Hunger
Chapter 14
Of all the elements, my friends, Shadow has always kept itself thoroughly shrouded in mystery. Unlike the seven other members of the Unseen Court of Mana, Shadow is both rare and elusive and blatantly defies the fundamental laws of heritage. Dragons of any breed and race can manifest the ability to touch the void from any age. In many cultures, manifestations of this power are often viewed as a sign of corruption. Eggs that display signs of being touched by the shadow are often abandoned if not outright destroyed under this hysterical superstition—and while it is less prevalent in modern times, the practice still persists in many corners of the world. As a result, many shadow dragons have made their home in the north, oftentimes making refuge in the city of Dracolith. More peculiar than its disregard for genetics is Shadow's temperamental nature, often displaying unpredictable behavior contradictory to its caster's intentions. Many describe the ability within themselves as sentient, capable of expressing moods that mirror or oppose their own, or in some cases override the caster's emotions.
While this does little to tear down the powerful stigma Shadow dragons have suffered under for millennia, it has granted the north an indelible moniker as the Home of Dark Dragons.
"It is often the misunderstood that suffer the inhospitable. Ask yourself, which of these you would choose to live amongst."
—Vassal Ambassador Gendrick Koteliri at his Inauguration as Representative Consul for the City of Dracolith.
Here, right in front of her very eyes, was a monster of nightmares, a forgotten myth from an age all but abandoned by history—plucked from a time where they tormented and slaughtered without precedence.
Born from the tales best whispered behind closed doors, the creature was the kind that would haunt her sleep for the rest of her life. Staring at it, Cynder could almost hear the wails of its past victims echoing across time. It made the whispers of her shadows cower and lash. The sweet bile of her shadows felt alive.
'Skinwalker,' they whispered.
'Tortured.'
'Abandoned.'
'Feed…'
'Run.'
And as the monster turned its blank stare on her, The whispers grew torturous, crowding out Cynder's thoughts until only one remained, a feeling, a need—a hunger. Not for love. Not even for revenge. But for the creature in front of her. Her shadows, they wanted it. She wanted it. They were speaking to her, controlling her, demanding her to consume the creature as if it were the only thing that could make her feel whole. For the first time in her life since she escaped Malefor, Cynder felt her control being ripped away from herself. And it made her furious…
Poetry. Daheel. They needed her. Spyro—Yes, even Spyro. Especially him.
Fighting, raging inside of herself against the voices, against her own shadows, Cynder burned them with the steel of her will, cutting through the veil of smoke that tied down her thoughts.
The world snapped—cold and wet, gray and muddy, rust and blood—and Cynder heard the music of combat raging on around her.
She heard the skinwalker scream as a blade of ice ten inches thick embedded itself into its leg, black blood bubbling around the wound, staining the white-blue of the ice a flat grey. It faced its attacker—Poetry.
It swung its long skin-bone arm, narrowly missing the dragoness as she dove, just as a paladin Cynder recognized as Daheel, buckled its leg with a boulder three times the size of his head; it fell to one knee.
He shouted something that might have been part taunt or part curse and all another blade the length of Cynder's tail ricocheted off its head, earning another scream of frustration from the skinwalker. Johagun was shouting as well, rallying to Daheel's battle cry, the air turning cold and frigid from the volley of ice attacks that were flung at the monstrosity.
Feeling like getting involved now, Cynder reached for the creature's shadow but found none, grasping at blank ground. Confused, Cynder reached for Daheel's shadow—molded it into a chain—and tied it to the creature's neck, tightening.
The chain shattered, surprising her with its sheer strength. Wailing, the skinwalker now had its blank face locked on her. It stood, swiping a Balka from the air like a fly. Virga'al screamed as he hit the ground, wing bent at an unnatural angle.
"I think it's pissed off," Poetry shouted from above. "Get that drake out of there," She ordered, slicing the air with a frozen whip, cracking it across the creature's hand as it reached for the injured dragon. "I need a distraction! Now!"
