About three days passed. Cynder had healed enough to be able to leave the infirmary, but she still spent most of her time isolated and depressed. Even when she was in company with her friends or the guardians, she would hardly speak. It was worrying at how many tears Cynder had shed over the past three days. Just yesterday, she had had a huge panic attack, hallucinating. She was recovering quicker after the panic attack compared to after the siege on Warfang a few days prior, but she still had shed a lot of tears, and distanced herself a lot.
Terrador and Cyril had spent more time trying to help Volteer, however, as they needed him to help run Warfang and get the army back up, now that there was another war, and a much bigger one than the last one to make matters worse. Volteer had been reluctant, but agreed to help, although he was almost always in a grumpy state now as he grieved for his daughter. It quickly came to Terrador and Cyril's attention that they needed someone else to take care of the army duties. They couldn't do it on their own (they didn't have anywhere near enough time, plus they had more important matters to tend to), and Volteer couldn't do it with his increasing anger issues, so they needed someone to be brought up to the role of organising army patrols. Terrador and Cyril quickly agreed that it should be Cynder; she used to be the army general in Malefor's dark army (and surely, they hoped she would retain some of that knowledge from that time), and it may help take her mind off her grief for what life could have been for her.
But when they asked Cynder, she didn't take it as well as they had hoped. "Seriously? You want me to take control of your armies?" she asked.
"Yeah." Cyril said. "We know you have experience. We could use that to our advantage."
"My time as a dark puppet was nothing like what you think it was!" Cynder shouted savagely. "I will not be taking that role, because all that role had to offer me then was pain and suffering! It was because of me, of my orders, that countless dragons died in the Dark War. When I would mess up, I would be punished. Badly. I don't want to be reminded of that. Gaul's punishments were terrible. Merciless. Bloody! THEY WERE AN ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE!"
"We're not like that, you know that pretty damn well, Cynder." Terrador explained. "Look, we're too busy to be worrying about our armies, and we have no one else that has had experience in this. You have, from dark experiences or not. We're not asking you to order murder, although it will only be Spyro's minions. We're not asking you to be cruel and relentless in training sessions or attempt to torture anyone. Be hard on them, to toughen them up, especially since we've had eight years of peace, but we're not asking you to be so tough on them that they hate the experience."
Cynder just glared at Terrador and Cyril. "Look, I'll think about it, okay? But I really don't feel like I want to. It… it just brings back too many memories of those I murdered. I even killed apes. APES! CREATURES ON MY OWN DAMNED SIDE! Because I thought it was fun. Because I wanted to." Cynder replied, tears glistening in her emerald green eyes. "Those memories are too painful to relive."
"We don't want to force this on you, Cynder. We understand if you don't want to." Terrador said. "But… it would be a big help if you did take this role."
Cynder nodded. She turned, about to leave the Warfang Temple, when she fell to the ground in pain, ears ringing. She let out a shout and squeezed her eyes shut, flexing her claws in the ground. Cynder heard Terrador trying to ask her something, but his voice was muffled out by the piercing ringing of her ears. Suddenly, voices began to speak in her head.
They are coming. The shadowclaws are coming. Help us!
The shadowclaws are coming to take us… They want something…
They're trying to find something! But we don't know what! Someone help!
So much… blood… It's a massacre!
They won't stop until they find what they're looking for…
Suddenly, an image of dead, bloodied corpses appeared in front of her eyes, flickering quickly between different bodies so Cynder couldn't get a glimpse of the dragons that had been murdered. But one, final image stood out for a few moments longer, and Cynder could just make out a glowing grey shape. A crystal.
One more voice spoke. They're looking for the Sound Gem.
Then her vision went black, and the ringing in her ears intensified for a moment, before dying away, her vision returning to normal. When she returned to the waking world, the first thing she registered was pain. A gravelly pain in her throat, most likely from screaming, and a piercing burning on the pads on her left forepaw. She looked down and saw a cut, bleeding only slightly, and small beads of blood on the claws on her right forepaw. Had she cut herself?
Cynder looked around, her ears numb and sore from the ringing and hearing failing her. She saw Terrador crouching in front of her, a worried expression on his face, and Cyril standing behind him, mirroring Terrador's expression. Terrador spoke frantically, his voice nothing but a frantic, muffled shout and his words indistinguishable.
Cynder focused on slowing her breathing, her heart beating heavily and rapidly against her chest, the muffled bass of the sound resonating in her ears. She gaped her jaws in a wide yawn and shook her head, and all her senses returned to normal. "Cynder! Answer me!" Terrador shouted, sounding really desperate.
"What?" Cynder asked, her voice hoarse from her screaming.
"Are you alright?" Terrador breathed, his voice shaking.
"Yes, I'm fine." Cynder replied. "I'm just… I'm just a little… shaken."
"What happened just then?" Cyril questioned. "You can tell us. We need to know. This concerns everybody. It's not just your problem, now. It's everybody's now that there's a war."
