A/N: This part is short too, but there's a lot going on here, so pay close attention! Cynder doesn't take to captivity very well. The end of the story is approaching, and a lot of the action will be happening in this part and the next.

The Half-Life of a Dragon Not Quite Purple

Part 4: Capture

The floor was literally rolling beneath her. Cynder woke already nauseated, sinking her claws into the creaking, shifting wood before she was even aware.

It wasn't immediately clear where she had been taken, but the ropes were gone and her wings were free, for which she was immensely relieved. The last thing that she remembered was making unfriendly eye contact with the leering bird-captain before she'd blacked out and resumed her series of frustrating mystical dreams. She wondered uneasily what he'd thought of her lapse.

Had she made any noises in her sleep? Could they even tell that she was dreaming, or did they think that she'd just passed out from exhaustion?

Maybe if they think that I'm psychotic they won't have any use for me, and they'll let me go, she thought hopelessly. There was every possibility that the beasts that had captured her had handed her right over to the apes, or any one of her numerous enemies – not for the first time, she regretted not trying harder to make some amends, even if it meant pestering the Guardians to escort her from the Temple grounds. Too many creatures had been harmed by her, lived in fear of her…

Regardless, she could only lie there feeling sorry for herself for so long. With what felt like a monumental effort, she steeled herself for the worst and peeled her eyes open, struggling to focus.

The cell they'd shoved her into was small – smaller than the storeroom back at the Temple, though instead of clutter it was full of absolutely nothing but dirt and dust. A fully grown dragon like Ignitus would never fit in such a space, and not for the last time Cynder bitterly missed the feeling of being big. There was no furniture to speak of. The walls in front of and behind her were solid planks, aged and scored from what appeared to be years of rowdy prisoners, who Cynder could only assume were about as willing as she was to be here. To her left, the wall was curved and a pitifully small half-round window let in enough daylight to illuminate the scuffed floorboards. To her right was another wall of wood, interrupted by an archway from which a dangerous-looking set of battered wooden bars descended into the floor. It had no visible knob or latch, and no hinges, which made Cynder distinctly uncomfortable. More so than she already was, anyway.

As the floor rocked again beneath her, she caught the sound of waves distantly slapping wood, and she blinked as it occurred to her that she must be on a ship.

Out at sea.

The thought should not have unsettled has as much as it did. She was, after all, a dragon – she could fly whatever distance it was from here to shore if she were pressed, although it might be exhausting, and there was no telling what sort of eyes the Dark Master might have in the sky now that she was no longer patrolling them for him.

It was just… She had never been very fond of water. It wasn't an element that Malefor had gifted her the ability to control, and the times she had been submerged had all been rather… traumatic. The idea of being surrounded by it, cold and wild, was not pleasant. She had no desire to find out if she'd retained her ability to swim.

The ship lurched suddenly, and she scrabbled with her claws on the wooden floor seeking some kind of purchase as she slid suddenly to one side of the little room. She must have made a noise, because moments later she heard heavy footsteps approaching her cell from what couldn't be more than twenty paces to the left. She hunkered down low into herself and listened carefully for any more clues as to what the rest of the ship might look like.

It wasn't surprising to find a slobbering mongrel on the other side of the bars, but it was still unpleasant. Cynder felt her wings rise, still folded, to shield her instinctively, her eyes narrowed into slits. A nervous gleam came to the Skavenger's eye – his clumsy white-furred paw hovered over the locking mechanism uncertainly.

"Yer awake," it said eventually, eyeing her as it might a docile bear: quiet and a just a tad fearful. "Skabb'll want to see yer."

"I don't want to see him unless he's opening this door and talking to me face to face," she hissed, almost surprised at the force of her own anger. She'd been free from her chains for long enough now that she'd gotten a taste for freedom, apparently. "You tell him that."

"Skabb doesn't take orders ver'well," it warned. "Ye'd be better off givin'im what he wants 'n not askin' questions." It looked her up and down again, as if confused – she could almost see the question forming on its face. How can something so small be so terrifying? She snorted. It must not have ever seen a dragon before. She spared a single amused thought for what its reaction might have been to her full size, months ago when she was at the peak of her borrowed power.

Pity. I would have given these ingrates something to be scared of.

