Chapter 7
My pelt itched and crawled as I struggled not to transform. I knew it would bring relief to the close space, but my opinion was that no one needed an extra fright today, what with the Kraken and the entrance tomb. The last thing they needed was an invisible (black skin, black shadows…) predatory Elf stalking through the near shadows. I knew that eventually my health would start to deteriorate, for werewolves do not go underground for a reason: the earth is our bane, and physical movement is our life. If I can't run and jump or do anything other than walk, I will start to Fade.
Legolas noticed my shaking and placed a hand on my shoulder, lending me his moral support. A grateful hum starts in my chest, and I rest my nose on his head. but there is nothing that he can do to stop it, and my shivering turns to violent twitching as we proceed down the awfully tight tunnel. Bones creaked inaudibly in my legs, spine and head. my jaw cracked out of place three times in as many hours, and only my will power kept me from shifting, but even that was running low. My whole body ached, and I began to lean into Legolas' hand, until I was resting most of my meager weight on him.
I can proudly say that I lasted four and a half hours. Then I keeled against the wall, nearly crushing Legolas as I did so. My head cracked onto the stone wall, then my nose on the ceiling as my neck spasmed.
"Gandalf!" Legolas cried when he found that he had no idea as to what was wrong with me. "Gandalf, something's wrong!"
The wizard rushed back through the group with a firm order to move no further down the tunnel without his aid. His grey robes fluttered in the speed of his travel. Once at the rear of our little caravan, he stopped, considering for just a moment. Then he slapped my shoulder with the butt of his staff and said quite loudly:
"Gust change, you stupid werewolf!" I didn't do it consciously; it just came as a loud scrape of bones and cartilage, then a feeling of vast relief. I collapsed fully to the ground and just lay there for a second, adjusting my NightSong senses back to those necessary for living underground. With my return to the body of my birth, internal functions that are incompatible with the Wolf started up again, though slower than usual. Infravision, the most useful sense next to hearing, would come once my natural resistance to negative magic caught back up.
With my ears back though, I had no need. Echoes and noises and vibrations in the stone told me exactly what was around us for many miles in every single direction. I sighed in contentment; this is what it is to be alive for me.
"Ready," I whispered past my fangs, and we were off again. Gandalf moved back up to the front, leading the way down the cavern. I felt completely at home, and my slender body flicked through the darkness like a fish through water.
Oh, I was glad to be back underground.
Legolas' POV
I watched in slight awe as Raksha fell back into the shadows behind, her ebony skin and silver hair blending perfectly, only to turn and find that she was standing not five feet in front of me. my shock must have shown on my face, for she giggled, and it was like the laughing burble of a stream. In the three weeks that I had known her, I had never seen her so joyous. It was refreshing, and I soon found myself laughing alongside her. She did a few tricks (such as running along the walls, and blending into the shadows and appearing somewhere impossible, like the roof), then sobered slightly and walked beside me, on her hands and feet. Her body was evidently built for this, I noted, for her odd feet and long neck made the pose seem natural.
Her hair was evidently bothering her, though. It kept falling off of her back and into her face, the long silver strands catching in her… talons, and tangling her arms. It was amusing to watch her trying to twist it back without standing directly upright and hitting her head on the ceiling. After half an hour of struggling in silence, she slipped up ahead through the ranks of hobbits, men, the dwarf and wizard and disappeared into the darkness up ahead, eliciting surprised yelps when they saw her dash over their heads along the roof. I kept my silence, and we all walked forward again. My eyes were growing weary of the constant dimness, and I longed to feel the sun on my face again.
I scoffed at myself. We had only been in this treacherous tube for a few hours! Ah, I am so weak minded, I thought. I can't even be underground for a whole day without longing for the light of day!
Third person POV
It was not far ahead that the company found Raksha, seated on a ledge at the wall opposite the fork in the road. Her hands flew almost faster than sight as she braided her silver tresses in many skin-tight plaits, each no wider than one slender black finger, then bound the loose ends up in a stiff leather strap.
Gimli, Boromir, Aragorn, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, even Gandalf, can say that they were unsurprised all they want: that won't change the fact that each one of them felt a moment of terror and confusion when they saw the shifting, shimmering shadow perched at eye height right in front of their faces. Gimli even screamed, though he would deny it ever after. Raksha flinched violently at the high-pitched noise, but did not open her eyes.
Once her hair was fully secured, Raksha hopped gracefully back to the floor. She slunk into an open door way, and everyone settled back.
"Gandalf, what was that?" Pippin inquired. "it was… scary!" he shuddered exaggeratedly.
"That, my dear Took, is our resident werewolf. You may perhaps know her as, Raksha. Fear not—she has been with us the entire time and poses no threat." Even as he said these words, his eyes were rapidly blinking; after his many thousands of years of life, it was hard for him to find something of which he knew next to nothing of. In response to Gandalf calling her a "Non-Threat", Raksha growled at them from the other room.
"Sorry," he whispered to her, knowing that she would hear. The deep rumble stopped. Gandalf led the others after her into the next chamber.
"Here is as good a place to rest as any: I know not which path to take from here, for this room did not exist when last I came through!"
All the races settled themselves on the floor, sharing out food and water, and glancing nervously for the strange and dangerous-looking shape that Raksha now occupied.
Raksha herself was nowhere to be found—she had run as fast as she could (which is very, very fast) down the lowest tunnel. It had been days since she had hunted, and cave creatures were her specialty. It would be a while before the rest of the fellowship saw her again.
