Thank you all for 100 views already; the views on this one is shooting up much quicker than Bitten, but I always expected that. Demonised is going to be a fun ride, so I hope you all stick around.
Anyway, I would be responding to reviews now, but I'm going to start throwing them in the A/N after the chapter, so that there isn't a whopping big block of bolded text before the chapter, and that can get annoying to have to scroll past sometimes, so those of you waiting for review responses, they will now be at the bottom of each chapter. This will apply to Bitten as well.
Cynder woke up with a shrill scream, jolting backwards and sitting upright. Spyro woke with a startled gasp, Cynder's sudden scream ripping Spyro out of his calm slumber. Spyro quickly calmed himself down and grabbed a hold of Cynder's shoulders in a firm, but comforting hold. The dark purple dragoness was breathing heavily and frantically, whimpering loudly each time she exhaled. "Cynder, calm down. What happened? What was it?" Spyro asked soothingly, keeping his eyes locked onto Cynder's, which appeared to dart around the room as if they were looking for something. "It was another nightmare, wasn't it? Tell me what happened."
Cynder wouldn't answer. She mouthed wordlessly for a few seconds before turning her head to attempt to look behind her. Cynder began to mumble fearfully and feebly, and Spyro's hold on Cynder's shoulders increased. "Cynder, Cynder. Look at me. Cynder. Look. Deep breaths." Spyro ordered gently.
Cynder's eyes found Spyro's and they instantly began to calm, the fear and agitation evident in her red and teary eyes. Spyro felt her body begin to stop heaving uncontrollably from her heavy breaths. The only other thing to feel was her immense shaking. While her composure looked calm, tears still threatened to leave her eyes and her facial expression was one of utter fear and confusion, her head, body and arms shaking vigorously. "Look at me. Tell me what it was about." Spyro pleaded.
The dark purple dragoness took a few moments to find her voice, and then she spoke, her voice quivering and hoarse. "I… I don't really know. It was s-s-so quick a-a-and strange; it wasn't like the other n-n-nightmares I normally h-h-have. All I remember was… a siege. On Warfang, I think. Everything was burning, and odd-looking dragons were everywhere, their jaws and their paws covered in blood. And then there was an… an odd being… hidden in shadows, with ugly red eyes. It came at me, and then everything went black. All I saw were those hideous red eyes and then I heard the word 'd-d-death' in this h-h-h-hi-hideously distorted voice." Cynder stammered. "A-a-a-and then the shadow being reared and I saw jaws lunging towards me. Th-th-that was when I-I-I woke up…"
Spyro didn't know what to make of it. A city under attack, strange dragons covered in blood and a shadow being. Spyro needed to know more. "What did the shadow being look like? Sound like? Was it like anything you remember? Malefor? You? Something else?" Spyro questioned.
"I-I-I-I don't know. The voice wasn't female, nor did the figure appear feminine, so it couldn't have been me. It wasn't Malefor. The voice and body weren't his. I don't know whose it was." Cynder shuddered.
Spyro made a face. He was just as confused as Cynder. Her nightmares were usually memories and reminders of her dark past and the darkness inside her and that she controlled, but this one was completely different, and didn't make any sense at all.
Spyro lay back down, yawning. "Well, all I know is that it was just a dream. We can talk to the guardians about it in the morning maybe. Let's get back to sleep." Spyro said, appearing to dismiss the issue as if it was nothing.
Cynder nodded and lay down next to Spyro. She stayed awake for the best of an hour before she got back to sleep, her thoughts controlling her mind and letting fear continue to course through her. The eerie green moonlight of Zella shining through the windows didn't help either. She wondered what the dream meant. Was it just a dream? Was it something that she secretly feared? Was it a glimpse of the future, or a message from it? She knew it could be one of those options, but the dream was so cloudy and misguiding in so many ways that it wasn't possible to distinguish which option it was yet.
Cynder eventually got back to sleep, and her sleep was undisrupted until the sun shone brightly through the windows of the large bedroom, forcing her eyes open as the rays of sunlight entered her vision.
"Hmmm… intriguing…" Volteer mumbled.
"So, you're saying you saw a siege on Warfang led by a shadowy creature?" Terrador asked.