Feeling spiteful, Cynder whipped her tail, knowing that it would gleam like steel in the dimness. "Funny… I don't take orders very well, either." She bared her teeth slightly in her own warning. "Tell him."

Warily, the pirate backed another step away from her door without ever having touched it. It almost seemed relieved. It was wearing a sweat-stained bandana similar to the one worn by one of the obnoxious little lizard-birds she'd met just before her capture, which only served to make her boil.

"I'll tell'im," it said, and then fled without a backwards glance.

Cynder wondered if she looked as demonic as she had that night in the forest, when her own reflection had startled her away from the water. She hoped so.

There was no way of knowing how soon the captain would deign to visit her again, so Cynder shook the feeling back into her legs as she stood and returned to her mental cataloguing. Again, she wished Spyro were here – this time if only because a second set of eyes and ears would be nice in a situation like this. She scrutinized the planks of the walls, frowning as she realized how many thin lines had been carved into the wood. She didn't understand several of the languages she was certain were present – she had only ever really learned to read and write in dragon and ape pictographs – but there were some that were large and clear with their intent, regardless of the specifics.

One prisoner had carved tally marks into the ceiling somehow – sixteen huge, clean gouges in the wood. Cynder shuddered to imagine what had happened to them.

Straining to hear even the tiniest creak out of the ordinary, she shuffled closer to the wooden bars and slowly stuck her snout through the gap. Her bitter nostalgia about her previous size evaporated to be replaced by gratefulness for her small, narrow face, because she managed to crane her neck and push her head most of the way through and into the hall. With a grimace and a twinge of pain, she managed to rotate it around one way and then the next, quickly taking stock of the long hall that seemed to stretch on forever, curving along the ship's sides.

There were rows of other barred-doors, placed at intervals so that, she guessed, none would be directly facing the others. The forced isolation of it was chilling, if only because it was something that the old her would have delighted in, had she any time or patience to build anything as extensive as this below-deck prison. For the umpteenth time since she'd woken, she wondered how large this ship really was. It appeared to be enormous already – what would she find if she ascended to the layer above this one? Was there more below?

How many other prisoners could there possibly be? She wondered.

The waves lapping against the side of the ship sounded more sinister than ever now. Cynder backed away from the door, wrinkling her nose, and sat back against the wall. The window above her head spilled sunlight weakly onto the floor where she'd just stood, pooling there like bright, false hope. There were gulls crying somewhere far overhead and she felt abrupt jealousy crawl hot into her stomach at the thought that other creatures were flying free, wheeling and soaring without a care when she was trapped down here by a bunch of mangy curs and their sassy little pets.

I could eat those things… I bet it would only take two bites, she thought petulantly, staring moodily through the wooden slats. She didn't know that it would really nourish her much, but it would be immensely satisfying. And she was nothing if not a hedonist, lately.

Only one if I was bigger.

She sat, tail curling tightly around her, for several hours before giving up and pacing about the small room again, agitated. Skabb clearly didn't think much of her challenge, if he'd even gotten it – she had her doubts that her messenger had even delivered her message. He'd been wary of her, but it was clear that he feared his brutal, brawny captain more. The sun was starting to dip and the light was disappearing, which told her that soon the endless night would be upon her, and she'd be alone in the dark once again.

She blinked. Endless… She'd forgotten about the lunar alignment in her loneliness, but it must be close now, surely? She could hardly remember how long ago she'd left the Temple. It had felt like half a lifetime, perhaps only because she missed them all so much, and hated herself even more than that… But it couldn't realistically have been more than a few days. A week? The moons had crept nearer and nearer each other these past days, until their edges grazed one another, and Cynder's scales rippled uneasily across her shoulder and down the length of her time with the unsettling realization that she may still be imprisoned when it happened.

Ignitus seemed to think that the night of the eclipse would be the night that evil ran rampant through the Realms.

Would she be running with it?

Cynder swallowed at the ghostly image that that conjured in her head. Even in her thoughts, her eyes gleamed eerily, empty of anything but Malefor's magic.

What was going to happen to her?

The waves lapped much more quietly against the boat in the nighttime, following the gentle ebb-and-flow of the twin moons each vying for their attention. Cynder listened to it morosely for a while, unable to sleep. She'd spent the remainder of the day alternately frustrated as she waited for the captain to appear, and anxiously anticipating another nightmare that had never come.

