"Well well well, if it isn't the Imperia I just killed. Sliced to ribbons, and now she's back and right as rain."

Darkmire turned to smoke below Imperia, the gleaming point of the Dragonslayer spear peircing the sand a mere instant too late to split the black dragon's skull.

"Returned for another round of melodrama, a grand performance of your self obsession. I will not indulge you this time, I will simply crush you and take that spear."

"Sounds like projection to me." Imperia said with a grin, yanking the spear free of the dirt.

"Projection?" Darkmire hissed. "My motivations are beyond your ability to comprehend. But by all means ascribe what you can."

"You act like a spoilt brat pretending to be a god."

Darkmire let out a sinister laugh. "Or perhaps a god pretending to be a spoilt brat."

Darkmire reformed from the shadows a short distance away and put her hand on her chest, where the Dragonslayer had stabbed her. A purple spark flickered into the wound, only to vanish without healing it. She frowned and tried again, but with no success.

"Now that's impressive… how fortunate that I don't need a heart." She muttered softly, then used her shadows to temporarily patch up the wound. She looked back up at the spear with blazing yellow eyes. "I want that."

"Come and get it then." Imperia spun the weapon gracefully, taking a flying fighting stance.

"Yes, that's exactly what I'll do." Darkmire said, still scratching her chest with a claw, then she spun a thread of shadow around her fingers and threw her arm wide, conjuring a vast net which she spread out around Imperia.

With a laugh the silver dragoness flicked the spear across the shadows, cutting through them with ease and sliding through the net.

Darkmire stomped the ground and ice spikes burst from the soil, which was already cold from her earlier display of power. Imperia skipped backwards, lashing out with the spear to shatter some of the spikes, while gracefully darting around the others.

Darkmire hissed slightly and the energy around her rose sharply, pressure pulling Spyro, Malefor, Cynder and Ignitus in a few steps towards her, before she beat her wings forwards and sent out an explosion of wind with the force of a bomb, flattening the ruined and sand covered remnants of the city in an arc in front of her, a snowy white wall of water vapour racing forwards ahead of the pressure wave.

Imperia turned, pointing the spear towards the oncoming blast and aligning her body behind it like an arrow, gritting her teeth as the spear absorbed energy and barely allowed her to cut her way through the deadly shockwave. She looked at the spear, which was practically buzzing with the amount of energy it had absorbed even from contact with a tiny portion of the bomb blast Darkmire had thrown.

"Wow, I wish I had the raw power to level a city. Luckily I borrowed some, here, have a taste!"

Imperia swung the spear down, ending with a flick like a whip, and blasting the stolen fragment of Darkmire's attack back out of the Dragonslayer and down at her. Darkmire was caught by surprise, her paws coming up too late to catch the bullet of wind, and it hit the ground right at her feet.

The sand erupted as the wind energy exploded, the sound briefly deafening all of them, it was much bigger than any of them had thought it would be, sending every dragon flying. Malefor and Cynder caught Spyro and Ignitus, safely coasting them backwards on the wave of energy as it chewed open a new crater in the earth nearly a hundred meters across. Imperia was blown backwards until she was hardly a speck in the sky, and Darkmire was hurled off her feet, tumbling and crashing through the dirt.

The crumpled figure rose, wings snapping back into place, the bones correcting themselves and mending with sparks of purple magic. "How interesting. That's a very impressive spear you have there. I can't wait to rip it from your cold dead-"

"If you're talking shit I can't hear you!" Came a distant shout from Imperia as she flew back towards the fight.

Darkmire grunted, and shadows swallowed her as she warped. Imperia crashed into the black dragoness and it felt like flying into a wall. With a casual swat Darkmire sent the other dragoness falling to the ground.

Imperia touched down gracefully, spinning the dragonslayer again and looking up defiantly.

"Say, wouldn't that have been helpful when I had Cyril by the throat? When you got to watch me squeeze the life out of him and wring his miserable little neck? When I sliced Volteer to ribbons, or how about when Flare sacrificed her life trying to hold me still?"

Darkmire snickered as she landed on the ground with a thud.

"You let them all die, your beloved Flare and Volteer, your friends. And for what? A cheap shot from behind? You must be pretty embarrassed that you missed."

She idly scratched the wound in her chest again, directing more sparks into it, and yet still it refused to heal.

