Hello all! Goodness this fight has been complicated so far, but there's about to be a whole new layer added to it. I can't wait to be able to read it from end to end once it's all done, should be quite the thrill. I'm interested to hear peoples thoughts on this whole thing.
On another note I've recently been told that fanfiction dot net might not be being maintained any more, I hope to finish this story before it goes down if it ever does, but if the site does go down don't worry, my story is all on Wattpad, and I'm starting the process of making an Archive Of Our Own (AO3) account as well and will post previous chapters there over the next few months.
Much love to you all, and now for the story:
A ripple of red power flowed out from Darkmire, sweeping straight through stone as well as through Spyro, Cynder and Malefor; only stopped by the bubble which surrounded them. Despite this the sound seemed to echo beyond that, out into the emptiness of space which surrounded their battlefield. To Darkmire's mind it almost sounded like the stars were singing back to her.
She laughed as she watched the eyes of the other three dragons closing, their wings ceasing to beat as they were pulled into her illusions.
For a moment she turned towards the shining oily surface of the bubble, the only thing which was keeping her from at long last being unleashed on the world again, ready to spend more time contemplating it. After all, to kill her three opponents so quickly would be a waste of potential time to make them suffer, and what suffering could possibly be sweeter than for them to see her tear through this bubble to freedom, revelling in their complete and utter failure to defeat her?
But before she could begin to think she felt her own red magic starting to build up and surge back to her. It was as if her magic was acting of it's own accord, no, more like a side effect. Something-
With her rusty instincts she was too slow to resist, and she suddenly found herself snapped into the same dream that the others were experiencing, her thoughts rapidly breaking off.
Cynder couldn't move. She was curled up and her muscles were unable to do anything more than the tiniest twitches. The world around her was nothing but blackness, with just the faintest warm orange glow to it, no matter how much she blinked and tried to move. This was a dream, but it felt somehow… different.
Sounds reached her ears, and somehow her mind as well. Muffled, coming from a long way away.
"-done it. I gave it emotion magic… I think."
A voice, soft, youthful perhaps. There was a reply, deeper, but further away. Cynder couldn't quite make it out. She listened keenly until the young voice spoke again.
"I… I know. Of course this was a good idea. Yes, I gave it everything, everything I can do. It won't be an ordinary dragon, it will be like us."
The deeper voice said something else that she couldn't make out, then it moved closer, much much closer. Cynder felt like it was mere inches away from her head as it spoke in a whisper which sent chills down her spine.
"That's right little one. You're special. And soon I'll give you my own gift too. The gift to balance the scales of fate and keep the story of the world on it's proper path. You will seek out the impure, you will feel their very minds as easily as a spider feels a fly struggling in it's web. You will be the weapon of our divine retribution. You will be a hunter, a hunter unlike anything the world has ever seen. Oh yes you will, little one, yes you will."
"I don't want to make a weapon." The first voice said quietly.
The second voice responded in a louder tone, filled with sudden anger. "We're doing this for you, do you understand!? Are you going to do your part, or whine like an ungrateful whelp?"
"It's done. I already did it. Now please lower your tone, you're scaring it. You're scaring… her."
And then Cynder jolted back to her own mind, but the memory burned clearly. As clearly as if it had happened to her yesterday. It didn't feel like something new, no, this was something old; something buried deep within her, but so much a part of her that she could hardly believe she had ever forgotten it.
She had just seen her first memory.
Or… not hers?
Something was off about it, and she couldn't quite put a claw on what it was.
For a moment she was able to force herself back to reality. She saw stars, Spyro, Darkmire. Then the red magic surged again and suddenly the four of them were standing in the Warfang Colosseum.
The sky was grey and cloudy above them, but the air was fresh and cool, and Cynder was relieved to breathe it in after the dusty stale air of Darkmire's Tomb and the acrid stinging air of Convexity, even if she knew that this was a mere illusion.
Darkmire dug her claws into the earth, growling and carving deep furrows in the sand.
"I… remember…"
The black dragoness whispered, sounding almost surprised. Grabbing at feelings, things that part of her mind was telling her was important, but she just couldn't figure out how.
"You all saw that too, right? Heard the voices around us?"
Spyro asked, looking at Malefor and Cynder with confusion. They both nodded.
