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He tore through the apes with a ferocity Cynder had never seen. If he didn't get them from afar with that dark breath, he would throw himself at their necks and shred through layers of armour to the flesh beneath. If another came at him before he finished, he would whip his club-like tail around like a razor, dragging his first target with the momentum, and both apes would then lie still on the floor.
When some of them moved to escape, he would roar and stop them before they could leave. Eventually, the bodies and debris and spilt toxins around the exits were too cumbersome to move past, and the rest could only count the seconds before the night claimed them.
When Cynder had been large, her violence had been immense, yet controlled. The mercilessness of each act measured and dispensed with precision to gradually and surely turn the Dark Master's war.
Cynder didn't know what would happen when Spyro ran out of victims.
Now and again, one of the apes, even those of superior rank, would throw another aside and scream and beg like the dragon squires she'd slain. She forced her eyes forward, waiting for something to give.
"He's not snapping out of it," Sparx whimpered into her ear. "What do we do?"
Cynder bared her teeth when one of the remaining apes approached her with arms outstretched.
"You shouldn't have turned your back," she sneered. She pushed little Sparx, who hadn't seen a friend in who knew how long, behind her and crouched low, but before Cynder or the ape could make the first move, a shadow descended upon the ape and snapped his neck.
Spyro shoved the ape away and glowered in Cynder and Sparx's direction.
Cynder felt Sparx's tiny hands on her horns. Neither of them dared to move.
The clatter of the final ape clumsily trying to arm herself drew Spyro's attention away from them. With a roar he wrapped himself around her shoulders and dragged her into the column of light. He threw the ape down into the Well screaming. Cynder blocked out the sound of the body cracking against stone.
They had to get him out of that light.
Sparx's grip tightened when Cynder bolted across the chamber.
"Spyro, stop!"
Sparx only retracted his grip on Cynder's horns to raise his hands in surrender. "Calm down man, it's me!"
Spyro growled down at them from the blinding column, eyes blank, burning white solely with malice. What loomed over them was a channel for the hatred that had built the mountain around them, the power the chamber was dedicated to, awaiting its release.
Cynder had provided for this power, and now this power had found a vessel.
When he flexed his wings, Cynder launched herself off the floor and into Spyro, horns first. They both fell out of the light and hit the ground hard, knocking more stone off the edge of the chasm. Through the rattling in her head and the blood in her mouth, Cynder pinned Spyro down. The effort burned her lungs and took every muscle in her body. It was like she was strangling herself.
He spoke his first words since coming under the night's thrall, harsh, now threadbare. "Let me—"
"It's over!" she yelled. She pressed hard, below the jaw, nearly piercing darkened scale. Shadowy haze licked at the tips of her claws.
Spyro hissed and writhed beneath her, but he was worn enough for Sparx to clamp himself over his forehead.
"Bro, you don't need to do this," Sparx begged.
"It's over," Cynder repeated softly. Spyro snapped at her but his thrashes got weaker and weaker, until she finally loosened her grip enough for him to sink back against the stone, eyes shut.
She stepped away as the haze around him began to lift from his body. Her legs shook in waves of unfamiliar energy as she waited for him to move. She needed him to move.
Sparx petted his face and whispered his name until Spyro raised his head and looked around the silent chamber, purple eyes glistening in terror.
"What have I done?" he whispered.
Cynder didn't believe it herself, but she knew what he needed to hear.