Dragon(s)layer

12


The Battle of Forlorn


{Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon Soundtrack: Small Valley Action}


To give Torrdonal credit for just a second: he did actually try. He really did.

But Cynder was far beyond his abilities. One was an average Warfangian warrior a head shorter than her mutated form, the other was a jet black magically altered superweapon who had been fighting for the Dark Army for years.

The jets of water shooting past Torrdonal's teeth topped the strength of a firehose, being capable of snapping wood. To Cynder, Torr' might as well have ran at her with a squirt gun.

She twirled in mid-air like a graceful, dark angel through the beams of white, her beautiful body glistening wet. Her claw slashed out, and Torrdonal flipped away end over end before crashing through the top of a tent.

Corrinthol was nowhere to be found, of course. So that only left her original target.

The Fallen rolled through a hut's window right as a crimson wave of Fear eviscerated the entire flank of the scrap building. Aluminum shrieked, boards crashed and dust and garbage flew everywhere. The Fallen shivered uncontrollably as he paused to take cover behind a warchest in the aft corner of the room.

He could hear whispers in his mind, and his body was gripped by an unshakeable sense of dread. It was the Siren's Scream that he heard Harad's Wing describing, one of the anti-elements only Night Dragons, and Cynder could use.

The urge to void his bladder was so strong that he almost gave into it, only stifling his own terror with a defiant cry, and a fist gripping his own hair.

Focus! Or your allies die!

The Fallen made a grunting sort of sound and rolled away from the warchest, tucking the dynamite sack to his back.

Cynder torpedoed through the sad remains of the Ape dwelling a moment later, a monstrous cry leaving her snout as her claw flattened all the refuse and furniture around the spot he'd been hiding in.

The Fallen didn't stick around to watch her regain her footing. Before Cynder could blink, he had scooped up a sheet of aluminum from the wreckage and swung it in a two-handed loop. The sharp edge caught her cheek with a tinny clank~! –noise rebounding around the smoking ruins. Cynder reeled, twisting through the wreckage like a black snake. Her hooked tail blade slashed purely in a reactive strike. The Fallen only survived when it smashed just short of his gut into an exposed rib of a tortured support beam.

The metal indented into a rough 'V' shape, and the Fallen hopped away. Cynder was snarling in fury as she wrenched her tail free and scrambled after him.

She was fast.

Faster than Spyra.

The Fallen had a difficult task ahead of him in the following seconds. He was sizing her up for something, or anything really now that he had her all to himself since first crashing here. He ducked under her tail and barely avoided a downwards path from one of her talons.

Cynder was doing this on purpose. She should've caught him with that last swipe…

So why was she holding back?

The Fallen could feel the pain in his ribs. One of them was probably at the least cracked, maybe even broken. The blows he'd been receiving were beginning to take their toll, and no amount of training and exercise was going to keep him alive if he was internally bleeding.

The magical runes scripting Cynder's face were pulsating like elegant lanterns. They were glowing a faint, ghostly blue through all the destruction-dust and the interior haze of the tower.

Striking her out of necessity was anathema to the Fallen, who suddenly found himself experiencing a clumsy museum-goers guilt. The feeling one got upon stumbling and putting their fist through an ornate oil painting by accident.

His foot caught Cynder in the breast and knocked the wind out of her. Even covered in perspiration and grime, her breath smelled like crushed mint. It blasted over his face as she sailed away and landed in the heart of duct chute connecting a maze of nearby weapon forges. The metal chute sang shrilly as she indented it down the center and kicked up sparks like a cloud of rain.

Cynder stewed for a second in the dust and toil. A reptilian groan echoed from her throat, and her tail slapped to drape limply across the ground. The Fallen licked his very dry lips and tore his gaze from his attacker.

The pillar.

It was close. Just another aisle. He shouldered his dynamite sack and pressed forth, flinching when another section of the ceiling came down and crushed a mob of encroaching Apes and a pair of Dreadwings coming at him from the west.

The whole cadre screamed and barked shrilly, cut off to deathly silence the second the masonry hunk kissed the dirt.

That was sign that the plan was half-working.

Forlorn was still holding. The tower was stubborn, just like its designers. It wasn't going to lay down after all these centuries and die so easily.

He needed to detonate the other pillars. Nothing could survive without its skeleton.

Practiced dashes of his stolen sword cast aside a pair of Apes attempting to engage him. Around a large storage tent filled to the brim with tethered bundles of glowing green Mana Crystals affixed to palettes, an iron spike the size of his leg whipped in a near-miss past his shoulder.

The Fallen stumbled and fell on his ass, blinking at the sight of a Spika-Cannon installed on the balcony of a large scrap-barracks overlooking the pathway.

The operator howled in challenge and slammed down on the firing pedal again, a ream of deathly spikes whipping out of the barrel with a fluent pattern of hisses.

The Fallen rolled and left a trail of stakes jutting from the earth in his path, the operator's aim true, but not that true. Just a fingernail's width behind him. That minute error saved his life.

Vaulting on his knees, struggling with the weight of the sack, the Fallen struck a fuse and tossed a stick in a wide arc. The operator screamed as he caught it in his lap and began to fumble for it.

The Spika-Cannon and a whole chunk of the crudely styled Ape building it was bolted into vanished in a black, fiery cloud of destruction. The pintle ring fell through the incinerated aluminum roof and landed on something flammable inside the barracks. The resulting secondary cookoff cast flames through every single porthole, murder slot and window, the barracks building bulging like a cartoon character's stomach would after drinking too much water.

The sound of a tent flattening behind him told him that Cynder had never been far behind anyway. In a mad sprint, he chanced a glance and saw her bounding on all fours like a cheetah cat down the pathway at him, her snout pointing at him like an arrowhead.

Shit.

He wasn't dodging this.

Shit.

Cynder's chest was the next thing he felt. The dynamite sack flew away and landed in a heap on the ground. Her paws roughly dug into the earth on either side of him, and the Fallen cringed as his face smacked into the trodden dirt.

"Even now, you course your foul energies through me!" Cynder ranted, her tongue slavering out as she screamed over the din of destruction just beside them. Every part of her body in contact with him felt that exhilaration, that breakthrough that she had felt upon first encountering him. "Tell me what it is! Tell me how you've made it so extravagant!"

Cynder wormed her thick hips and rolled the human over, her claw pinning him by the chest, like a black flower over his suited torso. The dragoness touched her snout to his nose and snarled, her white eyes wild.