Suddenly it all clicked in Cynder's mind. It was a memory, but it definitely wasn't hers. It was the first moment in the existence of the purple and black dragons. It was a memory from inside an egg. Darkmire's egg.
'You will be a weapon of divine retribution'
The words echoed dully in her mind, a deep voice cooing over the egg, seeing only a tool to achieve whatever his plans had been so long ago.
"And look where that got him."
Darkmire muttered, seeming to hear the words even as Cynder thought them.
"I remember it now like a fire burning in my skull. Such a strange sensation, this hate that I forgot during my long imprisonment… I know that voice. I know that voice!"
She practically shook with rage, claws scraping the ground over and over.
There was silence for a moment in reply, and then Malefor's eyes widened.
"The original Chronicler."
Darkmire jolted as she heard the name, the anger that she felt seeming to narrow into a focused point.
"Yes the Chronicler! Once an ancestor like all the rest, and the only one I managed to kill. The others will suffer the same fate someday far from now, once I am done with all of you. Hmm… I wish I had taken longer with him. At the time I was yet to realise just how long, long, looooong eternity really was. A shame his existence became such a forgettable blip in mine."
"But… the chronicler just records the stories of dragonkind." Spyro protested.
"Perhaps the first chronicler wanted to write that story himself." Malefor said.
"I couldn't have said it better."
Darkmire laughed.
The sky above the dream version of the Warfang colosseum where they stood seemed to grow dark and boil with red clouds and lightning.
"And this is how that story ends. His second greatest creation, me, surpassing them all and wiping away all trace of his first greatest creation: the chronicle he loved so much. Followed soon after by everything that could ever be chronicled again! The universe will be a blank slate, and then so too will be all other universes! And I'll keep them that way forever."
She raised a clenched paw and the ground rumbled under their feet, sending Malefor stumbling while Cynder and Spyro barely caught themselves. Gravity seemed to be pressing down on them harder than it should have, and the stone walls started to crack.
"You know I'm sensing a bit of dull edge to the fear you're supposed to be feeling right now. Maybe you're not quite grasping exactly what it means when I tell you that I want to FUCKING RUIN EVERYTHING!"
She screamed the last words at them, and the whole world seemed to echo with a single massive boom of thunder.
"I was annoyed at first that our magic somehow escaped my control enough to bring me in here with you, but now I see that this was a gift! So on the off chance that you're all too dead to appreciate my work by the time I'm free I'm going to paint a picture of it all for you here and now."
Her eyes flashed red and the world seemed to solidify around them, growing more and more real until even with her own powers Cynder could barely tell it was just in their minds. Darkmire's eyes glowed red so bright it lit her scales in a bloody red glow.
"Whew, that burns, oooh my eyes… Might have to rip them out later. But it's worth it! I won't need any fear magic for a while after this."
She blinked away trails of smoke from her head and laughed.
"Now where was I?"
Darkmire rotated her clenched fist and the ground they stood on turned with it, gravity itself seeming to rotate, and they realised that the entire Warfang colloseum had been lifted into the sky and was now turning upside down with them inside it. What had been red clouded sky showed the horizon briefly, before turning into a birds eye view of Warfang filling the space above them.
"Are you ready to see me at my best? None of this million years of rot which is making things sooooo much slower than they need to be. Aren't you curious? Well either way you're about to find out!"
A ripple of red suddenly ran through the world, but it didn't come from the Darkmire who stood opposite them. It came from the earth above. The colosseum turned slightly to give them a view over towards the east where Darkmire's Tomb lay, beyond the volcano which stood across the plains from Warfang.
Spyro, Malefor and Cynder shared glances, instinctively knowing that they'd just felt what the whole world would feel the moment a fully freed Darkmire exited the front gate of Darkmire's Tomb.
From over the horizon they sensed the approach before they saw it. Like sunlight coming over the horizon before dawn, but instead of that warm light in the sky it was a creeping sense of dread with a murderously pointed direction, a hungry wave of fear spreading out like the shockwave of a bomb.
Far below in the city the tiny shapes of dragons were fleeing, turning as one and starting to run away from the direction that the fear was coming from, looking like tiny ants as they moved and scurried around, taking wing by the dozen.
