you think it will hatch?”

“I can’t exactly say,” Nestor replied, his head tilting a bit and gliding a gentle thumb across the egg’s shell, “They were due in a little less than a month, so I’m assuming it’ll hatch in a month.”

“We should keep this egg closer to us, maybe even keep it inside the castle from now on.” The red dragon glanced up at his best friend, folding his arms across his chest.

Nestor nodded, “You’re right… maybe even rearrange one of the unused supply rooms into a small nursery… It’d be a bit zealous if we left a sole dragon in the large room we had started to prepare for dozens of hatchlings…”

Lindar stepped up to the two conversing elders, his hand already fidgeting on one of the watches on his wrist, “Nestor, who’s gonna name this one? I know we had a system created so that each of us could name at least one hatchling, but now that we only have one dragon it’s gonna be a bit harder for all of us to settle on one name for this little one and I don’t think it’s gonna be an easy feat for ALL of us to work together on it all or else this baby is gonna have the most complicated name in the history of all dragon kind! Even more complicated than that one dragon that had like 8 names as a weird hereditary title from those books that Oswin and Alban keep in their collection from the-”

“Lindar.” Nestor cut the blue dragon off, not surprised that he had started going off on one of his long winded anxiety rambles, but also not super in the mood to listen to one.

The clocksmith perked before giving a sheepish shrug, “Sorry, but the point still stands. Who’s gonna name him?”

The question got the attention of the rest of the group.

Despite them all being labeled as ‘Elder Dragons’, they all had the competitiveness of teenagers and constantly had to compete in metaphorical ‘measuring contests’ like ‘who could flap their wings the hardest’, or ‘Who could throw a sheep the furthest’. It all was a bit pointless to Nestor, but he couldn’t outright say that when he actively competed in the previously mentioned contests just as much as the others did. He’d also rather not mention the contests he would get in with the other clan leaders whenever they got together for their monthly meetings. They should really stop having alcohol at those meetings…

The first one to pipe up was Tomas, “We should draw straws! It’s only fair!”

“There are way too many of us to do that! We should instead pull names!” Nevin puffed his wings out a bit.

“That is the exact same thing as pulling straws, you buffoon!” Alban countered, his hand raised in annoyance.

“At least they’re trying to come up with something, all you’ve done is complain since you’ve gotten here.” Devlin crossed his arms.

“Is that seriously still what you’re thinking about? Would you drop it?” Alban’s feathers fluffed in aggravation.

“I will keep bringing it up since you clearly need that ego of yours brought down a peg!” The baker tutted his head in rebuttal.

“Guys, guys, please no fighting right now! We’re trying to figure out who will name our newest artisan!” Gildas clapped his hands, trying to keep things positive.

“Y’all should name him Kevin! I knew a nice Moai with that name. Lovely fellow.” Astor calmly offered, blissfully unaware of the growing hostility a mere 6 feet from him.

“Oh Kevin! I remember him! I loved his little parties! Some of the only folks who could party in lava like us!” Thor joined in the stroll down memory lane.

“We’re not naming the kid Kevin. ‘Sides, we already have a Kelvin in Magic Crafters.” Argus argued, eyes rolling.

“Having similar names has never stopped us before, We have both a Devlin and a Deblin.” Oswin pointed out, not entirely sure of the problem.

Darius butted in, “Their name should be dramatic! A clear connoisseur of the arts! Like a true Artisan! Something like Mephistopheles!”

“That is the most pretentious name I have ever heard in my life,” Gavin gave him a dead ass look of doubt, “Like… seriously?”

“It’s historic!” Darius spun around with a shocked expression.

“It’s a mouthful.” Nils grunted, waving his claw in a pointed gesture.

“Oh you have no concept of what a good name is! Yours is a single syllable!” Darius argued.

The bickering only continued further as Nestor let out a sigh of exasperation. Delbin could only offer him an apologetic glance, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Pretty sure you’re gonna be the guy to name the squirt,” The red scaled dragon said in a low tone towards the green dragon, “Leader gets first pick after all.”

Nestor raised a single brow, “You really think the others will give in that easily? I know you were there when it took us two hours to decide on a name for a newborn sheep.”

Delbin let out a half hearted chuckle, “Yeah, I remember… But this is a bit more important than Bo’s birth.”

“I still don’t know Del… It’s a lot of pressure that I don’t know if I’m re-”

CRACK!!

Any noise that had been in the field suddenly muted at the sound.

Nestor felt his blood run cold. Every muscle in his body felt like it had been tightened with a bear trap. His eyes went wide and full of terror as he felt the crack on the egg in his hands grow.

Every dragon was staring at him and the egg. He heard Delbin inhale sharply next to him as another cracking noise filled their ears.

The egg wobbled a little, Nestor could actually feel his body tighten in fear. His claws curled in a bit to prevent the small thing from falling out of his hands.

A chip popped off as the egg suddenly cracked open into various pieces, revealing the creature that had been shielded inside.

