The next day, Cynder had come to the guardians and told them that she had accepted their request to become the army general and supervisor. Almost immediately, Terrador and Volteer had taken her to see the training area, which was much more sophisticated and much, much larger than the public training centre in Warfang. The one that Spyro destroyed. Cynder thought, before pushing the thought out of her head so she could focus.
There were already a few dragons training in the room. Fighting against each other, and doing physical exercises like stretching and weightlifting. Only one or two of them stopped to look in Cynder's direction, but the rest of them continued training. The room went silent as Terrador called out, "Alright, attention, everyone!"
Every dragon's eyes turned towards Terrador, and then to Cynder, as they stopped what they were doing and the room was left in silence. "We've come to an agreement with Cynder. Given her past experience as a war army general, she will be taking over our role in supervising you." Terrador explained. "I know it may get a bit of getting used to, but Cynder wants to do some good, and we need time to focus on other matters."
"I heard stories that Cynder used to kill apes when they did something wrong." a muscular earth dragon piped up. "She won't do that to us, will she?"
"What the…?! Of course not!" Cynder exclaimed. "I had Malefor's corruption and dark thoughts controlling me. All I knew was torture and murder. There's no way I will continue to do that in my right mind!"
"Excuse Tyrax, Cynder. He normally says whatever comes to his mind immediately." Terrador whispered.
Cynder's gaze went from Terrador to the earth dragon who Terrador had called Tyrax. Tyrax was watching Cynder with a stare filled with nervousness, but there was something else in his gaze. But Cynder recognised that look from eight years ago. She used to see that look in Spyro's eyes all the time. He's willing to fight for his friends if something bad happens. Cynder thought. But he thinks that something bad is me.
But before Cynder knew it, Terrador was speaking again. "Treat Cynder with respect, and give her some tips and guidelines on how we do things here. It may take a while for Cynder to get used to being here, but I believe that she will do well. And I'd hope that you'd do the same." Terrador ordered.
"Yes, Master Terrador." every dragon acknowledged.
"Alright, break up!" Terrador called, and each dragon dispersed and returned to their activities earlier.
Except for one dragon, who walked up to Cynder and Terrador. He was an electric dragon, thick-bodied and large, with bright yellow eyes and orange horns that shot out of his head in straight lines. He had a few scars over his right eye, and he was missing a few scales from his left forepaw, revealing bright pink flesh. "Good morning, Cynder. Master Terrador." he greeted, before turning to Cynder and introducing himself. "My name is Logron."
"Uh, hi?" Cynder said, feeling slightly awkward.
"I'm sorry if we made you feel uncomfortable. This place tends to have that effect sometimes." Logron said, shrugging.
"So, Cynder, Logron is like the second-in-command to us guardians. He takes control of everything around here while we're off doing other duties." Terrador explained. "He'll show you around the place. Now I've got to meet up with some other people regarding… recent matters, so I've got to go now, Cynder."
"O-o-okay." Cynder stammered.
"Alright. Bye, Master Terrador." Logron said as the earth guardian left.
Cynder watched as Terrador left. She returned to her senses when Logron spoke again. "Hey, Cynder. It's alright." he said. "I'll show you around. Follow me. And feel free to ask questions. You'll need to know your way around here."
And with that, Logron walked off, and Cynder hesitated slightly, before following the lightning dragon. A few dragons muttered greetings to Logron and Cynder, before going back to what they were doing. They walked down a pathway that was surrounded by training rings. "So here we have our training area. There's about ten rings here, with a few pathways in between so others can get past. This is where we do our practice bouts with other dragons." Logron explained.
"With other dragons? Don't you have any that allow you to create your enemy?" Cynder asked.
"We do, but they're in another room. The room you're in is our main training room, our physical training room." Logron said, before continuing forward and stopping in front of a few different tables and poles. "These are our strength-building areas. We normally do stretches here to loosen up our muscles before we go head-on into practice in the rings."
