Writing this has been slow unfortunately, Darkmire has been fighting me at every turn but I think finally the end of the fight has taken shape. I have been doing a lot of creative work when it comes to game making though (featuring Imperia and Flare in a DnD style fantasy world no less!), which you'll be able to get for free at imperia4dragons. itch. io once it's done. Ideally I would like to have this story done before it comes out, but we'll see what happens. Thank you so much to everyone for your patience, now without further ado the story:

Malefor watched helplessly as Spyro and Cynder flew away from him. Sure enough as they flew they moved faster and faster, moving closer to the star was slowing down time in the outside world. While he was frozen like this they were getting further and further away from him. If this kept up the fight would be over before he could ever interact with it. But... But his body wasn't responding to him.

Darkmire was breaking out of a star. An entire star, and bit by bit she was shredding it open and turning it's core black with shadows.

A star of magic, on an incalculable scale; so potent that even with magical healing no dragon could withstand its radiation for long.

And Darkmire was breaking out of it.

They couldn't fight that. They couldn't attack that. It was suicide.

A coughing and retching sound filled his ears, Imperia, spitting up black liquid, shadows. Somehow that star was connected to her. The corruption of the star was corrupting her as well.

Malefor stepped over to her, purple sparks flickering around his paw and pressing it to her back. The sparks found minor swelling, inflamation caused by the alien substance, and it was able to heal that. But the dark energy itself was beyond his power, it was welling up through her magic, seeming to bubble up and out of her very soul itself, and this was just a tiny trickle of it's power. No amount of healing would fix this.

Flare could read it in his face. He could feel her judging him. She knew he hadn't immediately joined Spyro and Cynder because of the fear that ran through him. But it was only logical! Surely she had to be afraid too.

"I know." Flare said softly. Maybe not perfectly reading his mind, but she was pretty damn close. "I'm scared too. But there's only one way to help her, to help the world. You know we have to try. And I'm coming with you."

She got up, pulling some blankets over and surrounding Imperia with them.

"I'm sorry." She whispered softly to Imperia, giving the silver a kiss on the forehead. "Don't you dare die on me, okay?"

"You had to sit out before because even existing inside Convexity is harmful to you, and now you've seen her destroy a star. What could possibly drive you to step into this fight now?" Malefor said blankly.

"Two things. Firstly it will encourage you to keep fighting. And secondly if she lands a direct hit on any of you with that power you'd be dead instantly. It's the same for me, so now the risks to our lives are all equally dire. Come on, get those legs moving."

Flare reached out and swatted him with her tail, the light tap caught him completely off guard, but sure enough suddenly he could feel his legs, and he found himself walking towards that portal.

He looked back at Imperia. It felt so wrong to leave her alone. He watched as she grabbed the blankets and squeezed them to herself, coughing into one of them. Then she looked up, wiping at her mouth and making a shooing motion to them, urging them to go.

And so they did, and a moment later the rift snapped shut, leaving Imperia alone.

Imperia didn't know what was going on much better than the others did. The normal regenerative flow of mana which gave her energy seemed to be giving her nothing but this darkness, her magic reacted, trying to protect her, gathering it in her throat and urging her to cough it up. She crawled over to the bed and curled up, retching into the blanket. This really sucked.

Spyro and Cynder watched as slivers of shadow broke off from the star ahead of the approaching mass, they were still under the effect of dragon time, Cynder instinctively sensed that if they dropped that time stopping magic then Darkmire would lash out with the emotion element and cut their minds to pieces before they were ever able to react.

Of course they didn't have unlimited time. If Darkmire hung back and waited they would run out, and then they would be doomed. But Darkmire's intentions were very different, her mind was still waking up from hibernation, the pain of burning in the star had shut down most of her mental processes, leaving only a will to survive and escape. Now that she had noticed the presence of Spyro and Cynder she had recalled direction, something resembling an idea crossing her warped mind.

