Darkmire has promised Cynder a secret that might help save Spyro, but she has used their time alone to torment and play games with the younger black dragoness. Cynder, however, has been watching and learning from Darkmire's use of fear magic, and this time it will be Cynder who goes on the attack.
For this chapter there are two pieces of music, both from the soundtrack of the game Hollow Knight (which is one of the best and cutest games I've ever played)
The first is perhaps my favourite from the game: 'Grimm', by Christopher Larkin. It is the theme of a spooky but elegant circus/vampire themed boss called (of course) Grimm.
The second is from, arguably, the same boss. But this time he does not go so easy on you, the fight is a desperate struggle for survival taking place within a dream. See why I thought of it? That theme is the extremely fittingly titled 'Nightmare King Grimm'
Now for the story, enjoy!
In a raging fire stood two dragons, both jet black and yet unburned.
Huge tongues of fire shot upwards into the sky before fading, melting into new shapes over and over again. Far below was a river of molten lava and black volcanic rock.
In the distance a volcano loomed, although it was almost impossible to see through the waves of heat which made the air swim, and the sheets of flame which blasted up around them over and over again.
Cynder's eyes were narrowed; she didn't even feel the heat of the inferno, a memory of the belt of fire which she and Spyro had been guided through by Ignitus. The heat which he had given his life to protect them from. A dark memory despite it's brightness, a memory of a roaring place, roiling flames and the howling of fire.
Cynder felt her fear magic wrapping around her, hungry and vengeful. Darkmire was not afraid, not yet, but Cynder was eager to change that. Memory after memory came to her mind, things she could inflict on her enemy. She pictured them and then she shoved them straight into Darkmire's mind. Perhaps Darkmire didn't know how to protect herself, or perhaps she was too arrogant to even try, but Cynder's imagination easily created memories and experiences around them.
But in the middle of the sound of boiling lava, cracking rock and the crackling of flames there was a laugh. Strained, filled with pain even though her body was unharmed by the flames. Darkmire was still laughing, no matter what Cynder did.
The fire disappeared, and Darkmire was in chains, dozens of shadowy images, reminiscent of apes, were howling as they stood in ranks behind her.
The room was dark, a cave within a mountain. The floor was purplish stone with sickly hints of green running through it.
The sound of apes screaming was muffled, just like their shapes were, but they shook their ghostly fists and the stones they threw were very hard and solid indeed.
Cynder stood in front of a terrible throne, and in this dream the throne was hers. There was no Gaul.
The throne room was just an illusion, and through it she could see reality: The worn stone of the cell, illuminated by the red light of her fear magic. Darkmire sprawled on the floor with her chest shuddering and twitching from pain each time one of those imaginary rocks struck her scales.
The walls of the tiny cell were gouged and scraped from doomed escape attempts from long ago. They were alone down here.
They hadn't gone anywhere, it was all a dream.
And Darkmire continued to laugh.
The apes disappeared and the floor turned to water. A lashing storm and driving rain. Thunder boomed and lightning cracked the sky. The light revealing a storm tossed ocean, and a massive wave as tall as any building in Warfang was bearing down on them.
This was the Legacy Sea, the worst storm Cynder could ever remember seeing. She had lived along the coast for a few weeks, enjoying the salty breeze, the circling gulls. It had been amazing but humbling to be near something so vast and powerful as the sea.
The heavy chains from before were still wrapped around Darkmire, dragging her down into the water and she didn't even try to swim. The laughter turned into nothing but bubbles.
This, at least, was an improvement. Nothing else had stopped that sick laugh.
Cynder felt the dark water envelop her, seeing double for a moment as she broke beneath the surface. The vision of the dark ocean and the dark cell overlapped in her sight. The water was false. She could still breathe.
Despite herself she held her breath at first, having to force herself to begin breathing normally. And when she did so it was normal air which entered her lungs, not water.
Darkmire began to spasm in the water, yellow eyes blazing brighter and brighter as she focused on Cynder even as she sank.
Cynder gave it a few more minutes, watching, relieved that at least she wasn't laughing any more.
In the dark waters around them Cynder began to see the shapes of creatures. Sharks, serpents, and all the things she could imagine.
She hadn't put those things there intentionally, perhaps this place was controlled more by her imagination than by her willpower. But as long as the creeping things stayed in the distance she didn't really care.
Darkmire was drowning, but Cynder could see the grin on her face lit by the glow of her eyes. This wasn't enough. What would it take to wipe that disgusting smile off her crooked tooth face?
