A/N: This is the first Cynder-strikes-out-on-her-own chapter! I love seeing her regain her independence, to be quite honest - it doesn't really feel right to read about her weak and dependent on the other dragons when we all know how capable she is. I'm pretty fond of this part of the story too. Lots of Cynder passing out and reminiscing about life under Gaul ahead... But that's sort of a thing through the whole fic, so it shouldn't be too surprising. This one's a bit shorter than the last chapter but there's plenty more to come.

The Half-Life of a Dragon Not Quite Purple

Part 3: The Journey

She was ready to leave immediately, but the risk of being caught held her to the Temple another two days. It was difficult to contain herself once she had made the decision. But she did it, if only for Spyro's sake.

Ignitus kept talking about the lunar eclipse like a bad omen, and she just knew – deep somewhere in her chest, in the back thorny part of her mind that she was once trapped in – that she had to leave before it happened.

But not too soon. Or else Spyro would have the time to get distracted, to come looking for her when he should be preparing for the next battle.

The last days trickled by at an agonizing snails' pace. Cynder wandered openly through the halls for once, meeting the surprised smiles of the elder dragons with a bow of her head each time to disguise her guilt, and her intentions. She spent the afternoons in the gardens, avoiding Terrador and Spyro in equal measure, and regrettably also avoiding Cyril after he'd tried earnestly to convince her to try meditation.

The sleeping Guardians were a commonplace obstacle for her now, after weeks of sneaking around. Carefully, Cynder climbed part way up the wall, her claws sinking into the ivy like little ropes; she looked back critically after a few moments of careful scaling and deemed herself high enough to turn and kick herself off of the wall, spreading her wings to glide over their gently rising-falling backs and bellies, setting down lightly on the other side of the room.

She turned to look back at them sadly, one last time. Her gaze roamed over the regal shape of Ignitus' massive wings… The strength of Terrador's shoulders, and the battle scars he wore… Volteer's unique markings, the way he twitched even in his sleep, as though he couldn't even keep up with himself. A heavy sadness weighed at her heart as she took in Cyril's sleeping form. He had been the sweetest of them all… and she would not even have the decency to tell him goodbye.

This is the right choice, she reminded herself forcefully as she eased the heavy oaken door leading to the garden open and shut again behind her. I'm not doing this on a whim… I'm not bad for leaving like this, even if it feels horrible. Even if they think that I'm a traitor…

That was her most visceral fear now. Would Spyro think that she had left to rejoin the apes? Would Ignitus? She didn't want them to think that she had taken what she needed from them and then left to return to her role of Malefor's favorite pet. But what other way was there?

They would think what they would think. She had to focus on putting some distance between herself and the Temple, before she changed her mind. Before something struck her in just the right place and made her weak, made her selfish.

She kept her mind firmly on all of these things as she crept out into the garden, following the path by the light of the moon. She almost failed to recognize Spyro's voice, she was so focused on her task; the sight of him drew her up short.

"Cynder? What are you doing out here? It's dangerous." He made a sweeping move to cut her off before she could walk any further from the Temple, and she stopped short, narrowing her eyes in frustration. Didn't he know that she was dangerous?

"You shouldn't have followed me, Spyro."

"That's good enough for me!" Sparx said anxiously, gesturing wildly at Spyro – she strongly suspected that Sparx hadn't liked this idea to begin with. He had grown more and more suspicious of her in the past week, to the point where she was certain that everyone would feel safer if she left. She would feel like they were safer, at least. "Let's go. See ya!"

"Please, don't make this harder for me than it already is."

"I'm just trying to understand." He looked… horribly wounded, all wide eyes and slumped shoulders. Cynder winced as the guilt crept further into her gut.

I'm doing the right thing, she reminded herself. She was dangerous. She couldn't control herself… her mind did not belong to her, and she needed to be far away from here. I've caused enough damage.

She shook the thoughts from her head, slowly and deliberately. She couldn't meet his eyes. "I'm leaving, Spyro. I don't belong here. After all I've done… All I've put you through… I can't stay."

He sounded pained. "Cynder, nobody blames you for what happened."

That's not true. I do.

"Huh, I do. Speak for yourself." Sparx muttered.

"Sparx…" Spyro reprimanded, scowling at his friend. But Cynder felt his words right down to her bones. They tore at her, but she had needed to hear them; she couldn't afford to let her resolve waver now.

"No, Sparx is right." Cynder lifted her head and said the next words very firmly, wanting desperately for Spyro to take them to heart. "And every day that goes by, I'm reminded of it."

She hated to manipulate him this way. He was stretching his heart out to her, so wide-open and vulnerable, looking at her with so much sympathy it nearly made her sick. But if she didn't spin it to him like this, then he would come after her – and that would only put him in more danger. She was so, so sick of putting everyone around her in so much danger. "Spyro, your place is here. Your destiny is here."

She looked hard down at the ground, as if it held the answers. She found that if she focused on the shadows she could make believe that they were crawling towards her, obeying her and trying to offer her their comfort. "But mine is somewhere out there for me to find."

"Cynder…" His eyes searched her face wildly, voice gone whisper-thin with emotion. "I don't want you to go." He paused and then added, awkwardly, "Your eyes are beautiful tonight."

She met his eyes, finally, startled by the desperate admission. Her scales flattened against her. Overtaken by emotion, she could do nothing but turn away from him, choking out what might be the last words she ever spoke to him.

"Goodbye, Spyro."

There were so many things that she wanted to say. That she couldn't say. This goodbye could not be more than it was. If this was the only thing that she could do to protect him, then so be it.

