I would like to thank everyone who has been asking me about the next chapter. This is likely going to be the final story arc of this fanfiction. For good or ill, the fate of the world will be decided in Darkmire's Tomb.

Spyro has come here looking for a cure, or at least a way to seal his dark side. Word has been sent to Warfang, and before long Cynder and Malefor will be here too.

With any luck the next chapters will come quickly after this, one every week or two. I just needed time to make sure that the grand finale of this story would be suitably intense.

Enjoy!

"You can do it. You can open the bottom cell and see what's inside."

Spyro looked up as Scara approached, nodding to the older dragon. "Everybody was okay with it?"

"Yes. We talked about how your dark side seems to be completely sealed by being here, and we decided there couldn't be any danger. At least I sure hope not. When do you want to do it?"

"Now, I guess…" Spyro said. He stood up as Scara started walking down beside him, descending together into the depths of the pit.

"I'll be nearby. I'll wait at the tunnel entrance to the last two cells. If something goes wrong I'll at least be able to give the others some warning so they can seal the entire mountain. I'm sorry you have to do this alone."

"I'll be fine." Spyro said, partly to himself.

"What's in there? Do you know? Can you guess?" Scara asked nervously as they arrived at the final bridge.

"I don't know… Maybe a lifeless body like Malefor, missing a soul before it can rise again. Maybe just a pile of dust."

"Maybe an evil ghost." Scara said.

"Maybe…" Spyro agreed.

"Darkmire was supposed to have been so powerful he murdered the chronicler and plunged all of dragonkind into an age of darkness. He destroyed the ancient Realm of the Artisans who created all of those artefacts, like the Dragonslayer Spear."

"Well I'll just have to hope he's out of practice, if he's in there. If things look dangerous I'll just jump out and lock the door behind me."

Scara nodded. "I mean… it has been thousands and thousands of years right?"

"Right."

"Here… you'll need this." Scara handed Spyro a key made of dull grey stone. "For the cell."

Spyro turned and walked across the bridge, his body softly glowing as the blackness surrounded him. He reached the end of the bridge; a narrow tunnel of rock, and followed the path as it wound and twisted into the very heart of the mountain. Before long he was isolated in a tiny bubble of light against the darkness. At the end of the tunnel were two familiar doors. One door was open, and within was an empty set of chains. That was where Malefor had awoken. The other door…

The other door was chained shut.

Spyro examined the key, it was a simple and plain design; not the sort of key which looked like it might end the world. Hopefully it wouldn't, though.

He reached up and touched the door, and as he did so a poem of dull glowing purple words appeared, inscribed onto the door.

Doomed one,
Fated to answer the call,
Black or Purple,
Dragon to end it all

A message
Isolation
An Eternity
Salvation

Dragon to read this
I offer thee safety
let the world live on
Choose the dark with me

"You locked yourself in here didn't you?" Spyro asked softly to himself. "You buried yourself alive… You never were defeated. You…"

The realisation started to hit him. The Darkmire dragon had chosen to seal themselves away. They hadn't seen any other way to save the world.

"You never found an escape… You sacrificed your life. I'm sorry you had to do that. But thank you."

He looked at the key, a sudden feeling that there would be nothing in the room. Just a pile of dust, the remains of some ancient dragon who had killed themselves rather than live with hurting anybody else.

It was what he would have done, what he was trying to do now in fact. He wondered if he could be as brave as that ancient unknown dragon, of whom all memory of their sacrifice had faded, leaving only stories of their dark side.

It felt like sacrilege to open the door, but he had to know. He had to see.

There was a heavy clunk as the chains came free, and then it was just the door.

Spyro breathed deeply in… then out.

The key fit into the keyhole easily, but it was extremely difficult to turn, for a moment he was worried it would snap off in the lock, but it didn't. With a slight grunt he twisted and there was a 'clunk' from the door.

He pushed, and the heavy door slowly groaned open.

Inside was pitch blackness; a void. Spyro stepped forwards, his light illuminating the stone floor within. There were scratches, scratches everywhere. Every single millimetre of the stone inside.

Thousands upon thousands of scratches marked the cell.

Counting the days, or whatever it was down here that was worth counting in some places the scrapes were neat and ordered rows.

In other places the scratches had no pattern, the marks of a terrified dragon scraping at the walls as if trying to dig out to freedom . As if there were even days to count in here… The fear, the madness, the isolation that the dragon in here must have felt-

Spyro's heart missed a beat as he heard a sound.

A sob.

"No way…" Spyro whispered, while within his mind Hope had started screaming and howling to be allowed to be free.

