Frostbite
2
Honorable
{The Legend of Spyro the Movie: Soundtrack: Prelude to a Dream}
"Get out." Cynder's voice bounced around the spacious expanse. All the walls here were blackstone and plated metal. There were literally hundreds of empty hallways that allowed sound to travel through the whole complex. She could've whispered her demand to the pair of guards and they would have still heard her.
One of the white-furred Cold Legion Apes grunted, and the two sentries swiftly vanished through the Gothic-styled arch of the doorway. The doors themselves slammed shut soon after, and Cynder was left alone and to her own devices.
Sighing, the black dragoness slipped deeper past the rim of the tub, letting the water level rise to just below her jawline. The spicy scent of herbs rushed into her snout. She closed her eyes and lazily drifted a paw through the rose petals bobbing silently on the tinted water's surface. Nothing besides the quiet slap of the tub's interior and the din of her castle. Cynder spread her wings and nestled into the soft tile of the tub's bottom, trying to will herself to fall asleep.
Today had been a stressful one. News had reached her towers about Malefora's next plan of action. Her visions had foreseen a trove of great wealth to the South, across the Frontier Sea.
At first, it had been thought Infernia would have been chosen to pursue the matter. But Malefora had been insistent. Cynder was her prime general and the jewel of the Dark Army. She trusted no one else to handle such a massive and unexpectedly swift, affair. There was a ruin down there to be used as a basing for the Apes of Chieftain Visigoth's tribe. Such a thing was unheard of: Visigoth's old bones had been nomadic since his fetid conception, of which Cynder knew little of thankfully. His tribe was always on the move, switching between the geyser fields, the northern shores by the ruins of Stormwatch or the far western willow forests surrounding the Pond of Shroud.
Cynder had not worked personally in the same headquarters as Visigoth for over two years. The last time had been when his Apes had converted a beached carrack on the shores of Daragon into a field HQ. Cynder remembered how displeased the Chieftain had looked. He always was locked in a perpetual sneer at whatever he was staring at, but back then that sneer had turned into a tortured grimace. Visigoth hated the ocean. Mostly because he hated his fellow Chieftains, particularly Jute and Saxony, who both had mastered travel over the water.
Cynder spread her body out in the warm water and stretched her tail, teasing the tip of its blade against the opposite side's lower wall.
She'd miss the pleasantries of her castle on this deployment. She had never been to the South before, but she had been told it was a swamp. The whole landmass. A gigantic bloody marsh. She wasn't exactly thrilled about the redeployment.
On top of that news, the ongoing campaign in Avalar had officially lost traction and simmered to nothingness. For a time, it looked like an imminently rising Grublin Fly named Patpag was reorganizing the thinly spread Dark Army forces in the Twilight Forests and the Valley. He had apparently been killed by a very accurate Cheetah ranger hiding in a tree, and the fringent command structure held by the wild Grublins that had been living there detached from the front for decades broke down yet again.
The Cheetahs had stood rigidly against the wave coming at them, and had beaten it into a shredded, pathetic wilt of dead weed-limbs and discarded foliage. Were there still Grublins infesting the darkest corners of the woods? Certainly. Were they reproducing? Yes.
Could they do anything worth any degree of effectiveness for the coming months it would take their numbers to recover?
No.
Malefora's scheme to corrupt Avalar had failed yet again. Cynder knew it would, but her Mistress had been inconsolable as she always was on the subject of that territory.
Cynder assumed Malefora wanted to destroy it so badly because of how beautiful it was. By legend, no other land in the world compared to the golden Valley of Avalar, once a prime spot of draconic lairs in ancient times, and still home to the Cheetah tribes and the stringently spread Wildling Dragons. Maybe it was jealousy or a desire to strike terror in the Realms. Cynder didn't know. She did know the stress those failed, far-flung operations always caused. It wasn't the first time she'd been forced to pick up the pieces.
But none of that mattered right now… this water was warm, the spices fragrant, the atmosphere quiet… she could drift… and finally…-
Slam~!
The chamber doors (and Cynder's eyes) flew open.
The dragoness snarled as she twisted like a snake and stood in the massive tub, water splashing as rose petals clung to her shoulders and chest.
"The world better be ending, because if it happens to not be, I am going to flay you alive." She spoke concretely.
The Cold Legionairre standing in the doorway didn't even flinch. A normal Ape would've fallen to his knees and begged. Cynder's private army of White Apes were made of tougher stuff. He curtly bowed, the black pauldrons covering his shoulders clinking with his motions.