"Tell me how you can give me more of it."

The Fallen closed his mouth and coughed, eyes darting around nervously.

"…I have some ideas…" He awkwardly peeped.

"Good show there, sir!"

The Fallen's head whipped over to a nearby forge chute, crossing two stories overhead like some kind of skyline. There was a man sitting on the edge of it, kicking his boots like it was a fine Sunday afternoon!

"Conscience!" He squawked.

"Looks like our plan worked out after all!" Conscience dusted his hands off and leaned back in his seat, gazing down at the pinned Fallen triumphantly. "With a few minor adjustments, and such and so forth."

"This really isn't the time…" The Fallen winced when Cynder's paw flexed. The dragoness blinked at him, still heaving, and turned to follow his gaze.

Of course, Cynder saw nothing.

A sweet tendril of laughter bubbled up in her chest, and she sat on his waist with a delighted sigh, turning her eyes to dote on the smaller hominid trapped between her rear paws.

"Oh, I understand." She purred, licking her chops again. "You're going insane. Just like me…."

"It's-" He almost said it as usual. With a frustrated grunt, he grabbed her wrist and kicked his head back, shouting: "-It's complicated~!"

"You don't have to tell me. I've seen the furthest extent a broken mind can wander to. It is such a bountiful road… so commonly traveled, and so severely misunderstood… It's a flavor of life from the other side, the side people fear." Cynder gleefully let her paws slide through the dirt on either side of his head as she lowered herself, her rotund, crimson chest rubbing against his. She was… really, really warm, and soft… "Do you fear me, I wonder?"

The Fallen's panicked expression dropped off his face like a rock when he smelt it, the perfumey tint of female dragon. Cynder already smelled like a mint leaf, and the damned pheromones weren't helping.

I can't be thinking of this now, he thought, unmoving as Cynder touched the tip of her snout to his nose again. He gulped as her fresh breath blew over his lips in tantalizingly smooth waves. He was literally encased in a cocoon of plush, scaly, dragoness muscle and fat.

Little Fallen was having none of his sass. His spear was a beast that shot to such rigid attention, that it earned a gasp of surprise from the evil warlord currently pinning him.

"…Oh?" She whispered, more explosions echoing in the background as forges ignited and dynamite reserves were caught by falling debris. Cynder cocked her head and spread her thighs, idly rolling her heavy hips over him. "What is this that I have found, under your attire? It feels… it feels like a blade you have hidden from me."

Cynder's expression of shock was short-lived, and a honeyed laugh murmured under her tongue as she ground over the trapped human beneath her.

Must resist.

The Fallen's face was turning all kinds of colors as he forced himself to hold his breath and shut his eyes.

Need to- to – dynamite –pillar –collapse –tower- ohhhhhhhgawd, she feels like a beany-bag of scaly girl-ness…

The Fallen murmured nonsense as he leaned towards Cynder's crimson chest. The little brooch clinked quietly just beneath her choker. He aimed for the tender plane making the center of her breast and bit into it, trying to inhale as much of Cynder's spicy, fresh aroma as was possible.

For the dragoness' part, any remnants of her warrior spirit bled away in the coming second. Cynder buckled into the ground around her prey, and she moaned, like she would when she was pleasuring herself during all those lonely nights, in Forlorn and beyond in all her other posts she'd held.

Her meaty, feral hips rippled as she forced herself into his lap, trying to wedge the human's narrow lower half into the sweet, and plush crimson valley hidden under her supple tail and heavenly thighs.

Cynder let her neck crane as she gazed at the ceiling and sang for him a second, more raunchy note than the last. His arms slipped behind her black shoulders, interlocking his fingers just behind the spine at the base of her neck. Cynder's blood-red wings began to tremble, their joints eager to fully extend and become one with the air at the prospect of a mating ritual.

For all her might and power, romantically, Cynder was a cold and unused blade. When heat finally began its first tentative touches at the edges of her aura, her body began to hyperactively seek it in fullness desperately.

A moment ago, she had been chasing this human for the thrill of the hunt.

Now, she had caught him, and she would claim her prize as the successful huntress.

If any of her Apes tried to interfere, she would kill them. She would kill anyone who attempted to steal this moment from her.

This insane, out of character, flamboyant moment that she was having with a sworn enemy of her own cause.

Malefora's influence had never felt so distant.

What in the Ancestors' bowels had this wonderful creature done to her that could outdo an enchantment that had lasted her whole life?

Cynder felt alive.

She could breathe.


{Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night Soundtrack: Dreams}


"….This is not cast magic…" Cynder murmured, rolling as much of their flesh together as she could. She looked at him as he suckled on her crimson, softer plates like an eager hatchling seeking milk. It caused a chemical in her form normally reserved for matrons experiencing compassion for their young. Her heart threatened to burst. "…You enchant females of my race."

It wasn't a question.

The Fallen slicked off her chest and gripped her just over her delectably breedable thighs. He wanted nothing more in that moment to impale Cynder and rut her, like she was a desperate, drooling hen. He wanted to bury himself in her and piledrive her until she became a blubbering pile of spit and secretions on the floor.

He wanted to fuck this black dragoness and fill her belly with his baby-batter, ten helpings of it in fact! Enough for a whole fucking brood.

"Wherever you come from must be a bold and terrifying place." Cynder whispered, all hatred, all anger having left her face. "…Who really are you?"

He growled and dry-humped into the space just below her belly paunch. There was a muffled clap of scales. Cynder's mouth opened but no noise came out, her wings twitched, and extended a little wider behind her.

What followed was a pause, a feeling settling in from the weight of what he'd done. The Fallen- panting –glanced down at their merger and saw the raging erection straining to tear through his jumpsuit.

He had to be careful with that. His blade had done it in the past.

-But right now, his mind was more cloudy than the atrium level of this tower. He grunted and humped her a second time.

Clp~!

"…ah…"

Cynder sounded different there. Younger, more vibrant…

Hmmmmm….

Steadying her hips, he jammed into her a third time.

Clp~!

"-Ah!..." Cynder began to shiver uncontrollably, drool leaking briefly past her lower chop before her tongue slipped out and sliced it away. The runes decorating her snout were changing color.

They glowing almost like a muted shade of pink.

That's fascinating.

Clp~!

"-Ah~!..."

