Darkness.
Spyro thought he was dead. He felt dead. He had to be dead, there was no other way that it can be felt. Other than feeling nothing, that is. But still, he felt numb all over, and couldn't see through the pitch black that surrounded his carcass, and yet he felt something tugging on him.
He felt the dragging.
Oh, how he wished for the dragging to stop, just stop - please stop! A pull and a tug and he felt the nausea run through him. He could hear. Perhaps if he listened to the suspect's breathing, he could figure out who it is that's pulling on him.
In the distance, Cynder spotted a broken waterfall, without a doubt torn apart during the Separation. The island floated in the sky on its lonesome, the water's spray flinging itself everywhere like a spasmic. Even from where she stood, Cynder could feel the water's cool spray. She licked her lips out of parch, realizing that she had gone an entire three days without water.
Considering she was carrying quite some heavy weight, the journey there would be another twenty to twenty-five minutes; give or take. Below the waterfall, she saw another island floating on its lonesome. It isolated a moderately-sized oakwood shack, also torn in half by the Separation. Perhaps there would be a bedroom left untouched that Spyro could rest in? More importantly, perhaps there was a bed!
It would be Luck's courtesy to gift her this convenience, because she was getting tired herself, and she could use a place to sleep and some water to drink. As that thought crossed her mind, she reminded herself how long it has been since she last bathed. She looked down at her body from chest to tail and realized that she was covered in smudges and clogs of dirt. An unsanitary amount of dirt, to be exact.
She couldn't have that.
She looked at Spyro and realized he needed the same treatment - pardon the understatement. Aside from the dirt, the blood is what drove Cynder into a mixture of insanity and anxiety.
From muzzle to belly, to back, and to tail, his body was caked in dried blood. It would be a nightmare itself scrubbing it away, but then she finally wouldn't have to look at him that way ever again.
She glanced back up at the waterfall and licked her lips with a hopeful sensation. They would have to stop at the cabin first, where she would find a comfortable spot for Spyro to rest, then she would go and fetch a bowl. If all went well, maybe later she would take Spyro up there and give him a good scrubbing.
She glanced back down at the blood again and shivered. She quickly looked back up towards the house and began tugging on the rope. Spyro's body was splayed on a ratty canvas sheet Cynder had found while exploring an old ruin. She was sure it would be very itchy to lye down on, but she was sure he wouldn't mind.
She had to walk slowly. Any sudden movements would cause him to topple off the sheet and she would have to reset his body again, causing more time to be wasted. She was sure she had forever now. For the first time ever she felt free and that she could do whatever she wanted, but then again all she could think about is the blood. Would he die? No. She was sure of that. But their battle with Malefor had too many close calls to be called "few".
In the distance, at the other end of the island they stood on, Cynder saw a peculiar rainbow. Peculiar, because the rainbow looked almost solid, despite its transparency. Even as she got closer, the rainbow only became clearer. It was an amazing sight, one Cynder didn't believe she would ever see again in her life.
The rainbow was almost like glass. For a moment she stood her ground and mentally stuttered. It was a magnificent display of nature. There was no way this could have been built by someone. It had only been a week since the Separation, and if it were created before then, it would have crumbled away during the event. This intrigued her.
She layed a paw on it. The rainbow was somewhat warm, perhaps from exposure to the sun. She put another paw in front of her and took a step. Then another. Then several more, until she was dragging Spyro all the way across the glass arch. The surface was a bit slippery, but it was nothing too big to worry about. Even if she slipped off, she could just fly back up. The hard part was making sure Spyro didn't fall. Being a young dragon, he was still very light compared to the amount the typical adult weighs. But compared to Cynder, he was still very heavy to carry.
After covering a good length of the glass arch, she finally made it halfway through. She took another step onward and was suddenly propelled downward by the slippery slope. She landed on her bottom.
Ouch. she thought. Okay, remember that for next time you cross a strange-looking bridge made of glass.
She got back up, brushed away some of the grass covering her bottom from when she landed and looked to Spyro. It had seemed that instead of bouncing for a moment and landing on his bottom like how Cynder did, he just slid right onto the ground.
She didn't realize it, but she was holding her breath. As soon as she saw that Spyro was okay, she let go of it. She stared back at the house, now in full view. It looked a lot nicer up close. Besides it being torn in half, it also had an impressive foundation for it to remain in place as it did. Cynder was even more surprised by the fact that the second half of the house wasn't hanging off the side of the island.
She walked up to the door, an unnecessary precaution considering she could just fly around and enter through the side, but Cynder would much prefer to make her entrances and exits on solid ground, thank-you-very-much.
She turned the knob on the door and was appalled by a wretched stench that tore through her nostrils. Immediately she assumed the Separation caused a sewage pipe to burst, or perhaps a husband neglected to take out the trash to the despair of a frustrated wife - then she saw the massacre.
Though the house's foundation was strong, it still caused the house to shake spasmodically, and during that process, a part of the roof caved in… right on top of what she assumed used to be the owner of the home.
The dead creature before was quite the thing to look at: for one, it had the legs of a horse beneath its torso and the body of an ape in its upper half. A centaur. Cynder only ever saw one of these creatures during her time spent under Malefor's reign, and she indeed remembered how brutally she treated them; but she didn't want to think of that at the moment. It was Spyro she had to think about.
