That night, Cynder was woken up in the middle of the night by scurrying footsteps and whispers that failed to be quiet. She could also make out the clanking of metal armour, and by the sounds of the footsteps, the dragons wearing the armour were trying to move in a way that the armour wouldn't make too much noise. "Shush! We might not be heard but be careful! We don't want to get in trouble!" one of the voices whispered.
My window's wide open, you idiots, and you're not doing a good job at staying quiet. Cynder thought, slowly standing up and stalking silently around to the front door of the house, where two dragons were sneaking about down the street. One of them was an earth dragon, and the other was an ice dragon. They both looked quite young. She looked at the spines that ran from their foreheads to their tails and could see by the shape and number of spines that they were about thirty or forty, a little older than her. Cynder also noticed the armour and recalled the clanking of it earlier, but a sudden suspicion began to form in her head. Why are they wearing armour?
So Cynder decided to follow them down the streets, stepping lightly and slowly. She was far enough that she could still hear the whispers of the two dragons, but she couldn't hear them word for word. Eventually, they stopped and groaned. Cynder waited and listened around the corner of another building. "We were told to meet them here!" the earth dragon groaned, louder than intended. Cynder didn't interrupt. She wanted to hear what this was about.
"What time is it?" the ice dragon asked.
"Just past midnight." the earth dragon replied.
"Blast! We had to be here before midnight! They left at midnight!"
Cynder decided now was the time to press them for answers. "Who left? And where are they going?" she asked, walking out of the darkness.
"Oh! Cynder! I thought you were asleep!" the ice dragon exclaimed with a jump, suddenly seeming nervous.
"I damn well should be. And so should you." Cynder growled. "What are you doing out here, especially with armour on?"
"Well, we were on the list to go to Dark Peak tonight, so…"
The earth dragon slapped the ice dragon in the head with his clubbed tail, silencing him. "Shut up, you damned lizard!"
"Dark Peak?! They still went?!" Cynder snapped, managing to pick up on what the ice dragon had said.
The earth dragon sighed, knowing they had been caught. "Yeah. Electrika, and Tyrax, and…"
"Tyrax has gone?! That little piece of sh…!"
"Hey, hey! No need to get angry!" the ice dragon cried.
"Did you not hear me tell everyone earlier that no one was to go to Dark Peak?!" Cynder growled, and the two dragons nodded. "I'm surprised no one had the sense to stop these idiots!"
"No one else knew except for those who wanted to go. Electrika made sure of that." the earth dragon replied.
"Alright. The both of you, go home now! I'm gonna have to go and get them all out of there!" Cynder scowled.
"We can come with you and help!" the ice dragon pleaded.
"NO!" Cynder shouted, before taking to the skies.
As she got closer to Dark Peak, she almost collided into another dragon flying back her way. She recognised him from when she had scolded Electrika about setting this up. He was covered in his own blood, and his left eye socket streamed with dark blood that glistened in the moonlight. Something else dangled from the eye socket, and Cynder realised it was his eyeball, which was still attached only by the optic nerve, drooping down over his cheek. "Cynder! I'm sorry! It's not what we thought it was! They're too strong; there's too many of them!" the dragon sobbed, tears streaming from his good eye, blood from his bad one. "Don't go! Please! They're as good as dead!"
"I'm not going to leave them to die, you coward!" Cynder scowled, continuing on her path to Dark Peak. The dragon cried out to her, his pleas getting fainter as she flew away from him.
She entered Dark Peak through a large hole in the side of the mountain, which she assumed was the entrance. As soon as she entered, she saw armoured dragons fighting for their lives as huge amounts of shadowclaws and venomfangs roamed the caves inside the mountain. There were even dragons in chains, beaten, bloodied and maimed, that were trembling in fear, trying to do their jobs in amongst the bloody violence: carrying large slabs of stone and large piles of glowing gemstones, or mining deep holes into the mountain. Cynder quickly realised they were slaves.