Evidently, Skabb had remained unimpressed by her veiled threats – which was reasonable, as he'd bested her once already, but it still rankled her to think that she was nothing but a joke to a creature so massive with so little brainpower. She had been on the ship at least a day, and she'd been visited only once more by a smaller and even more pathetic-looking deckhand whose bandana had been tied loose and incorrectly around their head. They'd thrown chunks of cooked meat through the slats, and Cynder had eaten them with ferocious hunger when they'd left her once more, but flesh had only taken the slightest edge off of her appetite.

She needed nourishment. She hadn't even been allowed to finish feeding on that lonely Crystal in the wood before she'd been forced back into captivity. The Apes, at least, would have understood that much, but it appeared that as fearsome as the Skavengers might be to other races, they had never encountered a real, live dragon before.

If they did know, however, then it was doubly cruel of them to keep her like this. Not that she thought they would care much for her wellbeing once they had gotten what they wanted from her… but it still wasn't clear what exactly that was.

The floorboards in the hall creaked so softly she barely heard them as another wave gently slapped the side of the ship nearest her cell.

The resentment bubbling recklessly up in her felt like poison, so familiar… For once, she allowed herself to take comfort in it. She'd thought before that poison had been her friend, hadn't she? Why should she be afraid of it now? Her gut churned uncomfortably, unused to being full up like this of the flesh of other creatures. She imagined their souls screaming and pawing pitifully at the walls of her stomach.

I always did have a morbid imagination… She sighed and lifted her head again to stare sightlessly out at the moons.

Earlier there had been some commotion as several Skavengers had bundled what she could only assume to be more unconscious prisoners down the stairs and into a cell, but to her knowledge it was nowhere near hers. They had disappeared down the hall and not returned, with or without the small form she hadn't been able to crane her neck high enough to see. She wondered if there was another exit. There must be – but she had little hope of scouting for it unless she could figure a way out of this cell.

There was another quiet creaking sound from the hall. The floorboards were a lot noisier at night, she thought unhappily. She was really beginning to loathe being on this ship. Seasickness did not even begin to cover it.

Cynder huffed noisily and tucked her snout into her wing, burning with irritation. It was several moments before she recognized the shuffling noise from the hall for what it was and her head shot back up, eyes prying apart the dark to focus on the cautious jut of a pink nose through the lower slats of the door.

"Ah, it is you," the creature said in a familiar cantankerous voice. She froze, recognizing the shape of the Manweersmall before he'd even stepped all the way out into the open. He wore the same hat that he had worn when she'd chained him beneath the volcano with the others. "Cynder… you are nearly as small as I am, now. A nice change!"

"Mole-Yair," she said uneasily, not daring to move so much as the tip of her tail in case he was hostile. She wouldn't blame him – her memories of her days as a terrifying beast were hazy for the most part, but she could clearly remember the shouting this one had given her as she'd personally dragged him by his ankles down to the mines. Her soldiers had wanted nothing to do with him, even armed to the teeth as they were. He had a very colorful vocabulary, for a Manweersmall… Most of them had been quite timid.

But that… might have been her fault. She gazed shamefully at the gouges in the ceiling.

Mole-Yair seemed unperturbed by their reunion. In fact, he seemed pleased to see her. "You'll be needing something to keep up your strength, hm?"

"What?" She refocused her eyes on him, startled. He was thrusting a small, weathered rucksack through the slats, holding it open to reveal a glimmering pile of glowing shards. Cynder was up and rushing forward before she even consciously knew what they were. She thrusted her snout into the bag and inhaled sharply, her chest heaving in a silent sob. The pieces were small and far from the potency she was used to, living at the Temple with its plentiful gardens, but with every breath she took she could feel the well of energy at the deepest, darkest center of her filling up, slow and wonderful.

"Thank you," she gasped after a long moment of frantic rubbing and panting. Mole-Yair said nothing; she could feel him watching her with his beady eyes, measuring her, but she couldn't bring herself to feel naked as she might have yesterday. "Thank you, thank you."

Desperation was not dignified. It felt cleansing, though, and humbling, and some masochistic part of Cynder almost missed the horrible feeling of starvation creeping in on the edges of her sanity. She drew her head back out of the bag eventually, blinking slowly as the world sharpened and righted itself around her. Ahh… that's right. She shook out her wings, which had begun to flutter with excitement, and finally looked up bashfully at her deliverer.