In Nestor’s hands lay a dragon hatchling, barely covering the size of Nestor’s palms, its scales a pure purple that leaned more towards a shade of pink than blue. Its horns, wings and belly, in contrast, were a bright shade of orange. Overall, a more unique color scheme than what was common for the average Artisan dragon.

The little hatchling could just barely raise its head, sniffing the air around him, its eyes and wings firmly shut. It couldn’t hold its head up for very long however, letting it fall soon after and buried its nose against Nestor’s palm.

The silence around the small dragon continued, each elder still in awe at what they were witnessing. All of their curiosities growing but also in tandem was their growing nervousness over the fact that none of them had ever seen a baby dragon so SMALL.

Nestor remained still, his breathing tense but he calmed a bit when the hatchling buried its snout into his palm. He slowly lowered himself to the ground, sitting on his knee and pulled his hands closer to his body.

Delbin followed suit and sat down on the ground nearby. A couple others also sat down, like Gavin, Oswin and Lindar, scooting themselves to get a closer look at the newest member of their clan, while the rest remained standing, but made a circle around Nestor and the hatchling.

“Its so small…” Were the only words that Nestor could bring himself to utter out loud as he gently shifted the hatchling to one hand, it being slightly bigger than a single one of his hands which caused one of its back legs to dangle a little.

The carpenter gently rubbed a finger against the hatchling’s head, which caused the purple dragon to emit a squeak-like cry in clear confusion before it quickly settled down and pressed closer to the claw.

“They aren’t supposed to be this small… right?” Delbin muttered in a low tone, not wanting to startle the little one.

“Not normally, no…” Gavin mumbled in response.

Thor mused a bit, rubbing a claw on his chin in thought, “Premature dragon hatchlings aren’t unheard of… but they are rare. We are a patient species, having some of the longest periods between stages of life, so there aren’t many recorded or known instances of a dragon hatching early.”

“Is it bad for a dragon to hatch early?” Gildas inquired, a hint of worry in his voice. Nestor lifted his head, anxious to hear the answer.

The older dragon paused in thought, snout scrunched a bit, “I wouldn’t say bad. It shouldn’t have any negative health risks… though the hatchling may remain on the small side for most of their life. It may even impact their ability to fly, but I’m not entirely sure. It’s mainly speculation.”

Nestor nodded, his gaze falling back down to the hatchling in his hand, who had curled its body around the green dragon’s finger and had fallen asleep quite easily.

A comfortable silence fell back over the group of them, before something suddenly dawned on Gavin.

“Uh… question…” The brewster scratched at his beard, “What’s the gender of the squirt?”

Nestor blinked. He looked up at Gavin before looking down at the purple dragon. Another beat of silence passed before Nestor slowly turned his hand, and looked, earning a confused chirp from a newly woken up baby dragon.

The green dragon cleared his throat as he set the baby back down, rubbing its head with his thumb, “It’s a boy. Definitely a boy.”

Delbin couldn’t help but chuckle, “Dude you are such a pansy with this stuff. It’s just a baby.”

“Please don’t start with this right now, Delbin. There is a baby present.” Nestor retorted, trying his best to retain his composure, unaware of the knowing glances between the other dragons.

“Sooo… it’s a boy,” Tomas started, “Why don’t we name him Alon?”

“That’s too much of a soft name, it should be a hardy name! Like Benji!” Alvar grinned at his own suggestion.

“I still like the sound of Kevin.” Astor mused aloud.

“Why not Spackle?”

“Yonin?”

“Oh! Whinston!”

“Aidon!”

Delbin leaned back on his hands, tail lazily thumping on the ground as he looked over at Nestor, who was focused solely on the hatchling in his hands, “Any of those names sound right to you?”

Nestor let out an exhale, “No. None of them sound special enough… not for him…” The green dragon let his mind drift a bit as he watched the baby dragon in his hands slowly drift back to sleep, settling down after fidgeting for a bit.

The name needed to be unique. Something that both symbolized the young dragon’s survival and his spirit. Something that could be easily remembered and cool to say.

The noise around Nestor began to dull out as he fell deeper into thought. His brows furrowed and the tip of his tail swished back and forth. He knew there was a perfect name out there.

It was on the tip of his tongue.

Something that felt right when it was spoken.

……..

………….

…………………

That’s it!!

Nestor’s eyes snapped open, catching Delbin’s attention.

“Spyro.”

The red dragon blinked, “Spyro?”

Nestor nodded, “Spyro. That’s his name.”

The other dragons quieted after Nestor spoke, their attention peaked by the name suggestion.

“Spyro…” Delbin tilted his head to the side before smiling, “Yeah, Spyro. It fits.”

“It’s oddly unique, but fits perfectly with the rest of us.” Gavin nodded in agreement.

“It has that ignition of passion and power that a dragon name should have, but also the charm of a new life.” Darius proclaimed, grinning.

The rest of the elders followed in similar agreement. Nestor looked down at the sleeping hatchling, having a gentle smile, “Welcome to the world little Spyro… you’re going to love your new family.”

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“So how are you gonna tell the other clan leaders we only have one hatchling this decade?” Delbin questioned, full of condescension.

“I’m working on it.” Nestor grumbled back.