Chapter One: On the Horizon

The fields of Gondor yet unclaimed, Second Age, 3441

I have never seen such destruction.

Grey eyes swept the fields around him in chilling disbelief. He knew the cost had been great, the lives lost many, but he could not quite recall in his long life such an empty, hollow sight. Fields had been burned. Villages ransacked. People driven from their homes, left as skeletons for the crows, charred shells of what they once were. Their bodies littered the road, the hills, the mountains…

Elrond brought his eyes back to the road before him, upon which his horse Firverior trod. It will do me no good to linger on that which I cannot change.

It had been days since the last battle of the War of the Last Alliance, the Siege of Barad-dûr, had ended. Seven long, harrowing years, and it was over in just a few days. Sauron had been smote to his ruin, the darkness felled. The few orcs and uruk-hai that had not been killed during battle had fled, and Elrond was certain they would be lost with time.

Though I would feel infinitely better if Isildur had cast the Ring into the Crack of Doom, he thought, shifting his jaw to offset his frustration. A fool he thought Isildur; a righteous fool, but a fool all the same.

It is done.

But it did not feel like a victory. The sky was overcast with grey clouds that threatened rain, and there were no larks or sparrows to accompany their caravan back home to Rivendell. It was not cold, but the air held a chill to it: the chill and pallor of death. Somewhere between Gondor and Arnor they were, in the vast span of land that had yet to be claimed by any. It was a bleak land, of rolling green and yellow hills and black, rocky crags, with copses of pines or hardy bushes here and there. The Ered Nimrais loomed to his left, dark and foreboding, with fog swirling about and thickening as it churned toward the peaks. It was not a cheerful atmosphere, and it made Elrond less somber than he would have liked to be after a victory he had worked hard for, had yearned for.

They had lost many, too many, and he and his comrades felt the loss like one of their own limbs. Elrond himself would be returning to his lands with less than half of what he set out with, to claim that evil had been defeated and Middle Earth saved from ruin. However, the cause of it all, the One Ring of Power, still held true. All because of one man's greed.

Hopefully this price for peace has been paid in full and that trinket becomes inconsequential, lost with time.

Elrond turned his head slightly, looking to the right. Maybe there was a sparrow or two brave enough to traverse the broken fields. He heard the melody of one singing over the crunch crunch of Firverior hooves against the road. Although, as he tilted his head further he thought, that sounds like no sparrow I have ever heard before.

An abject sense of dismay gripped him then, coming on so suddenly he could not explain his next actions. He held up a single fist and behind him the call of, "Hold!" was shouted down the line of soldiers.

"What is it?" Círdan, the late Gil-galad's first lieutenant, asked.

Elrond frowned, thinking the sound was less melodious than he first thought; not like the song of the birds at all, but more like…a whine? Some incessant, high-pitched humming? What could be making that noise out here, in the middle of this desolate and depraved land?

Elrond dismounted from Firverior but stood next to the beast, unmoving, just listening. Círdan looked at him quizzically, exchanging a look of befuddlement with the nearest soldier, before saying to Elrond, "What is it, Lord Elrond?"

Elrond began to walk away from his horse, leaving behind the procession, much to the perplexity of those that watched the elf-lord. He had his eyes trained to what he thought probably used to be a village but was now charred remains of such, burned to ash and blackened rocks. Stinking bodies rotted in the dim light of the sun, and were laden with flies, beetles, and crows. As he walked by bones of a tree that had been burned, buzzards looked down from their perch with curious, beady eyes.

But he heard it still. That noise. More like a whimpering now, a sad, pathetic sound.

Círdan had dismounted behind him and followed close with his sword drawn as his eyes darted this way and that. Elrond knew the moment he heard the sound too when he asked, "What is that?"

