A/N: Hey guys, I'm back, let's get right to it I guess. Also, full disclosure, I'll be hiking the Long Trail in Vermont 9 days from now, so I wouldn't expect any updates for any of my other stories (This one won't be a concern, you'll find out why soon ;) ) for around three weeks as I'll be hiking 273 miles; hope you all understand :)
"..."-Helkil. I haven't played the game unfortunately :( They do look pretty sweet though, maybe I can draw some inspiration from them. Thanks for the suggestion!
"..."-Falconress. I guess you'll have to see, but something fun ;) Thanks fro reading!
"..."-Guest. Haha I bet he is; she is rather pissed. As far as times go, the unknown dude who has been moving her back and forth has used his best judgement to drop her back when he thinks it would be convenient, the linear passage of time is something that the unknown figure is unwilling to manipulate, but he has plucked her from times when it was easy timing in both worlds, or at least what he perceives to be easily timing. There isn't really a direct relationship between time passing in either world. I'm sorry if that was super confusing, but it's difficult to put my very convoluted thoughts on the subject into text. And it is a shame that Finglifn wont meet Artemis, I'm actually pretty sad about it too. As for everything else, I suppose you'll have to see ;)
"..."-Guest. A perfect description of this chapter lol, thanks for reading!
"..."-Angelmermaid4574. Thank you! She does, so far anyway :)
"..."-Guest. You guys really do catch everything, the whole "calling nobody my lord" is essentially correct, although it was more of a gratitude thing from the person who's been transporting her back and forth for what she's done. Spot on with everything else! And yep, sorry couldn't help it, hopefully this update is sufficient :) Thanks for reading!
"..."-Housten. Haha, it is indeed that time, you should like this chapter ;) Thanks for reading!
"..."-David12leca. Thank you! I'm glad you liked it, I thought it was pretty badass as well lol.
Alright, with that, onto the story, thanks so much for your support, and savor this chapter, it's the last one!
The creaking seemed like it could give me tetanus just from listening to it; those hinges really needed oiling.
I could feel myself cooling down a bit, I was still absolutely furious, but now I would much rather curl up into a ball and cry for a couple hours than be killing orcs.
I really just couldn't believe that he was dead, one of the greatest warriors of several thousand years; not to mention one of the best friends of a thousand years as well.
I drew small comfort that he was probably floating around happily in the halls of Mandos, or living comfortably somewhere in Valinor.
He wasn't really gone I suppose, I just couldn't ever see him again, which is actually just as terrible.
Not to mention that his son and his wife wouldn't see him again either, until their deaths anyway. The thought made my blood pump faster and a fire re-ignited in my chest.
How many fathers and brothers had died to rid the world of Melkor's filth? How many Sons and daughters were slaughtered when his orcs pillaged Northern Beleriand? This was bigger than Fingolfin, much bigger, and although I royally pissed at my friends death, I was exponentially more furious about how many elves, dwarves, and men had died trying to oppose the turned Vala.
The furnace in my chest roared hotter, like someone had added another shovel full of coal.
The orcs seemed to break out of their stupor at the grinding of the gates and one lunged at me, snarling, at least he was before his head was separated from his body.
Another one attempted to spear me, the top glanced uselessly off my armor and I grabbed the shaft, pulling the hapless beast onto my sword.
The sun suddenly darkened, all of the light and the warmth in the world seemed to be sucked out of the air.
The aggressive flashes of light behind me dimmed and the clouds looked more ominous, the orcs and myself once again paused, confused as to the sudden change in the atmosphere.
My eyes wildly searched around the plain, looking for any hint as to the source of the abrupt shift. I had totally forgotten about the gate.
I immediately looked back towards the Thangorodrim to see the gates wide open, and out of it stalked a giant; Melkor.
He was covered in wrought iron armor, nasty spike protruded from the chest plate and his helmet obscured everything except for a pair of glowing deep red eyes.
I noticed that he walked with a slight limp and a grim smile made its way onto my face, it appears Fingolfin had messed him up a bit.
The orcs were reinvigorated by the appearance of their leader, whether by fear or loyalty I didn't know. It didn't matter to me; the small smile wiped off of my face almost as soon it appeared.
This- thing, had killed my friends, and far too many others.
Scarlet ringed my vision and it again felt as if my whole being was on fire. The orcs, who had previously been keeping a wide berth from me were now charging forward, surrounding me from all sides.
I could feel the blood moving through their veins, hundreds of steady rhythms beat through the air.
I grabbed hold of one, the blood abruptly stopped moving, held in place by my power. The orcs suddenly froze, before collapsing, the maroon fluid liquid leaking out of its nose.
