Dragon(s)layer

3


The Cloud Ripper


{Black Mesa Soundtrack: Black Mesa Theme - Mesa Remix}


Cynder hated mushrooms. She always had ever since she had been a hatchling. Something about their appearance, their repugnant gait and their sheer stench was offputting to her.

The black scales running down her regal back glinted in the distant sun's rays as she twisted away from the railing, and by extension, the strongest veins of the deathly scent. She scrunched her snout and snorted, casting a displeased sneeze in the direction of what was helping along her bad mood.

Dragons possessed doubly the senses of what other organisms did. Many people might find the local fauna of the Southern Swamps as a mere nuisance. But to Cynder their very presence was offensive. It was a mixture of wet soil and puss, the smell they gave off.

She hated it. Almost as much as she hated how badly her servants smelled too. All of them already stank ripely of feces and piss (much to the chagrin of her poor nose). And together with the mushrooms, it created an air-funnel of wreaking horror that had driven her sinuses to the breaking point.

Terrible.

Cynder pinched two of her talons on a small chainlink dangling around the softer, crimson scales plating down her more vulnerable belly and inner chest. At the end was a tiny brooch, glinting silver in the daylight haze. She shoved the hole-riddled surface of it against the tip of her snout and inhaled very deeply.

The brooch was stuffed with crushed mint and herbal excretions. Close breaths like that were enough to numb her sinuses for at least a few hours. Of course, none of that relief came without its own price. Cynder slapped her chops with distaste and let the brooch tap back onto her breast.

Snorting the herbs gave her an aftertaste she certainly didn't appreciate on the back of her serpentine tongue. Out here it was all a bombardment of her senses. As if there weren't enough reasons for her to be flaming mad all the time.

"You know disdain is pure when you can physically taste it in your own air." She spoke aloud, her voice something of a smoky, toned song that always drew attention no matter the listener. Her ghost-white eyes glowed a bit more vibrantly as she cast them down past the taloned ridge of one of her slender paws. "What say you, Orderly?"

"Gigaw's words not wise. Gigaw's words not matter-of-fact and just. Not like Mistress' words." A trembling, green, growth-ridden abomination quivered by her foot. Green rivers of noxious puss fled in miniature canals down ridged,wood-like skin covering an exterior skeleton of stacked fungus slabs and bundles of flesh-moss. "Gigaw say; Mistress always right."

The creature's name was Gigaw. He had been the Orderly her master had assigned to cater not only to her every whim, but also care for the deteriorating hulk of the Forlorn Watch; her home and base of operations in the south.

Gigaw was a green little snotrag. A Grublin. One of her master's more obscene and widely spread races of 'Children' that the world had experienced the misfortune of having birthed from its own soil. Gigaw was no higher than the mighty dragon's knee and had to crane his triangular head upwards to leer at her with a pair of blood-red eyes. He was truly a hideous thing. Cynder hated him too. He had only fueled many evenings spent dreaming about her own perfect fantasy.

Would it be that she had the power to singe away the Forbidden Funguswood surrounding the base of her tower and turn it all into a field of naught but glass. She'd do away with the horrid fauna of this swamp to its last. Burn everything and kill it quickly and efficiently. Then, she'd toss Gigaw in a sump and enslave the insect populations due south, make them fix the Forlorn Watch and erect it back to its long forgotten majesty, during the age of the Old Kingdom.

Cynder preened at the pleasant fantasy, flexing her beautiful, crimson wings behind her back. Her appearance was quite the contrast to her hellish servant, and most of the environment here.

Where Gigaw was deformed and tiny, she was buxom and curvaceous. Cynder's body was the prime of her pride and upkeep. Maintaining it was a necessity that she held in high regard, and frowned upon those who did not similarly pursue perfection to a mania.

She was wreathed head to toe in a reflective coat of black scales that shone whatever haze of light or aura currently mimicked her surroundings. Crimson plates of lusciously smooth underscale ran down her rotund breast, and down into the dimpled curve of her belly. Her hips were full and her legs empowered by twisting bands of cabled muscle that slept under beds of paunch fat.

Her forelimbs were thin and could be mistaken for quaint in their femininity. Tight bands of chrome metal sealed her wrists and ankles. The chain she wore hung over a spiked choker that capped the base of her regally twisting neck.

Six ivory horns sprouted from the back of her spined skull, and her face was highlighted with ancient rune-scripts that had been branded into her cheek scales and forehead from rituals undertaken when she had been a hatchling. Their presence lingered like dulling tattoos of slightly pinked texture.

Years of battle service, licked by a taste from the tongue of darkest magic had sculpted her into a living piece of artwork. She was an ornate weapon. An emblem of the Dark Mistress' armies. She was Warlord of the South.

Cloud Ripper.

The inhabitants of the Southern Marshes called her the Cloud Ripper.

Cynder had never fainted or realized an interest in things so paltry as titles. But the fear she deliciously injected in whatever landscape she inhabited was plump and endearing. That was a smell she could appreciate, and it had a fine taste too, unlike all these damn mushrooms.

She turned a lazy eye down at the quivering Grublin by her foot.

"Do Grublins procrastinate?" She asked.

"Grublins?" Gigaw went rigid, peering at her as if she had spoken an unknown tongue. After a pause, he twitched and made a pleased trill. "Ah! Yes. Grublin-kin always procrastinate. Gigaw is fine exception, but most of Gigaw's kind not understand action, not understand success."

"Ah." Cynder leaned over the railing, her gaze peaking around the dark thickets of the Funguswood below. "I never extended the reach of my studies to the subject of my Mistress' creations and their social cues."

"Mistress' goals are too great for lowly Grublins!"

As freakish as he was, Gigaw understood the concept of being a kiss-ass. Everything out of his mouth-holes was a combination of brief reports, haphazard complaining, and heaps upon heaps of overindulged flattery. Cynder had enjoyed having her ego stroked, like she was a purring cat, for the first few weeks.

After a month, she had given him orders to remain silent unless spoken to. But even that little relief didn't get rid of her nose-aches and her toxic boredom.

"Whatever my Mistress seeks in these befouled reaches is beyond me." Cynder vented aloud, not caring if Gigaw did or didn't hear her. It wasn't as if he or her Mistress were in any position to impose discipline for something so low as griping. "She leaves me to stalk the abandoned catacombs of the Old Kingdom, searching crevices, brambles and mushroom thickets. Caves, caverns and peat bogs! There is an insult in that."

"Mistress is always right. Yes. Yes. Yes." The Grublin wrung his spindly little green claws together maniacally, a fit of horrid hacks blaring from the honeycomb of black-welts that were ripped in his moss-flesh in absence of a functioning mouth. Cynder flinched at her perfect atmosphere being broken, and considered throwing her Orderly over the railing. "But the Dark One foresees all! All things even beneath light and earth! Gigaw not lie when say; Mistress follows most righteous of deeds."

"Mana Crystal." Cynder muttered. "Once, this whole landscape was covered in it. Now it is hidden underneath the foul earth."

"Mistress smarter than earth..." Gigaw giggled, pointing to her quarters and study nearby, where on one of the tables not taken up by scrolls and books, sat an alchemy rig, fitted with mortars and pestles, beakers and calcinators. "Mistress make earth go boom!"

"Yes, it's quite the spectacle when push comes to shove." Cynder hummed. "We have enough of the black powder to produce enough explosives to level this whole fetid swamp. Rapturously does that power obey me and it is delicious~."

Cynder licked her muzzle, almost moaning the end of her own statement out. Her long and thick tail lashed like a whip behind her, its bladed tip singing like a finely tuned katana in the air. She was prone to episodes of excitability, even out here, in the lowest station she'd ever been given.

All for a pile of rocks. Mana Crystals were the lifeblood of the draconic youth, as they were necessary to replenish the elemental power of drakes and dragonesses who were still learning to master their own biologies. The gems grew where the dragons were most numerous. Thousands of them had been left behind after the south had been abandoned.

Cynder's Apes had been gradually depleting the underways and crevices of the marshes for the last month, and before that, even more months of preparation had gone into preparing the ancient dragon tower as a garrison.

Once gathered, the gems were refined all the quicker at her Mistress' home, the Dark Continent, and were bled into the earth, where terrible pacts of shadow-energy could be imbued into the magical drainage and used to create battalions of monsters.

Such replacements were needed for the Northern Front, against the dredges of the Dragon Realms, the New Kingdom, as some were calling it.

"Soon, Mistress' gaze not just preside over Funguswood." Gigaw chattered, hiking up on his talons to point over the railing. "See? Soon, all dragon monuments look like that."