The noise was not getting louder but Elrond drew closer to it, and although Círdan had drawn his blade he did not. He sensed no harm, felt no malevolence in the air. Carefully, quietly, he walked around the shells of lost homes, evaded decimated bodies, and peered around what foliage had been left untouched by the fires that had brought this poor, homely village to its knees.

It was in one of those unscathed bushes that he found her.

Frozen in shock, Elrond peered down at the small child that sat before him in the dirt. He had parted the half-burned branches of a thistle to reveal her, and as he stared at her for long moments he was not quite sure he could believe his eyes. She was young, a small girl, maybe around the human age of five. She was sickly pale, and her bones appeared to be pulled tightly over her skin she looked so emaciated; her eyes were sunken and ringed in black, her cheeks hollow. Her long, brown hair was matted, tangled, burned to the scalp on one side of her head, and her dark emerald eyes were vacant and glassy as they stared not up at his face, but his feet. She wore the most horrendous gown he had ever seen, a pathetic remnant of the splendor of what it once was; he could not even decipher the color. Caked with mud, torn severely, and so soaked with dried blood that he would think she had lain in it for days. Her feet were bare but blackened, and the skin of her limbs was either burned red from the touch of flames, lacerated, or black and blue with bruising. Her face was filthy, with a festering gash over her right cheek to snarl her upper lip ever so slightly. It was she who was making the noise, a ceaseless mewling that held no inflection, uttered through cracked and bloodied lips. She did not stop her noise, not even when Elrond appeared.

"By the gods," Círdan came to stand behind him, and now stared down at the girl in open-mouthed horror. "It is a girl."

Elrond could not move, so in astonishment was he. They had not seen any sign of life since they had left Gondor, friend nor foe. But this child…here? Had survived?

"She is Elvish I think." Círdan murmured, moving to stand by Elrond, parting back the bush with his own gloved hand for a better look.

Elrond's gaze flickered to her ear revealed by her missing hair and indeed, it held a pointed tip. Surprise struck him anew. Who is she? Where has she come from, to be so far from home? Her kin, where are they?

The child had yet to acknowledge he or Círdan. Pity swelled within him. She is in the throes of shock. She has seen too much, does not comprehend what happened no more than she could the war.

"How has this child survived? Come all the way from our own lands…" Círdan sounded morbidly shocked, and Elrond glanced at him to find his face twisted in a mix of pity and repugnance. Círdan shook his head, letting the bush fall back into place as he began to move away. "Put her out of her misery, Lord Elrond, and let us be on our way."

Elrond turned his eyes back to the girl. If she had heard his harsh words, she gave no hint. She continued to whine, her eyes fixed on the space where he stood.

I have taken too many lives already… But what kind of life awaits her if I do not?

He put his hand on his scabbard, but dread rose thick and cloying in his throat. He shifted his jaw once more and moved to wrap his fingers around the hilt of his sword. He found his fingers would not cooperate with his better sense, and he dropped his hand in a fist by his side.

Torn in indecision, he tried to move away, but found that he could not.

I cannot just leave her here… His mien softened at the sight of her, so wretched, so poor.

Elrond knew it was not in his heart to kill her no more than it was to let her sit in that bush and become prey to whatever fate awaited her.

He reached down for the small girl and took her into his arms. She gave no resistance, but nor did she readily enfold herself to his grasp. She did not change her tune nor balk at his touch, and she felt stiff in his arms and smelled as filthy as she looked. She weighed nothing, and a new pang of sorrow took hold of his chest as he cradled her close. She has suffered much.

"What are you doing?" Círdan asked, incredulous as he turned and watched as Elrond approached. "You mean to take her?"

"I cannot just leave her." Elrond told Círdan, walking past the lieutenant back to Firverior. The ebony destrier sidled nervously at the newcomer, his ears pinned flat to his head.

"Elrond, she will not survive the journey back to Rivendell! Look at the wretch." Círdan exclaimed, coming up behind Elrond as the elf-lord reached up to place the girl in the saddle, and then prepared to swing himself up.