This was a reaction game. The pen pressure on a drawing tablet. It was time to see: how hard could he press before he could get her to completely lose control?

He wished the jumpsuit would just be vaporized by the unbearable heat their hips were creating. Alas, it was not to be so. Still, the Fallen humped Cynder from below in a surprise offensive that soon saw her whimpering.

With each hit of his crotch into her valley, the clapping flesh became louder, and the 'Ah!'-s from Cynder became more high pitched.

By the end of the fifteenth thrust, Cynder was reduced to wailing. Sex-starved for so long, and driven mad by the pent-up and unnatural energies the Portaljumper had coursing through his body, Cynder was inconsolable. An act that would've normally elicited little reaction from someone aside from some dirty foreplay was making her orgasmic.

Cynder deflated on top of him like a cat that couldn't get close enough to an owner with magic fingers. She merged her forehead to his skin-covered, smaller one and slammed her hips down to meet his thrusts. The fabric of the jumpsuit strained and began to develop a noticeable dampness as the Fallen's Jimmy drooled like a starving animal all over the interior pouch.

Cynder's moans weren't the same as Spyra's. Spyra was brash, and direct, straight to the point.

Cynder's voice was sweeter, and it was deeper, and it sang. She sounded like some kind of perfected bathhouse matron only heard of in prepubescent male fantasy. Cynder's black hips rippled, and her bladed tail swept in looping arcs behind her as he viciously pistoned into her. He could feel her opening, through the suit. It was like the Nile down there. Their bodily slaps started to become wet as she bled liquid love all over his waist and belly, droplets flicking out from the connective slams that quivered her lower half and earned efforted grunts from his throat.

The Terror of the Skies was beside herself, panting, her tongue wagging around like a dog's. The Fallen unlinked his hands and brought them down as hard as he could past her legs.

Smack~!

-Cynder's ass cheeks were a pair of the world's softest exercise balls, and they wiggled with miniature formations of scaly tsunamis around his fingers as he slapped them.

Her wings jolted, but didn't preen.

He always got them to preen. Even the tough ones like her.

Maybe it was time to take a page out of Spyra's playbook…

"…I'm going to take you alive," He snarled through his teeth. "just so I can do what I please to you."

Cynder's moaning lowered for a moment, as she continued to jolt with each of his thrusts, she let a little laugh slip through her chops.

"…D-Don't think this changes anything, human…" The anger in her voice was a façade. A convincing one. But still a façade. "…You've damaged my tower, destroyed my Mana Crystal cavern, and wiped out a quarter of my army… Your days were numbered the moment you came from the sky. My Master will crush you."

She grabbed a wad of his hair and wrenched his head back, grinning evilly at him.

"It is your broken remains I seek to claim for my pleasure, not the man they once were."

"Funny." It was a bit of mood killer. The whole psychotic villainess and vegetable-making thing. But he could work around it. "Broken remains can't remind you of everything you don't have. Love being the primary one…"

Cynder's thrusts became less forceful, but her grin was still there.

"Your manipulation skill is weak." She criticized. "Just like the Purple Dragoness'. D-Did she rub that off on you? Hmmm? When you were sizing her up all this time? To enchant her, and turn her into your mate? Her?"

The Fallen mentally chuckled.

These dragons.

Always so overzealous, prone to emotion and arrogant. Males were worse in their own way, usually bluntly, and up-front.

Females on the other hand…

They required work. Work to understand them, to analyze them, to decompile their stories and let them know that one sought the sweet nectar they reserved for so few in their long lives…

"I already did." He smirked.

Cynder looked horrified. She stopped humping.

"…w-what…?"

The dream. She sounded like she did in the dream. A lost hatchling fresh from the egg, and crying on the floor. A harmless strip of soft meat entirely reliant upon others older.

"I already did, I already fucked the daylights out of your world's Prophesized Savior. I literally dicked your bible. And she loved it, just earlier today in fact. But can I let you in on a secret?" The human scooted upwards and stopped thrusting, his muscles burning as the pain from his battle fatigue began to creep back up on him. "While I was fertilizing Spyra's womb, I was thinking about how it would feel to find the unloved, outcast black dragoness that was enslaved to the darkest of powers."

Cynder's wings twitched. He could see some membrane.

"A female whose very life had been stolen from her, where so much had been taken from her, and so little given back to fill that empty, hungry void in her guts. Someone who was terribly lost in the dark, brooding, and skulking, fighting a war for a cause her true, inner self didn't believe in…"

Cynder's face changed before his eyes. Not in the ways of her expression.

Her face shifted.

It took him aback. He had to force through the pause to keep talking, to keep the charade going.

But man, did he have questions now. Or maybe he had answers. Probably fifty-fifty. These mutations? These changes?

It was a shell. It was a shell, and now he knew it was a shell.

"…I thought about how lonely such a soul would be, eternally gripping at the dark for some semblance of control that could never be hers. As she watched herself destroy her own body, her mind, and a world she desperately wanted to be included in…"

Cynder's prior expression of bliss had been replaced by something else. As her mouth hung open, he could only read one thing:

Pain.

Cynder was in a kind of state that could not even be replicated by tears. It was a kind of hopelessness that outclassed them.

Her wings drooped.

"…But then," He casually slipped a hand up to cup her prehensile snout's chin, feeling her warm scales on his palm. "I thought about what would happen to her if a light pierced the shadows, and suddenly, a hand reached out, and gave her a taste of the one thing she always lacked, and threatened to take her with it, beyond the veil, to the great, brilliant void that she had never understood. I thought about what would happen if her shackles vanished, and a crusader arrived to shower her in attention, in gold, in food, and in consul. What would happen if I put her in the place of a happy wingmaiden… and…"

Cynder leaned closer, her minty breath washing over his face again. Her wings twitched and started to spread very slowly behind her long, regal neck. The Fallen's lips brushed the tip of her snout, and Cynder's minute gasp was of the volume of a pin dropping. It was all he could hear.

"…and as repayment for that, she let me subdue her upon the floor, grip her beautiful haunches, and peel aside her powerful tail..." The Fallen grinned, and humped into her one last time.

Clp~!

Cynder went catatonic, mouth flapping like a fish's.

"…and I planted a steaming load of my prodigy in her supple belly, and made her the matron she'd always wanted to be."

The Fallen locked his lips over the tip of her snout.

Fwooofff~!

Ah. There it was.