He gestured to a rounded patch of dark color far off to the north, where the chin of the great Frontier Sea was just visible. The ruins of the ancient dragon fortress, Stormwatch, stood lonely on the coast.

"Nobody alive today had the satisfaction of rendering that." Cynder eyed the distant ruins with boredom. "And I don't recall asking for you to speak."

"Apologies, Mistress, apologies..."

"But, you are not wrong. Come along, Orderly." Cynder turned and began to trot back inside the observatory lounge. "Guard," She called across the floor. One of two white-furred, black-armored Apes with rigid expressions written on their mugs grunted, and bowed to her as she approached. "you may open the door, I'm on my way to deal with the news."

The doorway swung open and the Ape sentries- two members of Cynder's personal Cold Legion -stood on either side to allow her through. One of them growled at Gigaw as the Grublin scurried along Cynder's flank. Gigaw sounded like a little misbehaving purse dog with a returned gesture, snapping at the larger simian.

Cynder and Gigaw passed through an arch that wound deeper into the recesses of the tower's upper limits. The gothic architecture here was wounded and wrought with vines, acting as the central spine of the tower that led all the way down to the atrium chamber making Forlorn's foundation. It was over forty stories of steps. Cynder liked trekking the chute: as it gave her time to think, normally alone.

Gigaw, on the other hand...

"-Eek~! Nasty, nasty!" Gigaw chattled. His foot caught on one of the creepers overgrowing the steps. and he kicked and hopped madly until he was free of it.

"This tower was built almost four thousand years ago by ancient dragons hailing from Stormwatch." Cynder mused, stepping through sheet after sheet of dull daylight spilling through the ruined stained-glass windows layering down the tower's stairwell chute. "It was made to be a sentry and staging point for explorers founding their dens farthest from the Realms. Once upon a time, this swamp was rife with magical spirit-plants and ancient groves. Sentient stags guarded the woods and unicorns fed in the clearings.

"Dragons from the urban centers would come here to festoon their alchemical reserves with samples of the most exotic and rarest kinds. Hedgewizards and mages wrote the contents of some of the most renowned spellbooks and chemical tomes using material and wisdom that they found coming here. The Southern Marshes were, in essence, an extension of the Old Kingdom."

"Gigaw know this." The Grublin defended. His foot caught on another vine and he tumbled with a hideous shriek that echoed throughout the chute. His face met the brick with a muted thmp~! Gigaw laid there for a moment before scrabbling back up. "Gigaw aware to some extent..."

"Did my Mistress lecture you on nothing before sending you to me?" Cynder asked.

"The Dark Mistress... prepare Gigaw, as she see fit." Gigaw defended, talking in an almost calculated measure. "Gigaw grown from first-generation beneath Island Catacombs. One of the Oldies. Gigaw there when Dark Mistress roused the Magma Beast with terrible songs and binding chains of magick. Gigaw there when Dark Mistress presumed over you, ...ehm, Mistress."

Cynder's scales bristled at that. She snarled at Gigaw, reminding him that despite his older age, he was still a lowly whelp. She could crush him like a gnat when she fancied it.

Miniscule wort-creature.

Gigaw produced an obscene and disgusting chirp, his red eyes flaring. It was a sound his kind made when they were sounding their own alarm, kind of like how a rat couldn't help itself from squealing when someone attempted to step on it.

He carefully reoriented the subject.

"Gigaw only make known this. Gigaw have knowledge that can be best used by Mistress to further Mistress' goals, and Mistress' goals only. Gigaw is humble servant. Lowly Orderly, at beck and call."

"And what a humble minion you have proven to be." Cynder hummed, her hips swaying in glee as the steps passed without trouble beneath her athletic legs. "Surely, you would not be burdened by accompanying me to inspect the fruits of my command?"

"Certainly not, Mistress," The Grublin stumbled over a crack sheepishly. The chute was torture for him and Cynder was delighted by it. "Gigaw live to serve."


{🐉}

The healthy clink of pickaxes meeting stone rang prevalently even in the bailey section of the tower.

Here, the sprawling ruins of a cathedral-like fortification nested in the fallen ribcages of pillars and merlon rows. The smashed painted-glass frames rounding the atrium were overgrown with colossal mushrooms and strung with wooden scaffolding. Boilers built into the remnants of ancient sarcophagi tombs churned hellish magma that vented soot through nailed-in chimney chutes, ones bursting sporadically from the tower's basing archways and the dome that the actual spire itself sprouted from.

There were murder slots overlooking the Funguswood and the moss-plateaus that the Forlorn Watch was built atop. Stinking, furred warriors bedecked in roundel plate, chainmail, leather and bonded rags lumbered to and fro wielding poorly made bows and spears. They scowled behind tusked underbites and tribal masks spattered with haphazard dyes and paints, communicating through a series of whoops, grunts and howls.

Apes.

Possibly the one thing in abundance here that stunk worse to Cynder than the mushrooms.

Cynder snorted on her brooch again as she and Gigaw ended their trip down the stairwell. The scream of machinery blended with pickaxes, hammers and the strike of swords as Apes practice-dueled one another in makeshift debris arenas. They squabbled among campsites erected from animal fur tents and huts made from the dirtied bones of large swamp-herbivores.

The base of Forlorn extended to a diameter of around two hundred feet. Cynder's army had converted what had once been the skeleton of a library and a series of dragon tombs into a small industrial park and camp. The Apes were constantly busy assembling crude machines of war, weapons, and hauling Mana Crystals that they harvested from the swamps.

"The Dark Lady approaches!" –Trumpeted one of the burly primates. As Cynder trotted closer, squeaking hand-carts tugged by giant Anteaters and their Ape handlers finished their trundling trek into the center of the atrium. There was a convoy of six of them, and each of their opened, wooden holds was crammed with mountains of thick, glowing green gems. The Anteaters snorted tiredly and whipped the air with their snouts. Some Apes ran up with fistfuls of black insects and began to gently coax them onto the beasts' tongues as they greedily bent down to slurp them up.

"Mistress Cynder, the gems! The gems for you!" A larger officer named Gruluk, came as close as his cowardly nature would allow himself to get to the mighty dragon. He fell to his knees, grinning at her with rows of sharp, yellow fangs. His work teams followed suit, bowing and howling off cries of- 'Oo-Ah~!' –as they practically ate the dirt and cobble. "Great Fire Powder work! It work! Just as the Mistress' indefatigable, unsurpassed, and great wisdom knew it-"

"Oh, your ministrations bore me, lieutenant." Cynder swatted the Ape out of her way like he weighed no more than a sheet of paper.

Gruluk whooped loudly as he sailed away and plowed into a steaming stew-pot that some of the other monkeys had erected on the edge of the exchange. Scalding stew splattered everywhere and the pot flipped end over end, sending its ring of tenders scattering with panicked drawls and yips.

"You there, where did you acquire such a bounty of Mana gems? It couldn't have been close to the Watch. We've drained all the caves within a mile radius." Cynder pointed with the blade of her tail.

The aforementioned Ape shivered like a babe in the wind. Some of his fellows turned from their rapid bowing, whooping, punching and shoving him to the front of the ranks. He fell to his knees before the dragoness, terrified and breathing in quick rasps.

"Aye, Mistress, we're comin back from the southern edge, just at the end of the fungus forest." This Ape was much more blunt in his words, and Cynder liked that. "The boom-sticks revealed a great cave chamba beneath the bogs. It's packed silly wit hundreds of towers of them Mana Crystals!"

"Hundreds?" Cynder smiled, taking the Ape's stupidity for granted. Nearby, Gigaw trailed by her tail, hissing when one of the Apes curiously stepped closer and made to poke one of his puss-leaking mouth holes. "The crystal reserves we've discovered thus far have been minute and spread thinly. You're telling me that you've found a single pocket that filled all of these carts?"

"And still more." The Ape nodded, keeping his fear-soaked eyes on the dirt. "Me and the lads are unda orders from Chieftain Visigoth imself. He's the one found da chamber and stayed behind ta safeguard it."

"Really?" Gigaw chattered with interest, backing down when Cynder appraised him disapprovingly under her snout. "Apologies...Apologies..."

"It's the chief's words I'm repeatin, Mistress, not me own." The Ape gulped.

"Hundreds." Cynder had a slight glaze in her white eyes for a moment. She shook it away and preened her bladed wings. "A trove like what you are describing is enough to produce an entire Legion of my Mistress' prodigy. Speak with certainty to me."