"Without that spear you're not worth much are you? Just a jumped up little dream object with delusions of grandeur, propped up by arrogance and ignorance."

"Takes one to know one." Imperia responded as she rose up above Darkmire. "You're just a dream yourself, and you won't escape into the real world."

Darkmire growled slightly in annoyance, then reached up with her claws and sent a pulse of red energy towards Imperia, the fear element sweeping outwards and then crashing into the silver dragon.

Imperia twirled the spear around herself, closing her eyes and doing her best to guard her mind. The fear swirled around the Dragonslayer, diverting itself from Imperia slightly, charging the weapon with energy. Darkmire watched patiently, then flicked a claw, sending a spear of shadow shooting through Imperia's heart.

"So easy." She sneered, withdrawing the shadow blade. "Enjoy dying again. That spear of yours isn't so loyal, is it? That spear only wants to kill, and someday I'm going to kill the entire universe."

She raised a finger and beckoned to the dragonslayer.

"Come to your true master."

There was no magic, Darkmire didn't attempt to steal the weapon with wind or shadow, she simply spoke, total confidence in her voice.

The spear twitched in Imperia's grip, and the silver dragoness clutched her chest with one hand, trying to stem the bleeding, while her other held onto the spear even as it tugged against her.

"There's no way it would…" Ignitus said, struggling to keep a hint of dread out of his voice.

Cynder grunted slightly. She remembered the Dragonslayer moving towards Hope like it was magnetised when it had fallen to the ground before.

"It doesn't matter." Malefor said. "Imperia is buying us precious time, we need to determine our next move. Imperia and I spoke through dreams for decades, and defying death is entirely within pattern for her. It's possible that she may be immortal for the time being, but if Darkmire realises…"

"She'll realise right away if I try to break out of the dream by force." Cynder said. "I can try to prod at it a bit and see what I find, but I'm learning this as we go, I don't know how it works."

"Yourself and Spyro are the two with the most experience taking risks against world ending threats, I defer to your judgement." Malefor said.

"It's a risk we need to take." Spyro said. "The rest of us need to look for where the real body of Darkmire is after it got frozen in that crystal and buried by the explosions."

Darkmire was, for the moment, entirely focused on the Dragonslayer spear, amused as Imperia struggled to keep hold of it, the spear itself protesting against her grip, wishing to fly to the side of the black dragon.

"Come on now, come on now." She beckoned with a finger. "Oh Dragonslayer, do I not make a persuasive case?"

"You want it that bad?" Imperia said. "Then you can have it!"

She let go and the spear zipped towards Darkmire.

Imperia put her hands to her chest and wiped away the blood, and her wound healed instantly. She grinned and darted forwards, a sonic boom trailing in her wake.

The instant before the spear reached Darkmire's hand Imperia caught up with it, grabbing it two handed and spinning in a graceful rotation, bringing the weapon vertically down on Darkmire like a falling star, wind magic from Imperia's speed being converted into power and added to the strike.

Darkmire was driven down, one foreleg going down onto her elbow as she attempted to withstand the blow and a crater formed around her. The metal of the spear's crossguard, a diamond shaped piece of metal which was not unlike a spearhead or a dagger itself, had punctured into her back, breaking ribs and nearly hitting her lungs.

Imperia ripped the spear out as the impact bounced back, blood and dust floating in the air for a moment, snatching up all the extra energy and spinning back the other way, her hands sliding down the length of the spear to be holding it by its very end for maximum possible leverage, as she swung it like a golf club and hit Darkmire up into the air.

Imperia shot a brief nod to the others, before the ground shook as she took off, slamming into Darkmire in the air, the spear lashing and swiping. Each time Imperia feinted for Darkmire's head with the blade and baited the black dragoness into defending herself she used the chance to hit her with a shoulder ram or another swing of using the spear like a bat, each one throwing the black dragoness around as Imperia tried to take the battle away from inside the ruined walls of Warfang.

Darkmire tried throwing walls of wind, shadow and ice in the way of the spear, but it cut through everything that she used as a shield with ease, putting her on the back foot as even with her godlike abilities she was temporarily at a loss to stop it.

With a hiss Darkmire pulled shadows around herself, the spear sweeping through the cloud, cutting it apart and yet doing no harm to the dragoness within.

"You're beginning to annoy me."

