Welcome to the new year, everyone!

Hopefully 2020 has been a year of identifying problems, in preparation for 2021 to be a year of punching those problems in the face. Spyro and Cynder are still in the identifying phase for now, but they're itching for the oncoming fights.

Time was passing, without sunlight it was difficult to tell how much. Cynder didn't like being unable to see the sun. Despite her shadow element and her ability to melt into darkness whenever she wished she still felt cut off from nature.

She loved the warmth, the breeze, the strong shadows cast under trees where shady spots were created that she could lounge in. Every single thing that she saw in this dark place was a constant niggling reminder of how trapped they were. Every grey crag of stone, every metal bar or spiked fortification, it made it impossible to look anywhere without being reminded.

The bottom of the tomb was darker still, torches hung unlit in the walls, Cynder could feel them with her wind magic senses as they walked past. She had refused to have them lit, and she had refused to have Spyro or Malefor come with her to light the way.

The final bridge was the worst, if Cynder kept her senses tight enough to the bridge she couldn't feel the bottom of the crevasse, leading her to imagine that it went down forever. High above some light flickered out of the cell where Spyro and Malefor were waiting, keeping watch over the slowly recovering form of Pleasure.

Cynder felt a little surge of guilt, remembering the impact of her paw slamming into Pleasure's face. How she had lashed out in anger. The guilt mixed unpleasantly with her nerves, but still Cynder walked forwards, her expression calm and resolute, as much to give confidence to herself as anything else, but she also didn't want Imperia to sense nervousness from her.

The silver dragoness was a few paces behind, wind magic occasionally brushing softly against Cynder's as they scanned the same things. She could feel that Imperia had her eyes entirely closed as she walked. Cynder kept hers slitted but open, scanning for any possible source of light, but doing what she could to protect those vulnerable emerald orbs from potential threats, even though she didn't expect any.

Seeing the burn mark inflicted on Spyro's eye might have had something to do with her caution. She gritted her teeth slightly. She was going to willingly lock herself in a room with the dragon who had done that. The thought gave her a rush of anger, plenty enough energy to get her stomping across the bridge, down the final deepest tunnel, and to the pair of old stone doors which waited at the bottom.

She hesitated on the threshold, then stepped forwards and into the cell where Darkmire had been imprisoned all this time.

The floor was uncomfortable, claw marks and scratches left Cynder feeling slightly unsure of what texture would meet her paw each time she took a step. She didn't like that at all. Sometimes her paws would come down on uncomfortable lumps, or irritating dips, and she felt a slight worry about tripping.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Imperia asked softly.

"The meeting, or this?"

"Both."

Cynder shrugged, ordinarily a pointless gesture in the darkness, but Imperia could sense Cynder's body, and would see it with ease. "I have no choice about the meeting, unless you have a better option."

"Well not really. But are you sure you want to be locked in this cell?"

"Yes. It's a trial run. I need to know if I can handle it. I need to assess the battlefield."

Cynder walked around the edges of the cell, from tail tip to nose she would have almost been able to stretch across it. It was square, bare, empty. The celling was low, higher at the front and sloping down towards the back of the cell. There were scraps of dirt and dust around the corners of the room, but it was otherwise bare. The place was dark and small, with an air of long stale misery to it.

"I hope it doesn't come to a battle…" Imperia said.

Cynder only grunted, walking a few more circles. If there wasn't a fight between her and Darkmire in this claustrophobic little room now then there would definitely be one later and somewhere else. She could stretch her wings in here if she stood diagonally, although there was no chance of flapping them and they were constantly in danger of bumping into stone.

"Okay. Close it up." She said to Imperia.

"I'll open it in five minutes." Imperia said softly as she gripped the door and slowly pushed it closed.

Thud.

The sound echoed softly in the space, Cynder felt her ears pop as the pressure in the room tightened with the door closing. She opened her mouth and yawned slightly to equalise the pressure in her ears.

Her eyes weren't adjusting. There was nothing but darkness around her. The air was stale, unmoving aside from when she used her magic to send wind floating around the chamber, touching and feeling every inch of the stone until Cynder felt comfortable knowing where she was standing.