"She does not deserve to lie here in filth no more than she deserves to die. She did not ask for this." Elrond replied, settling himself behind the girl on top of Firverior. Her humming had not stopped, and the warhorse tossed his head in dissent.

"She is addled, Elrond! It matters naught! She will die with the coming of the dawn; you can see that as plainly as I can." Círdan continued, taking the reins to his own mount.

"That is for fate to decide."

Mumbling beneath his breath, Círdan took to his own saddle and shook his head in Elrond's direction as the elf-lord motioned to begin the procession once more. Tucked in the saddle before him, nestled between his armor-clad arms, the girl swayed to the movement of Firverior, her eyes dully vacant on the long road ahead. She was cold, Elrond belatedly realized, and so he pulled his cloak from his saddlebag and draped it around her, making sure to cover her legs, tuck it in around her shoulders.

Whatever grace of mercy the gods decided to lend you this day, little one, he thought, gazing down at her. I hope you transcend it with all that you are capable of.

And so they continued the journey home.

"You say you found her along the road?"

Elrond glanced up at Celeborn from his seat beside the girl's bed, and rose to meet the noble of Lórinand. "In what appeared to be a village that had been destroyed, yes. She had taken shelter in a thistle bush."

"And you know nothing of her?"

"Save the fact that she is Elvish, no. She has not spoken since coming to be in my care."

Elrond had been home for nearly a fortnight now. On this night, and in the two days preceding it, a host of nobles had come to his city of Imladris to convene and celebrate the fall of Sauron. Elrond had spent a great deal of time inquiring of the girl's parents, her lineage, where she might have came from, but no information was forthcoming. He had kept her sheltered from prying eyes, not wanting to upset or cause her more undue suffering, however he trusted Celeborn and Galadriel, and their daughter Celebrían was his most beloved. With Celeborn and Galadriel's longevity and worldliness, Elrond thought maybe they could lend more insight to the girl than he had discovered.

The girl lay in a feather bed in small room in one of the servant's wings in Rivendell. She had been scrubbed, washed, oiled, and tended to by Elrond's own hand for her burns and lacerations. Slowly, and under his practiced care, she was coming back into the hands of health. She had ceased her mindless humming, but as he had said to Celeborn, remained mute. Elrond knew nothing more about her since the first day he had found her.

"This poor creature," Celebrían knelt beside the bed, her face mottled with soft pity as she stroked the girl's brow. She was asleep now, had been sleeping often and heavily. However, her appetite was growing and her emerald eyes were beginning to lose their glassy, vacant glow as she settled into the calm and soothing surroundings of Rivendell. "She has seen so much for one so young."

"She does not look familiar to you?" Elrond asked first Celeborn, and then turned his eyes to Galadriel. "You have not heard of anyone missing a child?"

Celeborn shook his head, drawing Elrond's gaze. "It is not uncommon for children to be orphaned after war has shaken the earth."

Elrond turned his eyes back to the girl, so small and frail. Her skin was just beginning to heal from the burns, and the laceration that had almost halved her face was now a hardened, ruby scab. Her skin was the color of the sands of Lindon, and her hair, once it had been washed and combed, shimmered with golden, ebon, and burgundy undertones in waves of russet that fell to her waist. She was slight, still skin and bones, and was weak when she moved; a ramification of all that she had went through.

"She would have walked from our lands to be found in the realm of Gondor." Galadriel said softly, coming to sit in Elrond's vacated chair. She reached forth to sooth the girl, a hand tender on chin. "Unless someone had abducted her, and then lost her in the midst of the chaos."

"That is what I gathered as well." Elrond replied, his eyes gentle as they took in the small being that had nestled into a soft spot of his heart.

Upon hearing his tone, Galadriel glanced up at him. "You are to keep her." She did not frame it as a question, did not have to. There was none.