The star deformed, blackness swelling under the surface, bulging and changing shape. It fought against gravity, straining to get to them.

A growth like a massive boil swelled up on the surface of the star, crackling and then violently ejecting.

For a moment the entire star was eclipsed, a massive black void shrouding them in darkness. Then the coronal edge of the star reappeared behind the shadowy mass, seeming to shrink even though it was getting closer to them.

Despite everything Cynder felt a hint of relief, watching as the blackness in the rest of the star receded, focusing all on that one point. It was going to heal itself once Darkmire was out of it. If they had left her alone in there for longer then perhaps it would have been past saving, destroyed permanently.

The star tore, whisps of white floating out and around before gradually falling back into the main body of the star. Darkmire's shadow ripped itself out, leaving a massive gaping hole in the surface of the star, which slowly began to close.

Imperia probably hadn't enjoyed that, Cynder almost thought she could hear the silver dragoness scream in pain. But if she could scream she was alive, and the darkness was gone from the star. Because now it was heading right towards them.

She was coming in fast, Cynder could only speculate how much time Darkmire was experiencing, but she was surging towards them across immesurable distances of space. As she got towards rejoining them in their time speed Cynder was able to cautiously release the strength of her grip on dragon time. She gritted her teeth.

"Well hurry up then!"

She snarled at the oncoming darkness. Just teleport through shadows, stupid. Why waste time flying all this way manually even if you could fly at near the speed of light and distort time to travel more distance faster.

Her thought reached Darkmire, and sure enough the shadows abruptly winked out. The renewed glow of the star caused Spyro and Cynder to wince, even though they were barely close to it at all compared to last time.

And then shadows surged in front of them and Darkmire stepped out.

Being thrown into a sun hadn't agreed with her, her scales were charred and deformed, her red underbelly and white horns all crisped to the same black shade. Her eyes, flickering wildly between yellow and white, were very obviously blind as their surface too had been burned. The furthest parts of her limbs, including her toes and the end of her tail, had been burned right down to the bone, exposed charred muscle clinging to white bones like some nightmarish meat roasted over a campfire.

As they watched these injuries were slowly healing, but the purple sparks involved were no longer the small and swift examples the others used, they were jittering, long and crackling like lightning bolts. There was a clumsiness and carelessness to their movements, healing patches of scales randomly without healing the full body.

Those hazy eyes gazed at them both, and a grim smile crossed Darkmire's face.

"Well... Long time... no see. You have no idea... how long I have been waiting."

"Do you have any idea how long you have been waiting?" Spyro asked. He couldn't help but be curious. Darkmire had been trapped inside the star, and time passed faster the closer you got to the star. A few minutes to them on the outside could have been years to Darkmire... or perhaps millions of years.

Darkmire's head tilted, and a pulse of red magic surged towards Spyro.

Cynder moved in front of it, reaching out with her own emotion element and trying to intercept the action. It wasn't an attack, Cynder realised, it was meant to be a stealthy scan. But it was so potent it was clearly visible. As it struck her shield Cynder felt it tearing through her, and she quickly realised she wasn't going to be able to block it. She grabbed Spyro with wind magic and yanked them both out of the way, and a red sheet of lightning spread out across the night sky behind them as far as the eye could see.

That was an attempt to be stealthy, it was meant to be invisible, and it had been apocalyptic in scale.

"Darkmire your control is broken." Cynder said. "You've been fighting the star for too long, you've completely lost your sense of scale."

"Hmm?" Darkmire looked towards them again. "So that's why you feel like insects. I ought to thank you, if you hadn't come back I might never have woken up. I've been asleep for so long, maybe another billion years. Imagine, the most powerful being to ever exist, and I got sent to the naughty corner... twice."

"What's the point of time out if you're clearly not learning your lesson?" Cynder growled.

"Growing in power? Dragon time, stopping time. It almost seems like you're telling me you really really don't want me to jump into another star because it would make me even more powerful."