A massive yellow eye rose up above the horizon like a moon. Smaller than the one Cynder had seen within Pleasure's mindscape, but looking even more unnatural against the sky of the 'real' world.
A deep laugh boomed out, shaking the buildings, rumbling like the rolling sound of thunder.
The ground cracked and exploded in a crescent shape twenty miles across on the far side of the city, sending massive clouds of dust into the air and leaving a gaping pit that cut off the only escape route for the citizens below.
The horizon around the eye darkened, and began to roll across the landscape towards the city, coating the world in blackness as it approached.
The crowd was panicking with nowhere to go, screams rose faintly even to the watching dragons miles above, making the real Darkmire drool with anticipation as she basked in the sound of a terrified population.
"Oh Spyroooooo! You know Warfang better than anyone! Thank you soooo much for giving me all the tools I need to create the most realistic Warfang possible! All the suffering that's about to be inflicted upon your friends, it's all coming from your imagination!"
The real Darkmire cackled.
"How do you like it? Pretty realistic, huh? No cheating, no nightmare weaving. Just a real world, or close enough, for us to play in. Consider it a trial run for what I'm going to do once I arrive in Warfang for real."
The darkness approached like a storm, Cynder had never imagined so many shadows, a gigantic inkblot which was blacking out the surface of the world as it crawled towards the city.
The earth groaned under its weight, and Cynder watched trees fall like blades of grass and hills and mountains flatten down like bread dough under a rolling pin, the storm seemed to spread it's wings and walk across the land, leaving everything in blackness, then rising up over the city and hanging there.
The distant screams grew more desperate, more chaotic, but the shadow was taking it's time to fall, knowing there was no escape out from under it's sheer bulk now, it was simply too large to fly away from, and the earthbound moles and cheetahs had no chance at all.
Spyro could imagine dragons he knew desperately letting their mole friends onto their backs and taking off, winging it for the edge of the cloud even though it would take them nearly ten minutes at full speed to get there. Ten minutes of torture, Darkmire keeping the city suspended in horror of it's own mortality, it's inevitable fate.
He saw moles falling off the backs of dragons who'd never ferried a passenger before and didn't know how to do it safely, falling to their deaths among the buildings below.
"Just do it!"
He shouted to the real Darkmire.
"We get the point!"
"Why Spyro, Spyro, Spyro I'm shocked!"
Darkmire giggled with the absolute petty spite of a schoolyard bully.
"I might have spared them! But now that I have your say-so I guess I have nooooooooooooooo other choice!"
She twitched her clenched paw to the left, and suddenly they all slammed into the wall of the colosseum, catching all three of them by surprise. Cynder found her head ringing from the hit, she hissed and jumped to her feet, now standing on the wall, half furious from the cheap shot, but almost relieved to be able to go back to fighting instead of watching the horror unfold.
"Oops, my finger slipped!"
Darkmire twitched her paw to the right and gravity aggressively flipped again, and the three of them barely landed on the opposite wall on their feet.
"You know I'm putting in so much effort to show you all this, but I think it's time you got a bit of a closer look, am I right? Sure I'm right! Now go have fun watching me kill your friends over and over and over again… Goodbyeeeeeeee!"
Darkmire opened her paw and made a swatting motion, and gravity shifted again. Cynder thought she was ready to hold herself in place against the shift, but instead it felt like Darkmire and the colosseum was falling upwards away from them and she was a few moments too slow to stick with it.
Before she could fly the storm of darkness swallowed her.
At first everything was dark, but Cynder didn't have much space in her mind to be concerned about that, because her senses of touch and hearing were being assaulted. Her skin felt like it was being stabbed with needles, and her ears were filled with an endless screaming wind. Cynder spread out her magic, asserting herself in the space around her, driving the shadows back. Solid darkness was flowing around her like currents in a river trying to drown her. Out of the corner of her eye she could see flashes of orange fire from where Spyro was blasting shadows away from himself.
Any moment when a part of Cynder's body got too close to the shadows she was scratched and raked at by claws, sometimes entirely ghostly, sometimes solid talon on black scaled paws. Several times she thought she saw Darkmire's grinning teeth below a pair of glowing yellow eyes, waiting to bite her.
The storm screamed around her, reaching and snapping like a pack of ravenous animals, like living nightmares trying to steal her away as she fell through it.