Cynder nodded. "Did it look like anything you may have seen before?" Terrador questioned, and Cynder hesitated for a moment before she spoke.
"Sort of. I guess it sort of looked like a dragon. But I couldn't tell." Cynder said.
"Would it be Malefor perhaps?" Cyril asked.
"No. It didn't sound like him when the thing spoke at the end of the nightmare. It was too smooth and clear to be Malefor's rough and almost difficult to understand voice. The body wasn't his either. I could tell it was slightly thinner, and the horns were completely different." Cynder explained.
"I'm surprised by how much detail you remember. You would have only seen the shadow's body in full for barely a few seconds." Spyro said, narrowing his eyes and smirking with interest and amazement.
Cynder shrugged. "I'm a bit perplexed by this predicament," Volteer said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "It could be your mind mashing up everything that you have experienced into one multifaceted and horrendous nightmare."
"Should you have another one like it, please come and tell us everything you remember," Terrador said. "This is messing with our heads too, as to what your dreams mean, but I think it could hold some importance."
"Alright. Thank you." Cynder said, smiling thankfully. "Let's go."
Spyro and Cynder spent the rest of the day relaxing. Spyro wanted to take his mind off how disturbing Cynder's nightmare was, so he went up and continued working on his sculpture of the serpendraxes, in which he stayed up in the top floor sculpting for hours. Cynder, however, wanted to get some more rest, going back to sleep to regain her rest and calmness. She only hoped she wouldn't have another nightmare.
She did, but luckily for her, it wasn't as confusing and disturbing as her earlier nightmare. It was only a horrible memory of a dragon city she had destroyed; no survivors had made it out. The memory still brought Cynder to tears, but she was glad it wasn't like her earlier nightmare… vision… whatever one wanted to call it. It was terrifying and seemed as if it was personalised and talking directly to Cynder, especially with what the shadow creature said at the end. It frightened Cynder.
Spyro felt bad for his mate. Her nightmares had recently gotten more frequent even without this new nightmare, and he worried not only for her, but for a secret they had hidden for a while, to save overwhelming crowds, gossip, and embarrassment for the time being, until it was time to reveal it.
An egg.
A purple egg.
Spyro and Cynder knew the prophecies of a purple egg being laid every ten generations, and it had been twenty-three years since Spyro had hatched. Not even one generation was close to passing. A generation for the dragon race was about one hundred years. The generation still had seventy-seven years to go. And even still, there were an extra nine generations needed to pass before the next purple dragon. Spyro and Cynder had consulted the guardians about this (apart from them, they were the only other dragons to know about the egg), and Volteer suggested that it was possibly because Spyro was a purple dragon that another one came so early, due to the purple dragon genes transferred from Spyro.
And Spyro worried that when the time came for the egg to hatch, that with all the screaming and nightmares, the young child wouldn't be able to cope, especially as a newborn, having no clue what would be going on. Spyro could only hope to the ancestors that everything would subside when the egg hatched. He didn't want his child, son or daughter, to be living in a world of fear and struggles. He wanted his child to be happy and live a life without fear. He wanted his child to live a normal life, and to have a normal childhood, among others of his kind, a luxury that Spyro never had.
Cynder shouted, jolting her head off the ground and gasping heavily, tears brimming in her emerald eyes, which scanned around the darkness of the night. The nightmare was just as disturbing as the first one, probably worse, as the terrible vision kept repeating in Cynder's mind, her heart racing and breath heavy. Her shout, sharp and short, wasn't loud, elongated and shrill like the night before, and Spyro still lay next to her, asleep, however, he groaned as he fidgeted in his sleep. Cynder woke Spyro up. He groaned, and then lifted his head and saw the frantic look on Cynder's eyes. "Another nightmare?" Spyro asked groggily, receiving a quick nod from Cynder. "One of those ones?"
"Yes. One of those ones." Cynder said, not trusting her shaky voice to appear calm.
Spyro groaned as he sat up, several joints cracking as he did so. "What happened this time?" Spyro asked.
"I'd much rather save it for when the guardians are here also, in the morning," Cynder said.
"Better tell someone now, or you may forget." Spyro said. "Please, tell me."
"Alright." Cynder agreed, before telling Spyro what happened.
