Chapter XXXVII: The Tunnels
Lucy didn't go into the tunnels right away. Despite the fog that clouded her senses and the need she had to find Glorfindel, Lucy knew that venturing into a snowstorm in a see-through nightgown would get her killed through exposure. In a haze she mechanically made her way up the stairwell, returning to her room to grab the supplies she would need. The corridor was pitch dark, the distant howl of the wind winding along the length of it. When she returned to her room she found the condition there not much better. Her bed was just the way she'd left it, but it was still night out, and the lamps in her room had blown out hours before. It's time, a disembodied voice told her, but her brain said to go back to bed. Lucy wanted to go back to bed, to wait until morning to find him. The old Lucy agreed with that.
Lucy let her feet lead her to the mattress, her shackles jangling around her wrist and ankle as she crawled beneath the covers. Soon the pitch-black sky paled to purple, the light growing just enough that she could see the rafters at the top of her tower; the shape of the slot-like window that rested just beyond the foot of her bed. Eventually the dawn arrived, but the storm remained.
It was a pale dawn. A grey, sickly thing full of biting cold that normally would have made Lucy curl up beneath the covers, but in the intervening hours between Glorfindel's room and hers, she'd come down with a fever. A burning, insatiable thing that made her hair stick to her forehead with sweat, her joints aching and her breaths coming out in short, shallow gasps as she laid there, staring at the ceiling. Everything ached, and it was the ache of emptiness, but she felt stretched, her skin too tight, like something was crawling through her bloodstream. Finally, someone opened the door.
It was Morwen, carrying a breakfast tray. Behind her was Maeleth, carrying a fresh set of sheets. Aeloth was nowhere to be seen.
"How are you feeling, Sweetness?" she asked, and like the day before she seemed strangely off, her mind elsewhere. Her expression was vacant.
Lucy gave her a weak, pacifying smile.
"Alright," she said. She didn't mind that it was Morwen that morning, instead of Glorfindel's nanny. The older woman would be easier to get rid of.
Morwen walked over to the bed, carrying the tray. It contained a pot of that wonderful smelling tea from the night before. Beside the tea was Lucy's breakfast; sliced venison so rare it was raw and glistening, a large bowl of what Lucy had long ago coined elvish porridge, and three slices of bread, smelling fresh and cooked from the oven. Lucy was craving blood more than anything, but her hunger spiked at the sight of the venison, her mouth watering. Eat. She needed to eat, to stay healthy. She remembered that.
"I thought you could eat breakfast here today," Morwen demurred, setting down the overladen tray on the nearby dresser with a clack. "You can stay in the chamber, to rest up. It is cold elsewhere in the keep."
Lucy didn't want to stay in her room, and didn't plan to, but nodded blankly and said okay. She could figure out how to escape later so long as she avoided Aeloth. With a great deal of care Morwen helped Lucy into a seated position. Lucy's breasts were sore that morning. Her hip bones ached as if they'd been stretched on a rack.
"Drink it all," Morwen commanded, reaching for the teacup and bringing it to Lucy's lips. Behind her Maeleth veered off, heading towards the adjacent chamber to draw a bath. She put the fresh sheets on top of Lucy's bed before she left. "You must keep up your strength." Morwen continued.
Lucy did so.
Like before, the older woman fed her glass after glass until there was no tea left, and after Lucy finished she picked up the tray and sat down her breakfast in front of her. Without really thinking Lucy reached forward and began to eat. She had never been a messy eater – she was picky, beyond all else – but in a machine-like fashion she continued shoveling food between her lips, uncaring of the contents so long as they were inside her. She needed more energy to escape.
Morwen turned to take some dirty dishes out of the way, stacking them in a neat little pile before walking back to the table to deposit them. Lucy wasn't really watching her – too consumed she was with her meal – but a few moments later, she heard a crash. The sound of pottery shattering rang out with a musical clatter, followed by a gasp. There was the uneven shuffle of someone staggering. When Lucy looked up, she found Morwen on the floor.
The woman was kneeling, gripping the nearby table with a vice-like hold, her other hand clamped over her mouth as she stared at nothing. Her face was ashen.
"Morwen?" Lucy said through a mouthful of food, somewhat alarmed. She'd never seen the woman look so shaken, and even through her haze of lust and her determination to leave, there was something about the scene that set her warning bells screeching.
Morwen turned to her, and she looked like Morwen again, her eyes alive. The woman blinked once, then began trembling, gazing around Lucy's room with panicked, darting motions as if she'd never seen it before.