His light flickered with nerves, but then grew brighter; glowing enough to illuminate the chamber, and the black dragoness who was curled up and crying in the far corner.

A dragoness who looked almost identical to Cynder.

Bright green eyes stared at Spyro; while the black dragoness cowered away from the light that he was creating. Her pupils, which had been massive, contracted to two tiny dark points and she hurriedly closed her eyes and cringed back against the wall.

This was impossible… She looked barely older than Cynder and himself.

The dragoness had the same black shine in her scales as Cynder, but where Cynder was lean and muscled this dragoness looked as if she was starving. Every single one of her ribs was clearly visible, her bones stood out and her body was painfully thin.

The arrangement of horns that the dragoness had was the same as Cynder's, but where Cynder's horns looked strong and were of a medium length this dragoness' horns were enormous and looked as fragile as if they were made of glass. The two largest horns on either side of her head were each as long as her forelegs, and sure enough one of them had been broken off three quarters of the way along it's length, leaving a jagged cracked tip.

This dragoness looked like she could simply shatter at any moment, from the slightest touch.

Spyro nervously stepped into the cell, using his tail to make sure the door stayed open behind him. He wasn't afraid of her trying to escape; he felt only confusion and sympathy for this strange Cynder-like dragoness.

Was this Darkmire? She certainly wasn't what he had expected, not in the slightest.

"Hello?" He said softly.

There was a gasp from the black shape; she visibly flinched and started muttering to herself. Her emerald eyes closed, but he could see her still peeking at him, as if she could camouflage herself in the darkness.

Spyro leaned in closer, trying to listen to what she was saying; it sounded like some kind of ritual; the words were long and didn't seem like a coherent language. He leaned in closer again.

"Petrus Blizzari Sliver Drakko Terrador Eruptodon don't hurt me Petrus Blizzari Sliver Drakko Terrador Eruptodon please make it stop Petrus Blizzari…"

It was a list of names.

Spyro stopped. Where was she getting the names? Did she know them? She couldn't possibly be talking about the same Terrador he knew. Names from her past, perhaps?

She did seem to be using them to comfort herself. Each time he got closer she repeated them louder and faster. Spyro backed off, and the chanting slowed.

"Hello? Can you hear me? I'm here to talk to you." Spyro said soothingly.

The chanting slowly trailed off, and those huge green eyes fearfully looked up at him.

"I'm here to talk to you. It's okay, I'm a friend." Spyro repeated.

After several long seconds the chanting stopped entirely. She simply started at him in silence, mouth opening and closing silently.

"You… are real…" The dragoness looked deeply confused, as if expecting him to vanish at any moment.

How many times had she hallucinated someone opening the door? For that matter there was an even more puzzling question which came to his mind: how did she even still know how to speak?

Spyro was no psychologist, but he'd learned from Volteer a little bit about the effects that total isolation, and in this case near total sensory deprivation as well, had on the mind of a living creature.

Hallucinations could start in as little as a day; and insanity was a very real possibility which only got more and more likely over time.

This dragoness had been in here for time which was simply beyond Spyro's imagination. Not even Malefor's isolation could begin to compare with what this young girl had gone through. And how was she still a young girl? It was blatantly impossible.

One thing that Spyro was certain of was that the dragoness was insane, she might not be scratching at the walls… although she'd obviously done that in the past based on the scrapes and scars which covered the stone of the floor, but on some level she must be broken inside.

Suddenly he realised that he might be walking a very dangerous line here. The dragoness he saw in front of him was harmless, he could easily see that; but she was still a poison dragon, and he had no idea what might trigger her to snap.

The names, maybe he could use her name chanting as a gauge of how dangerous she was. Even as he had that thought he saw her mouth moving silently, his lack of a reply had been starting to trigger her fear again.

"Yes, I'm real. I'm just like you… I accepted your offer."

"Like me? Offer?" The dragoness looked at him without comprehension.

"To come here, somewhere safe where we can't hurt anyone." Spyro explained.

"Don't hurt me!" She gasped, pressing back again. "Petrus! Blizzari! Sliver!" She practically spat the names at him.

"I won't!" Spyro said urgently. "I don't want to hurt anyone ever again."

She started to calm down again, just slightly. Her voice lowered to a whisper and she leaned in. "The other one is listening. You can't say things like that… She'll do bad things to us…"

Spyro nodded slightly. "Okay. Who are the names you're saying?"

"Names?" She looked at him blankly.

"Petrus, Blizzari, Terrador. The names." Spyro explained.

"I… don't remember…" She said quietly. "I just say the words… They help me. Are they names?"

Spyro nodded. "They were your old friends, weren't they?"