She'd sever their tentative newborn friendship cleanly and walk swiftly away before he could think to follow her. She would let the world swallow her up, back into the darkness from which she'd come. She'd never hurt anyone ever again.

Not if she could help it.

She wouldn't let herself become his enemy again.

She wouldn't be Malefor's pawn, or his prodigy. She would remove all usefulness from herself. Fade into the background. Flee.

The undergrowth tangled around her slim ankles, but she refused to let it slow her down. She jumped through clumps of thorns, hardly feeling them pierce the pads of her paws, and tripped over knotted roots rendered invisible by the darkness. There was no illusion of glory here; she was running away, no matter what she'd told Spyro.

The action was born of helplessness, but as she felt her consciousness suddenly slipping out from under her, she was absolutely certain that she had made the right choice, and finally – finally – shaped her own future.

This is the right choice.

She was twelve and she was cutting her wrists in thin, jagged lines with unbent staples and notebook wires while her parents screamed at each other just beyond her bedroom door. Her hands were shaking; the blood was running down her wrists and dripping onto her pajama pants. She didn't know how she would explain that later. She didn't remember what she had even put on before bed. She had school in the morning –

Cynder felt her eyes flutter briefly open as her mind jolted painfully back into her body. She realized dimly that she didn't know where she was. Her head ached fiercely. The safety of the Temple was a distant memory already – a pang of regret, and a note of rising panic made her wings flare out and she gasped as she felt the membrane tear against a jagged piece of branch.

She was thirteen, she was at a slumber party because anywhere was better than home, and there were boys there but her mother didn't know.

The boys leered at her chest even though it was covered, at her red bitten lips, and the girls smirked at her standing awkwardly in the corner in her baggy clothes, her out-of-season sleeves, her ratty red hair and her freckles.

Somebody produced a dozen cans of beer from a bulging backpack and they were passed around; she felt the cool metal in her warm palm and tried to take comfort in it even though the scent of booze made her shake. The other girls shoved her into the circle. An empty blue wine bottle pilfered from the recycling bin, lying on its side at the center.

"Seven minutes," Lynn reminded her snidely, holding up the wrong number of fingers. She's too intimidated by all of this to say anything. She puts on a brave face, though, curls her lip and flips her hair as she's trained herself to do.

"Only seven?" she said. She had no idea what they'd do for that long, trapped among the musty coats. A stale, fearful taste coats her tongue at the thought. (Or maybe that was just the beer.) She hated closets. She hated the dark. She hated the way her mother sounded when she cried, on the phone and under her father's hands, and when she came back from the hospital without her baby bump, staring at her hands as if she could still see the blood.

She hated men, for all the things they did, and she hated boys, too – but the way they looked at her was addictive.

And this was still better than home.

Anything. She'd do anything. She'd prove her worth. She just couldn't go home tonight.

The boy's name was Jake, and he shoved his tongue in his mouth instead of asking for hers. The closet slammed shut behind them and she felt her throat seize with panic, silencing her, not that he was waiting for her to speak. He wasn't interested in talking.

"Relax," he said, reaching around to make an embarrassing attempt and unhooking her bra. And the worst part is that she didn't think he meant to be mocking.

Men, they were just like this, she thought. They had to be. Because otherwise, somebody would do something. Stop them.

The only thing she could think as he undressed her like a limp Barbie doll was that she was eternally grateful that it was too dark for him to see her scars.

When she regained consciousness, dawn was breaking pale and pink through the trees. With a groan, Cynder forced herself to her feet – she wobbled on her sore legs, her wings dragging on the ground, and searched through desperate bleary eyes for any kind of shelter.

The absence of Spyro already twisted around her heart like constricting vines, but she resolutely ignored it. She was in enough pain – she didn't need to dwell on things like that, relationships she'd ruined before she ever even had a choice in the matter.

She found her shelter in the form of a fallen log, hollowed over the years no doubt by one of the tribes that had gone in search of new land to settle with the news of her approach.

It was damp inside, but the moss softened the bare wood just enough, and Cynder fell into an exhausted dreamless sleep practically the moment she tucked herself in against it.

Cynder wondered uneasily how long she had slept. She had no one that she could ask, and the woods remained silent and sun-dappled as she wandered warily down what she suspected was a deerpath in search of water to drink – she was terribly thirsty, and terribly lonely on top of that.

It was clearly daytime, wherever she was now – late afternoon if she had to guess – and she felt deeply, utterly refreshed in a way that she hadn't managed in weeks. The log that she had woken in had been perfectly cool and shady; the forest was shaded as well, but the heat seemed to rise off of everything, and Cynder found herself regretting her decision to start her trek while the sun was still high and hot in the sky. The earth was beginning to slant downward, and she could only hope that it was leading her into a valley. Valleys meant water.

It might have been days… maybe even a week, though she really hoped not. She suspected that even if the creatures here could speak to her they wouldn't have much of a sense of time, and even then they probably wouldn't want to speak to her.

She could have sworn that the squirrels were eyeing her nervously from the corners of their beady eyes as they scampered from branch to branch.

Okay… Maybe I'm projecting. A little bit, she thought to herself with a quiet sigh.

Any noise was muted by the thickness of the moss underfoot. The wide trunks of the evergreen trees seemed to absorb the sounds of her humming along with the chatter of the small creatures and insects, leaving her feeling lonelier than she'd been in quite a long time. The long shadows that fell across her path like rifts deepened as the day wore on, though they didn't seem to be providing any real relief from the heat. She grew more and more curious, until she couldn't take it anymore. She had to try again.

