Alaklome::
By: Stephanie P
Most characters (c) JRR Tolkien

Chapter One:: Shadow in the Dark

"Cursed evolution," muttered the shadow, which crept through the streets of London's night. A tall girl with long coppery hair and ears with just a bit of point to them slipped from shadow to shadow, remaining silent, soft footed, and hidden. 'Vampires… they don't seem to realize that they're just a half breed of Nazgul and Orc.' She thought to herself. 'Yes… evolution'. The shadow watched as a group of Vampires passed her by. They hadn't noticed the shadow girl in the alley. She quietly, swiftly climbed a lamppost and was soon sitting on the lamp itself, perched, waiting. 'Darwin was right in thinking humans of today are the product of evolution, but not quite from what he thinks they were. Darwin wasn't around for the hard times of Middle Earth'. The girl in the shadows watched for her prey, the Vampires, to come within range. 'Hm. The Orc in them has evolved to drink blood rather than just eating the raw flesh of their prey. The Nazgul in them makes them spread their horrid disease to the point of infestation.' She leapt down from the lamppost and took off after the Vampires that had just passed by. She went silently and they never saw her coming. There were four of them. She took down all four with ease and then slipped back into the shadows as another pack of these creatures came running through.

Indeed a lot had changed since the days of Middle Earth. Human blood had mixed with that of the various other races. Hobbits were hard to distinguish from the other races because they now had average sized feet and were quite a bit taller. Dwarves remained much the same, but their skills and abilities increased through time. They now became builders of all sorts. There love still lay with the working of metal. Wizards still traditional as ever, had found ways of using the new technologies of the world to enhance their wizardry. Elves, though believed to be non-existent, were really more abundant than one would think. They still lived immortal lives, and none new were born. Yet the ones that remained had adapted. Their ears were an average size and their point less noted. They were still quite tall, and thin. Elves were usually quite solitary. Orcs and the Uruk-Hai had interbred and, with the help of the infections of the Nazgul, created a new terror, the Vampires. Many races had died out. Ents, Trolls, Balrog, were no more. The world was a very different place indeed.

The tall red headed shadow slipped into a warehouse. She went to a door in the back, opened the door and then went down a flight of stairs while making sure to close the door behind her. She slunk through the shadows towards a heavy metal door. She punched in the numeric password on a keypad attached to the wall by the door. The doors opened and the shadow went down another flight of stairs and was in a large room filled with computers and other various types of equipment.

"Gawain!" I shouted from behind one of my computer terminals. "You finally decided to come back eh? Took you long enough. Where were you?" I asked. The red head looked at me with a smile "I ran into some trouble on the way home. How about you Penny?" she asked with a smile. I looked at her with very pleadingly. "Please don't call me Penny. It's Pennrod. Pennrodiel if we wish to be technical," said the blonde, "anyways lets not discuss this anymore. I'm tired. I've been up all night playing with the wires of this damned machine. Good night Gawain." With that I walked past my red headed friend and through a door. I closed the door behind leaving the red head in the large main room.

"Hm… if Pennrod only knew how bad the nights really were," Gawain thought aloud, "then maybe she'd stop making a point of saying that before she went to bed at night… or morning rather." Gawain crept through a door at the other side of the room.

Morning came the next day as silently as Gawain had entered her 'home'. The morning was bleak and gray when Gawain walked outside to take a walk as she often did on nights when she came home late. It was as if she were guarding the place. Not that it would come as a surprise. Lately there were Vampires on the rise.

The year is now 2010. Gawain is quite old, though her face never does show her age. I'm not much different. The times of Middle Earth had come and gone and we had managed to survive where few elves had. Elves were few and far between in the end days of Middle Earth, but now they were even more so. Not only were we few, but also we had evolved and adapted to our changing world in ways that disguised our true race. Me running into a fellow elf was the biggest fluke of our lives. People like Gawain and me were rare, as there weren't many teams of elves running around. It was hard enough to find another elf, but to find one who you got along with like we do, that's as rare as they come I suppose.

Gawain came back into the 'apartment' to see me sitting at another computer tampering with it. I did that often I suppose. "Hello Pennrod." She said quietly. "G'morning Gawain, how are you this mornin'?" I replied without looking up from my work. She hated it when I did stuff like that. She made a small, wary, uncertain smile. "What's wrong?" I asked. I had turned around just to catch the look. "There's a lot of trouble brewing out there this morning Pennrod. It scares me to be frank." Gawain said as she folded her arms across her chest.