The sea began to glow blue, brightening above them but darkening below them, and the water fell away as a mountain of black rock and white snow rose up beneath them.
The wind howled around them, and the chill bit deep into their bones. Cynder found it hard to shrug it off, even knowing that it was just dream cold. She really really disliked snow.
The mountains were kind of beautiful, even despite the snow. Cynder's memory filled in the gaps with many mountains she'd seen in the past, creating a beautiful skyline all around them.
These weren't just the mountains she remembered around Darkmire's Tomb, they were mountains she'd seen across the entire length of the continent. The only thing to make the scene less than peaceful was the biting wind and the freezing temperature it brought with it.
Darkmire wasn't laughing, but she was still grinning arrogantly.
"Oh Cynder, Cynder, Cynder… I am an ice dragon. The cold won't hurt me."
She laughed and suddenly lunged forwards, teeth bared and snapping towards Cynder's throat.
As Darkmire leapt Cynder raised a paw and suddenly the mountain flattened out beneath them and they were standing on opposite sides of the Warfang Colosseum. A brightly lit day, warm yellow sand and golden stone.
Spyro was up in the stands, watching them.
Cynder quickly waved her paw again to make him disappear. She didn't need Darkmire to see that, and she didn't want Spyro, even if it was an imaginary Spyro to watch this.
Darkmire slipped in the sand and fell, her aggressive leap turning into a clumsy attempt that was nowhere near Cynder at all. She began to laugh again, thrashing around and kicking up sand around her.
Darkmire started to get memories about what had happened here. Cynder had a traumatic experience in this place.
She staggered to her feet, looking over towards the other black dragoness. And then suddenly Cynder was moving. She darted across the floor of the stadium, crashing into Darkmire and slamming them both into the far wall. Her metallic tail blade flashed and gleamed as it thrust straight into Darkmire's heart.
And then they were back in the cell at the bottom of Darkmire's Tomb. Pleasure was looking up at Cynder with green eyes wide with pain and horror. Cynder's tail blade buried all the way in her chest.
A small part of Cynder's mind was screaming, but she burned it away.
"Nice try."
She growled, and putting wind blades on both of her wings she sliced Darkmire's head off.
This was another dream, Darkmire had put them into it this time.
She looked down at the body, knowing it was no more solid than smoke. She closed her eyes and opened them again, forcibly pushing herself back into the real world. At least she hoped it was the real world this time.
The door was open. Definitely fake. Except what if it was real?
Cynder gritted her teeth, walking to the door and looking outwards. There was no Spyro, Imperia or Malefor. This was definitely fake then.
She reached out with her fear magic to where she believed Darkmire was in the real world, and sure enough she found the other black dragoness there, now standing up instead of laying on the ground.
She pushed for control, seizing it back with blasts of fear magic, throwing her powers around randomly and shoving memories into Darkmire's mind.
The two of them stood on a sandy river bank at the bottom of a deep canyon. In the distance Cynder could see The Destroyer crossing the river, just as it had done all those years ago. And above them was the massive dam which they had broken, flooding the canyon.
She could see that too once she turned her head, the white stone groaning and cracking before a massive torrent of water burst forth.
Darkmire stood next to her, pulling a copy of Cynder's tailblade from her chest and throwing it on the ground, and Cynder suddenly noticed that all the grass and all of the leaves on nearby trees that she could see were in fact tiny green versions of her tailblade as well.
Then the water hit her.
Both of them were standing in a forest clearing now, unharmed. Vines were reaching out of the trees around them, wrapping around Darkmire's limbs and beginning to strangle her.
"So peaceful." Darkmire sneered. "Such pretty things you show me every time."
She started to gag as the vines tightened.
"Unimaginative… Weak… You can't… find secret…"
Cynder roared in frustration and charged, swinging a hard punch which cracked against Darkmire's cheek and snapped her head to one side. She followed up with a clawed backhand, swiping across Darkmire's face and leaving deep cuts.
Darkmire spat blood, laughing and grinning. She pulled a hand free from the tangling vines and reached out towards Cynder, but then their environment changed again to the field of Crystals outside of Cynder's fortress.
Purple and blue crystals towered over them, and the sky constantly flashed with sheets and streaks of lightning. It was always storming over Concurrent Skies.
Cynder caught Darkmire's wrist in an iron hard grip; and in her other paw she held a dagger made of jagged crystal shard. She slammed Darkmire's hand to the ground and stabbed the crystal through it.
