Cynder's dreams are wreathed in green and gold.
The sunlight is bright and pure and perfect as it shatters on the trunks of the trees that grow around her; giants in their own right, dressed in curtains of vines and flowers, holding up the forest's ceiling with a might not so easily broken. Chandeliers of sunshine burst from between with the pretence of warmth and colour; the leaves glittering like emerald gems far above.
Spyro stands ahead of her, further up the path, walking steadily onwards, but Cynder does not feel the need to run to him when she knows she will catch up soon enough.
A smile sits warm on her face. It has been too long since she has felt enough happiness to smile, but in this peace of her, Spyro and the trees, there is nothing but peace and calm.
In this dream, the air is warm around them perfect in its existence in this dream-woven paradise. The air is warm; the sunlight gold. Spyro's scales shine like the colours of the Dawn, and there is space beside him on the path.
Cynder hurries her feet a little, quickening her pace to reach him, calling Spyro's name for him to wait, just a moment, until she has reached his side.
Spyro does not hear her.
Perhaps he is a little too far, or perhaps Cynder had not called loud enough, or perhaps something has caught his attention, but Spyro continues to walk, strong and sure, his path simple without tree roots to tangle at his feet or threaten to trip him like they do Cynder; her feet stumbling slightly.
A glance down at her feet shows vines tangled around her ankles; long grass threatening to trip her, though with a simple tug she is free, head back up, eyes searching—
Spyro is much further now, near draped in sunlight where he has broken free from the forest's embrace. Cynder calls again, a flicker of fear in her lungs, scared to be left behind, but no matter that she tries to run, nor how loud she calls after Spyro, he continues to walk and the vines continue to tangle around Cynder's feet until the sunlight swallows him whole and she is left to darkness.
Waking up is painful, but there is no peace of sleep to pull Cynder under once more.
Her body hurts her with the simple act of breathing, and when she tries to lift her head, to figure out where she was and why, Cynder feels as if she is holding the weight of the world upon her shoulders. She can hardly breathe when a mountain has fallen upon her chest, and a desert has filled her throat.
It's hard to breathe. It's hard to move.
It is hard to think beyond the pain and weight and fear of the suffocating darkness; hollow and thick and as terrifying as her nightmares.
There is a soft light flickering above her, like that of sunshine dancing upon the ocean's waves. It is lambent beneath the fluttering of tired eyes, but the longer that Cynder comes back to herself in increments, the more that the light and the shadows around grows increasingly sharper, until soft
shadows create themselves out of the darkness.
They remind Cynder of snowflakes in some ways, with the way that they dance as they fall to settle around her tired mind.
Cynder is in WarFang.
Or, at least she thinks she is, because while waking is painful and brings with it the ache of the world, things don't strike her as familiar, though the sandstone walls and the warmth of sunlight above her reminds Cynder of the Dragon City.
But when Cynder wakes, she is alone.
Spyro is not beside her.
She tries to speak, but as much as it was hard to breathe, she can barely conjure the effort to speak words. Her head is too heavy to lift, even as it lay in cushioned pillows. She cannot speak, but that does not stop the groan that leaves her when pain tears down her shoulders and back at the movement she demands from her own body, in search for Spyro who has, for what feels like an eternity, been bound to his side as much as he has been bound to hers.
Instead there is emptiness. The snake that tethered the pair of them together has been vanquished. By who, Cynder does not care. She is grateful the magic has gone, but so too with it has Spyro, and though there should be peace in no longer having to drag his body around, instead there is a void where he should be.
There is pain, because he is dead and she is not.
Still, she calls out to him.
Spyro has been her constant, for months now, and there is still a part of Cynder that does not believe that he could be gone, his name choked on her tongue—
"Easy Cynder, easy, easy," comes a voice from beside her. There are hands that come to steady him; shapes pulling themselves from the color of the room around her and it is Ignitus that fills her vision; the soft golden fire of his skin complimentary to sandstone walls and strewn blankets nested to give Cynder some semblance of comfort while she recovered her strength from her harrowing journey.
