New chapter time! Good luck following it if you haven't read the previous chapters recently, things are complicated. Ideally I'd have loved to release all of these chapters at once, but considering this fight scene across all the chapters is looking to come in at about 30,000 words that wasn't going to be possible. I hope you all enjoy this latest instalment!
Story now!
A pale wintery sun illuminated the ruined buildings of Warfang, normally comforting yellow stone looked pale and sick in the light, made worse by the greyish black veil which surrounded the city, as high as a mountain, encircling Warfang's outer wall and cutting off any sight of the green fields that lay beyond.
The once proud city was reduced to rubble, aside from the mountain which took up one quarter of the city the levelling of the city was almost complete. Only the lower walls of a few buildings were still standing, nothing more than a few meters high. What had once been a city now resembling little more than a rocky desert with a few battered and unstable structures scattered across its face.
In the centre of the destruction was the black dragon responsible, with elegant horns, a lean but muscled body, and blazing yellow eyes; visually she was disturbingly similar to Cynder's appearance, although none of her opponents held any hesitation due to that fact any more.
Opposing Darkmire were dragons of purple and silver, Spyro and Imperia landing hit after hit which Darkmire simply shrugged off, taking only scratches on her scales and not showing any visible damage from a flurry of fireballs Spyro launched at her.
Cynder was further away, alongside Malefor and Ignitus, watching the battle grimly.
Somewhere in Warfang, or perhaps outside it, the real Darkmire was hidden, channelling a vast amount of fear magic in order to hold them deep within this dream. They needed to find her before the dream Darkmire became strong enough to escape the dream completely.
Cynder knew all too well that the red element had a will of its own, that which Darkmire knew as fear and hate, but which Cynder had now come to realise contained more emotions than only negative. Her new understanding had brought her more control, she hoped, but Darkmire had come to the exact opposite understanding and her fear magic was wild and dangerous and aggressive. They could not allow a creature made of pure fear magic to develop something resembling a sentient consciousness and escape into the real world.
She glared at the other black dragon, and Darkmire seemed to sense it, yellow eyes flicking over to Cynder and baring her teeth in a sadistic grin even as she blocked a spike of earth created by Spyro.
"Well if you don't have any good news I'm going to go take this thing down before it can get too many ideas." Cynder growled to Ignitus and Malefor, who nodded.
"I'll stay here and help you keep her busy." Malefor said. "Tell Spyro to go looking for the real body."
Cynder grunted in acknowledgement and then dived back towards the fight.
Imperia was the centre of Darkmire's aggression, the slender silver dragoness had her claws out, teeth bared, flashing in and out of Darkmire's reach, bouncing off stones, the ground, or Darkmire's wings as she constantly moved. Every time Darkmire lashed out Imperia skipped back, but if she faltered for even a moment then Imperia came in with finger jabs to her eyes, slashes and kicks to her throat, hip and shoulder rams which spoiled her balance, and relentless harrying attacks towards every nerve, pressure point, or vulnerable spot imaginable.
Spyro supported her well, his preferred method of combat: bombarding his enemies with a storm of elemental attacks, was not working as well as it usually did. The further an elemental attack travelled away from the dragon who created it the weaker the attack would get, rocks became less hard, fire became less hot, ice became less cold. The oppressive mana that radiated from Darkmire due to her sheer power was magnifying this effect, a fireball that flew ten meters was weakened as if it had flown a hundred meters.
Spyro had quickly worked this out for himself, and had adapted his strategy, cloaking himself in element after element and then ramming Darkmire from above of from the sides, battering and pumelling her, beating her down with comet dashes and then recovering out of her range for a few moments before continuing, as well as regularly shooting bolts of lightning at her to slow her down if Imperia got too close to danger.
"Don't use too much power." Cynder warned as she arrived beside him. "We have to kill her here, but even if we do the real version will be waiting for us outside."