"I, I, I –" she began.
"Morwen?" Lucy asked, and Morwen swallowed heavily, seeming to come back to herself.
"I am sorry, Sweetness," she demurred, pulling herself to her feet. There was sweat dotting her brow and she kept her gaze trained to the floor. "I am just… I must have had a momentary spell of weakness. Forgive me."
Lucy said nothing, eying her speculatively as she continued to chomp down on the last of her bread. The rest was done. Without a word Morwen slunk back to her, removing Lucy's empty plates and tray. "That's enough for now," she said, swallowing visibly. Morwen closed her eyes and shook her head, as if to get rid of a surge of vertigo. "Come, it's time for your bath."
By the time they reached the chamber, Maeleth was already gone.
Morwen was getting worse by the minute. She was barely able to keep her eyes open, and Lucy sat still, watching the woman with something bordering concern as she struggled to wash her without losing consciousness. Morwen needed to leave, but she was decidedly ill, and despite her own motivations Lucy felt her apprehension rise. The older woman was the only other human in the city beside Belor, and she'd been kind to her. She understood Lucy, even when Glorfindel didn't, and that meant more than she'd realized.
When Morwen brought her back to her room, pulling Lucy's lounging dress over her head, Lucy came up with an idea. A good one.
"Do you want to use my bed?" she asked as Morwen wrapped a fabric girdle around her hips. Morwen blinked, looking up at her in a dazed, troubled fashion.
"Pardon, Sweetness?" she said.
"Do you want to sleep on my bed?" Lucy clarified. "You look tired." Then, when Morwen seemed to waver, she added, "I can work on my stitching while you're asleep. There's a chair."
But already, Morwen was nodding.
"I think I must," she said, blinking sleepily. With great difficulty the older woman managed to help Lucy don the rest of her dress, wrapping her in a thick fox-fur shrug that trailed all the way to the floor. "I do not know what is wrong with me. Perhaps I have not been sleeping well."
"It's alright." Lucy knew what that felt like.
The woman nodded, and once Lucy was settled Morwen made her way over to the bed, gingerly collapsing atop it. Lucy watched her like a hawk, pretending to work on her stitching. Soon Morwen was fast asleep, her body relaxed and her hands lying limp across the covers. Once the woman was dead to the world Lucy sprung into action, putting down her embroidery hoop and making her way over to the chest.
She grabbed her slippers and mitts, along with a thick woollen scarf and a random cloak from the dresser. Trying not to trip over her own feet in her blind rush to leave, Lucy made her way over to the secret door behind the tapestry and slipped inside. In a feverish stupor – made giddy by desperation and the prospect of finding Glorfindel – she barely managed to stumble her way down the stairs, driven by a warm, tingling sensation beneath her skin and the aching hollowness that seemed to have sunk all the way to her bones. It's time, Lucy told herself, and she was so high on the idea of him that she was sure she would find her way through the tunnels before Aeloth or Morwen found her missing. She was counting on it.
The servant's tunnel went all the way down the tower to the first floor, where it then wound through the kitchens and into the courtyard. Through some miracle of intervention – through the giddiness and the haze – Lucy remembered that Glorfindel's study was on the same floor as his room. That he might have maps of the tunnels, so she stopped.
Trying to be as quiet as she could – which was not quiet, at all – Lucy made her way to the study. Twice, she had to hide from the guards wandering about the halls. Aearmarth was not in the study, and the chamber itself was not locked. Her hands quivering, Lucy rooted through the maps piled on the table and the far side of the room. After fifteen minutes of searching she found nothing. If Glorfindel had directions to the tunnels, he was keeping them hidden elsewhere.
As she turned to leave, the letters and loose leafs of paper strewn across his desk caught her eye.
On a hunch Lucy began rifling through them, looking for stray maps. There was nothing much of interest on Glorfindel's desk to begin with, beyond what she already knew; reports on grain and additional supplies, along with the situation beyond the city within the mountains. It was described in vague, purposely oblique terms that she couldn't make much sense of, but one letter did catch Lucy's eye. Perhaps it was because it was similar to the note she'd spied on his desk several weeks earlier.
Three missing, the letter said, the delicate parchment crinkling between her hands as she picked it up. The lower reaches might have been compromised.
It was vague and cryptic, like all the rest. Lucy eyed the letter for a moment more, then stuffed it into her pocket and headed back into the hall. She proceeded on her way to the tunnels.