There was no resistance, Darkmire's bones were brittle and the dagger went straight through, making the dark dragoness hiss in pain before she continued to laugh.
This was just a dream, she could do whatever she wanted.
Spears of crystal emerged from the ground, stabbing and pinning Darkmire down and then Cynder started to hit her face over and over again, punctuating each stomp with a shouted word.
"Give! Me! The! Secret!"
Before long Darkmire's face was a bloody mess, but her laughter kept going, and so did Cynder.
This felt so wrong.
"Stop! Laughing!"
She clenched one paw, then wrapped the other one around it in a reinforced hammerfist, and brought it down on Darkmire so hard that it hurt her hands and she didn't even know if the crack she heard had come from the bones in her hand or from Darkmire's skull.
"Stop! Laughing! You! Sick! Bitch!"
Cynder jumped off her, turning and half walking, half stumbling away into the crystals, even as a massive crystal came down on top of Darkmire and obliterated her. But the laughter was still in Cynder's mind.
She staggered away, out of sight of what she'd done even if it was just a dream. Her paws were stinging, she'd hurt herself. But it was just a dream, in truth she was undamaged, and a moment of focus shook away the illusion of those cracked bones in her fingers.
"Oh yes… So close… tell me now Cynder… Tell me the secret about the red element!"
As Darkmire's voice cackled in Cynder's mind blood came trickling through the crystals, a pool spreading out from where she'd killed dream Darkmire and expanding to cover the whole world. Then the crystals disappeared and Cynder was floating above a sea of pure fear magic.
It looked like lava, bubbling and roiling and waiting to explode. Like boiling water as it heaved and surged below her.
In it's presence the laughter was gone, and it was like an ache on Cynder's brain that had suddenly been released.
Everything was mercifully silent, and she was alone.
It was just her, and her fear.
She felt no fear, and yet the element was still there.
And finally Cynder realised the shape of the secret. Because what she was looking at was not really fear at all.
She drifted over the sea of magic, looking down at it, seeing how it reflected her mind. A reflection of herself perhaps.
The secret that Darkmire wanted her to learn was obvious, now that she'd realised that her element was not fear, but something else.
Darkmire knew what the element was.
Hatred.
It was the element of hate.
Pure hate, a desire for destruction expressed in nothing but magic. It made sense why Cynder had mistaken it for fear. She had known hate and fear as the same thing for as long as she'd lived. She feared the things she'd hated, and she'd hated the things she feared.
Darkmire was trying to evoke that knowledge in Cynder. Making her realise that hatred fuelled her magic. That hatred caused it to seek out her enemies and act on her worst impulses.
She looked at the bubbling cauldron of magic, feeling like pure evil was rising up from it like vapour.
Was this really her element? The one element that, as far as she knew, only black dragons had.
Maybe they really were a force for evil. There was a good reason why Cynder refused to use her fear magic as much as possible.
She remembered how Darkmire had mocked her for being alone among others who she couldn't trust. She'd been given the feeling that Darkmire had a deeper understanding of her true nature than Spyro or Imperia had. And now she understood why.
She could fight it, run from it; but it would catch her in the end.
She remembered how Hope had called to her dark side and found nothing. He'd looked for some darkness which had been placed upon her by fate or destiny or the gods or whatever it was; and found nothing. But he hadn't looked for the evil which was within her. Maybe if he had then she would have broken and turned dark like him.
Now she was being put in an impossible position.
Knowing the truth about her element made her feel like it was more important than ever that she use it lightly and carefully and never let go of her control. But she also needed it to save Spyro, and worse than that she needed to do it aggressively. She would need to hurt Spyro, she would need to… need to hate him… but she couldn't bring herself to do so. She didn't want to hate Spyro, or even Hope. She couldn't.
Cynder returned to herself with a gasp.
They were back in the cell. Darkmire was standing in front of her, yellow eyes glowing softly.
They were both unharmed. Nothing had changed. As if they'd walked in here and hadn't spoken even a single word.
"How much of what you did to us before was dreams? Up in the cell when you and Spyro were alone?"
Cynder asked softly.
Darkmire grinned knowingly at the question, and that was all the answer Cynder needed.
"I see by your tone that you know the truth now."
"The truth about our nature?"
Cynder said quietly.
She had to think. She had to figure this out somehow, either that or she had to cut her fear, no, her hate magic out entirely. Push it down and seal it away and never use or think about it again.