"Okay," she said, out loud this time. She stopped in the center of the shadow of a tall pine and glanced around for anything that might trigger her abilities to spontaneously begin working. Spyro had it so easy… "Okay. Ignitus said that I should be able to…"

With her eyes closed and her mind as clear as she could make it, she focused on what she could remember – Ignitus' wise old face peering down at her as he spoke of what her mother could do, what she had been born to do, and Cyril's lilting voice gently telling her to meditate. Wrap the shadows around you, she heard Ignitus' voice tell her. With a pang, she realized that she missed him already, and that if she were ever to see him again the sad look in his eyes would probably be the end of her.

Focus, she chided herself. Feel the shadows… gather them up. She sucked in a sharp breath through her nose as she extended her mental presence tentatively outwards, as Cyril had tried to describe, searching for anything that felt familiar.

There was something there, something vaguely comforting in the surrounding dimness. It throbbed weakly, a second heartbeat beside her own. Convexity flashed briefly before her eyes. Cynder swallowed and held her breath, her dry throat spasming in protest as she narrowed her focus down to that elusive affinity – it danced just out of her reach, whispering and tickling at the edges of her consciousness but never letting her touch it.

"Come on," she whispered, visualizing the crystallized boundary in her mind and pushing past it. It shattered into a thousand razor-sharp pieces that rained among the thorns and the wreckage of her past self, resonating through her like shrapnel through honey, slow-motion. The shadows fled back from her as if frightened. She leapt after them, hyperventilating, and they flitted away like a swarm of tiny gnats, whispering and taunting her.

"Damn it!" she shouted. Her voice rang through the wood like a battle cry, startling a small flock of birds into the air with indignant squawks. She hardly heard them, searching desperately back through the crevices of her mind, but to no avail. They wouldn't let her close enough to so much as graze them.

The thorny back part of her brain began to ache from the strain. Too damaged after all, she thought bitterly.

The branches thinned above her as she stalked down the path, still burning with disappointment and shame. The sun was descending rapidly toward the horizon like a falling star, but it was still unbearably hot to be walking out in the open. Cynder wondered how long she'd been walking. Her failed experiment had to have taken some time; she'd woken late, but she'd hardly stopped at all otherwise, and most importantly she still had no idea where she was.

I wonder if Ignitus had a map lying around anywhere that I could have nicked… she wondered idly. Her thirst was really starting to distract her.

A cloud passed over the sun for a few blessed moments and Cynder groaned appreciatively as she shook out her scales, wings flaring out to catch the slight breeze before it could escape. It caught her surprisingly hard. With a yelp, she was sent tumbling down the hill and into another prickly patch of undergrowth. As she rolled over and tried to find her footing again, she blinked. Is that…?

The gurgle of running water was unmistakable and very close – she scrambled upright and pushed her way through a cluster of low, thick bushes. She groaned out loud at the sight of the silver stream threading through the undergrowth. A deer straightened up from where it had been leaning down to drink, alarmed at the sight of her, and galloped away in fright when she picked her way over to join it. She couldn't bring herself to feel badly about it. Any prey animal would be frightened of a predator, right?

Thank the Ancients. She leaned down and took a long drink, willing herself not to gulp. Her claws flexed pleasurably, sinking into the damp earth.

It was unlike her, she realized when she sat back up and stepped away to survey the small area, to not have thought about something like this when she planned her flight from the Temple. She had been a general for years, marching platoons of ape soldiers through every imaginable terrain as she conquered more and more land. Dante's Freezer had been the most unpleasant, and the most inconvenient – she had been young still, and inexperienced, and it had taken her nearly two weeks to navigate the unruly bunch of apes to the heart of the ice caves without freezing or starving them to death. Regardless of what powers Malefor had granted Gaul, the apes couldn't live on the energy of Spirit Crystals alone like she could.

She had plenty of experience scouting out routes from the air, and in surviving the harshest conditions. But maybe that was all behind her. She had lost her intimidating size and all of her powers – why not her learned skills, as well?

The thought was disheartening, but it was hard to feel anything but peaceful standing beside the shining stream. A cloud passed briefly over the sun, and Cynder eyed the water with growing curiosity – it still shone just as brightly as it had with the sunlight glinting on its surface, unrelentingly silver as though it had absorbed the light of the moons. Her tongue probed around the inside of her mouth, searching for the taste of venom.

"It's beautiful," she said softly to herself. Her voice was already becoming rough with disuse; she struggled not to dwell on what it might sound like weeks or months from now, when she'd finally be able to stop travelling. Maybe.

The stream was beautiful, in an ethereal sort of way that left Cynder feeling unworthy in more than one way. She stared at it for a long time and paced along its muddy banks as she deliberated.

Finally, she took one sharp, confident step into the gentle current. It lapped around her ankle and made a happy babbling noise. Tiny brown minnows parted from their schools and darted around her paw on their way downstream, barely bothered. Nothing else happened, though, except that she was gripped with a powerful, soothing sensation running coolly down the length of her spine.

"Okay…" she murmured, lowering her other front paw into the water and shivering pleasantly. "Not poison. Something else."

Wild magic wasn't completely uncommon. Cynder had spent a good chunk of her life as a general searching out sites with enough of it to power her crystals – Dante's Freezer, Tall Plains, Munition's Forge, among dozens of others that she'd considered and subsequently rejected. She forced her paranoia down with a small, exasperated sigh and padded into the center of the stream, all four of her paws planted in the loose silt.

There's nothing weird going on here, she told herself sternly. The woods were much friendlier than she'd expected them to be after weeks of nothing but bad news brought to the Temple from afar. You're just looking for excuses.

Whether that was true or not, she knew that she had to keep moving. There may not be apes here now, but they were bound to be on patrol throughout the Realms now, organizing and preparing. If what Ignitus said was true, they'd especially be on the lookout for herself and Spyro; if she managed to put enough distance between herself and the Temple, maybe they'd forego any attack they had planned in favor of bringing her back to their new headquarters.