The weather was frigid when Lucy went outside. Immediately she sunk up to her knees in the snow. It was only then that she'd realized she'd forgotten her boots, and when she did Lucy cursed her luck, breaking into shivers. Her teeth chattered and the chill was mind-numbing, but she didn't want to go back. There was no going back now.
Not far, she told herself over and over again, but in the snowstorm it seemed like forever.
The storm was raging, but the snow was thin; the flakes small and white, the sky an endless monotone grey as the wind whipped it down from the mountains. Around her were the white stone buildings of Glorfindel's estate, the sharply slanted roofs and golden steeples covered in rime ice. The ground was thick with snow drifts, carved into swirling shapes by the gale. Lucy could see few landmarks beyond the main entrance and the blacksmith's forge, and even those were hazy, made pale by the driving sleet.
Gritting her teeth, she took one step forward, then another, gasping at the coldness. The bottom of her dress and slippers were sopping wet, her fingers and toes numb to the chill. The gatehouse was empty when she entered it, which wasn't surprising. Lucy had only see one or two guards patrolling the walls, but everyone else was nestled safely inside. Within the structure the drifts were only a few inches deep, and in some places they had landed just so to show the cobblestone. Icicles hung from the large, open windows that lined the left side, and through them Lucy could see nothing but white, the keep itself disappearing into the gale.
Shivering hard and stamping her feet – one hand cradling her front in a motion that had become instinctual – Lucy kneeled down and felt around the stone with her mitted hands, looking for the entrance. When she could feel none, she took off her gloves with her teeth and tried again, searching for the tell-tale groove of the door that led into the tunnel, but still no luck.
There had been a door like this in Tommy's movies, Lucy remembered; a secret door that led into Moria that Gandalf had opened with a magic word. Although it had been ages since she'd thought of her original home, back on Earth – or what had led her and Tommy to Middle-earth in the first place – Lucy recalled the word with ease because it was the first one she'd ever said. The first word she'd spoken in Sindarin to Maeglin.
"Mellon," she breathed, but nothing happened. The whistle of the wind was fierce. "Mellon," Lucy said, speaking louder – her hand traversing the cobblestone – but still nothing gave way. Lucy felt her despair rise, and in an effort to comfort herself she began humming a lullaby. Her feet were wet and her shoes were wet and her whole body hurt and she was miserable, but Lucy was sick of being sad. She was going to do what she wanted, and no one was going to get in the way. "Mellon!" she said a third time, but the word was worthless.
Just as she was about to break into tears – just as she was about to lose her mind and go charging out the gate onto the street in an attempt to find another way in – Lucy's hand brushed against the cobblestone, pressing down. There was a click.
The stone groaned as it sunk to the side, sliding smoothly back to reveal the darkness beneath. Lucy gasped and had to grip the edges to keep herself from falling head over heels. When she saw the tunnel opening up like a yawning maw, she nearly sobbed with relief. The steps were craggy and raw cut as before. Inside the lights were extinguished. It was then that Lucy realized that she'd forgotten a torch, or anything to light the torch with, but the storm was so bad she couldn't return. She couldn't see anything beyond the windows of the gatehouse, and the air was getting colder.
Looking around herself for something to light the way, Lucy spied a closed-off section of the gatehouse, opposite the door; a small room of sorts that seemed to function like some sort of walk-in cupboard. Stumbling to her feet – worried that the entrance would close before she got a chance to crawl inside – Lucy rushed forward, throwing open the hatch and violently rooting through it for supplies. There were coils of pale yellow rope, along with several straw brooms stacked in a corner. Nearby there was a barrel of rocks, along with several smaller barrels filled with what looked to be dried moss. Resting on the middle shelf was a broken Noldorin lamp, and beside that was a small wooden crate filled with long, ivory-colored candles, fat at the bottom but thin on top.
Candles. Candles would work well. Lucy reached for them, picking up the long tallowed sticks and shoving several of them into the girdle of her dress. A few shelves down there was a small pot filled with what looked like flint sticks, which Lucy barely recognized and knew even less on how to use. She snatched some anyways, stumbling back into the cold towards the tunnel. One hand reaching down to grab the hem of her dress and lift it up, the other to the wall, Lucy began making her way down the steps, her face flushed with fever and her legs wobbly with haste.
