"Who enters my domain?" demanded the King of the Dead.
Aragorn narrowed his eyes. "One who will have your allegiance," he answered.
The skull-like face sneered. "The Dead do not suffer the living to pass," the long dead monarch retorted.
"You will suffer me."
The King stared at Aragorn and then laughed. Gimli and Legolas tensed as the hosts of the dead swept out around them... a circle of ghosts clad in the armour of a day long past, their spectral weapons still keen.
"The way is shut. It was made by those who are dead and The Dead keep it. The way is -"
The words of the foresworn king were cut off as the great gates above them shook violently. Aragorn concealed his surprise as the ghost backed up almost... nervously?
The gates shook again. This time the bar across them cracked visibly. Even Gimli had trouble imagining what engine could so easily threaten to force open such huge gates.
There was a third impact and this time the bar broke entirely. One of the gates simply swung open but the other was driven loose from the upper hinge and toppled over, the twisting effect breaking the lower hinge and leaving the massive gate as a crude ramp down from the gateway to the floor of the cavern.
Standing where the gates had been was a tall figure, clad in white and black robes, hair rising up into a series of spikes above his head. Legolas' keen eyes could see tiny bells at the tip of each spike and they chimed gently as the figure descended along the fallen gate, the flickering lights revealing him to be a man, scar-faced and with a black eye patch.
A moment later, a smaller figure darted after him. For a moment, the three members of the Fellowship wondered how a Hobbit had managed to enter the Halls of the Dead, only to realise after a moment that it was a small girl with short hair and clad in black robes. Like the man, she carried a long and slightly curved blade - so long that the scabbard through her belt would have scraped on the floor had it not been for the small wheels at the tip of the scabbard.
The unknown man smirked viciously as he glared at the Hosts of the Dead.
"Right then," Zaraki Kenpachi snarled. "So this is where you lot have been hiding..."