Disclaimer: Only in certain, very well monitored realms, should the following disclaimer take place…Stephenie Meyer and J.R.R. Tolkien own their parts of this story.
Author's Note: Happy 100th Review everyone! I know by the time this goes up, the reviews will probably be passed 100…but I started up this chapter on the morning I saw that b-e-a-utiful number on my FF account. Thank you everyone who has contributed your thoughts, opinions, and encouraging words. You are all my muses. Also, I wish to be a special thanks to Deep and Devastating, who was kind enough to write about this story in a blog she contributes to. All I care about is that a few of you are actually enjoying this story. Your thoughts really do keep me on track. Please enjoy this next chapter, which I am dedicating to all my readers that have reviewed my story!
Chapter 11: (If Oprah was part of this chapter) You get a free cave of death!...You get a free cave of death!...Everybody gets free caves of death!
There exists this psychological rehabilitation treatment for phobias.
It's called 'flooding'.
Now, in my own non-psychological expertise opinion, the word 'flooding' should have been the first giveaway that maybe this wasn't the best way to cure extreme fears. After all, what do people think about when they hear 'flooding'?
Death? Water? Noah? A somewhat crappy rendition of the book of Genesis put into musical formatting that I regretted paying twenty bucks to go see (nothing against the book of Genesis, but some things are not meant to be made into musicals).
Anywho, when I heard such a treatment existed for phobias in which the doctor gives the patient super high exposure of their fear – in hopes of breaking that fear – I didn't exactly hop on the flooding-bandwagon. Sorry, but if someone is afraid of…oh say, fire...my first inclination is not to throw them in the middle of a fiery pit and wait for them to stand up and say, "Thanks! I'm over my fear now."
Really consider this treatment and you have to admit…one sick puppy had to have thought it up.
So what the heck does flooding have to do with Moria (where we have been walking - aimlessly, I think - through for the past eight months it seems…though really only a couple days)?
Well, ever since we started down, beneath the crust of the earth, I've watched almost all of our company go through a certain type of the flooding treatment I think.
The hobbits (probably afraid of the dark, caves, plummeting into a dark pit of death, and rock moss more now than ever before) kept jumping at any noise and swearing they saw goblins or orcs in the distance. The noise most likely came from the loose rocks under their feet since the poor little dears hadn't stopped quivering since the creature from Satan's Sea World barricaded us in this endless cavern.
Every time hobbits whispered they saw something, Gimli always demanded to know where and would search out in earnest, hoping to catch a glimpse of a dwarf. To spare his pride, I never voiced or showed my concern for Gimli, yet the way he'd desperately hold on to the possibility that his cousin was still alive – despite the carnage at the entrance (which were all dead dwarfs shish-kabobed with goblin arrows) – was breaking my heart each time he insisted he too saw something and pleaded Aragorn to send a small party in that direction.
As for our fearless, human leader, Aragorn was having a hard time leaving the anguish off his face whenever he had to refuse his companion. Between quieting a mourning dwarf and calming a herd of jostled hobbits, I was far from envying Aragorn of his duties as the stoic, focused, put-together example for everyone else.
Aragorn, Boromir, and Legolas all shared a common phobia that stemmed from their shared discomfort at being underground for such a long period of time. Gimli, other than the vain hope of finding Balin not dead, was otherwise among his element in Moria. As the long hours rolled by, I noted as the humans and elf's hearts kept a consistent stressed pace and their faces fell paler and paler with the continued absence of open air and sunlight.
Because Jacob was still majorely pissed at me for loosing his clothes (apparently he had so many parties to attend as a human while in Moria), his anger plugged-up any fear that might have risen to the surface.
All in all, Gandalf also appeared fine to begin with, which was good to have him as the leader since most everyone else's phobia-attacks started acting up towards the end of the first day. Once the leader goes down, it never takes much else to bring the whole house of cards down with him. So, as I was saying, Gandalf was fine and dandy and doing his leader-ing thing until about an hour before when he abruptly stopped after we all climbed a mile high, very vertical staircase (Jake had to go last since his elongated train of a body climbed as slow as molasses).