As she fell the space opened up around her and she found herself below the cloud, looking down on a scene of devastation.
The Dragon Temple had been cracked open like an egg, the entire mountain shattered and blown apart, and in it's place was a tornado of black shadow which whirled and howled and looked down upon the rest of the city with menace. Dozens of smaller shadow tornados scraped and crawled across the face of the city like a bored child might claw shapes into the dirt, leaving trails of destruction behind them as they went.
She saw dragons fleeing this way and that, running from building to building as they tried to escape the storms and the drops of burning shadow which fell from the clouds, slowly painting the whole city in black like a rain of inkdrops. Cynder herself had to dive around a tornado, then a second one, before finally getting some space to breathe, frantically looking around for Spyro. When she looked up the clouds above her head turned sharp and jagged, and at least for the moment she didn't dare try her luck diving back into them.
Suddenly she saw a bright orange light and heard the roar of fire, Cynder dove through the storm, dodging around buildings and tornados to skid to a halt before a whirling ball of fire. She had hoped it would be Spyro, but to her surprise it was Flare, roselike wings fully outstretched, every inch of her body blazing with flame as she hurled sheets of fire in every direction to keep the darkness at bay, her dancing streamer of a tail whirling rapidly without stopping.
"Flare!"
"Cynder!"
The fire dragoness looked around, running a few steps towards the black dragoness and raising a wing protectively, all but yanking Cynder under the shield of fire which she was creating. Cynder accepted the offer of safety, diving into the gap in the fire shield which Flare had created, quickly realising that hiding under Flare's wings was Ember, and under her wings in turn were a pair of terrified moles.
"Cynder, what's happening!?" Flare said rapidly, deftly catching Cynder and all but shoving her protectively under her wings with the others. "Where is Spyro? What do we do? What are we up against?"
Cynder hit the ground with a grunt, Flare had pushed her a bit harder than she'd intended to. She looked across at Ember, who was looking terrified but glad to see Cynder, then she looked back up at Flare as she battled against the shadows.
None of this was real, the real Flare was at Darkmire's Tomb, and the real Ember was in Warfang, which was not being attacked.
And yet it felt real, her heart was hammering, her leg was sore from landing hard on it, she could feel the heat of Flare's fire attacks and smell the smoke.
"Cynder? Tell me what's going on!" Flare said urgently, able to glance down at the black dragoness a few times before fresh waves of shadow tried to break in again. One of the tornados was bearing down on top of them, the roaring screaming black wind obliterated buildings down the street from them as it dragged towards them.
It felt very real. Where was her real body? Just floating around in convexity?
"It's the Darkmire dragon, she has most of the same powers as me, just bigger. I need to find Spyro." She said.
Flare nodded shortly, then took a defensive stance and gritted her teeth as the sound of the tornado became deafening as it approached them. Cynder jumped up and reached out for it with her power, trying to control it and overcome Darkmire's power. The strength of the insane dragon was unbelievable, this one tornado out of dozens felt as difficult to assert control over as it would have felt to try and assert control over a wind tornado created by Imperia, and Cynder had tried and failed to do that plenty of times in the past. The shadows faltered and diverted around them slightly, just enough for Flare's shield to hold up and protect them while the storm travelled on past them.
The two of them looked at each other and shared a nod, but before they could catch their breath the ground beneath them cracked and opened up. Cynder leapt into the air, creating a bubble of wind to hold herself, Flare, Ember and the moles up, but when she looked down she saw a stressed looking and dirt covered Terrador urgently beckoning them down into the hole.
With another glance at Flare Cynder jumped down, half expecting a tunnel or a cavern, but there was nothing but the hole. She found herself pressing her body against the dirt in order to make room for Ember, the moles, and Flare as they all took cover.
"Have you seen Spyro?" Cynder asked immediately, but Terrador only shook his head and spoke to them in his own hurried tones.
"I need to keep moving to save everyone I can, Seizo will be along to collect you as soon as possible. I know you could both brave the storm, but we need everyone we can get if we want to launch a counterattack, so please, Cynder, Flare, don't risk yourselves."
Cynder glanced up at the entrance to the hole, which Terrador was already rapidly closing above them, but she gritted her teeth and did as he asked.