"We all can attest to it! Ain't dat rite lads?" The Ape turned slightly, smugly dragging the rest of his comrades in on the chopping block they had so eagerly laid him upon. Many of the work crew nodded their ugly heads enthusiastically. "Chieftain Visigoth has unearthed a bloody hoard."

A moment of silence impregnated the scene. Gigaw wandered closer, gazing at the dragoness patiently.

Cynder, for her part was caught in a strange limbo. On one claw, she wasn't entirely convinced. But then again… Visigoth was more competent than this entire tribe of numbskulled, shit-flinging primates combined. He was Chieftain for a reason, even if old age was beginning to catch up to him.

"We shall see." She finally decreed, looking down at Gigaw. "I am taking flight for the south. Work the slaves on double shifts. This amount of crystal will need to be processed in ten times less the hours. If any of them resist, deny them food. If they continue to resist, kill one of them. Work them to death if you need to."

"Yes, Mistress. Of course, Mistress." Gigaw bowed repeatedly as Cynder trotted past him. "Gigaw lives to serve."

Cynder trekked out on the ruined flight of what once were stairs that led into the yawning gates of the Forlorn Watch's bailey. The stairs had long been ground to dust and sloped to form a ramp for the wagon trains. The ruined gates themselves- laden with Ape tribal totems and markings –were swung wide open, letting in a blinding cascade of daylight from the gray sky above.

Cynder stepped into the arch and swept her gaze disapprovingly over the Forbidden Funguswood around her. She snorted, and leathery creaks sounded throughout the air as she rolled her petite shoulders. Sinews of muscle broiled beneath her onyx coat. Membranes of red extended farther and farther from the stilted limbs protruding behind her scapulas.

Her wings were five times the size of the rest of her body mass. They were almost bat-like, and worn from years of good usage. Cynder stretched the membranes, twisted her neck, and gave them a good flap.

Fwwhmmm~! –a whirlwind of dust kicked up around her. A trio of Apes that had been lumbering nearby were swept off their feet and flew over the side of the ramp, hollering and shrieking. One of the gem carts inside threatened to overturn, and the giant Anteater at its reigns mewled in panic. Cynder opened her jaws and released a terrible roar that echoed throughout the swamps.

The Cloud Ripper sped for her charge.


{🐉}

"Ouch."

Spyra grit her fangs and retracted her paw tenderly. She'd stepped right on a bog urchin. The drab-colored ball of needles was sticking to her pads, impaled in the softer undersides of her scales. When she leaned closer to grimace at the little creature, its spines started to shiver and a low, pebble-like growl rose from inside it.

"You gotta' be kidding me."

Scraping the urchin off on a log, Spyra rubbed her paw and limped over a few rock rises.

Bmmmmm~! –rumbled another explosion. The ground quaked, and stagnant, yellowed water rippled. Bats squeaked as they were dislodged from their roost somewhere in an overhead swamp tree. Spyra jumped inside her own scales again and scrambled for cover behind a stack of giant mushrooms.

Damn it.

She was as jumpy as a field mouse. Her of all dragons.

C'mon, Spyra, get it together! You're not scared of anything in this whole swamp! You know it like the back of your paw, for Ancestors' sake…

Humming angrily, Spyra's purple eyes locked on a patch of clearing just ahead of her in the overwhelming marshland brush. The earth rose there in muddy swells and veins. Entangled brambles scabbed at the edges of an almost mourning trench. Green smog billowed softly from the cave entrance. It was dark, and creeper vines hung like filthy hairs over its maw.

Bmmmmmm~! –Spyra yipped and ducked behind her mushroom when the cave entrance became lit with a glare of yellow. Dust fell from the archway, and some panicking bats fluttered out, vanishing in nearby willow trees.

The explosions are coming from inside there.

She had a gut feeling about whatever this was. She had experienced similar phenomena to this in the past. Methane gas sometimes ignited in the many under chambers and fungus-cavities that networked under the marshes as miles of twisting root tunnels. Spyra had never been able to explore the tunnels as deeply as she had wanted to, after all, going down there entailed the threat of things much much worse than Toadworts and Giant Mosquitos.

All kinds of ugly, larger and dangerous carnivores and scavengers lurked down there. Spyra had seen some scary things in those pits. But something told her that what she was seeing right now wasn't as mundane as methane.

Spyra used her teeth to pull an urchin barb from her claw, spitting it out and slipping around the mushrooms. Being this deep into the edge of the Forbidden Funguswood, the northern sky was shrouded in a rising wall of mushrooms the size of trees that were all over the hill of the cave's mouth. Some mushrooms bigger than cows speckled the muddy earth between her and her goal.

Nobody home will ever know. Keep your belly to the ground. Hips wide, forelegs wide and forward, and head low. Tail for balance… Tail for balance…

Spyra was giddy as she crept up to the cave, sliding across the marshy, dingy terrain like a salamander, or a snake. She'd been around enough of the fauna here long enough to learn from them, after all. Smooth and silent always got the drop.

The smog burping from inside the cavern stunk like hell. Spyra had to breathe through her mouth as she reached the cave's entrance and climbed up one of the mud veins. Being dirty didn't bother her. She liked it when the getting's were rough.

Smiling, with brown goop staining her beautiful purple coat up to her elbows and shins, Spyra gave her wings a little kick, and hopped into the throat of the cave, landing inside with a quiet squick~! –on the mud-plain within.

Bannnngggg~!

-The explosions were more defined now, less muffled. Her eyes dilated when the entire chamber lit yellow for just a split second. It highlighted the ceiling, and what she saw in those moments made her blood run like ice water.

Thousands of little eyes were looking back at her, some of them blinking out of existence occasionally or shifting. Her and the colony of alien creatures shared a prolonged moment of silence, them gazing at her squarely, her craning her head to meet their scrutiny. Spyra's vision gradually broke down and digested the dark. Bats. Lots and lots of bats. Evidently, the majority of the flock had decided that they weren't going to be chased out of their home due to the meddling of some fire.

Bannnnggg~!

-Some wings fluttered. Maybe a handful took off outside the cave. The rest jittered in their upside-down stances, teetering, like ornaments caught in a momentary breeze. A pebble bounced off Spyra's snout and she growled, making another flight of bats whisk outside for safety.

"Winged rats." She murmured. One of them shrieked at her. She spat an ember in the mud and kept going deeper.

Ghoulish methane-smog wormed from the root-straddled earth. Spyra made a mental note as she climbed through the stinking mess to keep her fire breath under control. No more ember-spitting. All it took was a spark and this whole tunnel would light up like a bomb.

But then, how were those explosions happening without setting off the methane pockets?

"-Come on~! Set up the Black Powder and get away from there!" –Hollered a guttural, raspy voice.

"The fuse isn't lit! ...There! Dat's much better…"

Thwock~! –went the report of an object bouncing off the second speaker's head. The victim howled in pain and whined.

"You idiot! Now look at what yu did-"

Bannnnngggg~! –the tunnel rattled. The screech of crackling shrapnel and the panicked cries of individuals who had been thrown off their feet echoed everywhere.

Spyra flinched when a glowing, green chunk of rock smacked right into the center of the tunnel ahead. It planted into the dirt from above, steaming with still fresh soot that leaked off of it.

"A Mana Crystal…." The dragoness gasped, hiding behind some squat mushrooms as she peered at the strange, pulsating stone. Mana Crystals were said by the dragonflies of her village to be quite dangerous, like Toadworts or Red-Cap Mushrooms. Spyra had always kept her distance from the things because of those worries.

"It fell down there!"

She jumped inside her scales and hunkered lower. Heavy footfalls clunked down a rampart of cave-dirt, revealing two lumbering creatures covered head to toe in bristling, unkempt fur. Spyra felt her heart leap into her throat.

"Dere it is! Rite where I said it would be…" One of the monsters cackled. "Black Powdeh always has the drop on stone an earth. See? And yu said I was crazy."

"You ar crazy, yu moron. You blew up our guys!" The other berated. "Rak, Glops and Shal! All of 'em are nevva gonna' see the light of day 'cause uv you and yer stupid fuse."

"Less mouths ta dribble and drool over the roast haunches bak at home…"

"I never said I was complainin. But yer still an idiot."

What the hell were these things? They were ugly as sin! Fat, blubbery, with limbs wrapped in chords of bulbous muscle and blanketed with scabby fur that was the color of dirty smoke. They had glowing yellow eyes and hideous underbites. And they stunk. Spyra actually gagged when their displeasing aroma began to waft through the already noxious methane plumes taking up the tunnelway she hid in.

"Did yu ere something?" The first asked as he bent over the Mana Crystal.

