Chapter 9: The Eye and the Chalice
As the group began following Víriel, Holly ran to catch up with her.
"Who told you we were looking for a tomb?" she asked.
"Well, you just did," Víriel replied. "I'm not stupid, you know. You've talked to Thorin about it before. And I saw the look on your face when Léonere mentioned it."
Holly glanced up at her, unsure how to feel about her statement. It was one thing to sustain friendly conversation and let Víriel braid her hair, but it didn't feel right to invest her trust in her so soon after they'd met.
"It's not my place to tell you what we're looking for," she said. "There's a reason for that."
"I know," Víriel said, glancing back at Thorin. "But if you do tell me, I can help you find it."
"Right." Holly was struggling to keep up with her. Damn those long legs. "Like I said, it's not my place."
Instead of continuing the subject, Víriel stepped over a fallen log and said, "It's over here."
The tomb was little more than a stone-framed opening in the side of a hill. A set of stairs extended downwards, wide enough for two men to walk side by side if they didn't mind their shoulders brushing. Everything beyond that was shrouded in darkness.
Holly walked over to the entrance, brushing her fingertips along the markings on the doorway. She could tell from the shapes that it was an elvish dialect, but the characters were too faded to discern anything beyond that.
The tall grass behind her rustled and she turned to see Léonere standing there.
"Can you read these?" she asked.
"No." He moved beside her to study the markings. "Why didn't you say you were also looking for the tomb?"
"You're relatively smart. Why do you think I didn't tell you?"
"You don't trust me?"
"Of course I don't. Come here." Holly motioned to him, and he knelt down so they were roughly at eye level. "I may give you my trust in time, but remember this: if you try to harm or kill any of my friends, I will kill you. And I will kill your friend." She held his gaze until his eyes shifted away.
Léonere gave a small, hesitant laugh. "I'm not sure how seriously I should take a threat from a woman half my height."
"If you want to test the validity of my claim, you're welcome to try. And if you have concerns about how tall I am, keep in mind that there are plenty of places below the belt where I can strike."
Holly pushed past him and walked back to where the rest of the group stood.
"We don't know what we're going to find down there, so stay on your guard," Thorin was saying to the others. "We find what we need and leave immediately after." He locked eyes with Holly as she approached. "Do you know anything else about this tomb?"
"Nothing specific," she replied. "It'll most likely be trapped, so we should watch out for pressure plates and the like."
"I told you so," Nori said to Dwalin.
"The object we seek is likely the most valuable item in the tomb," she continued, ignoring him. "So it'll be farthest away from the entrance, but probably in a central area."
Thorin nodded. "You lead the way, then. Along with them." He gestured to where Alistair and Léonere were standing side by side.
"All right." Holly walked back to the entrance of the tomb, gazing down into the darkness. "Do you know any spells for casting light?" she asked Léonere.
"A couple." He descended the first few steps, Alistair following close behind, and held his hand out, palm up. "Gal mîwe cornen." A small sphere of light flickered to life just above his fingertips, illuminating the walls of the entrance with a pale blue light.
It also revealed scorch marks stretching along the stone, and the chunks of rubble scattered along the edges of the staircase.
"Someone was here before us," Holly said. "They must have blasted the door open."
"You think they're still in there?" Alistair asked.
"We'll find out." She made eye contact with Léonere and gestured with her chin. "You first. You've got the light."
Léonere gave her one last unreadable glance, then continued onward into the darkness. The others followed, into the dust and darkness that waited beyond the stretching beams of sunlight.
The air in the tomb was stuffy and stale, having not been stirred in centuries. Bilbo kept his eyes on his feet, watching out for rubble and missing steps as they descended the staircase.
A few minutes later, they reached the bottom, where the tomb opened up into a wider room.
"Well, I don't think we'll have to worry about the people that came before us," Alistair said.
Bilbo stepped around Dwalin so he could see what Alistair was referring to. There were about a dozen bodies scattered on the floor, all decayed to skeletons. Most of them were holding rusted weapons and a few wore partial plate armor.
"They must have killed each other over the contents of the tomb," Holly said, bending down to examine one of the bodies.
Even in the strange-colored light, Bilbo could see that she was pale and sweating a bit, though it wasn't hot in the tomb. He walked over and touched her arm as she stood back up. "Are you all right?" he asked quietly.
"This place makes me sick. There's not enough room. If something happens, we'll all be tripping over each other instead of defending ourselves." She lowered her voice even further, so he could barely hear her next sentence. "I don't want to get trapped down here."
Holly was right. It was far too crowded in the narrow space of the tomb. They wouldn't be ready if something surprised them.
