Hello dear readers,
I know it's been over one year since I updated the story, and probably is gonna be a long while again for a new chapter to be written. But again, life is full of stuff to do and I'm studying to get my master degree.
Also, I noticed that we gained some followers from last time, thank you all for enjoying this story so far, I hope you'll like this new chapter. It is a bit shorter than usual, but I guess it's better than nothing, or maybe for the better even.
Again, thank you in advance for reading.
-Azotac
Spyro crashed with nonchalance on Cynder's pillow bed, huffing loudly. Some feathers left their silk envelop to lift up, guided by the pulse of air that the purple body generated by falling down on the smooth and soft cushions.
One of the errant feathers floated gently, twisting and turning on it self. In moments gravity took the win over the gentle current that previously lifted it up, making it pose delicately on the purple snout.
Two identical purple orbs focused on the feather, before the muzzle wrinkled back and, with a breath and a loud sneeze, made it fly away at full speed and behind the amount of cushions.
Spyro groaned and a light feminine chuckle came from behind him.
"This training session did a number on you, didn't it?"Asked the black dragoness, laying beside him on the bed.
"Ya, I maybe pushed myself a bit too hard, I thought I was ready to go back to normal."Said Spyro.
Cynder smiled, before beginning to caress him in between his shoulders.
"Wanna me to give you a massage?"She offered, moving her muzzle near his ears.
"Hmmmm, yees please"He replied, still with his muzzle in between the cushions.
She smiled, before climbing over him.
Her paws began to glide over his back, digits pressing in those toned and fatigued muscles. She began from his neck, then, after working there for a couple of minutes, she continued her descent towards the wing joints and the strong muscular groups there situated. She stopped there a bit longer, passing her digits along those chords, pressing along the flow of them, from the spine to the joints.
Beneath her Spyro gasped and whimpered in pleasure.
She giggled, before moving her paws upward along his left flank, reaching his foreleg, where she began to massage the shoulder muscles. She stood there for a minute before switching to the other leg.
She paid particular attention to this one, since it was were he was wounded.
She began to massage gently with her digits over the scar, feeling the contracted muscle underneath the purple scales.
"You're tense here, is this what bothered you during training?"She asked lovingly.
"Yea, but you're doing an excellent job in fixing it."He replied with a dreamy voice.
She smiled in hearing this.
Cynder continued with renovated passion to massage in that spot, before moving again to his upper back and descend along the spinal muscles until she reached the lower back, just above his tail.
She continued circling her paws along there for some more time before eventually moving on his butt. She gripped both cheeks lovingly and after a moment released the hold.
She sighed, letting herself fall alongside her partner, which had a dreamy smile on his muzzle.
His head moved forward to meet her, as he nuzzled gently and lovingly the dragoness.
"Thank you Cynder, it was really amazing." He said with a grateful tone.
"Anything for you Spyro."She replied lovingly.
They stood there, enchanted by the rhythm of their breaths, immersed in that peaceful silence of coziness and love.
Until Spyro's voice returned to reverberate softly in the room.
"Cyn, I…"He began.
The dragoness turned her emerald eyes on him, giving the drake her full attention.
"I…I've been thinking… a lot lately."He said, shifting on his back.
He raised both of his forelegs in the air, glancing at the sharp claws and purple paws.
He then posed them on his chest, gliding over the brute signs on his golden scales.
"What if I don't get better?"He asked, still looking up at the ceiling.
Cynder frowned slightly.
"But you are getting better, Aramis said your recover is progressing steadily now."She replied calmly.
"I know, but I feel like my body will never be the same, even after much time…"He continued, scrunching his eyes.
"And now I'm conflicted!"He suddenly exclaimed.
"On one side I'm terrified by this, if I do not return to my full power capabilities this would mean that I won't be able to protect the people I care anymore."
He then sighed.
"But on the other paw, I can't help but think if that would mean I'd stop fighting…forever. No more life threatening situations, no more pain. I…"
He then turned to face her.
"Am I being too much of an egoist?"He said, his voice carrying something a little more than a whisper.
She smiled lovingly, raising on of her paws and posing gently on his purple cheek.
Her thumb began to massage those tender scales lovingly as he leaned into that soft paw.
"Spyro, you're the most selfless dragon I know, and probably of the whole history of our race."
"You sacrificed everything you had for this world and you were ready to die in the planet core when you put it back together ."She said, matching his tone of voice, keeping her paw on his muzzle.
"You deserve to care about yourself, to think about your health and your desires."She continued.
"But what if-"He tried to argue, but the black dragoness quickly halted him by posing her thumb on his lips.
"Don't worry of everything that could possibly happen, focus on every day, on getting better and growing."She said, before removing her digit from his mouth.
"You may be right, you'll never be the same again, and nobody can blame you. Everything you stood up was terrible and painful, but it made you stronger!"She said a bit louder now.
Cynder then placed her muzzle agains his.
"And I'll be with you until the end, every step of the way."She said, concluding her speech.