Darkmire growled as she reformed behind Imperia, she lifted her hand and pointed a finger downwards, a huge downdraft bringing them both to the ground.

Imperia beat her wings to resist, but she was dragged down to land in the grass outside Warfang, shadows surrounding her on all sides, the wind pushing the grass flat.

"What are you going to do about it?" Imperia snarled.

"Funny you should ask." Darkmire hissed softly, the shadows deepening and darkening. Imperia swiped out, slashing holes through the smokey blackness, but it didn't have any effect as the shadow clenched its fist and the earth snapped shut like a trap, crushing Imperia inside and utterly destroying her. Her wind shield didn't even hold up for a second.

Darkmire released her shadows, allowing the earth to fall away, revealing dirt, blood, and a stained golden spear.

"Excellent."

Darkmire stepped into darkness and then reappeared above, touching down and gripping the weapon in a paw.

With a grin she lifted up the Dragonslayer.

The shadows and the grass stilled as she picked it up, even as a dream object she could feel the uniqueness of the item. It felt like a void, a sharp edged blade of nothingness, in which no light or magic or life could exist, all elegantly wrapped up in seals designed to direct and improve upon that lethal core.

"Most excellent indeed."

She purred, sensing anger and bloodthirst from the weapon, pathetically small in scope compared to her own, and yet it resonated with her, this was what had allowed her to call the weapon.

"Now, where are-"

The spear suddenly stopped moving, and Darkmire looked down to see Imperia grabbing it.

"Well well well, look at you. I take my eyes off the Imperia mincemeat for one second and you're suddenly all better!"

"You're so crude, did you run out of traumatic memories and personality flaws to peddle your toxic psychology about, and so now you're resorting to shock value?" Imperia said with a laugh, both forelegs and both hind legs grabbing the spear as she put as much strength into it as she could, aiming to twist it out of Darkmire's grip.

Darkmire channelled cold into the spear, dew collecting against it as it approached absolute zero, while with a single hand she countered Imeria's efforts and reversed the attempted twist inch by inch. Imperia gritted her teeth and resisted as Darkmire leaned her weight down on the spear, crushing down on top of Imperia slowly, inevitably.

"Keep it up, I'm going to snap you in half." Darkmire sneered down at her.

Imperia held out for as long as she could, before kicking out hard with her magic, unable to push Darkmire off herself but able to at least squirm her way out from under the spear. She landed a short distance away, panting and rubbing her feet. Holding the frozen spear had fused some of her scales to it, and her paws were raw from letting go of it.

"Where do you think you're going?" Darkmire said, a blur of dust and flattened grass following her movement as she zipped behind Imperia and swung the Dragonslayer at her. "I need to test if dream logic lets you heal from my new toy!"

Imperia dived and rolled under the swing. Darkmire's attacks were lazy and wasteful. If anything the spear made her temporarily less deadly, as it distracted her from using her more effective magic.

Darkmire knew this too, but she was determined to hit the elusive pest with the Dragonslayer. She swung twice more, developing a rhythm. She had never picked up a spear in her life and the dream Imperia was of limited use for stealing memories of spear skills from, so to make up for it she would need to direct the spear using her magic instead.

The spear floated upwards, spinning and whirling as it danced according to Darkmire's will.

Her fingers twitched and the spear jabbed and thrust forwards, faster than physically possible when being wielded by flesh and blood, less a spear and more of a deadly spinning propellor blade with a high sharp whining sound as it moved.

Imperia ducked and rolled and skipped around, the dragonslayer carving deep tracks through the dirt as it pursued her, sending grass and dust flying.

"You're like a mosquito." Darkmire muttered. "Enough flying around! I'm hitting you with this spear one way or the other."

The spear raced back to her hand and she pointed it at the sky, cold running through it, her power level spiking sharply and dropping the temperature in a wide area, the moisture in the air freezing into a vast sheet of ice that covered all of Warfang and the surrounding area, rapidly burying the city under a growing mountain of pure ice.

Imperia was caught in the snap freeze, her speed useless as she was encased in the ice. Her own slightly trained ice element protected her from the cold, but was too weak to allow her to escape. Darkmire beckoned with her claw and the ice flowed and moved to bring Imperia before the black dragon.

"Now that's more like it."

The ice parted, freeing Imperia's head and chest.

"Having fun there?"