Cynder had never been scared of the dark. She was poisonous, she could melt into shadows as she wished, she could sense where she was going, and she was a dragon. There was nothing in the dark which could be scarier than she was.

Well… until now.

But it wasn't just knowledge of Darkmire's existence which had her disturbed. The worst thing was that, aside from her memory, she had no way of knowing which wall had the door on it. The door fit so tight that she couldn't tell it's external lines from the scratches on the walls. She wouldn't even know which direction to start blasting if she wanted to dig her way out of here. It made her wonder if the cell might once have been even smaller and had been dug out to this size by Pleasure or Darkmire during their long imprisonment.

She paced back and forth around the walls, tail occasionally smacking the stone; her tail blade scraping and screeching against the rock. It was totally solid, nothing to give the unfortunate prisoner any hope.

It really did feel like she was in the stomach of the mountain, a tiny meal in it's belly, waiting for a digestion process which would take centuries.

As far as battle arenas went she did not love it; the space was too tight, there would be no room to breathe. Cynder enjoyed close range fighting, she preferred to be on top of her enemy, pummelling them down with rapid strikes; but she always wanted to engage on her own terms. She would have the benefit of plenty of walls which she could slam her opponent into, but there was also nowhere for her to hide or retreat to if the battle turned against her.

How long had she been in here? Just a few seconds, right?

Right?

Spyro and Malefor sat at opposite ends of their cell, and both of them wished they could have been sitting further apart. Indeed they were slightly more uncomfortable around each other than they were around the still figure of Pleasure, sleeping off her injuries curled up against the opposite wall.

The silence after Cynder and Imperia had left stretched out, although both of the purple drakes had things which they were deeply curious about neither of them felt comfortable talking with each other, let alone asking anything.

Spyro's last memory of seeing Malefor had been on top of the tower of Cynder's abandoned fortress in Concurrent Skies, although he supposed it was Malefor's fortress now and not completely abandoned; and Hope's last memory of Malefor was crossing convexity blasts with him and the massive explosion which had followed, and then barely escaping into the realm of convexity as the wounded guardians and Malefor had closed in around him.

Malefor was tapping his claws in a rhythm, making an effort to do it as silently as possible. The body language made Spyro think he would probably be willing to talk, but it was hard to start the conversation. Eventually he just gathered his confidence and spoke.

"So… Do we have a plan?"

Malefor gazed at Spyro with those hypnotic lilac eyes of his, considering the question. "I have presented theories to Imperia, Cynder and the guardians. I would be cautious before calling the results of those discussions a 'plan'… But we are working together quite well in my estimation."

"Well that's good I suppose, but a plan would have been nice too." Spyro said. "So I hear you fought Cynder?"

Malefor crinkled his brow in a thoughtful frown. "A fight would imply a level playing field. I would say that she put me through rigorous training exercises with slight bodily harm involved. It was an interesting experience. I was, of course, aware that my hand to hand combat skills were lacking; but Cynder demonstrated the problem quite sharply to me and began the process of fixing it."

"Right." Spyro nodded. "You know that she's placing trust in you, right? It's not something she's ever done lightly in the past. Don't you hurt her, okay?"

Malefor paused for several seconds, his mind working rapidly.

Was that a threat? It hadn't been spoken like one, it had been more like Spyro was asking for a favour. Interesting.

Cynder trusting him? Even more interesting. Malefor certainly wouldn't have given trust if their positions were reversed. His strong memory and his discussions with Imperia had kept his social skills from dying out completely, despite his long long imprisonment in convexity, and so he could tell that Cynder trusting him was a big deal. He had many reasons to place the utmost value upon it, and no reasons to break it. Besides even if there had been good reasons to break Cynder's trust it would not be the decent thing to do.

Malefor had been forced to take indecent choices for the longest time now, and he was out of practice at making kind choices. But now he had a very important trust placed in him and making a mistake now could be a disaster almost as serious as any other catastrophe ruining his plans. It would be hard to be kind to Cynder, but he would do everything in his power to make sure he did it perfectly.

None of this was visible to Spyro, who just watched silently until Malefor finally spoke.

