I am proud to announce that I have recently created a Deviantart account. 'Always4Dragons' is my name, as my usual name was sadly already taken.

Anyways, I promised you all in a note a few chapters ago that I would attempt to create art for this story. That's what I've done.

Thus far I've drawn a picture of Spyro and a picture of Imperia. I'll admit tehy aren't perfect, but I'm quite proud of them and encourage you to check them out if you've enjoyed the story so far.

I'll just quickly say here that if your image of Imperia and mine don't match then you can go with yours, I don't want to mess with her.

This link surely won't work, but I'll put it here anyway: always4dragons. deviantart art/My-Spyro-576353314

I hope you like my art, I doubly hope you like this new chapter!

Story now:

On a small platform above a lake of fire surrounded by hundreds of orcs, the ice dragon Seth stalked Spyro and Cynder.

"I didn't really want to have to kill you, Malefor and Gracious didn't either, that's why they've left you for me." Seth said.

"Then why are you going to try?" Spyro asked. Seth shrugged.

"Sometimes a few dragons have to die for the sake of us all; you two are disruptions, threats. If left to your own devices you would damage the perfect world Malefor will create."

"A perfect world needs to have me in it." Cynder said, completely straight faced. Spyro snorted with laughter.

"Are you going to take this seriously?" Seth asked.

"Nope, never." Cynder said with a smile.

"Well if that makes you feel better about this…" Seth lunged for Spyro.

Spyro saw it coming, Cynder saw it coming. The only one who didn't expect what happened next was Seth.

The ice dragon was fast, very fast, but he'd made the critical mistake of leaving himself too much distance to cross in launching his "surprise" attack.

Spyro didn't quite have the weight and strength of a full grown dragon, but he had the skill to use what he did have to perfect effect.

The movement that would become an attack began in Spyro's feet before racing up his legs and flowing through his tail and back as the purple dragon reared up; Cynder admired the grace of the motion, then Spyro twisted his shoulders, pivoted and smashed a devastating punch into the ice dragon's jaw. Cynder recognised that Spyro had adapted one of the moves from the Way of balance into his counterattack. Close combat may not have been Spyro's greatest strength, but that didn't make him any less devastating at it.

Seth was caught completely off guard and crashed to the ground. But he was quick to rise again, and anger flickered across his face.

"Perhaps I was incautious. Let's do this properly." He looked around at the stands and row upon row of orcs. "Kill them both." He said.

In moments the platform was filled with enemies, Spyro and Cynder were trapped. Cynder cloaked herself in shadows and she instead had the enemy trapped… from the inside. That was plenty enough for her to work with, she swept through the crowd and began to do what she did so well, kill things.

Spyro decided that dealing with their opponents one by one was too slow, and after all he couldn't simply poison and forget like Cynder did. He breathed in and concentrated, then he breathed out a snowstorm. Visibility dropped to almost zero, the temperature dropped sharply and snow danced across the platform.

Cynder recognised Spyro's favoured combo, she cleared the air around her of snow with her wind magic and retreated to the walls outside of the blizzard as quickly as she could.

Spyro spent several seconds creating spears of ice and sending them crashing down on the orcs nearby to ensure Cynder had time to get clear, he wasn't going to let her get hurt. Seth decided to take the fight to Spyro, being unaffected by the ice storm.

Spyro suddenly found his ice was turning back against him, he didn't have the skill required to beat the other ice dragon at his own game, but he didn't need skill when all his problems could be solved with a touch of lightning.

Spyro's blizzard lit up with electricity, Seth screamed, but his soldiers did not. However when the lightning faded it was rather ironic that Seth was still standing and nothing else was.

"Bastard!" Seth snarled, in surprise and pain. "You can't win!"

Spyro went to answer, but then decided it was wiser to say nothing. "Sure we can win." Was not the sort of thing he wanted immortalised as his last words. All the same he was pretty confident; unless Seth and Gracious had prepared a better trap than this he knew he and Cynder could handle it.

This time the great orcs joined the battlefield. Spyro used his comet dash to knock the huge creatures off balance while Cynder leapt into the air and aimed to strike them with her lethal poison. A swarm of flying grublins disrupted the fight. Cynder used her wind to send them crashing down to earth where Spyro could finish them off.