"You cheated." Imperia said with a huff. "Do your worst, but you won't be able to really enjoy your victory."

"Do my worst? You know normally I would take my time twisting your limbs around on themselves like a pretzel, let you feel every single degree of rotation as I turn your spine into a slinky starting from your tail tip up to your skull, but you're right, I won't be able to really enjoy this… because you're not worth that much of my time right now. I know you're stalling for your friends, and because they haven't yet given up hope that they can stop me they're not really getting to really soak in the despair that me killing you horribly would otherwise bring them. So I'm just going to test out this dragonslayer and see if it will put you down for more than thirty fucking seconds. Seriously, can you just die until I need you?"

Imperia snickered, opening her mouth to say something defiant, but then the ice around her limbs twisted, and she screamed in pain as her bones snapped.

"What?" Darkmire laughed mockingly. "I said I wasn't going to take my time making an Imperia twisty. That doesn't mean I wasn't going to do it!"

Darkmire flicked a finger and the Dragonslayer stabbed into Imperia's chest, then she flicked her finger again and it stabbed into her skull. A twist of her wrist made it rotate, turning Imperia's head into a smear.

"Pity the others didn't get to see that up close. Imagine them never being able to unsee it."


"Spyro, get this cold out of here, its distracting." Cynder muttered. "Malefor, get your ass in gear, I get the feeling Imperia has bought us all the time she can."

Spyro promptly created a dome of earth around them and glowed with warmth, allowing Cynder to focus.

"Are you onto something?" Malefor asked.

"Yes. I think she's... she's right here." Cynder reached out a paw in front of her face. "When I beat my wings in the real world I flew right into her. Her body is right against me, I know it. If I can just grab her in the real world I can get us out of here."

"What do you need?" Spyro asked.

"Time, distraction. Same things as we've needed for the last hour." Cynder grunted. "We're so close, if we can get out of the dream Ignitus can do his thing. I know its a lot to ask and all, but get out there and fight her."

Malefor nodded. "Got it."

He stepped through the earth wall of the dome, emerging into the frozen wasteland that Darkmire had created.

He could see the black dragon in the distance, a drop of ink against white and brown. As he watched she moved some of her vast mountain of ice around, then turned around and spotted him.

In her hands he saw the long golden shape of the Dragonslayer and felt a chill of dread. Trying to save the world in person was a lot more nerve wracking than calculating and planning had been.

Darkmire began to creep towards him, seeming to grow in size and disturbingness as she did so. She was inside his mind, mocking him. Her wingbones spreading out like the legs of a spider, inviting him to turn and run instead of standing his ground. Chills crawled up his spine, but he gritted his teeth and shook his head.

In a horribly unatural skittering motion she was on him, reaching out only to hit a wall of lightning. Malefor moved around her in a circle, keeping his guard up.

"What's the matter? Don't like bugs?" Darkmire said, her wings folding down as she returned to her normal form, a near mirror image of Cynder, albeit sharp edged and cruel.

"Don't think I've seen one in a few thousand years. But I don't recall them looking like that."

"Well I havent seen one in millions of years, but somewhere in the minds of you fools I'm picking up information. Speaking of fools, I seem to be missing a few. I see you circling around and deliberately trying not to think of where they've tucked themselves away."

Darkmire clicked her fingers and the ground in every direction suddenly burst upwards like the entire landscape had been covered in landmines, dust filling the air.

Out of the dust Cynder could be heard swearing, Ignitus coughing up dirt and Spyro brushing himself off after protecting them from the blast.

"How did you do that without earth magic?" Malefor asked, baffled, but still trying to buy a bit more time.

Darkmire grinned, seeming willing to provide. "Just a little something I got from Spyro's knowledge. The ground is full of frozen water to expand. He's so clever! You should ask me just how deep my mind reading can go. Go on, ask me!"

Cynder growled. "Well you just waste it on all these attacks and powers you don't know how to use properly."

Darkmire vanished, and reappeared in front of Cynder, grabbing her by the skull and pulling her into a puddle of inky blackness.

"Cynder!?" Spyro shouted, wading into the shadows, but he couldnt find any trace of them. Darkmire had pulled Cynder beyond his reach.

Cynder fought back, lashing out, her claws glancing off iron hard scales, the fingers around her head gripping harder until it was painful.