"It doesn't matter. It's not who I am. It's just an element."
"Our elements are who we are. But I don't need to convince you. We both know that there is only one way to save Spyro…"
"Why are you doing this? What do you expect to gain? Just more hurt? Trying to find some part of me which I can't just run away from?"
Darkmire shook her head.
"That's not what I want. Not this time."
Cynder narrowed her eyes slightly.
"What then? A friend? You think I could ever forgive you for what you've done? You make me sick."
Darkmire laughed and smirked.
"It doesn't matter what I make you. It matters what you make yourself. Now you know the truth. That is all I wanted."
"You knew it would hurt me to find out."
Cynder muttered; fear magic- no, hate magic whirling softly around her. No wonder it was begging to be used on Darkmire. No wonder it felt so natural and instinctive to lash out with it.
Darkmire began to grin again, inviting it. She wanted to nurture Cynder's hatred and make them the same.
Cynder was about to reach out with it and take out her anger on Darkmire, but she knew the other dragon would just enjoy it.
And then she felt something different. Something… gentle.
She reached out again, but not with force this time, not even with a gift of trickery like Darkmire had demonstrated earlier to show her visions of violence. She reached out because she sensed a connection.
Darkmire grinned as the red cloud came crashing down on her, but it was soft and warm as a spring rain. She frowned and tilted her head in confusion, and then her eyes widened in surprise as she suddenly realised what Cynder was doing.
"No. No, that's impossible."
Cynder wasn't using the red element on Darkmire. She was using it on Pleasure.
"I know you're there."
Cynder whispered. Her magic slipped straight past Darkmire, ignoring dreams, not trying to force something into the mind of her enemy. Instead she was trying to find something familiar.
"What are you doing!?" Darkmire hissed. She moved forwards, snarling, aiming to bite Cynder, but she was stopped dead in her tracks as Cynder found what she was looking for.
Suddenly Cynder felt a rush of movement, as if she was falling forwards into empty space. She spread her wings but they did nothing to slow her fall. For a moment she panicked, but then she sensed the presence of Pleasure. A faint cry for help coming from the bottom of a deep dark well.
She had to go. She straightened her body into an arrow and dived, faster and faster, leaving the real world behind.
"No!" Darkmire shrieked.
Orange. An orange sky with a yellow sun. She was surrounded by mountains of black and red and white. Poisonous colours. Everything was tainted in a venomous yellow.
The sun was a gigantic yellow eye, unblinking, with a pupil as dark as the abyss. It focused on her as she fell, and she saw it was filled with absolute hate. But then Cynder was falling behind one of the mountains and it was obscured.
She saw flashes of white, and what she thought was a… gigantic paw? Turned down, the arm making a bridge between two mountains. But she didn't have time to see any more, because she impacted with water, or some disgusting yellow equivalent which she desperately hoped was not urine.
The splash filled her mind and she didn't dare open her eyes, but she felt something grabbing her, hands were under the water and they were trying to pull her down. Before she could even struggle she heard a howl of fury which shook the entire world and blasted it apart.
"GET OUT OF HER HEAD!"
Darkmire's scream violently hooked around Cynder's body and tore her out of that dream, dumping her unceremoniously back into the real world with enough force that it sent both of them staggering backwards. Darkmire hit the wall with a thud, while Cynder caught herself in time. Physically she might have been unharmed, but her mind was a different story. She felt like she'd just gotten slapped by a god. A vast, horrible power which was infinitely beyond her comprehension.
Cynder shook her head, struggling to reset from what she'd just experienced. She couldn't believe that she'd been thinking her fear powers were comparable to Darkmire, that she'd even been arrogant enough to think she might be stronger. She instinctively knew that she'd just encountered something which would have been able to turn her into dust.
But Darkmire was in a similar state. She'd just seen Cynder do something which no amount of brute force should have allowed her to do. Cynder had dived into the heart of a black hole and emerged out the other side, and until Darkmire had blasted her out she'd genuinely been unable to stop her.
Cynder saw it in her eyes, those glowing yellow slits were wide with shock and angry confusion, and suicidal though it might have been Cynder felt a small surge of confidence.
They both stood there, panting and glaring at each other.
"And to think I nearly bought your lies."
Cynder growled.
"That's impossible!" Darkmire screeched. "You can't have gone into Pleasure's head! How did you do that!?"
Cynder opened her mouth for an angry response when the importance of what she'd just seen suddenly hit her.