-Cynder had by the far the widest preen he'd ever gotten from a dragoness. Massive, ruby wings with black fingers took up everything on the left and right, blossoming like felt flowers.

"…Sounds dreamy, don't it? But I mean," The Fallen quietly disconnected from her, shrugging in amusement. There was an explosion nearby. Another smokestack was coming down as the roof of Forlorn literally shook itself apart. "…it was just a thought."

"Yes." Cynder cried, gripping him by the head and yanking up to her face. "She says YES!"

"I'm sorry." The Fallen shrugged, wiggling free of her forepaws. Cynder gazed at him in shock as he stood in front of her, dusted himself off, and grinned. "But that isn't in the cards just at this moment."

"…w-w-what?" Cynder squeaked.

He pushed his palms into her chest, making her shudder.

"This might get a little rough." He winked.


{Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon Soundtrack: Small Valley Action}


Cynder opened her mouth to speak, but then, the Fallen heaved and rolled her onto her back with a single, forceful push.

Cynder flipped onto her hinds, lost her balance, and roared as she slammed onto her back, spreading her wings to save them from her own weight.

She rolled onto her feet and snarled. A piece of the roof slammed into the space between her and the human with a thunderous crash, blinding her for a second with dust.

Coughing, the black dragon vaulted the stone and grit her teeth as she pierced its veil with her stone eyes.

The Fallen leapt down the incline, the dynamite sack in his arms, a fuse lit on a stick jutting out from his fist. Cynder screamed as loud as she could and sprinted in pursuit.

He tricked me.

Cynder didn't know whether to let her rage flow, or give in to tears.

He tricked me.

There was no time for anything else. The Fallen navigated the rows of pallets surrounding the giant buttress base, and he tossed the entire bag at it, underhanding the lit stick, and saluting as he backed away.

"I send you to hell in lights." He muttered, and ran for his life.

Bannnngggg~!

-The explosion knocked him off his feet. He rode the concussive wave for almost twenty feet through the air, flames chasing just behind him the whole way, and landed roughly on a scrap-shack.

He punched a hole through the sheet metal roof and landed in a pile of debris inside, snapping a ratty table and sending clay jugs scattering in millions of pieces.

The explosion plumed at the neck and climbed for the atrium's ceiling. The burst was so powerful that it blew away a quarter of the western wall, and created a tumbling wreckage-slide down the plateau levels ringing Forlorn's foundation in. Hundreds of Apes died as the ceiling began to give way and debris rained with the viscosity of hail on the campsites and barracks below.

Cynder had taken flight, and had seen the orange bloom of the explosion coming right for her face. Magic was her savior, as she wreathed herself in a shielding spell that saw her unmolested by the fire, even as it angrily grabbed her and shook her through the air.

The black dragoness flipped and created a skid, smashing through a series of tents and ending her painful travel into the foot of a sentry stockade tower.

The tower's legs snapped against her wings and shoulders and it toppled forwards, its penthouse landing in the center of a storage warehouse filled with freshly primed dynamite. The explosion wiped out the rallying yard just ahead of the front gates, undoing months of construction progress in the blink of an eye.

The patrol gantries lining the walls were tumbling like tinsel, their doomed archers and crossbowmen staff being crushed, falling to their deaths or burning alive. Ape officers had no idea what to do. To them, it was as if the world itself was ending around them. The first two explosions were now devolving into a heat rush that threatened to spell doom for everyone inside Forlorn. Flames rose to the height of towers from every angle of the camps and barracks sprawls, bathing the atrium floor in a hellish amber glaze.

Soon, the temperature would rise to such a catastrophic degree that creatures even in close proximity to Forlorn's outside grounds would be vaporized.

Firestorm.

The Fallen had seen them before. Cynder and her army had never expected anyone to be foolish or crazy enough to start destroying things while they were still inside. There were kegs of TNT lying around like messy teenagers deposited underwear around their rooms.

So much stuff was cooking off that the ground atrium arena of Forlorn was becoming a pressure cooker.

And still, the third pylon was holding.

The dragons were arrogant as fuck, but you couldn't deny that they were pretty damn good architects.

Giant Anteaters ran past in a panic for the opened front gates. They snapped out of reins and abandoned carts. Several Apes were trampled by their own beasts of burden. The Fallen himself was nearly flattened as he stumbled out the doorway of the hut he'd landed in.

A furry mass slipped in front of his nose and rumbled for the gates nearby. He turned and watched the horse-sized anteater as it fled the flames.

Not a bad idea.

The Fallen nervously clicked his teeth and nursed his bruises and ribs.

The last pylon was in walking distance.

An explosion rattled the area nearby. He watched a mushroom cloud crawl into the air above, catching a Dreadwing and his rider, both of whom entered the plume unscathed, and emerged on the other side, burning alive, and tumbling down to their dooms.

The Fallen sighed shakily and closed his eyes, feeling the unbearable heat wash over him from every direction.

He stood in hell. Another he'd created.

How wonderful a day to die.


{🐉}

Ignitia used her horns on the doors. They smashed open in a storm of black splinters, shredding the pair of Cold Legion Apes that had been posted just behind them to bloody ribbons.

Snarling, the Fire Guardian stood in the observatory lobby and scanned her surroundings.

A round chamber with a porch plat stood before her. Overgrown with creepers, but in relatively pristine condition. It smelt of mint leaves and old parchment, and was serene in its silence. Ignitia could imagine that the Cloud Ripper had spent many evenings up here winding down.

She sneered at the twitching pair of guards bleeding to death on the floor, and left them to drain as she trotted to the chamber's center.

A pair of massive, lead orbs caught her eye. One was larger than the other, and they both reflected the slight tint of daylight sneaking in from the observer's plat nearby. The pods. These were the things that the Fallen had claimed he came down in… and truthfully, they were just as out of place and alien as he was.

Ignitia wanted to examine them further, but couldn't. She swallowed and looked around rapidly. She found the archway leading into a study, and sprinted through.

Inside, Cynder's nesting was propped in a corner, and a little window overlooked the Frontier Sea and the faraway ruins of Stormwatch. End tables and shelves were stocked with all kinds of scrolls and books. Tens of them. Ignitia managed a brief smile and darted forwards to the nearest table.

Maps, maps, lots of maps, and notes. She didn't have time to be picky.

Marked locations? Of what? It didn't matter. She bundled it all in clawfulls and stuffed it in her little bag. Reams and reams of… what was all this, some kind of series of diary entries? Didn't matter. Into the sash they went.