"I'll scout ahead," he said to the rest of the group. "If there's anything waiting to surprise us, I'll report back and warn the rest of you."
"We should stay together, as a group," Thorin said.
"I'm faster on my own. And if I run into something, I don't want the rest of you blocking me from behind."
"And you'll be able to avoid the traps?" Nori asked.
"Don't worry." Bilbo crossed the room, headed for the entrance to the next hallway. "I'll be fi…" He trailed off as the stone block beneath his feet grated and sunk a few inches. A metallic screech sounded from the wall to his left, and Bilbo squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for something to chop his head off. After realizing he was still alive, he opened his eyes and looked over.
"Hm." Holly walked over to the wall and gazed at a small slit between two stone bricks. "The mechanism must have worn out. The blade probably rusted away." She threw him a look over her shoulder. "Let's hope that's the case for the rest of the tomb."
"Right." Bilbo set off down the hallway, watching his steps as he went.
Once he was far enough out of the light Léonere had cast, he paused for a moment and slipped his ring out of his pocket. He put it on and the low, familiar hissing in his ear returned. Bilbo ignored it, continuing on with renewed confidence. With the ring on, he felt a bit invincible.
It was a feeling well-founded, since he encountered no more traps in the hallway. Though it was completely dark, he had a vague sense of where he was going. It was as though he could feel the energy of the stone structure around him, and the air running through it. For a moment he wondered what else the ring was capable of.
The strange pull he felt when he put on the ring had returned, but this time it seemed to be beckoning him out of the tomb. Whatever lay at the back of it, the ring seemed to want him away from it.
But that was silly, Bilbo reminded himself. There was no way a ring could want anything.
At the end of the hallway was an intersection with four paths—one straight across, two to the left and right, and the one he'd just come from. Following Holly's advice, he took the central route.
He'd only just entered the hallway when panting and footsteps sounded from back the way he'd come, accompanied by a bobbing light. Bilbo managed to yank the ring off his finger (with far more effort than he was comfortable with) just as Léonere came into sight.
"What's going on? Where are the others?" Bilbo asked.
"Further down the hallway," Léonere said, coming to a halt a few feet away. "The dead people, from the bottom of the staircase? They got up and started attacking us."
"Oh, no." He took a couple steps forward, his heartbeat picking up. "We need to get back there."
"All right." Léonere turned to go, then froze as they both heard an audible click as the brick beneath his feet grated downwards.
A long shape seemed to leap from the walls, swinging outward and right into Léonere's stiff form. As it passed, Bilbo realized it was the broken handle of an axe. If the blade had still been attached, it would have cut him in half. As it was, the handle still managed to catch his torso, right below his ribs. He saw a spray of blood spatter against the floor, then the light in Léonere's hand went out.
Bilbo cursed and ran over to him, wincing at the sticky blood beneath his feet. "Léonere? Are you all right? How bad is it?"
He heard a thud on the stone, as though Léonere's knees had hit the ground, and then a gasp of pain. At least he was still breathing.
"I'm—ah." Léonere hissed through his teeth. "Bleeding a lot. Also hurts."
Bilbo knelt down next to him, trying in vain to see the wound in the oppressive darkness. "P-Put pressure on it, that'll slow the bleeding." He couldn't dress the wound if he couldn't see what he was doing. The others were fighting off undead monsters, and wouldn't be able to help. "Can you, uh, do a healing spell on yourself?"
Léonere laughed, though it came out as more of a cough. "Doesn't work like that."
"Of course it doesn't."
If Holly were here, she would have known what to do. Come on, Baggins, use your head. Then he remembered the reason they were in this damned tomb in the first place.
He straightened up. "The chalice. That should be able to heal you, right?"
"If we can find it in time." Léonere grunted and pushed himself to his feet. "Go on, lead the way. I'll try and keep up."
Bilbo set off down the central hallway once more, pausing every so often to make sure Léonere was still following him. At the end of the hallway he could see a light. Even though it was faint, it nearly blinded him after being in the darkness for so long.
The hallway opened up into another room, this one a bit larger than the last. A thin beam of light came from the ceiling and illuminated a stone coffin in the center of the room. And at the back of the room, standing on a pedestal, was the chalice they'd been searching for.
"Well, that was easy," Léonere said. He was leaning on the doorway, head bent. In the light, Bilbo could see the copious amount of blood dripping down his shirt.
More footsteps sounded from down the hall. Bilbo turned around, squinting through the shadows to try and make out who it was. "Hello?"
There was no response, and a moment later he could discern the shuffling stride of one of the undead.
"Not good." He turned back to Léonere. "Go get the chalice, try and figure out how it works. I'll take care of him."