"What do you mean we have to kill her here?" Spyro said, panting slightly. "And trust me I have a lot left. I can do this all day."
"Well if we don't end this dream quick enough then this darkmire will turn into an unkillable ghost and escape into the real world." Cynder said bluntly.
"Oh, that's not good."
"Yeah. The real body has to be around here somewhere. Find her and wake her up. Terrador and the other guardians can help."
"Do you want me to splash her face with cold water?" Spyro asked doubtfully. "Tickle her feet? How do I wake her up?"
"Smash her stupid skull, doing that should weaken the dream for long enough for me to punch out of it and beat her down in the real world." Cynder said.
"Got it." Spyro said. "Are you sure you four can handle her without me? She's still not taking us seriously and no matter how hard I hit her nothing seems to slow her down!"
"Us three more like. Ignitus won't be any help for this."
"If only he'd been magically reversed back to the prime of his health too." Spyro said. "But he's still smart. I'll go find Darkmire's real body!"
Cynder nodded and bumped his tail with her own. "Take care."
"You too." Spyro said, and then he tucked his wings and dived towards the ground, sweeping over the rubble and stopping by Malefor and Ignitus to speak for a few seconds, then nodding and sinking into the ground and disappearing.
Darkmire turned towards Cynder, grinning and opening her mouth to say something, but she was violently cut off by Imperia uppercutting her mouth shut again.
With a furious snarl Darkmire swung, but the silver was back out of range before the hit could land, a faint laugh on her lips. "Oh Darkmire you're such good practice!"
Darkmire growled.
"You're hardly worth my-"
She threw her wings up to block another hit.
"-hardly worth my time. But Cynder, so glad you could join us. I can tell that our little audience gave you bad news. Although clearly not bad enough for them to risk their own cowardly scales!"
She raised her voice to a grating yell in order to direct that comment at Malefor and Ignitus.
Imperia hissed in anger and dived in for another attack, hitting Darkmire right in the eye, but with a tail lash Darkmire drove her back and continued hissing out her words.
"Bitch! Maybe when I start ripping you two limb from limb they'll decide you're worthy of their help! But it doesn't matter to me, they can watch all day, they can watch for an entire week! I'm not done with you yet, Cynder. You were always the most interesting one."
She gave Cynder a sickly sweet grin, made horrifying by the blood oozing out of her ruined eye, before a purple spark restored it to the only slightly less horrifying yellow that signified Darkmire was in full control over the body, with no hint of Pleasure fighting from inside.
The thought of Pleasure suddenly struck Cynder's mind. She doubted Pleasure even existed in the dream version of Darkmire, just another advantage the nightmare version had over the real version if she were ever to escape into the real world.
Cynder gritted her teeth, it was hard enough to think of ways to kill the monstrous dragon, saving Pleasure looked like a fainter hope than ever.
Darkmire glanced around, and Cynder realised she was beginning to think about why Spyro was missing. They couldn't allow that.
With a growl she surged forwards, wingblades and wingtips both poisonous and empowered by wind blades, using her wings like swords to slash and swipe. Darkmire took the hits with a growl, then grabbed for her, but Cynder knew that she had no hope of matching Darkmire in strength and so she twisted away from the grab and counterattacked with a wind hammer to Darkmire's jaw that snapped her head back and let Cynder back out.
Before Darkmire could recover Imperia was on her, and finally Darkmire had noticeably slowed down as the poison began to enter her bloodstream.
"Poison? Against me?"
Darkmire laughed.
"I feel that it's potent, but so basic! You could do better than this, despite the high dose."
Her eyes flashed green for a moment, and she sighed as she shook the sluggishness off her limbs.
"Don't try that again, or I add a bit of poison to my own strikes, and we both know that the little lady here would not cope so well with that!"
She laughed, leering at Imperia threateningly.
"Fine. It's not like we need it to beat you to a pulp." Cynder growled.
"Oh but you can't!"
