The Legend of Spyro: A Duel with Destiny

Separate Ways

Sorry about the weirdness with formatting the chapter, I prefer to use these lines, but until now I hadn't worked out how to get them. Now I know.

I have a song for this chapter: Boulevard of Broken Dreams, by Green Day. I feel it suits the mood of the overall chapter. Play it whenever you wish.

Spyro woke up lying on a smooth cold floor. His new wind element was making his scales tingle; he opened his eyes to find out why.

He was on a hexagonal platform, tiled in black and white. The platform was familiar; he looked further out and saw grey skies. There was a storm coming, it was this that he had felt using his wind element. He raised his head and looked around, the platform had to be up in the air; it had open walls and a roof of glass above. In a few seconds he realised where he was; he was on the high tower of Cynder's fortress.

Spyro got up and noticed that his paws and his tail had all been chained to the floor. He could move a few steps to the left and right, and he could stand up and sit back down again, but he couldn't leave the platform. He struggled for a few moments before deciding that he probably wasn't going to get out of here with his physical strength alone. He'd need to think of other options.

There was a new band around his neck, similar to the snake charm that had chained him to Cynder, but this one was made of dark crystal inscribed with runes, and it was absorbing his mana, the purple dragon naturally had a huge amount of mana, but it was all gone now, the crystal must have been put on him some time ago. It seemed to Spyro that the best means of escape he had would be to shatter that crystal.

He was about to try to break the crystal when his mind was filled with thoughts of Cynder. Where was she? Was she ok?

Spyro controlled his emotions, Cynder would be fine, she was probably getting together a force of dragons to find him right now.

Spyro frowned; first she'd have to locate him, and then she'd need to get to him. Mere numbers of dragons wouldn't help her against Malefor; only another dragon with Dragon Time could hope to fight him on any sort of fair terms. Any time Malefor chose to he could freeze the other dragons in place. Perhaps if the dragons tried a surprise attack...

Spyro shook his head to clear out those thoughts; Cynder would surely be thinking the same thing. He didn't need to work it out, Cynder would figure out how to save him herself, he trusted her completely. While he waited for her to rescue him he might as well see if he could escape on his own.

Spyro tried to bite the dark crystal, but he couldn't quite get his mouth on it. That wasn't going to work. He smashed his chest into the floor, hoping to shatter the crystal with his weight, he did it several more times but after a few minutes all he had managed was to make himself sore.

He gave up on escape for a bit and looked around. This was a rather nice place actually. The storm was somewhat threatening, but the architecture was most impressive and made the whole place feel majestic, and also rather dramatic. He wondered how this fortress had been made, had Cynder built it herself?

Spyro turned his head to look directly behind him, smiling as his mind was filled with memories of his previous visit here. Ignitus had been trapped in an energy field up there on another part of the platform and Spyro and Sparx had come to save him, fighting and defeating Cynder to do so. The adult Cynder from back then looked quite similar to the beautiful Cynder he loved now, he thought of how scared he had been to fight her and of how everything had turned out. The thought made him smile again. Spyro struggled to pull his tail out of the chains, but he wasn't able to.

Cynder would come here and save him, just as he had once come here. Then he would be playing the role of Ignitus, she would be him and Malefor would be Cynder's evil self. All things considered Spyro was in a remarkably good mood.