Whew, I'm excited for this chapter! With any luck from here on I'll have some more free time to write and I'll be able to fully work out the final parts of this story!

I hope you'll enjoy this chapter!

A faint thumping sound caught Spyro's attention. It was quiet in Darkmire's cell, nothing but his breathing and the sound of his scales scraping the worn stone floor to keep him company. For a moment he thought the sound was his heartbeat, but no, this sound was coming from the door.

Spyro stood up, leaving the malnourished black dragon on her own for now. Pleasure curled up tighter on herself as the warmth he had been radiating moved away from her.

He picked his way across the floor, some of the thousands of scratch marks which covered this cell were deep enough to nearly be a danger of tripping on. Before he reached the door he hesitated slightly.

That horrible thing which had emerged from Pleasure's mind was still in the room, dormant, but he didn't know when it might next wake. Whatever it wanted to call itself, Pain, Destiny, Darkmire, it was dangerous and it seemed to have a lot of control over Pleasure. Maybe enough control to take over her body and fight its way out of the fortress and escape the sigils which were binding it's magic.

If the door had locked when Spyro had slammed it behind him, and he guessed that it probably had, then maybe he shouldn't try to open it.

What if Cynder was on the other side? It was unlikely he knew, he'd been here for less than an hour.

There was another rapid series of thudding sounds against the door. Somebody was knocking as hard as they could.

Spyro took another few seconds to think about it. On the one side, if he opened the door he could talk to whoever was there, he could get food and bedding for Pleasure, maybe even give her a chance to feel a breeze or see some sunlight. If he left the door sealed then… well, eventually he would probably go insane and either Hope or Darkmire would force him to open the door.

No, the most sensible thing to do would be to leave now, seal the room up again, and never open it again.

Or perhaps sensible wasn't the right word. That would be the cautious thing to do. But Spyro knew what the right thing to do was, even if it was more risky.

"Hey, can you hear me?" Spyro asked softly to the black dragoness.

Pleasure twitched slightly, then as she felt the warmth return she slowly opened her eyes and looked up at the purple dragon standing above her, his paw softly glowing with heat. "You're still here…" She whispered.

Spyro nodded. "I'm going to help you. Everything is going to be okay. Can you stand?"

She nodded silently, eyes wide; stumbling to her feet. Her legs were shaky, and looked so thin it was surprising they held her at all. Unlike Cynder, who looked catlike and graceful when she moved, Spyro had to hide a faint laugh as his mind couldn't help but compare Pleasure to a stick insect or a baby deer.

He held out a wing for her and she gladly accepted it, wobbling a few steps towards Spyro and then leaning on him for balance.

"Where… are we going?" She asked, the faintest hint of hopefulness in her voice. "Can it be… somewhere nice? Please?"

Spyro nodded. "It's nicer than in here. Someday we'll get to go outside too. I promise."

"Outside?" She looked at him uncomprehendingly. "Outside this room?"

"No. Outside, under the sky. Under the sun." Spyro slowly walked them towards the door. "Do you remember outside?"

She shook her head. "I don't think I do…"

Spyro sighed with sadness, but did his best to give her an encouraging smile. So many things about Pleasure didn't make sense to him, but he knew that he wanted to help her. "You'll like it outside. But first let's get out of this room."

Spyro placed a paw on the stone of the door, the pounding had stopped but he could feel the faint vibrations of someone pacing on the floor outside. He turned his attention onto the door itself.

A large brick of stone was fitted inside the door, designed to fall sideways and lock the door into it's hinge when it closed. It was an extremely primitive lock compared to most, even the cheapest locks in Warfang at least used a basic counterbalance system to make the key easier to turn in the lock. This lock wasn't even made out of metal, which would have made it at least a challenge for him.

Then again, they weren't trying to imprison an earth dragon in here, the cell would have held quite well against Cynder, probably.

Although now he thought about it Cynder would have probably clawed the cell walls so much she'd have dug the entire mountain down to dust. He wondered idly if the metal chains on the outside of the door had been a later addition. Had metal even been invented when Darkmire's Tomb had first been built?

Pleasure watched silently as he inspected the door, her mind was still struggling to figure out what was going on, and she had no curiosity left for wondering what Spyro was doing.