"Mistress," His gruff voice echoed. "word from the Dark Continent."
"How the hell would you even know such a thing?" Cynder snapped.
"The Vision Pool below pulses with power." The Ape said. "The Dark One's whisperings are echoing down the halls. She is calling your name, my lady."
Cynder licked her fangs and lowered the threatening poise of her wings. She huffed, and stomped a foot in the bathwater, splashing the black and white tiled floor around the rim.
"I see." She shooed him. "Fine, I see! Go away. Get out."
"Mistress." The Ape backed out of the chamber and the doors slammed shut again.
Cynder smiled angrily and plopped her haunches in the water, trying to drain the frustration from her body as she focused on the water for just a few minutes.
It had taken her nearly an hour to set up this retreat.
She hadn't even sampled all her own damn fruits yet!
Growling, the dragoness extended a dripping claw and snatched the wine glass off the end table beside the tub, its top bundled and overflowing with a platter full of fresh fruits ranging from purple grape vines, peeled oranges and apple wedges.
Cynder drained the whole glass in one swig and slapped her tongue, trying to savor the heated departure down her throat.
Shit.
She put the glass down and grabbed the whole bottle. She sipped it at the neck until she ran out of air, taking it back with a crisp gasp, her glistening breast pumping.
The faster I get whatever it is done, the sooner I can return, she sloshed out and into the cold air, feeling herself shiver with displeasure. I hope.
[❄️]
Why did it have to be here?
The falls constantly roaring in the backdrop made it impossible for Cynder to think, and on top of that: they reminded her of her relaxing evening that she'd been denied. Her mood was already sour, forgetting the additives of these.
Shit.
Staring down from the ledge, Cynder watched the aqua waterfall tumble hundreds of feet below, where it ended its journey by misting and crashing over an array of smooth boulders capping its throat at the head of a triangular reservoir, rendered sapphire under the perfectly clear moonlight from the duo of planetoids taking up the midnight sky above.
The trees of Twilight looked like inky porcupines, shivering in the wind. They made a dark blue sea for as far as could be observed. Another nearby limestone formation was overgrown and looming to the east. Behind them was the very neck of the Northern Mountains. They were dark masters of everything behind her position. She was literally standing at the edge-fringe of Avalar proper. Twilight Falls was the landmark that was impossible to miss indicating that.
"Do you see something down there, Mistress?" Glower asked, his thin form appearing by her side as he peered at the falls below. "All that mist: it makes a good hiding place."
"You give their rangers too much credit." Cynder hissed, dueling with the staccato voice of the water. "Was it deceit or insolence that led me to believe your men had this mapped entirely out? Think about which I punish harsher before you answer."
"Mistress, I-" Glower tore his snake-like head back, his mouth hanging open. "…they moved."
"I know they moved, you imbecile." Cynder sighed in defeat, spinning around and moving to the center of the plateau. Three other Night Dragons besides Glower stood rigidly under the glade of a large oak tree encapsulating the rocky plateau. These were Naga, a one-eyed veteran drake who Cynder had worked with before, Poisus, a black dragoness who seldom spoke and had shuriken-shaped spikes running down her spine to her tail which was tipped with a bladed fin-fan, and Reslo, the lithe 'Poison Whip' dragoness who resembled a living skeleton and had piercing violet eyes.
"-doesn't it hurt?" Naga was saying to Reslo, the two of them idly chatting as Poisus silently watched, her expression hazy, eyes empty and staring through them.
"Pain is part of the cleansing process. If it didn't hurt, I would know something was unbalanced." Reslo was showing off her forepaw's wrist, where it was marked with tens of divets and sealed lacerations. Both of her front arms looked like that from the elbow to the wrist. Reslo always went through practices of ritualistic bloodletting between battles. "A warrior cannot take and not give back. Blood is too precious, even when it comes from the veins of the enemy. The animals around us have mastered this. The owl consumes a rat, it turns the rat into dung, that dung fertilizes the earth and helps the grass grow. A deer eats an apple off a tree, the expelled seeds give birth to the tree's children. Flesh for flesh. Blood for blood. It's uncultured to do anything else."
"Mmm." Naga harrumphed, his one silver eye wandering over Reslo's slashes. He flexed his wings and looked at her, his chops eternally locked in a scowl, even when he was feeling elation, but this time: aloofness. "Self-made temple?"
"What does that matter for?" Reslo took her arm back and huffed at him, her violet eyes daggering. "-Forget it. You asked and I humored."