Darkmire laughed.
"You've been trying soooo hard, and look! Nothing a few puple sparks can't fix. You are insects compared to me, but hey, if you haven't learned your lesson yet its fiiiiiiine! I'm enjoying the process of teaching you. The fear I see in your eyes each time my grip closes in."
She picked up a stone from the ground and crushed it into powder in her fist.
"See that? That's going to be you two."
Cynder growled in anger, but Imperia wasn't wasting time. The silver dragoness dived in, resuming her relentless assault on Darkmire, the wind rippling around her, punches landing with cracks like splitting stones.
Darkmire retaliated, wings lashing out, tail swinging, but despite her immense strength Imperia was always a step ahead of her and it was clearly getting on the black dragon's nerves.
With an angry roar Darkmire lashed out, but Cynder rammed into her from behind and destabilised her, causing the attack to miss.
"Are you trying to make her mad?" Cynder asked.
Imperia laughed. "Yes! She'll get angry enough to make a mistake, and besides what more can she do to us? She's already sworn to torture us to death."
"You'd better have a plan."
"Make her mad, buy us time so you guys can end this dream." Imperia said with a wave of her paw, casually ducking under a swipe from Darkmire with an easy movement that enraged the black dragoness further.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Cynder with a faint smile, hoping Spyro would find the real Darkmire as soon as possible.
As Spyro moved through the reassuring dark coolness of the earth he sighed in relief. This battle was one of the longest and most stressful he had ever experienced, and the moment of calm was something he desperately needed to refocus his mind.
He knew he couldn't delay long, at any moment the vision that Darkmire had mocked him with of her pulling Cynder's heart out could come true, and Spyro didn't know what dying in a dream would do to Cynder in the real world, but either way he knew that if Cynder took an injury their odds of breaking out of this dream would drop significantly.
But he calmed himself, every moment they remained alive was a moment closer to their fallback plan. Eventually the bubble prison they were all inside would fall into the burning core of a convexity star, killing all of them. The dream couldn't prevent that.
He grabbed that thought, twisted it this way and that, using it to regain a sense of perspective that the frantic work of evading Darkmire's grabbing crushing talons had made him lose. Then once he was done he forcibly put the thought out of his mind, it was their last resort, the worst possible scenario as long as they bought enough time. It wasn't how any of them wanted the fight to go.
Besides, thinking about that for too long was dangerous, Darkmire had shown herself to be proficient in reading minds, and they couldn't afford to give her any material.
He emerged into the underground cavern that Terrador had constructed for the survivors of the attack on Warfang, and even knowing that all the people he saw were just dream constructions it made Spyro's heart ache to see how few they were and how many were injured.
"Spyro!" Terrador was waiting for him, having sensed his arrival. "How goes the battle? I sense that Ignitus and some other dragon, likely Malefor, are standing by and watching? What's going on up there?"
"Malefor is staying back to heal injuries, and unfortunately Ignitus would just get in the way. He doesn't have the speed or the fire element to go into close combat." Spyro said. "The Darkmire dragon is intentionally not using her elements, and we still can't defeat her."
"But you must have come here for a reason? We can bring every dragon we have, we even have several feline folk with swords and bows."
The other guardians had arrived by now, Cyril and Flare looking composed and ready, while Volteer had one of his legs in a sling and had to hop with each step but was still looking determined.
Spyro shook his head. "We don't need you to fight, we need you to, how to explain this? There is a second identical Darkmire somewhere in the city or a few miles outside it, and she is channeling power to the one who has been destroying the city."
"You want us to find her?" Terrador finished the thought.
Spyro nodded.
"Will you search for her, or do you need to go back to the fight?" Terrador asked.
Spyro hesitated, gritting his teeth, Cynder flashed through his mind. "I will search."
"You take the northern outside of warfang, you know how to detect a dragon on the ground." Terrador said. "I'll take the southern side, the few earth dragons we have can go east and west, and the remainders will work aboveground and scout the edges of the city and up in the trees. Now go, I will have our search parties mobilised within minutes."