"Maybe it's them ghosts some of the lads are always gettin on about." The other waved a dirty paw and gripped the underside of the gem, heaving with the solid weight. "-Gah~! I fink I might slip a disk! Get ovva here and help me with this! Or I'll pound ya'!"

Monkeys. They were primates, with drooping noses and exposed, pink buttcheeks. Spyra cocked her head as the second Ape wrapped his arms under the gem too and hauled it out of the dirt with a grunt. Ftt~! –a blast of green dust farted out from its unwashed arse'. It giggled and the other one rolled his eyes.

"-You were just waiting for that, you stinkin' chimp."

"-Ooooo-hah-hah~!"

Fascinated, the dragon observed the pair trundle back with the gem. Neither of them seemed too impacted, laying their grubby hands all over a supposedly 'dangerous' item. Spyra narrowed her eyes and remembered to scoff her parents about it if she made it out of here alive.

A pair of crude, iron maces hung from straps over the Apes' two belts. They clinked against the leather and chainmail hanging in skirts over their knees. These people meant business.

"Put it with the rest of em…"

"Stop pullin fleas out of my coat! …. At least not dere, get dis leg, this one's completely infested."

"Fire in the hole!"

Bannnnnggg~! –everything up ahead was a ruckus of busied work and rushing voices. Spyra snuck up to a boulder and hid, scanning a wide antechamber that rose in a plateau in the center of a larger chamber.

There were tens of these Apes wandering around a dig site. Tents, weapon racks and stacks of crudely made boxes cluttered the outskirts of the base. The steaming remains of blast craters marred the earth in the center of the encampment and a series of rents wrought into the stone wall on the far side of the chamber. Pull-carts with giant Anteaters strung up to their fronts were stocked with glowing piles of Mana Gems. Pickaxes fell and hammers cracked. There were teams of Apes viciously battling rises of dirt and rocks at the bases of beautiful spire formations of Mana Crystals. The crystals sang sharply each time the Apes missed a swing and ate into their once pristine faces. Work teams scrambled about the feet of larger warriors to collect every shard that kicked off the gems and scattered on the ground.

Nearby, a smaller Ape tried to steal a canteen strapped to a larger's belt. The latter responded by grabbing over his aggressor's throat, decking him between the eyes and kicking his twitching form over a mud ridge.

"-Fire in the hole!"

Spyra whipped her head over to see a cluster of gems (and an unfortunate worker who hadn't had the intelligence or hearing left to heed the warning) vanish in a burst of flame and black soot. Glowing shards landed everywhere as Apes scrambled into the smoke to collect them excitedly.

A pile of barrels nearby was the source of those explosions. Sticks of red-colored material were piled inside to their brims. Every now and then, an Ape ran over and snatched a stick or two, carrying them to the most troublesome of gem clusters that they couldn't dig out with tools.

Holy frijoles, what have I found today? Spyra thought, clawing the edge of her rocky hiding place to watch with wide eyes. In all her years in the swamps, she'd never seen anything like these creatures before. Where did these Apes come from? And what did they want with the gems?

A shard of crystal landed just ahead of her hiding place after another explosion racked the far northern side of the chamber. It winked at her when it finally bounced to a stop in the dirt. It was completely unblemished, despite the soot, the soil and the cracks running along its edges. Spyra's purple eyes reflected its sickly shade.

Something inside her was just begging her to reach out and touch it. So, risking discovery, that was exactly what the young dragoness attempted to do. Her quivering claw extended as far as it could reach in her bid to palm the gem into her pads.

Right as her talons were about to make contact, a strange surge of sensations started bubbling up in the flesh closest to the crystal. Spyra gasped as her blood boiled and her bones quivered. Even in just the tips of her paw fingers, she felt… powerful. She felt good.

"-Work proceeds smoothly, my liege, as requested!"

Spyra's draconic hearing perked and she ripped her arm away before she could touch the shard.

"Though, we've suffered some losses due to-"

Bannnggg~! –the ceiling of the chamber echoed with panicked shrieks. A duo of Apes with flaming asses and blackened fur went flying in two different directions, hitting the ground hard amid raining chunks of crystal.

"…overeagerness." –Concluded the nearby speaker. Spyra saw a portly Ape with a monocle over his eye waddle out from the nearby fur tents. The creature sighed. "Cheerio, that it isn't of any significance. All in the name of progress must be slow and arduous when need be, I say."

"Your words never lack wisdom, Tinker." –Came a much deeper, more imposing voice. Spyra stopped breathing when the largest Ape in the entire mob became visible beside the squatter Tinker.

This Ape stood over eight feet tall. His shoulders were unnaturally broad and his fur ragged and heavy, colored a deep navy blue with gray ridges and plumes. A mane of deep blue hair ran from the base of his barreled neck to the tip of his tiny tail. He was positively awash in muscle, freakishly so, looking as though he possessed the strength to crack boulders just by clenching them in his big, leathery, black fingers.

Animal pelts decorated his back, held in place by a pair of snarling shoulder pauldrons that were shaped curiously, almost arrowhead-ish, and layered with elegant scripture. It was obvious that his kind hadn't sculpted the fine pieces. Roundel wood shields belted to his chest plated over a skirt of chainmail, and two haggard war axes hung from straps on his narrow hips, their butts made from the cleaned, shrunken skulls of deer.

"They don't, I know." Tinker adjusted his monocle. "For a moment though, envision the possibilities…"

"Go on."

"Behold," Tinker gestured to a nearby worker jamming his finger up his nose and twisting to get a good hook on a particularly troublesome booger. "the Ape, Chieftain Visigoth. A race who is not troubled by the more intricate priorities of the rest of the burgeoning world."

"Quite." Visigoth rumbled deep laughter.

"We weren't meant to grasp the evolutionary chain, clawing for the ends of all deals and scraps. That is where the Mana Crystal comes into play. It's form, its physique! And most of all, its power." Tinker salivated. "The Dark Mistress truly is generous to let us reap those benefits. Our lesser Mistress can't see it, but I can. I can see it very, very clearly. ….- oh, and don't… don't tell her that last bit."

"Your secrets are safe with me." Visigoth scanned the dig site. "This is our vision, Tinker."

"Right." Tinker grinned, clearing his throat uncomfortably. "I couldn't ever diminish another intellectual. Though I'd be damned if all this Black Powder isn't clogging my ear canals and my sinuses. I'll be smelling brimstone for a month."

"Sacrifices." Visigoth shrugged his massive shoulders, his pauldrons creaking. "That is one problem solved. If only the Cloud Ripper could curtail the lack of cesspits." –The warlord sounded dismissive, snorting, as a terrible scent began to waft from the edges of the camp. "Prepare your things and get ready to leave."

"Will she not arrive shortly herself?"

"To prove what?" Visigoth grumbled. "That my finds are not lies and treachery? Ever since I stole her from that wretched shrine, she keeps finding more and more creative ways to patronize me and stick her snout in my affairs. I will gain good standing with the Dark One through this haul. This is the most of the gem we have discovered in one place in this entire swamp. The slave pits need refilling and the Dark Mistress armies need reinforcements. The gems will do nicely."

"The dragonflies will suffice for the prior! Oh, jolly good!" Tinker hopped and clapped his prehensile feet together like they were a pair of subsidiary hands. "This calls for a shot of champagne and crumpets!"

"Your time in the North has changed you." Visigoth observed as the two lumbered back into the tents. "These words are alien to me."

"That is even more of a decadent chance for me, my chieftain! There is no greater satisfaction than introducing a clean pallet to the joys of finer brews!" Tinker sang. "-Once we enslave the New Kingdom, I must acquire for you a plantation facility with doubly the moles to staff and bring you drinks of your choice."

Nearby, Spyra held her breath and sank behind the boulders, her eyes wild and darting. Her mind was battling with a strange conflagration of emotion. On one hand, her excitement and her naivety had been curtailed. What was an adventure when such risk became reality?

Slaves? A Cloud Ripper? And they wanted to hurt the dragonflies. Her village. Her only home in this stinking marsh.

"I have to get out of here." She whispered, looking around at the distant explosions and the rushing teams of Ape warriors.

"Oi! You lot missed a shard!"

Spyra flinched and backpedaled from the rocks. A horrible smelling Ape ran over just in front of her hiding place and picked up the Mana Crystal shard lying there, waving it over his narrow head like it was a trophy.

"You're gettin' sloppier with each blow-up, Juluk! Don't tell me that many rocks bounced upside yer fat head!"

"Keep flapping your gums over there, and I'll eat your fuckin' children!"