Cyril's voice rose with fear as he kept talking, his voice and body trembling. Cynder had never seen him so afraid before. The wounds he received from the siege must have also scarred him mentally. With the Dark War just finished, and being a witness and a victim to something as horrible as Spyro's betrayal and the terrible shadow dragons that had attacked them, Cynder could understand Cyril's fear.
Terrador turned to Cyril with a stern expression. "Try to contain your fear, Cyril. If we want Cynder to feel safe, we need to keep ourselves together." Terrador said.
"No. I feel safer amongst others who I feel I can be on the same page with." Cynder said, looking up at Cyril, who was trying hard to stop himself from trembling. "If there's one thing you all taught me, it's to let my emotions out. My fears, my worries, everything. It's time you do the same."
There was silence for a moment as the two guardians contemplated her words, before Cyril broke it. "What happened? What did you see? Or hear? Or… whatever?" he asked. "Was it future sight?"
"No, I've lost my future sight, I know that for a fact. It's incredibly rare to have future sight for life, Earthshaker said so himself in Glimpses of the Future." Cynder replied. "But… I think I have something similar to Ignitus. He was one of the few dragons who could see in the Pool of Visions. But I could have it in my head. Some sort of connection… to… something. I don't really know."
"Well what did you see?" Terrador asked.
"I just saw mainly a bunch of corpses and heard a lot of voices as the corpses flashed quickly among my gaze. They kept saying odd things like 'They're coming' or 'They won't stop until they find what they're looking for' and stuff like that." Cynder explained. "The voices also kept referring to these 'shadowclaws'. The last thing I saw was a glowing grey crystal for a few moments while a voice said that 'They're looking for the Sound Gem' or something like that, before everything just stopped and went back to normal. I don't know what any of the voices were referring to, though, or what any of the corpses were signifying."
Shouting came from outside. "What now?!" Terrador asked, standing up.
An ice dragoness ran inside the Warfang Temple, breathing heavily. "It's Dark Peak!" she cried, using the name Spyro had used to refer to the mountain he had taken refuge inside. "It's spitting out more dark missiles!"
Cynder scrambled to her feet and followed Terrador and Cyril as they walked out of the Warfang Temple and looked upon Dark Peak as they saw the same bright flashes and purple missiles that had shot out of the summit a few days before. But this time, the missiles were aimed in a different direction. The missiles' landing points weren't visible as they disappeared out of sight behind the walls of Warfang, getting smaller as they moved further away from them. The sight made Cynder uncomfortable, and she realised that this new war was really happening. It was becoming real. Soon, no one would be safe from the claws of darkness.
"Where is he planning to attack now?" Cynder breathed.
"Wait…" Cyril said, eyes widening in shock. "That's in the direction of another city!"
"By the ancestors, you're right, Cyril!" Terrador cried. "That's Jorgarath!"
"That's my hometown!" Cyril exclaimed with fear. "Everyone's in danger! No one knows how to fight there; it's a peaceful city in the snowy mountains! They can't attack there!"
Cynder's head filled with distressed screams. "They've arrived. There's screams everywhere." Cynder said.
"We've got to go!" Cyril pleaded. "Please, Terrador! I can't leave my hometown to fall apart like this!"
"Alright. We'll go." Terrador said. "Bring a few guards as well. We leave now."
Chapter 56… is over 11 000 words long! HOW DID I DO THAT?!
That's the longest chapter I've ever written, and probably will ever write, depending on how the rest of Purple Legacy goes. But damn, I'm really impressed with myself, especially at the speed I wrote it in, as well as with all my assignments for school and stuff (although I procrastinated all weekend because I spent over nine hours on one of my assignments in two days and I was just fed up with school work – also I'm sick lolp).
Anyway, hopefully this was a good chapter. Boring filler but meh, action next chapter!
To 'Derick Lindsey', like I said multiple times, this story is M for a reason, and it's not a happy story, as you can definitely tell by the sheer emotion in the last chapter. But let me tell you, it's just gonna get worse. Not gonna say if there's a deus ex machina or not, but if there is, I still haven't written it yet, so it's going to be way past Chapter 50. And with how much progression there is, I bet you can guess how bad things are going to get by that stage.
As for the fire dragon that comforted Terrador, I didn't explain it as well as I thought I did, so let me elaborate. That dragon is not the one from Cynder's future visions; he will come in later. Remember that the dragon from the future vision had purple eyes. If this one did, it would definitely be noticeable, and I would have written it. So, this goes to say that this dragon has regular fire-coloured eyes, being red or orange, and is therefore not the dragon from the future vision. So I apologise for my poor explanation there, that's probably the first time I've written an explanation that poorly before. That just goes to show that no matter how much you as a writer knows, you need to include all the detail, even the obvious, because some people may not pick it up. So that's a lesson learned for me.
Finally, it's going to be a while before Forzen returns. Not going to elaborate anymore, because I don't want to spoil anything, but it'll be a long while. However, when we next see him, it'll be in Spyro's lair, Dark Peak.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed. Again, not sure how long until the next chapter, especially as I said two to three weeks last chapter but in reality, it was a little over one. Let's just say I'm a little all over the place right now…
BYE