"Mmm."
"Mistress, we're still waiting for Fanglo and Leaper." Reslo watched as Cynder stalked impatiently towards them. "I'm eager to head off myself, if it's worth anything."
"Pity, I was beginning to wonder if I was suffering lonesomely." Cynder rolled her eyes. "Keep your voices down. Have you all forgotten that the trees in Avalar have ears?"
"And arrows." Naga's prehensile tongue slithered through his fangs and licked over the scarred bulge where his left eye used to be. "Glower, move yet? Stay here not fit. Prey flees deep, soon we lose."
"Give the scouts the benefit of the doubt." Glower kept his distance by Cynder's flank, meeting eyes with the larger dragoness for a mere second before focusing on his Wing. "If they split up, it complicates matters. Our targets are priority number one, but most of all: stay out of the Mistress' way."
"It's an honor to be beside her, even if the glory isn't mine." Reslo gave a cocky grin, her violet eyes glowing the blue dark. "Shall we fashion a carpet for you, my Mistress, from the witch-cat's skin?"
Cynder rumbled in musing.
"Find enough of the corpse to piece together, and surprise me." She said.
"I've found them!" A royal blue and black-striped dragon, Leaper, flapped his pale wings wildly as he landed at the rear of the Wing. "They're cutting through the grove next to the tributary, the one that branches into the valley by Meadow Cave?"
"Damn it." Cynder chewed her tongue, her wings spreading under the sound of crinkling parchment. "Glower, start feeding into their path in pursuit. Where is Fanglo?"
"He was heading in the opposite direction." Leaper breathlessly pointed his tail blade.
Cynder animalistically snarled and leaped from the plateau, shooting dust in all the other dragons' faces.
"Reslo and Poisus are coming with me! Glower, take the rear!" She called, her roar echoing across the Twilight Forest as she zipped into the starry sky. "I will not let the witch-cat escape my grasp!"
"Go." Reslo angled her snout when Naga paused. He, Glower and Leaper's wings kicked, and the three Night Dragons show like bullets through the blue tree canopy and into the heavens, blending with the evening hue. Reslo looked at Poisus, who was meeting her gaze silently, and with glass eyes. "Find their scent and lead us?" She asked.
Poisus' mandible quivered, the freakish dragoness leaning forwards and testing the air with a plaintive handful of rough snorts. The cry that left her throat was abysmal, like the shriek of an eagle whose throat had been cut and scarred. She shot off the plateau and Reslo came after her.
The two of them caught up to Cynder only because the Cloud Ripper was distracted. Her glorious wingspan blacked out entire fields of the stars, her white eyes scanning the trees below with malice.
Reslo kept her thin limbs tucked to her breast as she kept at Cynder's haunch. Her gaze flickered over the silver bands cuffing Cynder's ankles and wrists and her tail. The jewelry glistened silver, particularly from the bluer of the Eternal Moons. The only armor she had in comparison were a pair of silvery shoulder pauldrons and the leather harness across her narrow breast. Poisus had a dagger tailblade and a series of belts wrapped over her upper arms and tail length. Reslo realized that she was part of a strikeforce assembled for the effectiveness of its members' mental instabilities. She started to smile wickedly.
Cynder dived and daggered the joints of her wings as she descended. All crickets, katydids and owls became silent as a horrific, shrill scream echoed across the Twilight Forest. It was Cynder's wings. The trademark terror-tactic that had earned her the titles she had. She was the fastest flier who had ever lived. She was so fast that she broke the wind, like a bomb slicing through the stratosphere.
Poisus' shriek was pitiful in comparison, but it didn't stop her from trying. She and Reslo tucked their legs and went after the Cloud Ripper. Leaves and twigs hushed by them as they breached the canopy.
{The Legend of Spyro Dawn of the Dragon Soundtrack: Cheetah Village Attack}
Cynder was the first to bare any kind of brunt.
Her dive had been an accurate one. No sooner had she ripped through the tree limbs did she land in a thunderous slam! –upon the forest floor below, snapped twigs and ruined branches falling around her like hail.
A cloaked individual just a head shorter than her staggered back on digitigrade, pawed feet, an arm gracefully swinging over its shoulder to clench at the handle of a chiseled wood bow slung over its back.
Cynder sneered and raised her claw. She swatted the ranger like he was weightless, raking a trio of deep gashes through his vest and robe that misted pure heartsblood. The Cheetah was silent as he sailed twenty-five feet and crashed into the trunk of an old tree. He slid down the bark and crumpled among the roots, his ruined cape and cloak resembling him as a discarded textile.