Panicked, Spyra forgot all about her rules for good stealth. She didn't keep her belly to the mud as she bounded like a gazelle back towards the way she had come, splashing through puddles and ripping through creepers in her bid for escape.

Suddenly, her front paws slipped.

Shit.

Splat~! –she face-planted in the mud, her vision blinded by damp murkiness, and her snout invaded by a terrible, and bitter-tasting cold sludge.

Spyra groaned and leaned back, spitting and hacking as she batted madly about her snout.

"Hold on dere just hold on! ….I gotta' take a leakage, boys."

"Not again, Jesper!"

"You fat piss-bag! Half this bloody cave's flooded with your shite, and I know it!"

Spyra shook herself like a dog, whipping herself back and forth until her vision cleared up. Unfortunately, it was just in time for her to glance in terror over the joint of her wing.

Standing right over the boulders she'd just vacated was one of the Apes. He was huge compared to her. Seven feet tall. A whole three or four heads over her own, and his reflective, golden eyes were locked right on her.

The Ape lowered his paws from where he'd been fiddling with a belt on his waist. His arms hung almost as limp as his jaw as he struggled to process what he was seeing.

"Bloody hell." –Was all he uttered out.

Spyra blinked and did what came as reaction.

Her talon swiped across the mud, and she flung her wrist, hitting the Ape in the face with a rock.

Bnk~! –it bounced off right between his eyes.

"-Ouch~!" He cried, tumbling over the rocks and collapsing, clawing at his face. Spyra turned tail and sprinted.

Behind her, panicked cries and rallying shouts echoed down the tunnelway. Apes whooped and hollered. She heard the one she'd escaped ranting and cursing.

"-That fing nearly took out my eye!"

"Lads?"

"What jus happened?"

"It was a trick of the light!"

Thwack-~! –one of them punched the last speaker. "It ain't a light-trick, it's an intruder, you orangutan."

"Does this mean we should tell the chieftain?"

"YES!"

Spyra heaved and spat mud from her chops. War whoops echoed and joined together in a terrifying cacophony inside the cave's bowels. Footfalls started to flood down the mud and soil. She flicked her tail and ran faster, bounding on all fours with abandon.

Light bloomed in her face, and the bats overhead fluttered into the daylight outside in a rush. No sooner had their shrieks and fluttering wings grown silent did she leap over the cave's chin and land in the clearing outside.

Spyra whipped her head around, trying to remember her way back to the village.

Then, the air whooshed.

Pc-chhhhhh~! –the ground trembled and a breeze of dust kicked in her face. Spyra reared on her hind legs like a panicked horse, flaring her wings and coughing as the dust temporarily blinded her.

"-Agh~! Damn it!" She sputtered, landing on her pads and batting at her dirty face again. "I knew my brother was right to hate mud so much!"

"Oh my~." –Hummed a honeyed, very deep voice just ahead of her. Spyra froze and gazed up in horror, suddenly realizing that something was blotting out the sun. "Look at you, you lost, poor little hatchling."

Spyra stepped back as Cynder's ghostly pale eyes flared in amusement.

"You are quite far from home." Cynder trotted closer, decorating the air with a metallic swipe as her talons unsheathed from her front paws. "What might your name be?"

The sound of Apes rushing down the tunnel. Spyra felt her mouth go dry as she looked desperately between the cave and the colossal, black thing that was approaching her.

She was trapped.


{🐉}


{Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning Soundtrack: Swamp Tense}


Once, when Spyra had been fresh from the egg, she had fallen into a sinkhole. She had been prowling the marshes. It had been one of her first times too. In all her eagerness to explore she had never even noticed the earth in front of her slipping away into a cavernous, black, mushy crevice until she was sliding down its dirty throat.

When she had landed, it had taken her a day to claw and swim through all the muck to get to safety. She wound up getting sick for over two weeks afterward, all the while getting scolded by her terrified parents.

Be more careful. -They said.

Stay away from the unknown. It's dangerous! -They said.

Why the hell didn't she just swallow her pride and listen?

This reminded her of the sinkhole. It reminded her of the feeling of being trapped. The inky, disgusting sludge crawling over her scales, submerging her toes, her ankles and her calves. The taste of wet dirt on her muzzle and the smell of methane, the walls literally running with horrible slop that kept caving in on her as she desperately clawed and crawled for salvation.

Hopelessness.

Spyra had really done it this time. And all in the presence of this… this thing…

Dragon, she realized, blinking away the dirt clogging her eyes and spitting rinds from her teeth. Dragoness, like me.

Spyra was right in that regard. The larger, black, crimson bellied dragon was like her in many respects, but only the most blatant of ones.

Aside from that, the first real dragon Spyra had encountered (besides herself) was terrifying to behold, if not a little cowing.

Talons sharper than steel crunched through the earth, where they stuck out in quads from her black, crimson-padded toes. She had a tail tipped with what looked like the blade of a sword. It whistled through the swampy air as it whipped to and fro with predatory impatience. Soulless, white eyes glared back at her with a strangely intoxicating, yet horrible mixture of emotions. The black dragoness looked almost like she was about to start salivating, like Spyra was some delicious dish that had been left, freshly cooked and steaming on a platter before her.

But aside from all that jolly good stuff, she was positively beautiful.

Spyra snorted as her eyes quickly danced over her larger form. She saw the magical runes decorating her snout, the silver armbands and the spiked choker sealing off the base of her regal, and sinuous neck. Her immense, blood red wings were each tipped with polished, serrated thorns that could skewer a boar in but a passing hit.

She's… curvy. Stupidly curvy.

Spyra harrumphed- despite her peril –and turned her nose up a bit at the encroaching beastess, instantly deciding that she didn't like her regardless of anything. She was backed as far as she was willing to be backed to the mouth of the cave.

"…Heellloooo~, is anyone quite home in there?" The black dragon's voice sounded like honey. It was sweet, and trumpety, like an instrument, quite a contrast for the more barbarically flavored assets adorning the fringes of her femininely erotic physique. "I see fire in your eyes. I must refrain from what I assumed earlier; you aren't lost. You meant to come here."

"…Yeah, yeah it was kinda', something, a little, like that." Spyra snorted, casting a glare back at the cave as the massed shuffling of clawed feet, whooping throats and clattering weapons got louder. "So… what are you supposed to be? Some kind of dominatrix with a grunge fixation and bad people skills?"

"A comedian." Cynder chuckled, hunching lower- like a lion preparing to leap –her tail swiping joyously behind her. "As if I did not have enough of those plaguing my ranks."

"Ranks? Ah." Spyra shot her a cheap grin, nodding back at the ruckus as the Apes reached the neck of the cave mouth behind her. "Those dudes are yours, then. How do you deal with the smell?"

"I have my methods." Cynder craned her neck, and her brooch clinked quietly against its chains from her throat. Spyra eyed the little trinket. Again, something about the black dragon's body was just… fixating. Pornographic. That chain against her sleek chest was like a fetish. "Your confusion is troublesome to me. Didn't they tell you what you might find this far south from the City of Wings? We live in Foreigncountry here, hatchling. Warfang doesn't breed children who mewl before the slaughter, defenseless."

"I am anything but defenseless, you stupid bitch."

Cynder snarled as the Apes came in a landslide from the cave. Some of them toppled over one another. They stepped on each other's toes, smacked blades and howled out warcries at the little purple dragon before the foot of their master.

However, a single brush of Cynder's tail was enough to stay them. Their prey was at the feet of the Cloud Ripper. There was not an Ape in the horde who was willing to challenge her for kills she claimed…

…all except one.

"Mistress." –Came a grumbling call.

Spyra turned around to reveal the huge chieftain she had seen before smacking and butting his way through the crowd of his lessers. The other Apes bowed out of his path, parting like tides of gray, filthy water.

Visigoth had his two wicked, huge axes in his dirty paws, and he kept them lazed on either side of his hips, his freakish, evil eyes locked on the smaller dragon between him and his master.

"Our appointment is belayed by an intruder." Visigoth sounded apologetic as he tore his eyes from Spyra and looked at Cynder. "Is this one for your claws or my blades?"

"Make way, make way~! By the fleas in our forefather's arseholes', you baboons go through so much effort to part for the Warlord, and not for your chief mechanic-" Tinker appeared, hobbling by Visigoth's side. He took one look at Spyra, and his little monocle dropped off his face. His jaw went slack. "…Holy ancient monkeys." He slapped a paw over his mouth.

"Control your engineer, chieftain." Cynder smiled. "He'll drool all over your feet."