"So," Aragorn asked Gandalf. "What was wrong with the wolf… er, Raksha?" he corrected his slip, hesitating for a moment before he remembered her name. Gandalf, and Legolas, who was seated not two feet to the old Maia's right, frowned at him, but Gandalf let it slide and explained what he knew.
"I already told you that she is a werewolf, though SkinChanger would be a more appropriate label. Apparently, she prefers to spend her time as a wolf, perhaps to hide from the elements beneath the pelt of fur, or mayhap to suppress memories, I know not. But either way, being underground strengthened her other side, I am assuming, and caused whatever was about her to reject the wolf body. So basically, she near about killed herself in an effort not to scare you all."
"And a little bit of thanks would not be missed, thank you very much." Only the three-Aragorn, Gandalf and Legolas- heard the musical voice in their head.
"Who knew—she has a temper!" Gandalf chuckled.
"Don't think that I won't eat you, old man—I have yet to find something worth killing, and I am hungry. And," she added. "it is within my power to do so!"
"And she has incredible hearing!" Legolas said, and the phantom presence in their head seemed appeased, for she withdrew back to her hunt.
Aragorn and Legolas struck up a conversation, and it was clear what the blonde Elf thought of the shapeshifter. Aragorn was confused, until Legolas mentioned her singing, and then he understood. His friend had a soft spot in his heart for music. His own mother had been a musician, before she had sailed. Any sweet melody reminded him of her. Gandalf just tat there, staring into space, with his staff over his knees lighting the room.
Raksha dropped headfirst down a long, deep hole in the floor of the cave, landing on her hands and bounding off along the walls, each reaching stride taking her thirteen and a half body lengths in zero point zero three two seven seconds, exactly. The next hole, located near about a mile away, was full of water, as were the rest of the lower floors, with the exception of the Great Chasm, wherein evil burned bright with malice to her heat-seeking eyes. Moments later, she twisted around and dove into the water.
Had she only her eyes and ears to rely on, she would have been blind, but her skin, which covered more nerve cells than could be found in one hundred humans or seventy nine elves, detected where each wall was, and she could hear a bit, too, once her ears were all the way full of the cold liquid.
Things stirred in the depths below her, but they moved away from the ebony creature, no thought of killing her in their subdued brains—she would have their tentacled heads in a second if she felt threatened.
She swam strongly, her slender, neutrally buoyant frame needing only the occasional boost to keep up an impressive speed that even the Watcher in the Lake would be jealous of. Turning down several tunnels, she found what she was looking for—a deep-lake saberdile, a creature from the Otherworld that must have swam through a darkness portal.
The thing was large, roughly the size of a dog, with four flipper limbs, a long tail, feathery gills like a salamander, thick, slimy skin and a head like a crocodile with teeth four times as long. In the second it took for the freakish creature to notice her approach, Raksha had the thing's neck in her hands and was twisting sharply. The aquatic creature twitched violently, twice, then died. Raksha tasted faintly the bland blood that trickled out from under her fingernails and from the saberdile's mouth. Swimming more with her feet, the NightSong dragged her food back to dry land, where she could eat without choking on water.
Even as she leaped up out of the hole in the main tunnel and cleared the water from her ears, she knew that something had changed: there was a new set of vibrations in the stone, very faint but still there, coming from the direction of the nine companions. Unsure of whether it was hostile or not, Raksha gripped her prey's sodden corpse by its shoulders and ran back through the mines to the guard room wherein the fellowship was to rest.
She wanted to keep an eye on things.
Raksha's POV
The saberdile was hardly enough weight to slow me at all—in fact, it weighed very little, to me at least—but it's tail was long enough to trip me on several occasions. I hissed through my teeth at it, but kept on running. A fierce protectiveness had arisen in me, and it would not be denied.
It was a surprise to me: I had only ever felt this way with Arwen, Elrohir and Elladan. But whatever the new cave-goer was, it would not take anyone by surprise, least of all me.
Upon reaching the cross roads with the old guard room, I settled myself in the doorway to eat my food. Legolas heard the slap of its carcass hitting the stone floor, and got up to join me in the darkness. As his hearing was too poor to serve as vision, I invited him to share mine. His subconscious allowed me entry, and I melded our minds, just enough that he could see as I see. He gasped in amazement: it was not something he was used to. The eves of middle-earth lack Infravision, SoundSight, HyperNerves and all the other things that are needed underground, so he was unaccustomed to seeing the varying shades of heat, or hearing the shape of an object, or feeling the faintest vibrations of movement miles below.
As he sat against the wall, I began my meal. Peeling off the skin, I set it aside for later. It was not good for eating. I nibbled the flesh from its belly first, my teeth slicing it into bite sized pieces with no effort on my part. Legolas seemed a little nauseated when he noticed what I was eating: I don't think he had ever seen a saberdile, and would gladly have lived his life out without the honor. Even I have to admit, they are not particularly lovely to behold. But they taste okay, and are quite a nuisance, so I have no problem eating the occasional one. And, as an added benefit, they are not intelligent in the least, so I don't have to worry myself over a loss of sentient life.
The slapping footsteps approached the company, nearing by a few more meters before they ceased for the rest of the night.
I would deal with it come the morning: for now, I had to dispose of the saberdile's bones.
I'm sorry, guys: this chapter is even shorter than the last one, by two or three hundred words!
I FEEL SHAME!
But if you wouldn't mind, reviews are much appreciated! Plus, I need new ideas!
Also, I may post links to my illustrations on deviant art to my profile. If you want to see my versions of my characters, you should check it out.
Ridiculous and inappropriate!
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