"Understood."

That was all he said, but he put as much importance behind the word as he could manage. With any luck Spyro would get the message.

Spyro nodded, looking over towards Pleasure.

"So what is the plan so far? Do you think what Cynder is doing now will help?"

"It's mostly straightforward: we put your dark side under extreme stress like we did at Warfang, but this time with your full awareness of what we're trying so that you can help as much as possible. With any luck we'll begin to see a split. Once we see a split we'll try to draw the darkness out of your body and trap it."

"How exactly does that work?"

"We'll begin to see your eyes turn back to bright white instead of the yellow which indicates a proper connection. Darkness will radiate off your body, at which point Cynder will use her shadow control to try and pull it away, but we'll be relying primarily on the sealing arrays which Imperia and I have spent years designing."

"So you hold me down and slap a piece of paper on me?"

"More or less. I'm sure you understand how that could be a challenge in the middle of a fight. I'll be able to draw on you with a blazing hot claw, with any luck."

"Ow."

"Once the sealing array has been mostly drawn we would have tried to seal the dark side away in a sealing circle, or just try to slay it outright."

"Pull the shadow out and just hit it?"

"Yes that should be sufficient."

"Okay… I suppose that makes sense as a plan. But what about Cynder's part?"

"Now this is where it gets interesting. What sort of secret does…"

He glanced at the sleeping form of Pleasure, aware of the risks of saying certain words around her.

"Our… friend… here have to share with Cynder? Will it really help?"

"We'll find out soon enough I guess." Spyro said softly. "Poor Pleasure… I don't know how to tell her she needs to go back into that cell…"

Malefor nodded. "I can't imagine she'll respond well to it."

"I know it doesn't look like it, you've barely met her, but the dragoness I saw in that cell the first time was just… so broken. I really want to heal her. She's improved so much. She's barely a shell of who she could be, but she's improving. I just hope she can continue to do so."

"We'll do our best for her." Malefor said with soothing confidence.

"Yes we will." Spyro nodded. "So we'll also use the cell while trying to draw my dark side out and capture it? Or do we have to get me just outside the front door so I turn dark?"

"Actually I think I may have good news on that front. It's impossible to draw out your dark side within the stone walls of the prison itself, the magic here is designed to turn dark magical dragons into mere shadows of their true selves. But I think it's possible that the prison extends into convexity as well, and in convexity we might be able to perform the operation."

"Convexity as well?" Spyro tilted his head curiously. "Why would they do that? To fit more dark dragons than they have room for in cells?"

"Perhaps. Or perhaps as a cage which would allow them to perform exactly the operation we're about to attempt. If only they had a dragon strong enough to go blow for blow with the dark dragon in a fight in it's home territory. In convexity where it would be at the very height of it's powers and any normal dragon would be weakened by the radiation from the stars."

"I see." Spyro said. Then he had a chilling thought. "What if there's already a dark dragon in there? Some third dark dragon who isn't Pleasure or myself? A full power dark dragon who's been trapped inside a convexity bubble for who knows how long?"

"I hadn't thought of that." Malefor admitted. "But we know the tomb was made to contain the dragon in the specific cell from which we recovered Pleasure. There are no stories of other black or purple dragons here, so I think it would be safe enough to at least check if it's possible."

"Okay… how do we check, and when?"

"If you enter convexity you'd potentially turn dark right away. I will try to travel there and back myself. And as for when, how about now?"

"Now? But Imperia and Cynder aren't here."

"For the moment things are calm and quiet, so I would like to do it now."

Spyro didn't look entirely convinced, but he nodded. "Okay. Give it a shot. Come back right away though, okay?"

"I will if I am able to. If I don't come back then don't follow me." Malefor said.

He stood up, reaching out with a claw and digging into something invisible. The wind rippled slightly around him.

Pleasure twitched, and Malefor instantly stopped what he was doing.

"Perhaps I should do this outside."

"Yep." Spyro hurriedly agreed.

Malefor left the cell, unlocking it with the key that they had been given. "Here. Just in case I don't come back."