She nodded. "I… I think so… I can't remember… Sometimes I cant even remember what the words are."

"Do you have a name? My name is Spyro. It's nice to meet you."

"Pleasure…" She nodded her head to him, her large horns making the movement look awkward and ungraceful.

"It's a pleasure to meet you too." Spyro smiled.

"No… my name. At least… I think it was… is Pleasure." A faint smile made her lips twitch. "Silly name, I'm sure."

"No it's not silly. It's a fine name." Spyro said encouragingly.

The dragoness shook her head. "I must have been in the dark a long time. Years, even… I never even heard of you in my life before. It's so hard to remember anything… But you know me somehow."

Spyro swallowed nervously. "How long do you think you've been here?"

Pleasure hesitated. "…ten years?" She offered in a small voice.

Spyro shook his head gently. "Your story is a distant legend. Purple or black dragons come along only once every thousand years, and according to some stories your life took place many many purple dragons before me."

"A… thousand years?" Pleasure said with a small choking sound. "No… that can't be…"

"It doesn't make any sense. You look so young."

Pleasure looked at her paws, seeing her bones under her skin, painfully long claws which would make it hard to walk. She shook her head. "I don't understand… I feel… not grown up. I can't possibly be a thousand years old."

"There was nothing to make you grow up." Spyro realised. "You've just been… frozen. Slowly forgetting everything. Nothing to learn, no new experiences. Your life just stopped."

"I… I guess so…" She looked down at the scratches which covered the stone. "I remember… terrible things… but I can't remember them at the same time. Did I do this? I have…" She looked up at Spyro. "Do you have any food? I'm hungry…"

Dragons could survive on their mana alone, without eating. Spyro had never heard of a dragon who had done such a thing for more than a year; and the physical effects that it had on the health of a dragon were strongly negative. It was, in theory, possible to survive on nothing but mana forever, but it didn't provide any true nutritional needs. It provided only the barest minimum requirements to keep the dragon alive. Living without eating led to impaired growth, brittle bones and horns, and wasting muscles which persisted for weeks even after normal eating was resumed.

Spyro kicked himself for not realising that this was the cause of Pleasure's appearance sooner. He simply couldn't leave her alone in this cell; the damage was possibly already beyond repair; she needed real food.

"Bits of my body… vanishing. So much… it… it h-hurt! Ohhh please no Petrus, Blizzari, Sliver, Drakko, Terrador, Eruptodon please don't let her come back… I d-didn't mean it! I'm g-grateful I swear! I didn't mean to s-say a word…"

"Enough sideshow, ask her the question." Hope growled in Spyro's mind.

"You're sick." Spyro hissed back to Hope quietly; not wanting Pleasure to hear. "Can't you see how much torment she's been through? None of the pain you cry about even comes close."

Spyro's outrage and reply caused him to miss something. The moment Hope had spoken in his mind Pleasure had flinched violently. She had heard the voice, and it had awoken something inside her. Her voice started rise, too weak to scream, but lifting higher and higher in pitch.

"Petrusblizzarisliverdrakkoterradoreruptodonnononononostopnopleasesnother…"

Spyro's ears popped and a splitting headache erupted in his mind. Hope's yowl of surprise and pain told him that the same thing had occurred to both of them.

A heavy smell of blood and magic tainted the air, the darkness of the cave pressed in on them both and Spyro's light no longer illuminated anything beyond himself and Pleasure.

The door was behind him and on instinct Spyro slammed it shut; he didn't even know or care if he would be able to open it from inside. His heart was hammering in his chest so hard it felt like it was going to burst.

Pleasure's begging cut off in a shriek, and then her body stood up.

Spyro staggered, because it didn't feel like Pleasure had stood up, it felt like her head had remained in exactly the same place, and she had quite simply pushed the entire planet down so that it was in the appropriate location for her to be standing on it.

Something terrible sliced into his brain and revealed words to him, not spoken; not even as if burned into his mind. No it was as if the words had always been inside him, and something had plunged it's claws inside his skull and dragged them to the surface.

"So the little one is here."

Hope screamed in a mixture of pain and defiance; forcing back the psychic knives which had invaded his mind. "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"

"It seeks knowledge…"

The pain intensified, probing through memories. Flashes of images went past Spyro's mind. Cynder, Terrador, Cynder, Ignitus, Cynder. Hopes memories of Cynder clashed with is, a confusing jumble before it was sliced apart. Spyro's mind almost seemed to physically reel back from the blow, trying to sort through what had just happened. Some terrible external mind was playing with his memories, twisting and stretching them to test their toughness. It reminded him of Cynder's fear magic, but he'd never been struck like this before.

