It can be said that after experiencing, and preventing, the end of the world, one would definitely expect to never be the same again. But for the two young dragons, Spyro and Cynder, they could've never imagined so literal a change as they finally began flying back towards the dragon city of Warfang.

The events leading to the change began when a vicious storm began to rage over the land, nearly throwing Spyro and Cynder out of the sky several times. Spyro thought they could've continued on through it, but after they nearly collided with a sheer rock face, he reevaluated that statement quickly.

Cynder took the initiative and arrowed her body, dropping towards a ledge that was far below them, but still a significant distance above the ground. Following her to the landing, Spyro tried to land gracefully, but the slick of the wet rock made it difficult to avoid bumping into Cynder.

Quickly, the two dragons rushed inside the cave, sopping wet and shivering with the cold. As the water slid off their scales, the searched the small cavern for an adequate spot for the night. The cave, however, didn't appear to have any viable spots as there was a definite lack of any sort of alcoves, ledges, or even any stalagmites. Something else Spyro noticed was the cave extending farther back into the mountain.

The question was where did it lead?

"Spyro, look at this," Cynder said.
"Hm?" Spyro said, looking over to where she stood.

Cynder was standing by a plank of wood that was hanging from a nail, upon which was writing that Spyro couldn't make out from this distance. Walking over to Cynder's side, he was able to read what the sign said and raised an eye-ridge in interest.

[i]No visitors. Official business only.
-Illustria[/i]

"Visitors prohibited, huh?" Cynder said, "It makes you wonder what they want to prevent others from seeing."
"Yeah, but either way we need somewhere to sleep for the night," Spyro said, "whoever Illustria is, I bet they'll understand. C'mon, it can't be that far back."

The two dragons turned and set off into the darkness, still shivering slightly from the cold. Unseen to the two dragons, a small snake slithered from behind the sign and watched them walk down the tunnel.

"Oh dear," the snake said, "another pair of 'test subjects' for Illustria. I pray to the ancestors she's in a good mood."

It was a rather sudden transition from the tunnel they had been in. There was tons of difference from the tunnel and the room they just entered. The chill of the cave remained, but all over the massive cavern were lights of strange and curious workmanship, illuminating the cavernous room brightly. Spread out haphazardly were various tables and benches with a variety of devices and mechanisms, of which the two had no idea on what purpose they fulfilled.

Suspended far above and casting shadows from the light filtering from above, a construct of unknown origin gently swayed. Spyro stopped to study it from a better angle as Cynder turned towards the various furniture that held the various devices.

Spyro winged up to a ledge near to the massive device to take a closer look at it. Branching from it, he could see numerous cords and supports binding it to the stone walls and rocky ceiling of the chamber. The device itself was... confusing to look at. There was several prism-like pieces of some sort of steel arranged around a central point composed of a mass of red spirit gems. The mass of red gem glowed, revealing veins of more crystals criss-crossing through the rest of the device. Gazing into the gem, Spyro felt comfort and safety, strangely.

Cynder was perusing through a row of cabinets that had just-as-strange devices stored in the glass shelves. Some sort of mechanical bug about the size of her fore-paw, a claw-shaped mechanism that looked like it would be mounted on a cheetah's arm, and a strange, drill-like apparatus were some of the curiosities she saw. The bug had purple gems, the claw thing had green, and blue gems rested in the drill, all incorporated somehow into the devices. What purpose such items would serve was far beyond anything Cynder could think of. She did notice, however, a strange presence emanating from the devices, like an amplified influence of the spirit gems.

As the two dragons studied the various curiosities, Spyro stiffened. He had a sudden and distinctive feeling of being watched by someone very near. He was about to turn to see where the feeling...

"Ah, greetings, little eggs, and welcome to the Emporium Illustria. Please feel free to browse my treasures and..."

Suddenly the voice was interrupted by a loud series of clatters and clanks as something made the definitive noise of someone falling down stairs. Spyro and Cynder whipped around to the source of the ruckus, just in time to see a cloaked figure tumbling down a staircase in the shadows they hadn't seen before. Both winced as they saw the figure's head impact repeatedly on the stairwell, their heads hurting just watching.