"Just make finding Spyro your top priority, okay? Whatever you see, whatever happens, trust me on the fact that Spyro and Malefor are the most important assets you have." Cynder instructed him, and was almost surprised when Terrador nodded in immediate acknowledgement.
As soon as he was done closing the earth above their heads Terrador stepped straight into the wall beside them, the earth parting around him so seamlessly it almost looked like he was a ghost phasing through it. With his absence the little earthen bubble they were in seemed bigger, but also more ominous, and Cynder found herself immediately disliking it.
Spyro emerged from the shadow storm like a burning red comet, a trail of fire left in his wake as he swatted away the shadows which tried to cling to him. When he saw Warfang spread out below him in chaos he froze, his heart pounding in his chest with anger and dread. He did not have Cynder's power to know that this was a dream, and it all felt horribly real. He saw dragons still fleeing for their lives, and the still bodies of Dragons, moles and feline folk scattered across the streets getting covered in the dark rain which was falling over the city.
He landed heavily atop one of the few remaining buildings, looking around and seeing a tornado was approaching, but he could hear that there were people inside the building below him.
With only a moment to think, and not sure what would be an appropriate element for combating a shadow tornado directly, Spyro dived down into the building and began throwing walls of rock around to try and reinforce the structure, instinctively working around the huddled dragons and moles who were taking shelter there, in the distance he heard a familiar voice shout his name, but the rest of what it said was drowned out as the storm hit.
Dust exploded from the roof and walls and Spyro heard shattering rock, he raised his wings, spread wide over those taking refuge with him, bricks and stone falling on him and making him grit his teeth in pain. The sound of the wind rose to an unbearable peak, and Spyro found himself roaring up at it, bellowing a challenge back at the sky as the roof was ripped off the building. The weight of the shadows tried to slam him to the ground, but he reinforced himself with more earth magic and pushed back, until finally the storm passed and Spyro burst out of the rubble, looking around and seeing a few familiar dragons picking themselves up, many of them injured. Before he could tend to any of them he found himself grabbed by a very familiar blue dragon, the same one who had called out to him in that voice which he hadn't heard since-
"Spyro! We have to get underground!" Ignitus said urgently to him.
But Spyro was frozen in place, staring at the familiar brown eyes, the noble horns, the imposing bearing of Ignitus, now coloured entirely in blue, and yet somehow still evoking a bright flame.
"Ignitus? But… how? You're supposed to be red."
Ignitus chuckled softly, looking over Spyro from head to toe, his voice calming and becoming gentle. "It always did suit me well. Now come on, we have to get these people to safety, if I remember correctly the watchtower down the street has a basement we can shelter in, the basement at least should still be intact."
Ignitus moved past Spyro, picking up wounded dragons, gently lifting several moles onto his back and protecting others under his wings, letting one of the more seriously hurt dragons lean on him to limp to safety. Spyro could only stand and watch the dragon who he had spent all these years thinking was dead, tears in his eyes, before finally he hurried forwards and began to help as well.
Flare began to glow with a soft comforting light, and for a moment Ember and Cynder made their own little flames to help, before Cynder remembered that fire would use up their air, and the moment she remembered that one of the moles slapped her and Ember's paws down.
"No fire underground!" They said.
Cynder was disturbed by the sudden reminder that this was all a dream, so she didn't even give the mole the hostile scowl that would have otherwise been her first response to their action. In the soft light provided by Flare's body she examined the two moles closer, noticing how weirdly similar they looked to each other, and both of them looked like one of the only moles she'd seen at particularly close range recently, that bookshop owner from when Spyro had taken her on a date. Her lips quirked up in a fond smile at the memory, while the rest of her mind was processing how this dream worked, and wondering just how much control she might have here.
"Did I teach you that fire?" Flare asked, shaking Cynder out of her musings. "It's strange, I remember doing so, but I can't understand why. In any case your control was looking good, from what little I saw of it just then."
Cynder opened her mouth, considering trying to explain what was going on, but then she shrugged helplessly, not sure what to say. For a few moments they sat in worried silence, before the earth below them opened again and a bespectacled green dragon poked his head into their bubble.
"Lady Flare, Ember, Cynder! I almost didn't see you there, you really blend in! Does anyone need medial assistance or can you just follow me down to the others?"
"No medical assistance needed, lead the way."
