The Voice of the Great Tree
Queen Shielean felt the stirring at the roots of the eternal tree. A shiver rocked the fortress's foundations and knocked her to her knees as she prepared the sigils. Sickness overwhelmed her, a sickness she remembered her father describing to her in the distant past.
"The land retches in the presence of a true dragon's flight. You will feel it in your bones, in the shiver of the great tree's roots and the foundations of all that is good."
Those remembered words sparked something in her, an iron will overtook her and nothing was left but the song of the eternal roots. Filled with power, she realised that this curse she'd lived with for four thousand and eighty years was much more than it had seemed.
The great tree’s power encompassed the essence of the elf kingdom of Darnathil, drawn up through deep roots. Each field tilled by a common farmer, every deer-grazed meadow of Buttercup, Cowslip, Sage and Selfheal, the Downlands where the Bison roamed and the hare leapt-- all these places held a spirit. The spirits, land and creatures were all one with the light that passed through the great tree.
Queen Shielean's eyes flashed an iridescent kaleidoscope of light mirrored in the sigils she had drawn on the floor of her antechamber. The eternal fire took her over as she remembered a dark-haired Windrider with tears in his eyes, and his wife turned Wosthawk.
That fire became a torrent.
As Aerthinth dived toward the wyvern formation a dark shadow eclipsed the sun and Hariethen banked sharply plummeting toward the earth.
He craned his neck upwards and beheld the gargantuan form of Hartdyran the dread. Aerthinth shivered as the red dragon's shadow cast its spell and his mind swam burning like magma.
The Wosthawk banked left out of the shadow, his love Hariethen screeching defiance as she beat her wings frantically to pull out of the dive. The defiance and elemental fury of that cry blasted the dragon's spell out of Aerthinth's head, and his heart leapt at his former wife's courageous heart.
As he levelled his lance at the great beast's belly, a cacophonous fire burst from the Worm's mouth like an erupting volcano eviscerating a formation of ten Windriders. The only sign of their passing brief trails of ash that disappeared in the wind of the great worm's wing beats.
Hartdyran pivoted in the air as a second group of Windriders broke from the main Phalanx that swirled like a flock of starlings, disintegrating into smaller groups and pairs, in a constant chaotic pattern like fish in a shoal confusing a shark.
This group of fifty Windriders dove toward the dragon, splitting into three squads as the beast inhaled the killing breath. The dragon let loose its inferno swivelling its head to incinerate each squad as they attempted a flank.
Aerthinth spurred his Wosthawk wife toward the Worm's belly, two minds working as one. They glided like a feathered arrow, Aerthinth bracing his father's lance against the stirrup with all his strength.
A sudden explosion of cataclysmic light rent the earth beneath the spinning Windrider as sigils of power glowed turquoise through indigo to vermilion in a circle of grass far beneath the battle.
Queen Shielean appeared in that magic circle arms upraised channelling all the light of the eternal root into the form of the merged souls of Aerthinth and Hariethen, Wosthawk and rider glowed like the sun.
In that power Aerthinth saw his wife once again, her essence glowing at the heart of his feathery companion, changed but never diminished. Her face shone from the centre of the Wosthawk beneath him.
Hariethen felt her husband's presence through the hawk instincts fully for the first time in centuries and she wept to be free.
As the queen looked on, the Windrider merged with Gosthawk in a lance of mesmeric light that struck right at the heart of the great worm. The dragon's bellow blew away the whirling Phalanx like leaves in a gale as that divine lance of two souls pierced its scales, exploding in golden dust like pollen born from the blooms of summer.
Queen Shielean remembered the final words of her father before he died of his wounds.
"A good ruler must always be prepared to make the same sacrifices they ask of their subjects."
Slender white elven hands weaved a pattern of a spell as the eternal fire raged even fiercer through her, burning away robes until she stood as naked as the day of her birth. That glowing form dissolved into the light of the eternal root as she became the land she had ruled for so long, a being of light that erupted toward the convulsing form of the red dragon.
A voice as powerful as the dragon's bellow echoed across the land as the great worm exploded in a cloud of gore and fire.
"I renounce my immortality."
In a patch of burning grass a dark-haired warrior and a golden-haired elf woman kneeled, locked in a fierce embrace.
The End
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