With a sense of renewed purpose, she walked with the current down the center of the stream.

There had always been Spirit Crystals in relative abundance, as far as Cynder could remember. Practically everywhere. They sprung out of earth, ice, and ash without any apparent difficulty, wild and perfectly common, of no use to any other creature until Malefor had let the apes in on the secret to harnessing their power. Concurrent Skies had been perhaps a bit oversaturated, and the Temple as well – there was the entire garden, well-tended again now that the Guardians had returned to their ancestral home to see to them, and a seemingly endless stockpile of shards stored away in chests and dark, forgotten storerooms riddled throughout the many twisting underground corridors; but as a terrifying mutant she had traveled all over these Realms, and she had never gone hungry before.

But she couldn't for the life of her seem to find any in this empty, untouched wood.

"You don't know how lucky you are," she muttered, glowering at a bushy-tailed young squirrel that was stuffing fallen acorns into its cheeks on the forest floor far below her. As she drew up nearer to it, it froze, and without even pausing to stare up at her it abandoned its task and streaked up the nearest tree trunk into the furthest branches.

Cynder knew herself to be a natural hunter, but the thought of swallowing an innocent squirrel now filled her with stomach-quivering revulsion. And it wouldn't help her in the long run, she reasoned. Dragons could sustain themselves on fleshfood for short periods of time, if they stayed close to the earth, grounded themselves… but not indefinitely. She had seen others waste away before her eyes, prisoners denied access to Spirit for months at a time.

Perhaps that meant she was weak or spoiled, as it had only been days since her last feeding. But it was still an unappetizing thought. She shuddered and redoubled her efforts, winging low through the branches and peering semi-desperately through the undergrowth for any little glimmer.

I don't think I could do that. Starve. She thought desolately, guilt dredging up from the depths of her mind again.

Truth be told, she had never known much about dragons aside from the fact that she was one, and so was her Master. Gaul had instructed her with only as much information as he felt was absolutely necessary, which had largely turned out to be… nothing substantial, or even accurate, as far as she could tell from her time recuperating at the Temple.

He'd taught her to read the symbols etched into stone and gold in the cities she laid waste to. He'd taught her to be cruel. He'd taught her to give in to her worst thoughts and impulses, and declare the wreckage in the name of her Master.

He'd taught her that dragons were despicable, that she was the only one of any use – not because she was special but because Malefor had decreed it, and nothing more.

A pulse of acrid anger made her claws flex impatiently into the dirt. She glimpsed her furious reflection in the gleaming water to her left – she looked absolutely terrifying in a way that she'd thought she never could again. The pale markings on her forehead gleamed in the moonlight like they'd been brushed on by some benevolent spirit, pearly and almost beautiful against the dark of her scales, but her eyes glowed green and too-intense in the night and illuminated her face just enough to make it look pointed and deadly again. Her tail was lashing viciously again. (She suspected it was becoming a bad habit, but as she wasn't planning on ever socializing again she couldn't quite motivate herself to try to curb it.) She looked like a smaller version of the deadly mercenary she'd been only several weeks ago, furious and ready to take it out on the next unfortunate being to cross her path.

Abruptly, she could see what the woodland creatures were running from when they saw her coming.

Oh. Her mouth pulled into a forlorn frown. Evidently, her reputation preceded her.

It felt more awful than she'd expected it to. As much as she hated herself every moment she was conscious, and as much as she still dwelt on the things she'd done – forests she'd burned in her senseless rages, creatures that she'd bitten and bled to death to satisfy her Aether-fueled bloodlust – something about being here, vulnerable and alone in the moonlit woods, shook her to the core. Remorse coiled hard and bitter in her grumbling stomach.

The moons watched her balefully, but Cynder shifted her focus to the stars, which twinkled with far less judgement. She gave a quiet sigh as she thought of that night that she'd spent with Spyro in the Temple gardens, surrounded by the stars and the gentle glow of the Crystal clusters.

He'd looked at her with so much raw empathy that she'd almost believed that he could understand the confused thoughts that had whirled through her ravaged mind. Her paws were beginning to hurt – she was unsure how long she'd been walking, only that the night seemed to stretch on unnaturally long and she was beginning to think she'd never see the light again.

The stars were the same but they seemed colder now. Unreachable. Cynder gazed up at them longingly, and heard Ignitus' voice like a ghost whispering into her ear.

There are legends, going back thousands of years… that the black dragons could travel between realms.

Again, the hideous tainted visions of the Dark Realms returned to the forefront of her mind. Fear rippled through her from snout to tail-tip; but she forced herself to focus, examining them for the first time since she had woken up safe and small again.

At the time she had been too weakened and frightened, she realized, to process any of what she'd seen. Malefor truly was gruesome, warped beyond any redemption, and he didn't seem to know it – or perhaps he didn't care.

The Dark Realms themselves had given her the impression of infinite, cavernous despair, barely contained, full right up to the seams with aimless, poignant hatred seemingly for sport. Fear had asphyxiated her the moment she'd passed through the barrier. There appeared to be no sky and no solid earth to stand on, at least from where she had entered: the open space was black and violet, like some sickening imitation of her hide and Spyro's stripped away from their bones and twisted together into something monstrous. Jagged rips had torn the glistening fabric of reality here and there, revealing slivers of hundreds, thousands, countless other worlds – she could only hope that none of them were as terrible as this one, though the muted unearthly screeching that had emitted from the one nearest her was demoralizing.