"It was… a dark forest, and I was being attacked by these… very gruesome looking dragons. Other dragons were running from them too. They actually looked to be either made of blood, or coated so thickly in blood that their scales weren't visible at all. The blood was set firmly over their eyes, parting slightly to reveal hideous yellow eyes, and long strings of blood setting in between their lips like disgusting string of saliva, and the corner of their mouths were set almost towards where the head and the neck connect at the jaw, with thick strings of blood in between the far reaches of the lips, much like the flabs of skin inside our own mouths." Cynder explained, pausing to let the guardians recompose themselves, obviously disturbed by her gruesome explanation of the hideous creatures chasing after her in the nightmare. "One of them leapt at me, and everything went black, except for those ugly red eyes from the last one. A word was muttered, 'bloodlust', and then those jaws lunged at me again, and I woke up."
There was a minute or two of silence as the guardians tried to get the ghastly, gory and gruesome image out of their minds, but it was almost impossible. Volteer was the first one to speak, "I'm… confused and… completely revolted by that… description of yours..."
"Don't blame me! That's what was in my nightmare! You wanted me to tell you everything!" Cynder argued angrily, her lack of sleep robbing her of her patience.
Spyro put a calming paw on her shoulder, and Cynder's anger quickly subsided. "I'm not blaming you! I'm just confused about why any dragon would have to experience a nightmare as gruesome as that!" Volteer clarified, shuddering vigorously.
"Should this just be Cynder's mind freaking out, or a glimpse of the future, much as I hate to think of the latter, we have some serious exploring to do in these nightmares of yours, Cynder," Terrador said gravely.
Cynder nodded sadly. "Why me, though? Haven't I been tormented enough?" Cynder complained.
Spyro put a paw on Cynder's and spoke with a comforting voice. "It's okay, Cynder. There are still some people that know you and love you for who you are now. Not for what you used to be. Like your friends. Dwell on those people, and not of those that only see you as what you were back then." Spyro said, before adding, "And I don't think these nightmares have anything to do with you. Should they be a glimpse of the future, I think we need to pay as much attention to these nightmares of yours as possible, given the horrific reality of them."
Cynder held back her tears and nodded once again, silent and solemn. "If you need to talk to anyone, Cynder, it should be those close to you. Us, Spyro, or even your friends." Cyril piped up.
"I know. I'd just like some time alone right now." Cynder said, standing up.
Spyro just looked up at her as she stood. "Go get some rest, Cynder," Spyro suggested.
Cynder nodded and left. Spyro remained in the room with the guardians.
"You could have gone with her. You know, do some sculpting or whatever it is you've been doing recently." Terrador suggested.
"I know… I'm just worried. That egg of ours could hatch any moment. Should these horrific nightmares continue, our child would be scared out of its mind seeing its parents breaking due to the nightmares." Spyro explained, his voice breaking with emotion and fear for his unhatched child. "And should Cynder's nightmares be a glimpse of the future, I want to be as strong as I possibly can to prevent any harm to Cynder and the child. I don't feel strong enough to be able to do that."
The guardians exchanged worried glances, and then looked back at Spyro, looking at his paws, his lips curled into a frown. "Spyro, you're a purple dragon. At your age, you're stronger than we possibly could have been when we were your age. Your combined power far succeeds ours. You shouldn't need to worry." Terrador said.
"But I almost died when we fought Malefor; when I put the world back together," Spyro said.
"That was Malefor. And you put the whole damn world back into one whole piece. What Cynder's nightmares tell us now is nothing compared to that amount of stress." Cyril explained, his voice low and firm.
"Sure, but the nightmares are only just forming. They could get worse. If they are glimpses of the future, more disturbing stuff could get revealed. I'm worried I'll need more power than when I beat Malefor and put the world back together." Spyro explained.
"What would require more power to beat than that?!" Terrador asked.
"I don't know. That's what I'm worried about." Spyro replied.
"I believe you're excessively concerned about practically nothing. I don't think something that wicked will come up just eight years after Malefor's unquestionable annihilation; it's too soon for the ancestors to allow another cloud of darkness to descend upon the Dragon Realms." Volteer said. "You needn't be anxious."
"I know, but I always feel like I'm not enough. That I can't do enough to protect those I love." Spyro groaned. "I know I shouldn't feel like that, but I do."
