What Cynder had thought was a dragon turned out to be, on closer examination, a catapult similar to the ones on Warfang's walls. Despite this false alarm the dragons decided to approach Darkmire's tomb cautiously.

Cynder flew high and searched the area, Spyro stayed roughly a hundred meters below her so that the chain didn't impede her reconnaissance. Soon the two dragons reached the level of the plateau. Cynder went further up the mountain and checked the battlements of the fortress; there were no openings or items of interest on the roof, so she returned to the main massive doors where Spyro was waiting.

"See anything?" Spyro asked.

"A big old fortress." Cynder reported.

Spyro looked at her.

"Besides that."

"Nothing." She smiled.

Spyro was still giving her a look.

"Couldn't you have just said that at the start?"

"Yes. But I spent three years, three years, talking only to Imperia."

"We need to get you some sort of help. First sightseeing, then therapy for you I think."

Cynder shrugged. The two dragons looked up at the walls of Darkmire's tomb.

"How should we get in?" Cynder asked.

Spyro walked up to the stone and reared up to put his paws against it. He frowned in annoyance.

"This is artificially stratified stone. It's been constructed in layers to stop earth dragons being able to travel through it easily."

"Earth dragons can travel through stone? Is that sort of like what the grublins and orcs can do with the ground?" This was entirely new information to Cynder, and it seemed kind of important. "Can you travel through stone?"

"Yes I can, and it's exactly like grublins and orcs, these walls would stop those creatures too. It must have taken them ages to build this. At least there's plenty of stone around." Spyro pressed his head against the stone and listened.

"It's at least a meter thick, probably more. Also there are razor sharp wires threaded through the walls. These guys have been pretty through."

"We aren't getting in through the wall then. How about the door?"

The two dragons looked at the door, and quickly looked elsewhere. Sometimes doors were made to be broken. This wasn't one of those doors and that was that.

"On second thoughts let's get in through the wall." Cynder said.

"Did you just have an idea?" Spyro asked.

"Follow me." Cynder flew around to the other wall of Darkmire's tomb, the one that fronted a sheer drop. She approached one of the arrow slits in the wall and hovered before it. The architecturally and mechanically minded moles had designed in-built arrow slits for their archers, hence they were called "arrow" slits, but dragons had adapted them for breath attacks, namely fireballs, without much difficulty.

The gap in the wall was about the same width as Cynder's head. No dragon could squeeze through that.

"Lovely. A window." Spyro said.

"I'll open the door from the inside, and then you can come in."

"Sounds like a theoretically solid plan." Spyro said. "But how do you get inside?"

Cynder smiled and shrouded herself in shadows. Spyro stared as the black cloud Cynder had concealed her body in slipped through the arrow slit. The shadows parted to reveal Cynder on the other side of the wall, the black dragoness looked around for a moment before turning back to Spyro.

"It's warmer in here." She said happily.

"That… was extremely sexy." Spyro said.

"I'll remember that." Cynder said with a smile. "Okay, the door's probably this way. If I can't open it I'll hoot twice like a barn owl and once like a brown owl, then you come around to this arrow slit and I'll come back out."

Spyro didn't have the faintest idea what even one owl hoot of any kind sounded like, but Cynder was gone before he could tell her so. He flew back to the door and waited, listening for general bird noises.

Cynder trotted down the corridor she had found herself in, she felt an urge to swish her hips and sashay, Spyro had called her sexy. That it was much warmer inside the fortress was an added bonus.

She couldn't quite work out where the warmth was coming from, the floor seemed to have some sort of central heating, but how exactly this might work was beyond her. She gave in to her urge and walked as sexily as she could down the corridor. There was nobody around to see her anyway.

Cynder found the antechamber that the big door opened to. Something had clearly happened here, there was blood on the floor. She checked each of the other corridors briefly but didn't see anything threatening. She examined the blood more closely, it was fairly old; it must have been there for a while. There was a scale on the floor too, a purple one. She picked it up; it was badly damaged, like it had been crushed.