Logron continued walking, and Cynder followed, looking around her as she watched multiple dragons weightlifting and doing stretches in the designated strength-building area, before looking behind her again to watch some of the dragons fighting in the rings. There was a loud slam as a dragon fell to the ground hard, followed by a grunt as he tried to get up. Cynder looked back to Logron, a question pricking at her mind. "Are elements allowed in the rings here?" she asked.
"No. We've got yet another room for that. We don't want stray attacks shooting out and about. They could harm other dragons." Logron explained. "We've got about four rings in that room for element bouts, and two in the room with the magic abilities. The rings for the element bouts are slightly bigger so the dragons can move around more, and the magic rings are yet again even bigger, as they're fighting an enemy that may be much stronger than themselves. They will also sometimes be put up against three to five enemies as one time as well, so the rings need to be much bigger."
"Oh. Okay." Cynder simply replied.
Logron stopped at the end of the room and opened a door, before pausing. Cynder stopped, staring at Logron, unsure why he was standing there holding the door. Logron tilted his head toward the open door, and Cynder suddenly realised with a jolt of embarrassment what he was doing. He's opening the door for me. Cynder thought. No one really does that for me. Maybe they think I'm not 'feminine enough' and that I can do it myself. I guess I give people that impression…
Cynder chuckled nervously, cringing, before walking through the door, hanging her head low. Logron followed her and closed the door behind him. "You alright?" he asked.
"Yeah. I guess I'm just nervous. I haven't done this in eleven years, and it wasn't a very pleasant experience." Cynder replied, shrugging.
"I'm not expecting you to be brutal and merciless. I'm asking you to be encouraging, yet strict. I'm sure you know how to do that." Logron said.
Cynder mumbled in agreement. "Shall I continue on?" Logron asked.
The dark purple dragoness looked up at Logron and nodded. Cynder then noticed that the room they were in was large. It split into three directions, four if you included the room they had just left. Logron gestured down the hallway ahead of them. "The briefing room and offices are down there. You won't really need to see them yet." he said. "Now come, we'll head to the elemental training room."
Logron turned right and walked down the hallway, opening the door for Cynder once again. Cynder nodded thanks to Logron, still feeling slightly awkward, but walked through anyway. Logron entered the room behind her and closed the door. Logron opened his mouth to begin talking as a heavy piece of rock shot at them. Cynder ducked as the rock soared over her head, shattering into clouds of dust and tiny pebbles as it hit the wall. "Sorry!" a voice called out.
Surprisingly, the voice was feminine. Cynder watched as an earth dragoness stepped down from a ring and walked towards her. Cynder wasn't expecting a female to be training here. "Surprised?" the dragoness asked.
Cynder didn't know what to say. Logron chuckled. "She's one of five females in the Warfang Army. Not including you, that is. We don't have a lot, but some dragonesses have fought hard to get their way into here, and they've served well. Don't take them too lightly. They're much like you, strong and stubborn, yet determined to do their best and to prove themselves." Logron explained. "This is Apata. She's probably the dragoness who's most like you, Cynder. I think you two will get along well."
"Nice to meet you, Cynder." Apata said.
Cynder nodded in acknowledgement and realised that Apata was much like her, even in her physical build. She had a slender form, yet her back legs were quite muscular, and her forelegs were a bit thicker than those of most dragonesses. Apata's eyes were dark brown, and her horns were long and curved, curving backwards behind her head, before twisting back up again. Her wings were large, and her muzzle was pointed, like Cynder's, and at the end of her tail was a club instead of a tailblade, similar to what most earth dragons wielded.
Apata's voice cut through Cynder's thoughts. "Well, I'd better get back to training. Jupal's been waiting for the chance to fight me for a while, only for it to be interrupted. See you around, Cynder." Apata said, before turning and running back to her ring, where a stocky ice dragon was waiting for her, an annoyed expression on his face.
"Well, this is our elemental training room." Logron said. "We've got our four rings over there, and on the other side of the room we have a few smaller rings with dummies for testing. Normally we use those for new recruits to test their elemental powers before we go to other dragons, but on the occasion, we'll get more experienced warriors returning to these just to have a bout with the dummies."