The figure crashed to the landing, but immediately sprung up to its feet, revealing a female cheetah within. She had blue-tinted fur that looked like it could use a good grooming, and a general look of insanity in her eyes. Spyro slightly recoiled silently when he saw one of her pupils was larger than the other, lending an appearance of eternal hysteria to the cheetah maiden. Immediately, the cheetah, swept her arms wide, clearly ignoring her preceding fall, and smiled widely.

"WELCOME to my humble abode, for it is an honor that my presence is graced with that of the Purple Dragon and the Night Mistress. My name is Illustria and I am Avalar's most renowned innovator," the cheetah said.

"Most renowned? Then why have I never heard of you?" Cynder said, eye-ridge raised.
"Oh, that may be due to ahem certain discoveries about the wrong way to concoct possible liquid forms of the spirit gems. How was I to know that distilling magical minerals in a melted form would have such lively results?" Illustria said, then clearing her throat, "let's just say that certain business-drakes of Warfang breathed easier with my removal from the city."
"So you were exiled?" Spyro said.
"No, rather, I sought freedom from the bureaucracy," Illustria said. "After all, they were only bringing me down and were limiting my creativity. Out here, I have the freedom to do as I wish and no one will bat an eye."

The two dragons cast a glance at each other, "crazy" being the first adjective they thought of the cheetah maiden.

"Here, I will show you what sort of progress I've made," Illustria said, grandly sweeping her robe as she stepped over to a device sitting on a pedestal. "This project here is my favorite. I call it the Ranged Spirit Gem Dispenser, or RSGD for short."

She picked up the device and slid back a part of the device, distinctly clicking the mechanisms. To Spyro it appeared little more than a gold-colored half-cylinder with small pins poking out of the front. He noticed the pins looked like sharpened red gems.

"I came up with the idea when I saw the aid Hunter gave to you during the final days of the war. I thought that if we can hurt our enemies at a distance, why not help our friends from the same? The concept behind it was quite simple, as I found that if you twist metal into a spiral, it gains the spring of a tensioned bow. Finding the spirit gems for experimentation was the second most difficult part, with the refinement into a point being the hardest. While it may not seem like much, I've noticed you dragons can absorb it through your scales. So I had another thought that perhaps some of the gems' potency is lost in the journey through the scales into the soul. That's why there's less and sharpened per gem, so I could more easily..."

Thwik

"OUCH!"
"Cynder!" Spyro yelled, resisting the urge to leap to her side and yank the gem-dart out. Cynder glanced down at her shoulder where the dart had connected, feeling slightly odd.

"By the Ancestors, I'm really sorry! I hadn't meant to fire..." Illustria babbled.

The two dragons ignored her as the flood of apologies spilled forth. Spyro's anger and Cynder's annoyance both changed when the sharpened gem glowed briefly like so many times before and was absorbed directly into Cynder. The pin-prick wound glowed briefly before healing instantly, making as if the injury never happened.

"...ever happened in all my test firings and simulations. I always knew the exact moment when it..." Illustria continued.
"Hey, you don't need to apologize," Cynder said, her calm demeanor derailing Illustria's apologetic tirade, "it was a healing gem after all."
"Oh? It... worked?" Illustria said, "you don't feel... strange in any way?"
"No, why should I?" Cynder shrugged, "I've absorbed plenty of these before, so what would make this one any different?"

Illustria didn't say anything initially, except for an unreadable expression Spyro couldn't interpret.

"In fact, I've never felt so good in my life," Cynder said, "whatever you did to the crystals worked."
"R-really? You don't feel... strange in any way?" Illustria said.
"Perhaps strange that you're asking repeatedly if I feel okay, but ye..." Cynder interrupted herself mid-word, an odd look on her face.
"Cynder? What is it? Are you okay?" Spyro asked immediately.
"Yes, I still feel okay, still incredible... but something feels...... weird," Cynder said.

Before any of the three could ask the question on their mind, the answer to them all came with a sudden, loud burble from Cynder's stomach. Cynder's eyes snapped open wide as understanding dawned on her and she frantically grabbed at her neck band, panic gripping her.