It only took a bit of Spyro's magic to rotate the stone back again, and the door clunked heavily. There was no handle on the inside, and nowhere to pull from, but before Spyro could even use his magic to open the door it was being slowly pushed open from the outside.

An old looking lightning dragon peered into the cell. "Spyro? I came to check on you and the door was shut. What's going-"

He trailed off in surprise as he caught sight of the black dragoness.

"Scara, this is Pleasure. She's the Darkmire dragon. I shut the door because I thought she was dangerous at first, and we'll need to be extremely careful to keep monitoring her, but I think she's safe enough to bring out of the cell. She's in desperate need of food and water. Can she come out?"

Scara faltered, caught off guard. "I… I'm not sure… Allowing you into the cell at all is already breaking the most important rule. Do you swear she's not dangerous?"

"I can't swear that. But I can't just leave her…" Spyro sighed softly. "If she has to stay in her cell I'm staying there too. Could you bring us food and water?"

Scara turned away and walked in a small circle, glaring at his tail as he tried to make a decision, then he groaned. "Fine, she can come out… But I hope you know what you're doing Spyro. You are the saviour of the realms, that's the only reason I can even begin to allow this."

Scara moved a cautious distance back, although not nearly far as he would have gone if he'd known what Spyro had seen happen in the cell a few minutes earlier, and with that Spyro slowly guided Pleasure out of the cell for the first time in a millennia.

The black dragoness looked lost, staring down the plain stone cave, another cell similar to hers off to one side with an empty set of chains in it; but ahead of her was a dark twisting passage leading ever so slightly upwards.

The stone was unscratched, natural looking, and it contained faint glimmers of colour, a spectrum of grey to brown, but with tiny hints of dull green. Copper ore, but Pleasure didn't know that.

One of her wings reached out, leathery scales brushing the stone as Spyro helped her slowly limp her way up the tunnel, her legs and her painfully long claws barely supporting her. They took several turns, and then suddenly her wing was no longer touching stone but empty space. The path had opened up to a narrow bridge across a dark cavern, the walls, the floor and the ceiling all vanishing into darkness lit only by distant torches, flame flickering and dancing.

Spyro began to glow brighter, until his light illuminated the entire cavern faintly. Pleasure's eyes were fixed upwards, staring not at the roof but at all the open space above her. Enough space for a dragon to fly, even if only for a few beats of their wings before they'd need to dodge a stone bridge or reach the opposite wall.

She stared at the dark cavern as if it was the most incredible thing she'd seen in her life; her wings fluttered and her nose twitched as she caught a faint hint of cold air, fresh air, air from the snow covered mountains outside.

"This… this… is so beautiful." She whispered softly, tears in her eyes. "Thank you…"

Spyro gave her a minute, he could tell that she was in shock. Besides, how often did you get to be the one to introduce someone to their first time seeing an open room in over a thousand years?

"Let's find you a cell. You'll be able to see out of it, and we'll get you something warm to sleep on and something warm to eat." Spyro said.

Pleasure nodded mutely, her eyes remained fixed on that empty space, the open air of the cave, hypnotised by it even after they'd crossed the first bridge and started to walk their way up towards the higher floors. Every single window they passed looked out onto that same miserable view, but Pleasure kept her eyes locked on the sight as if she never wanted to see anything else.

Spyro wondered if they dared bring her all the way up the narrow crevasse to the fortress. How incredible would it be to see her look through the windows?

Not yet, certainly. She could turn to smoke and be out of those windows in a second, and if she did then she'd be taken over and she would turn back towards the fortress with those terrible yellow eyes, all of her dark magic returned to her, and blast it down to the bedrock in seconds. It was too much of a risk, sadly.

But someday.

After all, he had promised.

A bolt of lightning lanced straight through the centre of a ring made of shadow. A fireball, on target for a second ring, fizzled out in midair as its caster was punched in the jaw.

Malefor fell back with a grunt, rubbing his face and panting.

Cynder, also panting, nodded to him slightly. "That was good. Again."

A series of five shadow targets appeared around Cynder, flying out to different sections of the room, occasionally darting and weaving, imitating the flying patterns of dragons as well as Cynder could make them, while she was also busy leaping forwards, claws outstretched and seeking to land a hit on Malefor.