Rushing forwards, eyes on the downed Paladin, Cynder swiped the air between the creature's legs, her wind element cracking its near-skeletal shins with the force of a battering ram, but the skinwalker refused to fall.
Before she could sense the hit coming, the skinwalker's hand collided with her rib cage—bones creaking, the air knocked from her lungs—throwing her off course and into the crumbling wooden wall of a nearby building. Wood splintered and shattered around her as she careened through the wall, sharp pains stinging the membrane of her wings.
Struggling to breathe, Cynder gasped, groping the air with her talons as if she could grab it and bring it to her mouth. There was a terrifying moment where she felt like she was back in the graveyard—buried alive, dirt pouring down her throat.
Then Poetry was there, dragging her from beneath the rubble of wood and stone, muttering feverishly to herself. "You're alright. You're a big girl. Come on," before snapping out orders, Cynder could hear—could feel—the fear in it. The way it trembled. "Daheel! Get that thing off its feet and on the ground!"
Above her, Cynder watched the roof of the building she was in get torn to ribbons, showering the two of them in planks and broken logs, allowing the creature an unobstructed view of her with its eyeless face and its bloody smile.
Immediately Poetry encased them in a shield—a bubble of solid white ice—but it wasn't necessary because Daheel cracked the creature's bare head with a hammer of stone, shattering to pieces that reformed into a spiked roar was a battle cry, the force of his swing sending the nightmare's empty gaze up to the heavens.
It bought Poetry enough time to finish dragging Cynder from the rubble, as well as a chance for her to catch hold of her breath again.
Back in the open, Poetry rushed off to check the pulse of a motionless Zirin, yelling frantically, "Balka! Somebody get this dragon to cover! Ancients' breath, what have I gotten us into?"
Cynder gritted her teeth against the protest of her ribs—cracked, most likely—thinking, I could go for some of that Greywing soup right about now.
A roar from Daheel as his chest was sliced had Cynder staggering to her paws. She vaulted through the air, putting what little wind she could summon here beneath her wings until she was soaring at breakneck speeds. Roaring, she flung her tail blade at the beast with a venom-coated swipe to its forearm. Smooth as a razor, she flayed it's flesh from bone, tar-like blood gushing from its wound.
Pirouetting in the air, Cynder released a concentrated blast of her own shadow into the creature's ribbed-sternum, gripping its chest with her shadowy talons and pulling apart. The fracturing of the skinwalker's ribcage sent chills of triumph down the dark dragoness's spine.
But a blood-freezing scream wounded Cynder's ears long enough for the creature to grab Poetry by her tail and throw the dragoness into her. Colliding with one another, Poetry's weight felt immense as it hit her, knocking the wind out of her for the second time in as many minutes. The pair hit the muddy ground, sending globs of it into the air as they cratered into the soft, wet soil.
The world tilted—her equilibrium thrown off—making her feel like she was a bat hanging off the planet, and the throb of her head had her wondering if she was suffering from a concussion.
Beside her, Poetry grunted, hissing between her teeth as she applied pressure to a grievous cut along her right hind leg, blood trickling out from under the press of her tail, down her scales into a growing red stain on the brown mud beneath her. Thinking on her feet, Cynder pried Poetry's tail away—much to her discontent—exposing the wound with a sound like wet Velcro. Another shriek erupted from the skinwalker, and her shadows quivered at the sound. She had a choice: help Poetry and keep her in the fight, or leave and do what she can to help Daheel mount the beast to the ground. She chose the former.
"What are you doing? Get out of here," Poetry growled.
Assessing her wound—a deep cut, shredded muscle, possibly a torn ligament—Cynder knew it needed to be stanched but couldn't rightly do so; she licked it, her saliva acting as an antiseptic healing agent. Thank the ancients she was a poison dragon, and moderately versed in its medical uses. It would need drainage later but that could wait until they were all back under the relative safety of Shiverum.
