Disclaimer: I claim NO ownership of The Lord of the Rings Franchise, nor do I claim ownership of Tolkien's work. Credit and ownership belongs to its rightful owners, NOT me. The only things I own and wish to receive credit for are my own original characters and plots. Kudos to Tolkien for creating The Lord of the Rings, Middle Earth, and everything else that he did :).

The first chapters of this story, including this one, have gone through some MAJOR changes! No worries, no worries, it's all for the best!

-craftykitty

Chapter Two – Arrival

The first things that I became aware of were an awful, bodily ache and the fact that I was laying on the ground. Everything ached. I cracked an eyelid. I was outside and it was nighttime. I gasped and sat up, my back achily protesting that action. Oh, dear God. Ohhh, Christ. What the hell happened back there? I took a moment to process my surroundings. I made a mental list of my location:

I'm on the ground.

I'm underneath an oak tree.

My back feels like someone took a sledgehammer to it.

Something smells extremely dead.

I think I might be on a cloud…

I soon realized that it wasn't entirely a cloud, but fog. As I started to pick myself up off the ground, a burning pain knocked the breath out of me. I looked down at my torso. Horror grabbed me by the throat as I realized that part of my shirt looked like it had been burned away. The charred fabric opened to reveal a deep, blackened burn in the center of my chest. I slowly sat back down and examined the wound. It appeared to be no deeper than my skin. There was no blood; the burn appeared to be cauterized, but charred. What scared me the most was the shape of it. It looked like a brand.

I gripped the old oak beside me and struggled to stand. An expanse of dead grass and mud spread out before me. The bones of the earth stuck out of small hills in jagged, toothy formations. Directly to my right, a larger, unnatural-looking hill rose from the earth. Great pillars hewn from a dark-grey stone seemed to grow right from the hilltop in a circle. A stone archway grew out of one of the hillsides. Half-worn letters were ornately carved into the pillars forming the bases of the archway and great, stone door lay at the center. The lettering looked like runes from an age long past. Everything around me made me think of a great, big Stonehenge. I was standing in the middle of a huge, old relic.

My wound blatantly made itself known to me once more. Clutching my side, I gasped and stumbled forward, falling into the mud at my feet. I brought my hand away to see blood. I needed help. Someone, a hospital. Anyone!

A grinding sound resonating from the large hill caught my attention, followed by a long, slow hisssssssssssssssssssss. I snapped my eyes to the door. It was… opening. Like the not-so-brave little wuss that I am, I scuttled backwards through the mud, seeking the shelter of the oak tree. I hoped to God that the shadow and fog would hide me. Whatever was happening, it didn't feel right.

Crunch. Crunch. I squeezed my eyes shut and crouched lower into the shadows when I realized that I heard footsteps. I couldn't keep myself from shaking like a leaf when I heard ragged breaths being drawn a mere 10 feet away from my hiding place. I shook even harder when I heard a slimy, guttural voice.

"Goooootttthhhh… Gooothhhh… Goth!"

Goth? Gote? Whatever that word meant, I had no idea. I just knew I could potentially be killed out here. I then heard a second voice. This one chilled me to the bone.

"Hoshaaaaatttttt Snaaaagaaaa. Thrak parpara shatraug-gijak. Buuuurzuuuuuuum."

I cowered in fear and pain as I heard heavy footfalls moving my way. I snapped my eyes open in time to see a sight so horrible that it belonged only in my darkest nightmares. A tall, awful creature, about seven feet in height, shuffled my way. Dirty, sallow skin was stretched over its bony frame. Muscles bulged underneath the skin in all of the wrong places for something that looked so malnourished. Filthy, shredded pieces of cloth and metal covered the top halves of its legs and parts of its torso. Its long, twisted legs ended in large feet shod in what looked like the stretched-out flesh of long-dead animals. Its face was purely repulsive to look at. The skin was wrinkled and slimy, stretching out over its high cheekbones and framing its too-wide eyes with a mushy-looking mess of pasty flesh. Its gaping, lipless mouth revealed a row of yellowed, razor-sharp teeth. I was too damn frozen in fear to run, even though my brain screamed how stupid I was for not doing so.

The creature stretched out its claw-like hands and caught my arm in a hard grip, dragging me out of the shadows. I couldn't do anything but kick at it and scream profanities.

"Undur kurv!" it shrieked. The back of its slimy hand made contact with the side of my face. That only made me scream louder.

It- I'm going to call it the Thing- lifted me from the ground and threw me to the feet of the owner of the second voice. I looked up. I expected to see a face, but I saw nothing beneath the black hood that covered its head. Its entire body was draped in a black cloak and its hands were covered in gleaming, metal gauntlets. It didn't move. I don't even think it breathed. What it did do was smell like death and scare the living hell out of me.

"Dûshatar lûb, shatraug gijak. Broshn gazghash, ssssnaaaaagaaa krimp." Its voice was like sand leaking through a siv. At its words, the Thing cackled maniacally. I couldn't understand a word that it said, but I gathered that it was quite bad.

"What the hell is even going on?!" I shrieked. The Thing snatched me up off of the ground. "Get OFF me! Let GO! NOW!" I felt the charred skin on my chest tear. I shrieked and felt a wave of nausea wash over me. My head felt lighter than air and I struggled to keep down the vomit. The figure in front of me produced from his cloak a short, pointed blade that reminded me very much of an oversized needle. I wanted to shut my eyes but I couldn't.

"Morguuuuul-thaaaaaaaaaauuuuuk, snaaaaaaaaaagaaa rad."

I prepared myself for the pain of the blade entering my body, but it didn't come. Everything was frozen. A sudden blinding flash of light seared my vision and clouded my head. What felt like a mild shockwave knocked me out of the Thing's grasp. The last thing I remember is slipping into the mud and my vision slowly fading to black…

Hello, dear readers! Constructive criticism and reviews are very much appreciated. Criticism is a necessary element of successful writing. Thank you for reading, and check back often for more chapters :)! We're just getting started. I intend to make this story lengthy.

-craftykitty

P.S. The strange words that you see in this chapter are spoken in the Black Speech, the language of Mordor. Tolkien was quite vague when creating this language. I used various online English-to-Black Speech dictionaries, most of which were created via speculation based on the information given in Tolkien's writings. The meanings of some of the key words in this chapter's dialogue will be given to you in chapters to come :)!