Chapter Text
Eight years. That was the amount of time that had passed since Spyro and Cynder had beaten the Dark Master, Malefor. Since their escape from the core of the world, and their return, peace had spread throughout the Dragon Realms. Darkness was gone, and so was Malefor and all his servants. The world had returned to normal when Spyro put the world back together, and, although the times of darkness was over, Spyro and Cynder, mainly the latter, would still have nightmares about the terrifying experience during the Dark War.
Since Cynder began having her nightmares barely a month from returning to Warfang, Spyro had made sure that he could provide her comfort whenever she needed. And it worked for Cynder. Spyro still had nightmares on the occasion, but he was able to handle them himself. Given Cynder's past experience as the Terror of the Skies, her nightmares reminded her too much of the old life she wanted to forget.
This day was like every other one. Normal and peaceful, and, generally uneventful at times. It was the middle of the day, and Spyro was spending some time to himself outside the walls of Warfang, looking out at the wilderness, as he did on the occasion, the adventures of his childhood playing throughout his mind again. He sighed. Deep inside Spyro, he missed the swamp. He missed Sparx and his parents. He hadn't seen Sparx in seven years; the little golden dragonfly had stayed in Warfang for the best of one year before deciding he needed to head back to the swamp, desperate to see his parents. Spyro had lots to tend to, in fixing up Warfang after the war and finding the dragon population that had fled, as well as learning what it meant to be a dragon, especially as the war had distorted his view on what a dragon was quite heavily, and Sparx ended up leaving alone. Spyro wanted so badly to go back to the swamp and visit his foster family, but there was one problem. He hadn't been in the swamp since he was twelve when he left to go seek the Chronicler during the coming of the Night of Eternal Darkness. He was twenty-three now. It had been eleven years since then. Spyro didn't remember the way to go. Neither did any of the dragons. Most of the maps had also been destroyed in the war, and no one had rediscovered the swamp; even the guardians had forgotten its location, as they had fled after the destruction of the Dragon Temple by Malefor's paws.
Spyro groaned as he stood up and went back into Warfang, where he was greeted by plenty of smiling faces and hundreds upon hundreds of dragons. Scout parties had gone out after the Dark War and returned with many dragons that had escaped during the war or had been prisoners, some of which Spyro was a part of. Spyro was a saviour to them. It was true, he had put the world back together, but Cynder had helped plenty, and she was given almost no credit for it, and Spyro hated that. It had taken two, almost three years for the world to get used to her being around and seeing her as different to what she had been in her old life, but even now, many dragons still distrusted her, and most dragons still saw Spyro as the one who saved the world, and Cynder as Spyro's captive. While they had been chained up, Spyro saw no reason for them to be seen as captor and captive, rather, he thought they should have been seen as friends, equals. That was not how the world saw them when they were fifteen.
About twenty minutes passed before Spyro returned to his house, a large stone building, which was four storeys tall. He and Cynder shared the large building to themselves; they were mates after all. When he got home, the building was devoid of any draconic presence. Cynder had probably gone off with her friends or something like that, as she normally did. Cynder struggled to make friends, but strived with a passion to do so. She only had four friends; unlike Spyro, who had no problem making friends, although he had five that he particularly enjoyed spending time with. Spyro hated that his reputation as a hero got in the way of everything and influenced his life. Cynder's reputation as an ex-murderer put her out of the majority of dragons; she only really fit in well with those who didn't fit in well either or those who were like Spyro and saw her for what she truly was, rather than her past doings. Spyro had decided, since the number of people wanting to be close to Spyro was suffocating him and getting in the way of Cynder, that he would decline the majority of the friend requests that were thrown at him and try to be a part of Cynder's friend group, although their friend groups were vastly different.
