A/N: Merry Ficmas everyone! This year I've dedicated a monster of a fic to my dearest, darlingest, oldest friend Ivy. She's been with me through all of my worst memories and even though she has a fuckton of her own personal bullshit to deal with, she always cares for me, and I know she's always there. I appreciate her presence in my life more than she could ever possibly know. In honor of her, I've painstakingly combed back through the entire The Legend of Spyro series as well athe wiki and come up with a plot that takes place throughout the second installment, Eternal Night, which follows Cynder's story rather than Spyro's. Cynder is just about her favorite fictional character and I have to agree that she deserved way more character development than she was given; in fact, she deserved her own storyline entirely. So I tried to give that to her. I hope that I did a good job. A lot of the lore in this story is concocted entirely by me, but some of it is related to the stuff I read in the wiki and my own observations and musings while playing and watching playthroughs of the games.

I love you, Ivy! Merry ficmas! The parts that I post today, Christmas of 2016, are only the first half of the story. More to come as soon as I get off my ass and finish it.

The Half-Life of A Dragon Not Quite Purple

Part 1: Convexity

For as long as she could remember, Cynder had felt as though she was racing towards her death – she decayed, she felt, at a specific rate, both her sanity and her body which still grew even now to impossible proportions, tearing itself apart.

She was not naïve. There was something about her, something wrong. Unnatural. Broken.

And now, here in this endless swirling echo chamber, surrounded by some unnamed inescapable barrage of pure power, she felt… free.

So close…

It seemed to go on for ages, but at the same time, too quickly. She felt as if her soul – a soul? since when had she had a soul? – were being ripped from her body and then forced screaming and thrashing back into it, only to be ripped from it again. She could see in the corners of her vision that her scales were glowing, coal-like. For only a moment, she thought she would die. Memories surged forth unbidden from the dangerous thorny parts of her mind, the last-guarded bits, not untouched by the darkness but still surviving. That part of her never spoke, but it thought with all of its tiny might – and she ached that it was trapped there in a sea of poison and angry, muddled darkness.

This must be what it is, she thought dimly as the righteous anger of the Ancients tore through her in a violet haze. To feel yourself turning to nothing but ash. Like a phoenix…

She had never met a phoenix. Never even seen one from afar. There was so much that she hadn't gotten a chance to do, or see.

Spyro stared at her in exhausted, uncertain horror, hovering on those tired little wings above the ground as if still unsure whether she would lunge down and try to eat him. He was a persistent, overly-noble little thing with a hero complex. He was exactly what she had come to expect from the Light.

An inexperienced whelp, the likes of which she had crushed carelessly underfoot so many thousands of times.

He was nothing but a child. She had killed children before, of course, at the order of her Master and that of Gaul and his wicked staff, but this almost seemed wrong. She had put it off as long as she could – but he had followed, and she had not had a choice.

Ignitus has surely been grooming him for this from the moment he stumbled across him, she thought bitterly. The great orange blot. She could only hope that this purple dragon would follow in the Master's footsteps, and that his first order of business would be to rid the world of that gutless coward.

Damn Ignitus. Damn the little purple dragon and those large, earnest eyes, and the clumsy eager way that he had wielded the elements against her.

Darkness threatened the corners of her vision. Cynder struggled to keep her eyes open, deeply aware of how far she had fallen – from the mighty black terror of the skies to this limp, pathetic, weak, useless corpse –

Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard terrified screaming, amplified by the years of screams she'd heard and elicited from every creature imaginable. There was a whirl of color, overwhelming, and memories that threatened to break free of her skull and pour into the thickening air, to fill up Convexity entirely with the evidence of her misdeeds. The white-hot pain shattered her focus and penetrated her to her very core. Her black, corrupted core. It began at her center and spread rapidly to very tips of her wings, incinerating the membrane, cracking her scales, like the world's most vicious wildfire. And then the world surged up around her, enormous –

And the blackness engulfed her entirely.

On two legs. Upright. The edges of her vision were obscured by a fluttery, fiery red, like wisps of something she had only ever vaguely known.

She wobbled, unsteady, then lurched forward – little five-digit paws came out to clumsily grip some something smooth, hard, polished. Laughter erupted around her, from figures thrice her size, looming over her with no apparent malice.

She could not focus her eyes. She narrowed them, attempting to examine the paws spread out in front of her – so pale and chubby, fleshy, with no scales to protect them.

She shook her head in sudden confusion, and the wisps flared wildly around her face again, as if to comfort her. Or strangle her.

What were scales? What –

She felt her mind slipping away from her, and desperately tried to hold onto it. Soft, blunt claws sank into the sides of her head. The laughter only got louder – one of the giant figures approached, lumbering, and leaned down to put it's fleshy moon-like face close to hers, a small protrusion rubbing at the tiny remnant of her snout.