There were several hundred meters between me and Melkor, all filled with orcs, but not for much longer.
The rest of the orcs skidded to a halt, and took a cautious step back at the sight of their dead comrade.
It was too late though, I sprinted towards the dark lord, the orcs in my path falling dead, but by no blow of the sword.
Perhaps it was immoral, perhaps it was a violation of the gods; but I didn't care.
More hearts stopped, more orcs collapsed, maybe I was hallucinating, but I thought I even saw a flicker of fear in the dark lord's eyes.
I was finally upon him, I flew through the air, the moisture condensing around me and pulling me towards his chest.
Riptide glanced over his shoulder, not able to penetrate the thick armor. In a flash I was on the ground behind me, launching a furious series of strokes at his lower legs.
The warhammer dented the ground where I was standing seconds before. I jumped on top of the mighty hammer, then leaped towards his face.
Riptide slid across the cheek guard of the helmet before I spun upside down and kicked him in the chin, sending his head snapping back with a painful crack.
I landed back in front of him, just in time to have my legs swept by the shaft of the sweeping dark lords hammer.
I fell to my back, my legs had small slices through the greaves, which blood was leaking out of. Wait, blood? But the curse of Achilles should have prevented that injury.
I looked a bit closer at the blood trickling down my shin, only to realize it had a golden color, with only a slight red tinge.
Ichor? But that would- I was interrupted by a hammer landing directly next to me, barely grazing my side.
That was it, I had enough of this filthy arrogant murderer. I rolled to my feet, letting moisture condense around me once more, pulling me up and several feet back.
I felt an even greater connection to the earth and the water that it held than before. Even the clouds seemed like they answered to me.
I reached out to feel control over these masses, I latched onto the clouds, pulling them towards me.
Rain fell in torrents and the droplets lashed out against my exposed skin.
The clouds spun swiftly around the dark lord and I. He looked confused, even taking a hesitant step backwards.
I urged the clouds to spin faster, the wind picked up and my very soul felt as if it were going to melt from the heat building in my core.
The earth rocked with a tremor, and again, massive cracks opened up in the dirt as the crust shook with raw power.
The dark lord raised a hand and shot a beam of black energy at me, I swooped lower and it shot harmlessly over my head, he sent more, machine-gun fire speed of dark light shooting towards me, I countered, shaking the earth beneath his feet and spending spikes of water shooting towards his neck.
He swiped through them with his war hammer and continued his assault. I shook the ground, more violently this time, the top of one of the three peaks behind us toppled and fell towards us.
It crashed into the plain with thunderous claps and streams of water and beams of dark light shot through the storm, crumbling unknown objects from beyond the obscuring clouds. I screamed with rage and urged the storm to spin faster.
After twenty years of near nonstop fighting, this might be it.
The day that it all ends, the day that Melkor is ended once and for all.
The unit was doing well, if not for the countless casualties that we had suffered over the years.
There were only a couple dozen of us left from before the Dagor Bragollach.
At least it was for a good cause, our lives would not be forfeit if our children could settle in this land without threat from orcs and trolls.
I honestly felt pity for the Orcs that were going to encounter Persephone; at their passing would be swift.
I had no clue how she was back from the dead, but she was, and she was mad. Over several hundred years, I had never seen her that angry.
The battle was picking up, the dragons and the eagles were battling in the skies above us and the rest of the field was filled with orcs, men, and elves, all heavily engaged.
Our tight formations had broken at the sight of literal mountains being thrown down and the continent shattering before our eyes.
A huge storm had formed over Angbad, where Persephone I couldn't help but wonder if she had anything to do with it; but that would be illogical.
Only a Vala or Eru himself could summon and control such destruction.
The storm was ripping up the landscape, pulling both orcs and dust up from the plain.
I ducked under another swing from a particularly troublesome orc and swift stabbed it in the chest.
The ground shook again and I stumbled, barely pulling my sword out of the creature in time to block a slash from another orc.
When the Maia had started dueling the turned Maia, it was destructive, vast carters had appeared on the planet and landslides had plummeted from surrounding mountains.
The battles were practically invisible. All that was visible were flashes of light and slight glimpses of fiery string and swords as the entities moved faster than even my elven vision could follow.
Thousands of such engagements were occurring across the plain and around the surrounding skies.
The battle had devolved into absolute chaos. I stumbled again as a flash of light, pushing a fiery streak slammed into a mountain, flattening the entire structure and sending blocks of stone flying high into the atmosphere.
The sound was deafening as thousands of tons of rock and dirt crumbled into dust.
The storm near Angbad became even larger, dark streaks of shadow now shot out of the clouds occasionally.