Léonere nodded and lurched away from the doorway. Bilbo took a moment to make sure Léonere could stand on his own, then drew his sword and turned back to the advancing monster. He parried its first, rather clumsy swing and detached its arm in one blow. The other arm and its head quickly followed.
Before the rest of the undead had even hit the ground, Bilbo was running back into the room with the coffin. Léonere had made it to the other side of the room and was bent over the pedestal. After a moment, he raised his head and turned around, holding the chalice loosely with one hand.
"Did you, uh, drink from it?"
Léonere nodded.
"And did it work?"
He nodded again, and swallowed hard. His breathing had gone from painfully shallow to deep and heaving.
"Are you all right?"
Léonere raised his head and shook it as though he meant to clear it. "It healed me. I feel great."
"Good. Let's take it back to the others." Bilbo walked over and reached out for the chalice, but before he could reach it Léonere cried out and dropped it as though it had burned them. They both watched in horror as the chalice fell onto the stone and began to crumple, as though collapsing in on itself.
"Why did it—" Before Léonere could finish his question, an unearthly screech sounded throughout the tomb, as though the very stone itself was trying to shrink in upon itself.
Bilbo yelled out in pain, clutching the sides of his head as flames shot into his vision, the fire spreading outward in the shape of an eye that seemed to pierce his very soul, its pupil a dark shape that went beyond the meaning of the word dark and instead reached out like a void, content on consuming and destroying—
Someone was shaking his arm. "We have to get out of here!" Léonere was kneeling beside him. "Come on!"
The room around them was shaking, bits of dust and small stones falling from the ceiling. Bilbo pulled himself to his feet from where he must have fallen to his knees.
Still a bit disorientated, he followed Léonere back into the darkness, the image of the burning eye still smarting behind his eyelids.
"You've lost. Give up. I beat you. You're boring, like the rest of them."
Holly bit back a scream and channeled her fear into pushing Damon's hands away from her throat. She was gripping both of his wrists but his fingers crept ever closer to the skin of her neck.
"There's no reason to keep fighting," he said, his dark eyes inches from her own. "You do realize that, don't you? If you keep pretending that you can win this, I'll have t—" His words were cut off as a chunk of rock fell from the ceiling and crushed him.
Holly blinked as reality reasserted itself with a jerk. The wrists she was holding were just bone, and the rest of the undead was underneath the piece of rubble that had nearly killed her.
She was in the tomb. Not Ravenhill.
The rest of her group had taken care of most of the undead, but a cave-in had blocked off the hallway, separating them from Bilbo and Léonere. Another tremor shook the tomb, and larger pieces of rock fell from the ceiling.
Holly ran over to the pile of rock obstructing the hallway, searching for a way through. She couldn't blast through it, or she might bring the whole place down upon their heads.
"Holly!" Thorin shouted, beheading one of the undead with a powerful swing. "Stay with the group!"
"We can't just leave them!" she shouted back.
Víriel appeared at her side, kneeling down. "There's a gap up near the top. I'll boost you up."
Holly shot a glance back at Thorin, then turned to Víriel. "Thank you." She stepped into her outstretched palms and reached up for the edge of the gap. There wasn't enough room to ensure a graceful landing, so after she pulled herself through she fell face-first down the other side and landed painfully on her shoulder.
She had only just stood up when she heard footsteps. Moments later, Bilbo and Léonere came running down the hall.
"Oh, thank Eru," Holly said, moving forward to meet them. "Did you find the—" The remainder of her question was drowned out as a deafening groan sounded from behind her. Bilbo reached out and pulled her away from the pile of rubble just as it collapsed into the earth, along with most of the ceiling.
Through the streams of soil raining down from the disintegrating ceiling, she could see Thorin beckoning to them and shouting something that was inaudible over the sound of the shaking earth.
She managed to make out the word jump. "I'd really rather not," she said, more to herself than anyone else.
The three of them glanced at each other, made a silent agreement, and sprinted forward together to try and clear the gap that separated them from the others.
Holly felt a sickening rush spread from her stomach all the way up her spine as she hurtled through the air. A shower of dirt hit her head and shoulders for a split second, then the edge of the gap appeared before her, rising up and up—
Dwalin grabbed her upper arms and pulled her onto solid ground. She had just enough time to confirm that Bilbo and Léonere had made it across as well before Dwalin was pulling her after him, up the stairs and out into the sunlight.
As soon as she was well away from the entrance of the tomb, Holly leaned her hands on her knees and tried to catch her breath, bringing one hand up to wipe dirt out of her eyes. She straightened up and did a quick count of the group—everyone had made it out alive and relatively well.
For a moment they stood together, wordlessly watching the rest of the tomb crumble into rubble.
