Chapter 21:

Warland

Author's Note: Sorry again for disappearing for so long. Surprise, surprise – I had a brain tumor. It was apparently why I've been so sick. Long story short, some doctor saved my life by just looking at me and being able to diagnose it. I had brain surgery six months ago tomorrow and am going through treatments now, but only should have three more before getting the long awaited clean bill of health. Now, I'm just trying to get my writing feet under me again. So, comments are great! Clue me in on what you want to see happen and let me know how to improve.

Until then . . . happy reading!

Legolas watched Mala as she rode in front of Elladan. Her winter eyes were still closed. He listened to the horses breathe, hooves crunching leaves and snapping twigs, scuffing the dirt, and Elrohir's heartbeat. Legolas leaned back against the twin's chest. Though Elrohir hadn't said why he didn't want him riding behind him, Legolas knew.

He wasn't long for the same sleep Mala had retreated into.

"How far are we from home?" Legolas asked, not looking away from his friend.

"Your home or ours?" Elladan asked with a hint of a smirk.

Legolas didn't return it.

"At least five months from Rivendell," Elrohir answered sternly. "Seven months from Mirkwood."

"So I will have been absent for almost three years by the time I return," Legolas said.

"You will stay in Rivendell until you are better," Elladan promised.

"No," Legolas said. "I will continue home. I will not stop."

It wasn't that he wanted to see Thranduil, but rather his brother. Now that Sard was gone, Kasslad was all he had left.

Elrohir placed a quieting hand on his shoulder. Both twins held their breath. Legolas sat up and listened. A pair of footsteps sounded next to them in the shadows, moving faster than any human could walk. It was unnerving.

Legolas turned to the left and squinted, just making out the shape of a woman. She kept her pace with them, and as they crossed beneath a ray of sunlight, he saw her.

"The dragon woman," Elrohir whispered for elven ears only.

In the brief glimpse, Legolas saw again the black cloak that engulfed her entire body and free-flowing white hair, wild as though windswept. Just as the first time he laid eyes on her, that was all he saw.

"We should kill it," Elladan whispered.

"She saved our lives," Elrohir snapped. "Perhaps she is like Indari."

"Indari," Elladan scoffed.

"Perhaps she is only protecting us," Elrohir said more sternly.

"I don't trust dragons," his twin said.

Though Elrohir didn't respond, Legolas noticed he rested a gloved hand on the pommel of his sword that hung at his hip. Legolas tried to find the woman again, but her quick footsteps only helped lull him to sleep.

"Legol. . . ." Elrohir shook him, but Legolas just listened to her footsteps, the horses breathing, until all he became aware of was the cold.

O

"You are not our king!"

Thranduil cut off the elf's head, watching golden hair fly as it rolled off a stump of a neck. Blood flung across the white stone outside of the throne room, so stark it struck him like a scream.

"This doesn't mean you've won," Inamgia said.

The traitor stood between two Kindi soldiers, both of whom had wild red hair untamed by braids and knotted with golden features and twigs. Having lived among them for the better part of a year, they looked noble in his eyes now. Inamgia's dark ochre locks hung in smooth rivulets around an unmarred face, as perfect as an opal inlaid in gold. Her red robes were of silk interwoven with panels of silver. Before that cursed snake, before losing his youngest son and his kingdom, she would have looked like the only speck of civilization in this churning metropolis drenched in elven blood.

Now, he sneered at her.

Now, she was nothing more than a mockery of what Mirkwood elves had become . . . these cold, faraway creatures. Perhaps the dragon's greed had infected its people, perhaps his own failures had simply ruined his people's trust. Either way, this would be remedied first by force.

Then with patience.

He waved for the soldiers to take her away to be locked in the dungeons. He would decide what to do with her later.

Until then. . . .

"Ada," Kasslad urged and Thranduil heard the smile in his voice.

Thranduil turned to face the throne room doors. One stood on hinges, the other had been charred by fire. He stepped through the space left to him.

The room was in shambles. The sweeping windows to the left were shattered. Glass had blown across the stone floor, tangling into the rugs that had long tears in them. Dead flowers sat in cracked vases and the stairs leading to his throne had chunks missing from them.

The throne itself looked dark, half burned as if someone had tried to set the petrified wood on fire.

Taking a draw on the smoky air, he stepped back toward his birthright. Kasslad's quiet footsteps followed. Elves began filled the room, silently watching him march forward. They were mixed between knights, including the tall and ominous Naspen, as well as the wild elves that had followed him from their quiet home where they had all been forgotten. Among them he saw Thranellian.