She looked around for Electrika or Tyrax, or someone else that she knew, before she was tackled to the ground by… she didn't know what it was. It had no scales. Its flesh was pink, almost red, and the pumping of its heart and veins was visible through its outer coating of flesh. Its eyes were much like those of the shadowclaws and venomfangs, except the irises were a hideous yellow. Long, jagged teeth shot out of its gums, which were round and lumpy, exposed from its peeled back lips, and long strings of saliva hung from its jaws. The dragon let out a loud snarl, and raised its head, but Cynder rolled over, trapping the fleshy dragon underneath her claws, before raising her claws and striking the dragon across the neck. Huge amounts of blood spilled from the wound, and the dragon died almost instantly. It dies easier than the damn shadowclaws and venomfangs. Cynder noticed. But what's the catch?
She didn't have time to figure it out as she felt poison hit her in the neck. She absorbed the acid and turned to where the shot came from. Two venomfangs were rushing towards her, snarling hideously, venom dripping from their fangs. Cynder let out a siren scream, and one of them fell to the ground, immobilised, while the other leapt at her. The venomfang bit down hard around her neck but Cynder thrashed about, throwing the venomfang off her. She pinned the venomfang to the floor, hacking wildly at its forehead, dark green blood spraying everywhere. The venomfang finally gave a dying scream, before it released one final glob of poison at a dragoness passing by. In chains, carrying a load of rocks on her back. The fire dragoness fell to the ground with a scream, as the heavy rocks fell down on top of her. She thrashed wildly for a few seconds, before going limp. Her foreleg twitched one more time before she was still. Cynder noticed that the dragoness was extremely malnourished, her form thin and bony, and lips dry and cracked, a few teeth missing from inside her open mouth. Her lolling tongue had even been pierced, a large hole in the pink muscle. Cynder's heart sank. This was a slave, killed without reason by a random glob of poison from the venomfang.
With a gasp she remembered the other venomfang. She turned, immediately as she heard a scream. An armoured dragon, one she didn't know, but had seen once around the barracks, lay foaming, writhing, screaming, underneath the venomfang that had recovered from its shock quite quickly. Venom dripped down its lips, and it turned towards Cynder with an evil grin as it licked its lips, smearing venom all over its mouth. The venomfang turned towards Cynder and began to walk off its victim until it was smashed to the side by a clubbed tail.
Tyrax roared as he leapt on top of the downed venomfang, clawing at its forehead. Cynder ran forward and decapitated the venomfang for Tyrax. They gave each other a brief look, before they turned to the soldier that the venomfang had poisoned earlier. But by the time they got to the infected dragon, he was already dead, eyes staring sightlessly at the roof of the cave, mouth open and tongue lolling, and already reeking very badly. Tyrax looked to Cynder with fear and shock on his face. "This is why I said not to come, you idiot!" Cynder shouted.
"I'm sorry! I didn't know! I just wanted to get revenge on those who attacked us! For those who took the guardians, and many warriors and other lives from us!" Tyrax whimpered. "I didn't think it would be this bad when I signed up to come here!"
There was a scream. Cynder turned and saw a savagely beaten dragon, a slave, covered in blood and missing a limb and half his tail, fall to the ground. Shorok stood over the slave, tailblade covered in the dragon's blood. Shorok looked up and his eyes met with Cynder's. "You'll regret coming here!" Shorok boomed. "You will surrender and become slaves, or you will die!"
"NEVER!" shouted a young armoured fire dragon, running towards Shorok.
The dragon was cut down with one swipe of Shorok's tailblade, and he fell dead, his head twisted at an awkward angle. Cynder heard Tyrax gasp beside her. She turned to him and whispered quietly to him. "Find Electrika if you can and get everyone else out of here. I'm going further in to get anyone who's strayed further in to get out of here." Cynder ordered. Tyrax hesitated. "Now, Tyrax!"