Glorfindel, she thought as she reached the bottom. I have to find Glorfindel. Inside the tunnel the floor was dry and cool beneath her feet. The torch was on the wall where the guard had last left it, but beyond that Lucy could see nothing. She grabbed one of the candles tucked into her girdle, bringing it forward with a shaking hand and the flint with the other as she tried to figure out how to light it. She'd been pampered for so long that she had next to no survival skills, and she was so feverish with the need to escape that she'd forgotten almost everything of use, including the knife that Morwen had given her.
"Think," Lucy told herself as she stared at the items, her teeth chattering loudly. Just think. Plan. Lucy wasn't very good at long-term planning – she tended to live in the moment – but the idea of finding Glorfindel motivated her. The thought of being happy always did. Lucy struck the flint against the ground, then the steps, but neither of them produced any sparks. When she tried the wall, there was some progress – the air lighting up with small flashes of gold – but it died down as quickly as it came. Moving her candle closer she tried to light it again, and again, but the sparks were erratic. Her arm was growing tired.
It's time, the voice told her, and even though Lucy was tired she continued to try. She couldn't seem to stop. Just when she thought her limb would fall off with the strain, a spark caught and the tallow lit. Lucy nearly dropped the candle in surprise. It was an ember at first. Very small, and it nearly went out when she fumbled with it, but Lucy dropped the flint instead. It struck the ground with a tinny ding as she cupped the light with her hands, and Lucy looked up. In front of her the shadows in the tunnel receded.
There was not much light that came from the candle – barely enough to see more than three feet in front of her, but it was still better than before. The ground was flat, the dirt pounded down. Otherwise it was empty, devoid of everything save for herself and the torch on the wall. A tingling sensation made itself known in her chest, pleasant and fluttering; a tugging sensation beneath her breastbone that seemed to be yanking her forward, as if she were tied to a tether, but she thought about Glorfindel instead. Reaching for the flint, Lucy pulled her cloak more tightly around herself, tentatively walking forward as she held the candle aloft.
Soon her steps grew faster, her gait more confident. She was too focused on her goal and her relief to finally be going that she didn't think to grab the torch off the wall and use that instead.
Lucy walked aimlessly for a time. She wasn't fully aware of the fact that she was walking, or where, just that she was putting one foot in front of the other and going in the direction that felt best, following the phantom call. Eventually she realized that every time she took a turn, she was heading down, and that comforted her a bit. It seemed logical to her – this pattern she was following without really following – and from that point on Lucy trusted her feet, taking whichever tunnel sloped forward. Deeper and deeper she went, into the cavernous warrens that existed beneath the city.
Lucy had known there were tunnels beneath Gondolin since she'd first arrived, but it was only now – when she was wandering about unaided – that she finally clued into their scope. The tunnel system seemed to be as big as the city itself, if not bigger, and time had no meaning down there. There was no passage of time except for the melting wax of her candle. She could have been beneath the earth for a few minutes, or perhaps a few hours, but the truth of it was that Lucy simply didn't care. So long as she kept walking forward her anxiety was kept to a minimum, her mind in a trance.
The tunnels were dark and dry at first, and while they weren't warm, they weren't cold either. As Lucy wandered deeper, the tunnels themselves began to change. They became more jagged, the corridors only half-finished, and as she walked further still they began curving around each other in organic shapes, becoming more cavern-like. Faintly Lucy could hear the murmur of voices from somewhere higher up, echoing down, but she ran into no one below.
Eventually the tunnels grew warmer. Lucy grew warmer too and loosened her cloak, her steps growing lazy and meandering. Her hand went to her chest, rubbing at a strange tightness across her ribs. Her breaths grew somewhat short. Lucy kept on walking until she was almost half asleep; until her brain began to shut down from the sheer monotony of it all, and her body took over instead. She walked until her first candle burnt down to a nub, and when the wax was licking at her palm she finally reached up to change it. It was only when the second candle had burnt to a crisp and she was moving onto the third that Lucy realized that she'd forgotten the torch; that she only had two candles left. It was then that a small thread of apprehension began to weave through her.
How deep am I? she wondered, but she didn't know.
It doesn't matter, a voice whispered to her, tickling like sandpaper against her ear. Lucy recognized it, but couldn't place it through the fog that was shrouding her senses. Keep going.
Lucy did, despite her muddled apprehension and the way she was running out of candles. The tunnels were becoming even more rough-hewn, barely more than impressions of paths. The air was much warmer and moist, but somewhat thin. Faintly Lucy thought she could hear the murmur of water, but she didn't know where it was coming from. The light of her candle did not show the path ahead by a great deal, but from what she could discern the rock was naturally hollowed, pockmarked and chipped. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling in greater numbers; large cobwebs, so big they sometimes spanned the width of the tunnel and were difficult to traverse. Patches of lichen grew on the walls, luminescent mushrooms forming a thick carpet on the floor. Stalactites were hanging from the ceiling.