"You think you're immune? You think your untrained scrap of power was keeping me out? You thought wrong, sister! You might have suprised the dessicated dried up husk of my real self enough that she stopped trying to read your mind, but not me! I've been under your shields and prying knowledge from your brain since the first time our claws crossed!"

Darkmire laughed as Cynder's claws lashed out, scraping over Darkmire's skin and going for her eyes. Cynder sent a violent pulse of red magic through Darkmire, only to have it caught and disappated harmlessly.

"You call it the love element, I call it the hate element. But how strange, you're not using love or hate. Right now you're definitely using good old fashioned fear. I wonder why? Are you scared of me Cynder?" Darkmire mocked, sending red tendrils through Cynders scales.

Cynders mouth opened, snapping wildly, her tail blade coming around and lashing like a whip, only to bounce off Darkmire's scales. Her claws found an eye and stabbed, feeling it burst, but Darkmire didn't even flinch as Cynders finger ripped into her eye socket. Cynder beat her wings, but the darkness gave her no lift, it felt like they were sinking in water no matter how hard she tried to swim.

"There we go, a caged animal. Still think you're clever for coming up with this plan to have the Chronicler take my place? You'd need to get out of the dream to even try, and you can't even escape this shadow realm. Or how about dragon time? I can see Spyro teaching you how to do it, maybe I can throw you all off this planet and spend a little bit of time trying to follow his advice."

Cynders tail blade found the hole in Darkmire's chest from where the Dragonslayer had stabbed her and rammed inside, feeling gooey shadow filling the wound like a scab, and burying her tail so deep she could feel Darkmire's heart beating around the tip.

Darkmire coughed, finally experiencing something even close to discomfort, but it still wasn't enough to break her grip.

"I can see your memories of talking to Pleasure too, she won't be a problem once I'm out of this dream, and she's so spineless and useless that we both know none of your ideas for using her would ever work. Spyro seems to have something clever planned as well, I'll have to find out what it is soon."

Cynder honed her most destructive poison, something that would blind and paralyse and inflict every agony imaginable on the other dragon, and channeled it directly into Darkmire's heart.

The evil dragoness only laughed. "Wow, so desperate! Too bad I saw that one coming too!"

Cynder felt her poison being reversed, the effects analysed and duplicated as Darkmire reverse engineered it. With horror Cynder realised she'd blown one of her best weapons and it had done nothing.

"That's right!" Darkmire laughed. "And with your mind laid bare it looks like you have no secrets... left..."

Her eyes widened with sudden horror.

"The prison! You set it on a collision course with the convexity star!?" Her voice rose to a shriek.

"And I've been wasting my time fucking with you when we're all going to burn in pure convexity energy! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!"

Cynder was hurled out of the shadows onto the ground, coughing and spluttering as Spyro ran to her and held her in his wings, frantically checking that she was alright.

Darkmire emerged, shadows lashing wildly, hurling them all away. The dragonslayer gleamed in her hand and she threw it on the ground with a scream and stomped on it.

"YOU FUCKING TIME WASTER!"

She flicked a finger and from the desolate earth around them the crystal with the 'real' dream version of Darkmire rose up and flew to her.

She pointed at Cynder and the air around the black dragoness turned solid, dragging her forwards.

Cynders own control over air was so much weaker she could give herself only a few milimeters above her own skin in freedom, enough to wiggle the tiniest amounts as Darkmire pulled her close.

"You! And this! Somewhere here are the ingredients to get me into that sweet reality, to get me that immortal unsleeping indestructible body you're so fucking worried about. Why haven't you figured out how to control the dream enough to get me out of here you fucking imbeciles!?" She shouted at both Cynder and the comatose body trapped in crystal.

Her eyes darted around, panic mixed with cunning, red energy pulsed from her and cut into the brains of the others. Spyro and Malefor flinched as their memories were grabbed and pored over. It was a horrible feeling, it felt like being rubbed with sandpaper. Ignitus fared even worse, his body shuddering and collapsing as pain lanced through him until he could barely think.

"I can see it! The convexity stars, the magic bubble, our bodies floating there. How do I get there!?" Darkmire screeched, the earth rumbling and groaning from the force of her rage. "Think, dammit! Think for me you-"

Her voice cut off in a strangled squelch, and she looked down to see the point of the dragonslayer emerging from her neck.