The planet rumbled again and a huge section of the plain fell, I mean literally fell, the mile wide chunk of rock separated from the crust surrounding it and fell what must have been fifty feet into the ground.
At the sight of this, the armies of elves, men, and dwarves must have had the same idea. The voice of what had to be a Maiar echoed across the plain. "Fall back, it is too dangerous!"
The host of Valinor started marching back, displaying any orcs who attempted to attack their retreat. I also started to walk backwards, leading the scattered grouping of elves around me.
I had a feeling that it was going to get incredibly dangerous very soon. My suspicion was confirmed after a couple of flashes of light flashed over head, rocketing towards the battle.
I paused after walking back some miles, looking in amazement at the utter destruction that was now rocking the very continent.
Ancalagon was falling towards the three peaks over Angbad, the gigantic dragon had been somehow bested.
Its heavy body fell onto one of the peaks, crumpling the pillar of slag and refuse heaped from the cesspits of Angbad.
The next sequence of events was indescribable. The three or so flashes of light streaking overhead earlier had reached the main field of battle and were now wreaking untold destruction.
The storm grew bigger than suddenly vanished. Mountain ranges were leveled, lakes created by wanton blasts of energy, entire forests uprooted and thrown through the air as absolute death and destruction was strewn across the landscape.
I stood in utter shock, frozen to the ground at the destructive power of the Valar, Maiar, and Morgoth. An elf grabbed my shoulder gently and started pulling me back towards the rest of the retreating army.
It felt as if I had no control over my body, that it was acting upon its own accord. That when I channeled a blast of pure energy out of the tip of riptide, carving a ravine in the earth, that it was not me doing it, but an indescribably incensed proxy of myself.
Two other beings had joined the battle against the dark lord. A man with glowing tattoo etched over his bulging muscles, and a graceful slim man launching arrows at impossible speeds at Morgoth.
The super buff being grabbed Morgoth by a foot and sent him flying into the iron mountains, the dark lord took the tops off of several mountains before skidding to a stop, colliding with one final rock cliff.
We all advanced towards him, I pounced with riptide, only to be slammed with a blast of dark energy and sent flying into the ground, creating a chasm.
Normally I would be dead after a hit like that, curse of Achilles or not, but I felt stronger than ever, barely even injured by such a stroke.
I stood back up in the several hundred foot deep crevasse created by my slide into the ground and shot up through the air, eager to give Melkor another taste of riptide.
The massive piece of rock pulled out of the crust of the planet hovered, controlled and supported by several tendrils of water it was barely staying airborne.
My eyes were shut, clenched with the pain of controlling a several mile wide object. Melkor must have still been unaware of the huge chunk of rock hovering above him.
The battle between us had raged for hours, more and more Maiar were throwing down their foes and joining the relentless assault on the dark lord.
The landscape was now unrecognizable, the mountains had been flattened, the surface of the earth was fractured and slowly falling below the land next to it.
I could feel the chunk of the planet now over the head of the dark lord. I clenched my eyes even harder, tendrils of water shot out and grabbed the Valar and Maiar engaged with the dark lord, they were whipped back out of range of the huge rock.
I was still under it, and I knew I would probably get crushed instantaneously, but it would be worth it, vengeance for all of those who had died to his hand would be more than enough to outweigh my death.
Memories flashed through my mind, my first quest, the first time Fingolfin had asked why my armor so much had silver on it, Artemis helping me in the labyrinth. "I'm sorry." I whispered to nobody in particular, and let the water go.
I heard Melkor scream in rage before an overwhelming weight landed upon me crushing my world into an all-encompassing black.
It was a solemn meeting, the Valar had won, but at the cost of the entire continent of Beleriand.
The land mass was so ravaged by the war that it had sunk under the waves completely, save for a few small islands.
Melkor was once and for all defeated, locked behind the door of night, there would be no escape for the turned Valar except for the end of days.
It had taken hours to carefully move the massive chunks of rock that covered the utterly spent being; he had not even resisted as he was chained by Tulkas and Orome and brought to Valinor before his sentence to eternity beyond the door of night.
Manwe sat at the end of the hall, the Valar and the Maiar gathered in the wings of the hall; the trial was over, but there were still questions lurking among everyone's mind.
One in particular actually, who was the raven-haired murderous warrior, the one who had taken on Melkor one on one for several minutes, and who had dropped millions of tons of earth on top of him.
Manwe sat upon his throne, pondering the answer to this question. She was not an elf, they could not have wielded that sort of power.
The only conclusion was that she was a lost Valar or Maiar, not seen until now.