"Ancients' breath! The pale dragon hissed. "I like you and all but now isn't really the time."
"I told you to work on defending your right flank," Cynder offered weakly, trying to distract Poetry from the pain.
The dragoness gave a rasping laugh. At least it worked a little. "I'll remember that in the afterlife."
Spitting out the blood Cynder focused on drip-feeding the wound with a cytotoxin from her tail, it would sting but it would help sterilize the cut for now; if she didn't, the chances of infection would practically triple. "Shut up. I'm trying to save your leg—and your life."
"That's a relief. You hardly took me out to dinner first—Stars of Fate!" Poetry swore, the whole of her body arching against the muddy ground. "RUTTING WARN ME NEXT TIME!"
Again, the skinwalker wailed furiously, closer this time. Cynder chanced a glance back and could make out Daheel, the earth rumbling at his call, as well as the regiment. Sawblades of ice sliced at the creature's stomach; the shrill sound of shattering ice and gusts of wind whipping the rain in all directions. The fight seemed on their side but that wouldn't last long if Cynder and Poetry stayed out of it any longer.
"Ancients breath," Cynder murmured to herself, doubling her efforts. This was taking too long and she knew it. Stupid. Combat surgeon was a role she was used to playing. They needed her in the fight but she couldn't leave Poetry like this.
Turning back to Poetry, Cynder eyed the dragoness from head to tail, her body rigid with distress. "Got anything for the pain?" The ice dragon asked.
She nodded, coating the blade of her tail with a topical pain relief agent. "It's no Flecotine, but it'll dull the pain. You'll probably have a scar." A paladin roared in the background as they were wrenched from the air, captured by the skinwalker's lethal grip, drawing their attention back to the greater issue at hand, adding to its impetus.
Stolidly, Poetry stood and tossed herself into the air before Cynder had a chance to reprimand. But her surprise didn't last, and soon she was back in the bedlam herself, spotting Daheel break the creature's grip on Hikono with a sturdy crush of his tail-earthen ax to the skinwalker's forearm. The force of it should have broken its arm, but all it seemed to accomplish was anger the beast further.
That awful scream of a hundred murdered lives filled the air.
Taking the opening, Cynder once again reached with her shadow—long and dark, hungry and firm—this time finding purchase on the creature's head. With shadowed tendrils, she clutched both sides of the creature's maw, felt the phantom scrape of its teeth on her ghostly limbs, and pulled with every fiber of her being, drawing strength from her fear element as it feasted upon those around her.
The skinwalker's mouth snapped wildly, surprising Cynder with a wave of anguish that lanced through her forepaws as if it had actually bit her. This creature…. Cynder's internal panic suddenly shattered as a realization struck her.
This creature must be born from the shadows; it was the only explanation she could come up with, and the prospect of it terrified her. Exploiting her lapse in judgment, the skinwalker grabbed Cynder's shadow limbs, aiming to fling her into the rusty walls of the fortress. She barely managed to cut her phantom tendrils in time before colliding into the Mirefall ramparts.
Growling, Cynder used her excess inertia to sweep back at blistering speed. A rise in hot anger sent faint flashes down her neck as the creature swiped Balak from the air. It ignored Poetry's ice whips wrapped around its midriff—webs of frost spreading across the creature's skin at their touch.
Poetry barked something at Daheel, who was in the process of crafting boulder weights around the creature's feet, molding and cementing the mud from the ground like clay, hardening it around the skinwalkers ankles. Then the dragoness took off, not to the west, not to cover, but to the sky and vanished in the storm hungry clouds; they flashed with thunder and lightning as if in warning.
Cynder wanted to call out to Daheel to ask what was going on but couldn't get the words out before lightning suddenly struck the soil beside the skinwalker, thrusting the world into variable shades of white and gray—a shrieking choir crescendoing in her ears.