"It seeks knowledge of the black dragon."

Hope howled back in response, his mind lashing out and trying to purge the razor sharp whips which were wrapping around them.

It was futile, no matter what he did it had no effect. Spyro could almost see Hope sitting on the leaf, floating in the sea of their connected mind, desperately shooting blasts of fire at a massive formless red cloud.

"She must be mine!" Hope snarled.

"Such ignorance."

"TELL ME THE TRUTH!"

"She will be yours."

There was a sick, sadistic sweetness to the voice as it spoke.

Before Hope could respond, in celebration or otherwise; both he and Spyro were slammed with an image: Cynder's body torn open, still beating heart pulled from her chest by a skeletal black paw and thrown at Hope's feet. There was more detail, much more detail, but Spyro's mind refused to even contemplate it.

"YOU'LL DIE FOR THAT!" Hope screamed in rage.

Spyro, mercifully still in control of his body, had to gag. He brought his paw up to his face and slapped himself violently. Her eyes, he'd seen a hint of betrayal in Cynder's dying gaze as she had looked up at him with her blood draining away. No. NO. He refused to believe it. For once he was entirely in agreement with Hope. He slapped himself again, hard enough to scrape his scales. The pain in his skull was still building up higher and higher. It was hard to breathe in the blood scented air which was filling the chamber.

"You came here in search of your destiny."

I

Am

Your

Destiny.

"In this cell my name was Pain, a name chosen to be the opposite in every way to that of my host. My worthless vessel flinched every time you made her think of the word; so many times broken and tortured, and yet always afraid of me as if it were the first time. The dragoness who came in here so long ago was nothing like the Pleasure you see now. Know that her old self died a suitably torturous death as her price for defying me... But now I see a new name which you will know me by. A much more fitting name."

The voice trailed off into raspy laughter.

Spyro breathed deeply and forced his magic to settle, the weak flickering glow grew bright enough to see Pleasure's face.

Her eyes had turned a bright yellow, and had no pupils at all, just a pair of flat yellow disks with no defining features at all. Her lips were pulled back into a maniacal grin, revealing sharp white teeth. She leaned inwards, and again it felt like the whole world shifted around her, dragging Spyro closer instead of pushing herself forwards. His spine tingled with horror as he took a step back, suddenly expecting that she was going to jerk forwards and bite him. His action made her laugh mockingly.

"Give Cynder my regards, little one. I look forwards to meeting her."

Spyro's ears popped as a massive amount of pressure suddenly faded away, leaving a vacuum around Pleasure which nearly dragged him off balance.

The black dragoness collapsed like a puppet with her strings cut, head hitting the ground with an unpleasant smack.

Hope was screaming and yowling inside Spyro's mind as if he'd just been burned, which in a way he certainly had been, swearing vengeance and enteral agony on the… thing... that had just spoken to them.

It had been a horrific experience, unlike anything Spyro had ever so much as imagined before. The thought of being trapped alone in the darkness for thousands of years with a monster like that made his heart break with the unfairness of it all. Nobody deserved something like that.

He violently shoved the image of Cynder away before it could resurface; forcefully dragging any other image of Cynder to the forefront of his mind instead. That beautiful smile, that graceful body, those shining black scales. He would die before he let anything like that happen to her.

"Crush her skull. Do it now!" Hope snarled in his mind.

They looked down at the black dragoness, helpless as a child. One good stomp would be all it took, he wouldn't even need Hope's strength based on how brittle and weak her bones would be. It would work too, the horrific thing inside that little girl's head might be powerful, but it could not possess them, if they killed Pleasure now it would be enough to end all chances of that horrible future coming to pass…

He knew he couldn't do it.

"COWARD!" Hope screamed "YOU SPINLESS FUCKING COWARD I KNEW YOU NEVER LOVED CYNDER!"

Spyro closed his eyes and shook his head. "She deserves so much better than that."

Instead he reached down and very gently attempted to shake the black dragoness awake. Pleasure groaned slightly, instinctively flinching from his touch but too dazed to have any more of a reaction than that.

He sat down beside her, her body was cold, her scales smooth and soft, but the muscle and bone underneath distorting the natural curves which a normal dragon should have had. He raised a paw, holding it above her side and warming it, like the warmth of the sun on a winter morning.

The sleeping girl's body relaxed slightly, some tension leaving her muscles. A look of sudden peace on her face as she felt the sun's warmth for the first time in an eternity.

Well well well, there is one final player in this game. The first black dragon, more powerful even than Malefor.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter! I'll see you next time.

-4Dragons