"If you see her do not engage. Use a pulse of earth magic to signal me." Spyro said.
"Understood. And one more thing."
Spyro stopped to listen, hearing importance in the rumble of Terradors voice.
"Spyro, if there is any advantage to be gained from us engaging Darkmire in battle you must signal for us to do so. Consider than an order. I would have ordered us to engage already, but I trust that you have some sort of plan."
Spyro hesitated. Even if they were only the dream versions of his friends he didn't want them to die.
Flare spoke up, her voice gentle. "Do you know why, even after years of war with the Dark Master, Warfang still stood, even with half it's buildings demolished, near all its population fled, and despite being in a poor strategic position?"
Spyro frowned, opening his mouth to respond, then pausing. "I have some ideas, but I don't know."
"Because keeping Warfang standing by force, despite all the risks and losses, protected the rest of the world from the Dark Master's wrath. Warfang and it's guardians are the point upon which we will not back down, upon which we have staked the future of dragonkind. Coming here first will be Darkmire's mistake, and she will flee from here in defeat, or she will die here. We refuse to allow any other options, even if it means we die here. If Darkmire wants to get to the rest of the world she will have to go through us. Don't let her leave here alive, Spyro, call us in when you need us."
Spyro nodded, then turned and departed through the wall to begin his part of the search.
Every minute that Cynder and Imperia held Darkmire's attention felt like hours, but Cynder could see around them moles picking through the rubble at the very outer limits of the city, where the wispy black wall extended into the sky and denoted the barrier of their battleground.
Spyro emerged beyond the wall after casting around the area and determining that Darkmire was not present. The fields and mountains stretched out before him, wavering for just a moment as shapes in the land rose or shrank. Mountains which had looked like the right height when viewed from the lifted out of the ground Colosseum looked too tall from ground level, and the dream shifted earth and stone to correct itself in accordance with his memory.
Then the obvious realisation struck him. The most logical place for Darkmire to be was exactly where they'd left her, the hardest place for them to reach unnoticed: The colosseum still floating near a mile above the city.
Almost as soon as Spyro had the thought a rumble through the ground came to him from Terrador, a rumble that had a vibrational pattern encoded in it, and the vibration when spoken would form the word 'up'.
Spyro replied in the same fashion, his ability to speak in this way was more limited than Terrador's, but over this distance he knew the earth guardian would be able to pick up his message. He replied 'stay down', and then took off towards the floating structure. As he ascended the first hundred meters he saw what the sharp eyed dragons within the city search group had observed. In the centre of the sands on the upside down structure was a black bubble with red glowing eyes within it. Near impossible to see from the ground, but as Spyro rose up it became clear enough to be unmistakable.
Spyro's flight did not go unnoticed, Darkmire grinned slightly as she felt him ascend and read his thoughts.
"Well well well, so that's where our purple friend has run off to. I thought I could feel rats scurrying around down below!"
Cynder turned, and saw Spyro outside the city walls, flying upwards towards- of course.
"Imperia buy us time."
"Yes ma'am!" Imperia said with a smile. "I know just how to get in her head. She'll hate me after this one."
Cynder was already gone before Imperia had finished speaking, taking off upwards so quickly a ring of dust blew away from where she had stood.
Darkmire spread her wings to follow, but bands of earth wrapped around her feet and the downbeat of her wings did nothing. With a growl she kicked the stone away, turning to see Malefor had stepped up beside Imperia.
"You were looking lonely, I figured now I have some idea how she fights you could use a hand."
Imperia purred and gave him a playful wink. "I knew you'd swoop in to save me sooner or later."
"You don't need saving, just assisting."
"Let me have this, being rescued makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Or maybe its seeing those earth leg cuffs? I can't wait to explore those some other time."
Malefor flushed and looked away.