"I have no memory of this place," the wizard whispered, eyes searching the three doorways before us.
Biting my tongue at a jab about old age (my 500 year old self had no place to talk) and senile minds, I was silent and very pleased when Aragorn quickly suggested we take this opportunity to rest and regain strength. As soon as we all got settled, I understood his urgency to take a break when everyone, save for wolf-Jake and myself, pulled out their pipes and turned to their nicotine addictions to take edge off this whole cave experience.
For once in my life, I was grateful to the heavy fumes of roasting tobacco leaf. While I never felt fear of an approaching threat (any heartbeat present made itself very known in these echoing caves), the dank, dark overall feel of Moria wasn't doing a thing for me. To feel a little sorry for myself, and due to lack of any conversation since Gandalf demanded we only speak when necessary, I mulled on the sad pathetic-ness of my current state. The dampness of the cave air was slowing up the normal time it would have taken for my clothes to dry, so I was walking around in a soaked cloaked and squishy boots. My hair was falling out of the braid concoction Tinu had assembled, and the grotesque taste of demonic octopus was still very present in my mouth.
And the smell…cripes, that by far was the worst. Almost everyone smelled of swamp and dead fish and stress and fear and tiredness (those final three do emit smells to the trained, supernatural nose). The Fellowship's straying odors along with earth and lingering scents of dead this and that (probably dwarf and goblin, though we hadn't see any other corpses…yet) were beginning to drown me in their stifling presence.
So yes, when Gandalf's age started catching up with his mind and Aragorn suggested we take a breather, no one objected in the least.
Dropping down beside Boromir, I breathed deeply in the forest-like smells of Middle Earth leaf and pipe and then dropped my head to my scrunched up knees to shut my eyes and block out as much of Moria as possible.
Nudging my shoulder with his, Boromir said softly after tasting his smoke for a moment, "You did well back there, milady."
Snorting, I opened my eyes and turned my head to face up to his fine, golden one, "Yeah right. In case you weren't paying attention, Frodo got jostled around like a freakin baby toy and almost became a smudge in between a monster's canines, because I was too busy being a sissy about the smell of dwarf guts. Now we're all stuck in a tunnel without a light at the end of it, and the only wizard we brought along forgot where the heck we are (thought I heard the sound of an insulted "huff" from behind us where Gandalf was sitting). I'd say you should seriously reevaluate your definition of a job well done."
Not wanting any more interruption to my little pity party, I buried my head in my legs again. Sighing a little (I could hear the smile on his lips though), Boromir only patted my back a little and said, "Nevertheless, a job well done, Bella."
In reality, I knew the whole beast from the black lagoon incident wasn't completely my fault. Aragorn knew about the threat as well, and a bunch of collaborating factors took place in a very short amount of time…all creating the perfect opportunity for that "thing" to strike out at Frodo and I.
Because I honestly hadn't allowed my mind to fad into that sleep-like nothingness since Imladris, while the hobbits discussed their evident problem of hunger, and Gimli bragged to his fellow warriors about Moria's wealth of mithril (definition of mithril: sparkly metal substance that apparently is primo armor material and very expensive…side note: Balin got bucket loads of cash from Moria's abundance in mithril – apparently didn't think to use it for his army though – and Frodo's uncle Bilbo was given a chain-mail shirt made of mithril – "a kingly gift!" according to Gimli)…moving on, so as all the guys sat around and talked amongst themselves, I decided to doze off to the murmurs of their voices and the soft, frank air of their smoke.
"Gggtthhh…mmmiiinnne. The hobbitedness gotttsss mmmyyyy pthrecioussss."
In a snap, my muscles tensed up and my mind drove above its fogginess. Sitting up, I listened and again that soft, throaty purr echoed from a direction far off from where we camped. At my other side from Boromir, sitting on a ledge, Frodo suddenly turned and faced the direction of the noise. Poising his usual frightened shock reaction to anything unexpected, the hobbit stumbled back a bit. Hopping to my feet, I walked over and grabbed his arm before the tiny man could crawl away.