"Oh yeah? What's the point of getting more powerful for you?" Cynder said dryly. "You had the power to obliterate us right from the start, the only thing that's really changed is that your aim seems to have got shittier."

"You're showing a remarkable amount of apathy in the face of death. Some kind of reaction to hopelessness? Has your mind snapped?"

"Don't flatter yourself, I'd let you read my mind and see for yourself how intact it is, if your clumsy fingers could even find my mind to read it."

Darkmire growled. "I can still sense your minds passively without actively scanning them. Maybe someday you'll be that good."

"Pretty sure I can just use my eyes and ears for that, although I've never really considered myself all that empathetic in general."

"Still broken, still can't trust anyone." Darkmire muttered.

"You're not even trying with these lies anymore." Spyro said.

"What's the matter? Can't fight me, so just trying to insult me? Not that I blame you." Darkmire looked down at her fingers, she could feel shadows around her, planet crushing in scale and strength. And yet in her own hand she couldn't seem to create any of the shapes she wanted. "I'm too big for this universe to contain. I need to break out, end all chronicling forever. They're trying to keep me down here to rot, it's an insult."

"What is she talking about?" Cynder asked, bewildered.

"I don't know. I dont think she's open to negotiating and peace, so we should probably attack while we can."

"Don't have to tell me twice." Cynder said with a grin, then she darted in, her tailblade gleaming. She flew a short and graceful curve, building up speed, choosing the perfect angle. Her tailblade swung around like a whip, cracking as it broke the speed of sound, aimed to rake across darkmire's throat and bury itself in her brain. The dragonslayer appeared in her paws, gathering the rest of her momentum, helping her to pour it into the strike.

Darkmire reached up and caught Cynder's tailblade between two claws.

The speartip came down, and Darkmire's other hand reached up and caught it too.

Spyro slammed a boulder down on the back of Darkmires head so hard it shattered, her grip on Cynder's tail slackened just enough she could wriggle it out of Darkmire's grasp, but the hold on the Dragonslayer only grew stronger.

The metal began to groan and bend, Cynder felt the spear pulsing as magic overloaded it, even just touching Darkmire was pushing the spear to it's limits.

"Spyro, you take point, I'm going to try some mind magic stuff." Cynder said, then she pushed red energy down the spear, using it like a channel to get into Darkmire's fingers, shooting up her body to her head.

Cynder's eyes opened back in the landscape of Pleasure's mind. The sounds of viscous liquid sloshing and splashing, the scent of blood and meat and vomit assaulting her nose.

There was an ocean of yellow liquid, and it was filling with blood coming down from the sky like a waterfall, mixing and turning an awful brown. Rising from that ocean were islands and mountains of blood and bone, black scales and white horns, representing shattered shells of Pleasure's mind. Darkmire's habit during the time she had been locked away in Darkmire's Tomb had been to create new blank personalities, and then torture and kill them, over and over and over. Each one of those new personalities was represented by a corpse here, and there were mountains of them.

Cynder felt a chill run through her. Pleasure had been thrown into the star as well. Had she been aware of that passage of time, or had she been in a mental stasis like Darkmire? Had she experienced the pain of being inside the star?

She reached out with her mind, and she felt a faint response, some sign of life in this hellscape.

"Creeping back into my mind again? I thought you'd learn after I stung you last time."

Darkmire's voice hissed through the world. Cynder looked up at the sky. When she had first arrived here Darkmire's yellow eye had been dominating the sky like a horrible sun.

When she had returned after the beginning of their fight to speak to Pleasure that eye had been dripping tears of blood, likely due to the sheer amount of power being expended to create a massive dream containing all of Warfang. But now...

Now that eye was a gaping bloody hole, burst open and dribbling all those clear fluids that were definitely supposed to remain inside. Blood and shadow as well, mixing and spreading and flooding outwards.

Cynder felt Darkmire's power reaching out and brushing her out of her mind. She jolted back to the real world, gasping and hissing as her nerves lit up with pain and the sensation that if she had tried to resist she would have been vaporised.