"Ha, gotcha." Imperia laughed. "I'm so happy we finally get to fight together. Just thinking about it makes me want to smile, and you know what the best thing to do with all the leftover adrenaline after a fight is, right?"
"May we please focus on winning?"
"Trust me, this is all part of the plan!"
"The flirting? Seriously?"
"What? Darkmire hates nothing more than seeing people happy."
Imperia grinned down at the black dragoness, who sure enough couldn't help but listen in to every word of their conversation. She didn't hate it, exactly, she was more savouring how high Imperia's mood was to make the contrast sweeter for when she tore it down, but a part of it did also make her burn with anger towards the arrogant silver, and desperately desire to make her pay.
And so all thoughts of Spyro and Cynder were briefly forgotten as Imperia dived in towards Darkmire, but this time Darkmire was determined that she would not walk away so easily.
Imperia took the upper hand immediately, ducking under Darkmire's first strike, even adding in a sexy little tail flick as she did so. She responded with a jab to the throat, predictable, barely enough to sting, then she darted to one side and her claws slashed off Darkmire's flank.
Darkmire coiled around and lunged, and while Imperia's dodge was more than enough to evade the attack she failed to notice the victorious glint in Darkmire's eye.
As she had done the last few times Imperia appeared behind Darkmire, and this time, finally, the black dragon was ready to punish her for it.
Wind dragon 'superspeed' came in two forms, the first was unnaturally quick reaction times and manoeuvrability, sensing enemy movements as soon as they happened, and using wind to enhance in dodging out of the way.
The second, the kind which allowed a dragon to move faster than the eye could see, required the dragon to choose the spot they were moving to beforehand, and in that moment it did not allow for adaptation. That meant if the enemy knew where to hit before you moved…
Imperia appeared directly in the path of Darkmire's swung tail, an impact fueled by all of Darkmire's spite, anger, and unnatural strength. Imperia had appeared close enough that the tailblade didn't cut her in half, but the tail itself slammed into her body and with a bang Imperia was struck down, her body curling into a ball as she smashed through the lower floors of an entire row of houses, creating a long impact crater and a V shaped cloud of dust when viewed from above.
Cynder saw Imperia struck down and gritted her teeth, flying faster, she couldn't turn back and help. She was nearly at the colosseum and inside she could see the curled up form of the real Darkmire inside her protective shadow bubble, as if sleeping, but with eyes blazing red so hot and bright they were glowing and almost seemed to burn with tongues of flame extending out around her head even through her closed eyelids.
She landed there on the upside down sand a few moments before Spyro did.
"Figures she'd be here. She thought she could get a good view." Cynder muttered.
"You okay?" Spyro asked.
Cynder nodded, then reached out towards the bubble, pushing her claws against it and finding it annoyingly resistant. "Can't just attack her. That's fine, I wanted to use fear anyway."
A tendril of red energy gathered around Cynder, and then reached out and struck through Darkmire's shield as if it wasn't even there, burying itself inside her skull.
She could feel Pleasure in there, reaching out towards her, blind and desperate, but trusting that Cynder would find her again. Cynder switched from plans of attack intended to break them out of this dream to a more general approach. Imperia was keeping the dream Darkmire busy, which in turn kept the real Darkmire busy, this was a much needed chance to communicate, she hoped. And the deeper in she went before starting her attack the more likely it was to break the dream.
Cynder's body relaxed, Spyro moving up to catch her.
Cynder found herself floating high above the horrific landscape which was Pleasure's mind.
Above her was a gigantic yellow eye, but unlike last time when that eye had immediately focused upon her it now stared blankly, unfocused, unable to observe her for now.
Blood was welling up from around it and inside it, less like tears of blood and more like a waterfall of it, pouring down like from a terrible wound, a bleeding sun that highlighted the whole sky in red.