Snapping his arm back the moment I touched it, Frodo looked over with his wide blue eyes and expressed relief when he saw who grabbed at him.
"Bella," he breathed.
"What did you see?" I whispered calmly, not wanting to jolt his small heart into cardiac arrest.
"Something…I do not know what…Look! It is over there," he pointed out into the great drop of the mine, toward a maze of poorly built ladders.
Cautiously stepping to the very edge of the ledge, I pierced my gaze through the gray shadows of the tunnels of rock.
Sure enough, climbing along one of the ladders was a small spider-like creature with gray skin. Its back was turned to Frodo and I so I couldn't see its face, and the emitting stench of our unwashed company along with the pipe smoke forswore any hope of catching the creature's scent from where I stood. Focusing out my hearing toward the direction of the ladders, I caught the thumping of a heartbeat. Not surprising, due to its size, the echo of the heart suggested it was similar to one of the hobbits' hearts.
"What the heck-" I started to remark.
"I must tell Gandalf!" Frodo announced and scampered away to tell his wizard friend of this latest development.
Though Gandalf was a better shot at gaining details about this new creature, I could have told Frodo from simple observation that whatever it was…it alone wasn't a threat. Even from the dim of the mine and the length of distance, the sickly thin, undernourished state of this being was obvious to a keen eye. Still, informing our magic wielding leader was for the best. Perhaps this was a spy goblins ordered to follow us and gain our position and number for a future blitz attack.
While still staring down at the creature and watching as it lifted its head to the side and flash eyes at me, I listened as the smell of woodland elf approached me from behind.
"What has bothered Master Frodo?" Legolas asked softly with only interest embedded in his words.
Not turning to face the prince (that would be a way, way too close encounter), I mirrored Frodo and pointed out to the ladder the creature was scrambling up now that it noticed the attention I was giving. "Look over there," I commanded.
Placing a hand to the bolder at our right, Legolas leaned over from behind me and gazed above my shoulder. Once again placing himself in very close quarters of my personal space (apparently the lose of this space biologically resulted in a scratchy throat, because my swallow was beginning to feel like a rubbing against sandpaper).
The sound of his rising heartbeat informed me the elf saw the little creature as well just before it disappeared into a pitch-dark tunnel going away from this mine.
"Was that a goblin?" I asked, wanting to say something since silence in this particular lack of space would mean a form of personal hell. Besides, my knowledge of goblins reached as far as the animated movie The Princess and the Goblin, which my second grade class watched on the last day of school to celebrate the end of the year. Despite this very informative insight to the world of goblins and their problems with salivary glands and lusting after underage blonds, I didn't feel it best to rely on that information alone if I was going to encounter an army of Middle Earth goblins with intent to kill them.
"No," Legolas answered, shifting his weight back now that the creature was out of sight (perhaps my own salivary glands would start remembering themselves), "Goblins are a little larger and wear more clothing generally. Also their skin is a pale green. Much similar to frog skin."
"Oh," I nodded, still not turning around since this proximity would still put me way to close too his chest, "…Then what the heck was that?"
Before His Royal Highness could answer though, Gandalf's mental light bulb got replaced and he announced which of the three doors held the grand prize. Way too uncomfortable at this new found proximity (more like lack-of) between my loathed ally/enemy, I didn't even bother arguing when Gandalf claimed he was depending on the better smell of the passage way we were to go down (not that I would ever underestimate the trusted ability of a nose). Without making it too obvious, as well as avoiding pushing him off the ledge, I bent around awkwardly and maneuvered past Legolas (without touching him - score one for the blood sucker!) and leapt up to the passage way (stopping quickly before I slammed the old wizard down a steep staircase) to get as far away from certain persons – cough, elf, cough - as possible without abandoning the entire Fellowship.
Traveling down the staircase in our usual line, we must have gotten within half a mile of the earth's core by the time we hit level ground again.
Without warning, Gandalf slowed his roll to a halt. Out of habit, I sniffed the area and again found nothing remarking a threat.
Why the stop?