Arrows flickered through the woods from all directions within seconds. Cynder roaring as she bent and twisted in awkward, painful angles. The rounds slipped so closely that she sometimes felt the feathery dusting of fletching on her scales. She snarled when an arrow struck her side and protruded, blood dribbling from the stalk poking out of her flesh.
"They're in the trees!" Cynder howled, opening her maw. A cone of flickering, crimson energy battered into the canopy of a tree, ripping leaves off its limbs and wrenching the trunk on its own rootball. A Cheetah fell screaming and tumbled to the ground in a quivering, howling mess. Poisus leapt on him like an eager dog and ripped his throat out with her teeth, still shrieking.
Reslo bounded across the forest floor like an elk, her unnaturally thin legs propelling her with the speed of a bullet. Her wings flapped and she landed on the stalk of a tree, scampering like a squirrel up to the nearest limb, she snarled and whipped her tailblade, hooking the ranger based up there by the thigh and dragging him out of his hiding place.
The Cheetah met the ground hard, hollering as blood pumped from his leg. Reslo made to straddle him and tear him open with her claws. The ranger slipped a knife from his robes and slashed her across the breast, before bringing the blade in a return arc that buried the steel to the hilt in her shoulderblade.
Reslo screamed as she grabbed his arm and twisted it, bone snapping as the Cheetah's shoulder and bicep remained upright for the sky, but his hand and wrist pointed vertically down beside them and towards the grass. She impaled him through the sternum with her tail blade, and tossed the twitching cadaver like a ragdoll into a ditch.
Ringing steel and dragon roars came from the south. Glower, Naga and Leaper merged into the fight, shadow fire bathing treetops as Cheetah rangers returned said fury with accurately launched arrows.
Leaper tried to mimic Reslo as he squirreled up a thick oak trunk. An arrow entered his long neck and punched out the opposite side, another ran his shoulder through, and another stuck rigidly from his pelvis. He collapsed down the tree choking on his own blood as he became a writhing pincushion that the rangers peppered the moment he stood still.
"There-!" Naga barked, his jaws bloodied as a Cheetah died under his forepaws. "There is! There witch!"
Cynder ripped her tailblade from a stomach and swung the corpse away, where it smacked off a tree in two separate pieces. She turned and snarled at a clearing between two of the oaks.
Striding forwards, unaffected by the forested terrain was a Cheetah clothed in long, ragged green robes. He held a staff with a ball of amber clenched in its gnarled head. White light streamed down his arms as he raised a paw and began to chant in an ancient runic language that even Cynder didn't understand.
Glower went to take off and attack the magic-user from above, but when he started to lift, he was roughly yanked back down to the grass. He hollered as animated, slithering vines materialized out of the forest grass and slowly ensnared his front and rear paws, pinning him to the ground. He opened his mouth and blasted a cone of black flames at the Cheetah in a last effort.
The magic-user put his staff out, and a bubble of white light materialized around his person, leaving Glower's Shadow fire to wash across its globe-like face harmlessly.
"Get the staff away from him!" Reslo hollered, ducking behind a thicket as arrows slipped over her head. "Poisus, cover me!"
Poisus' avian scream bounced around the woodlands as she bounded up a decaying log and vaulted into the trees overlooking Reslo's position. Poisus snatched a ranger from his perch and flew off with him dangling by his cape from her claws. Reslo didn't see where she took him.
Cynder had already moved forward. Magical words etched from her snout as she sprinted at the Cheetah sage. White balls of flame shot out and ricocheted off crimson spheres that orbited around Cynder like bloody wisps, they put themselves in front of his attacks as if they had minds of their own. When Cynder was close enough, a solid icicle of green acid shot from her mouth and whisked at the sage.
The Cheetah brought up his staff- his fangs exposed in a knowing cringe –the Poison bolt hit the haft and sent him spinning in the air off his paws. The bolt exploded and green mist trailed from his body as splotches of acid ate away at his fur.
Cynder pounced and caught the magic-user before he landed. She tumbled with him violently through the brush, coming to a dusty halt under the gaze of a tree. Reslo saw a ranger in a nearby thicket, an arrow prepared and aimed directly at the back of Cynder's head.
Reslo ran with all her might and threw herself into the air, her cry distracting the ranger long enough for her to cover the distance and bring him with her to the ground. She saw him, briefly, his feline features twisted in a hateful expression, his amber eyes blaring and locked on her as he struggled.