Spyro pressed his paws to the ground and broke a large segment of the platform off, sending all the orcs on it falling into the fire below them.

Seth was beginning to realise that the two dragons were much more powerful than he had expected. That these two should be so strong at such a young age was an unpleasant surprise. He launched ice spikes at Spyro, who countered by raising a rampart of stone out of the platform. Seth jumped up on the wall that Spyro had created and sent a hail of tiny ice splinters down at the purple dragon. Spyro melted every splinter with a torrent of fire, and then launched a fireball while he was hidden from Seth's view. The ice dragon needed all of his speed to dodge the concealed attack, then he was struck hard from above by the black dragoness. He didn't realise how fortunate he was that Cynder failed to cut his hard scales, but he realised that he was in a bad position and fell back to let his orcs keep the dragons busy.

Cynder stopped using her shadows, they were taking too much of her mana, she had a huge amount of mana to throw at problems, but there were an equally huge amount of problems to be dealt with. She realised she needed to conserve her power, so she switched to using wind only as the drain on her mana it caused was minimal. Without Cynder's influence the battle began to turn against the two dragons, orcs rose from the ground or jumped down onto the platform from the walls faster than the two dragons were defeating the creatures.

Spyro was struck several times. He focused on taking down the biggest threats as they appeared, trusting to his defence and his hard scales to protect him from the enemies he didn't deal with immediately. A few blows got past his guard and an axe bounced off his shoulder, not cutting him but still causing pain. Spyro created an earth pillar below his feet which he used to launch himself into the air, and then he spread his wings and regained his composure above the battlefield. Soon he had to dodge ice spikes launched by Seth from below, he retaliated with fireballs and ice spikes of his own and the older dragon took cover on the walls below the platform.

Spyro noticed Cynder was almost surrounded and wasn't using her shadows to escape, he dove down to help her but before he could reach her a great orc rose from the ground beside her and caught Cynder full on with a devastating swing of its spiked club.

Cynder felt the air rush out of her body at the blow, she folded under the impact and was knocked to the ground. That had hurt a great deal, she put her paw to her side, there were no puncture wounds and no ribs were broken, as far as she could tell. She struggled to straighten her body out but she was winded, a winded wind dragon was sort of ironic, but it was too painful to laugh with her side in this state. Cynder determinedly clambered to her feet and hissed in defiance at the great orc as it wound up for a crushing blow. Dragon time would be helpful right about now, she thought.

Cynder felt a buzz in her belly; pleasntly it eased the discomfort she felt. The world turned purple and slowed to a crawl. Cynder knew she hadn't activated dragon time, she still didn't know how to do it, but the mystery was solved soon enough when the great orc slowly coming in for a second attack was torn limb from limb by explosive fire.

Spyro emerged from the ruins of the creature's torso, he looked furious, more furious then Cynder had ever seen him. Normal time restarted and the fight paused as everything in the room hurriedly reassessed the threat this purple dragon posed. Spyro's eyes flickered yellow, his teeth were bared. His entire body radiated power like waves of heat. He looked, for want of a better word, deranged.

He looked like dark Malefor.

Spyro reached down and grasped the head of the great orc that had struck Cynder and wrenched it from the creature's shoulders as easily as if it had been made of paper. He raised it up.

"Nobody touches her!" He roared and the entire cavern vibrated with the massive force of his voice.

He brought the skull down with a wet crack, crunching it into paste.

His voice reminded Cynder of something, a dream she faintly recalled, a nightmare of fire and darkness. Spyro was letting his rage take him over.

She ran forwards and grabbed him, holding him tightly.

"Spyro! Don't lose control!" She looked deeply into his eyes, they were their usual beautiful purple, but madness was bleeding through them. "I'm here Spyro, calm down."

The purple dragon hesitated; his eyes betrayed a hint of confusion.

"Come on, smirk and laugh it off. Make me want to smack you." Cynder said to him.

The corners of Spyro's mouth twitched upwards.

"Are you alright?" He asked. He returned Cynder's embrace and checked her side for injury.

"I'm fine." Cynder smiled, "I can take care of myself. Are you alright?"

"Thanks Cynder. Thanks for stopping me again." Spyro said.

"No problem." Cynder said gently.

"Dark Spyro." The couple looked around, having almost fogotten that they were in fact surrounded by enemies. Seth walked up to them as he continued speaking. "Now you have to die, do you understand how nessecary this is? Now you should be able to understand."