"Let me risk a little more light," the wizard raised his wooden staff and out reached brightening white light from the crystal situated at the top. Flickering to greater and greater strengths, the crystal's magic light pored over ahead of us and ignited a clear visual of exactly where we stood.
Gimli gasped.
Aragon breathed in and forgot the other part of the respiratory process.
Wolf-Jake ceased panting.
My eyes grew a few times wider.
This was no mere mine.
"Behold," Gandalf spoke to his company (ever one of us speechless and struck stone still), "the great realm and the Dwarf-city of Dwarrowdelf."
The sight before us went on forever with a ceiling held up by stone pillars that I couldn't even begin to measure in height and width.
Mithril done Gimli's cousin good.
"There's an eye-opener and no mistake," Sam worded his and our shared astonished admiration for the dwarf city.
In my long years, I'd seen a good many great things built by men: the Coliseum of Rome (before it collapsed about two hundred and fifty years ago during World War IV), the Taj Mahal, the Forbidden City (even after the second great Chinese Empire reclaimed it as a sacred capital), Karnack Temple, the Palace of Parliament in Bucharest, and the Lourve Palace in Paris to name a number of them.
While this realm – this giant hall of stone – didn't compare in architectural exception or square space area, there was something about it. About it being so far underground, built by dwarves (probably with only the most primeval of tools) of all things, and in a midst of rickety, dank mines. Maybe it all came down to the timing. After days of traveling through moss, swamp, and cold bolder, to come upon this glorious site of eloquence amongst dull darkness. These things and things too magical and raw to name easily placed the realm of Dwarrowdelf as the most amazing manmade sight my eyes had ever beheld.
When I finally regained my voice and could pull my eyes away from the almighty hall of pillars, I placed a hand on Gimli's shoulder and said with grin, "For what it's worth, Gimli, I am thoroughly impressed with your cousin."
His misting eyes of unadulterated pride were reply enough.
As well guessed, no one had a problem not speaking as we walking in silent reverence through the staggering city realm. What I personally found amusing to pass the time was watching Legolas try not to seem like this piece of dwarfish engineering awesomeness literally blew his mind to the Shire and back. He caught me staring at his tightly guarded facial expressions more than once. I simply sent him a smirk and looked away in delightful excitement in how Gimli and I could hold this against His Majesty in vocal sparing matches to come.
The Fellowship's considerably more positive and peaceful mood sadly crumbled into little tiny bacon bits when Gimli caught sight of an open doorway with light coming through. Without stopping to consider others' thoughts and opinions on the matter – or maybe ask for backup just in case he was barging into a goblin love fest (truthfully, I didn't sense any heartbeats coming from inside the room – but Gimli didn't know that!) – the dwarf started sprinting top speed over to the doors.
A second after Gandalf shouted at him to stop, I vamp-sped in the direction of the dwarf just in case all the tobacco and underground air had suppressed my senses any and he too got shish-kabobed by arrows. Blurring past Gimli and entering the room first, I halted and quickly took in the room. Other than the beam of natural light coming in from a single high up window, the room resembled the entrance to Moria almost to a tee.
Must have been all the smelly, dwarf corpses lying about.
Assured that Gimli (who trotted in soon after me) and I were the only two living things in the room, I turned and watched my companion fall to his knees before the stone coffin built in the center of the room.
Then, shockers of all shock, before my eyes, Gimli - the dwarf warrior that made S.W.A.T. teams look like junior high cheerleading squads – started weeping in agony over the tomb monument. Too sensitive about harming Gimli's pride in this display of emotional weakness and caught way off guard to do anything, I stood my ground watched as the rest of the Fellowship piled into the room.
Gandalf walked passed me and peered over the tomb. Following his movements with my eyes, I became aware that there were markings carved into the coffin arranged as if they were letters. Because of the little time I spent in Imladris' libraries, I knew it wasn't elvish.
"'Here lies Balin'," Gandalf read slowly and with deepening pains (at hearing the marking did actually spell out words, I assumed it was in some sort of dwarf language), "'son of Fundin, Lord of Moria'."
Oh, crap.