Some secondary, subconscious part of her had wanted desperately to prize them the rest of the way open, to slip through just to see… to get lost in the folds of the universe, to escape her Master, escape her own guilt, to learn what lies beyond the Dragon Realms. Malefor's looming crimson-streaked eyes had been the first thing she'd seen, though, and they'd stolen every last infinitesimal scrap of her petrified attention – and even now, just thinking about it, she felt her lungs heave anxiously as though they expected any moment to take a wrong step and stumble back into that horrible place, even though to her knowledge Malefor was no longer confined there.

Now he was probably lurking, winging about Convexity poisoning everything he touched… biding his time. Waiting for Gaul to finish what Cynder had faithfully started.

Her skull was beginning to feel too small once more. A throbbing had started at the base of it again, pounding in time with the pangs of her anxiety, escalating a notch a minute. She wondered again if it was hunger or just fear that wracked her body today.

The starlight no longer filtered through the fog settling bleakly over her thoughts. It had thickened to become a dense, impenetrable mass of bad thoughts and negative energy, sapping the last of her strength. Her body was beginning to feel distressingly weak. There were no Crystals here – no Crystals in this entire forest! She'd chosen the only path with no visible sign that she'd ever be able to survive here – unless the Crystals here were disguised as rocks, and she was just too stupid to figure it out, she was going to starve!

She was bitterly wondering why she hadn't had the presence of mind to ask Ignitus about types of Spirit Crystals, or where they grew, or why – about anything, ANYTHING that might have been useful in a situation like this, where survival was her first priority, Ancients help her she had no common sense, did she? – when the racing of her pulse exploded behind her eyes and the world fell sharply away from around her.

Cynder staggered blindly backward as she recognized the signs of another lapse, lurching towards the ground in the hopes that she could save herself from another nasty fall. She barely felt her head thud against the dirt.

The journey to the office at the end of the entrance hall had been a blur.

She had heard her name on the loudspeaker, been shepherded out of class with the eyes of dozens of others at her back – even as she took small, unsteady steps past peeling lockers and shredded scraps of flyers, she could feel them multiplying. She clenched her scrap of notebook paper into a ball in her fist, forgetting suddenly the obsessive need that had gripped her, the half-finished sketch of two indistinct winged shapes dancing together. They disappeared from her mind and left her alone to face her apparent judgment.

The whole school could be looking at her for all she knew. She was too scared to look back.

Her wrists burned. She swore she felt them bleeding, wouldn't dare check.

Not now. Not here.

Too many eyes.

The fluorescent light felt scorching. Sweat beaded along her spine and soaked her temples, weighing down her dirty hair. Had she showered last night? At all this week? She couldn't remember, couldn't think of anything but the algebra homework that needed to be done before fifth period, please won't they just let her go back to class so that she could sink down in her seat and try to work out the problems under the cover of her desk, please, she couldn't afford to fail another class –?

This man was frightening. He shouldn't be – she knew that, somewhere in the back of her muddled mind – he shouldn't be scary, didn't mean to be, she shouldn't be scared, so why was she shaking like –

"April," he was saying, looming over her in the worst possible way. She thought of the man at home, the looming figure, his waiting fury. Her hands shook. "Your mother called. She asked me to talk to you. April?"

His hand closed gently around her shoulder. Her eyes snapped shut as fear coursed through her, blistering her lungs and pouring out through her mouth. She couldn't stop it. She couldn't feel her lips.

"I'm FINE!" she shrieked, and turned to slam back into the door. She stumbled out through the office, her face hot and wet, her eyes still screwed shut as she desperately staggered out into the hall, towards the main doors, toward freedom.

But there was no freedom. Nowhere was safe. She was trapped, trapped and terrified – there was someone waiting for her wherever she went, looking at her, judging her. Wanting to know what's wrong. Wanting to punish her. To hurt her.

She could hurt herself. She'd proven that! The green stone on the back of her ring finger felt too hot and she twisted it anxiously as she fled into the parking lot and disappeared into the sea of student vehicles.

Why wouldn't everyone just leave her alone?

Her first thought was one of extreme annoyance: the loose dirt that had somehow come to coat her snout in her sleep was unbearable.

Cynder sneezed violently, forced to sit up as a cloud of dust spread around her and got into her eyes. She blinked furiously and scrambled backwards. Already, her head was spinning, desperately grabbing for the remnants of the dream that were already slipping back into the dark depths of her unconscious mind. All that she retained was the strange lingering image of her eyes reflected on the back of a small piece of metal.

It was useless, she realized with a sinking feeling. These couldn't be anything like Spyro's prophetic purple dragon dreams… It seemed that she wasn't meant to remember them, no matter how disturbing they were.

So why am I having them?

Taking a deep breath, she held it in the center of her chest, counting backwards from ten. She had to reign in her temper. She couldn't afford to be impatient, couldn't allow herself to lose control – she had no idea who might take it from her if she loosened her grip even a little. Malefor, Gaul? Some darker, more sinister creature?

She'd been a tool for too long already. Whatever these dreams were – whoever might be trying to communicate with her, or more likely distract her – Cynder was determined to retain her newfound autonomy to the end.

The morning was, once again, oddly silent. As she lifted herself gingerly from the ground and shook the dirt out from the miniscule scales along her wings, stretching the membranes to their maximum – her wingtips brushed the bark of the nearby trees and frightened her half to death.

Her heart thudded loudly in her ears. She scowled at herself. She could feel her pulse skittering in her throat, all the way down the length of her neck.

If I'm so terrifying, then why am I the one flinching because of a plant?