Flare responded, causing Seizo to open a small hole for them which Flare squeezed herself through, spinning tail brushing over the dirt and beckoning them all to follow.
"How is the ground holding up? Is the enemy likely to discover us?"
"No direct attacks yet, but I saw how the ground was ripped open during the initial moments of the storm. If whatever it is becomes aware that we're taking shelter underground then it will be able to expose us in seconds. What are we dealing with?"
"One black dragon. She can do the same things as me, she's older than Malefor, and she's totally out of her mind, loves nothing more than torture and destruction." Cynder said. "Poison, Shadow, Wind… fear… She can probably sense us down here already." She realised with a rush of nervousness. "But then why hasn't she…?"
She came to the realisation, and once again someone else immediately put it into words, in this case Seizo.
"By the sound of it the most likely reason is that she is too entertained watching dragons on the surface run for their lives."
"Once their time runs out, so does ours." Cynder said grimly, her mind visualising dragons up above, hiding from the black rain, running from building to building to try and avoid the tornados. At the rate she'd seen how long would it be before the entire city had been razed down to a barren field of dirt and dust, painted black by falling shadow? Ten minutes? An hour?
Cynder followed Flare's spinning tail for about a hundred meters, diagonally downwards, before the space opened up into a larger cavern with about twenty dragons, many of whom were wounded, and a hundred or so moles in it. It looked like moles had fared better during the assault than dragons had.
Cyril was tending to injured dragons, although he could do little more than provide ice and cool water to them, and among the injured dragons was Volteer, one of his wings broken and a deep gash along his side. Flare immediately ran to him, giving his uninjured parts a hug and hurriedly talking with him as she began to help tending to his wounds, also no doubt sharing all the information she had with him.
Seizo looked at Ember and Cynder apologetically. "Well here we are, Terrador and I reinforced this cavern as much as we could, and its far from the Warfang underground which has already been compromised and is full of shadows and green mist. But I need to go find other survivors. Stay safe okay?"
Cynder nodded, then stepped closer to him. "Spyro and Malefor need to be your first priority, okay? Terrador knows. I know they're more likely than most to be able to fend for themselves, but even if they seem to be doing fine, even if you have to leave someone else behind, you need to bring them in, okay?"
He nodded with grim determination, and hurriedly began to make his way back up the tunnel which closed behind him.
"What's going on, Cynder?" Ember said softly, fear in her voice, but trying her best not to show it.
Cynder thought for a few moments before answering. "Well… There's good news and then there's bad news. The good news is that you're allowed to think of this all as just a horrible nightmare. The bad news is that it could become real if we don't stop it."
As Cynder spoke for a moment a vision of Ember standing between herself and the fire king Magmar flashed in her mind; seeing Ember put herself between Cynder and that monster, the spatter of blood, the big heavy claws of the gigantic dragon painted red, and Ember falling, bleeding from the throat. She growled and shook her head, shoving the images aside.
Long minutes went past, time seeming to stretch out painfully slowly as she watched the others frantically dressing wounds, experiencing pain, Warfang being pushed to its limits to try and survive.
That was what Darkmire wanted them to see, she had turned this unexpected magical backlash into a playground in which she could torment them; using their memories as ammunition to try and make them suffer.
Much to Cynder's relief she was spared from thinking about that any more, or for that matter being asked any more questions, as finally one of the walls to the cavern opened and Malefor stepped into the cavern, with Imperia by his side. For a moment their presence caused a ripple of fear among the citizens hiding in the cave, but the much greater threat outside eclipsed any fear of Malefor that might have lingered there.
Imperia was the first to rush over to Cynder, landing beside her and putting a finger over Cynder's mouth before the black dragoness could even speak.
"I know it's a dream." She said immediately. "The others can't seem to grasp it, although I tried to tell them. But I'm pretty much a hundred percent confident. I don't know if I have you or Malefor to thank for imagining that I would be able to know when I was in a dream, but it's very much appreciated."
"Well I guess that makes things easier for me. Not being able to explain it was exhausting me." Cynder said. "The real fight isn't going well… We hit her with enough to kill any dragon but she laughed it off. She claims that the dream version of her will be even stronger, I don't know how we can even get through it to get at the real one."
There was a distant rumble from up above, and what sounded concerningly like a mocking laugh, somewhere up on the surface.