Not being able to help it, I felt my chest constrict again as a metaphorical heart in it broke. Gazing over at the anguished dwarf, I couldn't help but become overcome with sadness and anger for a moment.
For days we all watched as a fellow warrior searched ferociously for signs of his family, keeping up vain hope that he would be rejoined with his cousin. Yeah…back in my world, cousins weren't always that close a lot of the time. In Middle Earth, though, I'd bet family was a heck of a more loaded word than the holiday obligations of meet-and-greet my version of society took it as.
"He is dead then," Gandalf said, taking off his pointy grey hat in respect for the fallen, "It is as I feared."
That's when I started staring at the wizard and realized that none of this, not the corpses in the entrance, the lack of miners in the mines, Balin's tomb - none of this drew an inch of surprise from Gandalf in all the time we'd been in Moria. In the beginning, I supposed the octopus-demon aftershock kept me from noticing it, but now in retrospect, my brain must have nailed it down to Gandalf's bearing a pessimistic view of life. Either way, all this really bad crap that'd been happening hadn't jostled the wizard at all…as if he went into Moria knowing it all was likely to occur.
Leaving Gimli to be comforted by Boromir (self-appointed shoulder-to-cry-on of our group…wonder if all Gondor men are as sensitive as him?), I quietly walked over to Gandalf and whispered to him (trying really hard not to sound accusing, mind you), "You already knew this place was a death trap, didn't you?"
Instead of defensive, hard eyes, Gandalf looked down at me with naked pity and sorrow. Clearly he enjoyed seeing Gimli in pain as much as the rest of us did. "I knew that if the dwarves of this realm and Lord Balin were not wise, they would surely be fated to come upon a great many foul things that make the deep places of the earth their home," he replied back quietly, neither of us wishing to upset any present company with what we said.
"Then why didn't you warn us?"
"I suppose I wished to hope, Isabella," he said so easily I expected it to come with a shrug, "I do not like walking through my days without hope. There is no freedom in that."
Against the sad, angry animal in me that wanted to find a guilty party and lash out, I couldn't help but agree with the wizard. It was right of us not to dash Gimli's hope of finding Balin alive and well. Still, it didn't stop the ballooning sorrow growing larger in my chest, making me wish I had some tears to spare for Gimli's grief.
Losing family usually seemed more bearable with there were others present to cry with you.
Turning from me, Gandalf bent down to the dwarf skeleton seated against Balin's tomb and carefully took the giant book encompassed in its bony arms.
I took a step away from the wizard and found my legs and back hit a hot, soft body. Reaching behind me, I stroked Jacob's fur and turned my head so the side of my face could bury into his horizontal torso. My brother rotated his giant head around and looked at me with worried eyes.
All the crap about his clothes was far behind us and I was happy for it.
Whining softly in concern, Jacob's tummy vibrated and I closed my eyes for a minute and breathed in his sent to enjoy a universe where we weren't underground in a room full of maimed bodies and bone dust. Opening them again, I smiled sadly to my brother and gently pushed off him then gave a few more strokes through his fur to let him know I was okay.
Outwardly I was okay…inside though, was an aching cry to get the heck out of Moria. I'd had my fill of dwarf hospitality for a lifetime or ten.
"'They have taken the bridge and the second hall,'" Gandalf's slow words carried through the room and drew everyone's attention. Even Gimli ceased his weeping to listen as the grey wizard read from the writings of a dead dwarf. "'We have barred the gates…but cannot hold them for long.'"
I knew what he was reading…and it sickened me further to the core. In Gandalf's hands was the Middle Earth dwarf's version of a political or military journal, created to record the important actions and circumstances of a powerful force in order to be reviewed at a later date. Usually these journals read with boring, straightforward facts such as dates, locations, and numbers of personal and supplies. What Gandalf read, though, sounded more like the growing despair of brave men that knew death was readying its strike.
"'The ground shakes…drums…drums…deep. We cannot get out. A Shadow moves in the dark…We cannot get out…They are coming.'"