Her sour inner monologue followed her persistently through the day, no matter what she did to ignore it. For hours she followed the silver river – at a distance, because her paws had been soggy from the previous day's trek through the mud and she found the feeling of swollen, mushy skin to be wholly repulsive – with no end in sight, no other creatures to even pretend to converse with, and a pounding headache that was only getting worse, and which was making her increasingly paranoid that this was the beginning of a much more gruesome break in the depths of her mind. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't stop the persistent little thoughts from sneaking in through the cracks she'd imagined there.

If Spyro were looking for you, they whispered traitorously, then he would have caught up to you by now…

But she didn't want Spyro to come looking for her. Or… that's what she'd told him, wasn't it?

But has that ever stopped him before?

Cynder scowled up into the foliage, failing spectacularly on focusing on the dull ache of growing hunger rather than continuning this ridiculous conversation with herself. He's being respectful. He's never been anything but.

Or maybe he's sick of you. You're tiresome, and he's got more important things to focus on… More worthy dragons to save…

Her inner demons were writhing victoriously already, and as she fumbled for a rebuttal, she faltered. She'd considered all of these things already, only in varying stages of half-consciousness.

And what if they were right?

Maybe he's found out about the dreams, they suggested. He knows that you're deranged. You're still broken! You're like a broken pot whose pieces have just been stacked together again. You'll fall back apart at any moment.

A loud crack and a surge of pain forced her back to reality. Her tail was still gesticulating wildly, bleeding slightly from the tender spot where it had made contact with the nearest tree trunk. From the looks of the dented bark, cracked and falling to pieces, she had gotten off lightly.

Reluctantly, Cynder padded over to the muddy shores of the stream and gingerly turned around to dip her tail into the cool, gentle current. She tipped her head back and sighed, silently but with fervor.

He understood me, though, she thought feebly. She desperately banished the larger-by-the-minute image of Malefor's ghastly lamp-like eyes from her thoughts. She was sure they'd be back. No one has ever understood me before.

And no one will again.

Unbeknownst to her, the shadows of the branches overhead twisted inwards to pool around her where she stood.

Dawn the next morning, Cynder awoke feeling incredibly drained; more than she could even have imagined, these past weeks in which she'd thought she could feel no worse than she already did. Her skull felt tender all around beneath her scales, as if someone were trying to press the sides inward. The sky was a kaleidoscope of hazy colors that she couldn't make sense of for long moments of still-fading terror.

Whether it was the nightmares, another symptom of her insanity, or her own hunger, she didn't really care – she just wanted it to stop.

Cynder silently, futilely berated herself for not even thinking of nourishment when she had concocted this half-witted escape plan of hers. It just hadn't occurred to her that she couldn't run to the other side of the planet without some kind of nourishment. Perhaps she'd expected to just up and die the moment she was clear of the Temple grounds. That certainly would have been easier than this.

Clearly, she was just as naïve as Spyro.

The thought was disproportionately bitter, and it unsettled her enough that she forced herself to sit up. The world tilted oddly for a moment before settling again in seemingly the wrong way; and she found herself faced once more with the prospect of marching aimlessly through an increasingly dark, damp forest with no idea when she'd ever emerge.

With that in mind, it was challenging to force one paw in front of the other. But she did it. The grove was, at least, thick and refreshingly cool. The silver river had widened dramatically last night when she'd finally settled down to sleep (or, rather, collapsed) and she would now have to take a running leap and glide across if she wanted to cross it. The earth remained mossy and richly moist, sticking between her toes and leaving dark debris on the tips of her wings where they brushed the ground beside her, limp.

What if this is all for nothing? she thought dejectedly. I can't go back now. I can never see any of them again…

No. No, that was no way to think – she'd still pose a threat if she rolled over and gave in now. She had to do this, for the dragons that she'd come to care for, for all of the creatures she'd already harmed too much. She narrowed her focus to that one tender, painful thought and pushed onwards, stumbling through the undergrowth. She managed to drag herself perhaps another mile down the length of the river in the next hour, barely awake and unable to comprehend anything but the labored in-out of her breath and the growing ache in the pads of her paws. The water was threaded with luminous purple, almost the same shade as Spyro's eyes, though the possibility that she was hallucinating it lingered at the hazy edges of her mind.

(She didn't mind. It was, as hallucinations went, fairly comforting – the weak, pining part of her fixated on that color like a lifeline.

Things would be so much more bearable if she'd just let Spyro come with her…)

But the exhaustion was tangible and becoming more overwhelming by the minute. There were no animals in sight anymore – they had all begun to give her a wide berth the day before, and by the time she woke this morning the woods were entirely silent. There were no Crystals, no deer… She fixed her eyes desperately on a particularly ancient-looking tree barely visible in the distance. It was rose gold and alluring in the soft glow of the still-rising sun.

If I can make it to that tree, she decided. Then I'll stop and rest. Briefly.

It was perhaps a bit too optimistic to expect that she wouldn't just fall asleep again and wake up just as tired and more hopeless by half. She had hardly been awake at all, and already she was swaying with every halting step. Nevertheless, Cynder closed her eyes and forced her legs to move mechanically, feeling the coolness rising off the river to her left.

Her eyes were still closed tightly in concentration when she felt it. The far-off pulse of a Spirit, calling to her – it beckoned her with great, ocean-deep concern, as if the Ancients could feel her desperation and were extending their wings out toward her to pull her closer. But that was ludicrous, and Cynder couldn't breathe for several moments as she struggled to understand why the Ancients would give a damn about her. She who had wiped out half her own race. But the feeling didn't lessen – if anything, as she took one more stumbling step forward, it grew exponentially. A sense of overpowering tenderness stole into her chest and spread out through her veins, horribly at odds with her guilty conscience.

The emotional rebound burned at the base of her skull and in the back of her throat, bringing tears to sting at the corners of her eyes.