The purple dragon had improved enormously, a light gust of wind giving him just enough speed to leap out of Cynder's way, but at the same time his cast fireball missed a shadow target, exploding on the wall instead.

From a seating area above Flare and Imperia looked down on the scene, watching the two dragons trading attacks back and forth, bouncing and zigzagging around each other as they tried to get the upper hand, all while Malefor fired blast after blast of his elements, trying to hit every target. Cynder got careless and Malefor's tail thumped hard against her side, making her hiss and stagger.

Taking advantage of the moment of distraction Malefor fired two shots which both hit shadow targets dead on, but Cynder immediately counterattacked with a spinning kick, her lithe body moving with violent energy, she changed stances and her second strike turned into a feint, baiting Malefor's guard downwards before her tail slammed into his skull, almost managing to knock him out cold. Her remaining three targets moved faster than ever.

The purple dragon grunted, swaying and staggering but barely defending against several quick attacks as he scrambled out of range.

Malefor's eyes flickered away as he tried to track the shadow targets; but when Cynder whirled around to kick him with her hind legs he managed to get his guard up in time to block, staggering back with a grunt. She repeated the same kick, but this time her kick intentionally missed and she did some kind of move Malefor had never seen before, her other leg coming up and slamming into his ribs, then suddenly locking him between them, her tail hooking around him as her body twisted violently, slamming them both into the floor and making Malefor's head ring with pain.

Rounds in their fights no longer stopped after the first time Cynder landed a solid hit, and Malefor had a collection of heavy bruises on his chest, limbs and jaw from this round alone which his magic had not yet gotten around to healing.

"She's a prodigy." Flare said quietly to Imperia. "She's maintaining so many elemental manipulations at once, moving them all independently, and fighting with her wind enhanced melee style at the same time."

Imperia tilted her head, pleased. "I always told you she was something special. So is Spyro, of course."

Flare shook her head. "This is something else. The sheer amount of mental processing speed required…"

"They're amazingly skilled dragons. I claim full credit as her main teacher." Imperia smiled.

Flare rolled her eyes, and her whirling tail smacked Imperia's wing playfully.

The pair of them watched as Malefor staggered to his feet a half second behind Cynder's more graceful jump up, shaking his head to clear it and creating a bubble of wind around himself to buy himself time to recover. Cynder never hesitated to punish him in moments like this if he didn't have a temporary defence up and he'd quickly learned that it was safer and less painful to just keep fighting through the dizziness unless he was totally sure he was safe.

Sure enough Cynder slammed a wind blade into Malefor's shield, testing it, but Malefor's defence held for long enough for him to recover.

"Cynder was quite slack with keeping her passive wind perception active for a long time."

Imperia commented.

"It's a difficult thing to maintain focus on. In the fight at Shattershelf she lost to Malefor due to not having her wind senses activated. The lightning clone technique that he and Volteer both use has no mass, so wind passes right through it, and that is a trick which wind dragons should almost never fall for. But now she's keeping it up quite well indeed. I've felt her wind brush over us a few times just to check that we're still here."

"Not to mention the five targets made of shadow." Flare commented. "A simple circle shape, but to move them all independently without breaking them…"

"It's not something that would be beyond the reach of a guardian. We train hard to multi task like that. Earth and wind dragons tend to be especially good at this sort of thing."

"Hey, I make sure all of my students understand the principles." Flare huffed. "I insist that my students are able to make a dozen shapes out of fire before they reach their next level under my training."

Imperia giggled. "Of course. Sorry darling. You're wonderful as a teacher."

Cynder slinked aside as Malefor lunged, his paws slamming into the ground where she had just been standing. Cynder's wingblade sliced over his side, screeching as it deflected off the hard scales, and at the same moment one of her shadow rings darted inwards and wrapped around his throat, beginning to try and strangle him.

Malefor made a choking coughing sound, but then he blasted the shadow apart with a pulse of energy, teeth bared and ready to continue, but Cynder nodded.

"Good."

Malefor dropped his claws back to the ground, panting, his wounds finally getting a chance to heal. "That was sneaky. We never specified you could do that."

Cynder shrugged and grinned. "Well I can do it, so I did. That's just how these things work."

"I should have been able to counter it more quickly. Understood."