With a furtive glance around, Mole-Yair pulled the bag back through the slats carefully and snapped it shut. He lifted the hat from his head and stowed the bag beneath it – looking at him, amazingly, it was impossible to tell that anything had changed, and Cynder had to admire his skill at subterfuge. He finally spoke, leaning his snout through the bars again.

"There, that is better… Tell me," he said, somehow managing to lower his voice even more, until she swore that she could feel it vibrating in the pads of her paws. "How long have they had you here? When did they bring you?"

"I – I don't know." She was still too preoccupied with Mole-Yair's apparent lack of resentment towards her to think clearly. Her head felt cluttered and twisted around. "More than a day ago. Skabb is refusing to see me."

The Manweersmall raised one bushy eyebrow, cracking a grin. "I can't imagine why."

She grimaced and averted her eyes again sheepishly. It really is my own fault. "I don't think that he wants to hear what I have to say to him."

"Maybe it is a good thing then that I have not had the opportunity." Cackling, Mole-Yair withdrew his snout, and a thrill of fear at the idea of being left alone again brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them away furiously, though Mole-Yair didn't seem to notice. He was looking grayer around the snout than he had when she'd imprisoned him. She wondered how long the Manweersmalls had been here… hadn't Spyro freed them only just before their confrontation at Concurrent Skies?

"Mole-Yair," she said carefully, drawing nearer to the door despite herself to face him. He twitched his whiskers as though inexplicably pleased by this. "Where are we? Do you know who these – creatures – are?" She struggled to find the correct word to describe them and fell flat.

"You are on the Fellmuth," Mole-Yair said, a note of derision entering his voice. "It is an unreasonably large ship piloted by a brute called Skabb. But don't be fooled – he is a puppet to those filthy little birds that defecate on his shoulders all day long… If you want to take him down, I would eat those two first. I am sure that the bad taste that they would leave in your mouth would be worth it."

Cynder pulled a face, "I'll keep that in mind."

Where did you get those shards? She wanted to ask, but she wasn't sure where the boundaries between them might lie, or if that would be overstepping them somehow.

"There have been whispers from the other prisoners," Mole-Yair told her conspiratorially. "They say you are a spy sent to free us by the elder dragons." He scoffed, not unkindly. "I knew that the black dragon would never allow herself to be captured on purpose. You look like you have been trampled by a herd of stinking apes."

She had nothing to look at to judge whether or not this was true. But she didn't doubt it. She was only beginning to feel better, having been forced to rest, and the energy she'd taken from the Crystals likely wasn't going to be enough to improve her bedraggled appearance. "I haven't been well lately." She couldn't stop the next words from slipping out like a sigh. "That's why I was traveling alone."

Unexpectedly, she felt a small, gnarled paw patting her shoulder, and looked up into Mole-Yair's wrinkled little face feeling smaller than she ever had. He was looking at her with so much unfettered sympathy that even the wariness of his posture couldn't make her feel badly about herself, and she wanted suddenly to let loose and just cry as she'd been stubbornly determined not to for days now. The question aching in the back of her throat couldn't be contained a moment longer.

"Why are you telling me this?" she blurted, her voice quiet and raw, almost lost to the slosh-slosh of the water. "Why don't you hate me? I've done – I did horrible things, and you…" She drew a ragged breath, heart racing anxiously. Mole-Yair only shrugged.

"The word is that Spyro is your friend," he said simply. "The wurms that lived near to your fortress spread the tale of your return to these realms at his side. They say that you were possessed." He eyed her shrewdly then, and she froze, trying not to shrink away. Whatever he had been looking for, he appeared satisfied, nodding roughly. "Any friend of Spyro's is a friend of the Manweersmalls. Black dragon or non."

She let out a breath that she hadn't even realized she was holding, and the tears came with it. Headbutting his small hand, she stepped away to allow him to draw it back through the bars. Mole-Yair looked distinctly uncomfortable but he didn't move, still peering at her intensely. "Thank you," she said again, thickly. "For the Crystals, and… the information. If I get out of here," she vowed, her voice gaining strength as the idea spread its roots in her mind. "I won't leave until I free you. And your people."