She placed it back carefully on the ground and went to open the door.

Spyro walked in and immediately noticed the blood. He walked over to it then looked at Cynder.

"Did you find anything? And don't say corridors."

"Just that blood." Cynder said as she sashayed over to Spyro. He found her much more interesting than the floor.

"That's a different walk." He noted.

"Walk?" Cynder blinked. Oh yes, she had forgotten to turn her sexy walk off. "Um, I was just…"

"It was really sexy. You look great."

Cynder smiled bashfully, careful to hide her internal celebration. She could walk sexily more often; it wasn't that much harder than walking normally and was certainly more rewarding, Spyro was admiring her appearance again and she enjoyed it.

"I'll remember that." She said. She could let Spyro stare at her all day. Particularly if she was allowed to stare at him too, it sounded like a great way to spend a day really, but today wasn't the right day for that so she moved the conversation along. "What do you think of this blood?" She asked.

"Dagger said he'd hurt Malefor badly." Spyro picked up the purple scale. "It seems he was telling the truth."

"That scale is quite a bright purple. I recall Malefor being darker than that."

Spyro put the scale against his upper back, it matched almost perfectly but had a more pointed shape compared to Spyro's scales.

"Why wouldn't he have killed Dagger?" Spyro asked. He dropped the scale. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" He asked Cynder.

Cynder frowned. Her first thought was that the two dragons could be working together, but there was something else nagging at her.

"There's two possibilities. First is that Dagger serves Malefor, but that wouldn't explain why there's blood and the purple scale on the floor here. So… there's something that Malefor didn't…" She looked up, making a decision. "You're thinking there's something here Malefor didn't want us to see."

"Precisely." Spyro said with a brilliant smile. "Let's do some sightseeing."

The two dragons searched the corridors systematically, Cynder wasn't in the habit of being quite so methodical, but Spyro suggested it. They started at the top floor and worked their way down, each corridor in the fortress had a right angle turn halfway along it, on the outside edge the corridors had arrow slits like the one Cynder had entered through and on the other side were doors that led to the chambers of each guard dragon.

There were other rooms, like an eating room that was built well into the side of the mountain, but there were no dragons. No guards, no sign of a struggle, nothing. The two dragons finished their search at the bottom of the fortress, where a broad staircase led down into the darkness.

"There are rooms for up to thirty dragons. At least twenty were occupied, but we haven't seen anyone." Spyro said.

"They must be down in Darkmire's Tomb itself. Unless Malefor captured them or something like that."

"I doubt he captured anyone. It probably won't be pleasant down there." Spyro said.

"We have to find out for sure." Cynder said.

"Let's go." Spyro replied.

The two dragons began to walk down the stairs, the roof immediately lowered so that both dragons had to walk with their heads down. The darkness closed in around them. After a few seconds of walking the stairs were replaced by rough stone. The floor began to slope downwards steeply. Cynder noticed a scent immediately, she had trouble placing it for a few steps until she realised it was a mix of two more familiar scents. She didn't like the smell of underground, the smell of stone and dust, the caves with stalactites and stalag floor things smelt nicer, but this tunnel had nothing to recommend it.

"We must be in a cave shaft of some sort. I'll give us a bit of light." Spyro said. He began to glow softly.

Now the two dragons could look around and see where they were. They were in a crack, a crevice, a deep slash in the side of the mountain. It was perhaps two meters high at its widest point but was easily thirty meters wide, narrowing until the black stone closed back together. The closest thing Cynder could liken it to was the inside of The Destroyer's belly, she didn't like it very much.

Spyro, however, was fascinated.

"This is awesome!" He said. He abandoned the highest section of the rift like cave to crawl over to one of the edges and look at the stone. "It must be an ice cave." He added.

Cynder looked around, there was no ice, she was glad about that.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Since when did you care about caves anyway?"