He slid the key across the floor to Spyro, the metallic sound made Pleasure twitch slightly in her sleep yet again, but thankfully this one seemed to be an innocent reaction, rather than a warning sign of Darkmire rising to the surface.

Malefor walked as far down the corridor as he could while remaining in Spyro's sight before turning and once again opening a rift to convexity, this time Pleasure had no reaction, so Spyro nodded and Malefor completed the rift and stepped through.

For a moment the corridor was dark and empty, Malefor vanishing into the portal. Spyro didn't even have time to begin worrying, because true to his word Malefor stepped out of a new shimmering rift, returning to the corridor and closing it behind him.

His eyes were bright, pale purple and gleaming with curiosity and excitement. He grinned as he walked rapidly down the corridor and stopped outside the door.

"It's perfect. It's beautiful."

Spyro raised an eyebrow. "What did you see?"

"I stepped through into convexity and I saw a mountain of black rock floating in space, I appeared on the slopes. It's surrounded on all sides by a dome. The dome looked like oil, dark with an iridescent sheen of colours gleaming on it's surface. No signs of life, just a massive star blazing in the sky."

"A dome, you say? Like a magic bubble?" Spyro asked. "Do you think that'll be enough to keep me inside?"

"I'm not certain, not yet. If your dark side escaped it would be very unfortunate, but we would still have a few more months to track him down and try again. If Pleasure's dark side was to escape… That could be much worse. We'll need to test it as soon as possible, firstly with Imperia and myself going in and examining the bubble. Only after we figure out what we're dealing with will we move on to the next step."

"All this preparation is making me nervous. I've always just sort of improvised." Spyro admitted.

"Your tactic of charging headlong into trouble is something I've spent the last sixty years planning carefully around." Malefor responded.

Spyro nodded, remaining silent for several seconds.

How many of the choices he'd made in his life had really been his own? Since he'd met Ignitus in the mushroom forest all those years ago, had it really all been part of Malefor's plan?

Perhaps it had been. The thought was kind of scary, but after a moment he shrugged it off.

He'd made his own choices, he'd lived his own life. Maybe his choices had been planned for, and his life had been an integral part of a larger plan, but it had still been his.

Malefor, to his credit, picked up on Spyro's distant expression and guessed at the reason behind it.

"I put you in a situation where you needed to act to save the world, and you acted. How you did it, or even if you did it at all, was always up to you. You surprised myself and Imperia many times."

"Thanks… I guess." Spyro said. "I do think it's a good idea for us to go into this as prepared as possible. It's just that there is a big difference between training for something which might happen, compared to planning how to deal with something that is already started."

"I suppose there is." Malefor agreed. "It's been a long time since I had a thought like that… A very long time. Cynder was right to judge that I needed more training. No doubt I still do. A few days isn't enough to make up for a thousand years of atrophy, no matter how sharp my magic and my mind were fortunately able to stay."

"For a thousand years you're still pretty quick." Spyro said with a rather Imperia-ish tone in his voice.

It took Malefor a moment to place exactly what the intonation meant, before realising Spyro was poking fun at him. Only Imperia had really done that often. He hadn't yet decided if he liked it, but so far at least he didn't dislike it.

The two of them sat in silence for several moments before Malefor spoke.

"I suppose a self-deprecating chuckle would be appropriate here, to indicate acceptance and appreciation of your humour. Unfortunately I feel like the moment has passed, if I did that now then it would just sound awkward and forced."

Spyro nodded. "That sounds like a very appropriate reaction indeed. It's fine though. You're not that bad at the whole social interaction thing. Besides I get the feeling that sometimes even someone as confident as Imperia gets the feeling that they're just pretending they know what they're doing."

"I suppose so. I have to wonder how much of social interaction is instinct, and how much of it could be codified into a list of rules which, if followed perfectly, would get you the result you desired every single time. I've spent a long time in the position of a negotiator, making deals, trying to find pressure points and weaknesses in my opponents. Just chatting is rather new to me."

"Well I hope you like it. Sometimes it can get a bit draining for me, and then I like to go and do combat training or curl up with a book. But still it can be nice to just talk."

"Do you know much about shielding and redirection symbols? Or just extremely archaic languages?" Malefor asked.