The Manweersmall curled his lip up in what she could only assume was meant to be a happy expression. "I will hold you to that. Now sleep, or you will be tired for your first battle."

Before she could ask him what he meant by that, he had slipped away down the hall with quick, pattering little footsteps like wind. Cynder let out a gust of a sigh and slumped back to the floor where she had been attempting to sleep earlier, knowing she would probably have just as little success now. There was so much to process. So many plans to consider. She closed her eyes wearily.

The Manweersmalls were on her side. She was forgiven. It settled oddly under her skin, like an ill-fitting blanket, leaving parts of her still cold with doubt and guilt. She wasn't sure that she deserved forgiveness – she hadn't been possessed, as Mole-Yair had suggested, and in comparison to the death and destruction she'd personally caused, the things she had been through at the hands of Gaul and her Master seemed like pitiful excuses. Practically nothing, in comparison…

She thought hard about Mole-Yair's expression when he had spoken the words, but she still couldn't sense any trace of lingering anger in them. Even this paranoid creature had given her his faith. Just like Spyro… just like all of the Guardians.

They believed that she was good. That she could be just as brave and bright as Spyro was.

The thought of Spyro stopped her short. It ached.

Stop thinking about him, she told herself sharply, but the ache only intensified.

For the first time, she considered that maybe the last creature to forgive her would be herself.

It had been, as best she could tell, two entire days since her capture when the wary crewmen came to let her out of her prison.

They didn't try to drag her by the rope this time, which Cynder was glad for. She was tired. The energy she'd managed to draw out of the Crystal shards that Mole-Yair had smuggled to her cell was meager, and she had been kept cooped up for too long – her muscles were complaining loudly. She was vaguely curious who she would be facing, as the Skavengers hadn't breathed another word about the Arborick fellow that they'd referenced threateningly at her when she'd been captured.

Maybe he escaped? She thought. Or maybe he was too big to keep in the cells, and they had to leave him back on shore.

Lucky him.

In the split-second before she was shoved around the corner and toward door that was already starting to lift open to reveal the arena, Cynder wondered exactly how large this ship was. The arena was twice as large as she'd imagined it when she'd first heard… She nearly missed her introduction, she was so preoccupied.

"… the former queen of conquer herself!" the detestable little purple bird was crowing, and the slobbering crowds of mongrels in the stands were eating up every syllable. "Cynder!"

She felt dirtied for even participating in this; but she was confident that, whoever she ended up facing, she was in no real danger. She watched the sliver of blue sky between the masts above the packed stands grow larger with each passing second, forgetting to care who she was facing at all.

It doesn't matter. I'm way overqualified for this, she reassured herself, and took a deep breath in order to clear her muddled mind and square her aching shoulders. Now that I've seen the sky again I can think of a way to get out of here. Maybe I can even leave right now, if I'm fast.

The door was wide open now, and she stalked out into the arena of her own accord, taking a small amount of smug pride in the fact that she hadn't given them the chance they probably wanted to prod her around some more.

And then she was face to face with Spyro.

His eyes were wide in alarm and something resembling fear. Cynder felt a pang dangerously close to her heart, that the sight of her could inspire that sort of thing in him anymore. Before she could dwell on it for too long she began to circle him, as she would any opponent, and despite himself Spyro responded in kind.

She lowered her head and narrowed her eyes at him. This would have to be a good show – all of her escape plans had been effectively destroyed, now. She couldn't very well leave Spyro with these animals! Don't they know that he has more important things to be doing?

"Just like old times, huh, Spyro?" she said loudly for effect. The burning anger that had lit in her chest was fanned by the excited mutters and hoots of the audience, but it would work to her advantage to play the crowd and she knew it. It didn't appear that Spyro did, though, because he was eyeing her with a fearful sort of dismay, appearing to swallow something down – perhaps his pride, though she doubted it – before he responded.

"Cynder, I'm not going to fight you," he said lowly. The look in his eyes dared her to contradict him. She felt a strange flush beneath the scales around her throat and had to remind herself to focus, focus – there would be time to moon over Spyro later.

She reigned in an annoyed huff, barely. Why does he have to be so noble all the time? "Relax," she whispered, flaring her wings out threateningly – partly for show, and partly to conceal her words from the onlookers. "I'm just trying to put on a show for the crowd while we try to figure out what to do."