Tyrax nodded quickly, and ran off, as did Cynder. She ran towards the direction Shorok had come from, the Shadow General distracted with other matters, allowing her free access into the inner workings and corridors of Dark Peak.
As she ran, she came across a few armoured dragons, whom she told to leave. She made sure they made it out to the entrance cave, but most of them were killed by shadowclaws and venomfangs, as well as the occasional weird fleshy dragon. She ran about for thirty minutes to possibly an hour, and she was satisfied that she had made it through most of the caves in Dark Peak that the dragons probably would have made it through, and she was about to turn around and run back until she was hit in the face by a glob of poison. She shook it off her face, absorbing what wasn't shaken off, and groaned, "Why am I always hit in the face with these damn poison attacks?!"
She stopped short as she saw what had attacked her. A venomfang, but larger than most of them, and more properly structured. From the curvy, slender form of the creature, this venomfang was female. Then the venomfang spoke, and she realised that, like Shorok, she was a general of war, leading her type of dark dragon. "Well, well, well. Look who we have here." the dragoness said, her voice deep and raspy, and she licked her lips with a wet, venom-coated green tongue.
"Who are you?" Cynder asked, feeling her limbs begin to tremble.
"I'm Vhara, the Venom General, leader of the venomfangs. I'm sure you know about that role; you've met Shorok before." the she-venomfang said with a hint of a chuckle. "Hell, you even used to be one yourself! You'd know about it on a very… personal level, I assume."
"Those days are over. I'm not what I used to be."
"Oh, I can tell. You're weak. Spyro's beginning to think less of you now."
"Probably good for me. I want nothing to do with him."
Cynder let out a siren scream, but Vhara leapt out of the way before the scream had even left Cynder's lips. Cynder closed her mouth, ending the useless attack, and growled. "I know your tricks, girl." Vhara chuckled back at her.
Suddenly, Cynder was tackled from the side. Two venomfangs stood over her, venom dripping down their lips and onto Cynder. Dark green blood streamed from the eye of one of them, and the other had a slit throat, which obviously didn't mean anything to the seemingly invulnerable dragons, as the crystal in its head was still intact.
Cynder growled as she fought from underneath them. With much effort, she threw them off her, and sliced off the head of the venomfang with the slit throat, the wound already evident helping her with some of the work. The other venomfang leapt at her, and she whirled around, stabbing the venomfang in the other eye with her tailblade. With a roar, she yanked her tailblade out, the eyeball skewered on the end of it, fluids and blood spilling from the pierced sphere. The venomfang screeched in pain, before Cynder put it out of its misery by separating its head from its neck.
"Clever girl." Vhara chuckled, a teasing tone in her voice. "You know my kind well. But I can assure you, I have more surprises!"
As she said this, Vhara peeled back her lips, and her mouth opened to an unnatural angle, a second row of razor-sharp fangs extracting out of the roof of her mouth just behind her first row of fangs. Immense amounts of venom and saliva dripped from her wet jaws. The smell was sickening, and the sight was horrifying. Cynder was frozen with fear for a while, before she realised how quickly Vhara was coming at her, jaws wide open, wider than most dragons' jaws could go. Cynder ducked, and Vhara took a bite out of the rocky wall. Cynder ran backwards, wanting to get away from the monster, as Vhara turned around, spitting out the rocks out of her mouth, before she opened her jaws again in a roar, giving Cynder a brilliant view of her wet, dark throat.
Cynder let out a scream as she closed her eyes, turning away and swinging her tailblade around. She heard Vhara roar, and she opened her eyes to see that she had left a great big cut on the roof of Vhara's mouth, dark green blood sliding down to the back of her throat. A few fangs had also been wedged loose, and blood oozed from the gums. While Vhara was distracted, roaring in pain, Cynder turned and fled, unsure of where she was going, but wanting to get away from Vhara.