The blood covered mountains below, pouring through valleys, painting everything it touched dark red until it met the ugly yellow rivers of what looked like vomit, which made up the 'water' of this world.
Where the red blood met the yellow bile, or urine, or whatever it was, the colours mixed into a brown that was, if possible, even worse. Everything about it made Cynder uncomfortable, and she turned away from the sight.
The rest of the world was a mountain range of gore, peaks of black scales, spires of bone, slopes of blood and flesh and organs, and all of it was, in some horrible way, alive. The mental representation of the remains of Pleasure's past selves, each one tortured and destroyed over the past million years and added to the pile.
Somewhere among all of that she could feel the Pleasure she knew was alive, and hopefully unharmed. Cynder flew down, following the thread of red magic that connected them together.
She glided down between the bones of a giant splintered ribcage, rising above flailing disconnected limbs which weakly swatted and grasped at the air as she went by. Her path took her to the empty eye socket of an enormous Pleasure's skull, the far side of which was cracked open and allowed some light to filter inside.
One sunbeam shone down into the darkness, making it almost possible to ignore the fleshy and unsettling walls if you only focused on what was within that sunbeam, and the thing that was within the sunbeam was a makeshift tent of black scales. The structure, simple but steady, sheltered a fragile looking black dragoness who was hiding under her wings and mumbling the familiar sound of a list of names.
"Petrus, Blizzari, Sliver, Drakko, Terrador, Eruptodon, Spyro, Cynder, Cynder, Cyndercyndercyndercyndercyn-"
She looked up suddenly and her eyes widened.
"Cynder?"
"That's me."
"That's you?"
"Uh… yes?" Cynder stepped forwards slowly, waiting to see if the name chanting started up again, but it didn't.
As she approached the light grew a little brighter above them, and as Cynder stepped into it she realised that the warmth she was feeling was identical to the warmth Spyro had conjured for Pleasure, and it flickered faintly like the flame of a torch.
Those were the only sources of light Pleasure remembered, certainly the only kind she found comforting, compared to the sun-like oppressive evil eye outside.
Once she saw that Pleasure was not afraid of her Cynder sighed in relief and lowered her guard.
Darkmire was an entirely separate beast in this world, this was the mind in which Pleasure and Darkmire were directly opposed, entirely split the way that they had hoped Imperia's sealing array would split them, and so Cynder was not afraid of Pleasure transforming and attacking her. She ws moving slowly and gently in order to keep Pleasure's fragile mental state intact, and each moment she was present the shelter Pleasure had created grew a little more, rather disturbing since it was made out of flesh and skin, but Cynder hoped that it was reflective of Pleasure's mental state improving. If it was then there was an awful lot of junk still left to clean out though, an entire ocean of it.
Darkmires words flashed in Cynder's mind for a moment. 'If you did get rid of me, what would be left?'
"It doesn't matter, we're going to save you because it's the right thing to do." Cynder muttered to herself.
"I'm glad to see you again." Pleasure whispered. "It felt like so long… I thought… maybe you wouldn't come back. That I would never see you again." Tears welled up in her eyes.
Cynder hugged her gently and reassuringly. "I felt you still reaching out. You never stopped trying to get to me. That's how I found you here."
"Where… where are we? I can't feel her inside." Pleasure said, wiping away her tears and smiling weakly. "Is this what its going to be like?"
Cynder nodded. "It'll be even better than this. As for where we are, uh, I want you to just focus on this little area where we are right now. See these black scale, uh… walls? I want you to think of them like my wings, think of them protecting you. And then I want you to think about something you find beautiful and clean, like a calm ocean or… um… something you know."
Pleasure nodded dutifully in understanding. "I'll try my best. You have to leave me… don't you?"
Cynder nodded reluctantly. "She needs to be jolted awake so we can fight her properly. But I'll stay for as long as I can, I want to make sure you're ready. I should have tried to talk about it with you earlier but…" She bit her lip slightly. "I had no idea it was this bad in here."