Alistair was the first one to break the silence. "Oh, Valar," he said, striding over to where Léonere was standing. "Where are you hurt?"
Under all the grime, there was a good deal of blood covering the lower half of his shirt and the top of his trousers. But Léonere held a hand up, shaking his head. "I'm all right. One of the traps got me, but Bilbo," he nodded to the hobbit in question, "helped save my life. We found the chalice and I used it to heal my wound."
Thorin stepped forward. "Where is it now?"
Léonere and Bilbo both hesitated, until the former spoke, "It was destroyed. I'm not sure how, but after I drank from it, the chalice imploded, sort of."
"And I assume that was when the whole tomb began falling apart," Holly said. Léonere nodded. She focused her gaze on the ground, a strange bitterness welling up on her tongue. Her solution had been useless after all.
Another bout of breathless silence swelled over the group. After a minute, Thorin said, "Let's take a short rest, then."
Holly steeled herself and walked over to him as the others settled down. She needed to set one thing straight, at least.
"It wasn't me. The undead, in the tomb, I swear it wasn't me."
Thorin held up one hand. "I believe you. I was watching you."
She blinked, surprised. "I'm sorry, about—you know. I had no idea it would happen like this."
"I know."
A scraping noise from the wreckage of the tomb entrance caused all of them to turn. A bony hand was fisted in the grass, and as they watched, the rest of the undead creature rose from the earth, loose soil raining down from its yellowed skull.
"These things don't die easy, do they?" Víriel walked over as it rose to its feet. She didn't bother drawing her weapon. Instead she raised one leg in a high kick that sent the undead's skull flying backwards over the rubble. The remains of the undead body crumbled to the ground.
"That's not right," Holly said, walking over to the fallen body. "The last time we encountered the undead, they became inanimate within a few minutes. Why did this one keep moving?"
Víriel looked at her. "This has happened before?"
She nodded. "Hopefully for the last time."
As the light of the setting sun caught the breastplate of the fallen body, Holly took note of the symbol painted on the metal. She knelt down and brushed some of the dirt off. Though the red paint was chipped and worn in places, there was enough left for her to discern its shape.
"It looks like an eye," Víriel said.
"That's because it is. I've seen this before."
The red eye was a symbol used by a group during the Second Age—supporters of Sauron. So they must have invaded the tomb to try and take the chalice, and fought with another group.
Sauron had been the most powerful caster of dark magic since the Second Age, as well as the most powerful necromancer. Perhaps he'd laid a curse upon the tomb, which affected burial sites in the surrounding area. That would explain why the undead stayed standing longer as they got closer to the tomb.
But Erebor was hundreds of miles away. A curse powerful enough to have that range would be strong enough for all of them to physically feel the raw energy radiating from the source. That theory also didn't explain why the undead would rise when they were near, instead of at random times.
Holly opened her eyes and turned to look at the rest of the group, studying each member individually. It had to be one of them, then, something that followed them and caused the dead to rise. She could rule out herself, as well as Víriel, Léonere, and Alistair since the latter three hadn't been close during the first two undead attacks.
This left the three dwarves and Bilbo. She couldn't fathom one of them practicing necromancy on purpose, so it had to be an accidental activation. A curse wasn't too likely because people were generally aware of the fact that they were cursed, even if they didn't know the specifics of it. No, it was more likely that one of them had picked something up, something—
portable, easy to hide, and simple to activate.
Holly's eyes widened as buried memories from two years ago resurfaced.
How do you know about that?
I saw you turn invisible. And after giving it some thought I concluded that you must be carrying some sort of magical object, seeing as you don't have any natural magical ability.
You're right. I did find a ring in the Misty Mountains.
Holly, there's something wrong with this ring. Whenever I put it on, it feels—
"Eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains must be true." She looked up to see the others staring at her.
"What is it?" Thorin asked. "What did you find?"
Holly sucked in a slow breath, looking over at Bilbo. He gazed back at her, concern evident in his eyes. She still remembered the distrust that had filled his gaze the last time she had asked him about his magic ring.
"Well," she began, then decided there was no point in mincing her words, seeing as they were all screwed no matter how she explained it. "Bilbo, there's a good chance you're carrying the One Ring."
You've can probably tell from this chapter that I've been watching too much Walking Dead and playing too much Legend of Zelda and Uncharted... (And I just got The Witcher 3 for Christmas, so evidence of that is probably gonna show up in a couple chapters.)
Anyway, this concludes Part 1 of the fic and if everything goes to plan, there will be another couple 10-chapter segments like in Fëangren. The next few chapters, of which I already have rough drafts, are going to be pretty dark (I promise at least one character death) so prepare yourselves.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you thought. It helps me out a lot!