Imperia's face turned grim. "Seizo told us you were down here, but then he stayed behind to distract her. I think deep down he might have also known this wasn't real."
Spyro made a sweeping motion with his paw and the rubble which had covered a staircase leading down into a basement was lifted aside. He began to guide the wounded down there, all while looking up at the sky, both to watch for any further shadow attacks, and because seeing the familiar faces within this dream was unsettling.
None were more strange for him to see than Ignitus, who he had last seen in the Belt of Fire, before the defeat of the Dark Master, when Ignitus had given his life to grant them safe passage through the flames.
"Spyro, can we talk?" Ignitus said softly.
Spyro moved past him, helping the last of the dragons down the steps and standing aside so Ignitus could take shelter with them. The basement was spacious and had so far remained solid, without even cracks in its roof. It did seem to offer them safety, at least for now.
"No offence, but the real Ignitus is gone, beyond my reach. I promise there is nobody I would rather have here to help us save Warfang right now than you, but I'm not here to relive those memories right now while there is a fight going on." Spyro said, looking at him and shaking his head softly then turning away and sealing the stairs shut to block out the storm.
Ignitus shook his head. "Spyro, I'm the new Chronicler. I am not part of the illusion, I've been drawn into it just like you. I… I came back for you. I know it's too little and too late, by the time I arrived in Warfang you were in the grip of Dark Spyro. I'm sorry I couldn't come back for you sooner."
Spyro listened in silence, staring at the older dragon with confusion at first, then shock as the information sunk in. "It's really you? That would explain the blue colour."
"Yes, it is really me. I'm sorry for bringing back painful memories, I wish we had met under dif-"
Ignitus grunted as Spyro stepped forwards and grabbed him in a tight hug. "I'm glad to see you."
"-Oof! I can hardly believe how much you've grown!" Ignitus chuckled softly. Spyro was now only a few feet shorter than him, approaching fully grown, and Ignitus could feel how strong he was through the hug. "I was always watching over you, but respecting your privacy of course, I wouldn't misuse the powers of the chronicler like that."
Spyro blushed, deciding not to think about that too deeply. "I always believed you were there. I didn't always follow my heart, I tried but I failed when Cynder left Warfang."
"Spyro I can't tell you to have no regrets, that's something you have to feel for yourself, but you've exceeded everything I hoped for. My only regret is that I couldn't be with you and the others for it all."
Spyro wrapped a wing over Ignitus and held the older dragon close to him, and despite the storm and chaos and the nature of the dream, for a moment he was able to simply feel happy.
"I'm glad to see you again."
Terrador arrived back at the underground sanctuary he had constructed for them all, leading another group of refugees. Imperia immediately perked up and glanced at Cynder.
"Hear that voice?"
Cynder tilted her head and listened with her wind magic, then smiled as she too identified the familiar voice of Spyro. She hopped to her feet and moved over to meet them, surprised when she saw that Spyro was side by side with Ignitus.
Ignitus beckoned them all over to him, and Cynder took her spot next to Spyro, giving him a relieved hug.
"You okay?"
Spyro nodded, smiling. "Better than okay, look who's here!"
He gestured to Ignitus, who stepped forwards and nodded to them.
"Cynder, thank the ancestors you're alright. As I was just telling Spyro I-"
He glanced at Cynder's suspicious expression, and a reassuring smile warmed his eyes.
"I see you wondering. Indeed I am the real Ignitus. Whatever magic our enemy created here resonated with me, and I feel as if my own magic turned against me and dragged my mind here. I suspect that Darkmire experienced a similar backlash of her own magic, likely even stronger than what I felt. My real body is still in Warfang, being worried over by Cyril and Terrador. I fear that in taking the role of Chronicler I have inherited a legacy which contains at least one evil deed, perhaps many, and it was always going to catch up with us someday. But where there is danger, there is also opportunity. Now that you are all gathered I think I may have a plan with which we can defeat Darkmire, permanently."
Suprise, I finally got to the payoff of bringing Ignitus back! Two worlds, a dozen characters, and one embodiment of pure evil. Finally all the pieces are set, and the most explosive part of the battle yet can begin. I'm looking forwards to next time very much indeed.
Please comment and review if you enjoyed!
Until next time
-4Dragons