"What is wrong with you?" Visigoth batted Tinker back and kicked his monocle after him like a dog fanning its own recently laid shit. He pointed an axe at Spyra. "This one has seen the dig. We cannot let it get back to Warfang and reveal our plans."

"Oh no, my dear chieftain, this little girl is not from Warfang." Cynder shook her head.

"Warfang? You're all from Warfang?" Spyra took a step towards the Apes, but flinched back, bearing her teeth, when two of the larger ones put themselves between her and their chieftain, brandishing crude spears with blood-red strips waving in the wind from their hafts. "Ease off, buds, it was a simple yes or no I needed."

"How rebellious." Cynder licked her teeth. "I still have not had my questions answered. All dragons have a title, even ones ignorant to the world. Lonesome one, your name?"

"Spyra. Spyra the dragon." Spyra glared over her wing joint. "How about we diffuse this tense-stuff a little bit and find an agreement."

"Oho~." Cynder elated. "That's chippy and cute."

"Let me finish." Spyra licked her chops, her purple eyes darting between the two walls blocking her paths. Briefly, her wings twitched and she considered trying to fly away. But all the throwing spears the Apes had, and the speed of this black dragoness, made her think better on it.

Just bide your time.

"One question and answer for another. I'm Spyra, and methinks I found something I wasn't supposed to see… So whaddya' say we all put the stabby bits down and talk things out for a second?" She said.

"At least she isn't dumb like a brick." Visigoth shrugged his pauldrons. Spyra's temper flared.

"And, at least I don't smell like someone lit a bag of shit on fire and doused it in their own urine." Spyra chipped the massive chieftain a sharp grin, fearlessly, despite his towering bulk. "I bet your mom bawled when she crapped your flea-bitten tookus out, huh?"

Visigoth's face lit up in a seething expression of rage. He grabbed one of his impromptu guards and shoved him from his path, stepping forwards and clasping his axes.

"Ah-ah-ah~." All attention went on Cynder. The black dragoness waved a paw, stifling her own amusement with a palm to the tip of her long snout. "This one amuses me, Chieftain, stay your hand. You have the strength. Spare me a moment."

"But, Mistress, she dishonors me before-"

"Stand down, Visigoth."

Visigoth huffed through his tusks and stepped backward, growling under his breath as he stared daggers at the smart-mouthed purple dragon.

I will have your blood, his face told her. Spyra smirked and wiggled her hips at him, kicking dirt with her hind paw before turning back to Cynder.

"Rough crowd you have here." She commented.

"You must understand how difficult it is to find a decent conversation in these cesspools we have to the south." Cynder relaxed her pose a little and eyed the smaller female with interest. "It is all toil, dirt and mushrooms." She shuddered. "Spyra, your unannounced company is bittersweet. You've got some energy in your words that I find highly entertaining. But that temper..."

"Somethin' you don't know the half of!" Spyra posed proudly, spreading out her paws. When Cynder took a step forwards, Spyra opened her jaws, and a brief torrent of broiling flame belched from the back of her throat and past her teeth, singing the earth and humus right before Cynder's toes. The black dragoness smiled, but didn't even flinch. "You stay right where I can see you, lady, don't you think buttering me up is going to get my guard down."

"Perceptive too." Cynder relaxed, cocking her horned head. "You are full of surprises."

Before Spyra could react, a powerful claw gripped over her breast. The purple dragoness grit her fangs as she was swung through the air.

Crnnccchhh~! –fractured the muddy earth beneath her back. Cynder painfully compressed her wings underneath her as she slammed her into the ground, leaning her snout in closer to breathe a minty blast of carbon over Spyra's face.

"It pains me to kill the only thing worth even a sliver of my time in this swamp." Cynder clicked her tongue. Spyra began to cry out in pain as she compressed her talons. Some of the golden plates layering down her breast cracked under the immense pressure. They splintered, and their edges formed spider limbs. "Goodbye, Lonesome Spyra."

Spyra watched as Cynder opened her snout, crimson energy broiling in the back of her throat. It resembled fire, but it was the color of blood, and it glowed evilly, warbling and flexing like some kind of whirlpool made from red molasses.

Many others would've been helpless as the Cloud Ripper executed them without thought. Spyra, however, was in no mood to lay down and let some haughty goth-slut waltz in and kill her.

Wrenching her body in one deft wriggle, Spyra opened her own mouth, a tornado of living fire cascading from her throat. The flames resembled a gigantic sun-tentacle as they whipped over Cynder's face.

The black dragoness howled and reeled, leaping away as flames ignited her flesh and singed the interior of her throat. She was like a cat who had lost an eye, whirling around on all fours, shaking her head wildly as soot belched from her snout and muzzle.

Spyra's victory was short-lived. She didn't even have a chance to pump one of her wings.

A racket of throaty yelps caught her attention. She spun around and gasped as a crudely carved axe blade descended with the intent to create an incision in her face. The Apes took the opportunity like a mob of foolhardy drunks, rushing her in a bounding mob of smaller warriors.

She ducked under the blow and rolled past the heels of an Ape, using moves and skills she'd developed hunting giant insects and badgers.

The Ape bellowed and twisted on a heel to meet her, but then Spyra shot up onto her feet, spun in mid-air, and brought the golden leaf of her powerful tail across his nose before he could swing at her again.

Crunch~! –went the Ape's nose. He howled and spun like a dreidel in the air before landing in a plume of dust.

Another Ape brought down a spear. She twisted around it and vaulted off her own heels, snarling as she shimmied up the haft and past the pommel like a snake slithering up a branch.

Spyra whipped past the Ape's face and dragged one of her wicked sets of talons across his eyes, gouging both of them with a syrupy eruption of deep crimson blood that fled down his cheeks and soiled the fur on his chin. The Ape screamed and lost his spear, rolling into the mud of the swamp floor and joining his comrade. His mewls of agony were cut short as the other soldiers trampled him in their craze to engage this new enemy.

Spyra dispatched another via a swipe across the chest and a backflip, her heels crunching his nose and knocking a canine-tusk loose. Her opponent choked on his own blood and was cast between the shoulders of two more assailants.

Axes, cleavers, shortswords, and clubs arced, swept, and dove in all kinds of angles. Spyra was quick, though. Years of navigating the swamps meant she was used to getting jumped by things like Giant Mosquitoes, bloodsucking nymph flies, and Bulb Spiders, all of whom were fast-striking ambush predators with nasty bites.

Merely a quick dodge here, a shimmy to the left and a duck to the right, and everything became a procession to her. Spyra rolled, jumped, climbed, slashed, gored with her bronze horns, and whipped with her tail. Apes flew in all kinds of directions, howling in pain, fright, and confusion.

One of the furry warriors landed face-first in a hollowed stump with a meaty thnk~! His legs started kicking, echoing monkey-calls rolling out in a tirade as he cursed up a storm.

"Enough!" Visigoth hollered, stomping through the mob to attack her. "Leave the dragon to me!"

"Yeah! Yeah, leave the dragon to you!" Spyra parroted, glancing the flat of an axe with the length of her wing. Spyra's reactive uppercut caught the Ape in his throat. He danced away from her, hacking up his own lungs. Freed, she turned to face her newer opponent as he crushed swamp reeds and batted aside vine draperies in his path to reach her. "I bet you have a lot of problems dumped on you all the time, what with being a chieftain of a tribe and lineage of cross-eyed dipshits who can't count to three."

"Arrrgghhhh~!" Visigoth brought one of his axes down on her, but he of course missed. Spyra was like liquid magenta around the blade. It impacted the dirt and she swam up the handle like a rat.

Visigoth gawked- slack-jawed -at her speed before Spyra latched onto his face like an angry cat.

"-Eeeeeggghhh~!" –Visigoth screeched femininely, dropping his axes and clawing at his head. Spyra dug her talons into his mane and wouldn't let go. "-Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff~! Get. It. Off of me~!"

"Steady. Steady." An eager Ape hauled back with a throwing spear, pinching an eye shut and biting his tongue. He tried to line up the weapon's head but struggled as Spyra crawled around Visigoth's large body like a cockroach. "Damn. Don't seem like I gots a prime shot, I don't."

"You got this, just aim for its fat, thorny head!" One of his fellows ran up beside him and cheered him on. "Oi'! I think the chief's winnin'!"

"-I wonder what this does?!" Spyra cackled. There was a crunch of flesh, and Visigoth screamed so loudly that his own ears started to bleed. Spyra's tail eagerly wagged from her hiding spot underneath the Ape's lumbering arm. His fingers tore at his armor as he struggled to locate where the dragon zipped to every time he failed to grab her. "You got a really cute little tail back here, bud'! It'd suck if someone torched it!"