Bmmmmmmm~

The observatory quivered and Ignitia stumbled to regain lost footing. She looked at the observer's plat and blinked when soot began to rise from below the balcony.

The Fallen must have blown up one of the pylons. She didn't have much more time.

Her hip bag ran out of room as she scrambled over to a shelf and stuffed in as many books as she could. When it bulged and weighed on her hip, she found a traveler's pouch sprawled beside Cynder's nesting. She used it like a cocoon and bundled tens of scrolls and parchment rolls without even bothering to read their contents.

She ransacked Cynder's quarters, ripping open a chest and sifting through little parchment wrapped Mana Crystal nuggets, the pre-cut ones dragons commonly used for refreshment. Cynder had enough of them to last her years out here. Ignitia accidentally touched one without its wrap and shuddered when the gem was absorbed into her body with a weak flash of light. She was old enough that Mana Crystals were no longer required for her elemental casting, but they still offered an energetic rush when taken.

She now felt rejuvenated.

She found Cynder's larder behind the nesting. Dried cheeses hung from racks, cured meats were in wraps on a table, but nothing here spoke of any further records.

This couldn't be all of them! She barely had enough to fill two shelves.

Cynder had to have the rest of them somewhere. The books, the scrolls, there was more! She remembered, from all those years ago.

A cabinet! There.

Ignitia used her teeth and ripped the doors off their hinges.

A tsunami of books tumbled out!

But so too did a panic-stricken, screaming green thing with red eyes.

The Guardian reeled as a Grublin clutched onto her breast and wouldn't let go, stabbing at her with a little knife clenched in its gnarly claw.

Gigaw was making all kinds of vicious shrieking noises as he slashed at Ignitia's tough, golden breastplates. One strike hit a notch, and embedded to the hilt. Ignitia roared as blood trickled past the steel.

She mounted her hinds and swatted the creature off her with a quick slash of her paw. Gigaw flattened an end table and skittered with pieces of the top across the lounge.

Ignitia ground her fangs as she fell back to all fours, glaring down at the knife sticking out of her chest. She gripped the hilt and yanked it free with a tiny gasp, blood spattering onto the floor between her fores.

She heard little claws scrabbling on the tiles. Ignitia cast her wing aside and spat a ream of pure flame after Gigaw, who was scrambling into the lobby chamber.

The Grublin shrieked as he threw himself through the doors to the chute stairwell, the flames just knicking the backs of his little legs. Ignitia cut her breath attack. She didn't have time for a lone Grublin, whatever its reason for being up here had been.

The books…

Ignoring her wound, the Guardian started to gather them all up in a somewhat organized pile. More booms and muffled thuds were evidence enough of the fight being surely underway. The Fallen had certainly made well on his promise. When he wanted to cause it, he was going to make one big fucking mess of a scene.

Spyra. Please be okay, please be okay, please be-

Ignitia paused as she finished organizing the pile.

…What was she doing?

The Purple Dragoness was back! She was alive, and had been safe. Ignitia hadn't felt such joy in years, maybe even in her whole life!

That egg… all of those eggs… Ignitia had loved them like they were her own babies.

And one of them was still here!

And she'd…

She looked down at the books, blood still leaking down her golden breast.

…And she'd journeyed to get these?

Why hadn't she gone into the catacombs with Spyra? Why hadn't she followed to protect her?

Ignitia stifled a cry by eating her own fist, a tear rolling down her finned cheek. She was in shock. It hadn't set in. She was still living her life for the obsession she had developed over the books, and the knowledge, and the hunger for information, the noise to drown out her depression and her sorrows…

She was a failure.

Bmmmmmmm~!

-Another explosion rattled the whole observatory. The screech of metal caught her attention, and she glanced quickly into the lounge, her thoughts leaving her.

The metal pods were sliding to the left. The floor was angling, and so was she.

The sky beyond the observatory railing was shifting. The Forlorn's tower was starting to teeter in its moorings. She was out of time.

Throwing the books into the ajar remains of the cabinet, Ignitia tossed her sash in too and knocked the piece onto its back. She wrapped her forepaws under the rim, and sprinted for the platform on her hind legs, swinging her tail for balance, kicking open her brilliant, flaming wings.

Explosions thundered the backdrop as she cradled the cabinet and leaped over the railing, her wings beating once, twice, and carrying her over the panorama of the Funguswood below.

Light of breath, the Guardian winced as the weight of the books strained her forepaws. She glanced over her membrane and watched in horrid fascination as the Forlorn Watch began to swivel, like a buoy in the surf bobbing on waves.

The tower was collapsing.

Spyra… my hatchling!


{🐉}

The Moles had to be herded, a little bit like sheep. Morinth and Taliopia had one side, Harad the other, Spyra was the one in front, killing any Apes that ran or jumped into their path.

"Keep going!" She cried, her talons flecking blood as she tore through a trio of Ape soldiers who screamed and died. "Run! All of you!"

Explosions were constant, and fire began to consume the atrium. Entire camps were aflame, and forges were detonating. The Apes she was killing weren't even intentionally trying to get in their way to stop the slaves.

They were all running. Where to? Wherever. Anywhere in their desperate bids to get away from the fire that was killing them.

Still, some of the Apes weren't too keen on not having anyone to take with them. Perhaps in last-ditch efforts of stubborn hatred, a small band of warriors suddenly descended on the Moles from a diverging pathway.

Moles screamed as the Apes mercilessly fell upon them and hacked them to death with imprecise swings. They killed indiscriminately. Women and children were sliced to pieces and trampled.

Harad jumped into the fray first and slammed an Ape so hard with his mace-tail that he snapped the simian in two. Spyra followed his example and vaulted into the nearest Ape with a warcry, flames leaping from her throat and burning them to ashes.

"Spyra!" It was Morinth, she was cutting an Ape out of her way with her tailblade, pointing her wing wildly to something ahead. "Watch out!"

Spyra felt cold, driving pain as something hit her in the chest and sent her rolling through the dirt. She scrambled to her heels, wincing at the damage wrought to her breast, and watched as a Dreadwing screamed at her, highlighted orange by all the deathly fires invading the area.

"You!" A massive Ape slid down the beast's wing and strode between it and her, pointing a vicious-looking, barbed axe, one of two, in Spyra's direction. "Purple Dragon!"