"Cynder! What's the matter!?" Spyro said, his own panic rising seeing Cynder's frenzy.
"Gotta... get this off before... it gets too small!" Cynder said, struggling with her choker. "I can feel..... the change is about to....... oh no."

Cynder's frenzy immediately ended as she leaned back onto her haunches, an expression of horrified resignation coming completely over her face as she stared down towards her stomach. Spyro's own gaze was drawn there, just in time to see Cynder's belly visibly jiggle.

"What, by the ancestors, is...?" Spyro muttered, stepping slightly closer towards Cynder.

Almost immediately, he jumped back in surprise as he paid witness to Cynder's belly beginning to grow! Her magenta plates spread and shifted with the additional bulk pushing out. Cynder instinctively pressed a forepaw into the increasing bulk, feeling the added softness. It quickly became a blatant orb of paunch, quickly reaching the floor even as Cynder reactively stood on her hind legs at her full height. But it only marginally delayed her stomach's impact with the cold cavern floor, shooting a shudder through her at the sudden sensation of ice. But the feeling vanished as her newly-fattened girth warmed the area.

Unable to maintain her two-legged stance, Cynder rolled forward onto her bloated gut as it continued to grow. As her belly pressed into the ground, she shuddered and her eyes rolled upward with the intensely-strange sensation of feeling herself just [i]spread around.[/i] She let out a slight "umph" as more bulk continually filled her out, swelling her increasingly-ample gut and starting to fill out the rest of her features.

Folds and rolls quickly developed on her neck as it thickened considerably, making her neck more inflexible by the second. Her once-slender legs ballooned with fat, becoming prolate spheroids more than actual legs. Her tail become a veritable pillar of scale-covered fat, blimping several times thicker with lipid stuffing. Cynder's back started to become its own landscape of fatty hills, making her wings seem stumpy.

Then the fattening reached her neck and head, worrying her considerably about the choker.

But her fears were both laid to rest and newly aroused as she witnessed the neck-band [i]grow with her swelling neck![/i] Quickly, her neck became large enough to be used as a pillow! She only needed to relax her head and her fattened neck would support it! Her face retained most of its angular lithe, but there was a degree of softening of the angles and lines of her face.

Through it all, her belly continued to grow! While the rest of Cynder was certainly no stranger to bigness now, her belly was the champion of enlargement. Mere seconds after it had touched the ground, Cynder's front paws were lifted up and away from the earth as the sheer amount of fat on her stomach proved to be greater than the length of her bloated front limbs. As this distance increased, Cynder felt the frightening sensation of even her BACK paws starting to depart the ground.

But as sudden as her weight gain had started, it suddenly stopped, the disorienting tingles stopped. She could actually feel her expansion stop. She clenched her eyes shut just as she was about to glance down at her swollen body. But Spyro kept his eyes wide open in shock.

He had simply frozen as if he had used his own Ice breath attack on himself. Standing still as a statue, he witnessed Cynder's grotesque change with dumbfounded bewilderment. It wasn't every day a dragon witnessed another dragon swell easily six times their size in fat alone! Being honest with himself, though, Spyro didn't know what to think of this. It was just too.... bizarre to be able to get any sort of feelings sorted out.

How was he supposed to react to his love wildly ballooning in front of his eyes?

Cynder, too, sat there frozen, staring aghast at her blimped form. She held her paws up and away from her scales, almost terrified to touch herself in disbelief. How could there just be so much OF her!? She was close to the size of a full-grown dragon now. Eventually, the shock abated somewhat and she allowed herself to lightly press her new girth with a forepaw. The sensation sent shivers through her, making her jiggle involuntarily.

Spyro watched the mesmerizing wobbling of Cynder's weight, a myriad of emotions stirring in him, as well as Cynder. Having been hatched knowing war, they never had tasted much of prosperity. But now that it was shoved fully into them in this fashion, they were left completely and utterly confused.

"Oh, goodness, that was quite.... unexpected, if I'm being completely honest," Illustria said, confusion blatant on her face. "I... uh... had no idea the crystal was so... potent..."

