Chapter 11 - Celebration

The crimson sun breached the forested horizon, bathing writhing mists in rosy hues. Its warmth touched Rowan's sleeping form, stirring him from vivid dreams of the coming trial.

Blinking away vestiges of night, he glanced about their rocky encampment. His companions stirred one by one; grim visages emerged from the fog as memory returned of why they'd braved this cursed wood. Above, upon a pinnacle shard, a hulking silhouette was discernible even through swirling vapors.

A furrow creased Elia's brow as she sensed his gaze, offering a wan smile meant to bolster flagging courage. For now, came their moment of truth - all struggles led to this place. Rising jointly, they turned to survey the dawn-cloaked cliffside and its colossal guardian, a fading star against suffusing daylight.

With a thunderous howl splitting mists, the behemoth replied in challenge. Scales glimmered coldly through parting veils, its primeval might a tempest to fray even steadfast mettle. Exchanging grim nods, the fellowship readied weapons and steeled hearts for the coming madness. Whatever fate awaited, they would meet it facing the light, as one. Rowan threw back his head and loosed an earsplitting yell that rented the murky air, summoning depthless reserves of ferocity and heart. With answering battle cries, his brothers-in-arms brandished weapons wrought for this fated dawn.

As one, they plunged headlong into mist cloaking the treacherous slope. Pebbles skittered and grasses were trampled under steel-shod boots, the elements themselves conspiring to spur them ever upward.

Breaking from veils, the dragon reared upon its perch with a roar like the end of days. Colossal shadows wheeled against the paling sky, backlit by guttering flames churning its gullet. With nightmares given flesh, it opened fiery jaws to spew an inferno challenging the sun itself.

Unflinching, Rowan plunged into blistering waves with his warband at his flanks. Magic and steel flashed in coruscating harmony, honed under countless foes to now meet their destiny incarnate. Heartened by love and duty, Rowan rallied others onward - for in facing fear itself could courage be supremely tempered. Rowan wove through the maelstrom in a dance of death, parrying talons shearing stone and batting raging infernos aside. All the while his gaze flickered to Elia, assured by her grace as runic chaos flowed from fingertips.

Yet as the dragon twisted in a pirouette of destruction, a flash of amber caught its eye. With a hideous shriek it lunged, only to rebound off Rowan's singularity of purpose. Steel rang out his challenge, summoning its full, nightmarish attention upon him alone.

They dueled through torrents of cinders tracing arcane patterns, his every parry guiding wraths from Elia. Though scales shed molten shrapnel, Rowan endured; his love lent strength to shield another from one breath of that hellish maw.

Blades wove calligraphies of valor through engulfing melee, carving scars amid churning shadows. But Rowan faltered not, finding solace in her light to renew his onslaught against the chaos. Their bond would see this foe vanquished, or the mountains themselves swallowed in its dying throes. Far from the chaos, Cadmon watched for an opening. A knowing smirk curled his lips seeing the dragon's fixation; it would take more than farmer's steel to fell such a beast.

With a grunt, he heaved his throwing spear in an onyx blur. Its tapered point sank between armored plates to elicit an outraged shriek, dragon and Rowan briefly separating in surprise.

Now Cadmon bellowed taunts thick with bravado, jeering its ancestry till wrath was fully transferred. Another spear vanished with a wet thud, eliciting a pained spasm.

Wings beat frantically yet throes only fanned cinders, blinding any from discerning allies from foes. Into the tumult Cadmon charged with javelin raised high, binding the rampaging horror's murderous intent upon him alone.

Though talons rent armor asunder, he withstood its hellish spectacle with mocking laughter. A final spear pried open scorched jaws to stick fast, drawing its shrieks away from others engaging in deadly dance.

In agony it thrashed, consumed with hatred for this gnat that harried flesh amid flame and ruin. And in its distraction, demise was sealed. Elia wove mystic sigils with blade-swift gestures, summoning dormant forces till air vibrated with potential. Her focus honed to a razor's edge watching Rowan's dance with the mountain-sized wyrm.