She refused to examine the intrusive feelings at all, too thoroughly convinced by her own irredeemability, but no matter how hard she tried to ignore it her eyes still snapped open when she felt the heat spreading across her back as the trees receded and gave way to a small, sloping clearing. The sun glared down at her, much higher in the sky. Her eyes found the source of the incessant pull, helplessly admiring the exquisite way that the light glinted off it.

Later, she would think back to this moment, furious with herself and trying to understand how she had let her guard down so thoroughly. She had trained so hard. But it was hardly her fault, in the state she was in. The first glimpse of a Crystal in days made her careless, giddy – she raced to it at a gallop, similar to the one she had mocked Spyro for many times.

It wasn't just a Crystal. It was the first bit of hope she'd had in days.

Maybe she had done the right thing. Maybe she could survive on her own for long enough to get away – she would run to the other side of the earth, to another Realm entirely if she had to, following the call of the stars that knew her ancestors, who would know how to help her. How to tuck her away in some secret place where no one else would touch her and be corrupted.

Even if it was all for the sake of dying well and truly alone.

The Crystal, when she first rubbed her flank firmly against it, appeared different from the ones she had grown accustomed to at the Temple gardens. It reminded her of the Crystal beds grown wild around her base at Concurrent Skies (though she loathed to even think about the place she'd festered for so long in isolation): the planes of the center crystal were smooth and untarnished, almost transparent but for a livid green sheen, but stalagmite-like protrusions stuck out at extreme angles from the base of it, making it very difficult to get close to.

It was as if the poison in the river had seeped into the Spirits, as well, but Cynder was undeterred. Poison, she reasoned, had long been her friend.

She stepped neatly over each of the protrusions as she wound her way around one way, then turned and rubbed against it with the opposite flank tentatively. For all she knew, she'd drop dead the next moment – that wasn't the worst thing, was it? – and Spyro would have one less hopeless thing to worry about. One less evil in the world to take on… But the cool energy that seeped soothingly in between and beneath her scales didn't feel toxic, and Cynder wasn't sure that she would have minded if it was. She had been weak for so long now. She couldn't take another day of it.

She hardly registered the sharp rustling in the undergrowth behind her, too busy pressing her face eagerly to the crystal. She could feel magic singing along her spine and to the very tips of her wings, to the ends of her claws which had sunk deep in the soil beneath her in pleasure. She had never been this hungry before, so incapacitated, her nerves were all on fire all at once as they reignited, restored –

"Well, well, well. What have we here?" There was a loud, sloppy bark of laughter behind her and a squawk – too close.

Alarmed, Cynder spun around in time to jump back away from the merciless thrust of the hulking creature's sword. But it wasn't silver – she screeched and flapped her wings twice, hard, attempting to dodge a second time as the blunt wooden end of the weapon slammed into her chest and left her winded, reeling sideways with her wings still flapping wildly.

Before she could take another gasping breath and try again, she felt the presence of several more assailants approaching her from behind. Her tail lashed instinctively. She wanted to turn and make quick work of the weaklings at her back, but she didn't dare turn away from the leering, slobbering black-and-white furry beast towering over her. That one, she knew, would hit hard.

"Who are you?" she shouted. "Get away! I'm warning you!"

The razor-tip of her tail whipped across the abdomens of what felt like three underfed henchmen, all of them bony yet broad-chested. They were larger than apes but less coordinated, although she was willing to bet that they were just as dangerous to her in her weakened state.

More importantly, though, they were carrying something long and thick between them.

Rope.

They meant to capture her.

She shuddered and flared her wings again, straining to find an air current that she could use to take off. There were too many creatures here, though, crowding her and blocking the wind from the cliff, and the trees were no help.

"Oh, it's not important who we are. But I know who you are." The creature bent down and jabbed the wooden end of it's sword into her shoulder, expelling a reeking laugh in her face. On one shoulder perched a drab little brown bird, with beady, malicious black eyes, and on the other there was a puce-colored bird of the same type. The puce one clicked it's beak in laughter – with an unpleasant start, she realized that the voice wasn't issuing from the mutt shoving it's snout into hers, but from the bird.

"The Terror of the Skies, wasn't it? Cynder the Black Dragon!" It sounded horribly pretentious, peering curiously at her tiny new form. She did her best not to tremble, still backing minutely away with her tail lashing behind her, keeping the other creatures at bay for the moment. "What an honor!"

"I'm not anymore," she protested, although when she heard it it hardly made sense. Her head was suddenly pounding in the same way it used to when Gaul cracked his whip in her direction. "I'm different now –" She sucked in a sharp breath, unable to stop the rest from tumbling out. "Don't call me that!"

The moment the words left her, she froze. The implications left her breathless.

Can I really be different?

The ropes swung over her head in a flash, and she came to her senses just a moment too late to escape – it tightened around her from both sides, pulled taut until her wings were crushed painfully to her sides. A growl ripped from her throat. She threw herself against the pressure without hesitation, panic rising to fill her gut and climb her throat – this wasn't something she had practiced! She hadn't trained for this!

A flash of memory splintered her concentration, throwing her violently backwards in time. Chains. The manacles around her slim neck and slimmer joints pulled painfully as she strained to flap her wings. They hurt – she was too small, too young.

She cried out wordlessly, tears brimming in her eyes, but Gaul only raised his whip and laughed.

"Try harder!" he snarled. "You're useless to your Master if you can't even fly!"

The sting of the whip seemed to suck all of the air from her lungs, splitting her open across her back from her right flank to the left side of her neck. She wailed.

"I can't do it!"