It was like a passage from an old comic series my dad read called Creepy. Don't ask me why Charlie, as down to earth as they come by, was interested in a horror comic book when he was-
Bang!
Heads shot around to the bolt of noise coming from behind. In the queer tenseness of the moment (with the final words of a dead person being read aloud and all that nonsense that – if you consider it – we really could have done without), the clanging echoes jolted me into battle mode and I released my fangs in gut reaction, ready to fight.
Pippin. Poor, poor Peregrin Took.
Sheeeesssssshhhhhhhhh!
Down dropped yards of metal chains.
Whosh!
From our sight went the skeleton corpse of some poor fool whose last moments were spent seated on the tip of a well.
Bang! Bang! Bang! A thousand more "Bangs!" that grew in echoes.
Finally, the encore of this sad performance was the bucket that the dead shmuck had been holding for whatever reason.
And in the matter of a few seconds, three days work of traveling in silence and thudding heartbeats of fear. Every one of us torn through and scratched out on the inside by stress and anxiety of this dark, lifeless underground graveyard, all moving forward with the goal of reaching the other side unseen and unheard. Pippin, the youngest of the hobbits, had managed to destroy the efforts of the entire Fellowship in under a minute.
Out of pure lunacy at the situation, hardly believing what I just witnessed, emotions flaming about in my chest and head since we started through Moria all came to a sharp end leaving only a sick sort of angry, despairing humor.
I explain myself and my very unsteady emotional state so you may understand why, after the chain and the body and the bucket fell into the well, thus alarming anyone within a hundred miles of our presence...why I started giggling uncontrollably.
Snorting, I couldn't bear to look at Pippin's adorable mug of shame or Gandalf's towering posture of loathing at the hobbit for fear I might match the Bangs before with loud laughter. Instead, to muffle my unprofessional response, I slammed my head into Jake's fur and snorted and giggled until I lost control of my shoulders shaking and chest hyperventilating.
Later on I would blame this episode entirely on Moria…which I promised myself about two hours into it, I would never return should we get out.
"Fool of a Took!" Gandalf spat, not bothering with volume anymore, "Throw yourself in next time and rid us of your stupidity."
Snort! More giggling.
I buried my head as deep into Jacob as it would go without harming his ribs.
As the stress of this particular chapter of our quest slowly drained with the warring away of humorless laughter, my ears perked at a sound completely new.
The sound of drums.
Pulling away from Jacob, I reached out for the noise and found it growing louder. At the steady growth, there accompanied another noise. A kind of shriek I'd never heard before.
"Do you hear that?" I asked, wondering if it was loud enough yet for non-vamp ears and trying to place the sounds' origins, which was particularly hard since we were inside a bunch of caves.
"Your laughter?" Legolas asked sharply.
Honestly, I didn't blame him for reprimanding my reaction to Pip's mishap. If one of my men had pulled a stunt like that back home, he/she'd be out of a job and perhaps blacklisted from other special intelligence work before you could yell "tickle fight!"
"No," I waved the elf off, wanting him to concentrate since his hearing was closest in sensitivity to vampire's ability, "Listen."
In no time, my comrades all stiffened at the unmistakable sound of drums and shrieks, both growing louder and louder as they closed in towards us audibly. In a faint undertone, I began to notice another sort of rhythmic thumping.
A heartbeat. Lots and lots of heartbeats. An army of heartbeats.
"Gandalf," I started to address our leader to let him in on the likelihood of our Fellowship of eleven quickly becoming outnumbered when a wall of stench hit my nose like a punch.
Grasping my nose again, I bent over at feeling sick by the overpowering odor. Dwarf corpses aged to dust and octopus-demon guts combined barely hit the rector scale of what I smelled approaching us.
"What is it, Isabella?" the wizard took notice of my reaction and stepped towards me in some concern and definite need to know what I could sense.
"Frodo!" Sam gasp demanded we all take notice that Frodo's hip blade was glowing blue (mental note: ask about glowing weaponry later on when the stench of filth and hot, sticky garbage and manure aren't polluting the air).