"Where is Spyro?" Cynder asks, ignoring the gentle touch on her shoulder that begs for her to keep steady, pushing past the desert that fills her throat, battling against the mountain that crushes her chest, feeling weight upon her back where her wings have been braced by bandages to keep them from any more injury while the strain of muscle and tendons heal. "Ignitus, where is Spyro‽"
"Once we found a way to break the magic that was binding the two of you together, Spyro's body was taken to one of the rooms underground. The cold will preserve his body long enough for us to gather an audience for his final rites," he says, and though Cynder can hear the pain Ignitus speaks when referring to a boy he privately considered his own son, so too does she hear the way he says body as if Spyro was nothing more than rotting meat and flesh clinging to hollow bones.
But anger is a useless emotion. It doesn't change the truth, that Spyro is rotting; that his soul has long since left this world and all Cynder had been dragging with her was a husk; a shell of a once mighty dragon that had been reduced to nothing but a memory.
"You have been asleep for three days now. You must be hungry," Ignitus says, with the airs of someone that does not know what to say, and yet needs to speak anyway to fill the silence with something besides the pain of remembering what is missing.
"I'm not hungry," Cynder says, almost reflexively, but no sooner do the words leave her mouth do they hold actual weight; shrugging away Ignitus's hand from her shoulder, turning to push herself to her feet.
Fighting the weakness brought on by sheer exhaustion was another battle, and though Cynder thought that she had given up the ability to fight, it was not the case for Spyro. She was nothing if not stubborn and though Ignitus at first asked her to remain in the nest, he knew it was a losing battled;
his touch turning from barring to supporting, and he helped Cynder to her feet, mindful of bound wings and deep bruises that colored her scales.
"I need to see him," she says, but upon taking her first step, that is where her strength fails her and she all but crumples upon herself; saved only by Ignitus's arms and a touch of concern that cuts through the sudden swell of worry and fear.
"Calm down Cynder. You'll hurt yourself. You don't have the strength to move just yet," he says, easing her back down.
"I have strength enough," Cynder snarls, hackles raised, a growl warming her throat as anger builds—anger not to the older dragon, but to herself and this weakness that shackles her to the nest instead of allowing her to follow the winding stairs and corridors down to the dark where Spyro's body lay, robed in candlelight until there was chance to give a proper farewell.
"You cannot walk without me to help you," Ignitus says, reserved. "And I will help you," he continues, his tone softening slightly, "but first, patience. Eat some food. Gather your bearings. And then we will visit him."
Visit.
Because their time together will be brief.
Cynder does not realize she is crying once more, until she feels tears on her hands, looking down to see the way they trace the shapes of her scales like rain water.
"My dear."
Cynder does not need to meet Ignitus's eyes to see the tears that they share. She can hear them in his voice; feel them in the hand that steadies itself, once more, to her shoulder, the touch to the top of his head and the way large arms embrace her with the gentleness of a father that she deserved. "You have been forced to shoulder so much these last few days. And you have grown so much, by these trials laid before you. I am sorry that I—that we could not…
"You do not deserve this pain. You shouldn't have been forced to say goodbye so soon."
Cynder has no words. She can do nothing but lean into the touch offered to her, unashamed of the tears that she sheds beneath the sounds of Ignitus's murmured comfort and the sounds of others shuffling quietly into the room, there to be a hand, a shoulder; whatever Cynder may need.
All Cynder needs is Spyro, but that is impossible.
She has been by his side, protecting him, for what feels like an eternity and age, and now he is gone. His body might remain, but it is not the same, and there would be no smile should she find where he's been laid to rest; no smooth sound of laughter, no lingering eyes, no words hovering on the edge of his tongue that he does not say, because he cannot say them.
Not that Cynder could reach Spyro even if she had the strength to see his body. She is still harshly weakened by her journey, still harshly weakened from too many days with too little food and injuries sustained from having to fight off enemies, and falling to her own weakness. Her wings are bound and so too can Cynder feel familiar bandages wrapped around her hind legs where they had taken the brunt of her fall; bound, unable to move as she wills.
The universe has a cruel sense of humor, and had Spyro not sacrificed his life for it, Cynder would burn the world into ash and soot.