Cynder nodded, and turned her eyes to the far ring where Apata was fighting the ice dragon that she had named Jupal. Cynder was slightly interested to see the bout. She watched as Apata made the first move, leaping at Jupal before diving under his legs, knocking the heavy ice dragon off balance. Apata flew up into the air, shooting a few earth missiles at Jupal. Jupal deflected a few as he tried to get up, but a missile hit him square in the chest, knocking the air out of him.
Cynder wanted to keep watching, but Logron was walking away, and Cynder turned to follow him. "You'll get a chance to watch some fights later, I promise." he said. "In fact, I want you to have a few fights with some of the dragons here so you get to know their strengths, and they get to know yours. It's always helpful having an ally that you understand fully. I guess that's how you and Spyro ended up getting to know each other so well."
Cynder winced at the mention of her corrupted ex-mate. "Eh… touchy subject. But yes, that was. Being chained together was the main reason for it though." Cynder said.
"Right, I know. Sorry for bringing it up." Logron said as they left the elements room. "But it's going to keep coming up. What's past is past, and you can't keep dwelling on that."
Cynder sighed. "I know." she replied.
"Anyway, inside here is our magic arena, where our magic rings lie. We only have two, and we're working to get more, but two have served us quite well for the past fifty years." Logron said as they entered the room.
Cynder gasped as she saw several dragons inside a ring, fighting against about five shadowclaws. An ice dragon stood outside the ring, ready to destroy the shadowclaws and to help out the warriors that would get downed. Cynder watched as a shadowclaw was thrown to the ground, and one of the dragons, a strong earth dragon, swiped furiously at the shadowclaw's neck, only to be thrown into the air as the shadowclaw lashed out with its hind legs, and another shadowclaw lunged at the earth dragon. The earth dragon was downed, and roared in pain as the shadowclaw's razor sharp claws dug savagely into the earth dragon's shoulders, disabling his forelegs. The shadowclaws then disappeared as the other dragon, a fire dragon, ran to the earth dragon's aid. The ice dragon walked towards the earth dragon and breathed ice onto the dragon's shoulders, cooling them down from the burning pain.
"Yeah, we're kind of struggling with these things. We're a little unsure of how many we need to throw into the ring at once." Logron said. "You've had two encounters with them. That may help with our judgement."
Cynder looked at Logron, and then back at the earth dragon as he was brought up into an upright position, sitting on his haunches, as he was given a few red gems. "Why didn't that work?" Cynder heard the earth dragon mutter between some heavy coughs. "I tore out its throat."
"I know why!" Cynder blurted out, and then suddenly felt awkward as all eyes in the room turned towards her.
Cynder shrunk away shyly, before Logron whispered to her. "Tell us. We need to know."
"The… the dragons…" Cynder started awkwardly, before clearing her throat and starting again, much more confident this time. "The shadowclaws have a crystal embedded into their chest next to their heart, surrounded by two ribcages. The crystal holds a power stronger than the shadowclaws' blood, and has extra veins coming out of it, connecting to the heart and to the brain. It's like a second heart. The heart could be punctured and a lot of blood could be lost, but the crystal provides the life source to keep it going, as the veins going into the brain keeps its body moving. A slit throat may cut a few veins, but there are veins all around the back of the neck, too. So basically, you need to destroy the crystal, or cut off the shadowclaws' heads so that it can't move its limbs, leaving the energy to seep out of the open veins exposed in the open wound."
And then Cynder went silent. Logron turned to her with a smile. "That's some really useful information you've got, Cynder." he said. "Sometime later, you need to tell everybody else all this. But for now, we need to get Strayut fixed up, and get some training going for you."
"Training?" the fire dragon asked. "Is she joining the army?"
"Yes. But she's becoming our new leader. The guardians have other stuff they have to attend to, and they can't be focusing too much on this." Logron explained.
The fire dragon nodded and turned to the wounded earth dragon named Strayut and helped him to all four paws. There was a look of pain on Strayut's face, and Cynder felt bad for him. The closed wounds had left huge scars.
Before she knew it, Logron had turned, ready to leave. Cynder quickly caught up to him. "Meet me in the elemental training room. I want to get everyone else in there so we can start those fights. I would like to have at least four or five before you leave." Logron explained.