Spyro looked at Cynder, who nodded to him, and then he put on his most confident look and replied.

"You can't win, I may not be strong enough to beat you, but Dark Spyro will be. You really should have brought more firepower."

"Dark Spyro is not without weaknesses, attachments. Love." Seth moved fast, Cynder had to admire his speed.

He caught her firmly and put a razor sharp blade of ice to her throat. She still had to admire his speed, but grudgingly now. He'd gotten too close to her.

"Wow. You really are quick." Spyro said.

"I am, but this next part is proably going to be rather slow. I can make it simple for you though. If you kill yourself right now I'll let her go."

There was a moment of silence. Then Spyro snorted with laughter.

"You would have been better off grabbing me." Spyro said. Seth frowned.

"You still find this funny? I think you may find it less so if I rip out Cynder's eye."

"That would be less funny." Spyro admitted.

"Perhaps Dark Spyro will be more easily persuaded. I'm sure you're getting angry, aren't you Spyro?"

"Yes. I am getting angry, I'm looking forwards to getting hold of you now, but I'm not quite that angry."

"Do you not believe I'll do it? Cynder I promise I would have preferred not to do this, but you seem likely to suffer in this standoff, what do you think?"

Cynder turned, careful not to give Seth an excuse to harm her, then she too smiled.

"You would've been better off grabbing Spyro."

Cynder turned into shadow; Seth stumbled as his captive disappeared beneath his paws. Cynder's smoky shape slipped straight through the ice dragon's body before reforming behind him and skipping away.

"Everyone was afraid of the Terror of the Skies, but as Cynder I am constantly underestimated. I don't need Spyro to save me, and I certainly don't need him to sacrifice himself for me. I'm powerful in my own right. You may be one of the first to learn it, but certainly you won't be the last."

Seth whirled around and fired ice spikes at Cynder, she concealed herself in the darkness again and they phased straight through her.

"Any second now you'll start to regret doing that." Cynder said coldly. Seth went to attack Cynder again, but found his body was unresponsive. He staggered, tried to stop himself from falling and couldn't.

Seth landed heavily, Cynder smiled and walked back to him, Spyro joined her.

"It took just a small cut on your leg. You probably didn't even feel it. You 'll be dead in a few hours, but before then you can look forwards to partial paralysis, heart palpitations, surges of adrenaline and eventually uncontrollable muscle spasms. You may wet yourself, or damage your own limbs through spasms before you die, but in a relative sense it won't be all that painful."

"You can be a bit scary sometimes." Spyro said to Cynder.

"You should have seen yourself a minute ago. 'nobody touches her!' It was rather impressive."

"Ehe, yes." Spyro laughed with embarrassment. "Anyway. He touched you so…" Spyro stamped down on Seth's paw as hard as he could, the ice dragon hissed in pain. "I don't usually have a habit of taking revenge, but I'll make an exception for that."

He leaned down to speak to the ice dragon directly.

"You and your brother were going to Shattershelf; we know that. I have only one simple question: Where is Malefor? Where was he going?"

Seth hissed at them.

"He can speak, right?" Spyro asked Cynder. She nodded.

"Where was Malefor going? Cynder may have a cure for you if you behave. Answer me."

"You're… too slow." Seth let out a rasping laugh. "He's so far… ahead of you. Malefor is… perfect… a god…"

"And where did dragon perfection go?" Spyro asked.

"I can tell you… can't stop him now… The White Isle. He went to… see Ignitus!"

"See who?" Spyro asked, completely thrown by the response. Cynder recalled that the White Isle was where the dragon Chronicler, said to be one of the Ancestors, resided and watched over all of dragonkind. Spyro had met The Chronicler before; the blue dragon had spoken to him in his dreams and helped him regain his powers after his battle with Cynder.

"Ignitus died, he can't be at the White Isles."

"Heh… Death is not the obstacle… that you think… it is. Ignitus was saved… he is the Chronicler now."

"That's not possible, he would have told me." Spyro said, shocked.

"Cant. He's not meant… to interfere." Seth coughed. "Malefor needed library… He found the Chronicler… he got what he wanted."