"Nowhere can be bad if you're there."
"Oh shut up, you're going to give me a toothache with that sweetness."
"Sorry…"
"Don't say sorry, I liked it. That's just how I react to compliments sometimes."
"Oh, okay."
"It just sounded like something Spyro would say." Cynder said with a smile. "In a good way."
Cynder glanced around, and saw something which surprised her. Among the darkness of this cavern the walls had taken on a more rocky texture, but what really stood out was the faint lines of mineral which ran through it. Cynder didn't know the elements, but she saw red rusty looking stuff, green streaks, and little crystals which glittered like tiny shards of glass.
"So this is what you find beautiful, huh? Guess you've had a pretty poor selection to choose from."
Pleasure looked around the room, then smiled faintly. "I did this?"
"Yes you did." Cynder nodded. "Hey, want to do something else? This time how about you're the one hurting her."
Pleasure flinched at the word 'hurt', but when nothing happened she untensed just a little bit and nodded hesitantly. "I don't know… but just tell me what to do."
Cynder hesitated, then shook her head. "If you're not sure then focus on reaching out to us. Protect yourself, clear your mind. Okay?"
Pleasure nodded. "Okay…"
Cynder was disappointed, Pleasure had no aggression in her, perhaps just because she was so beaten down, or perhaps it wasn't in her nature. It seemed like all they could rely on her to do was reach out for help.
Cynder raised a paw and a ball of red energy appeared in her palm. "I'll be back for you."
Imperia came to a tumbling halt, she had lost count of the number of walls she'd crashed through after Darkmire hit her. Single digits, probably, but even through her wind shield it felt like she'd been run over by a carriage.
In the distance she could hear Darkmire laughing, a controlled and mocking sound very different to the laugh of the real body which collapsed into gurgles and coughs and splutters without being able to fully express the sound.
Imperia groaned as she uncurled herself, gingerly testing her wings and legs and relieved to see they still worked.
Glancing back she saw the path of destruction that her body had caused, leaving a crater through the rubble and half destroyed buildings of a whole city block.
"Wow, that's cool."
Malefor landed beside her, panting, reaching down and grabbing her, purple sparks around his hands. "Imperia! Are you alright!?"
She laughed faintly and accepted a few sparks before swatting his hands away. "I'm fine. Wind shield held up really well."
"But… how?" He said, surprised.
"It helps when you know the hit is coming. Your reaction really made it look convincing though, great job."
"What?" Malefor was confused for a moment, but then he realised the cleverness of it.
Imperia got to her feet with a grunt of effort and looked towards Darkmire, who's gaze was locked on her.
"Look, she's forgotten everything else." Imperia said with a slight laugh, then got to her feet.
"Well well well, you survived." Darkmire laughed. "Enjoying the pain? Lets do that again, shall we? Malefor are you looking forwards to seeing little Imperia get crushed like a bug? You'd have to get your cowardly claws into the fight in order to even try to stop it!"
Imperia growled and stepped in front of Malefor protectively. "He won't need to."
She darted in to melee range with Darkmire, dodging a slash and grab, but with a sudden burst of speed Darkmire caught her with a wing, sending her crashing to the ground.
Malefor went to try and step in, but a bump of wind pushed him back. Darkmire lunged forwards as Imperia tried to get up, raising both her paws together and bringing them down on Imperia with a roar of victory.
Imperia raised one forearm to block, and somehow the mighty downward strike stopped dead to be just a gentle touch. A ripple ran through Imperia's body, and she jabbed Darkmire in the throat with her other paw. The moment her paw made contact there was a sound like a thunderclap and Darkmire's neck exploded.
Darkmire's yellow eyes widened with shock, and shadow wrapped around her neck in a desperate attempt to keep her head attached. Her tail whipped around clumsily towards Imperia, but still with enough force to obliterate a house.
"What's the matter? Let me guess, this technique wasn't invented back in your day."