"You have mountains, I have caves. Geology is essential to earth dragon training, the ground isn't just the ground, see, there are dozens of different types of stones, and dirts and fault lines. An earth dragon who knows what they're standing on has a huge advantage over one that doesn't."

"I see." Cynder said.

"You don't see… do you?" Spyro asked.

"Not really. But I understand why it's important for you. One of my elements is a bit like that."

"Poison?" Spyro asked immediately.

"Exactly." Cynder said, surprised he'd thought about it so quickly. "I base my poisons off naturally occurring plants, I used to only be able to create destructive poisons, but learning about plants has taught me that there are other ways to use this power."

"Your elements are so amazing." Spyro smiled. "Okay, we should keep going."

"Don't, Spyro. I can see you're dying to tell me about the cave, what sort of cave is an ice cave?"

Spyro's smile made Cynder feel warm inside. He was so happy at her interest.

"Okay. So the earth isn't entirely solid right? Like a small stone it can have cracks or weak lines in it. What we're standing in at the moment would have been one of these cracks a long time ago. We're standing in the weakest part of the stone in the mountain."

"That doesn't sound safe." Cynder said.

"Don't worry; I'd know if it was unstable. I probably could bring it down if I could find the right sort of fault line in here." Spyro looked around.

"Please don't." Cynder said.

"Okay." Spyro laughed. "I won't. It would take several minutes of feeling around anyway. Seizo would get it done much faster; he has a lot of talent in this sort of large scale manipulation. Seeing as these mountains are in a temperature region that can melt in the warm season, and the slope the fortress is on would get regular sun, water would get into the fault line and freeze. When water freezes it expands. We should walk while I talk, this cave could be very deep."

"Sure. So the water and ice forces the crack apart, makes it bigger?" Cynder asked, the two dragons continued their decent.

"Exactly, and it takes the path of least resistance which is why the cave is deep, wide and narrow like the fault line."

"I understand that." Cynder said proudly. Spyro nodded, still smiling.

He opened his mouth to keep talking, but he shut it again with a small snap when he placed the second scent that had been bothering Cynder.

It was blood, and no small amount of it. Not all blood smelt alike and there was a distinctive unpleasant affect to this smell, Cynder was completely certain that there was a dead dragon down there; and probably more than one. They had both been sure there would be but the smell of blood really drove the point home. Dragons had died in this deep oppressive hole.

"Let's be careful." Spyro said. Cynder nodded and the two dragons moved silently down through the earth.

Cynder could have spread her wings in the cave, even flown if she was careful, but she couldn't help but feel very trapped by the stone.

"How deep does this cave go?" She whispered to Spyro.

"We've come down at least a hundred meters." Spyro said, he looked back at the dull smudge of light that was their exit. "It could go much further." He said.

"That's just great." Cynder muttered.

The two dragons crept through the darkness. The cave roof grew lower; Spyro was forced so low he almost had to crawl on his belly. Cynder was thankful for her slim proportions.

There was no light now but Spyro's glow. Cynder had excellent night vision but she didn't want to think about how dark the cave would have been had Spyro not been there. She would have to use her wind to sense where the walls were in that case, but seeing using the wind was not as comforting as simply being able to see.

They heard it before they saw it of course, sound travelled well in the narrow cave. Cynder paused and looked at Spyro silently, he stopped walking and listened.

It was a scraping, dragging sound. Something was slowly crawling up the tunnel towards them. Spyro and Cynder hesitated, neither of them wanted to have a confrontation in a place like this.

"It could be a guard." Cynder whispered to Spyro. He nodded.

"Hello?" He called down the tunnel. The sounds stopped immediately.

"Identify yourself!" A dragon's voice yelled back. He sounded relatively young, but Spyro knew he could still be a threat.

"We were sent here by the Guardian dragons of Warfang! My name is Spyro and I'm travelling with Cynder." He called.