Logron and Cynder left the magic room and they split up. Cynder walked into the elemental training room, standing in silence as she watched the dragons training. She looked over towards the ring that she had seen Apata enter earlier, and saw her walking out of the wing with a smile on her face, chatting to Jupal, the dragon she had been fighting with. They were both bruised and had bloody cuts on them, but they walked to the corner of the room grabbed a few red gems from a storage chest that was there, healing their wounds.
Before long, the door opened and Logron entered the room with lots of dragons behind him. Immediately, Logron started speaking. "So, as some of you may or may not already know, Cynder here is taking the role of being our general and advisor, giving the guardians some time to focus on other, more important matters that concern Warfang, as they need to focus more on those issues than the ones here. She has already had some experience in this field of work, although the situation was vastly different to this one." Logron addressed all the dragons. "I hope you all learn to treat her with respect and help her out when she needs it, as you would with me or the guardians.
"Now, the reason why you're all here is because I want to get some of you in the ring with Cynder. It's always good to know the strengths, and weaknesses, of your allies, and Cynder will need that knowledge, and you may need that knowledge of Cynder's strengths and weaknesses too. We will probably only have time for four or five, maybe a little more, before the day's over. Sound good?"
The dragons murmured in agreement. "I guess so." Cynder muttered quietly, though no one heard her.
"Alright, for now I want to get those in the ring with Cynder who are willing to, for the time being. We will go through everybody, but for the first few, I want volunteers." Logron added. "So, are there any volunteers?"
"I volunteer!" a female voice rang out, and Cynder recognised it to be Apata's as she walked through the crowd.
"Really, Apata?" Jupal asked from the crowd. "You were only just in the ring with me, are you sure you want to go straight back in?"
"I'm sure. I guess I'm excited to have another female here – there's not that many of us. Maybe I'm also interested to see her fighting style." Apata said.
"Alright, anyone else?" Logron asked.
There was silence before another voice piped up. "I volunteer." Tyrax said, lifting his green head up to be seen.
"For your own information, Tyrax, you can trust her. If this is only to see if you can beat her or not for your own personal needs, then your turn will have to wait." Logron retorted.
"I volunteer because I want to get to know her better." Tyrax argued.
"Alright, then." Logron said after hesitating. "Tyrax will be fighting Cynder. Any more volunteers?"
"I volunteer!" a younger voice called out.
Cynder turned and saw the dragon who had spoken. He was a young electric dragon, and couldn't have been any older than twenty. He had bright yellow eyes and his curved horns were a dark indigo colour. His horns shot out backwards from his head, before curving upwards, creating a deadly weapon. His left flank bore a small scar, and his forelegs were thin. "Alright, Blitz is in. Two more, and I might finish it off." Logron said.
Two voices called out at the same time. One belonged to a stocky fire dragon who looked like he had been serving for quite a while. He was probably in his hundreds, or nearing that age. The other belonged to another fire dragon. He was young, in his mid-twenties, like Cynder. She was slightly reminded of Pyron when she saw this dragon. "Vetar and Molron are in, and so am I. So let's get started." Logron said. "Apata will go first, Blitz will go second, Vetar is third, Molron is fourth, and Tyrax is fifth. I will go last. Get in the ring."
Cynder hesitated, before walking towards one of the rings. The dragons all moved to make way for her and Apata as they made their way to a ring. "Good luck, Cynder. You'll do well." Apata said quietly, bearing a friendly, yet competitive smirk. "But I won't hold back. And I hope you won't either."
Apata stepped into the ring and moved off into one of the far edges. Cynder followed suit, placing herself directly across from Apata. "Okay, so the rules are simple." Logron said. "You may use your elements on your opponent, and you may draw blood. Stop and hold back if you think it's appropriate, or if the opponent says so, and the winner is the dragon who can mimic a killing blow, whether it's a tailblade or their jaws to the throat or the chest, or whatever else it may be. Now, stay safe, give it your all, and let the best fighter win."