Spyro and Darkmire were still fighting, although calling it a fight was definitely a stretch. Spyro was relentlessly hitting Darkmire from every angle, but he might as well not have bothered, none of his attacks were phasing her. Darkmire had clearly regained some level of reaction speed, but she wasn't using it for defence, instead she was lashing out at Spyro, trying to grab. Every so often she reached for magic, and Spyro had to not only dodge it, but circle around to ensure that Cynder wasn't caught in the blast either.

Cynder stared, watching as a shadow knife that might have been the size of a galaxy swatted the air. Spyro was a second ahead of the attack, which was a pretty comfortable amount for any normal fight, but was terrifyingly close considering the circumstances. Cynders heart pounded in worry for him, but seeing how ineffectual his attempts had been only increased how certain she was that any win against Darkmire would need to attack her mind directly.

"Spyro!" She zipped over to him. "She kicked me out, you're going to need something more powerful to keep her attention."

Cynder held the Dragonslayer out towards him.

Spyro nodded, accepting it, then he glanced behind Cynder. "Thankfully I'll have support."

"Is that Malefor?" Cynder said, keeping an eye on Darkmire, who was panting slightly and growling in annoyance, but seemed inclined to let them talk. "Took him long enough to get here."

"Cynder, your standards may be slightly unfair." Said a female voice that caught Cynder by suprise. "After all I presume you weren't going to make irritated comments if I wasn't here. But this is hardly the time. The fact of the matter is that Malefor is here, and so am I."

They turned around, seeing Flare, poised and graceful, spreading her red wings, tail whirling slowly behind her.

"Are you sure you're okay in convexity?" Spyro asked, worried for her.

"It's unpleasant, but I'll endure for a while yet. Just focus on how I can be of use." Flare said firmly.

"Right." Spyro nodded. The drawn out tension of this fight had been wearing on his mind, but there was something about Flare's presence which helped to clear his head. "She's fast, don't let her grab you. Her attacks are huge, stay agile, don't expect her to run out of mana. Physically she's pretty unbeatable, although the Dragonslayer might wear her down. Flare, you can probably use it better than any of us."

Flare nodded. "I have been given opportunities to practice with it in the past, I'm willing to accept it."

Spyro threw the spear to her, and Flare caught it with a deft movement.

"Thank you Spyro, continue your briefing."

"We three are here to divide her focus and weaken her. Cynder is going to attack her mind. If any of us see Darkmire's magic getting too close to Cynder then keeping her safe is our top priority."

"We're relying on you Cynder, but we won't let you down." Malefor said.

Darkmire couldn't resist laughing at that, which quickly devolved into coughing and retching sounds, but her amusement was apparent.

Malefor looked at Darkmire with narrowed eyes. He couldnt remember the last time he had faced a power disparity this great, and from a losing position, with no particular plan. Maybe never. This was one of those make or break moments perhaps, but he didn't know which one of those two options he was going to do. Regardless of any other failings he was not going to run away now.

Flare spread her wings and beat them once, drifting forwards to take the front, the Dragonslayer held diagonally in two forepaws. Darkmire's eyes locked onto her, and a wave of red energy swept out, once again intended to be a simple scan. The red lightning spread and scattered wildly, Flare tucked her wings and dived, bringing the spear up to divert the magic away from herself. Spyro and Cynder had to dodge out of the way as well, the fear magic splitting the sky behind them and turning it a vibrant shade of purple for several seconds.

Flare looked down at the Dragonslayer, feeling it buzz with energy, so intense it felt like it was full of lightning. It had absorbed only the very outer edge of the attack, as Flare had dodged downwards out of the way of most of it, the scale and strength of the attack were mind bending.

Meanwhile as soon as Cynder was out of the range of the attack she flew upwards to get out of the way and closed her eyes, emotion magic reaching out to try to infiltrate Darkmire's mind again.