Vhara's cries began to fade into the distance, and Cynder breathed a sigh of relief, believing that she had finally lost the crazed Venom General. She walked slowly down the corridor, before she felt something squelch underneath her paw. She looked down and lifted her paw to see that she had stepped on a pool of blood. A few metres away lay two dark green wings, disembodied, streaming with blood. Bloody pawprints ran off down the corridor, and there were two pairs of them. A broken, bloodied eye nearby, too.
There was a loud bang, followed by a howl. The bang sounded again, and this time a thud followed. A terrified scream sounded, but it belonged to a different voice. The awful soundscape of shouting and more loud impact sounds continued for a moment, before it ceased. Cynder felt compelled to run over and see what was going on, but she needed to be careful. She didn't know what she would see. She didn't want to know what she would see.
A bright yellow light lit up the tunnel from the opening a few metres in front of her, and then there was a hissing sound. Dark, thick smoke bellowed from one side of the room outside the tunnel. Cautiously, Cynder continued to step closer, letting venom settle on the ends of her fangs in case something attacked her.
She turned to the left and let out a shriek at what she saw. Two earth dragons, one male and one female, dead, slumped in a bloody heap on the floor, the male slumped over the female's body. She remembered this horrific sight clearly. Cynder suppressed the urge to vomit. She had seen this before. These bodies. Exactly the same wounds, exactly the same position. Thirty-nine days ago, just over a month, she had witnessed this exact moment in her dreams. It was all coming true. The shock began to get to her. The blood, the stench. The corpses that lay in front of her. It was all too much for her to handle. Suddenly Cynder realised what she saw in the corridor – the two wings and the eye – they belonged to this dead couple. Cynder swallowed, and stepped closer, closing both of the dragons' eyelids, and the dragoness' gaping, bloodied mouth.
"Hey!" a voice croaked from behind her, and Cynder saw a bloodied and broken electric dragon behind her. Cynder must have missed him from her dream; she didn't remember seeing an electric dragon in the room. But she never really checked. Then she remembered the blast of yellow light. Electricity. She had seen that in her dream. The dragon spoke again. "I tried to help them! He did this! He… he's a murderer!"
"I know. I hate Spyro's guts." Cynder spat. "I'm trying to kill him."
"No. Not Spyro." the dragon croaked, before bursting into a fit of savage, wet coughs. He then began to throw up huge amounts of blood, causing the blood to stain in his mouth and around his lips, long strings of blood hanging from his chin. Tears streamed down his cheeks, mingling with the blood on his face. "We were friends before Spyro… Spyro turned him. He… he was…"
"Who are you talking about?"
"He… he…" The dragon struggled to speak, drawing hoarse breaths between croaky words. He gurgled, choking on the welling blood in him mouth, before he tried speaking again, blood spraying from his lips. "He was… he's…"
The dragon's half-raised head slumped to the ground, and he ceased breathing. Cynder swore quietly. Now there was another murderer on the loose, and the dragon said he knew the one who did this. We were friends before Spyro… Spyro turned him.
A corrupted slave? How far could Spyro fall? Cynder didn't want to know the answer.
Another howl pierced through the air. She looked in the direction of the sound and saw blood splatter onto the ground a few hundred metres down the large corridor from around a corner. She remembered this, too. Hopefully, she was quick enough to catch the murderer before he left. So she ran down the corridor, but when she got there, only the corpse of a malnourished lightning dragon lay in front of her, a gaping, bloody hole in the dragon's forehead and his jaws opened unnaturally wide. Cynder swore again. This is going to play out exactly the same way as my nightmare!
Another howl. Cynder struggled to hold her tears back as she ran towards the sound, only to find yet another corpse, alone, yet covered with immense amounts of blood and with an extreme injury. She didn't stop to look at the details; the only thing she saw was blood and a red body belonging to that of a fire dragon. She looked around hoping to see any sign of the murderer. Nothing.
Feeling frustration fill her, she let out a shout, "Where are you?! Come and show yourself! And why are you doing this?!"