In her opinion, that really should have been obvious. Sometimes Spyro really was such an oblivious country bumpkin.

"Don't trust her," Sparx urged him frantically, hiding behind Spyro's head as he stared at her with loathing. "She wants to eat me!"

She bit back a snarl – for Ancients sakes, is now really the time, you daft insect? – when Spyro's eyes shot up to the sky over her head, and almost simultaneously an explosion sounded to her right, ripping the boards right out of the floor. Cynder threw herself sideways, gasping for breath as the air filled with wood chips and thick, choking dust. She heard the telltale screech of Dreadwings and cursed under her breath.

"W-what's happening?" she heard Spyro spit out between his teeth, coughing. He was too far away – she had to get to him, make sure that if one of them escaped, it was him. Her muscles were suddenly taut and alive with adrenaline – the achiness from earlier had vanished, as had her fear, as if it had all absorbed into the center of her. She felt, briefly, powerful.

"I want out!" Sparx was howling, and then suddenly his screeches turned several octaves more panicked. "I WANT IN!" He was racing in her direction, getting louder – which meant that whatever was chasing him was getting closer too, and fast. The blood was so loud in her ears now that she could hardly hear the fray, lashing her tail expectantly as she braced herself for the fight to come to her.

I'll gladly take a chunk out of one of those creepy flying rats, she thought to herself darkly. Her claws sank viciously into the wood beneath her paws in anticipation.

Her wings beat furiously, trying to clear the air in front of her, scanning the arena. The Skavengers had all but disappeared in the chaos, yelling and creating a general ruckus as they trampled over each other in the stands, brandishing their swords and daggers, trying to get down below the deck – or maybe they wanted a piece of the action. Whatever it was, they were failing at it, and the Captain was nowhere to be seen. She was distracted searching for Spyro, when she felt too-late the weight of the wind on her back as a Dreadwing swooped down to grab her by the back of her neck with its gaping razor-filled mouth.

Pain burst along her neck in a thousand tiny punctures. She screamed, writhing violently away and feeling her scales tear away from the wounds like tiny droplets, blood welling up to fill the creature's stinking mouth.

"Get away from me!" she screamed. Her wings were flailing, the wind beneath them gone, betraying her. She realized suddenly that there was no way that she could escape now on her own – if this thing had orders to kill her, then it would, and that would be the end. It was twice her size and probably much better fed than she had been this past week and some. Though she was terrified of holding him back from his own escape, she had no choice but to call out to Spyro. "Help!"

No sooner had the word left her mouth than she felt her claws being ripped free of the wood as the Dreadwing snorted and launched itself back into the air, leaving her dangling from its jaws like a helpless kitten. No matter how hard she struggled, she couldn't find a good enough grip on the air to twist herself away and break free. Beneath her, smoke began to billow from the ship's innards – there had been gunpowder along with the cannonballs, she realized with horror. The ship was on fire.

And Spyro was still on it.

"Spyro!" she gasped, thrashing her wing against the Dreadwing's flank, only to squeal with pain when her bare scales smashed into iron spikes. Armored. Of course.

"Cynder!" Spyro cried out, but his voice was fading into nothing as the sound of the waves, the wind, and the Dreadwings powerful wing strokes deafened her.

All around her were more of the shrill, foul flying beasts – a whole flock, she realized uneasily, all of them fully armored and several of them mounted by ape soldiers that she refused to focus on, in case she recognized them. Clearly, her abduction had been a top priority. They'd hardly paid any attention to Spyro at all, despite the rumors that Gaul had placed a bounty on the purple dragon. For some reason – and she could think of several very unpleasant ones right off the top of her head – Cynder had been their number one target

She fought and twisted until she was completely spent, but it was no use. The sea seemed endless beneath her. The sound of the water filled her with anxiety. She couldn't fall – she couldn't fathom touching it, couldn't fathom trying to swim right now, like this – and so she stopped struggling and went limp.

The bright disc of the sun was still high in the sky, but she was already exhausted.

Would she dream again? she wondered. Against her better judgement, she had begun to look forward to the dreams in a grudging way – she wanted to know what they meant, who she became once she entered that other strange realm where there seemed to be no dragons to speak of, but apparently just as much suffering as

There was little to be done but to wait. She felt her consciousness slip away from her while her scales grew hot and dry in the salty ocean air.