Fire erupted behind Visigoth's back. The Ape cried out as steam shot up from his backside and he flopped onto his huge chest, whimpering like an infant as he rolled back and forth on the dirt.

"-Erm, I don't think that's supposed to happen." The Ape beside the spearman uttered. "Stop drop and roll, sir! Yer bloody arse' is on fire!"

"Steady…. Steady… and….-" The spearman loosed his weapon with a glance of his arm.

"-You know, just as a head's up, you might wanna' think about investing in some bandages next time you turn up the suck." Spyra said as she sauntered off the Chieftain's prone back, his pained groans going ignored. Spyra glanced once over his back and giggled, her wings fluttering as she licked the back of her paw and sat felinely before Visigoth's jaw, which was eating mud. "Oh man, cowboy, you're gonna' need this."

Spyra stuck a rock in Visigoth's mouth.

Just then, there was a crunching sound and a tear of leather. Visigoth's long face lost all color as a spear impaled his left arse' cheek, and stood proudly in the swampy air like a makeshift banner pole.

His teeth cracked as he bit down on the rock, some of the yellow shards bouncing off of Spyra's paws. She dusted them away, glancing around at the mob of defeated primates littering the earth.

"Alright, who's next?" She snarled.

All that answered her was a collection of coughs, groans, and whimpers. Apes victimized by her speed writhed in agony all over the place. One or two of them might've been dead.

"Hey," She grinned. "Not half bad, if I don't say so myself."

The Apes had probably never stood a chance.

At least, this group of them.

"Get her!" An officer cried, tens of more voices howling out to join his as another wave came at her.

"-Shit!" Spyra cut off her musings. One of them swung at her with an axe. "Maybe I didn't think this through."

Tens of Ape warriors jumped over the wounded to encircle her. She may have taken out the chief', but she hadn't dealt with even a quarter of the overall mob. Now, they were foaming at the mouths, howling, crying out in rage at the humiliation their powerful leader had suffered at the hands of this zippy, smart-tongued lizard.

But all of that was mitigated by a banshee's scream echoing across the swamp. Spyra looked up just in time to see a black shape descending on her from the heavens.

Cynder appeared, cracking the ground as her great mass drove her heels' weight into the humus-slicked earth between Spyra and the remaining Ape mob. She had leaped several feet across the battlefield.

Wait a second, why does she still look pretty?! I burned her face off!

Evidently, this wasn't quite true. Cynder's facial features were as pristine as they were before she had eaten a helping of purple-brand deluxe flame. There wasn't a scar, singe, or crooked scale on her.

Cynder hummed and cracked a smile.

"You aren't the only spontaneous one around here." She chirped. "I'm impervious to magic. That means your elemental breath is no more dangerous to me than an errant afternoon breeze."

"No way! T-That's- That's cheating!" Spyra gaped.

Suddenly, Cynder began to move, and Spyra couldn't do anything but desperately pull herself away from a blinding harry of talons aiming for her throat.

Cynder now had become wordless. Spyra's stunt had changed everything, and any small semblance of musing that the black dragoness might have possessed was now banished beneath an unrelenting tsunami of vicious, animalistic hatred. She was going to disembowel this little shit-dragoness and eat her still-beating heart.

We shall see where your humor lies as I feast on your entrails! The Cloud Ripper thought, bearing her fangs and swiping her tail, trying to trip Spyra. The latter leaped over the blow and tucked into a roll.

However, the Cloud Ripper wasn't having any more of a prolonged fight. A great blood-colored wing batted Spyra from the air, like a swatter to an errant fly.

She careened head over heels and smacked chest-first into the trunk of a willow tree, cracking the bark and sending fronds tumbling to the ground in hushed whispers.

Spyra compressed there, like a smashed bug, and then groaned and slid down the trunk, hushing onto the earth and falling with her wings splayed out. The purple dragon's eyes rolled in her head. She blinked and watched- upside down –as Cynder bounded closer, snarling, with more crimson energy bubbling from inside her mouth.

Oh boy.

Spyra grit her fangs and felt her heart bump into her breastplates. She scrabbled away and Cynder skewered the earth she abandoned, her claws dicing and interlocking, sending bands of soil and pebbles flying everywhere.

Spyra kicked her wings and glided right over the larger dragoness' hips. Her talons slashed out and drew crimson lines across Cynder's previously unblemished scales, the ones armoring the length of her elegant spine.

Slskk~! –flesh squelched and blood misted in the air. Cynder cried out.

"Ha! You're just like that shag-rug with legs!" Spyra chortled, landing and prancing back from Cynder as her tail-blade slashed out in a near-miss. "Not so confident now!"

Cynder hissed. Her and Spyra sized one another up, their tails each whipping behind them.

Stubby, tiny, ugly little tomboy, Cynder scowled inside her head, turning an eye past her shoulder, where blood trails ran like little glistening canals down her haunch from the claw wounds she'd suffered.

It had been a while since she'd discovered an opponent capable of bleeding her. It excited the draconic commander. Cynder licked her teeth and flexed her wings. It was too long since a proper dragon had challenged her to a game of domination.

"Lonesome Spyra," Cynder dryly croaked, padding westward, where Spyra countered eastward, both of them beginning the slow process of circling. "I have underestimated your prowess."

"You aren't the first." Spyra mumbled, hunching lower, appearing much tenser than her opponent. The truth being: she was. Spyra had never encountered anything that had survived more than a few twists and hits with her in melee. Toadworts, big bugs? None of those things were even comparable to the lightning-fast reflexes and indraconic strength of this black dragon. "Awkward, but you never returned the favor for me, ya' know? Names?"

"Hmmmph~." Cynder hummed, smiling as tens of Apes surrounded their invisible arena ring, silently watching in awe as the reptiles prepared to reengage. "Most of our kind do not suffer such ignorance, not knowing who I am. You really have no clue?"

"I'm not most of "our kind"-." Spyra voiced her parenthesis.

The first dragon she finds, and it's trying to eat her. Today was just a grand ole' day, as it turned out.

"You stand before Cynder, Terror of the Skies in the North, Cloud Ripper of the South." Cynder bowed her head for emphasis. "Woe betide you. I am the Mistress of Forlorn, Lady of the Concurrent Shadowy Veil and Doom of the Westward. You stand claw-to-claw with a legend, hatchling."

"Anyone who has to specify what the fuck they are ain't totin' much, sister!" Spyra spat. "I can brag about a pair I don't have all day, none of it means jack unless I bleed whoever is listening."

"Aptly put." Cynder conceded with an angry huff. "What you lack in etiquette, you seem to at least moderately recover in philosophy."

"I have no idea what you just said, but screw you too."

"Can you not engage a worthy opponent in a civilized discussion? Not even for a fleeting moment?" Cynder feigned hurt, reclining her long neck. "All you appear to be capable of is insults, brash decisions, and unintelligent banter."

"It's all enough to get even your attention, legend." Spyra winked. "You wanna' get on with it?"

"Oh, most certainly." Cynder winked back. "Taste Fear."

Spyra initially thought Cynder was screaming at her, but then, as the black dragon's mouth opened, and glowing, crimson mist spilled past the rinds of her jaw, she knew that something much more dangerous was occurring.

Cynder was using an element, just as she had, and it wasn't fire.

Crimson bouts of sloppy, liquid-like energy catapulted in spreading droves past Cynder's teeth. The almost intelligent plumes of broiling, screaming magic sailed in every direction, whisking about the swampy ground and the tall grass like a platoon of bloody will-o-wisps spreading out in a pack formation.

Spyra stumbled backward as every single roiling orb stabbed towards her in one fluid motion. The purple dragoness gasped as syrupy washes of coldness bathed her scales and sent chills rattling down to the deepest portions of her body.

Before her waking eyes, black shadows emerged from the whipping tornado of panic that became her vision. The ground had vanished, the trees and the sky were gone. Spyra was screaming, and all she could see was black: an endless, hungering pit of darkness that penned her in with its inky flesh.

Spyra was tumbling. She was tumbling through the air, head over heels, her wings ineffective, fire in her eyes, and the light of heavens blinding her. Her nightmare from last night rewound itself in her mind like a film reel. She felt sick, and her throat burned as she voided the contents of her stomach and collapsed onto her belly.

She knew what Cynder was doing. It was magic. Unnatural power that the dragonflies only had limited understanding of and influence over.