"Not really."

Spyro shook his head.

"And even if I did I probably couldn't join you in Convexity without going dark. And I doubt I'd be much help then."

"Hmm, perhaps not. We'd better wait for Imperia so she can help me instead. I'd like a second pair of eyes to look over the bubble."

"She's in high demand at the moment." Spyro said with a slight laugh. "And to think she was worried she'd have nothing to do."

"Indeed. But I'm sure she'll be wishing she was able to help once the time comes."

"Kind of like I wish I could be helping now." Spyro sighed, getting up and putting his forelegs on the wall, craning his neck up to look out and down into the dark depths of the prison. He wasn't able to see anything, even though he knew Imperia and Cynder were both down there. "And they're only doing the practice run."

"Isolation can be a scary thing, although I would hope that Cynder can handle a few minutes. Still if she can't then at least we'll know about it now rather than when it's too late."

Spyro gritted his teeth slightly as Malefor used 'hope' in a sentence, but he shrugged it off. "That's what she's thinking, even though I know she can handle it."

"She has certainly given me that impression. She's incredibly capable." Malefor agreed. "I'm sure she's handling it just fine."

"Imperia? Can you let me out now? Helloooooo?"

Cynder said loudly to the wall with the door on it.

Come on. Imperia was a wind dragon, she had excellent hearing. If anyone could hear what was going on inside the cell it would be her.

"Hello!?" She called out somewhat louder.

She waited a few moments with no success.

Nothing to be scared of. Imperia had already agreed to let her out in five minutes, and she had to be close to the time.

She slapped the door, hard and unyielding stone. No movement. Now that she was standing against it, her only escape route, the darkness seemed somehow hungrier. Like it was lurking around her, creeping inwards and waiting to swallow her up.

"HELLO IMPERIA CAN YOU HEAR ME!? I WOULD LIKE TO COME OUT NOW!"

For a moment there was nothing but the echo of her words, bouncing off the tight walls and making her ears ring slightly.

Ka-thunk.

She sighed in relief at the new sound. A sound from outside! A moment later the door opened and Cynder pushed her way out of it, practically bumping Imperia out of the way in her eagerness to get out of the door.

"I thought I heard shouting, are you okay?" Imperia asked, shutting the door behind them and moving over to give Cynder a reassuring hug.

"I'm fine. I just got bored and wanted to find out if you could hear me if I shouted." Cynder said, even though she knew full well that Imperia would be able to feel that her heart was pounding.

"It was very faint. For a moment I wasn't sure I heard it at all." Imperia said. "Are you sure you're alright?"

Cynder nodded. "I'm fine. It's just a bit tight in there. I haven't been locked in such a small space in a long time."

"Bad memories?" Imperia asked softly.

"Not really. Just tight. I couldn't spread my wings or swing my tail around in there."

"Claustrophobia?"

"No."

"Are you sure you want to go through with this?" Imperia asked, her voice soothing, entirely non judgemental. Cynder knew she could back down if she wanted, but she wouldn't be pressured into backing down either.

"Yes, I'm sure. Especially now I know if I shout loudly enough that you'll hear me. We take her down here, you jump in her face and say 'boo!' to activate Darkmire, then slam the door on us. I play along and restrain myself from beating the crap out of her. We get the super special secret, I calm her down, and then we yell at the door until you let us out."

"If you need help at any point just yell, Spyro and Malefor will come busting in and I'll be as close behind as seems sensible. Also we'll come in once about an hour has passed, even if you haven't called."

"I can handle an hour." Cynder said with renewed confidence.

By the time Cynder and Imperia were back up in the main cell with Pleasure, Spyro and Malefor Cynder's heartbeat had calmed down. In fact despite her experience she was feeling much calmer than Malefor or Spyro looked. Imperia was her usual confident self, and Pleasure was still asleep. Her jaw was looking better, although Cynder still felt a little surge of guilt thinking about how hard she'd hit her.

She hugged Spyro, speaking up as needed to fill the others in on what she'd decided.