Up ahead Lucy could see the tunnel widening out, its ceiling dropping down until it was flat and wide. When Lucy drew closer still, she saw two black maws looming out of the darkness; two tunnel systems, and the sound of rushing water was much louder. The pounding in her head was much louder, too.
Where am I? She wondered as she reached the branch, but as soon as the thought crossed her mind it was shut out, brushed away with a caressing push. The skin beneath her shackles felt hot. There was an oppressive sensation in the air; a tightening pressure over her breastbone and a buzzing at the back of her skull that she knew all too well, except she forgot the specifics.
It can't be that bad, she reasoned as she stared at the two foreboding entrances. Just pick one. Both of the tunnels were covered by spider webs, but the left more so than the right. The webs stringing across it formed a circular pattern that resembled a cocoon, and the air that emanated from its low, oblong entrance was slightly foul. There were no mushrooms on the ground, but the entrance was slimy, and through the pale light of her candle Lucy saw strange red lichen growing across the rock.
An odd sensation made itself known between her shoulder blades, as if someone was watching her. When Lucy looked around, she saw nothing. Through the haze of lust and the burgeoning fever, her apprehension began to grow.
It's here, the old Lucy said. It's here, you have to go back. Her scar throbbed something awful.
Keep walking, a voice commanded, and Lucy recognized the voice in an odd sort of way, but couldn't place it. She didn't like the smell that was coming from the left tunnel, and even through her fever she knew that she didn't. Despite that, she didn't want to go back.
Think of Glorfindel, she repeated. Lucy thought of herself sitting in the secret garden beneath the statue of Tommy, the stone figure gazing down at her like it was alive. She imagined Glorfindel nearby, the laughter of a child not far off, and saw herself tinkering with the strange, spinning lamp that Maeglin had taught her how to make. She thought of all this, and she smiled. It was nice being around others, she decided; it was nice not being lonely, and it was nice being loved. A family would give her that. Once she got Glorfindel back and they escaped from Fingon, everything would be wonderful, she decided. She took a step towards the darker, foul-smelling tunnel, and then another. The candlelight flickered in her hand, her slipper-clad feet stepping on something small and knobby as she walked in. Those small, knobbly things crunched beneath her toes as she passed.
The tunnel was straight for a very long while, sloping at a sharp angle. Eventually it began to twist, while the ceiling remained low and wide. As it levelled out and became flatter it almost seemed to turn into a cave, oblong with stalactites and stalagmites piercing it from top and bottom. Not too far off, Lucy could hear the river. The walls were wet. Around her the cave was covered with layers of cobwebs, one on top of another; massive cobwebs from which nothing hung, but so big they could trap a man.
Lucy skirted them awkwardly. More than once her skirts brushed against them, wisps of it clinging to the wool. A pip, pip, pap sound came from somewhere inside the cave, along with a whispering noise that she couldn't quite place, like silk moving across a rougher surface. The crunching, uncomfortable feeling beneath her feet continued, and the throb of her scar got worse.
Reaching down – her candle in hand – Lucy attempted to grab her skirts to gather them close, but as she did she got cobwebs in her hair. As she tried to disentangle them, she tripped.
"Shit," she said. When her hand automatically went to her front to protect it – the other going to the ground to stop her fall – she dropped the candle. It rolled across the ground for a foot or so, the flame flickering wildly. Knobby brittle things crunched beneath her feet as she stumbled to her knees.
The moment Lucy put a hand to the ground to stop her fall, she discovered the objects were sharp in a worn down sort of way. She cut her palm on them. As the candle rolled further, the flame dipped lower. The others fell out of her girdle. Lucy quickly scrabbled forward despite the clinking on the ground and the cobwebs in her hair, reaching for it. She didn't want the light to go out.
When her hand closed around the wax stem, she lifted it up. Sniffling audibly as she looked around herself for the missing candles, Lucy reminded herself of Glorfindel. She knew he wasn't down here, but she'd hoped she would have found a way to him by now. She'd trusted her feet. Slowly the flame flared back to its regular size, large and orange and luminous. She couldn't see the other candles, and absently mused it was because the wax stick blended into the floor; with the long, narrow stones that curved at sharp angles like ribs.
