When Nine woke up, the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was Spyro and Cynder cuddled up near the side of the clearing, still asleep. He didn't want to wake them, so he decided to practice flying even more.

After a few minutes of flying, he began to get a little hungry, also thirsty. However, this raised a problem; there was no food or water. And in the charred wasteland they were in, he was pretty sure they wouldn't find any inside the ring. He landed and sat down to save energy.

Finally, after twenty long minutes, Cynder awoke with a jolt, churning up some of the ashes around her into the air. "Hello, Cynder." He would have said 'good morning,' or any variation of the phrase, but he didn't know if it was morning or not.

"Uh, hi Nine," she said, glancing over at the volcano, erupting as if on cue. Lava began heavily flowing from the top. "We need to move, fast."

She jostled Spyro, nudging his shoulder to wake him up. He woke up slowly, still wanting to sleep. "What, what?" He said, annoyed.

"Get up, we're leaving for Warfang," Cynder said, pushing him to his feet.

"Now? It's too early."

"No, it's not, get up." She shot a bit of wind in his face to get him woken up, which seemed to work.

"Ok, fine, I'm up. Let's go to the volcano." He took off and flew to the volcano, not caring to hide his aggravation. Cynder and Nine struggled to keep up.

Spyro had to wait at a rock shelf for Cynder and Nine to arrive, and by the time they got there, he had completed thirty paces on the shelf.

Spyro calmed down during the updraft ride, using smoother, more controlled movements.

When they cleared the volcano, they immediately began ascending. Cynder, once again, became dizzy halfway through the ascent. Spyro repeated some of the stories he told her the last time they tried to get over the ring. But, Nine usually jumped in the story when Spyro broke to take a breath or think of a new line, and eventually it became a sort of contest. After Nine and Spyro both became dizzy, the story telling to calm down Cynder soon calmed down all three of them.

As they continued to get higher to pass over the ring, the harder it became to climb. They couldn't glide as often, so they had to beat their wings harder and faster to keep airborne. "Is anyone else hungry?" Nine asked, his stomach almost drowning out the sound of the wind.

"Thanks for bringing it up," Cynder said, her previous hunger coming back at the mention of it.

"No, not really." Spyro was probably the strongest of the group, so he could go on a bit longer without food.

Trying his best to ignore his hunger, he glanced at the ring. They were about a hundred yards away, and still about fifty feet too low. Higher, higher, higher!Nine thought furiously, beating his wings like never before, his strength quickly diminishing.

He took note of Spyro and Cynder's height, both of them at least twenty feet above him.

They were almost there, Nine could feel the strong heat radiating from the ring and onto his body. Higher! Higher!He screamed it in his mind, attempting to motivate himself. It seemed to have worked.

Seconds before the ring engulfed his entire body, his broad wings caught the warm, rising air and carried him past the ring. The flames barely licked his underbelly.

The ring wasn't very wide near the top; they passed over it in a few seconds. After they were sure they had completely passed over it, they dove for the ground, not bothering to glide.

A small amount of land that bordered the ring was just like the inside, but it quickly faded into a lush green oasis. The trio cleared the border easily.

The second they touched down, they collapsed into the grass, almost dying of fatigue. However, Nine regenerated his fatigue remarkably fast.

He stood up within minutes of landing, feeling the grass under his paws, brushing his wings on the greenery all around him. "Finally," he whispered to himself. "I'm free."

Spyro was the next to stir, surprised at how fast Nine recovered. "So," he said, "how is it outside the ring?"

Nine could have gone on for hours about how amazing it all was, but he summed up most of it with one sentence. "It's what I've been dreaming about for three years."

Spyro couldn't help feeling sorry for him; he couldn't imagine how hard it must be to be voided of the outside world and flying for three years.

Cynder then got up, still a bit devoid of energy. "That," she said, "was too high. Why couldn't we go through it like the first time?"

Spyro's face turned expressionless, remembering how Ignitus sacrificed himself to get them through the ring, also how he turned dark.

Nine tried escaping the conversation by looking up to the sky, catching a glimpse of what it looked like without black clouds of gas looming above. "Hey look, fruits!" He spotted brightly colored fruits in the canopy of a tree.

Spyro was much too tired to go up and gather fruits, so Nine went up and snapped them from their branches. Spyro caught them with his wings before they smashed on the ground.

Once they had a small pile of fruits, Nine returned to land.

They all lay down around the pile. "Ladies first," Nine said politely, nudging the top fruit towards Cynder. It rolled down the side of the pile, landing at her paws.

"Thank you," she said. Cynder would have said more, but she was starving. She took a bite out of the fruit, not bothering to pick it up.

She chewed for a

bit then swallowed, her eyes growing wide. "It's amazing," she said, rolling herself another fruit. Spyro and Nine did the same.

The small pile of fruits they had gathered vanished in seconds, each of them getting the same amount. All that was left of the fruits was odd purple seeds.

Spyro gazed southward, the direction of Warfang. However, he couldn't see far due to a sheet of fog rolling across the landscape. Nine and Cynder were staring at him, waiting for him to make one of his leaderly decisions. "I guess we'll leave tomorrow," he finally said. "Now, we need sleep."

Nine looked up to the sky again before falling asleep under a bush. Spyro wondered how he could fall asleep so fast, but his thoughts were interrupted by Cynder. "Spyro, it happened again," she whispered.

"Tell me," Spyro responded.

"This was the worst of them all. I was walking down a hallway, which seemed to go on forever. The walls were smeared with blood, and dead dragons were everywhere. Then, I came to the end of the hallway, and you were there. I was going to ask what had happened, but I saw you ripping out the throat of another dragon. After you finished killing him, you turned to me. I ran away as fast as I could, but you caught up and grabbed my tail. You smiled at me, your teeth almost completely red, and…" Spyro didn't need to hear the rest; he could fill in the blanks.

Spyro was about to lie down next to Cynder when she stopped him. "Maybe we should sleep…farther away from each other," she said. It broke Spyro's heart, but he knew it was for the best. He sighed and took a few steps off to the side, Cynder moving in the exact opposite direction.

Spyro lay down in front of the tree that produced the fruits, the moon beaming down on him. Cynder was near Nine, who was sleeping like a rock. For some reason she felt safe around him.

Spyro gave Cynder one last smile before closing his eyes and falling asleep. Long after Spyro fell asleep, Cynder lay awake in the darkness, eyeing Spyro from the shadows. Eventually, her sleepiness got the better of her and she drifted in and out of sleep.

About halfway through the night, when all of the dragons were asleep, a jet black raven landed at the tip of a tree, casting a shadow directly over Spyro's body.

Chapter Five in about thirty seconds.