Author's Note: So, the original version of this story I started writing when I was in middle school. I'm now a sophomore in college. Hence my writing has greatly improved and many things about the original plot changed. This is sort of a teaser chap, to see if there's interest and whether or not I should pursue the rewrite. It's AU but has lots of canon elements incorporated into it. If you take a gander at wikipedia and look up the few mentions of dark elves in Tolkien's mythos, you'll see that I try my best to keep to what is known of that history. Whoa, that sounded dry XD. Okay, read and enjoy! And review, peas and tank you...
Haldir knelt, ran his fingertips across the crusted spatters of sticky congealed blood that speckled the underbrush. Hard to tell how much the quarry had lost…the woman(and he was quite sure she was female, no injured man would have leapt and scrambled so erratically.) had fled so far and tried to hide much of her trail. He rose to his feet, his bow knocked with one slender silver arrow.
"You're nervous. Why? Maybe she's one of the Galadhirim, gone astray-" Rumil spoke softly from beside his brother, his pale blue eyes reflecting the light of the noon day sun. Haldir glared at him, stepping carefully over a large root.
"They're all accounted for. This is someone else, badly injured and aware she's being hunted. If she meant us no harm, why hide? Surely she must know we could aid her. The question is her location now…and why she dared venture here in the first place if she feared it so much." The patches of blood were getting more frequent, less well hidden. He could even see where she'd churned up the leaf litter, fallen perhaps. "Reasons, I just want to know your reasons…" He murmured, more to himself than to his brother.
"To escape from the orcs, I expect. How much harm can one wounded elleth do us? If you're sure she's an elf, that is." Casually, Rumil stepped around the patches of bloodied leaves. He had an almost bored expression on his handsome face. "I think we should get back into the flets…dangerous to linger, what with the goblins."
"So you'd leave a wounded woman to the mercy of the orcs? Such chivalry, Rumil." Haldir rolled his eyes as Orophin detached himself from the shadow he'd been scouting in, startling their youngest sibling. Rumil's face screwed up in consternation and he opened his mouth to retort.
"Enough. The pair of you…she's close."
oooOoooOoooOooo
It was nearing evening, she could tell just by the smell in the air. It was different, walking upon the earth and not below it. She was still half-blind from the shocking brightness of it, all the colours. Nazg shifted in her cramped position, ensconced in a hollow at the base of a massive tree. Not a mellyrn, but one of it's smaller cousins. Big enough for her to hide under from the meddling Galadhrim. To drift unsafely in and out of consciousness in the enemy territory of the Golden Wood, Dwimordene…
She slowly slid a hand beneath her breastplate, across skin sweaty and grimy and sticky with blood. The skin around the gash in her side…it felt warm and swollen. Septic. She winced, curled up tighter on her side and tried to ignore the sounds of grubs boring into the tree trunk above her. She wanted to rage, to have the strength to take out her fury in a fit of childish frustration. By Morgoth, her body hurt.
Her eyes snapped open, the molten gold irises glinting in the fading sunlight as her brows knitted with fury. She'd have that ring if it was the last thing she did…and she'd make the hobbit pay. That would be enough, to kill him and take it. She'd nary have to harm a hair on anyone else's head, with his death they would all be undone. But she couldn't do it with a Smaug be blessed wound…she could barely even stand. The Galadhrim were tracking her, too. Sindarin, maybe Noldor clans….she couldn't quite recall what the exact lineage of their people was. Really, it didn't matter. They were her kind and yet also not. Betrayers of Eol…slayers of Maeglin, the Sharp Glance. They were her enemy forever and always, even if the Lord Sauron were to forsake her. Bodily wounds would heal with time, wounds of the soul never. When they came she would fight them. Maybe she would be lucky, maybe she would happen across healing supplies on one of their corpses. A shock of pain ricocheted through her ribcage as she shifted and she bit her lip and struggled to stifle a gasp.
Suddenly, Nazg felt fingers clench in the cowl at the back of her breastplate. With an inhuman shriek of agony and fury, she twisted around to snatch at her assailants wrists. The movement was so painful it proved disastrous. She screamed as she was dragged wriggling into the fading sunlight like an adder from it's nest.
"Haldir, she's-" Nazg snatched the dagger at her hip and made a wild stab for the ellon's foot. He was barely quick enough to hop backwards and out of range. Blood seeped from the barely crusted scab as she rolled onto her belly, the brightness of the evening light causing little pinpricks of pain to pulse behind her eyes. Her growl ground out of her throat in a visceral, animal-like sound that was part pain and part rage. It was too much, her body ached and her wound felt raw. She flailed out with the dagger once more, only to feel arrowhead scrape the column of her throat and turn her chin up.
A mixing pot then, of the various clans. The three Galadhirim surrounding her were obviously related, though their features bore the mixed traits of an assortment of Calaquendi. Clan differences aside, the ellon threatening her had rank. His raiment and bearing superior…she slapped away the arrow point and made a wild swipe with her dagger, scoring a large chunk out of the hard wood of his bow. Did he think she was stupid? He was too close to shoot her- a booted foot slammed hard into the base of her neck and ground her face into the leaf litter, a bow around her neck like a yoke.
"Daro! O man dor tuliel le?" Damnation and spite! She spit out some leaves and blinked hard, her eyes still adjusting to the light. It hurt, too much to be fair. She didn't know much elvish, but she understood 'daro' well enough. She released the dagger, helped along by the ranked leader slamming his boot heel down onto her wrist.
Haldir felt a bone crunch in the elleth's wrist as he relieved her of her weapon, feeling a mild twinge of guilt. Then, she had just nearly cleaved through his bow handle. The same bow he'd had since his induction as the March Warden of Lothlorien, awarded to him by the Lady herself. The ungrateful little witch…and she would not look at them.
"Tiro nin!"
"Bauw. " Was all she replied, her voice hoarse and strange. Even her elvish, in the one word she had spoken, sounded somehow wrong.
"Brother, I need to speak to you-"
"Not now, Rumil. Tiro, elleth!" He resisted the urge to kick the difficult woman in the side, as much out of frustration as nervousness. So much was wrong about what he was seeing, from the ragtag black armor she wore to strange tattooing on her shoulders and wrists. The fang of some large animal hung around her neck from a black cord, flanked by two bird skulls. Hair that was too gold to be any kin from Mirkwood. Thin, as well. Frighteningly thin…
"Stop asking for something you do not want, Galadhirim." Why would an elleth speak westron instead of her mother tongue in the company of other elves?
"What do you mean? Show me your face!" He barked sharply, taking two strides toward her and reaching to grab her chin. She threw her head back and Haldir swallowed a cry.
Her face was comely, like all the Eldar, but gaunt and gray with the state of her wound and harshly carved. But her eyes…she had the eyes of an orc. Large, still elf-like in their slant and the shape of the pupil, but a pallid yellowish tawny colour. She smeared black paint around them, perhaps to shade them from the sunlight. Even though it was bare dusk light, he could see the discomfort it caused her to glare at him. There was a thin scar running horizontally across her left cheek, white as sunlight against the gray of murk that was her skin. Despite the pain, her lips pealed back in a half snarl, half grin.
"You gawp as if you've never seen a dark elf before, March Warden. Where are your manners, cousin?"
End Note: And yay for the sampler! Now, you canon junkies can once again read the silmarillion or check out wikipedia if you're lazy. AU? AU. Aaaaaa UUuuuu! So leave me a review, my lovelies :)