A second later, Lucy realized that they were ribs. That she was sitting on a pile of bones, bleached and dry. Her breath caught in her throat.
The lower reaches might have been compromised, the letter had said. Glorfindel had been worried about it – and had tried to hide the news from her – weeks before. Above here the shffing sound echoed again. Lucy looked up and to the left, raising her candle. On the ceiling amongst the cobwebs, there was a familiar shape. A large, white shape with gangly limbs like a spider, slowly stirring from its nest of webbing.
Lucy's scar throbbed. Her breaths grew short.
The baramog yawned wide before it cracked its neck back into place. It turned towards her.
Immediately Lucy rushed to her feet and ran as fast as she could, not caring of where she was going so long as she was running, dropping the candle in haste. She ran into the darkness, her hair tangling with cobwebs and her feet tripping over mountains of bone.
Baramog. There was a second baramog, and she remembered the first, its teeth on her throat and its claws in her flesh. Lucy remembered her broken ankle and being unable to scream and never, ever, ever. She should have never gone into the tunnels. Her breaths were coming out in gasps.
In front of her the tunnel narrowed. Lucy didn't realize it was entirely ensconced in cobwebs until she ran headlong into it, her momentum allowing her to fall through the first few layers. Click, click, click, came the sound of sharp nails moving along the stone behind her. In the dark she couldn't see it. Lucy couldn't breathe and the cobwebs were everywhere, white and thick as a door. She screamed.
Found you, the voice said, and Lucy remembered Mairon. She remembered Sauron. She remembered what he'd done.
In a blind panic – letting out a sob – Lucy leaned forward. She pushed against the webbing and then she fell through it, just a bit. Another push and she was falling all the way forward, stringy threads clinging to her hair and dress.
Suddenly there was light.
The twisting sensation beneath her breastbone turned into a hurricane of vertigo, a rushing sound in her ears. She wasn't in the tunnel anymore. She was falling into long, pale green grass, the fragrance of honeysuckle high on the wind. Her body thudded softly against the ground as she landed, and it took Lucy a second to realize there was no baramog behind her. That there was no cave either. It took Lucy even longer to realize that there was no webbing holding her in place, although there were remnants of it clinging to her hair. When she clued into this, she looked up.
She was in a valley of some sort. An incredibly steep mountain valley, with massive, snow-capped peaks on either side. The valley was long, to the point where Lucy couldn't discern the end of it; covered in lush green grass that whistled softly in the warm summer breeze, giving way to peat moss that trailed up the mountains sides until that too turned into stone. There were no forests nearby. No trees and no hill upon which a white city sat. It was summer here, but it had been winter in Gondolin. Above her the sky was cast in perpetual twilight, so thick with stars that it was like looking into the heart of the Milky Way.
It reminded her of her dreams.
"Help!" Lucy croaked through a cough. The air was thick; as thick as it had been when she'd first landed in Middle-earth, and everything was new. Lucy coughed again, then gagged on panic. She was still cold, her hair covered in spider webs, but there was no tunnel and no Gondolin and the grass felt as real beneath her fingertips as the silk of her dress. "HELP!" she screamed.
A warm summer breeze returned her call, but otherwise there was nothing. Lucy was alone, again.
Author's Note
So I'm gonna keep this author's note very short. They've been getting too long, and I feel they're beginning to detract from the story. Just a couple quick things to touch on, and then you'll hear no more from me until the next update:
1) In an effort to keep these A/N short re: guest reviews, I'm only gonna respond to those that have in-depth questions attached to them, and even then I'll have to be selective. I thank you all for your input, and I'm thrilled you like my writing, but this story's getting to the point where there's just too many reviews to keep up with. My policy towards signed reviews remains the same.
2) Revisions have been made to Chapter 36, and things have been shifted around in future chapters to add some clarity to the plot. While I appreciate constructive critique - and clarity in future plot points is important - after going over my earlier chapters (with the help of others) I can definitively say that I've said what I wanted, and no more changes will be made. I am writing the story I want to write, and have been very clear in my execution of it. If the complexity of The Hematic is not to your liking, or the subject matter discomforts you - if you dislike the darker tone of the story, or desire a more conventional GiME - then unfortunately I'm going to have to recommend you look elsewhere. No hard feelings over the fic (and if you unfollow I totally get that), but what you want as a reader and what I'm writing as an author are mismatched. So head's up, and best of luck in the hunt for new fanfics.
That's all for now. 'Til next time, and have a happy October!