Actually, not a Maiar either, no Maia could cause such destruction, the only answer was that she was a lost Valar, but how and why did she stay hidden for so long.
Manwe was stumped, truly and completely. For all his wisdom he could not draw a conclusion on a topic that he knew so little about.
That is, until a brown haired elf stepped out of the crowd gathered inside the hall. His armor was marred with scratches and gouges, his face was streaked in ash and dust; and he looked completely exhausted.
The elf spoke. "My lord, if I may."
Manwe nodded stoically. "Say what you wish."
"My lord, I believe I may know the identity of the person seen fighting Melkor." The elf went on to describe the strange person's sudden arrival several hundred years ago in the middle of a major battle.
How the elves didn't trust her at first, but she showed her skill in several small engagements, leading the king of the Noldor to grant her a small unit of elves to command.
How Morgoth had appeared at the Dagor Bragollach, how the person called Persephone and the Elven king had allegedly faced down the Dark lord, buying time for their army to escape, and how the visitor had died at his hand.
How she had been dead for over a century, but suddenly reappeared at the time of need, when Melkor's power was the greatest, his domain nearly uncontested.
How she had been seen carving through hundreds of orcs, and then facing down the dark lord himself, displaying incomprehensible power.
Manwe nodded, listening to the account of the elf. Soon, dozens more of the elves stepped forward, telling tales of how, earlier that day, they had seen her slice through a balrog single handedly, how she had called to her a storm that rocked the continent.
That she previously had only been a very skilled swordsman, but after gher return unleashed power not seen since the .
Manwe held up a hand. "This is necessary information, but it does not answer what she is, and why she is here."
The room fell silent, nobody had an answer to the questions posed by Manwe.
That is, until a strong deep voice spoke. "Persephone is a visitor, one that I stumbled upon by accident, but one who I brought to help protect my creations and break Melkor's hold upon my children."
The voice carried the authority that only the creator could hold. Eru very rarely communicated with the Valar, and never when the elves were there to witness it.
Manwe replied, hoping to have his questions about the still mysterious figure at least partially answered.
"Where is she now?" The voice resonated through the hall once more.
"Gone, out of mind, she will never return." Manwe was satisfied by this answer. He owed Persephone a great debt, her actions had helped save the children of Eru, if she ever returned, he would ensure that she would get the thanks that she deserved.
Manwe dismissed the rest of the elves and Valar, sitting alone in the hall deep into the night, his mind swimming with thoughts.
My eyes flickered open, once, twice, and then fully exposed to the soft light of the stars. I was lying in a soft patch of grass; my body felt as if it had been put through a meat grinder.
I wanted to sleep, maybe for a couple years, but I fought the urge. I needed to find out where I was.
I staggered to my feet, my muscles screaming for me to lay back down.
A thick forest encompassed the most of the clearing; I looked around, my neck aching at the exertion, my gaze landed on a small section of the clearing that wasn't adjacent to trees.
The grass slowly fed into a shimmering lake, stars reflected in its mirror-like surface; the thousands of tiny dots of light seemed to smile at me as I watched a comet speed across the sky.
I looked up from the lake, and nearly jumped out of my skin. An old wizened man stood at the edge of the lake, also gazing at the stars.
He sported a long white beard and was clothed in long robes that gleamed in the starlight.
He turned around, and gave me a gentle smile. His eyes were pure black, but nebulae shone in the center of the dark orbs.
"Ah, Persephone, please." He waved me over, his spindly hand motioning towards a spot at his side.
I stumbled over, my body still feeling absolutely shredded. He watched my awkward gait and frowned slightly.
"My apologies, I had forgotten that you would likely be feeling a bit terrible, especially after what you did today."
What did I do today? I asked myself internally. The memories flashed into my mind, the battle, the confrontation between me and Morgoth, the rock.
The man placed his hand on my shoulder and a wave of warmth spread over me. My limbs no longer felt like lead and my posture straightened, I stood taller, free from the pain that was previously wracking my body.
"Hey, I don't mean to be rude, but who are you?"
He gave me a grandfatherly smile. "The one who brought you here; you probably know me as Illuvitar."
A/N: Well guys, 40,000 words, three months, and a whole lot of fantastic readers. I just wanted to thank you all for being so great and making this story what it is, I wouldn't have had the motivation to carry on with this story if it hadn't been for you guys; I really do appreciate the support.
With that, this story comes to a close, it was a joy to write and I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did.
If you want to read any more of my works, check out my profile, otherwise, it's been an honor guys, this story is officially complete.
Lol gotcha, new chapters are coming, try to guess what will happen and when these events will occur in the reviews. See y'all next chapter, hope you don't hate me too much for messing with you like that 3