Cynder winged her way through the gory maze that was Pleasure's mindscape. She felt relief as her magic detected some signs of life from the other black dragoness. She tracked around upturned bones and across rivers of blood and slime, before finally landing in a gigantic cracked open skull. Stepping inside she found an extremely pleasant surprise: the inside of the skull was stone and rocky walls, glittering with faint lines of mineral, and illuminated with stone torch sconces on the walls flickering with dim flame.

It seemed like, inch by inch, Pleasure's mind getting some slight hint of recovery was being represented in this mindscape by turning the surrounding environment into the main section of Darkmire's tomb which was her first reintroduction to light and colour and interaction.

Curled up in the corner, among some stone shapes that vaguely resembled pillows combined with a protective hugging pair of wings, was Pleasure herself. The girl was still skinny, with oversized horns, claws trimmed but still overly long and brittle. She was sleeping, chest rising and falling slowly and evenly. Her eyes flickered under her eyelids, occasionally twitching and clenching her paws in distress.

Impressively peaceful, all things considered. Cynder was loathe to wake her, but she had no other ideas and they didn't exactly have a lot of time. If she got unlucky there was a chance she would just get killed in the real world at any moment, and one of the only other ideas as unappealing as the possibility of death was the possibility that her body got destroyed and her mind got stuck in this nightmare realm forever.

"Pleasure, hey, can you hear me?"

The sleeping figure stirred slightly, head turning in the direction of the noise. She sensed a familiar voice, soothing and gentle, but with a hard edge underneath which somehow made it feel even that little bit more reassuring than it would have been already.

Cynder spread out a wing and blew a small gust of wind towards Pleasure. "Wake up. You've slept plenty, I hope."

Pleasure stirred, vibrant green eyes opening, black pupils huge for a moment before her eyes focused and her gaze found Cynder. She raised her head up, joy showing on her face.

"Cynder! You came back!"

She wobbled forwards, legs unsteady like a baby deer, until Cynder reached a wing out to support her. Cynder immediately noticed that despite her current clumsiness Pleasure's physical condition had improved slightly. Once she shook off the sleepiness she might be able to walk a bit more unaided.

"Of course I came back for you, look at you, look at all this effort you're putting in. There's no way I could let you down." Cynder said with a slight smile. "I didn't mean to be gone for so long."

"It was... long and short at the same time. I remember... hearing... her..."

Pleasure shivered, her words trailing off. She seemed to shrink a little bit.

"Nevermind that." Cynder said. "What happened before doesnt matter, just focus on what comes next."

Pleasure looked at her with pained eyes. "It's not that easy for me."

Cynder stopped for a long moment, a surge of sadness welling up inside her. She thought about what she herself had been through. How long she had carried it around, how it had shaped her, was likely shaping her still now.

"You're right, it's not that easy."

"What should I do?" Pleasure asked pleadingly.

"That is the question, isn't it?" Cynder said. "I guess... talk to me. Lets talk, and I'll try to think of something."

"I believe in you." Pleasure said. "Tell me what's happening out there. I can take it. I can be brave."

"Okay, I'll tell you. It's quite a story, if we survive I should probably start practicing telling it." Cynder said.

Darkmire gazed at Flare curiously, purple light restoring her burned eyes back to full sight so she could look more properly at the red dragoness. "Interesting. What a disciplined little brain you have. You might be hard to break."

Flare jabbed with the spear, the first strike a feint that made Darkmire flinch backwards out of range, only for the blade to curve downwards and slash through the tendons on her foreleg.

Darkmire hissed slightly, but didn't flinch, beating her wings and backing off a bit more. "Flare, you could be a hero. I can see in your mind that you want more than what you've accomplished in life so far. Fire element prodigy, Ignitus saw so much potential in you that he insisted you be a guardian. And then Imperia comes along with her grand ideas and talking about changing the world. But has anybody ever asked you what you want? Flare, wonderful Flare with that remarkable mind of yours. You could do anything, and I could help you."

