This chapter is horrible because I'm trying to update before my mother comes to visit, so I can't go into detail.

±13

Cynder sat in the bath tub at Celia's palace. Glomp and Spyro both tried their hardest to scrub her clean, but a lot of blood was stuck on her. "I am a good person. I am a good person. I am a good person..." She's been saying that for two hours now.

"Why won't this blood come off? It's getting on my nerves!" said Glomp. The pink male scrubbed as hard as he could with a burning hot wash cloth.

"I'm more concerned about if she'll be okay. I don't want her to be stuck in a trance like this forever!" said Spyro.

"What's going on here?" Braniac came in to see. "What happened to her?"

"Cynder went nuts and killed everyone at a party," Glomp said plainly.

"Oh. And let me guess, the blood won't come off and she's stuck in a trance?" Glomp nodded. "This is simple. I'll just ask the queen to do what she did last time this happened." Glomp left the room while Spyro wept.

The purple dragon held Cynder's hand. "Cynder, please snap out of it. I love you."

"I am a good person. I am a good person. I am a good person..."

Cynder woke up in the alley behind a tavern. The black dragon shielded her eyes from the intense light of the lanterns. "Son of a bitch." The sun had just started to set, and Cynder's gigantic hangover felt like a ton on her back. "What happened to me?"

"Hey, bitch, I thought I said get out of here!" An angry mole shouted at Cynder from the back door of the tavern. "Get! Get out before I call the cops!"

"Eh?" Cynder stood and walked out of the alley with a limp. "What the shit happened? Why am I in so much pain?" She passed by a bakery and looked at her reflection in the window. "Whoa..." Her face was completely bruised and bloodied, part of her right eye has swollen, and she was wearing a strange hat with beautiful gems. "Hmm. I don't look too bad, maybe a few days in bed will do me some good. At least I got a new hat." She opened her wings and got ready to fly. She looked down and sighed. "Spyro loves Ember. Of course he loves her. I was a fool to not see it." She looked back up and spoke to no one in particular. "Ember, just make Spyro happy. He deserves it. If you break his heart, I'll make you regret it." She flew off to the temple, accepting that Spyro's heart belonged to Ember.

Celia came into the room in her dragon form. She was carrying a hand mirror. "What's the problem?"

Spyro pleaded to the queen, "Your Majesty, please help Cynder! She's traumatized!"

Celia approached Cynder. She held up the mirror and focused hard. "Cynder's stuck like this for a reason. Spyro, these Cymbols on Cynder's body, do you know what they mean?"

"No, I assumed she was born with them."

"She wasn't, but they are a part of her. They're called Darkness Glyphs. They harness the darkness in a person's body and give it life. We all have darkness, a darkness we must accept. Our darkness gets stronger as we resist it. Darkness Glyphs make it so that the person's darkness is on the outside instead of the inside."

"What do you mean?"

"Cynder is not supposed to be black, Spyro. Black is the color of a shadow dragon, but Cynder's body shows that she isn't a shadow dragon."

"But she has the shadow element."

"That's because of the Glyphs. I've examined Cynder's body, and I see what she is truly. Slender form, nine ivory horns, wicked sharp blades on the tail and wings, narrow face, and exposed bone that resembles shackles. Spyro, Cynder is a Mort dragon."

"A what?"

"A dragon with powers over death. She's had her true self hidden, hidden underneath layers of darkness which has been brought out by the Glyphs..."

"And how do we save her?" Spyro asked.

"There's only one way to save her. Like I said, Glyphs need darkness. Her darkness currently has her as its prisoner, and it doesn't want to let go. The only way to remove the glyphs is for them to lose control of the darkness. We need to remind that it is her darkness. She must take control and master her own darkness."

"How do we do that?"

Celia gave Spyro the hand mirror. "This is Cynder's Mental Haven. Take it and enter her mind. Find her, and free her. Remind her that the darkness is hers to control."

"I'll... I'll do it." The purple dragon held up the mirror. He briefly looked at Cynder in the tub. "I love you..." He stared into the mirror. The longer he looked into the mirror, the funnier he felt. Things became fuzzy, sounds faded, his eye lids became heavy.

±13

I promise the next chapter will be better.