As Cynder continued her shocked gaze at herself, Spyro's own observations were pulled to her expression. Shock, dismay, chagrin, and even grief were present on the dragoness's face. She delicately kneaded her bloated form, shivering with every touch, the grief in her expression becoming more and more the primary emotion.

To be honest, Spyro was quite conflicted himself. Of course, this was Cynder he was talking about and he would love her for as long as the Ancestors allowed him breath. There was nothing that could keep him from waiting on his love claw and tail.

But at the same time, how would this impact their relationship? How would they live, day-to-day, if they would be concerned about Cynder's girth hurting the smaller Spyro in some way......?

The crazy idea occurred to him, and it actually almost revolted him at first. But the thought ignited brightly again with one sentence:

[i]It's for Cynder.[/i]

"Illustria, hit me with a dart," Spyro said, never letting his eyes leave Cynder's face.

Cynder's head reeled up, eyes wide in shock. None of the previous grief remained, having vacated for complete disbelief at Spyro's words. He heard Illustria distantly blubbering about something he wouldn't have understood anyways, something about "results" and "varying conditions."

"Just do it, please," Spyro said, pleading silently to the cheetah inventor with his eyes.

Almost like from a trance, the cheetah's mood shifted to determination as she picked up and readied the gauntlet device again.

"Spyro......"

He walked up to Cynder's wide form and placed a paw on her stomach, making her twitch slightly at his touch. Would it really be that sensually intense? It had been a good several minutes, but any touch elicited the same response.

"B-but, Spyro.... being... like this.... it's not..." Cynder protested.
"I don't care," Spyro said, pressing a little firmly into her gut for emphasis, to which she shivered with an audible gasp. Spyro let off the pressure quickly, thinking he had hurt her.

Cynder, however, was fighting off a wave of ecstasy that had washed over her. That push had been the most intense feeling she had ever felt. It was like every nerve ending, every sense, and every feeling had been cranked up to all new levels of... not pain, but [i]enjoyment[/i] for the feeling of Spyro's paw pressing into her immensity.

Barely able to hear what he was saying, Cynder managed to make out the last of his statement.

"...not alone in this. If this is what it takes, then I do it gladly."

With that, Spyro felt it adequate signal to Illustria, who took the sign and fired a crystal. It landed with an inaudible thump into his left flank. The absorption of the gem itself almost made him fall to the ground. It was a lot like the comforting warmth of usual absorption, but much more intense. Mere fractions of a second passed and the feeling was gone, the warmth having spread throughout Spyro's frame.

"But... life will be more difficult with all this..." Cynder said, motioning to her own fattened body, before reaching down to his shoulder.
"Will it? As long as we have one another, we can overcome any challenge," Spyro said, already feeling his belly being spread across the cave floor.

Cynder looked down slightly, slight shame entering her face.

"You don't have to do this. It could just be me..." Cynder started again.
"No, I don't want to lead a life with you worrying about crushing me, toppling me, or just breaking my legs because of a misplaced step," Spyro said, already beginning to rise from the amount of fat on him, "this way, we can remove the worry and just focus on us."

Cynder's eyes tracked Spyro's rise as his head approached her own, his girth increasing all the while, rapidly matching her own. She noticed the thickness of his legs quickly matched her own, and even surpassed it, as his neck and tail out-girthed hers, though just barely. He developed more bulges and billows in his fat than Cynder, having been of a stouter structure already, giving him a more-rounded appearance.

As his head rose a few inches above hers, a feeling of love, as immense as the two dragons had become, shot through Cynder. Of course, it could've been Spyro's belly flowing into Cynder's own, but there was still that part of Cynder's mind that remained rational. That small part of her mind realized one all-important fact, one truth that pushed out the remainder of Cynder's inhibitions.

She LOVED Spyro!

Spyro's growth stopped, leaving him slightly fatter than Cynder, but the two dragons closed their eyes with large smiles on their muzzles. They pressed their heads against each other and smooshed their bellies as well.

Illustria stood to the side, watching the romantic moment, struggling (and failing) to keep the tears from flowing. It was sooooooo romantic, she couldn't hold back the emotion! Then her eyes turned back to the device in her hand. Studious, her mind returned to the compunctions of this discovery.

If red gems made one fatter, what did the others do? She wondered....