So, realising he was alone for a bit, with Cynder out and about with her friends, he decided to relax and do what calmed him down. Sure, with the amount of peace in the Dragon Realms, there was plenty of relaxation, but talking, sitting and watching the wilderness, and hanging out with friends, just wasn't enough for Spyro. What he enjoyed was sculpting. He had gotten pretty fond of his earth element for this particular task. He had several finished sculptures on the top floor of the building, and he was beginning to work on yet another one. Currently, the sculpture he was working on was of an ancient race of sea serpents called serpendraxes, that were slender and long, snake-like creatures with no legs, four beady eyes, two heads, each with webbing around the forehead, jawline and chin, and two rows of razor-sharp fangs in the mouths. Serpendraxes had long gone extinct after a war between them and another extinct race of water dwellers called the hydrolixes, which were large fifty-metre-long eels with massive fangs that hung grotesquely out of their maw, two eyes set on each side of the head, and, unlike most eels, had two arms with massive claws as fingers for grabbing and slashing. Since Spyro got into sculpting, he had searched around the major library in Warfang for many books on ancient races, and he'd always thought that the serpendraxes looked elegant yet battle-ready, and he liked that in a creature.
Cynder didn't know where the love for sculpting came from in Spyro, but it was an understatement to say she was quite amazed at the realism and close attention to detail in Spyro's sculptures that were made purely from his earth element, although it was more than just creating a sculpture out of the ground. The design and shaping of the rock took hours upon end, and sometimes, depending if Spyro was having a bad day, which he had quite a lot, he would spend most of the day on the top floor of his home working on his sculptures.
About four years after they returned to Warfang, Spyro began to grow strangely distant on some days. He would just… shut himself away, and no one knew why. He would never talk about it, and whenever he came back out into the world the next day, he would be happy and joyful, with a large smile on his face. It perplexed many, especially Cynder, as the distancing had happened just after they had become mates. Usually when he shut himself away, he'd be doing sculpting, but there were some days where he'd lock himself in his room and do nothing, and it worried Cynder. As of recently, Cynder had not been allowed into Spyro’s sculpting room, and he spent a great deal of time in there. It worried her, and she didn’t even know what he was making. His sculptures intrigued her; she just wanted to look. But as long as Spyro had found something to cast his mind on when he was troubled, that was all that mattered.
Cynder, however, spent most of her time being social and trying to make friends. She liked having people around her that she could talk to, and she strived to try and mingle around in society, especially given the distance she had from society when she was a child and fresh from her rescue from Malefor's clutches.
Her four main friends were quite an odd bunch, but Cynder felt like she fit in with them. There was Rubblerust, a young twenty-year-old earth dragon, three years younger than her, who was very quiet and introverted, struggling to know what to do in a social situation. He was lonely most of the time, but usually he liked being alone and having small groups of people around him rather than huge crowds. Since Spyro and Cynder returned to Warfang from what was Mount Malefor about a month after Spyro put the world back together, they had tried their best to make Rubblerust feel like he could have someone to talk to. That worked well for him. He was a darker shade of green, and his horns were gold-plated like Spyro's, unlike the dull or pale brown like those of most other earth dragons, like Terrador, for instance. His eyes were a bright green, standing out against his dark green scales, and he had a few scars around his right forepaw from accidentally getting his paw stuck in between two hot metal poles in a blacksmithing station when he was ten.
Then there was an ice dragoness named Freeze. She was small for her age (she was twenty-two, a year younger than Cynder) and was also slightly scrawnier than most dragons. She never knew her father, and her mother went missing when she was five. She hadn't had a home from then until the age of fifteen until a dragon by the name of Pyron, a fire dragon who was also in Cynder's friend group, found her and his family ended up adopting her. Although she was well looked after, she still stayed quite thin, and she didn't grow that much. That caused a lot of problems with bullying, and out of defence for his foster sister, Pyron would get into quite a lot of fights. The fire dragon was covered in scars from those bouts, but he was proud of every single one of them. Freeze's scales were pale blue and had a very evident sheen on them. Her eyes were a royal blue, and her horns were long and straight, coloured indigo. Pyron was a vibrant red colour, and he had horns much resembling Ignitus', the same colour and everything. His facial structure was composed a little differently, and he had small horns pointing out of his jawline and on top of his top jaw, running from above the nostrils to where the jaw connected with the skull in between the eyes. Unlike his foster sister, Pyron was quite large, and his legs carried large muscles. He was twenty-four years old and was nearing his quarter-century hatch-day, which was a big deal for all adolescent dragons.
