Loch Ness
Summary: There is no monster at the bottom of Loch Ness, just three Scottish gals from 2010 and a rip in the fabric of reality. On the other side of that rip is a whole other kettle of fish.
Chapter One: Lassies in the Lake
Disclaimer: I don't own Lord of the Rings.
AN: I am not Scottish and only know what I've read in books and on the 'Net, so feel free to correct me but please be fair!
"Dwarf doors are invisible when closed,"
Aragorn limited the outward expression of his amusement at Gimli's robust bragging to a short exhale through his nose and a twitching in the corner of his mouth. Gimli was a proud creature like all those of his race.
"Why doesn't that surprise me?" said Legolas disdainfully, looking down his nose at their shorter companion.
Legolas, he reflected, was a proud creature as well, and that would have been fine if only the dwarves and the elves were not feuding and if only the two representatives for their species didn't make a habit of constantly needling each other in a childish fashion.
As it was Aragorn was glad Gandalf intervened before Gimli could do much more than growl at Legolas thus saving them from another pointless argument.
"Yes Gimli, their own masters cannot find them if their secrets are forgotten,"
The wizard was clearly just as weary as he of the childish bickering and had decided to bring the dwarf down a peg or two, as he was usually the instigator of such routs. Gimli was not a dwarf given to much restraint as far as the matter of his tongue was concerned, but even he had to work up the nerve to cross Gandalf, who was quite a formidable grump, as well as a wizard. Instead he began to tap the wall of solid rock on their left with his axe, clearly searching for the door.
Aragorn wasn't too concerned about the door, Gandalf after all knew exactly where it was, he was more concerned about the lake on their right. There was something about it that was, quite frankly, disturbing. It was like the water was watching you and it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in alarm.
Aragorn was pleased to note he wasn't the only one to feel this way. Legolas, usually the first one to sense danger, was distracted by his ongoing silent tirade against Gimli, Aragorn had been privy to some of it and it was really quite amusing. The elf was not, however, necessary since the skittish Frodo and the inherently suspicious Boromir were looking alternately tense and nervous and throwing sidelong glances at the lake every few minutes.
Aragorn dropped to the rear guard position and peered at the lake as if he could force it to reveal its secrets.
"It reads," Gandalf said loudly, jerking Aragorn away from his contemplation of the danger presented by the lake.
The wizard had managed to not only find the doors but make them visible in the time he had been distracted.
"The doors of Durin, Lord of Moria, speak friend, and enter," Gandalf declared pleased, pointing out the appropriate runes in an instructive manner.
"What do you suppose that means?" Merry asked.
"It's quite simple, if you are a friend you speak the password and the doors will open," Gandalf explained.
Merry and Pippin shared a glance before nodding in synchronous acceptance of this explanation.
They all turned to Gandalf watching with interest as he bellowed a phrase at the door, when that did not work he tried another.
"Nothing's happening," Pippin pointed out.
Gandalf dropped his arms to the side, a gesture of annoyed bewilderment if Aragorn had ever seen one, and pushed on the doors in case the mechanism that moved them simply needed a little encouragement. The doors remained solidly shut.
The wizard began muttering to himself and Aragorn turned his attention to watching the lake once more, ignoring the wizard's sudden foul temper, as ignited by Pippin.
Seeing that the task of opening the doors would be more difficult than anticipated the Fellowship decided to take a much needed rest break. Aragorn used the time to relieve their hardy pack pony Bill of his burdens and send him on his way.
The look of loneliness on Sam's face almost made him reconsider, but then he reminded himself that the pony would spook and get itself and likely others killed in the mines which would likely cause Sam even further distress. The practical Hobbit understood the necessity and relinquished the pony gracefully with a loving rub on the nose.
"Strider, what do you suppose that is?" asked Sam pointing to a pale splotch that had just bobbed to the surface of the lake.
"I don't know Sam,"
Aragorn hurried over to where Merry and Pippin were tossing stones. He was too late however, Merry had lobbed his rock with impeccable aim and as another white figure floated gently to the surface of the lake the first cried out in pain at being struck by a rock and then began to thrash about screaming unintelligibly.
It was not, as he had first assumed, a sinister creature of some sort, but apparently a human woman. A screaming human woman, and, thankfully, a human woman who could swim. She also seemed to have half a brain on her because her screaming tapered off as he and Boromir waded out to her and she began swimming to shore, expertly towing two more young women, clearly unconscious, along with her.
She reached them with no apparent trouble but when he and Boromir moved to take her two unconscious companions she began babbling at them clearly angry, but in no language Aragorn had ever hear of. Boromir and he exchanged uncertain glances.
"Milady, we mean you and your companions no harm," Aragorn started trying to placate her, pointedly ignoring the way Legolas was ready to put an arrow in girl if she so much as twitched wrong.
Her freckled nose wrinkled up, quite adorably really, and she looked at him, the very picture of shocked confusion. She said something very slowly, though if the shrill pitch of her voice was any indication she was quite distressed.
"I'm afraid I have no idea what you are trying to say," Aragorn answered shaking his head no.