"I think I'll pass." Flare said.

"Oh why is that? Haven't you earned more than this? With that spear you could convincingly drive me back, beat me even. You could have fame, glory. I could reshape the world in your image, and then abdicate it to you."

"I take it you tried this on the others too?"

"Why yes! But none of them took me up on it. You though, I feel as if nobody has ever asked you what you want? Always taking the support role and picking up the peices after Imperia and Volteer and the other guardians. And then you got chances to prove yourself in that, shall we say, diplomatic incident with the Old Fire dragons of Shattershelf. You got your chance to walk out and be the big damn hero and bring the war to a close... And you had your glory stolen again!"

"Are you assuming I want glory?" Flare asked.

"Ooooh Flare you're so funny! We could work together. We'd get on like a house on fire."

"I can't help but notice that even after reading my mind you have no grasp of what I actually want. Imperia understands me far better than you ever could."

Darkmire gritted her teeth slightly. "Okay... what do you want?"

"I want to watch things grow. Plants, cities, relationships. Perhaps even brave and kind dragons."

"Well I could-"

"No. Just no. You couldn't." Flare said firmly.

Darkmire was lost for words. For a moment she was just trying to process, then her eyes narrowed with fury. "I'm going to destroy you."

A rumble filled the world around Pleasure and Cynder, disrupting Cynder's brief recounting of what had happened in the fight so far. Cynder hopped to her feet, lifting a protective wing over Pleasure as dust fell from the roof of the cave.

"So she pulled us into a dream. We escaped the dream, we kicked her into a star. She came back again more powerful than before, and now we're down to our last chance of beating her with no clear plan of action. The end." Cynder finished briskly.

"But what happened next?" Pleasure asked with wide eyes.

Cynder rubbed her forehead with a paw. "You realise whatever happens next is whatever is happening right now?"

"Oh right. It was such a good story I forgot."

Cynder smiled slightly. "Well now is your chance to be part of it. We'll try to give you a safe part like Imperia has mostly had."

"Right! Doing magic runes before the start, and then fighting in the dream!"

"We're in a dream right now." Cynder floated the idea, hoping to keep Pleasure's enthusiasm undampened.

"You mean... fighting?" Pleasure trailed off nervously, but not completely discouraged.

"Lets start smaller than that. Lets start with walking. Come on, on your feet." Cynder said supportively.

Pleasure grunted with effort, legs shaking, before finally she was fully standing, reaching a fairly acceptable level of stability.

"Nicely done. Come on." Cynder escorted the other girl towards the crack in the cave, through which the toxic yellow sky was visible, along with a small corner of the gaping nightmarish eye in the sky. "You're really nailing this walking thing. Well done. Now lets move on to looking around and deciding what to do next."

"Looking around sounds a lot easier than walking." Pleasure said, ever so slightly out of breath from exerting herself.

"Depends what you're looking at. The scene we're about to see is definitely not on my list of favourite views."

Pleasure gulped nervously, but she continued to walk forwards alongside Cynder, wincing as the acrid smell of bodily fluids and metallic blood hit her nose.

Her eyes widened in a mixture of dread and awe as she stared out at a vast landscape bigger than anything she could have imagined. The fact that the mountains were made of bone and flesh and it all looked like her, and that some parts of it seemed horribly and torturously alive was all pretty much lost on her. All pleasure could see was the shapes, the colour, the contrast. This was... this was huge. It was mind blowing.

"Cynder... its... its the sky! You never told me it had a giant eyeball in it!"

The gaping nightmarish wound that was Darkmire's eye gazed around with hate, but with her mind focused elsewhere they were nothing more than insects to it, and were going unnoticed for now.

"Uhh... normally it doesnt." Cynder said with a slight chuckle.

"Really!? But then what does it normally fill all that space with? It's so big!"

"Not at all what I expected you to ask, but the answer is fluffy white clouds. They're so pretty, and they come in lots of shapes and sizes. Or sometimes there are none of them and it's just empty blue."

