Chapter 1.1

The walls of Fangorn Forest closed around them like claws closing around prey. They all knew the stories. Even Gimli, a dwarf who had spent nearly all of his years beneath the surface locked behind walls and doors of stone, seemed to know enough of the mythology of Fangorn to tremble so violently that Aragorn could hear the buckles on his boots shaking. They were all of them unnerved; they were all of them uneasy. But this was where their friends had fled, so this was where they followed.

Yet even as the air he breathed seemed to suffocate his courage and tempt his heart with the thought of fleeing back into the day, what truly haunted Aragorn was that no sign of Merry, or Pippin, or even the creature that had followed them into the darkness of the forest, had yet been found. No blood. No tracks. No signs of struggle or battle. The tracks he'd followed had disappeared long ago in their journey through the trees, and the further they drove into the forest, the less he understood. He was no perfect tracker, to be sure, but a Ranger should need no aid in pursuing the path of two young hobbits and a wounded orc of Saruman's. It was as if they had simply vanished.

Then he felt it – a tremor beneath his feet. At first Aragorn thought it was the trees, their roots shifting and twisting underneath the surface of the earth. But the tremor was beyond mere physical movement. There was something else at work here. A look at his companion's faces confirmed that it had shaken them as well.

"Oh, there's something foul here, lads," Gimli said, his voice barely more than a breath as he raised his axe and glanced wildly about him. Legolas, too, raised his bow slightly, his piercing gaze searching the shadows of the forest. Their ears listened and heard nothing but the groaning of bark and root.

"They are afraid," said Legolas.

"Of us?" Gimli whispered, still looking about frantically.

"Aragorn." Legolas's elven tongue pierced the silence, and for a moment, the darkness around them seemed to lessen. "Something's out there."

He strode forward, leaping over a fallen log and rushing a few silent steps ahead. Aragorn followed close at his heels until the elf came to a sudden stop. He looked out over Legolas's shoulder, but even the eyes of his bloodline could not match the sight of the elves.

"What do you see?" he asked.

He waited, but no answer came from the mouth of the elf. A second tremor shook them, this one more violent than the last, and Aragorn reached out towards the trunk of the tree nearest him to keep from falling.

"I see…"

A piercing blue flash of light erupted in Aragorn's eyes, and then he felt himself being thrown through the air like a wooden sword being thrown from the hand of a child. He landed shoulder first against a tree and sank to the ground, his head dazed, the close air of the forest coming slowly and painfully to his lungs. As his vision cleared, he saw Legolas a few yards across from him, pummeled by the same blast that had hit him.

The White Wizard…he is here.

A sudden growling rushed through Aragorn's ears. His mind filled with the possibilities of what monstrous creature Saruman could have brought with him into the depths of the forest – orcs, urak hai, wargs. The thought drove him shakily to his feet. But as he stood and tried to establish his balance in spite of the pain in his head and shoulder, he realized that growling came from none of the creatures he'd fathomed in his mind.

Gimli, having just finished his awkward ascent over the fallen log that Legolas and Aragorn had so easily stepped over, leaped furiously to the ground, his eyes filled with a dwarven rage that was fueled by his fear of his opponent. A throwing axe cut through the air towards the growing blue light, which had now reached an intensity that was near blinding. There was a cracking sound, and shards of the throwing axe flew in a hundred different directions.

"Gimli! No!" Aragorn shouted, but the dwarf charged on. There was a second brilliant flash, and Gimli landed, groaning, beside the Ranger. Out of the corner of his eye, Aragorn could see Legolas standing before the blue-white light, his bow lowered, accepting of the fact that this was a battle they simply could not win. Aragorn knew it as well.

Still the light shone on, but now a figure could be seen somewhere within its rays. As Aragorn raised his hands to defend his eyes, a weathered, dark voice spoke.

"It is a pity that we must meet under such circumstances. In spite of what you may think, I find your actions under the trials you have faced to be quite admirable. It is an unfortunate twist of fate that such measures had to be taken to ensure our plans."

As the light shone on and his breath remained, Aragorn wondered why Saruman would taunt them with fair words before their execution. He knew such an end could come. Aside from Sauron himself, Saruman was their greatest foe. But this was so unlike the Saruman that Gandalf had warned him of during their travels with the fellowship. The words from his mouth sounded almost as though they could be sincere. This was no servant of the enemy; or at least not the enemy he knew.

"Who are you?" Aragorn asked, taking a step into the blazing white-blue light. "Show yourself!"

"I am afraid I can't do that," the figure answered calmly. "I hope the next time we meet it will be under more peaceful conditions. Goodbye."

The light collapsed, shrinking back into nothingness. Then Aragorn's body was pulled viciously from the ground, the world around him spinning and twisting into a thousand different shapes and shadows until he did not know which end of him was up and which was down. The spinning slowed to a halt, and instead of the forest's oppressive air, he felt the thickness of water all around him.

Kicking his way up, Aragorn burst through the surface and breathed in the atmosphere of a very different world.