He faltered; immediately chaos erupted from her in a maelstrom rippling the very ether. Bolts of scintillating energy seared through brass-colored scales, eliciting an agony that rent the quaking stone.

Where Cadmon's taunts stirred wrath, hers ignited true suffering matching its primeval nature. Spasmodic twitches wracked its colossal form, cast adrift upon a sea of torment unknown since ancient shores first felt its tread.

Yet still it fought, lashing with barbed tails and threshing wings scattering cinders. But no defense withstood her arts, learned through long nights encircling even the dread. Scales sloughed away in sheets of slag, baring ravaged flesh and cracking bones to her relentless storm.

With it fully in her thrall, Elia loosed a final sigil of gloriously baneful splendor. Its answering shriek shook fog-shrouded valleys, carrying a death throe's fleeting triumph on smoking thermals.

The dragon tottered; flame-scored visage upturned in a last baleful glare. Rowan beheld centuries of malice etched into obsidian orbs, now fading swiftly into the mists of memory.

With an almighty lurch, the mountain of scales crashed sideways. Stone shrieked and rent under its tumbling mass, vortices of grit and cinders swallowing its end among primordial crags.

A deathly hush fell upon the peak, haunted fleetingly by fading echoes. Then as one, the fellowship threw back ash-stained faces and unleashed a delirious cheer ringing through coronae clouds. They had endured nightmare incarnate and emerged triumphant.

At the edge of the precipice Rowan swept Elia into a fervent embrace, hearts resounding as one. Her etheric tempest had felled a god of elder myth; by their hands and through their bond, a dark era was ended for this land.

Far below, wailing horns announced deliverance to hamlets spared annihilation by their sacrifice. Clasping hands, the warband surveyed the rent land newly freed by their cleansing blades and arts. At the journey's end, a new dawn had been forged. The company embraced on windswept stone, exultation flowing freely despite pallid faces and slow-seeping wounds. Their voices lifted in exuberant chorus across battlements still warm from the last fray, shrieks affording naught but ashes where homes once stood.

But rise they did above death's pervasive miasma, winged by relief that lives would be forever spared this nameless terror's shadow. As fog swirled around singing chains still dancing in aftermath, weary limbs stoked freshening fires and packed salvaged spoils from the foe whose doom ensured new growth.

Elia mingled balms and poultices with practiced hands, repairing ravages to flesh where her tempest left rents in the living fabric. Rowan grinned though pain suffused him, sharing kisses sweeter than any elixir for binding both body and soul against all darkness yet to come.

Together they sat vigil through the night, surveying spread havoc fading phosphorescent beneath waxing moon. In its pale glimmer, Rowan at last knew peace - for as long as she walked these lands, no shadow could eclipse the light they had birthed together through steel and spell. Dawn's roseate light roused the warband from fitful rest. Around flickering embers, Elia assisted Rowan groggily redressing weeping abrasions crisscrossing flesh and spirit alike.

With practiced hands she smoothed salves over raw burns where molten shards found gaping vulnerabilities in his armor. Throughout, lingering in azure eyes was the silent question - had her tempest's backlash incurred costs too grievous?

Rowan answered gently by capturing her wrist in a kiss. "By your light alone this hellish wood was purged, beloved, as surely as our homeland will flourish come spring. All prices were willingly paid."

Cadmon laughed coarsely, unveiling bandaged ribs. "Well spoken, farmer. One day you may even best me with more than fancy words!"

Mirth brought needed levity to shadowed glances still scanning the quiet wood for remaining horrors. Theirs had been a long and twisting road, yet walking its lengths at Elia's side made even deepest wounds sing with triumph.

With dawn, it was time to begin the homeward trek. Though remembrances would long haunt twilit glades, henceforth life would return - and love would nourish all in their protection. Setting out together as sunrise gilded misty valleys, their lights led a still-awakening land into freedom's boundless dawn.