The black dragons hoped that her words had the same effect that his own had during her numerous moments of turmoil.
He always knew what to say and what to do to make her feel secure and valid, worth of love and loved, even in the darkest moments of their lives.
And when she focused her gaze back onto his, the results were clearly expressed.
Two violet irises were open wide, glistening in awe and love.
Spyro released a breath he didn't know he was holding.
"Thank you Cynder…thank you"He said, before hugging the dragoness tight against his chest.
Again, they laid there on the cushion bed, enjoying the presence of one another.
The purple dragon felt like a weight was removed from his shoulders, he felt good and hopeful. But his calculating mind couldn't help but think again about the whole problem about the dark crystals.
He heard from the Guardians that they sent northward a team to investigate some old ruins.
The drake wondered if they actually found something or just ended in an empty wasteland.
"Who knows…"He finally thought, looking out of the window.
"What do you mean with 'do not enter' ?"Asked with a worried tone Nemes.
"Sir, it's an ancient barbaric symbol. Opponent factions used prisoners of war like this to signal forbidden or occupied territories."Replied the soldier.
"And how do you know that?"Inquired another drake.
The first soldier sat on his haunches, posing a paw to his chest.
"History his one of my passions, modestly I studied all of the first era wars during my years at the academy and aced all my exams"He said with suave tone.
"Yea sure"Replied the other.
While the two soldiers bickered, corporal Nemes was still focused on the corpse impaled at the door, and the crystal hidden behind it.
Another soldier walked beside him.
"Sir, what should we do?"He inquired.
The ice drake remained silent for a couple of seconds, not removing his gaze.
Then, unexpectedly he began walking towards the door, with cautious steps.
"Sir?"Came the soldier's voice, but his superior didn't turn.
Even the others quit their small talk and focus on the ice dragon
In moments Nemes was only a couple of meters from the door.
He then took another step.
A surge of purple energy coursed trough the gate and to the impaled dragon.
The ice binding him began to crack as its eyes shot wide open.
They were empty of life, but filled with dark magic.
His broken maw opened wide, releasing a nightmarish hiss, probably due to the fact that its vocal cords, if not rotten were completely frozen.
The ice kept on cracking, until one of its foreleg got free, and began to flail in every direction.
The corpse continued to move around, trying to free itself from the frozen prison, but before he could free its second foreleg, an ice spear impaled its head from the maw.
Another last nightmarish wheeze came from the carcass, as the purple magic drained from those dead eyes.
Nemes turned to his soldiers, breath ragged and worry in his eyes.
"We should get out of here as soon as we can. Our mission is complete."He replied.
The others didn't need to hear it twice.
After a couple of minutes they were already walking back towards the entrance they came from.
Their pace was brisk as everybody wanted to leave the cursed place as soon as they could.
The team climbed the stairs from which they descended and reached again their entrance point, with the wall of ice still blocking the window they broke into.
They ice was clear enough to see trough it, and it looked like the storm was still going.
"Looks like we're staying here for a bit."
Nemes sealed the door behind them, not wanting to have any undesired guests that could possibly come out from the place they came from.
"We should camp here and leave as soon as the storm ends."
"We'll be taking turns to watch, I'll be the first, you all rest instead."He concluded.
"Yessir, thank you sir."Replied in chorus the soldiers.
In the span of few minutes the whole team dropped their satchels to the ground and began to pull out their blankets, distributing them on the ground to create an insulation layer before laying on them and covering themselves with the remaining ones.
Nemes observed with pride the organization of his squad, before he turned to the frozen window, his gaze lost in the snowstorm raging outside.
The drake sighed.
His emotions were a bit conflicted right now.
He was relieved to have completed his mission in such a short time.
But at the same time, that would mean he had to report back to Warfang and probably come back here in less than a week to destroy the crystal, probably with a bigger team.
He was already thinking about all the tactics and plans to be studied in order to dodge the possibilities of the building collapsing on them while the operate, the number of dragons needed only for this job, etcetera, etcetera.
So his turn to watch passed in a blur but outside was still snowing.
A soldier got up on his own to inform him that he could rest, a fact that the ice corporal gladly accepted.
He laid himself a bit far from his soldiers, with his head on his paws, and quickly fell asleep.
..
…
…..
"Sir, the storm has cleared!"A soldier murmured, while shaking him awake with a paw.
A blue eyelid cracked open, revealing a pale golden eye, that quickly sharpened and looked straight at the soldier above him.
In a couple of seconds Nemes was up and his gaze was already inspecting the situation around him. Once he saw that almost everyone was getting ready to leave, he turned to the soldier beside him.
"Thank you, now get ready to leave you too."He said and the drake nodded, scurrying away.
The ice dragon walked towards the makeshift ice wall from when they arrived, and, looking trough it, it was evident that it wasn't snowing anymore, but he could see that the sky was still mostly grey, with some solitary rays of light filtering trough the puffy clouds.