Chieftain Visigoth ignored the Moles, and the other dragons, snarling as he trotted closer and smashed the flats of his axes together, kicking sparks.

"Our battle has not concluded." His deep voice droned over the flames penning them in. "I will fashion a fresh banner pole from your spine, she-drake!"

"-Visigoth!" A second Dreadwing covered in plate armor and a snarling helm flapped in a hovering stance overhead, a similarly large Ape swinging his arm at the warlord in the saddle. "The toweh's comin right down! We gotz ta go! Leave her ta burn!"

"Fly, Jute, lead your tribe to salvation!" Visigoth spat into the dirt and trudged towards Spyra. "We die together if needed. I will have my honor back."

"…Buddy," Spyra snorted, hunching lower and flicking her tail. "if I fried you once, I'll fry you again. Anybody up for some singed Ape-steaks? I'm buyin'."

Visigoth howled and ran at her, swinging his axes with abandon.


{🐉}

Nobody even attempted to stop him. There was no one left.

Nothing but charred and broken corpses. Nothing but the whisper and roar of fire.

The Fallen hummed to himself as he trekked the macabre fields he had reaped through the Ape campsites. Bodies and bodies, wrecked stockades, abandoned turrets and barracks. A hellish ghost town.

The squeak of wheels drew his attention, and the path ahead was obscured when something rammed through the folded remnants of the tower.

It looked like a carriage at first, but steam was screaming out the back of it, and metal plates were bolted over the wooden frame as a makeshift armor component. A snarling grille vent bled red light from a coal-fed tank, and bladed wheels tore into the earth with every rotation.

That must have been the WarrWagon Palmet had mentioned.

An open seat in the spine contained a trio of operators who all hooted and swung coal-shovels in the air with abandon. The world was on fire, and these fuckers were still high as kites on engine-adrenaline.

The WarrWagon hissed steam as the driver wrenched the poorly constructed wheel and directed the grilled nose right for the Fallen. It chugged, and rattled, and burped soot out hastily bolted pipes running along the sides.

The Fallen finished lighting a fuse and chucked the stick.

One answer for everything.

He'd had enough fighting today.

The dynamite landed inside the seating compartment. Then the WarrWagon blew apart in a wretched squeal of metal and cinder of wood. Parts flew everywhere, and every part of the main chassis that didn't wilted, and became a black scab where it folded to, like the peeling remains of a can nuked inside a microwave.

He limped around the steaming mecha-corpse and continued on his way, spitting at it for good measure.

A quick dip in a dynamite barrel had refreshed everything he needed. The bandolier over his chest would be enough and he knew it.

The last pylon, open in a clearing. The Apes hadn't constructed anything around or on it, apparently using the space as a mustering yard for infantry.

"-Wooooo~! Hoooo~! Ah! Bugga-nuts! Boss! Fank the ghosteez of yore I found ya…" Palmet came jogging out from nearby. His fur was frazzled, blackened, and daggered all over, making it look like he had been struck by lightning. He must've set a fuse too short. "…I ran outta dynamite, but ya should've seen all the chaos I reaped with what I had! Me and Meep showed dem loyalists whatfor, didntwe, Meep?"

The little octopus creature appeared on his shoulder, and pumped a tentacle into the air.

"Meep!" –It squeaked.

The Fallen slowly trailed his eyes between the two of them and sighed, looking at the pylon just ahead.

"Palmet," He tiredly jabbed a thumb at the front gates, just a yard away, where liberating daylight streamed through and bracketed the hellish amber glaze deeper inside here. "just get out of here. I don't care where you go."

"…Oh… But, ah… I thought-" The Fallen glared at him and he shut up, fiddling with his paws. "…Right, back on the road again, I see how it is. Well, if ya don't mind so much, why not jus kill meh like ya did all the other Apes?"

"Call it a stroke of mercy." The Fallen shrugged, tossing the bandolier at the foot of the great pylon. It hit the earth with a muted crunch! –making Palmet wince. Meep in turn was watching, fascinated. "Nobody can seem to think of me in a straight way. I'm either a ruthless butcher or a crusading savior. When are people going to see that it doesn't work like that? That's there's a gray area, and that we're all in it?"

The Fallen toyed with a stick in his hands and shrugged.

"You better get out of here, the tower's coming down."

"Yeh, I can seez dat." Palmet snorted, looking up as the great dome buckled, and chunks continued to break away overhead. More TNT caches somewhere nearby detonated and thundered the whole atrium. The screams of dying Apes had all but gone silent by this point. The Ape hummed in thought, and brought Meep to cradle in his arm. He pet the unsanitary creature idly for a second. "…I'm a simpul mahn,"

"I had no idea." The Fallen creased a lip.

"but even I gotta say this: what else can we do every day besides wut feels right?"

The Fallen slowly looked over at him, and blinked.

"…Who are you again?"

"Oi, boss, I kno it's been a long battle, but I didn't fink my name was that easy to forget…"

In the distance, a pained scream caught the Fallen's ear.

Tanged, undeniably feminine, loud as hell, it must be…

"Spyra!"

In the distance, surrounded by flaming debris, there she was, fighting for her life against an Ape triple her size.

"Oi, that's Visigoth! My old employer!" Palmet pointed proudly. "…I hope he doesn't have any hard feelins about the whole betrayel fing… Maybe I should send him flowas and a good will lettah befer I approach him."

"Take your mumbling self and get the fuck out of this tower." The Fallen shoved him towards the gates, and broke the fuse on the stick. Meep squealed and hid in Palmet's arm crease. "I kept the long fuse for a reason…"


{🐉}

"Is that everyone?" Morinth wheezed, circling the congregation of Moles as Taliopia led them to the edge of the Funguswood surrounding the road.

"Everyone we could manage." Harad nodded, glancing back at the tower. "The Wingleader still hasn't returned…"

"Neither has Spyra!" Torrdonal gasped, dragging Corrinthol with him. The red dragon was babbling incoherently and sucking on his thumb talon, mumbling words like: "Cynder!" –and- "Maniac!" –and- "Aliens!"

"Wait! Someone's coming through the gates!" A Mole pointed for the soot-leaking, great archway at the foot of the crumbling tower. A single, humanoid shape materialized and sprinted down the ramp.

"Is that the fucking monkey?" Harad gawked.

"Cheeky that, we've literally sleuthed our way through some of the most lethal situations in our lives and somehow he survived." Morinth sighed.