Reslo opened her mouth and bit him across the face, forcing her jaws together until something cracked and blood gushed over her tongue.
"Heel, wicken-cat-!" Cynder cried, ripping the sage off the ground and pinning him to a tree. He dropped his staff and quivered, the grass beneath him pattering wetly. "Look at me as you die."
The sage growled, Cynder's tailblade had run to the hilt through his gut. The wet slapping was from his entrails sloshing out around the breach. He gripped Cynder's wrist that was keeping him aloft, his hood blowing off his head as his ears wilted.
"Take a moment to smell Twilight's air." Cynder panted, covered in grime and sudor that left her body glistening. "Take that memory with you to wherever your people believe you'll go."
"…n-never…" The sage muttered. Cynder sneered and leaned closer.
"What say you, wicken, speak your last." She growled.
"…y-you take life…" The sage cringed, his cat-teeth bared as he died. His eyes were foggy with age, but they were bright with knowledge, Cynder was captivated as she watched the light flow from their beautiful, once amber holds. "…you don't know what you take…"
Cynder breathed heavily, her brow furrowing as she ignored her surroundings.
"I know life and death as well as anyone." She muttered.
The sage actually smiled.
"…you… know only death. You have never… lived."
Cynder shivered. She slid her tailblade out of him and let him crumple to the ground. The black dragoness felt her jaw quiver. She backed away from the body like it was going to explode, her eyes wide and terrified.
"Mistress… are you alright?" Glower was still tearing vines off of himself as he hobbled over. "The sage lies dead… finally."
"Witch dead?" Naga bounded out of the woods, silver eye locked on the corpse. "Witch dead… Mmm. Good. Very good."
Reslo lumbered over, nursing her stab wounds, her wings lowered like the ears of a pained rabbit.
"The glory is yours, Mistress." She cracked a grin, drawing Cynder's gaze from the body. "Are you well, my lady? You look… uhm…"
"What did he say to you, Mistress? When you had stabbed him?" Glower looked at the dead sage like a fascinated hatchling. The Cheetah was serenely, even disemboweled. His face was devoid of pain despite the gore. He looked almost natural, like the tree whose roots he was crumpled over. He had died protecting the woods his people had owned since the dawn times. His end was markedly poetic.
Cynder closed her mouth when she realized her jaw was flapping. She swallowed, darting her eyes between the Night Dragons.
"…He heaped curses on me, like any in his woeful position would do to their murderers." She muttered, preening her red wings as she turned and trotted away. "Where are the others?"
"Poisus will come back…" Reslo growled. "-when she's done with her meal."
"Mmm." Naga shook his head. "Freak."
"Leaper and Fanglo are dead." Glower huffed. "They got Fanglo before the battle started, I found him in a thicket with his throat opened and his wings slashed."
"And Leaper?" Cynder tiredly scanned the trees.
Glower looked at her for a second before answering.
"H-He, ehm-" He cleared his throat. "-shot to death."
"Indeed. The rest of the Cheetahs have fled. Our mission is complete and victorious." Cynder stated, staring out into the Twilight woods around them. "Glower and Naga will collect Poisus, wherever she might be out here. Reslo, I will heal your wounds. We leave as soon as we are collected. Leave the dead."
Glower lived up to his name to her as he tiredly extended his black wings and lifted up into the night. Naga grunted and went after him, leaving only Reslo and Cynder.
"Appreciations, Mistress." Reslo mumbled, Cynder lazily waving a paw in the air, red energy swirling as her flesh started to reseal. "It is an honor to serve."
"I'm sure it is." Cynder muttered, lowering her paw when the spell ran its course. "We have fought before, Reslo."
"In the past, Mistress." Reslo shyly bowed her needle-like head. "Three times, two of mutually shared bloodshed. Each has been more exhilarating than the last. You are… uninjured?"
"Why would you care?"
"Mistress?"
Cynder looked at her. "Nothing. Get ready to leave."
"Of course, my lady."
"Reslo."
"Yes, Mistress?"
"I appreciate you stopping that ranger from shooting me." Cynder looked over at her. "When were you planning on taking credit for such an act? Do you think I read minds?"
"…I-I am now unsure, Mistress." Reslo gave a crooked snout-grin. "The deed is better than the reward."
"…That's…" Cynder dropped her angry expression for just a blissful second, as she met Reslo's violet eyes, the roar of the Twilight Falls echoing overhead. "…honorable."
[❄️]