"You really don't know how I did it, do you?"
Darkmire bared her teeth in barely contained fury. When her reply came it was so slow and painfully reluctant that Cynder barely even heard it as a recognisable word instead of a frustrated yowl.
"Nnnnnnnnoooo…"
Cynder couldn't help but quirk her lips up in a smile at that.
Darkmire lost her control completely.
"HOW DID YOU DO IT!? HOW DID YOU GET INTO HER HEAD!? I'M THE ONLY ONE IN THIS HEAD!"
Darkmire ran at her, but with such an emaciated body she was no threat whatsoever. Cynder gently slapped her claws aside and then struck her in the centre of her head, sending a quick pulse of red through her.
Then they were both floating above that sea of pure red magic which Cynder had for so long thought was fear, and then briefly thought was hatred.
Darkmire was panting, eyes narrowed, snarling in fury.
Cynder only smiled, and allowed herself to fall.
She hit the substance with barely a splash, and as she did so it calmed, she disappeared under the surface with barely a ripple and suddenly they were standing in the colosseum of Warfang once again.
"Impossible. How are you unharmed? You fell into the hate. Even in a dream that should have…"
Darkmire muttered, her eyes narrowed, trying to figure it out.
Cynder shook her head.
"Because it's not hate."
She looked up into the stands, and there was Spyro. Sitting there like she had pictured him, watching and giving her an encouraging smile.
"That's… that's impossible."
"We were both wrong."
Cynder said with a smile.
"I thought it was fear because I was afraid. You thought it was hate because you're hateful. It makes sense doesn't it? But I realised those are just how we reach out. The red element isn't how we connect. It's the connection itself. It's the element of emotion."
Darkmire growled, shaking her head.
"You think you know more about hate than I do? I know everything!"
"You said you did. I don't believe you anymore."
"Heh, you think you're stronger than me; is that it?"
Darkmire let out an unhinged chuckle. She raised a paw and snapped her fingers and the colosseum blew apart around them, scattering into dust before rushing back inwards and reforming the walls of the cell, illuminated now in blazing yellow and red light as Darkmire almost seemed to glow with power.
"Is that it? Huh? Is that it? Is that it?"
She took a step forwards, and the whole world groaned. The already tiny cell seemed to get smaller around them, as if Darkmire wasn't so much walking towards her as shrinking the space between them to pull her closer.
"I know the secrets of the universe, I know the truth about the gods, about the Fragment of Discord, about reality itself! And you think I don't know this!?"
Cynder tried to snap back to the real world, and yet all of her senses were telling her that they were already there.
As Darkmire took another step Cynder felt a rush of fear. The stone around them screamed in protest, dust pouring down from the ceiling and cracks forming in the stone itself. Still she forced it down and reached out with compassion.
She tried to find Pleasure, sure that the other girl was in there somewhere and trying to help her. But when she found the connection all she heard was screaming and agony. Darkmire was torturing Pleasure, not allowing Cynder to connect, and all that pain was flowing into Cynder, turning her own new understanding of this magic against her.
Cynder jerked back, pulling herself away from the connection and spinning up the pain and fear she had gathered, then blasting it towards Darkmire as a screeching red ball of energy.
Darkmire raised a paw and slowly clenched her fist tighter and tighter, the world folded in on itself until the ball winked out of existence, and Cynder felt herself getting dragged into that distorted point until Darkmire suddenly released, unclenching her paw and dropping it.
"I could kill you here and now. But that's not how I do things you know."
Her voice started out dark and low, sounding like a thousand whispers and distant screams. But as she continued her tone grew more frantic and high pitched.
"I won't kill you until you beg for death, until you know that there is no hope in your life, that I can take everything you love, and that while you might have figured out some small trick about the Hate element which I don't yet know it is an insurmountable fact that I am better than you in every way."
Her voice rose to a laugh, screeching and grating, spittle flying from her mouth. Cynder had to press herself against the wall to avoid the potentially deadly spray of poison.
"I will learn your little trick and then I will use it on you before I kill you, so that the last thing you regret is being a minor annoyance to me!"
She stopped, panting and occasionally giggling, the movements jerky and unnatural.
"Now I hope you've got all that memorised because I'm not repeating it."
Darkmire's eyes turned green and then rolled back into her head, and she collapsed to the ground.
Cynder could tell from her wind magic that the other girl was laying on the floor, twitching. Her heart was beating but her breathing was shallow. Cynder immediately sensed there was something very wrong with her, she rushed over.