Coughing, Cynder's nose wrinkled at the smell of ozone that pushed into her nostrils, followed by the unmistakable crisp of smoke.
"Rutting hell!" Cynder cried, furiously wiping at her eyes in hopes to steep the world in color again; she crashed into the ground, feeling the mud cake her scales.
A second strike of lightning had the metal of the fortress walls singing as it struck a bastion, discolored sparks flying out in all directions. The thunder that followed was brain numbing.
When Cynders vision came to, the wooden structures of the fortress were in flames, the skin walker was shrieking, and Daheel was roaring in pain, a splinter of wood roughly the size of his horns embedded in his shoulder.
Seeing her opportunity, Cynder thrust herself back into the air. The skinwalker screamed in fear and Cynder relished the taste of it, using it as fuel to stoke the flames of her mana. Suspended over the fire, smoke curling around the beat of her wings, she watched the creature rear back, stumbling over the weight of Daheel's stone manacles.
The fear that flooded the air was toxic bliss—curdled and arresting, conspiratorial and pernicious—she could practically see it coursing out of it like vains, radiating off the monster's skin like the waves of heat that radiated off the fire; it warmed her,a sigh escaping her as she was subsumed in the sensation.
Rejuvenated, she reached out with her shadows. Nine long, dark tendrils crept out from her like an oily stain, trembling in anticipation. Gods she was hungry and it made her feel strong.
She felt the familiar sensation of losing parts of herself that often came with using the shadows. It felt like freedom: giving into the strength of dark entropy. What always remained was the hunger.
Endless.
An eternal ache inside to make itself whole, forever unfettered and free—but incomplete.
To survive such an existence, to live countless eons, roaming the world and cosmos in search of oneself, never feeling sane or full or at home.
The choir—the whispers, she could hear them now as they spoke—it sang. A dirge, a lament itself, it's whole self. Shattered. The words, she didn't understand them. But she could feel them.
It tasted like suffering.
Furious, Cynder plunged black tentacled spikes into the skinwalkers chest. The creature screamed in utter terror, clawing at its own legs, cutting itself in its haste to escape. Not even caring, the nightmare struggled against Daheel's restraints until Poetry pinned its hands down with spikes of ice the size of monoliths.
And with a roar like thunder that echoed in the valley, Cynder pulled. Pulled at the creature's ribs, at its teeth, at its bones, at its very own darkness buried within its soul. Until the creature roared with her. Skin ripping, bones cracking, she tore ribs from sternum, splitting the skinwalker's rib cage in half from neck to navel. Blood bubbled out in globs, oozing and coagulated across the muddy turf. Rapacious, relentless, Cynder kept on, tearing limb from limb, ligament from tendon, skin from bone.
"Cynder!" Her name. Someone was calling her name. "Cynder! That's enough! Cynder!"
Silence crashed down on her and her strength evaporated like water thrown to flame. She felt as if her entire being were an abyss, sucking down her soul until there was an emptiness as vast and cold as space between the infinite gaps of her mind and body.
Conscious of her surroundings but as if she were experiencing them through the mind of someone else, she couldn't decide what felt real.
in the mud, tears, sweat and rain stung her eyes. And then Poetry was there, lifting her up, shouldering her weight. Cynder tried to speak, to thank her, ask if she was okay, ask what had happened, why she left. But all that came out were names: Kardama. Riona, Imogul. Kardama. Riona. Imogul. Kardama. Riona. Imogul… Spyro.
Finally, exhaustion took her; the world faded into a black miasma where hunger was depthless and nothing felt whole.
And those shadows, the ones that oozed and undulated from the skinwalker's corpse, like a still-beating heart torn from its chest cavity, crept across the muddy soil to the north.
Author's Note: Once again, I thank you all for your words of encouragement and supportive advice. This was a shorter chapter and I already have the next chapter lined up to be posted but am working a little harder to get it just the way I want it. Chapter 15 is going to be a big one not just in general but for the story as well. Can't wait for you all to read it!