Spyra had never seen such potent usage of it before. Once, in the past, dragonflies from another village along the coast overlooking the iceberg-riddled seas had come to her village seeking trade. Spyra had been a little whelp fresh from the egg. She had witnessed a dragonfly chieftain- one much like her father –use magic for the first time.

She had watched as the chieftain had picked up a dead flower from the edges of their hut, and before her eyes, in his chitinous fingers, the flower moved and lifted on its own accord.

It had transformed from a bleak black to a vibrant green, erecting on its stem, its petals blossoming from the previously dead, black pupil of its heart.

Spyra would've felt nostalgic if she actually had control over her own body. That memory was nothing right now. She couldn't do anything but wretch, and crawl, and tumble and flop all over herself.

This magic was not life-giving and pure. This was the stuff of evil. It was Cynder's dreaded Siren's Scream. She was so stricken with overwhelming terror that she couldn't formulate any kind of words, not even curses. She could only scream and cry. So that's what she did.

I want to go home.

Something hit her flank. The ground reappeared just in time for her to sprawl on her own ribcage.

Dizzy and confused, she whipped her head up at the reemerging sky to see Cynder's leering, black face grinning down at her. Her six, ivory-white horns were now stained at their very tips with a rich red. Spyra glanced down at herself and gasped at the ragged welts of opened flesh marking her right flank.

Cynder had gored her. Three ragged holes deeper than her knuckles were thickly trenched into her scaly flesh, rising and falling with her panicked breathing. Blood tumbled from them in squelching bouts, bringing pain so clear that she could taste it.

"I'm going to eat your eyes." Cynder gleefully told her.

Then, there was a crack of thunder.

Bcckkkkkkmmmmm~!

-It was so loud and mighty, that it shook the earth, dislodged twigs from trees, and sent entire flights of birds flying off in the distance.

Cynder stumbled, all the Apes howled. The Cloud Ripper snarled at the disruption, and craned her long neck up with a look of indignant rage.

Spyra cringed as pain blossomed in her side. Despite that, she was taken completely by the same thing Cynder was. Even all the Apes had stopped whooping and hollering, and they too were watching the skies in confusion, scratching their ugly heads and shrugging to one another.

"What in the balls of the Ancestors was that?" Cynder finally hissed when no one in the field spoke.

"Look!" An Ape pointed to the north. Cynder and Spyra followed his finger, and together, the two dragonesses' eyes went wide.

Descending on a trail of blackened soot, riding a fat arm of smog that ran the distance of what appeared to be several miles across the local horizon, was a rolling miniature sun.

The fireball was easily ten times Cynder's size. It was bigger than some of the mushroom trees that were present in the Funguswood. Spyra almost completely forgot about the pain in her flank as she shivered onto her feet, and watched with awe as the meteorite descended on a highway of unholy flame.

"It's a shootin' star! Someone make a wish." One of the Apes proclaimed proudly. Another punched him in the face and snarled.

"That ain't a shootin' star, you simp'."

"Well, whatever it is, it's comin' this'a-way!"

"Scatter!" Cynder barked, unfurling her wings as the ground trembled, and a bright, neon orange began to highlight the fronts of both her and Spyra's forms. The earth turned amber, trees turned yellow and the sky was blindingly bright.

The Apes jumped, leaped and sprinted in all directions, grabbing vines, hopping stones or vaulting mushrooms. They climbed trees, trampled each other and left their wounded for dead. A whole cadre of them threw their arms in the air and sprinted back inside the cave they'd come from.

In the chaos, Chieftain Visigoth had collected himself, blood dripping from his mouth as he blinked at the descending meteorite, and traced its trajectory.

The cave.

It was going to hit the cave!

"No!" Visigoth barked through his broken teeth, lumbering like a zombie towards the cavern's mouth.

"Chieftain, bugger all, forget the cavern!" Tinker had of course stayed in the back to observe the violence. Now, he scrambled over, yanking on Visigoth's trunk-thick arm in panic. "You aren't going to get anywhere if you're dead! And neither will the tribe!"

"But the crystals-"

"Chieftain! We're sitting on a hot cigar, and the fat lady is singing! We need to run!"

Visigoth quivered with rage. He hollered and drove a fist into the earth, before grabbing up his axes, hooking his squealing mechanic in his arm, and sprinting away.

"This isn't over, she-beast!" Visigoth called back.

"Cannot handle a single dragon, but experts are they at fleeing like roaches." Cynder spat. She cast one baleful look down at Spyra, and leaped into flight without even giving herself the chance to sneer.

Spyra watched her go, before scrabbling on the earth, ignoring the flares of terrible pain in her ribs. She rolled over a log, zipped between trees, and raised her head just in time to see the flaming star pass right over where she was standing. The comet was so close, that sweat began to glisten and run down her scales.

The fireball incinerated the forest canopy in a hellish ash-rain of cinders and burnt embers. Trees collapsed, trunks snapped and mushrooms exploded into spore-clouds and chunks of fungus-flesh.

An earthquake ate away at the swamp, and the entire clearing just where she had fled from vanished in a flash of light. Spyra was lifted from her feet. The earth separated and revealed glowing bands of what appeared to be an underlayer of magma muscle. Trees were ripped from their root balls and cast away like mere flowers on the wind. Rocks the size of housing huts hit the ground and shattered, sending chunks flying everywhere.

Spyra landed painfully in a grove, branches, and clogs of dirt toppling over her and thinly burying her.

The air was dominated by a non-stop roar of primordial volume and strength. The wind whipped, wood screeched as it ripped and rocks clattered as they were destroyed. The wrath of this heavens-borne object was immense and seemingly endless. Spyra truly thought for the longest while that she had died.

Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, everything stopped.

The wind settled, the roar subsided, and the searing heat eating away at her scales began to taper. The last few pebbles scattered and dirt crunched, but then, a serene quiet impregnated the atmosphere.

Nothing moved, and all Spyra could hear was the wheezing rush of her own panting.

Slowly opening her eyes, the dragoness stewed under the blanket of soil and tree foliage keeping her pinned in the terrain's indent. She didn't dare move in fear of inciting some kind of retaliatory insurance strike meant to completely kill anything that had survived the first barrage.

But nothing came for what felt like hours. In reality, it was only a few minutes.

…I can't move.

Spyra's eyes fluttered as she thought of what that sentence in her head was really meant to say.

I'm too afraid to move.

"…N-No, no I'm not afraid of-" –Spyra's whisper was cut off in a sharp wheeze. Twigs and dirt tumbled off her as a sharp pain jolted her from her makeshift, would-be grave. She grit her fangs and tenderly touched a blood-soaked claw to the wounds on her flank. "-anything…." She sorely concluded, sweeping an eye about her surroundings.

Cynder the Cloud Ripper was nowhere to be found. As were all the Apes. She couldn't even see the trees that hadn't been ripped to shreds anymore either. Everything was shrouded in dancing, thick, choking smog and soot. Embers fell like glinting, orange snow, and rained in a slow, continuous, and immense procession with the speed of descending flecks of parchment.

Spyra reached out and caught one of them on her palm, watching as the glowing little snowflake simmered out, and turned into an expended little strip of black powder on her scales.

Suppressing a tortured whine through her teeth, Spyra shivered as she lifted herself from the debris and stepped out of the incline. She stood in the middle of the chaos, beaten, panting, and unsure of what the hell had just happened.

Exploding monkeys, other dragons, evil plots for everyone I care about, and now the sky is falling.

Spyra lumbered drunkenly through the haze, coughing as soot clogged her nostrils and her burning throat. She staggered carefully up a rise of dirt, bowing her head as if willing her horns to somehow take the smoke's might instead of her lungs.

How am I gonna' explain this to anyone back home? I mean, it can't get any worse than-

Spyra's jaw dropped as she reached the summit of the crater's ring.

The cave, the clearing, and for what looked like a mile of the landscape had been completely cleared and transformed into a bowl-shaped impact crater. The canyon was huge. Ten times the size of her village, beautifully highlighted with glowing orange ember-snow, and obscured in great licks of smog that blotted out the wilting horizon of dying, burning trees penning the crater in on all sides.

Lying directly in the heart of the newborn valley, nestled on a bed of interlocking, magma-tinged veins running in a gauntlet about the dirt, was a glowing boulder, one that glinted, like it was made of metal.

The boulder was huge and buried up to the nape in the center of the crater, steam covetously winding and licking up and down from its surface and edges.

Spyra blinked when something metallic clacked. It was a quaint noise that traveled across the entire zone. The dragoness' heart stopped beating when something on top of the rock moved.

There was a figure perched on top of the metal bulb. It was standing on two legs, and it wasn't an Ape.


{🐉}