"-I'M ALIVE!" Palmet distantly called, sprinting closer and closer. "I'm alive an well! No one needs ta worry, I'm still here ta be yer emotional support, and yer personal, uninhibitedz, shoe-shiner-"

A piece of debris smashed right into where the Ape was standing with a ragged crash. Some of the Moles gasped. Dust clouded and pebbles clobbered down. Then there was silence.

Harad grunted, and Morinth chuckled.

"I should allude to unfulfilled desires more often." She bashfully looked over to where Taliopia was whipping out healing salves and applying them to a crying Mole infant in the crowd. "…I could have a girlfriend who's tough and sassy and confident, yet somehow…" She muttered.

A long pause.

Nothing happened.

"Shit." The dragoness chirped cheerfully. "Aaaand it's gone."

"The Purple Dragon is still inside." Harad grimly uttered. "With that thing that the clouds shit on our heads."


{🐉}


{Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning Soundtrack: Freezer Action}


Spyra flipped over the axe and landed, bands of lightning flickering from her mouth and impacting Visigoth dead-center his breast.

The power surged through him, and though he screamed in pain, he still pressed his advantage. She slipped over one slash, ducked under another and feinted a third.

Visigoth caught her on the fourth.

The axe slashed across her chest and drew blood in a near hit. Spyra cried out and tried to beat her wings to get distance. Visigoth reached out with a grimy fist and grabbed her tail, yanking her back to him with a snarl of: "-Come back here!"

Spyra rolled in the dirt and he pressed a heel over her head, compressing, and burying her snout into the ground. She flailed and tried to tear into him with her rear paws, but found they couldn't reach.

It was getting hard to breathe.

"What victory befalls me." Visigoth muttered. The killing of dragons, the art of his youth, lost upon him by the politics of his own world. He was heaving from such a short and albeit efficient duel. His limbs were tired, his breath limited. Spyra had undone most of what Tinker had fixed. Gouge wounds matted his torso, his lower half was scorched and patches of his fur and skin had become blasted fields of blisters and rubber.

Still, he stood defiant, even as his body was stripped away. It was always the plan, to claw and bite and kill until the very end.

He had always planned on doing the same to Cynder when he could've, realigning the Apes to once again be nomads of their own homeland. To have Apes fighting for Apes and no one else. That was the spirit of their people. That was what was meant to be.

That was what hadn't happened.

But, in hindsight, perhaps betrayal needed a few more years to simmer before it would be appropriate. And, in the meantime, maybe slicing the Northerner's prophesized savior into cutlets would alleviate the travesty if only briefly.

One could be hopeful.

Visigoth swung down with both axes past the knee. The tip of a sword burst through his stomach and blinded him as his own gore spurted in his face.

Visigoth reeled in suffering silence, collapsing onto his back as Spyra wrenched her head from the dirt and gasped to refill her lungs.

"-F-Fallen?!" She sputtered.

"Get off my bitch, you walking ball of lint." The Fallen snarled, dropping his bloodied blade.

Visigoth vomited red, rolling over as he made for one of his axes. The Fallen ran forwards and tore it from his paws, throwing it away before kicking the warlord onto his back. Visigoth was saying something. A hoarse whisper under his breath.

"I'll give you that. Tell me." The Fallen straddled the Ape's larger waist and knelt down to hear what it was.

"…too old for this shit."

Visigoth started heaving deep, tortured laughter. Blood bubbled through his teeth, and his glowing eyes began to laze as he clenched at the impalement wound through his guts. His entrails were slithering out of the breach like eager leeches.

"Why didn't you just walk away?" The Fallen shook his head. "Honestly."

"…not… a coward." Visigoth suddenly reached up and gripped the Fallen by the scruff of his jumpsuit, yanking him closer. "…I am here until the end, human."

"You're there." The Fallen gripped him by the jaw. "And by the way?" He leaned closer. "This is for Cynder."

He twisted, and Visigoth went limp.

"You okay?" He took Spyra's paw and lifted her off the ground, dusting her wings dotingly. "He didn't hurt you too bad did he?"

"Nothin' I ain't dealt with before." Spyra quietly laughed, looking up at him with a grin. "But I had it under control. Eating the dirt was… uhm… part of my strategy, to mislead him."

"Uh-huh." He rubbed a thumb on her cheek. "That's Spyra for you."

Bmmmmmm~! -The last stick.

-The tower moaned and rumbled around them. The ceiling, the entire ceiling was crumbling now, and if he didn't know any better, the roar getting louder and louder from the stairwell meant that the chute was coming down.

This whole atrium was about to be a parking lot.

"Go! Run!" He cried, shoving her along for the daylight streaming through the gates not too far away.

Mounds of debris snapped from the heavens above and crashed with mighty blasts of dust and fire all around them. The tower strained, buckled and howled as ancient stonework failed and the legacy of the southern wyrms became undone all at once.

Spyra took flight and zipped through the archway just as he was about to step through.

A pained sound stopped the Fallen in his tracks.

Standing at the top of the road ramp, he spun around, wild-eyed, and looked back at the main rallying yard.

It was Cynder, she was crawling out from a pile of banister poles, and the hurricane of tumbling debris was almost on top of her. She locked eyes with him across the distance. The dragoness cut off any further vocalities and grimly sneered at him, staying still, her jaw quivering.

Maybe one of them was willing to let it be…

He growled at the sunlight outside, and turned around.

-but not both of them.


{🐉}

"Fallen~!" Spyra screamed, tearing against Morinth and Taliopia's paws as they held her back. The air crackled and Forlorn began to get shorter, and shorter, the tower vanishing beneath a growing plume of dust and fire. "-FALLEN!"

The observatory plat was the last thing to go. It disappeared as the last of the tower's great chute became one with the crumbling remains of the atrium. A last report of thunder rolled across the land.

And then all was still, save for the tumbling of a few last, errant bricks.

The dust cloud didn't show signs of dissipating, but the explosions, the howls of Apes and the screams of Dreadwings had all died out.

A slight breeze rolled in, and a toad croaked. Tears started to flow down Spyra's snout. She heaved and stopped resisting against Morinth and Tali'.

"…No…" She sobbed. "NO!"

Torrdonal drunkenly fell on his belly beside Corrinthol, who had gone quiet, both of their eyes locked on the dust cloud and nothing else. Harad was unreadable, but anyone closely examining him could see his gaze darting everywhere, looking to pick out any semblance of life persevering in the dust.