His chest ached at seeing blood smeared across his cousin's face. Maronellian wouldn't have wanted his eldest to see war, but Thranduil couldn't change what has already happened.

So he continued moving forward.

When Thranduil turned back to face the throne ahead of him, he stopped.

One of the most menacing elves among the three kingdoms stood in his way with a double-hilted sword in hand. The blade glared red in the sunrise bleeding through broken windows and the flicker of fading torches.

Glorfindel squared big shoulders. Though Thranduil wasn't sure when the Balrog Slayer woke from his coma, the long sleep didn't seem to take any strength from the old warrior.

"Kasslad is king." Glorfindel's voice rang loud between broken walls. "You still haven't answered for what you've done, Thranduil."

He knew the blade in Glorfindel's hands. It was Kingbreaker.

O

Elrohir rode hard. Legolas swayed in front of him, cold as ice and as limp as the dead. It chilled him to see the elfling that had suffered so much now waver on what should have been an eternal life.

The tithen prince had fallen into his coma three days ago now. Though he and his brother rode endlessly, to the point where their mounts had started frothing at the mouth, they hadn't escaped the snow of the eastern mountains. The blue shadows of these black oaks stretched endlessly across the rocky slopes, ice catching beneath hooves and making the horses slip.

His mare tripped on the rocks, which were as fragile as slate, kicking ice into a spray behind them as she tried to find traction. Elrohir gripped the reigns and shifted his balance to keep seated, wrapping an arm around Legolas to prevent him from slipping off and falling under the horse's stomping legs.

"We're trying to cover too much ground too quickly," Elladan called, huffing as he made his own mount stop.

Mala's white hair hung in wet strings, wet from snow that had melted in the afternoon heat. Still, the white stuff clung to the ground, a ground that never thawed.

Elrohir didn't dare turn his horse to look his twin in the face, but glared back ahead at the black line of trees they were about to enter again.

"They are dying, brother," he breathed, swallowing the pain that truth brought with it.

"I know." Pause. "I don't want this to be how it ends, but I don't believe they were ever going home again, one way or another."

Elrohir cursed under his breath and spat. His twin said nothing of it.

"Dekriem and Kagnirrok, the dragons that started all of this, are to blame," Elladan said. "Not us, not anyone. Dekriem should have never wormed his way into the royal family of Greenwood the Great and Kagnirrok should have stayed in his cave and left Legolas alone, but that's not what happened. Dragons are the evil in this world now, and it is they who took these elflings from us."

Elrohir was shaking his head. Kagnirrok was to blame, but not Dekriem. As hard as it was to believe, that dragon-man had earned his trust and he mourned that his friend was lost to the Termar Empire, just like Sard was lost to it.

"We should keep going until they fade, then wrap them for burial," Elladan said, his voice hollow. "But we need to stop rushing, or else none of us will make it home."

Elrohir wanted to scream at him, run him through with a sword, hit him, do something to make him regret everything that just came out of his mouth, but his fire was out. He stared into the darkness below the trees and breathed in the frozen air, so cold it hurt his lungs, then exhaled warm air that soothed his chapped lips.

Movement caught his attention, averting his anger.

A tall, thin figure stepped out of the shadows ahead of them. The dark cloak enshrouding them was familiar, as was the wisp of long white hair that escaped the hood.

It was the woman who saved them from the Terkmar soldiers on the plains.

Or not so much of a woman as Indari was a man.

This was a dragon in a very good costume.

"Who are you?" Elrohir found his voice first.

She stepped closer, somehow finding solid purchase on the icy rocks between them. The hiss of Elladan's blade being pulled from its sheath rang in the thin air and stopped her.

"Who are you?" Elladan didn't quite ask it. His words sounded more like the angry Terkmar soldiers than any fierce demand made by a soldier at Rivendale. It chilled Elrohir's heart and made him shiver.

The woman, or dragon, whatever it was, raised her head. More white hair went flying in the breeze. The cotton strands hid her face, all but cherry red lips that looked very solemn.

"You don't recognize me, old friends?" she asked, her voice as cold as the ice that crackled below them.

Neither Elrohir nor his twin responded. Elrohir was too afraid to look away from her to get confirmation from his brother that he knew her. As far as he knew, the only time they had ever met was on the plains during their escape from the empire.

In the answering silence, the creature threw back her hood. Wild white hair spun around her in the wind, tangling and twisting like a blizzard. Her face was revealed, skin as white as aspens. It was as though she was born from winter, almost as though they had seen that face before. . . .

Elrohir turned to his brother then, who was also looking at the sleeping elfling in front of him, slumped in her coma.

"She is me," the creature said. "I am Mala."