This time Imperia stopped the tail lash with a single finger, the ripple running through her body as she swatted Darkmire's back with her tail, sending the black dragoness slamming into the ground hard enough to crack it and break bones even in her unnaturally tough body.
"That's your own strength being used against you. Normally redirecting the energy of a strike can never redirect enough energy to do serious damage to the enemy. But you with your lovely super strength are giving me so much kinetic energy to steal!"
Imperia formed wind blades on her wings and began to slice and dice mercilessly at the fallen black dragoness below her, those attacks dealing far less damage than the stolen superpowered hits she had just inflicted, but still inflicting relentless pressure as Darkmire struggled to heal herself.
As Darkmire reconnected her throat with purple sparks she let out a screech of anger and swiped a wing at Imperia's legs, but the silver dragoness jumped off it with a laugh, shooting up into the air before coming back down like a falling star directly on Darkmire's skull, hearing it crack, then she grabbed Darkmire by the horns and began to slam her head down against the ground, at first once per second, but then speeding up, twice per second, three times per second, until she was smashing Darkmire's skull against the ground with the speed of a jackhammer, so fast it was impossible to see her hands moving.
After about ten seconds she stepped back, panting heavily and flicking blood off her paws, looking down at the destruction she had wrought.
Purple sparks rose up and began to stitch the shattered skull and brain back together, but Imperia swatted them away with her wing and a blast of magic. They returned in greater numbers and desperation, and Imperia snarled as she swiped them away again.
In that moment she looked almost scary, Malefor wasn't sure if it was more appropriate to be impressed or disturbed. He had never seen Imperia fight all out before and she was brutally efficient and murderous, he knew instantly that she had been aiming for this scenario right from the start of the fight, what he had just seen was her ultimate killing technique.
A blast of purple sparks so thick it was like a solid cloud tried to repair Darkmire's skull before it was too late, and when Imperia tried to crush them again a blast of shadows threw her backwards and formed a protective sphere around Darkmire.
"Guess you couldn't beat us without magic after all." Imperia said tauntingly.
After several seconds the sphere retracted to reveal Darkmire once again intact, looking physically pristine but with her rage now tempered by suspicious cautiousness.
"So that's your best? More annoying than expected. But you'll pay dearly for making me reconsider my no magic rule. You may be immune to impact damage, but once I get my claws around you I can still rip you into bloody chunks, and I assure you I'm going to do exactly that."
"Respectfully you will have to go through us first."
Darkmire jolted, turning around with a hiss, her eyes narrowing as she saw a red dragon approaching with a whirling tail. Flare gave Imperia a nod and smile, wordlessly questioning Imperia on if they could assist. Imperia bit her lip, hesitating for a moment, then nodded softly in return.
On either side of her Cyril and Volteer stepped around to flank the black dragon, completing a circle with Imperia. She couldn't see him, but Imperia knew that Terrador was underneath the ground and poised to strike.
"Well after seeing what Imperia just did to you I must say I've been looking forwards to fighting an opponent against whom I don't need to hold back." Flare said, flames beginning to dance along her tail.
Whew, Imperia can be scary when she wants to be! And to think she's just been sitting quietly on those last couple of abilities all this time. I wonder what other tricks the others might be hiding, and I wonder how many of these abilities Darkmire might be able to successfully steal.
Writing Pleasure's scene was tricky for me at first as I couldn't figure out how Cynder should approach her and what they should talk about. Some of that uncertainty suited the situation well, and so it remained in their actual conversation. I also especially loved adding Cynder and Spyro's names into her list, which was something I was excited to do from the moment I had the chanting list idea.
Now, as if I havent set enough work for myself its time to add the guardians into this fight. It felt wrong for them to not get involved.
The question still remains though, how to beat Darkmire?
Thankyou for reading! Let me know what you think of this chapter, I read and appreciate every review very much 3
Until next time!
-4Dragons