The crowd of Moles were all still too. Everyone was still after that mess. The only thing to breach the silence was Spyra's mourning sobs.

"…Sssshh, ssshhh, it's okay dearie…. You're okay…" Morinth soothed, rubbing circles between Spyra's wing joints.

"D-Does that mean the Fallen's… is he…?" Taliopia bit her talons.

"And what if he is?" Morinth's voice cracked, her suddenly remembering what it felt like when he touched her on the chin. She wanted that back, and didn't want to admit it.

"…I…" Taliopia turned her head away and bit her lower chop. She hugged Spyra's side and sighed in defeat. "I'm sorry, Spyra."

"At least we got the Purple Dragon!" A Mole suggested nearby. Morinth hissed and shot him a death-glare, making him jump and quiet down.

"His sacrifice wasn't in vain, at least." Harad sighed, settling on his launches. "Forlorn, an entire Ape tribe, and the Terror of the Skies all wiped out in a single battle. This Fallen might have turned out to have been a hero after all."

"I'll say, he's certainleh got a nobel sorta streak to him he does." Palmet sneezed as dust wafted in his face as he stood next to Morinth. The latter craned her snout over and blinked at him, before turned back to stare at the cloud where Forlorn had been.

"No, really, I should've seen that coming." She said.

"Meep!" Meep crawled up Palmet's arm, making him chuckle.

"Was a close call earlieh that was, eh, Meep?"

"Mmhm, the wrong party members died." Morinth grunted.

"Oh! Look, dere he is." Palmet pointed. "See dat? An all yu were havin a fit ovva nothing."

"Can you not grace us with but a moment of quiet?" Harad growled. "Just because I hated the scrawny sky-alien does not mean I will not afford him a warrior's silence."

"The Ape's right." A Mole shouted. "Down the ramp, see?"

Spyra gasped and shot up out of Morinth and Taliopia's paws, her red, puffy eyes lit up like lanterns.

Striding in an even jog was a large shadow getting ever closer by the second. The dust parted, and Spyra shrieked in joy, flapping her wings and darting over to meet the subject halfway.

"FALLEN!" She squealed. "Oh, Fallen, I thought you were dead! I thought I was dead! And there were explosions, and dying monkeys, and shit and- and-"

Spyra blinked and skidded to a halt half-way through her lunging hug.

Cynder tiredly blinked back at her.

So did the Fallen.

She was tossed over his shoulders, like an oversized rucksack.

"H-Hey, Spyra." He muttered, his knees wiggling. "Sorry, I had to take a-"

He collapsed, Cynder giving a pained squeak as she pinned the poor human under her scaly girth. An arm popped out from around her thigh and pointed in the air.

"-I ahhd tuu akke a eetoorr." –Muffled through Cynder's belly.

"I must have died." Spyra sniffled, glaring with increasing rage at the black dragoness. "Cause it'd be a cold, damn day in hell I sit back and let you sprawl all over MY HUMAN!"

"Yours?!" Cynder reclined in shock, standing and yanking the Fallen to his feet, only to clutch him protectively to her large chest. "Clearly the advances he has made upon me repeatedly in the field of battle suggest that I am the more sought-after partner. Grace and majesty before dirty commoners, Spyra. That's the way the world works."

"Yeah? Well then why'd he fuck me and not you?" Spyra shrieked, growling like a dog, her prior mourning completely forgotten. "I'm the one cookin' his egg-spit right now, bitch, all you got is an empty, cold cunt! I bet you puff dust when you queef!"

"Male-stealing slut!" Cynder howled, and the two dragonesses slammed into one another and tumbled through the dirt, snarling, biting, kicking, cursing. The poor Fallen stood there and watched without a clue as to what to do.

"…Fallen?" Harad blinked nearby.

"-It's- it's-" The Fallen pointed at the tower, himself, then the dragonesses…. "-it's fuckin' complicated, alright?"

"Spyra!" Ignitia cried. She sailed in on a westward breeze and landed not too far off from Harad, a cabinet clattering onto the road as she lazed her paws, some books tumbling out the sides.

The fighting in the dirt stopped, and the two dragonesses turned to look at the assortment of people spectating the event. Spyra sat on Cynder's chest, panting, weakly tapping her on the snout with no energy left to punch.

"….i-is that… is that my book cabinet?" Cynder wheezed. "…why… why the hell would you steal my book cabinet for?"

"It's cherry wood." The Fallen noted with a shrug. "It probably looked pretty nice before… well… all this…"

"T-T-T-Terror of the Skies~!" Corrinthol shrieked, and tried to bury his head in the dirt like an ostrich. Torrdonal was chewing through his talons, and Morinth and Taliopia were hugging each other, eyes wide.

"Ancestors' blood." Harad shook his head, drinking in Cynder's prone form from tailtip to horns. "I never thought I would see… this close… Cynder, the Cloud Ripper. You've killed many of my men, general."

"…I hardly believe you'd be the first in a long line of many." Cynder hissed, trying to roll Spyra off and failing with a tired slump. "…So now that you've all flattered yourselves by wiping out my army, destroying my tower and stealing my fucking bookshelf, can someone pry this purple nightmare off of me sometime today?"

"What the fuck is this thing anyway?" Spyra coughed, snatching up the brooch off Cynder's neck and squinting at it.

"It has crushed mint inside." Cynder snorted, batting at the dust floating everywhere. "The mushrooms around here drive my sinuses to ruin…"

"Don't they…" Spyra trailed, leaning an elbow on her sternum. "…how's the fresh fall from power feel?"

"I don't believe it has quite set in yet." Cynder leaned her head back and huffed, her tail thumping. "…but enemy to enemy, can you please lower your voice? I have a now splitting headache…"

"Uh… boss-I mean, Mistress," Palmet nervously edged closer, waving cheaply when Cynder lazily glanced at him past her own cheekbone. "…I hope we don't ave any hard feelings about the employment shuffle here…"

"Who the hell are you, and why do I care?" Cynder breathed.

"I'm really glad that I could bring all of you together, this very moment…" The Fallen nodded, placing his hands on his hips. "…Dark and light, good guys and bad guys, Apes and dragons and bad guy dragons, well, bad girl dragon and… yeah it's all fantastic."

The human wheezed a single laugh.

"G'night."

-And collapsed on the ground, fast asleep.


{🐉}