"What kind of dragon can't fly?" The whip cracked again, and she felt blood welling up through the torn membrane of her underdeveloped wing. Gaul was grinning sadistically; she had to close her eyes, trembling all over as she tried to focus. "Unless you aren't a dragon at all – in that case, I'm sure that he wouldn't mind if I killed you. Shall I ask him?"

She sobbed and beat her wings again, hard and clumsy. Her paws briefly left the ground.

The clearing came back into focus so suddenly that her body jerked with the emotional momentum. She was trembling.

Stop it, she inwardly berated herself. Don't let him think you're afraid.

Hardly a moment seemed to have passed since her outburst – she was standing in exactly the same spot, she deduced, and no one else had moved either. But the talkative bird ignored her as if she hadn't spoken at all.

On closer inspection, it didn't even entirely seem to be a bird – its wings were featherless, scaly and thin, not so unlike her own. It had a long, kinked tail with a wild tuft of what appeared to be fur at the end, though she had yet to see it move. It looked broken. Its skin was leathery and dull, and a long, poorly healed scar stretched across its front like a warning. I'm small, but you'd do well not to assume that I'm helpless, it seemed to whisper.

No, it wasn't an ordinary bird. But it certainly wasn't related to a dragon.

"You're quite a bit smaller than I remember you…" It cocked it's head and considered her with a dark glint in its eye that made Cynder's scales flatten. She bared her teeth, wings struggling uselessly against her bonds of their own accord. That, more than anything, seemed to entertain it. "But isn't this delicious! Don't worry – you won't be too much of a disappointment. I'm sure Arborick won't even notice the difference!"

The other bird laughed raucously; there was a smattering of uncertain titters from the crewbeasts surrounding her. It left her wondering if they even understood what their apparent leader was saying, or if they were nothing more than trained pets who recognized a signal when they heard it. She forced herself not to turn and glance at them, tucking away the unfamiliar name for later pondering.

No time for pondering now, she realized with dismay. She was well and truly trapped.

The bird pecked sharply at its host's neck and the poor beast's eyes watered as it obediently sheathed its sword and reached for the ropes. Her captors gladly gave them up; they were eyeing her nervously, cowed by the crackling magic still faintly swirling around her from her interrupted feeding.

"Come on then, men," the bird commanded with far more swagger than a creature of its diminutive size should have been able to muster. Cynder glowered at it, but it wasn't even looking at her anymore even as it tugged the rope sharply and forced her to stumble in the direction that it had come from, down the hill and toward the distant sea. A rapidly growing sense of renewed helplessness was threatening the edges of her vision.

Wait – she knew this feeling. She stopped dead in her tracks, vision already swimming.

For Ancient's sakes – not again! Why now?!

Hopefully they wouldn't just drag her through the undergrowth. She felt herself falling, just as the bird twisted back to look at her smugly again, and caught its eyes narrowing just before she fell unconscious.

Numb numb numb. There was nothing left to feel.

She'd spent fifteen miserable years enduring the screaming, the begging, the sobbing, the bruises. He never relented. She was practically an adult, she could get a job – she could quit school, she was going to end up failing out at this rate anyway. She could LEAVE.

But her mother wouldn't leave.

She felt her mouth pull into a deep, quivering grimace as she tripped down another flight of ugly brown carpeted stairs with her purchase in hand.

Her mother was a fucking idiot.

She tightened her death grip on the gauze she'd wrapped around her bicep, though the blood was already seeping warm and sticky and too-much between her fingers, and crept past the laundry room and through the door at the end of the poorly lit hall. The garage at the lowest level of the building was always eerie at this hour, all cracked cement and pale, flickering fluorescent lights that maintenance had neglected to change for the past four months despite the complaints. Empty bottles that had once contained cheap liquor and cheaper beer littered the floor on top of dark stains that could be just about anything. The vehicles were, for the most part, not in much better shape than the building itself, and she had no problem tucking herself in between two of them and curling into a ball, blankly facing the metal doors.

The plastic gallon jug clutched in her other hand was only half full, but it had to be enough. Had to. She swallowed, throat horribly thick and dry, and fumbled one-handed with the cap. Her hands were sweating. It took her an impossibly long time to get it off.

This is the right choice, she thought without conviction. It was the only choice. Or at least, the only one that had any appeal anymore.

"Bottoms up," she croaked at the empty space.

Before the smell could hit her, she tipped it recklessly back and swallowed a foul mouthful.

It was undoubtedly poison, though that should have been obvious – antifreeze was not a beverage. It was an exit. Her exit. But regardless of how committed she'd been seconds ago, her throat was convulsing and her mind was a senseless whirl of panic and terror.

She choked and gagged, and without thinking threw it forcefully away from her and against the front tire of the car beside her; an alarm blared deafeningly through the garage, bouncing off the concrete and amplifying horribly until she was sure that the whole block could hear it. Her eyes spilled over again, still sore and swollen but unable to stop.

This wasn't right. This wasn't what she'd imagined. She couldn't stop gasping, clutching at her throat with both hands as she leaned over and gagged, spittle and blue liquid decorating splattering the floor beneath her. The meager contents of her stomach soon followed. Her arm was covered in blood now, the gauze lost somewhere on the ground with nothing to hold it to her gaping wounds. She struggled to remember where she had left the razor responsible – probably on her nightstand, where she had failed to leave a note. She couldn't find the right words to say, but she should have tried, she knew suddenly. The trembling had progressed to full-blown, violent shaking, she couldn't stop, couldn't stop –

Her mother wasn't going to leave. She'd just think this was her fault.

And she'd never, never leave.

Her vision was blurring and dimming now. Her ring seemed to gleam especially brightly, deep green beneath the spray of blue-tinted vomit on the back of her hands.

Oh God, she thought miserably, I fucked up.