Cynder felt her heart beating heavily against her chest, and quite quickly, it became the only thing she could hear, the deep tones rumbling painfully in her ears. Time seemed to slow down for a while. Then, Logron's voice pierced through the deep sound of her heart beating, reverberating painfully in her ears.
"The battle will begin in three… two… one… FIGHT!"
Damn, this week has been so stressful. Probably one of the most stressful weeks of my life. Struggled a lot, felt really unmotivated to do a lot of things, but the week's over, things are getting better, and I'm feeling much happier than I was a few days ago.
I managed to get little bits of writing down where I could (really only for about ten to thirty minutes at a time), but I finished the Epilogue of Demonised, as well as the Prologue for Part 2 of Purple Legacy, so Part 2 is now officially underway, and another chapter is ready to upload, so here it is.
Hopefully this came out well… I don't know much about army settings so I made a lot of it up, but hopefully I got somewhat close? Even if I didn't, pretend that it's another culture, another world, another completely different species, so we can just say that the way the Warfang Army works in this case makes sense for this story. It was always going to be an important part to the Purple Legacy series, but I struggled getting ideas around it and trying to get it looking right.
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Onto reviews (going to split them up into separate sections with an ellipse between paragraphs (as double-enter doesn't work on Doc Manager) to make it easier to discern where another review response starts/ends).
To 'Derick Lindsey', I agree that the Ignitus scene took its damn time, but I'm proud of it. I decided to expand on Cynder's character and end up giving her a brother (they will meet at some point in the series), as it's a good theme for Cynder's character development in a lot of fanfics, as she doesn't have a family (Spyro doesn't have a draconic one either so it's good for him too, but really his dragonfly family is enough in most fanfics), but most of the fanfics that include this theme that I have read introduce Cynder's family in very, very similar ways, so I tried my best to make it something different and unexpected. Not going to say if I've already written it or not, but I know exactly what I'm doing with it.
As for the atheist comment, it makes sense but not really the effect I was trying to achieve. Again, probably poor explanation. The ancestors do care for every living dragon and want to try their best to help each and every one of them through life, but in terms of intervention, they don't want to try and control a dragon's life, as that is not their job. The ancestors have already lived their lives, and want to let every living dragon choose where their life will go, but will provide their help. What I'm getting at, is that if suffering comes along, dragons could easily ask the ancestors to take the suffering away, as they easily have the power to do so. There may be situations where they might intervene in a way that'll take it all away, but generally, they'll help them along, provide encouragement and love, and help them through their walk, because suffering is a part of life. Atheists still do exist in the Dragon Realms, mainly because they haven't tried to ask for help or have tried to block out the ancestors, or in some cases, they have blocked out the ancestors so much that their connection with them has been terminated. Hopefully I explained that one well and it sheds a bit more light on that topic. The ancestors will continue to show up in the series as well, especially due to one of the characters having a strong connection with them, but I'm not going to say who and when.
Unfortunately, the 'rule' that you suggested is not a thing. If Spyro wants to corrupt Forzen too, he very well can, resulting in two corrupt purples. Again, not going to say if that will happen or not, but theoretically, it's possible. As you said, it'd be a pretty stupid rule too, and wouldn't make much sense.
Also I didn't actually know you couldn't vote on polls as a guest (I never really looked at polls that much before I got my account, nor have I really seen that many), so I guess there's two votes for 'yes' on the short-story part. I've already got a few ideas planned for it.
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Going off the final comment in responding to the review, Part 6 of Purple Legacy involving the short-stories will be posted once the five main parts are finished. It's not necessary to read, so once you finish Part 5 you could probably finish there, but it's purpose is to expand on events during the Purple Legacy series, as well as events beforehand (during the canon Legend of Spyro lore or even before that) or afterwards. Got a few arcs planned, but I'm not going to say any more about it. I won't release much information about it now, but when Parts 3 and 4 come around, I'll give out a bit more information on what I'm planning with Part 6, as it'll be vastly different from Parts 1-5.
Anyway, hopefully you enjoyed that chapter (sorry for a massive A/N, but that's why it's all at the bottom nowadays instead of at the top), and I will see you sometime soon. Up next is training with Cynder and co.!