O

Kingbreaker broke Thranduil's blade in half. The blow rippled up his arms, jittering his bones and bringing him to his knees. Still, he held onto what blade was left to him, which was now no better than a knife.

Glorfindel towered over him, a glow about him as though his righteous rage was shining through. Thranduil glared because though the Balrog Slayer wasn't wrong, he still had no right.

Their fight had gone on too long, from hours to perhaps days. Thranduil felt the exhaustion, saw it in the elves that leaned against the walls. Kasslad and Thranellion stood side by side, hands stretching out the tension from resting on weapons, ready to jump in should they be needed.

Thranduil hung his head.

None of this should have happened.

"Forgive me," he said, staring at the blood-streaked stone below, smeared in dust and littered with broken glass.

"Do you concede." Glorfindel didn't ask it. The weight of Kingbreaker brushed against the back of his neck. Murmurs spun through the room, angry and mournful and excited.

Thranduil closed his eyes.

He swung his leg under Glorfindel, bringing him down. The heavy elf landed on his back with a jarring thud, teeth cracking together. Thranduil kicked the double-hilted sword from him, only to take it up himself. He pressed the tip against Glorfindel's neck.

"Do you concede?" he asked.

The elf's blue eyes widened. Sweat stuck his pale hair to his face, breath sucking it in and out of his partly opened mouth.

"Never," he said.

Thranduil nodded. He expected no less from him. Even still, he brought Kingbreaker down. The heavy sword sliced through Glorfindel's right arm at the shoulder, breaking bone and tendons. The elf's scream was tremendous, tearing straight through the soul. Something about it reminded Thranduil of the screams that fill his kingdom the day Kagnirrok destroyed all their lives. It was a fitting end, and he prayed to the Valar that it was the last scream of its kind.

"I am king, this is my right and one that I will not give up," he roared down at Glorfindel, shoving the bloodied end of Kingbreaker under his chin to make him look up.

Glorfindel neither acknowledged what he said or lost the furious anger lit in those sharp eyes. Thranduil knew he should have killed him then and ended that vengeance boiling to a head, but wondering how he would answer to Legolas stopped him. His elfling may be dead for all he knew, but the hope that he was alive made him step back.

He waved to Naspen to take Glorfindel away.

"Treat him," he said. "Then take him to the dungeons."

Naspen seemed to be the only elf in the throne room who didn't seem tired or phased by any of this. He simply nodded, tall and wraith-like as though this happened daily. Nothing passed in those dark eyes, no anger or remorse, nothing. It was chilling and yet Thranduil was glad.

Knights surrounded Glorfindel, who screamed as they moved him.

Thranduil watched as they led him out, then looked back at the pool of blood he left behind . . . as well as his arm.

Thranduil stepped over it. When he reached his fire-scarred throne, he turned to face the shattered, broken people in front of him.

Kasslad bowed first.

The rest followed.

Thranduil watched them bend to him. In the silence that followed, he only heard the drip, drip, dripping of Glorfindel's blood off the end of Kingbreaker. It all but echoed in the hall, where the evening sun bled through blown out windows.

"I'm home," he said.

O

"Let me help you get to Rivendell," the Mala creature said.

Elrohir never felt so much terror. He stared at this woman, this elf, this dragon, whatever it was, and shook his head.

"You can't be her," he said. "She is an elf. She is right over there." He pointed to his twin, who kept an arm wrapped around the sleeping elfling.

"There is no time," she said. "Your ada is here, but he will not find you if you do not move."

"Where is he?" Elladan sounded breathless.

"Follow me." She lifted her hood. "Your mounts will die, but Legolas won't."

As if his horse heard her, it huffed and stomped. Ice broke on the rocks under the pressure.

Before his very eyes, her cloak ripped as wings erupted from her spine. Within half a second, it was no longer an elf in front of them but rather the black dragon from the snowy plains.

Scales shivered, making an eerie crackle like that of shaken sand. The crimson flesh from her jaw and down her chest glowed as fire rumbled from her stomach to her jaws, or its jaws. Elrohir didn't know what to think of her.

Fire exploded skyward as its tail swept across the trees, taking down oaks in a shattering rani of splinters. The gush of fire cut off and talons scraped ice and rock, shoving up as wings pushed down. Storm-force wind shoved them back. Horse screams ripped at Elrohir's ears. The mare bucked, but he kicked at it, spurring it into a run after the dragon.

"No brother!" Elladan shouted. "It is a trap!"

Elrohir didn't listen. The mare wheezed but galloped, bursting into the trees. He could see the dragon through the branches, but he had to rush to keep up.

"No!" Elladan sounded determined to stop him, but at least he was following. "No!"