He posed his paw on the icy barrier, and with a small flash of blue light, it collapsed in a myriad small particles that got carried away by the wind.
Immediately a chilly breeze entered the room in which they were.
A shiver run down some soldier's back, making them curse under their breath.
"C'mon team, we gotta go back and report to the guardians. The sooner we depart, the sooner we get back to warm climate."Announced Nemes, while checking a second time the straps of his armor.
When he turned he found his soldiers mostly in line, ready to leave.
He smiled, before gesturing with his wing the opening.
One by one, the dragons took off from the ledge of the broken balcony and darted in the grey sky.
Nemes looked back one last time, before taking off.
With a spin, he got in front of the formation, leading the way southward, back to the dragon capital.
Nemes looked westward, noticing the sun quickly going down on the horizon.
He sighed, already beginning to look around for a place to rest for the night.
"Gotta speedup a bit"He whispered.
The group managed to fly for almost one hour, before it got too dark and a bit too cold to continue safely.
Nemes announced their descent, and in the span of twenty minutes they found a cave in which sleep in.
They quickly got to the ground and swiftly entered the cave, only to realize that it was a bit small to fit all of them.
"Looks like we'll have to squeeze a bit, sir?"Said a fire soldier.
Nemes, looked around to his soldiers.
Though the flight was relatively short, he knew he pushed up a bit the pace to get them as far as possible from north, plus flying in the cold was fairly more difficult physically.
He breathed out slowly.
"Ok, looks like we gotta snuggle"He quipped.
"Amiur, you go in the middle, warm up your body with fire energy. You guys, take out your blankets and lay them to the ground, like before."Ordered the corporal.
The team did as he told, and in the span of a couple of minutes they were all already disposed in a flurry of wings, tails and scales on their makeshift pavement, staying close to each other and especially to the fire dragon in the center.
Many of them were snickering at the situation.
"I've never been touched in so many places by so many males!"Exclaimed the fire soldier in the middle, before a tail slapped his nape.
"At least you could scratch my back to sleep as a thank you?"
The answer was another limb making his side.
"Admit you're enjoying this Amiur. Gotta keep your dick in check tonight"Someone exclaimed from the side, gaining the laughter of all the others.
"Terrified of accidentally sucking it Onix?"Replied quickly the fire dragon, making the giggles continue.
The corporal laughed softly at the scene, before setting down too, in front of the others, with his muzzle facing the opening of the cave.
A bit of joviality was of vital essence in moments like the these.
Their life was not in danger, but who knows what awaits them once they return again north for destroying the crystal.
He whispered a tough to the Ancestors, before closing his eyes.
Auros was resting on the bed of his room, thinking how he spent the morning and the moments of intimacy he had with Nix.
He had to admit it went…Really well all things considered.
He almost botched it, but in the end she caught what he wanted to say and then: boom.
Full fledged kiss!
With a dragoness so beautiful!
He was honestly impressed if not a bit stunned by how things progressed.
But now he found himself…scared?
He didn't knew how to progress with the relationship. Maybe he just needs to keep doing what he does usually, right?
People in general don't like changes.
"Or maybe I could ask Spyro!"He exclaimed in his thoughts.
"Spyro is surely more expert in relationships, and I bet he-"
A knock came from his door.
The drake snapped out of his trance, with his head tilting towards the source of the sound.
He quickly got up and walked towards the wooden door, before gently open it, only to find Volteer, in all his big size in the corridor.
"Ah, young dragon, sorry to disturb your well earned rest, I hope you weren't asleep for too long."He proposed, with his usual quirky voice, albeit with a softer tone.
"No sir, you didn't wake me. You need me for something?"Asked the youngster.
"Yes and no! I need to give you something I should have given you this morning, but better late than never!"He said producing a glass flask with a bluish turbid liquid inside.
"This is the medicine I told you about some time ago! It should remove the painful effect from the use of the red gems."He offered excitedly.
The smaller drake took the flask with both paws and looked at it with wonder.
"Thank you sir, it's…amazing. Thank you."He said, almost without breath.
"Ahh, don't thank me yet young one, we must see if it works well first. The ingredients are all natural, and I added just a bit of spirit gems to make it of quick absorption."Explained the guardian.
"Take a small swig of it tomorrow morning just after you wake up, the effect should last until midday, in time with the end of the morning training session."Concluded the electricity dragon.
"Thank you sir, really. I'm speechless."Replied the young dragon.
"It was my pleasure young Auros, now I'll leave you to your own devices, have a good night."Said the elder. Auros posed the flask on the desk before returning to the door with hurry and bowing back to the guardian.
"Thank you again, goodnight to you too"He said, before closing the door.
The drake sighed deeply and walked back to the desk, where he posed the flask.
He looked at it curiously, with a paw ready to touch the glass container, but a big yawn escaped from his mouth.
"Yea, I'll take a look at it tomorrow."He resolved, dropping on the bed.
In the end, he was tired after all, since as soon as he closed his eyes, sleep took him in his calming embrace.