The last dragon in the group was an electric dragoness who went by the name of Electrika. She was the youngest in the group, being nineteen years old, but she was probably the most mature of them, having been through a lot of torment in her life. Cynder, as the Terror of the Skies, actually took Electrika's family away from her and they worked as slaves, and they eventually died because their bodies couldn't handle the physical stress any longer. Electrika was only three when that happened. An elderly ice dragon named Irrith, who had passed away in his sleep about two years ago, had found her alone and taken her in. Surprisingly, when Cynder found out that she had taken Electrika's family, the young dragoness forgave Cynder, giving the same reason of acceptance as Spyro had – that Malefor had used her as a puppet, and that she wasn't in full control of her actions. Cynder was grateful for that. Electrika had pale yellow scales and a bright blue underbelly, as opposed to the dark, royal blue that most other electric dragons possessed. Her horns curved outwards slightly, and she was quite tall for her age, yet very slender.
On the occasion where Spyro or Cynder were not having time together, or alone, doing what they enjoyed doing, they would be with the guardians, getting over the trauma of the war together, as they had been the most exposed to the conflict than most other dragons had. Hell, Spyro and Cynder were the ones who fought Malefor. Most of Spyro's nightmares and problems around Malefor had begun to subside, but Cynder still faced troubles frequently; she knew she could never escape her past, and she kept blaming herself for everything she did, even though she knew it was all Malefor's fault. Either they'd be getting over the trauma, or they'd be going over meetings, political stuff, all the other things that the guardians did. Although the guardians were very highly ranked, and significantly older than Spyro and Cynder, they had formed a strong friendship.
Upon Spyro and Cynder's return from the Mountain of Malefor, they both had become strangely distant when the guardians asked about Ignitus' wellbeing. It was a few days after that when Cynder broke the news to the guardians, so Spyro didn't have to do it, for he was closer to Ignitus. Volteer and Cyril were shaken, but Terrador took it the worst out of the three remaining guardians. Terrador and Ignitus had actually been very close friends in their childhoods; Volteer and Cyril both came from different cities. Terrador had had a hard childhood, and Ignitus was always there to make him happy. They had been there for each other since day one of their schooling, and now the great fire guardian was gone. The earth guardian had taken a while to recover after the horrible news of Ignitus' passing was broken to him, but when he did, he had a different, stronger light in his eyes. He was ready to become the leader of the guardians, and to look for a new fire guardian.
That task of finding a new fire guardian had been a difficult one, and after eight years, the task still proved unsuccessful. There weren't many dragons up to the task, and those that were up to it were arrogant and selfish. Even Spyro had been considered, knowing how strong he was in his fire element. The purple dragon had quickly turned down the offer, as he was the purple dragon, and not only would it seem unfair to the other fire dragons, but he also wielded the other three elements. It wouldn't have worked. So, that meant the guardian party was still at three, but they had not given up on a fourth. They all knew time played its role, and at some point, some fire dragon would appear and would be a perfect fit for the title of the fire guardian.
But even throughout all the drama and trials that the dragons faced, peace had overtaken the Dragon Realms, and it couldn't have been any more real for Spyro and Cynder. They had been exposed to the war as children; they had to fight in the war, something mere children shouldn't have had to do. Peace was only ever a distant dream, a fantasy, for Spyro and Cynder, yet here they were, living in it. It was so welcoming.
But there was fear in the peace. Cynder believed that Spyro worried too much, and many other dragons agree. Cynder wanted very much to put her dark and violent past behind her, which she had done quite easily thanks to the comforting peace. But Spyro still worried that the peace would not last forever. He would tell Cynder that the peace was just time for the darkness to rise and a new war to start. Cynder knew that was true, but she kept telling Spyro to lighten up and to forget.
He couldn't. He was a dragon raised by dragonflies. The violence came all too quickly for the young child to handle. Spyro couldn't forget how quickly his life changed. That change had changed Spyro dramatically, and for the worse.