"You're too late." The dragon below them said. "There's nothing you can do." What bravado he had used calling to them the first time was gone, there as only weariness and defeat in the dragons voice.

"Let's go see him." Spyro said. He and Cynder kept crawling down the tunnel until they came across the dragon.

He was an earth dragon, and he was injured. Cynder guessed he was about thirty or forty, still young in dragon terms. His forepaws were bloody and cut; the scales on his belly were scratched badly. He also looked burned, like he'd been hit by a fire or lightning attack. His body was mostly brown, with green highlights on his scales.

The earth dragon looked at them with dull eyes.

"You're too late." He repeated.

"Are you okay?" Spyro asked.

"No. I'm nowhere near okay. He tore them all apart, you don't want to see that." The dragon said.

'What's your name?" Cynder asked.

"Nestoc." The dragon said. "Of Warfang."

"It's good to meet you." Spyro said.

"I can't say the same." Nestoc said, "you're going down there anyway, aren't you?" He sighed, and then he turned around and began to crawl back down the tunnel. Spyro and Cynder followed.

At the end of the cave there was a flat floor, Cynder and Spyro stretched their wings and backs, glad to be out of the tunnel.

Nestoc considered the two dragons, they were both quite young, and neither of them was particularly large. Spyro was tall but lightly built, he moved and behaved with confidence, like he had a great deal of power, he looked like a fighter, but this lean dragon had little resemblance to what Nestoc had thought a dragon of Spyro's reputation would look like.

Cynder didn't impress him, the dreaded terror of the skies redeemed walked with a similar sense of confidence to Spyro and was extremely graceful, but she was also constantly posing, swishing her hips as if she wanted to be stared at. She was certainly beautiful, but nothing more than a pretty face. He couldn't hold her evil past against her, or feel any fear of her; he just forced himself not to stare at her curves.

"I've heard a lot about you two, the dragons of legend and all that. Honestly I was expecting you to be bigger Spyro."

"You're not the first one to say so." Spyro replied.

Nestoc didn't reply. He limped across the floor, favouring his left paw, until he reached a place where the cave opened up.

"Welcome to Darkmire's tomb."

The three dragons stood on the edge of a massive pit. It was easily twenty meters across and Cynder could only guess how deep it was. A series of descending bridges crossed the gap. The cavern roof above them was jagged and sharp, the walls of the pit had rows upon rows of spikes to make climbing nearly impossible, and everything was spiky and looked dangerous.

"Who exactly was this Darkmire?" Cynder asked, rather disturbed.

"The other Black dragon." Nestoc said. He looked down into the pit.

"Very helpful." Cynder said sarcastically. This wasn't especially informative, and was also slightly insulting given that she herself was a black dragoness. "And?"

Spyro took over answering the questions.

"And nothing. We know practically nothing else. According to legend Darkmire terrorized the world and murdered countless dragons. When he died they built this tomb to contain his body, because it was feared he would rise again to bring about the end of the world."

"Sounds like we've got another Malefor down here." Cynder said.

"We've got a Malefor on the loose already, we don't want two." Spyro said.

The dragons made their way around the first ring of the pit until they reached the bridge. Cynder noticed holes in the bridge, Nestoc explained.

"These had lethal spikes on them, which were designed to only retract for a single minute to allow passage. It was a one way system. He took control of it all with his lightning and used the bridges against the others."

The spikes were retracted, and Nestoc seemed convinced they would stay that way; they had for several days after all. The dragons walked across the first bridge safely. Cynder couldn't work out why the bridges had spikes when you could just fly between levels, and then she noticed the razor wire. It had all been cut, every single strand, and it decorated the lower areas of the walls of the pit like ivy. It must have filled the whole space before it was cut; she shivered at the thought of flying through that. This place was nasty.

On the third level Nestoc stopped.

"I've done my best for the dead but…" He trailed off. Spyro and Cynder moved past him, into the next room, and he limped after them slowly.

