Convexity

Music:

After following her through the dark void, Spyro watched with horror as Cynder approached the portal, releasing from the grip of her mouth the final energy crystal needed to unlock it.

“My master returns,” the black dragon said as the crystal’s power was consumed by the portal, now opening.

“We’re too late!” Spyro cried.

If only Cynder had known what she was doing, if only she had known that which truly haunted her. For by freeing the dragon which she thought could save her, she released the very beast that enslaved her mind and body from the beginning.

“Hmph…persistent little fellow, aren’t you?” huffed Cynder, turning around. “This is where it really ends.”

“Bring it!” Spyro said determinedly.

“No mercy this time,” the black dragon said, stretching her great wings.

“I can’t watch this,” Sparx whined.

Music:

The battle ensued, one that would change them both forever. It was long and hard, Spyro using all he had learned from his masters, but eventually he broke her. The black dragon always had a hard life, and watching as life after life was taken by her own claws, yet being able to do nothing, made her into a force willing to do anything for freedom. But still Spyro broke her.

His sheer desire for a better life, free from the pain of this world, caused an outbreak of an element never wielded by him before. It was Æther. The symbol of hope itself, present in the very atmosphere and the spirits of all, and the true element of the Purple Dragon.

In his outbreak of Fury, Spyro broke the Dark Master’s possession of the dragon once used as tool of destruction. The one whom Cynder had been hunting, seen as a nuisance to her own plan, had been ironically destined as the one to set her free. His energy had made her clean, purged of Malefor’s spell, and after falling to the ground in an awful thud she then lie motionless.

Cynder sighed in pain, and her body then returned to its natural form, a dragonling, and her bracers fell off. This was noticed immediately by Spyro, who gasped, “She is just like me.”

However, the curious markings on her head, lower back, and below her shoulders had stayed. These markings were a side effect of the curse she was put under, but do to the nature of the curse, were originally associated with a benevolent blessing, and so stayed permanently embossed in her scales.

Cynder also remained a black dragon after the purge, which was unexpected, as there was a rumor the ferocious dragon was black as a result of her corruption by the Dark Master and his armies.

All this happened in seconds, but now Spyro watched as her young form, still black as night, was drawn in by the Convexus Portal, which had seemingly gained a vacuum after being opened. Spyro was unaware of where the portal led to, but knew it couldn’t be good.

The portal was a clone portal, and having the location of Malefor’s death as its base, meant that anyone entering it could end up in either of two places: the world, at the base of the great mountain were Malefor built his fortress, or the Dark Realm known as the Stygian Orcus, where souls are tortured for eternity.

“Dude, we gotta get outta here, now,” urged Sparx.

“But I c-c-can’t leave her behind,” said Spyro looking around at the wreckage caused by the portal’s coming implosion. “I’ve got to save her,” he reiterated, this time more resolutely.

“Sss-what?! Save the beast that’s been trying to kill us?”

“Yeah, that wasn’t her fault,” said Spyro, indignant. “She was being used by the Dark Master.”

At this he let go his hold of the ground, and let himself be drawn into the portal. After an unbearable minute of terror, Sparx saw Spyro fly out of the portal, carrying Cynder’s unconscious form. “Now we can go.”

This is the story of how a captive wanting freedom unknowingly released the one who had chained her, and gained her freedom twice from the one whom she sought to destroy.