The discovery made by Malefor took up much more time in the conversation. At first Imperia expressed disapproval that he'd decided to dive into convexity without telling them all, but once the discussion turned towards what he had discovered there she was overtaken by curiosity instead.

The idea of a bubble trap was familiar to both of them, as they'd been trying to create something of that nature to trap Hope back in Warfang, although they couldn't agree on how this ancient and much larger bubble might work without going in and having a proper look at it, which Imperia was eager to do.

They argued back and forth good naturedly, despite the grim and high stakes situation and the dark lighting of the cell their enthusiastic discussion brightened up the room enough to relax them all.

The minutes went by as they talked, and eventually the noise started to wake up Pleasure. The fragile black dragoness started to stir, and after a long while she raised her head.

The conversation stalled nervously, as they tried to gauge if she was a threat at the moment. Imperia, who had been lingering in the doorway, closed the door and backed several paces down the corridor just to be at a hopefully extra safe distance.

Finally the black dragoness opened her eyes, and they were green.

There was an audible sigh as the tension eased in the room, and then Spyro got up and moved to sit down next to Pleasure.

"Hey, how are you feeling?"

Pleasure hesitated lightly, worry written on her face, and only intensifying when her eyes picked out Cynder from among the gloom and stared at her. "Not… good. I… I don't know what happened."

Cynder couldn't imagine what Pleasure was thinking. Was she angry? Did she really not know what happened? If it had been anger she would at least have understood, but she didn't understand this.

"Did I do something wrong? I'm sorry…"

"No, you did nothing wrong." Cynder said. "I wasn't thinking."

"We can't even talk about it can we?" Pleasure said quietly. "Because of me." She looked down in shame and frustration.

"Hey, we're still here to help you." Spyro said calmingly, as he spoke he waved a paw towards the torches flickering on the walls, brightening them to illuminate the cell in warmth.

Cynder felt dirty about this. Pleasure just seemed so lost and confused. It felt like taking advantage of her. She knew Darkmire had put her in this position, and that knowledge fanned a little flicker of determined fury inside her, enough to make her speak up.

"Pleasure can I ask a favour from you?" She said.

The other black dragoness nodded, her overgrown and cracked horns exaggerating the movement.

"I'd like to ask you if we could go back to your cell. You and me together."

Pleasure faltered slightly. "Well… What will happen?"

Cynder sighed. "I don't know. I can't promise you it will be okay. There's just a chance that we'll learn something important. Something to help us."

Pleasure nodded slightly, a complicated mix of expressions on her face. Logic and emotion warred within her, or at least the nearest approximations to logic and emotion that her long shattered sense of identity was capable of experiencing. In the end all she was really left with were her feelings, she didn't know what she thought, or what the sensible choice was, she just felt.

"You can think about it if you want." Cynder said after a long silence.

"No need. I…"

She breathed in, then let out a long shuddering breath, gathering her courage.

"I will do it. Just… Can I ask a favour as well?"

Cynder nodded slightly. "You can ask…"

"Please… talk more." She looked at Malefor and Imperia hopefully. "I couldn't hear it properly, but I heard… laughing. Please do it more."

"Ahhhh she's making my heart melt!" Imperia squeaked. "Of course we'll keep talking! Do you want to just listen?" She came closer, close enough to talk easily, but not too close.

Pleasure just nodded, her guilty look at asking for a favour was calmed by Imperia's rapid and enthusiastic acceptance of it.

The conversation started up, awkwardly at first, but Imperia soon teased Malefor out of his shell until he forgot that they were being listened to, starting to engage in the conversation and discussing some technical aspect of symbols and magical language.

Spyro remained with Pleasure, and although Cynder would have liked to have his warmth resting beside her instead she didn't really mind. Pleasure needed the comfort much more than she did, and the look of peacefulness on the other black dragoness' face as she slowly laid down her head, just listening to their voices, made it all worth it.

I'm not overwhelmingly happy with this chapter, it feels a bit slow. But our favorite dragons are all hurrying to prepare themselves for the impending fight. It won't be long before their ability to prepare is put to the test.

In fact it's going to start next chapter.

Looking forwards to next time!

Don't forget to leave a review if you enjoyed the chapter!

-4Dragons