Cynder shook her head. "Actually you were very quick. I couldn't really expect you to have done better. You might almost be ready for a rematch with Hope."

"Your vote of confidence is appreciated." Malefor said dryly, but then he bowed his head respectfully to Cynder. "Thank you. These past two days have certainly been an enlightening experience."

"Again?" Cynder said, and for the first time in at least a hundred times she'd said it Malefor heard a genuine question in her voice, not a mildly sarcastic order.

He nodded and stepped into a defensive stance. "Certainly."

Cynder dived forwards, but Malefor was on guard, their wings and tails clashed as the next round of the fight started.

"Fifty years until she can beat you? Wind against wind?" Flare whispered to Imperia.

Imperia considered the bet for a moment. "Hmm… Depends how hard I try to stay ahead. How many years until she can make more shadow flowers than you can make fire flowers?"

"Fire is much harder to craft. You know that." Flare said defensively. "It burns away very easily."

"Ten years then?" Imperia smirked.

Flare huffed, but shrugged. "You know, probably, yes. But if she was a fire dragon making fire flowers then I would say no. Besides I'd like to see her blow a building into rubble with a single fireball."

Imperia giggled. "Aww… Everyone has their own talents. You know what? I'm feeling confident actually. I'd bet you at least a hundred years before Cynder manages to reliably beat me in the target game. She does have all her extra elements though…"

Flare laughed. "Well I guess we'd better get used to having a much more powerful dragon around. Or three."

Imperia purred in agreement and hugged Flare with her wing happily as they continued to watch. "Does it make you nervous?"

"Of course it does." Flare said. "But I would much rather have Cynder, Malefor and Spyro over Hope or the Dark Master. I've crossed claws with Hope and the Dark Master once each, and I don't wish to repeat the experiences."

"Which one was worse?" Imperia asked curiously. "I never dared go anywhere near the dark master after he was freed. It was a very tense few years, I expected him around every corner."

"The Dark Master was more powerful of course, but it was worse to see something wearing Spyro's face and body, and yet so violent and savage. I'm very glad I never faced either one of them by myself."

"It's going to be okay." Imperia said confidently. "These two can handle Hope, even if the final fight happens the way I expect it will."

Flare frowned. "Do tell. What do you know that I don't?"

"Hope can escape into convexity, right? I suspect that Cynder or Malefor or both will chase him in there. If and when Hope is beaten that's where it's going to happen."

"So… we can't help?" Flare growled in dissatisfaction.

"Not at full power. In convexity we'd be a liability. We can maybe weaken Hope before he retreats… but the final fight will be Cynder and Malefor fighting alone against Hope."

Pleasure groaned and held her belly, and she'd had barely a couple of bites of food. Spyro looked on, not sure weather it was more important for her to eat, or if it was more important that she not overeat. She placed the remaining cubes of salted meat back down on the plate and sat back on her bed, holding the sheep woollen blanket tighter around her.

"This is incredible." She said softly. "The blanket. The taste. Everything. Thankyou so much, both of you."

She looked up at Spyro, who was sitting in her new cell with her, and Scara who was standing just outside the door. They were locked in of course, just for safety, but there hadn't been a disaster yet and Spyro was starting to feel a bit more optimistic.

"I still can't believe it." Scara shook his head in amazement. "That anything could survive so long locked away there."

"I wish I remembered more of it." Pleasure sighed, then she hesitated. "But something tells me it's for the best that I don't. It only felt like a few months to me. Especially because we still talk the same."

"I was wondering about that." Spyro nodded. "I can't believe you speak the same language, in fact I'm surprised you have a language still at all! I guess you did have-" He bit his tongue to stop himself from saying 'someone to talk to'. Even just mentioning the… other thing could be enough to make Pleasure lose control. "It's remarkable."

Scara tapped his tail blade against the floor as a thought occurred to him, and then he spoke in a language that Spyro didn't understand, a combination of short sharp vowels and humming sounds.

For a moment Spyro was completely puzzled, but then Pleasure nodded and responded with a similar string of sounds.

"And would you like a bath too?" Scara said, switching back to words that Spyro could understand.

"Yes I think so. Please."

"Just a moment then. Did you notice when we changed languages?"