There had been a last stand in this room. A fire dragon and two ice dragons had stood and died together. Cynder had seen death before, but she hadn't expected the brutal violence that had been visited on these dragons. When she had been controlled by evil her cruelty had been legendary, but now the thought of any dragon willingly inflicting harm like this on another made her sick.

Nestoc had laid the bodies out and put bandages over their wounds, but the smell of blood was think and heavy in the air. Spyro and Cynder looked on in horrified silence, Nestoc limped into the room, tears running down his snout.

"Why would Malefor do this?" Spyro asked. "He didn't have to kill them like this."

"Malefor didn't do this." Nestoc said, looking at them.

"Then who did?" Spyro asked.

"The insane lightning guardian. Thoran, he did this, he killed them and he laughed as he did it." Nestoc spat. "I swear he will die, I'll not rest until he pays for what he's done here."

"Was there a guard here named Dagger? Did anyone else make it out?" Cynder asked urgently.

"Perhaps the Captain of the guard and his younger brother may have had a chance. The Ice dragons, Gracious and Seth, there was no Dagger."

"Oh no." Spyro said. He looked at Cynder. "He'll be in Warfang by now."

"And he's looking for Imperia." Cynder whispered.

Volteer was patrolling the walls of Warfang. It wasn't the most interesting of tasks, but it took his mind off the things that were troubling him. He was worried about Malefor, the dark purple dragon had never entered the battlefield personally, preferring to summon legions of orcs to fight for him, but Volteer had little doubt he could destroy all of Warfang if he chose to do so. He was worried about Spyro and Cynder, they were smart and skilled enough to handle any trouble, but they were also unlucky enough to encounter plenty of it. Thirdly he was worried for Flare, the fire guardian had left to go to Shattershelf after the guardians had finished their council. There had been a law in place for centuries that the four guardians could only separate under very specific circumstances and with much ceremony. It had been painful in the past, Volteer had wanted them to just get rid of it entirely, but Terrador had insisted it stay. They had worked around it successfully though, which was nice.

Flare had taken several of the fire dragons from Warfang as part of her delegation; one dragoness that had chosen not to go was also guarding the walls. Apparently Seraphia had never gotten along well with Flare.

Volteer recalled that Seraphia had been one of the two dragons knocked out by the traitor in Warfang on the night that the vaults had been raided. She looked asleep, lying draped over the wall like that. For a moment he thought she might have been knocked out again and winced at the thought of such bad luck. Even the best dragon can get unlucky. He looked around for anyone else on the wall, but didn't see anyone.

He went up to her and was soon proven wrong. Seraphia wasn't unconscious.

She was dead.

Volteer had seen dragons die, he'd even killed a dragon once before. The memory of doing so had haunted his dreams for months afterwards until he'd talked to Terrador about it. Despite this suddenly having a dead dragon pop up in front of him was rather stressful for Volteer.

It was the way she had been killed that upset the electric guardian particularly. Lightning was quite a nasty way to die. Volteer rushed over to the fire dragoness and checked her pulse, but she was definitely dead. Her body was still warm, and somebody had killed her.

He recognised the way she'd been killed, she'd been struck from behind by lightning claws, and her attacker had aimed right for the base of her skull and smashed her spine before burning her. It was a brutal and effective way to kill, and Volteer recognised the style immediately. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, praying to the Ancestors first for the sake of the dead fire dragon and then again for the safety of every living thing in Warfang.

"The more you know the more you learn that you know nothing."

I'd argue with this quote, I feel there are things we can know, and that knowing these things is not a matter of learning. It's philosophical, and the point is that the more you know the more you realize how little you actually know. Rephrased: It's the stupid people who think they know the most.

Perhaps you can make a different interpretation to mine, and you may be right to think differently to me. I'm not always correct (usually but not always)

Ooh, hey, there we go. You can have TWO quotes:

"Nobody is always correct."

-4Dragons