Darkmire melted into shadow and reappeared a short distance away, looking back to see Imperia flicking blood off the dragonslayer.

"Having some trouble?" Imperia said smugly, spinning the weapon in her paws.

Darkmire screamed in fury and swung a paw, hurling an obliterating blast of ice in the direction of the silver dragoness.

Spyro ran over to Cynder, helping her fight her way out of the solid air prison that Darkmire was losing focus on. Cynder came out, shaking herself off and growling lightly.

"You really did a number on her, what happened?" Spyro asked.

"Wasn't me. She had me in the palm of her hand until she realised that we're all going to crash into a star and burn to death."

"Oh right, I can imagine that being a bit of shock." Spyro chuckled.

"She doesnt handle pressure as well as we do." Cynder said with a slight grin.

"We're used to danger." Spyro chuckled and gave her a light bump with his wing.

"And I dont even care how badly it turns out as long as we're together." Cynder agreed.

Imperia absorbed a fragment of Darkmire's ice blast and swung the dragonslayer down to send it back again, but Darkmire was having none of it this time.

The black dragon raised a clenched fist and the air froze around Imperia mid swing.

"Oh you have got to be-"

Imperia's words were cut off as Darkmire pointed a finger upwards and made a swatting motion, and Imperia was lauched upwards out of sight.

For two seconds, three seconds, Darkmire held her position, still pointing up, her gaze rising to the moon still positioned in an ecclipse above the ruined landscape.

A plume of dust appeared, looking tiny from the ground, and a small new crater appeared on the surface of the moon.

"Did she just-" Cynder said blankly. It was almost comical.

"That's kind of awesome." Spyro admitted.

Darkmire looked down at them with narrowed eyes, and suddenly it felt a lot less funny. When she spoke her voice was no longer panicked, but had an ominous calm to it.

"I think I've figured it out. No thanks to any of you. If this dream universe is trapping me then I just need to destroy everything in it."

Her hand still raised towards the moon spread open, then began to squeeze.

The night sky seemed to grow heavy, and Darkmire's mana levels rose sharply, a point so intense it seemed almost to be dragging them inwards. A thin veil of shadow covered the moon and wrapped tight.

At first it was almost inperceptible. The surface of the moon grew smooth, flat, and began to glow with heat. After a few seconds it looked smaller than before.

Darkmire's expression grew slightly strained as she gritted her teeth with concentration and the process accelerated. The strain of being condensed into a point heated up the stone until the moon looked like it was made of lava.

Spyro created a mace of earth in his paws and winged his way forwards, looping around and slamming it into the back of Darkmire's head, only to have it shatter on impact without her so much as flinching. Her eyes glanced towards him.

"Your magic can't survive in my presence in this state. Your spells evaporate as fast as you can make them. Wait your turn and I'll dispose of you soon enough."

Darkmire made a pulling motion, a grin playing at her face as she set the now moltern moon on a collision course with the earth.

Spyro, however, wasn't giving up that easily.

"Oh no, a dragon with no magic. Whatever can a dragon do with no magic?" He said sarcastically, then he bared his teeth and bit down on Darkmire's throat.

Darkmire grunted in irritation, her other hand coming up and slashing at Spyro's head, but he blocked her with his wings and bit down harder. Her scales were near indestructable, but he found the wound stabbed by the Dragonslayer and he tore at it with all his might.

Darkmire went for another strike, but Cynder was on her before she could land the blow, grabbing Darkmire's wrist and twisting in a front flip. Darkmire's bones popped as her wrist was forced into the unnatural position. With the weight of both dragons on her and only her hind legs for support she fell to the ground with a grunt, letting go of the moon to try and push herself back up.

The veil of shadows burned away from the moon in an instant and it expanded back to near it's original size, although its surface remained as smooth glowing lava.

"Stop... distracting... me." Darkmire grated out around Spyro's jaws. She reached up and grabbed him, levering his mouth open inch by inch until he had to let go or risk having his jaw snapped.

Darkmire's wrist healed with a spark of purple magic, and then she slammed the ground, a shockwave blasting both dragons away from herself.

Cynder deflected the worst of it with wind, and was about to charge in again, but Darkmire had expected that, and with a snap of her fingers she froze Cynder in a block of ice. Spyro ran to help, leaving Darkmire once again free to focus.