"I know not what else to do. She will not speak; I do not even know her name. I have not had any inquiries for a missing child, and those I have asked no nothing of one. She is too young to send away, has not yet begun to fully heal…"

But Elrond knew it had been a losing battle from the start. When she had looked at him for the first time, waking from a deep sleep of which he thought she had succumbed to death, Elrond knew he was lost. Her green eyes had shimmered, filled with unspoken tears that would not fall, before she had clutched onto him in a grip that trembled and burrowed herself into his arms.

"You cannot send her away," Celebrían said, coming out of her kneel in a graceful flourish of shining blue skirts. "She has no one, Elrond."

Elrond looked at his dear Celebrían, felt the soft touch of her hand against his forearm. They were not yet married, but his heart had been lost to her from the first moment they had met. He felt her influence on him then as he gazed into her bright, morning-blue eyes, and his face softened out of its stern lines.

"What would you have me do?" he asked her, though he knew the answer; it was the answer that resided in his own heart.

He felt for the girl. She had traversed war-torn lands, escaped merciless torture from those who would see her dead, and pried herself from the very grip of death countless times. It spoke of strength, a strength Elrond did not see in many men, and maybe something a little more. Maybe the hand of fate was at play here, and Elrond was not keen to deny her.

"Keep her here; let her become a member of your household." Celebrían implored, her hand tightening on Elrond's forearm. "She has overcome and endured so much…she deserves a life of peace."

Peace. Elrond's eyes moved back to the small girl, and he smiled softly. "That she does."

Rivendell, Third Age, 3018

It was a sparkling autumn day in the dell of Imladris, with a cool breeze that swirled brightly colored leaves and the scent of trees throughout its many porticos and balconies. The ivory stone roofs and white facades of the houses of Rivendell reflected the light of the afternoon sun warmly and radiantly, and although the two were sheltered in a gazebo near River Hall, the Lady of Rivendell and her companion did not feel the chilling touch of the shadows. Arwen was languorously lounging on a stone bench, her sable hair tickling the uneven stone of the floor, humming a melodious tune with her eyes closed as she basked in an errant ray of sun. Her dearest friend Nieriel sat opposite her, reading The Deceit of Annatar.

"How different this world would be if your father and the other ring-bearers had not discovered Annatar for who he really was." Nieriel remarked absentmindedly, her emerald eyes trailing the pages of lore written by Elrond's own hand, her long, slender fingers reverently stroking the vellum.

"Surely you and I would not be sitting here as we are now." Arwen replied, twisting a single strand of hair around her finger.

"Ah, but you are not sitting." Nieriel said smartly, causing Arwen to peek open her eyes and glare affably at her companion.

"Whatever would I do without your insight and intuitiveness?" Arwen said blandly, drawing a small smile from her friend as she sat up slowly, her long hair falling to brush the bench on which she once laid. Her gown, a beautiful crimson compliment to her fair skin and dark hair, rippled with her movements, and Nieriel watched as Arwen came to her feet and then glided to the nearest balustrade. The gazebo overlooked the city nestled in the valley, where homes, decorated walkways, and gardens lay. Waterfalls were abundant, carving their paths down the Misty Mountains and into the glade to empty into the mighty Bruinen, the river which Rivendell bordered. River Hall rested behind them, but Arwen's eyes lay on her home city and the splendor it exuded.

Nieriel laid aside her book, her brow furrowing ever so slightly. "What is the matter, Arwen? You seem troubled." She could see it in her lady's stance, in the way her moon-silver eyes darkened, and her face suddenly shadowed in turmoil.

"I sense a danger in the air." Arwen said softly, her voice, usually melodious, wavering with trepidation. "An ancient danger; one that is dark and utterly evil."

Nieriel rose from her stone seat, the green gown of her plain maiden's garb billowing around her legs as she crossed the distance to stand nearest Arwen. The Elven noble was her most beloved friend, her most trusted confidant, and she worried for her in this moment; she did not like this troubling façade of her lady. They had grown up together; Arwen as Lady of Rivendell after her mother, the fair and gracious Celebrían, and her, Nieriel, as her handmaiden, and so Nieriel knew her well. And this trepidation was not like Arwen.