One final howl. Cynder stiffened. The fire dragon had been the last one in her nightmare. The howl sounded again. Cynder turned and walked slowly towards the sound. She turned a corner, before she stepped in a pool of blood and gore, and she leapt back, screaming, wiping the gore off the bottom of her paws. An earth dragon that looked a lot like Terrador lay in front of her, eyes rolled back in his head, the white, soulless eyes staring sightlessly at her. A large hole went through his forehead and out the back of his head, blood streaming from the wound, and pieces of brain and flesh dripping out of the wound. There was another wound in his chest, and entrails were thrown carelessly out of the wound; a lung here, and half a stomach there. His heart was thrown a few metres in front of him, still attached by a few large blood vessels to his chest. The heart was flattened, seeping blood. Cynder shuddered as she realised she had stepped on top of the heart.
She suddenly saw a few claws around the corner. Red, covered in thick, wet blood. She gasped, and the claws disappeared around the corner, and scrambling pawsteps were heard. She swallowed, walking towards the corner. Could this be the murderer? she thought. Who is it?
She reached the corner. The claws had disappeared over the left side of the corner. To her right, there was an entrance to a large furnace of some sort, lava being thrown about inside, a few thin platforms of rock around the place. She looked to her left again. She was about to step forward, until a crazed dragon lunged at her from where she came from, and she was tackled to the ground, her hind right leg inside the dragon's mouth. She looked up and saw with a gasp who the dragon was.
Bright grey scales, almost white, with bright red eyes and blood covering his lips, claws and tailblade. The same dragon that had leapt out at her in her dream. Cynder tried to stand up, but the grey dragon pulled her with a heap of force into the furnace room. The heat was intense, and Cynder began to sweat immediately. She kicked out savagely, knocking the dragon away from her, releasing her hind leg. She stood up, feeling blood dribble down her leg, and let out a roar.
The dragon chuckled at her attempt to be intimidating. "You don't scare me, Cynder. I know who you are. I know what you've done." the dragon said.
"Shut up! You don't know me!" Cynder retorted.
"I know more about you than you realise, Cynder. I know about what you've done, who you've loved and cared for, and even where you live. I know you, Cynder!"
"Get away from me!" Cynder screamed, swinging her tailblade in a wide arc towards the dragon's throat. She nicked the scales, but the dragon had moved far enough backwards for the tailblade to miss his throat. A few beads of blood trickled down the wound, but it was nothing fatal.
"Cynder, you know better than that." a deep voice echoed throughout the room. Spyro's voice, Cynder remembered it all too well. A massive head made of lava burst from the magma below her, smoke and ash bellowing from it, the light hurting Cynder's eyes. The head resembled Spyro's. "Why would you hurt this dragon? He seems to know a lot about you."
"Knowledge you probably gave him! I remember I knew a lot more things thanks to Malefor, some of that knowledge I lost after I was freed from my prison!" Cynder scowled.
"After I freed you from that prison." Spyro corrected.
"Shut up, you f…"
"No need for that, Cynder." Spyro interrupted with a chuckle. "But in all seriousness, he does know all that, all in his own mind. Sure, I helped with some of it, but most of it was his own knowledge. In truth, he's closer to you than you think."
"I've never met this guy, Spyro! How can he be close to me?"
The grey dragon reared his head and laughed. "A pity, Cynder, that you don't even know your own brother."
So it seems Electrika went along with the suicide mission anyway… Also, here we have direct links back to Cynder's future visions at the start of the book, and now Cynder's brother has been revealed too.
I'm really happy with how this chapter went. I'd say this is one of my best chapters. I'm proud of the next chapter as well. But things are starting to turn for the worst now…
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Derick Lindsey: Cynder's 'friend group' as mentioned in the Prologue (I put it in quotation marks because of how Electrika turned out) ended up turning into the four elements unintentionally. But I'm glad you enjoyed the actual guardian trainees.
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Hopefully you all enjoyed this chapter, and I will see you with the next one! (I know I said Bitten was going to be the next chapter but oh well… maybe for Halloween…)