She gingerly held her hair to the side and away from her back, twisting to look at the throbbing red skin and the bold black lines of her first tattoo.

"It's huge!" Lynn gasped, clutching dramatically at her heart. April's eyes flickered back and towards her cleavage on cue; she looked quickly back between her own shoulder blades in the mirror, heat climbing up the back of her neck and into her cheeks slowly.

Focus on the tattoo, dumbass, she thought to herself desperately. You're supposed to be the excited one.

This was the last thing she could afford to splurge on before she had to start saving. Fast food may not have been glamorous, but the idea of fleeing – of never having to come home to that horrible cramped apartment full of the years-long stale scent of terror and resentment again – that was worth any amount of grease in her hair and under her nails.

She'd do anything. Anything.

It had come out exactly as she'd imagined it… exactly as she'd drawn it, several weeks ago in the middle of the night, in the midst of a terrible, beautiful nightmare. She'd woken sweating and struggling for breath, twisted up hopelessly in the sheets as though they were trying to strangle her, arms pinned tightly to her sides. But she hadn't had the time to panic, because a startlingly clear, shimmering image was pinned in the center of her mind like a prophecy and she could think of nothing else but getting it on paper before it disappeared.

She'd torn herself free and seized the pen from her nightstand, along with an abandoned English notebook from her bookbag lying open on the floor, and put down line after sharp, perfect line until the image stared back at her exactly as she'd seen it in her dreams.

It was a crystal – an enormous, beautiful, jagged thing that seemed to burst from the ground. The planes were uneven and glassy-smooth, tapering off from the center to severe points in every direction. Somehow, although she'd never had much of an artistic flair, she'd managed to draw it with every minute detail intact; and her tattoo artist (a friend of a friend who wouldn't ask her for an ID) had transferred it exactly at the top of her back, just creeping up the base of the back of her neck.

It was gorgeous. It hurt like a bitch.

She had no fucking idea what it was supposed to be.

She had no idea why it was on her now, permanently, but it gave her a penetrating bone-deep sense of rightness when she looked at it.

Safe, sweet, flat-chested Rina nudged her in the ribs with a bony elbow, giving her a little grin. She was small and dark-haired, and perfectly ordinary in that April had known her since she was a nasty little she-devil on the playground at recess, and it was practically impossible to conceive of her in any way other than utterly platonic. She prayed that her friend hadn't noticed her wayward gaze. It was nothing – it wasn't important – she wouldn't want anyone to think…

She didn't want the way anyone looked at her to change.

"Soooooo, what color are you gonna make it?" Rina asked slyly, fingers hovering over the still-bleeding lines almost reverently. Lynn huddled in closer as well, grinning and gasping.

"Ohhhhh, make it purple!" she squealed, clutching both of their arms.

"No," she heard herself say, although 'purple' sent a pleasurable vibration down her spine for some reason. She raised her gaze to meet her own pale, tired eyes in the glass. Her lips quirked up in her reflection, though she could have sworn she hadn't moved a muscle. Maybe she was just going fucking insane. That would make a lot of sense.

"It's going to be green."

Her reflection winked.

Cynder had hoped never to wake to the musky stench of ape footsoldiers' sweaty fur in close proximity ever again. She spent a few moments upon regaining consciousness just lying very still, feeling excessively drained despite the fact that she had clearly been sleeping at least half the day, if the lack of light behind her eyelids was any indication. Her head hurt; her wings hurt; the strong muscles of her thighs hurt. She couldn't recall doing anything deserving of this kind of exhaustion – she could hardly even remember losing consciousness.

She sat up suddenly, sick at the thought. How much time had she lost?

Her mind was flooded with an influx of unwanted possibilities – what they might have done to her while she was incapacitated, what she might have done. Flashes of blood and gore, scenes she'd seen before, the phantom taste of fur and marrow between her teeth. She had to hold her breath for a long few minutes in order to keep herself from gagging.

Was this it, then? Was it exactly what she feared – was she going to become the monster she'd been before, all over again?

She forced herself to drag herself to her feet, wings flapping restlessly to help her balance. There was a horrible familiar weight of clanking metal surrounding her neck.