Shrieks grew louder and sailed into Balin's tomb room through the open thin wooden doors that separated us from the great realm. Standing erect, I forced myself to adapt to the smell of whatever that sad barrier was keeping out. For a moment I concentrated more on the heartbeats and found them too numerous to count.
Yep, an army was headed our way.
Just what this quest needed.
"Orcs!" Legolas announced, obviously able to place the animalistic whimpers and yells to the one Middle Earth species the twins had insisted I kill if I ever came across.
Well this is your lucky day, boys. Too bad you weren't around to see it.
Taking notice that the one barrier between the realm and this room was wide open, Boromir raced over to close the doors.
Thud! Thud!
With wicked good reflexes, the human man pulled back his head just in time to save it from a pair of arrows now embedded in the flint of a door.
Crap. That meant they were close.
"Get back!" Aragorn switched like a machine to leader-mode and shot orders to the hobbits, "Stay close to Gandalf!"
In seconds the reality of the situations dug beneath everyone's flesh. While Boromir pressed the doors shut, I watched Gandalf herb the hobbits together like a teacher would to small children. Fear played out plainly on their youthful, bright faces, and that expression alone drove a sharp knife of anger through to my being.
This was pure ridiculousness. These hobbits weren't supposed to be here. They were suppose to be back home with ale and gardens and some nice girl (whose name I think was Sandy or Penny or Rosa or something like that) to tease Sam about until a pink blush covered his cute, dimpled face.
Unhinging my fangs again and hissing a little whilst glaring hard at the door, as if the enemy on the other side could see me, I then faced Jacob (his monstrous teeth bared, breathing deep and rough).
"Watch them," I simply put, nodding back at the frightened four huddled together. Their tiny swords at the ready and hearts not at all prepared for what was about to hit.
Growling in a sort of grunt, Jacob (still facing the entrance) backed up to be closer to his young friends.
"They have a cave troll," I heard Boromir inform Aragorn with bitter sarcasm.
Legolas threw forgotten axes and spears to the humans to bar the doors shut, granting us a little more time to prepare before the wave of inescapable battle. Behind me, Gandalf unsheathed his long sword and gave a battle cry that really sounded rather weak in comparison to the rumbling growl Gimli gave once he leapt up to stand aloof on his fallen cousin's grave.
"Let them come," the vengeance-thirsty dwarf demanded; axes ready in his hands. Heart and blood pounding hot and fast in anticipation. "There is still one dwarf yet in Moria, who still draws breath."
Oh yeah, this was personal.
As for myself, you may wonder. Once ordering my brother back, slowly I stepped forward to cover Aragorn's flank, since the fearless-leader was busy with a bow drawn.
"Be ready, Bella," he said, eyes trained on the door as it bulged forward in loud creaks when the orcs slammed at it to open.
I didn't bother to answer Aragorn. You see, as with the majority of battles I head into, I had a plan. It was a simple, basic, logically plan. In fact, the plan itself only amounted into two words:
Nobody dies.
That was it. Simple. Basic. Logical. Nobody (as in nobody I gave a hoot and a half for – a.k.a members of the Fellowship) was going to die here today.
Nobody dies.
Those two words became a mantra in my brain as I licked my tongue over diamond hard, pearly white fangs, moistening their shapes and swallowing the sweet venom overflowing my throat. Reaching over, I filled one of my empty hands with the hilt of the short sword resting at my hip. I didn't twirl it or cut at the air; I simply held it firm in my hand. Tip of the blade pointed at the creaking, shrieking entrance.
Nobody dies. Nobody dies.
Digging my feet into the cold dirt, hunching my stance at the ready. For the first time in three days, since we arrived at that pebbled beach beside the black swamp, I felt very, very calm.
AN: Well, my dears. Hope you enjoyed your Christmas season as much as I did. Sadly, tomorrow I return to university and academia. As I said before, I don't write FF during my time at school. Hopefully this chapter will do in tiding you all over until another is posted. Please be patience. I'm not exaggerating when I say it might well be months before another is posted. Until then, please, please, please share your thoughts – good or critical. I'll take it all. Till next time, drink your orange juice and believe in magic daily.