Shadows once again covered the surface of the moon, thicker than before, and when Darkmire clenched her fist the effect was rapid.

The orb of shadows shrunk in the sky, faster and faster. Before long the glow was faintly visible through the shadows again, but this time it wasn't the orange of lava it was white, like a star.

The other dragons began to feel slightly light on their feet, and the wind seemed to be blowing towards Darkmire, gravity becomming chaotic.

Cynder shook off the last of the ice as Spyro melted and manipulated it away. She immediately launched towards Darkmire once again, but a gust of wind swatted her away and sent her tumbling.

The object that had once been a moon, now a glowing burning orb of dense energy approximately a hundred kilometers across, entered the upper atmosphere.

The sound crept into the world, a high pitched whine that started out too faint to hear, but soon rose in volume until it sounded like the roar of fire. The next thing to hit them was the heat. After Darkmire had frozen solid the planets core the temperature had been dropping bit by bit as the ground leeched heat away from the air. But now new sunlight was beating down on them, almost painfully hot.

Darkmire wasn't done yet.

Now that they finally had perspective the dragons could see exactly what Darkmire was doing, the sizes of her magic finally on a scale that could be comprehended by the eye.

Gravity grew sharper and sharper, and the glowing star born from their moon grew smaller and hotter with every moment that passed.

"Are you insane!?" Malefor shouted. "Bring that down here and it'll kill you too!"

Darkmire laughed. "Of course I'm insane you idiot! Don't you like my new toy?"

She brought up her other hand and added it to the crush.

Fifty kilometers wide. Twenty five kilometers wide.

Ten kilometers wide. It was too bright to even look at.

Smaller still.

Still getting closer.

"Run!" Malefor screamed to them, and Spyro, Cynder and Ignitus took flight, having to beat their wings hard against the wind that was rushing towards them and upwards. The entire atmosphere of the planet starting to be drained inwards like water running down a plughole.

A kilometer wide.

A hundred meters wide.

Something was happening now. That brightness changing in shape.

They were barely connected to the ground now at all. The smallest step made them start to float. Small stones and dust falling upwards instead of downwards.

Ten meters wide.

One meter.

A bright white disk around... something dark.

Smaller. Too small to even see from a distance.

Darkmire reached upwards and plucked from the air a tiny orb, about the size of a baseball, ringed by fire, and unnaturally distorting the light around it to the point where the object itself was impossible to view. Spyro, Malefor, and Ignitus had some idea what they were looking at. A mathematical theory made real, an equation of infinite density lept from the pages of a textbook into the world.

What Darkmire held in her paws was a black hole.

As Darkmire rolled the object between her fingers the world groaned. The weight of it was still pulling down towards the planets core, and Darkmire and the black hole began to sink through the planets crust, a crater forming around them and growing outwards in every direction.

Cynder had to dart backwards and grab Ignitus by the horns, his lack of magical assistance with flying meant he had no chance of outrunning the gravity. Even with her power Cynder was barely keeping ahead of it, and it wasn't just the pull backwards which was dangerous. Every beat of her wings she could feel forces working along the length of her wings, like the tips of her wings were flying through different air to the middle and base. Her tail was locked straight outwards, pointing exactly towards the black hole. With a scream of effort she put on a burst of speed and caught back up with the others, dragging Ignitus along behind her.

Darkmire looked down at her new creation, a sphere which light could not enter, and which contained the entire mass of the moon in a single point. The gravity of it should have torn her apart. Her bones were less than brittle twigs compared to this, more like strands of fragile silk. If she allowed it this thing would consume her, but she kept it hungry.

In truth she wasn't quite holding the thing. The mass of the moon was packed down so small, like a single grain of sand. You couldn't do much with a grain of sand or a speck of dust, so instead she held it by the event horizon, that black void from which light itself could not escape. Perfect darkness.

While holding the black hole she also needed to keep the earth away from it. Dust and stone and everything on the planet was being pulled towards her, and she pressed down with wind magic to keep it away. It wouldnt do to have her new object surrounded by a debris field so thick that she couldnt see or hold it.

It occured to her suddenly how easily she was holding planetary forces apart, so easily it felt natural. She grinned at her power.

But this moment had been savoured enough. She bent her lengs and pushed off, jumping.