It was infinitely worse than the days of imprisonment she'd endured already, to think that Gaul held her lead once again. The ape who actually held her chains was significantly less threatening, and probably less competent too – if I time it right maybe I could loop around and… – but her contemplation was cut short as he turned back to face her and leered, beady eyes bright and mean.

"Good, you are awake… The King will want you conscious," he said approvingly. His fist tightened around the chains tauntingly, as if daring her to try and break free. He rose from the blackened tree stump that he'd been resting on. "You were slowing us down, traitor. Get up."

He yanked her chains like he was cracking a whip. Cynder winced as they bruised her already tender windpipe and scrambled to her feet, glowering at him. It was unsettling how unaffected he was by it – have they already forgotten? The other apes were milling about in their heavy clanking armor, unperturbed by the burning of her slitted green eyes on the backs of their necks. Once upon a time they would have thrown themselves at her feet the moment that they saw her, awake and furious, begging for mercy.

They used to be terrified of me.

Abruptly, she was disturbed by the curl of bitter disappointment she felt in her gut. She didn't… no. No. She didn't want to be that dragon anymore.

The Mountain was looming dark and ominous and far too close ahead of them. It was less than a day's march through the woods; and there, waiting for her undoubtedly with that terrible staff in hand, would be Gaul. Cynder shuddered.

"Get up! Get moving!" The ape that had spoken to her roared, shaking her chains for effect. The soldiers hastily gathered their scraps of food and sprang back onto their restless mounts, moving into formation and beginning their march anew. The Dreadwings screeched happily at the prospect of getting to stretch their limbs again, throwing their heads and slobbering onto the blackened earth. Their saliva was corrosive, she remembered suddenly, which explained why the places that they'd bitten her hurt so damn much; as she was tugged along, she kept her eyes on the ground and stepped carefully over the shallow pits they left in their wake. With a sinking heart, Cynder realized that she was at the center of the horde.

There was nowhere else to go. There were swarms of other dark beasts – in the distance and all around them, she could feel them like a sickening, throbbing heartbeat uncomfortably close to her own, drowning it out – all heading in the same direction.

She thought about Spyro. In the panic and confusion of their scuffle earlier, and the fire, she hadn't had time to wonder how they had ended up in the arena at the same time – or even on the same ship. He had to have been captured… At first she had thought that he'd followed her, but the captain had spoken about him with the same smugness he'd regarded her with, as though he had bested him, captured him – forced him to fight like an animal.

He'd been battered already, she realized belatedly. His scales had been dirt-covered and he'd been limping slightly. How many opponents had he been forced to face before Cynder? Was he badly injured? In fact, he'd looked exhausted. She fought down the anxious thoughts, the possibilities. There had been plenty of other prisoners on the ship, many of them gruesome and dangerous, according to Mole-Yair when he'd visited her briefly again. The vibrant brightness of Spyro's eyes that she'd admired must have been adrenaline. She felt her scales flush.

Did I really assume that he looked like that because of me?

Maybe he hadn't been looking for her at all. He had more important things to do than follow her wretched hide to the ends of the earth. Trying to redeem the unredeemable.

She stumbled and her captor twisted back to look at her scornfully. He alone was travelling on foot – she could only guess that he was trying to prevent her chains from being tangled or tampered with. She closed her eyes and took a calming breath as the black anger surged from the thorny back part of her mind, jealousy followed close behind. If I were half as powerful as Spyro, I could incinerate this bastard.

Some 'midnight dragon' she was.

"Pick up the pace, runt!" He took one look at her face and cackled, fingering the chains in his hands lovingly. "I'm sure Gaul wouldn't mind if I strangled you… He knows how much you like to backtalk your handlers."

The apes nearest them tittered. A flash of sudden years-old panic made her face numb. Cynder froze, the sound of the chains clanking filling her ears and taking her back; visions of Gaul's face looming maniacally over her as she struggled to breathe superimposed over reality, the phantom pressure of his claws digging deep into her exposed throat making her throat spasm. Back then, the gaping hole where his left eye used to be had still been unfilled and sickening to look at, reeking like rotting garbage. She'd gagged the moment she'd been able to breathe again, revulsion crawling through her innards like poison.

Her captor bared his teeth and gave a harder tug, eyes narrowing. "I said faster."

There was no choice to make. Simmering, she put her head down and marched.