Apparently this was the wrong response because all of a sudden tears swam in her large brown eyes. He and Boromir both took a reflexive half-step back and glanced at each other in wry terror. Being warriors, men, and not often in the company of female companions, feminine tears were things they did not know how to deal with.
Luckily for them before the girl could do more than blink a couple of times quickly Gandalf strode over to the shore and called to them to come in. Aragorn glanced at the girl who was watching the wizard wave them out of the lake and catching her eye he indicated by sign language what he intended to do. She nodded her assent and almost as one Boromir and he slung the other young ladies, who weren't waifs by any stretch of the imagination, over their shoulders and were slogging to shore. The conscious girl followed them with a bit more delicacy.
"Frodo has managed to get the door open, now, what's this nonsense?" asked Gandalf fixing the girl and her waterlogged companions with one of his milder quelling looks.
"They floated up out of the lake, and they speak a strange tongue, I have never heard its like," Aragorn reported.
"Hmphm,"
Gandalf was speaking to the girl who was conscious, switching languages every few sentences, when she did nothing except look at him with wide lost eyes and to babble in her strange tongue occasionally the wizard grunted and turned back to the group of curious males who had had gathered in a loose semi-circle beneath the tree. The Hobbits had chivalrously fashioned little cushions for the unconscious ladies out of their rolled up cloaks and were hovering worriedly over them.
"It seems I will have to cast a spell on them," said Gandalf.
"What sort of spell?" asked Boromir suspiciously.
"I will essentially drop my knowledge of Westron into their heads, and though they will likely have tremendous headaches we will then, at least, be able to communicate," sighed the wizard.
Closing his eyes he began to mutter softly in a manner completely opposite to his bellowing at the door earlier.
The girl's eyes went wide and she clutched the sides of her head briefly before those eyes rolled up in the back of her head and she slumped inelegantly forward into Gandalf's waiting arms. The other two did not stir, out cold as they already were.
"What are we going to do with them?" asked Gimli disagreeably.
"We cannot just leave them here!" Legolas declared.
Aragorn might have been more impressed by this chivalry in the face of tremendous inconveniance if it hadn't sprung from the contrary desire Legolas had to be the dwarf's exact opposite.
"Legolas is right, we cannot leave them to fend for themselves," Boromir said looking scandalized at the thought if equally annoyed that they would have to put up with the females.
"Moria is hardly the place for a girl much less three," Aragorn said neutrally.
"Why don't we ask the ladies themselves when they awaken?" suggested Gandalf in such a way as to imply that they were all a bit dim for not realizing that this was the only acceptable course of action in the first place.
It would have been a perfectly acceptable course of action for all those involved had Frodo not suddenly had his feet pulled out from under him by a scabby purplish tentacle and then been dragged along the rocky shore towards the lake.
"Frodo!" cried the hobbits catching the rest of the party's attention.
The next cry came for Strider's aid as Sam and Merry hacked through the tentacle.
Boromir and Aragorn were on their feet with their swords drawn in the same amount of time it took for the tentacle monster to knock the other three hobbits roughly aside and orient Frodo in a dangling position.
It became immediately apparent that the creature could sense the Ring and was drawn by its twisted call. As though the Fellowship converged on the creature, hacking, and slashing with various weapons, the beast remained determined to have Frodo, rather than an easier meal.
The beast rose up revealing a bony, almost skeletal, truly massive cranium that played host to a fleshy maw the size of a pit filled with double rows of large sharp looking teeth. Aragorn spared a brief moment to wonder as how the thing managed to feed itself in such a relatively small lake.
Finally, with Gimli felling tentacles as easily as if they were saplings, they managed to extricate Frodo from its clutches.
"Legolas!" Boromir ordered.
"Everyone into the mines!" Gandalf called.
"Into the cave, hurry!" Aragorn snapped at the flagging hobbits spurring them into faster retreat.
Legolas got off a few clear shots at the creature's fleshy bits causing the tentacles to retreat into the lake for a brief moment with a horrible roar that was unlike anything they'd ever heard before.
"The girls!" Boromir realized suddenly stopping short as he sloshed onto shore.
Cursing Aragorn, Legolas, and Boromir turned from the yawning entrance of the mine to the vulnerable and unconscious lumps of damp female they had left on the shore, not to mention the hobbits' cloaks. Moving quickly each member of the trio grabbed a girl, complete with hobbit cloak, slung her over his shoulder and made a breakneck run for the mine entrance. The angry tentacles were hot on their heels trying to trip them up. They barely reached the safety of the mine.
The creature, determined to pursue the Ring and infuriated to boot, wrapped its tentacles around the protuberances presented by the door and heaved its large scabby mass onto the rocky shore. The doors, having not been built to withstand the strain of several thousand pounds of angry monster pushing and pulling on it, broke with a sharp crack destabilizing the mine entrance and causing several hundred tons of rock to rain down effectively burying the wide-eyed Fellowship and their three damp unconscious female burdens.
AN: Like it, love it, hate it? Please review and tell me what you think, constructive criticism is welcome and encouraged.