Spyro grasped Seth's head and spoke to him in a low dangerous voice. Cynder looked around; the orcs did not seem willing to attack them, perhaps because Seth was under threat, or because they were too afraid of Spyro. Whatever the reason they held back, it was a relief to Cynder.

"Is Ignitus still alive?" Spyro snarled.

"Yes…" Seth hissed.

"At the White Isle?"

"Yes."

"Where is Malefor now?"

"He's waiting for us… at Shattershelf. When the city falls… he will be there to watch… the first victory."

"Thanks, this has been very helpful." Spyro smiled. "Cynder can decide whether or not to give you an antidote. I suggest that you ask nicely."

Spyro stood up and looked around at the assembled orcs.

"What are you lot waiting for?" He yelled. There was no response. He shrugged. Cynder stood over Seth.

"Antidote… please?"

"Will you try to kill us again?"

"Honestly… yes." Seth said.

"Sometimes being a hero is so annoying." Cynder grumbled. "I wasn't going to let you die though." She jabbed her tail blade into the ice dragon's side. "That will cure you but it has a delayed effect, don't bother trying to get up again yet."

Spyro and Cynder started to walk away.

"Do we know how to get out of here?" Cynder asked.

"Not yet." Spyro said cheerily.

"So… this was a trap." Cynder noted.

"It was okay, I suppose. As traps go."

"Not very threatening, they should have brou-"

Cynder was cut off as the entire room shook. Spyro looked at her sadly.

"You had to say it didn't you?"

"What's going on?"

Spyro pressed his paw to the ground, he sighed wearily.

"Yep. It's big, moving fast, below us…"

"What is it?"

"I'll give you three guesses." Spyro said.

Cynder didn't have time to make a guess, but in fairness to her she would have gotten it right on her first attempt.

A massive rocky hand rose out of the fire and grasped the platform.

"I really thought we killed this guy." Spyro said.

"I think there's more than one."

The Golem rose up to the celling, filling all the space in the arena, it's huge mouth was big enough to swallow a dragon whole, it roared with a high shrieking sound. Its burning pit eyes fixed on the two dragons as it settled into position over the platform. The orcs went crazy; many were knocked from their stands into the fire.

"It doesn't like us." Spyro observed.

"I think it doesn't like you."

The golem lowered its head and roared again; hot air rushed from its mouth, driving Spyro and Cynder several steps back before Cynder deflected the force with wind magic. At least the monstrous creature didn't have bad breath.

Suddenly the Golem caught sight of Seth; the ice dragon was laying helpless right in front of it. The creature's eyes narrowed, it reached down and swatted at the paralysed dragon. Seth disappeared into the fire below, his scream unheard over the Golem's roar.

"That's… bad." Cynder said, stunned.

Killing orcs was one thing, the creatures were magical constructs with minimal intelligence, but the death of a dragon was something very different. She hadn't been expecting something so sudden, so merciless.

"The Golem didn't like him either." Spyro said, but his heart wasn't in the words.

The Golem gave the dragons no time to get over what had just happened, it swung its arm across the platform, Cynder rolled under the attack, Spyro was still too shocked to react with his usual speed, and the Golem smacked him off the edge of the platform along with the orcs that hadn't hidden under the ground. Spyro spread his wings and circled around to behind the Golem, he fired ice spikes into its back, which had almost no effect.

"Go for its head!" Cynder yelled. She flew for the same target and slashed a wind blade across the Golem's throat, she cut its lava-like flesh, but the monster had no vital organs to destroy.

The creature was huge; as it thrashed around in anger it cracked the walls and the stands. This Golem might even have been bigger than the first one.

Spyro dodged around the huge creature, its tail swept up and he jerked to the side to evade it. Being behind the Golem was just as dangerous as being in front of it. Spyro went to the celling, it had been cracked by a flailing arm, and he took a moment to find a weak spot up there and then sent a surge of power through the stone.

Tonnes of rock crashed down on the monster, the creature screamed as it was knocked from its place and it nearly fell down into the fire. But it did not fall; instead it caught the sides of the arena and clambered its way back up. Now it was definitely mad.

Spyro and Cynder faced off against the monster, it swung at them, and then slammed its hand into the platform, trying to squash them. Spyro and Cynder dodged easily, Spyro fired ice spikes at it as it got close, but he was doing minimal damage.

"We'll need to work together!" Cynder called. Spyro nodded. "I'll keep it busy; you try to damage it with your more destructive elements."