"Pleasure, can you hear me?"
There was no response. Cynder gently slapped Pleasures face to see if there was any reaction, but there wasn't.
Darkmire must have done something to spite her, whatever Darkmire had done with her fear blast Cynder got the feeling that Pleasure had taken a serious hit from it. She might even be brain dead.
Cynder gritted her teeth in worry, leaning down.
"Pleasure? Can you hear me? What did she do to you?"
Cautiously she reached out with her magic. Fear magic, compassion magic, she'd decide on a name for it later; but as she reached for Pleasure she found a shield around her mind. Darkmire had blocked off any chance of Cynder repeating what she'd done earlier.
As Cynder poked and prodded the wall she was rewarded with a flash of an image. That same poisonous yellow landscape she had seen the last time. A world with Darkmire's eye in the sky, looking down on strange twisted mountains. Perhaps that was Pleasure's inner world, just like Spyro had an inner world. That was what it would look like in Spyro's mind if Hope was able to take him over.
Cynder pushed a little deeper, and felt a pulse of hate like an electric shock, followed by a warning growl. Then suddenly Pleasure's mind was violently jolted, restarting it.
The poor dragoness breathed in a great shuddering breath, then she reached out and felt someone above her and began to scream.
She thrashed away from Cynder, crying and flinching and cowering.
"No! Please I'm sorry! I'll do anything!"
She started to babble her list of names, repeating them like she always did when she was stressed. Cynder stepped back, ducking under a swung tail easily and deciding to give her some space.
"Hey, it's me. It's okay." She said soothingly. But her voice brought only a renewed scream and wave of pleading.
"Don't hurt me! I'm sorry!"
"I won't. It's me, Cynder. Calm down Pleasure."
"H-how do you know my name?"
"We're friends." Cynder said in her best soothing tone. "Do you… remember me?"
She got no response, only a mute shake of the head, and Pleasure curling up even tighter into a ball and repeating the names.
Cynder felt her heart tear a little bit, but maybe Pleasure's memories would come back quickly. She hoped so.
"Hey, it's okay… Maybe when you see me in the light you'll remember. I'll get you out of this cell."
She turned to the door, creating a wall of air between them to muffle her voice before shouting as loudly as she could. For a moment there was no response and she began to feel worried. But then the door opened with a 'thud' and she saw a worried looking Spyro peeking inside.
Cynder sighed in relief at the light, how badly she had missed the colour purple.
"What's going on? Are you okay? Do you need help?" Spyro asked.
Cynder shook her head. "I got what I needed. But Pleasure…" She looked back, the ray of light illuminating the crying shape. "She's not good."
Spyro nodded. "Well at least you're okay."
He hurried into the cell, glowing softly. Pleasure cowered away from the light as Spyro dropped to sit beside her.
Malefor and Imperia hung back, watching what was going on.
"Pleasure? Can you hear me?"
At his voice she twitched slightly. Maybe a hint of recognition. Cynder hoped so, at least.
"You can open your eyes. It's okay, I promise."
As he spoke Pleasure slowly opened her eyes, flinching away at first, and then realising that the light wasn't hurting her. Her eyes, while weak, were somehow a little bit used to the light. She had seen light before… recently.
"Purple…" She said quietly. She had seen that colour recently as well. It was important to her somehow. It was connected with a name… "Spyro…"
"Yes, it's me." Spyro said softly.
Pleasure nodded slightly, raising her head ever so slowly to look around. Her green eyes met Cynder's, the two black dragonesses looking at each other, and Cynder finally saw a flicker of recognition.
The moment didn't last long. Pleasure laid her head down, a heavy groan as she did so. Her eyes closed and her breathing evened out as she fell asleep.
"Let's get her out of here." Spyro said softly. "Take her back up to where the bed is."
Cynder nodded in agreement.
"So what did you find out?" Spyro asked.
"A lot. I'll tell you on the way."
And there it is, the real secret of Cynder's fear element. I've been very deliberate about not introducing any additional elements, and it's far too late in the story to add any more now, but fear has been waiting with this unexplored secret all this time, something which re-frames why it does what it does.
Cynder is still a long way from really understanding her element, let alone controlling it, but perhaps she finally has the edge she needs to meet Hope and Darkmire on a battlefield where they can be truly defeated.
Let me know if you enjoyed the battle, the reveal of the true nature of Cynder's fear magic, and anything else you liked!
Thanks, as ever, for reading.
-4Dragons