Still holding the black hole in her paw, she had to jump with it's weight, pushing it directly away from the core of the planet. She was quite literally lifting the moon. Her power level spiked to new heights and sure enough she rose into the air until she could see outside of the crater her black hole had dented into the earth. The landscape as far as the eye could see was ruined.

There, in the distance, were the fleeing shapes of the tiny dragons she had been dealing with.

She laughed, the sound cutting through everything in the world to make sure they heard her.

"Hey Malefor! You know what this is right? Here, catch!"

She wound her hand back, taking aim, and then she threw the black hole in their direction.

"Why are you running?" She laughed, feeling as gravity violently shifted around her and the black hole arced away from her, seeming so slow.

Once the black hole was thrown Darkmire released her hold over it, the vast amount of power she was expending to keep the black hole contained felt like nothing to her now, and so she was utterly unprepared for the scale of what happened next.

The first thing that happened, obvious enough to anyone who thought about it, was that the earth and the black hole immediately attempted to snap together like a pair of magnets. The ground lurched violently upwards and the black hole began to plunge downwards, intent on burrowing straight into the center of the earth and rattling around in the frozen mantle of the planet until it had consumed it all.

The next thing that happened, disappointingly to Darkmire, was that all of the loose matter on the ground jumped upwards even faster to join the black hole. Loose matter, when dealing with gravity equal to a moon compressed into an infite point, meant anything less than several tons in weight. The black hole was immediately buried by sand and dirt and rock, which began to rotate and glow with heat as it started to form an accretion disk of material. Her view of the fleeing dragons, and of that curious black void, was blocked.

Malefor, and by extension Darkmire, had no idea about what happened to a black hole after it was formed, especially one that was so relatively small. They were unaware that it would, if sufficently compressed, be quite stable. However Spyro and Cynder both had very strong impressions of what was 'supposed' to happen when an object like that was released.

The howling sound of the black hole reached a peak, and there was a brief moment of silence.

Then the black hole exploded.

The resulting blast was not fire, or lightning, or convexity, or pressure, or anything else that Spyro had experienced before. It was a pure wave of irradiated particles expanding in every direction at near the speed of light. There was no running from it, no blocking it.

The leading front of the explosion punched microscopic holes through their bodies for a fraction of an instant, before the blast consumed them and vaporised all of the dragons, including a very suprised Darkmire, along with a sizable chunk of the planet.


For all their brushes with it Spyro and Cynder had never experienced the moment of their own physical deaths before. Naturally it was not an experience that many individuals would be capable of discussing.

Against all odds there were three such dragons present, Darkmire, Malefor, and of course Ignitus, but mere discussion would not have prepared either one for the experience.

Spyro and Cynder felt themselves as disembodied minds in a sea of white, faintly aware of the signatures of magic around them, shattered scraps of energy beginning to dissipate without a body to shape it. Spyro focused on purple sparks, feeling as if he could almost manage to heal this, if he could just hold himself together, but every time he tried the explosion destroyed anything he tried to connect. Cynder meanwhile instinctively reached for her shadows, sensing that even with no physical body if she could just reach a shadow she could become incoporeal and maybe even figure out how to rematerialise the way she did at any other time. But of course there were no shadows in the supernova of a moon converted to pure energy.

For a moment Cynder fought to control her panic, it felt so real. She worried for how Spyro was handling this without having her ability to sense that they were still in a dream

With no world, no body, nothing to distract her, she reached out. Both versions of Darkmire had been destroyed in the black hole explosion, she was never going to get another chance.

She pushed with furious determination, a scream of effort filling her lungs as finally, finally, she opened her eyes in the real world.

The blazing convexity star was beating down on them, filling the sky, painfully hot. And right in front of her was the fragile, malnourished body of a sleeping god. Their bodies pressed together, Cynder's fangs and claws right against Darkmire's dull black scales. Utterly helpless.

"Rise and shine, bitch."

Cynder growled, red magic flashing from her mouth before she bit down violently on Darkmire's skull.


And we're finally out of the dream world! Writing Imperia dying a bunch of times was a bit uncomfortable, but with how the story was shaping up there was no way around it. It did slow down my writing process a lot, but still this chapter is one of my favourite things I've written. That bit with the black hole was so cool.

Thankyou for reading! If you'd like to leave a comment or review it is much appreciated!

Until next time.

-4Dragons