"Good luck." Spyro replied.

Cynder flew up to the Golem's face and hit it with a gust of wind to get its attention. As its eyes locked on her flying shape she spat burning poison into the monster's eye socket. The Golem howled, Cynder tried to loop around to get its other eye but it was shaking its massive head back and forth and she couldn't get a clear shot. Cynder used more wind blades to injure the monster further, but it showed surprising cunning in working out where the attacks were coming from and responded by lunging forwards in that direction, trying to eat Cynder.

Cynder ducked under the gaping mouth and landed on the Golem's vast chest, somehow the beast must have had a sense of touch, because it beat its giant fists against its chest to try to catch her. Cynder skipped around the monster to its back and then its shoulder.

She looked down at the platform, Spyro was charging up some sort of electric attack that made his whole body glow brilliantly. The Golem's remaining eye spotted the bright light and the monster went to smash Spyro flat.

Cynder smashed her tail blade into the creature's eye, but it still remained on target despite its blindness.

The Golem's massive hand came down and Spyro was underneath it.

Cynder screamed in fury, one final devastating wind blade slashed the Golem's head and split a large piece of it right off, causing the monster to roar in pain, but its hand stayed where it was. Cynder flew straight for where she had last seen Spyro. He was tough, he was a dragon, he had to still be alive and she had to help him.

She was halfway there when the Golem's entire right forearm quite simply exploded. Spyro staggered to his feet, looking battered but still determined. His entire body was glowing with lightning.

He stumbled slightly, dazed by the force of the impact, then his eyes locked onto the golem and he snarled and bellowed a challenge.

"ALWAYS… BURY… YOUR APPLE SEEDS!" He roared, and then he flew straight past an astonished Cynder and right for the Golem's open mouth.

Spyro hit and the monster came apart around him and the headless remains of the Golem fell back into the abyss and it was the strangest battle cry Cynder had ever heard.

She watched as Spyro flapped dizzily back around towards her and landed in a heap at her feet. She hurriedly checked him for injury but found he seemed to be alright.

"Some trap." Spyro mumbled.

"Are you okay? Can you talk?" Cynder asked, she hugged him tightly and put her wings around him.

"Yeah."

"What does burying apple seeds have to do with anything at all?" She had to ask, it was too weird.

"Oh… uh." Spyro blinked. "It was just the first thing I thought of… They can grow into new apple trees, you see. Maybe 'always' was the wrong word…"

"Seriously?"

"I think I'm concussed." Spyro mumbled. "You're very beautiful Cynder."

"Stop overacting. I'll stop hugging you."

"Nooo… please don't stop." Spyro moaned.

Cynder kissed him on the forehead.

"I wouldn't."

After a while the two dragons stood up. Spyro shook himself off with a sigh. They stood for a while, slowly relaxing. Cynder hadn't realised how tense she was.

The couple walked to the front edge of the platform and looked down. The heat rose up from below slowly.

"Seth is gone." Spyro said. Cynder nodded.

"That shouldn't have happened. He didn't need to die."

"No. Nobody needs to die." Spyro said sadly. Cynder sat and thought for a moment.

"He said Ignitus was alive."

"At the White Isle." Spyro said.

"This is your choice; it's up to you Spyro." Cynder said. "Do we go there?"

Spyro sighed again and shook his head.

"The dragons at Shattershelf may have been at war with us, but they don't need to die, they don't deserve to be destroyed for the vengeance of Gracious or the whim of Malefor."

"You're right, I agree. We can't just ignore them."

"We're going to Shattershelf."

"Do you know where it is? Because I don't."

"I know the general area, we'll find it. It'll probably be the city with the army camped out the front."

"No problem."

Spyro turned and began to fly to the door they had entered to. It was almost at the end of their chain, but not quite, the glowing snake charm gently tugged her towards where Spyro was. Cynder listened to Spyro scrabble around at the door for a few seconds before she heard him make a victorious sound and the door slid open.

"Let's get going." Spyro said. "This wasn't so bad as far as side quests go, but there isn't anything left for us here."

Cynder nodded, but turned for one final look down at the fire Seth had fallen into before she left.

"Death is not the obstacle that you think it is." She murmured.

"If you cannot explain a thing in simple terms, then you do not understand it well enough yourself."

-4Dragons