The guardians exchanged looks and whispered to themselves for a few seconds, and then Terrador turned back towards Spyro and spoke. "We will open the training arena for you, should you feel uncomfortable with how this is all going. I guess it has been eight years since we've all had to partake in a full-on battle, and those nightmares Cynder's having are slightly worrying, given the beasts in them. We don't want to be scratchy." Terrador explained. "But I don't think we'll be able to teach you any more of your elements. You're experienced enough in them, and apart from the very advanced stuff, there's not much else to do than explore what your element can do and push the limit."
"Sort of like what I've been doing with my sculpting?" Spyro questioned.
"Yeah! Like that!" Cyril exclaimed. "Just… do it with ice, next time!"
"Cyril…" Terrador groaned, not going any further, his glare spilling enough words to the egotistic ice guardian.
"Sorry… I did it again, didn't I?" Cyril asked.
Terrador nodded slightly, glaring at Cyril. They had talked about Cyril's self-praise. Cyril didn't fully know when he was doing it, and he had to get Terrador or Volteer to tell him, or anyone else really, although he only listened to Terrador (if Ignitus were still alive, he would have definitely listened to the fire guardian). Whenever Volteer told Cyril he was talking about himself highly, Cyril would just tell him to stop using dictionary language and only then would he stop talking about himself. Then a big argument would flare up, and Terrador would always end up having to break it up and yell at the two guardians. Now Terrador knew how Ignitus felt, the fire guardian being the previous leader of the guardians. Ignitus had had to even break up fights Terrador was in, but with Ignitus gone and Terrador taking his place as the leader of the guardians, Terrador had needed to learn to be more responsible for his own actions.
Spyro stood up and thanked the guardians, then walked out of the Warfang Temple towards his home, yawning widely, displaying his large fangs. He went home and decided to go back to sleep; he had had trouble going to sleep the night before, his thoughts dwelling on Cynder's horrific nightmares. He'd only been asleep for an hour before Cynder woke up with her second vision. He never got back to sleep after that, his thoughts focused on Cynder's description of the blood monsters and fear filling his heart.
The purple dragon fell asleep quite quickly, his sleep deprivation forcing a burden onto his eyelids.
This may seem cliché, with Spyro and Cynder's child being purple and all, but I assure you, some of the events around this whole thing will not be what you're expecting. Also, just putting this out there, my explanation of the unnamed blood monsters was when I began to experiment with how far I can go with gore content. It'll get much worse later down the track. I promise. And more time skipping than usual (sorry); events are slightly jumpy for the first six chapters until things start to get real.
Onto reviews now; there's only two, but I will respond to both of them. To 'lord typhlosion' (and mixing into my response to 'Derick Lindsey's' review), I did say back in Broken Perceptions that I was going to try and get three or four chapters out on Bitten before I posted this, and that time has come. Demonised will always be a bigger priority over the Fazbear series, but I will continue to write it, because there are some areas in Fazbear that I am still quite happy of. So if you're following Bitten, it will continue.
Going fully to 'Derick Lindsey's' review, I did explain in the Prologue that Spyro was extremely busy in helping rediscover lost dragon populations around the time Sparx left, as well as the fact that he couldn't remember how to get to the swamp and the dragons had no maps of it because the swamp hadn't been rediscovered. Also, Spyro had been having his stages of isolation as well to add to that, another thing that would have put going to the swamp off his mind. I may not have explained it too well in the Prologue, but the explanation I had was heaps more than I originally had, and the original version of the Prologue was just not good enough for that mention of Spyro not going to the swamp. Anyway, you'll find out what's happening to Spyro soon enough, and there's going to be a lot of twists in this series, one of which I'm not sure you'll see coming.
Anyway, with all that done, hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you in the next chapter where a bit of research goes into these nightmares Cynder's been having. In the meantime, what do you make of them?
See you in the next chapter, whether it's Bitten or Demonised, I don't know; it really depends on how I feel and what ideas I get regarding the two (well, I'm actually currently rewriting Bitten's sequel, to be honest, and posting a chapter of Bitten when I finish a chapter of Fazbear Part 2, just like what I was doing with Demonised and Broken Perceptions a while back).