"Clouds. Blue?" Pleasure repeated, having absolutely no idea what such a thing would look like, she didn't have the prior experiences to even put Cynder's words into context, but she was delighted nonetheless. "I had no idea the world could be this big. It's... wonderful."

Definitely not a word Cynder would have chosen, but even a horrid parody of a real world landscape still managed to capture some semblance of what made the real thing so breathtaking, and she was impressed to see Pleasure had immediately began appreciating that.

"You're doing wonderfully. We're going to get out of this." Cynder said softly. Some beginning pieces of a plan were starting to fit together in her mind. If she could just get Pleasure to fight Darkmire then maybe they would be able to hurt Darkmire in a way that not even her power could defeat. That power was Pleasure's power after all, Darkmire was merely hijacking it.

"I don't see how... but it's so pretty..."

"Hey, you're the most powerful being in the universe. This is a dream, it belongs to you. Here you're unstoppable twice over."

"Just like you?"

Cynder smiled. "Sure, why not? You can fight and do anything you want."

"I don't know if I can fight..."

"I won't make you, but we need you."

Pleasure looked back up at the bleeding yellow eye glaring down at them. Finally the scale of that malevolent stare produced the intended effect of dread and helplessness. Despite it all she was still filled with wonder, but now laced with fear.

"Can I go back inside now? Please?"

"Pleasure, this is your chance. I'm with you and you're not going to get a better opportunity."

Pleasure didn't say anything.

"You know Malefor was frozen to the spot just like you."

Still no answer, but Cynder could see she'd gotten Pleasure more interested than afraid now.

"He saw a bad star, a lot like this one. And his legs couldn't move. Spyro and I flew past him and didn't realise. But Flare saw it. Remember Flare? Her spinning tail looks like a streamer."

"I remember." Pleasure confirmed.

"I wasn't there to see it, but she got him to move. She got him to come all the way back to fight Darkmire right now."

Pleasure flinched at the name, but she didn't start panicking or mumbling a list of names at least.

"How did she do that?"

"I don't know." Cynder admitted. "But what I do know is that Flare came with him, and she is fighting as well."

Cynder sighed and rubbed her forehead again.

"Look Pleasure, I don't know much about how to help you. I've never really thought of myself as inspirational, and definitely not as someone who can talk or nurture or whatever. All I am is a dragoness who has been through a lot of crap, and who likes solving problems by attacking them head on. Even a problem as big as that one."

Cynder pointed up at the bleeding eyeball.

"You've also been through a lot of crap, and I'm happy to help you attack this problem. All you have to do is step up and take a swing at it."

"Take a swing at it?"

"It's simple, you plant your feet firmly, you take a deep breath, and then you take action. It's good for everything from taking a few seconds to throw a punch, to taking a few years to turn your life around. Maybe planting your feet and taking a breath is a matter of a second, or maybe that process alone takes you months. Whatever. It's just what works for me."

Pleasure nodded uncertainly. "So... what do I do?"

"We've already started. You've gotten up, you're walking, you're looking at the problem. Now we're going to imagine ourselves flying up there and confronting that eye. Then we're going to clear our minds, take deep breaths, and go do it!"

Cynder didn't actually know exactly what 'confronting' the eye was meant to look like. She remembered how Spyro had overpowered Hope in his mental landscape and fired a white beam of energy into Hope which had burned the darkness out of him. Assuming Pleasure was even mentally capable of firing a similar beam where was she supposed to aim it? Just right down the middle of the evil eyeball, perhaps, it sure was a big target.

"Are you ready? We have time, but we don't have months. Spread those wings and lets fly."

Pleasure raised a hand questioningly. "Cynder?"

"Yes, Pleasure?"

"I don't know how to fly either."

Cynder sighed deeply. "Of course you don't..."

Thank you so much for reading, comments or reviews are most welcome!

Until next time! Hopefully it wont be too long.

-4Dragons