Cynder stepped over the wreckage and headed in the direction of a spiral staircase. She was sure that somewhere up there would be a room with a bed that Spyro could rest in. For a moment it crossed her mind that maybe it was a bad idea to leave Spyro outside all alone, but then again, so would bringing him inside this ominous home without looking it over first. So it was decided she would take the risk.
She made her way up the stairs, listening carefully to every creaking step the cedarwood made. She was glad that the home was torn in half, allowing the sunlight to filter in as if the indoors were nothing but a shady tree. She could see every step she made without tripping and falling down, and she was even more glad to find that, when she reached the top of the staircase, the upstairs hallway had windows. This meant she wouldn't have to take a moment to let her advanced vision adjust to the darkness. The hallway was narrow, but at the end of it, if she were to make a right turn, she was sure she would see the big, gaping hole.
The hallway was more of a small corridor. Its walls were lined with many doors, each one leading to a room of some sort. Cynder sighed in frustration, as she realised that she would have to search and seizure every single room until at least one of them were up to leisure, and even then she would have to search every other room to make sure there was nothing dangerous to worry about - other than the fact that the floor might cave in at any moment, but she was sure that would only happen if they walked around the house with a fork in their eyes.
She reached for the handle of the nearest door and turned it.
Locked.
Really? The house was torn in half, and this is somehow a problem? She would have to find out later. For now, she needed to check the other rooms.
What she found didn't really surprise her. The next room was a bathroom (the fancy kind with a flusher); a really small, cramped bathroom, to be exact. The next room was a library. It had an impressive assortment of books, alphabetized and all that neat stuff, but she didn't care for reading at the moment. Every door lead to something different, and that something different, no matter how much it peaked her interest, wasn't the different that she was looking for.
It wasn't until she reached the end of the hallway that she found what she was looking for. The bedroom was moderate-size. There was a bookshelf against the wall left of the door, and a bed sitting at the other side of said bookshelf, opposite of a window. There was a nest of fishnets lying in the corner a few feet away from the foot of the bed. It was all jumbled up in front of a closet door, said door hanging open. After looking into the closet and finding an assortment of sinkers and lures and bait, she concluded that the owner of the house was a proud fisherman. He must have been taking the net out just as the shaking started, dropped it out of fear of being pancaked to death in his own home, ran downstairs, and wounded up being crushed to death anyway. It was even more unfortunate that he was crushed to death by the only part of the roof to cave in.
Immediately, Cynder felt a ping of sympathy for him and made a mental reminder to give him a proper burial. Albeit to knowing very little about him and his life, it was a sad way to die: out here, all alone, where no one knows that you exist. Forgotten.
She shoved the net into the closet, not bothering to make sure it was snug in neatly, and she made headway out the door of the bedroom to fetch Spyro.
The funny thing about luck is how convenient it is. After Cynder had tucked Spyro into the bed, she took off for the waterfall. Not even fifteen minutes did she arrive, and to her shock she found the basin to be full of fish! Freshwater and fresh food? They may be here for awhile!
The island was very large and was one of the many supporting reasons why the waterfall hadn't run dry yet. The river slithered around the island like a snake coiling its body, ending at a fairly large basin. By now said basin was a quarter empty, but if it could hold out for nearly two weeks, she was sure she could get something out of it. Though there was something strange about it, like, say, an unnatural vibration in the air that could only be given off by magic. Could that also mean the waterfall was being kept alive by some stray magic beneath the ground?
She immediately felt a ping of regret for shoving the net back into the closet without thinking. She could have brought it with her and caught a whole assortment of fish. Despite this little piece of arrogance, she figured she could still catch about two or three fish - and so that's what she did.
Not half an hour later did Cynder return to the house with a maw full of two fresh bodies of fish. She would cook them later tonight, in case Spyro awoke and she could eat with him. She dropped the fish off on the dining table and then she went back to the basin.
After an hour of furious scrubbing and sheer regret that she hadn't done such a noble thing sooner, Cynder felt cleaner then she had been in weeks. Her scales seemed to almost glimmer in the sunlight like polished obsidian. She made a mental note to give Spyro the same treatment tomorrow. By now the sun was going down and it was time for her to retire indoors.
Spyro was too asleep to notice the large shadow emanating through the window. At first, it was nothing, then the figure forming the shadow came into apparatus as it prodded the window to open.
A large, skeletal hand entered through, opening up its fingers and making way to where he layed. Spyro still hadn't noticed, but if he did, the first thing he would have done is fought back the dreaded beast. Instead, the near-corpse opted to lay in place and await its faith.The large, skeletal hand seemed to glide across the room over to the bed. As it got closer and closer to the young dragon, its fingers protruding out one-by-one (first with the index, then the thumb, then the rest), preparing to grasp the helpless whelp -
Cynder entered the bedroom in a hurry to check to see how Spyro was doing. She could see the perspiration on his face, a sign that he was still, in some way, alive. She breathed a sigh of relief as she realized that he might finally wake up soon.
Realizing that soon probably wasn't tonight, she finally took notice of the furious growling in her stomach. She would have to eat dinner without Spyro's company after all.