Pleasure looked at him without comprehension. "I don't understand. I'm sorry. I didn't change languages."

Scara looked to Spyro. "I think she's reading our minds. I spoke in wolven and she responded in wolven; but she didn't even know she did it. I asked her if she wanted a drink of water and then a bath."

Spyro turned towards pleasure and thought as hard as he could about how much she looked like Cynder. "Can you tell what I'm thinking?"

She looked at him, startled, and shook her head. "I d-don't think so. I don't know what I'm thinking either."

He changed, thinking as hard as he could about sheep. "Still no?"

She shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. I didn't know you had different languages, I just understood it."

Her mouth was moving slowly, staring to silently whisper names, they were scaring her. Spyro backed off. "So do you want some water?"

Pleasure nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Scara, realising that something was amiss quickly stepped away. "I'll go and get you some water. Take care."

Spyro watched Pleasure out of the corner of his eye, she seemed to be stable, but he didn't move or to reassure her or edge away, not knowing what might make things worse. It was remarkable to think that she was somehow picking up language from him and Scara.

Did that mean she knew every language? Or was it the opposite? Maybe she knew no languages at all. Was it possible that she was speaking gibberish and somehow her magic was translating it into meaningful words?

That thought disturbed him, so he put it out of his mind. She was broken, her body was a wreck from malnourishment and neglect and her mind was probably in an even worse state than that. Pondering what it meant and how it might feel wouldn't do as much to help as some food and a chance to talk.

"Do you remember what trees are?" Spyro asked.

Pleasure looked at him blankly, shaking her head. "Again, no. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. How about, uh, rocks?"

"I remember rocks. However I forgot they were so… grey. I'm used to just black. Everything was black everywhere."

"Do you… have a favourite rock?" Spyro asked. This wasn't going terribly well. What was he supposed to talk about?

Pleasure, however, giggled. It was a raspy sound, for a moment Spyro thought she was having a coughing fit, but then he saw the faint twitch of a smile on her maw. "No I don't think I like rocks very much. Some of the ones down below had some red colour in them. I saw when you opened the door that there were rocks with red and green… I like those ones. Seeing colours, shapes… They're all amazing. I forgot… I th-think I forgot… that there were things in the world as beautiful as the colour red… Or as beautiful as you."

"Oh, um… thank you." Spyro said hesitantly. On any other dragoness the look of wonder in her eyes when she looked at him would have made him think she had a crush on him; but Pleasure had the same look no matter what she was staring at.

"Spyro? What is the biggest thing in the world?"

"Well… The ground is pretty big, and the sky is like a vast cavern that never seems to end, but if you don't count that then mountains are quite big, the sea is very big, and Warfang is quite large too."

"A vast cavern that never seems to end." She repeated in absolute awe.

"It's strange. When you're not flying you can kind of forget how big it is. I often only think about things like Warfang and the sea being big."

"Warfang? The sea? What are those?"

"Warfang is a city, a place where many dragons and other creatures live together peacefully. It's full of rooms with comfortable beds and food; people to talk to, books to read, gardens. There are walls upon walls of yellow stone, but you never have to walk more than a minute to be under the sky."

"That sounds incredible…" Pleasure said, eyes unfocused as her imagination, rusted from lack of use, struggled to create a picture that matched Spyro's description. "Why did I ever leave it…" She bit her lip. "I guess I had to…"

"You saved it. That beautiful place exists because of how brave you were." Spyro smiled encouragingly to her.

Pleasure hung her head sadly. "I wouldn't be strong enough to do that. The old me, whoever she was… she's gone. I'm just… what's left. I don't deserve all the things you're doing for me…"

"Don't be so hard on yourself." Spyro said. "Even if you don't think you're brave you're still good. I can tell. Besides it's a lot easier to be a hero before you know what the consequences will be. Trust me, there are lots of things I've done that I probably wouldn't have done if I knew how hard they would be; but I did them, and I'm glad I did."

"But I don't even remember what I gave up anymore… How can I know if it was worth it? Please… Tell me more about the world. What is the most beautiful thing out there?"

Spyro couldn't help the sudden smile that spread over his muzzle. "The most beautiful thing in the world? Well that's quite a story to tell, a story that has many similarities to yours, actually… Let me tell you about Cynder."

-4Dragons