"What is this you speak?" Nieriel asked, not knowing if she wanted the answer. For some time now, the shadow in the east had been growing; even here in Rivendell they felt the effects of such. Orc raids had increased in number and intensity and uruk-hai dared to cross their lands. On many a scouting mission she and Arwen had ran into packs of wargs, sometimes a troll or two. More than once they had came across scorched earth and abandoned villages while out riding.

"I do not know," Arwen replied, turning her grey eyes to meet Nieriel's green ones. "But there has been much talk of the Ring."

Nieriel's mouth hardened and her eyes narrowed as a bolt fear lanced her heart, before she quickly dismissed it. "The One Ring of Power?"

"Yes." Arwen whispered, her eyes trailing from Nieriel to overlook her beloved city of Rivendell.

Nieriel knew the power the trinket held, what could happen if it fell into the wrong hands. The Ruling Ring had the authority to control the other rings, and in turn, their ring-bearers. All would be slave to whoever held it, and in turn, a slave to evil. Thankfully, it had been in the keeping of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, and Gollum before him, for the longest time, safe and sound and silent, but what of it now?

"What do you know, Arwen?"

"Evil is rising." Arwen replied, her eyes glimmering, her voice suddenly hollow. "From the Necromancer he has risen, unchecked and unhindered, morphing into The Lidless Eye to keep watch over Middle Earth from Barad-dûr, biding his time until he can take a more substantial form. His minions do his bidding, breeding filth from the bowels of Mordor to create armies unlike the earth has ever seen. Why do you think we have seen an increase in the number of orcs and uruk-hai in our lands? Why wargs run rampant and destroy homes and towns? Sauron knows the Ring is in the keeping of Bilbo and will stop at nothing to obtain it…and now has the means to do so."

Nieriel's eyes widened; these new changes chilled her, enraged her. "Why have we not stopped him? I do not understand how such a great enemy goes overlooked."

"Saurman has forbid it. To speak against him would invite death."

"Saruman is a fool," Nieriel snarled vehemently. She usually was not prey to such shows of emotion, but she realized the depth of this situation even if others refused not to. "And we are fools if we think not to quell this insurgence."

"It is not that simple, Nee." Arwen said softly, her voice regaining its inflection. "This has grown beyond our measure. We need to formulate a plan, proceed with every caution."

"So let us bring Bilbo here, protect the Ring from those who would see it to Sauron, until we can devise a plan to destroy it."

She dared not voice the other option. To take the Ring from Bilbo would invite great greed and evil into the tranquil halls of their home, and the effects, not only to Rivendell but also to Middle Earth, could be devastating. Because those wanting to do good with the power of the Ring would find themselves corrupt beyond all means, and nothing but strife and turmoil would abound.

"And bring the wrath of Sauron down upon our home?"

Nieriel frowned; she had not thought of that. "At least we are strong enough to combat his forces."

"Our kin sails for the Undying Lands; the time of the Elves is over. There are not enough of us to stand and fight."

"So why do we not go and destroy Sauron, once and for all? We know he lurks in Mordor; we still have a chance to see him obliterated."

"He has grown too great, accrued too many to his aide." Arwen looked at Nieriel then, her eyes suddenly full of fear. "War is coming."

AN: So there it is! The first chapter! I know, I know, I took an extended hiatus, but it's here and I hope it was worth the wait! As always, I welcome any well-meaning, well-versed, constructive comments, questions, or concerns, so that being said hopefully I will hear from all of you bright-eyed, bushy-tailed creatures on what you think so far! It's going to be a doozy- I promise you that!

And for future reference, Nieriel is pronounced: Nee-air-ee-el.

Until next time, my lovelies!

xox - ithilbereth