"Come here, April, don't hurt yourself," the high voice chuckled. More wisps, darker and less delicate, came down around her like a curtain and she felt something clasp around her ribcage on both sides and lift her forcibly from the ground. She kicked, screaming wordlessly.

Suddenly, she realized that she didn't know any words.

And even if she did - her strange, wet mouth simply didn't have the capacity to form them.

The fear surged up around her like a living thing. She was suffocating. The giants laughed and shook her. She clawed at her throat with chubby useless appendages.

No! No! Where am I?! Why didn't I die? What is –

She roused, she didn't know how many moments later, to a wounded gasp. It could only be the little purple dragon – Spyro.

"She is just like me."

Why is he still here? Her pain-addled consciousness couldn't make sense of it. Doesn't he know that he'll be the first to die?

Hide, Spyro! The voice in the back of her mind shouted, but now it appeared at the front, louder, stronger than she'd ever heard it. Ragged from the bite of the thorns that it had finally escaped. Hide! Run! Get away from here – you've lost! You're out of time!

The ground shook and rumbled ominously. Behind her closed eyelids, Cynder felt the portal flash in warning. Widening.

So this is the end, she thought. There was nothing more to be done but give herself over to death. The Dark Master could scorn her all she liked – she would not have to live to see it.

The dragonfly's frantic voice rose above the cacophony.

"Dude, we've gotta get out of here. NOW."

"I- I can't leave her behind… I've got to save her!"

"What?! Save the beast that's been trying to kill us?"

Shame rippled through her, an emotion that she thought she had lost to Gaul and his savage whips long ago. He's right, Spyro.

"That wasn't her fault! She was being used by the Dark Master!"

She wanted to laugh, hopelessly, but there was no last vestige of willpower left in her to lift her head or even open her mouth. From her left, she felt a sudden sharp tug, as if the air were sucking her backwards – into the portal, she realized. The Dark Realms were calling her. Reclaiming her.

Helpless, she shuddered and allowed herself to be pulled backwards. The stone scraped at her soft underbelly. She could not remember being soft before, anywhere, but now –

Cccccynnnnnnderrrrr…

The whispered sound of her name was like ice in her veins, encasing her heart. She couldn't breathe. Eyes squeezed tightly shut, she gave herself to gravity, and braced herself – to be torn apart, dissected, even eaten. Nothing was out of the question now. The Master was free, and he would take his revenge on anyone – anything he could get his claws around.

She felt the moment she passed through the portal like a blast of icy wind. It was agonizing, even in comparison to what had happened to her minutes ago. Her eyes were not open, but she could see her horrific surroundings perfectly – they were gruesome, dark yet glowing sickly with a purple light that seemed to seep out of the ground like poison.

A pair of enormous, gleeful eyes fixed on her from above. She gasped, sucked in a toxic breath to scream for mercy, and felt her soul fracture into uneven little shards as the darkness filled her lungs and tried to suck it straight from her body.

"Cynder!" His voice came from behind her like a distant echo of light, a dream of a remnant of hopefulness. No. Why is he here? Get out, Spyro! Run! Like a hawk, the little dragon swooped down to sink his claws into her shoulders, and with a mighty tug that she couldn't imagine mustering the energy for, they both tumbled backwards through the portal once more and into Convexity.

"Now we can go," Spyro shouted breathlessly, sounding so childishly triumphant that she ached. Where his claws pierced her, between her scales, she felt scoured – as if whatever Light he had emanated earlier still lived in him, and coursed through him to cleanse her.

Her limbs, her tail, even her wings felt like lead – she wanted to lift them, to break away from him and start flapping, to save him the extra weight – but she couldn't. Couldn't even move. Something was very wrong. Spyro was so much smaller than her, he shouldn't be able to drag her, let alone fly with her weight

What has happened to me?

"I'm right behind you buddy!" Sparx shouted back, although the words were nearly lost to the explosion of noise as Convexity began to come apart. Stone flew apart and towards the portal, pulled by the tremendous rage of the first purple dragon.

"He'll kill us all," she whispered, although Spyro couldn't have heard her. Terror was seeping through her as the ice melted. The air was rushing past them at alarming speeds, the temperature increasing to uncomfortable levels, and Cynder wondered – as she began to feel stretched and thin, as ringing sounded in her ear and vibrated through whatever was left of her body – if this were the end, after all.

They never slowed as they shot out of the narrowing entrance to Convexity and into the Dragon Realms once more. Cynder barely had time to wince before she was tumbling head over tail towards the earth. They collided with it in the same moment, hard, the sounds of their pained gasps mingling in the still air.

It was a comforting thought to fall unconscious to.

She felt something releasing its grip in the brittle broken wall of thorns at the back of her mind. The door to Convexity was closing, sealing up before her Master could force himself out. In his distraction, he had finally lapsed long enough to let her go.

Good riddance, she and the voice both thought vehemently. Cynder coughed a laugh as her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

They were the same.