Chapter 118
Between Joy and Grief
Never in my life have I been so ridiculously grateful to see daylight. But the effect was almost magical. I could have sworn up and down that I had never in my life seen a better sunrise than that one and actually, I'll stand by that statement. It was glorious. It was everything a sunset ought to be: golden, uplifting, bloody gorgeous. Early sunlight streamed across the land, making the armour and weapons of the Rohirrim glint with beautiful shining light. It promised a better day than we had seen in a long time.
It was hope, pure and unadulterated hope.
It was no such thing for the orcs still trying to get past the wall and through the gate. Both walls and gates were battered after the assault on them that by now had lasted for a day and a night. Our defenders were weary, bloody and disheartened, but the sight of their allies rushing to their aid, as Boromir had promised them all along, gave them access to unsuspected reserves of energy and hope. They stood on their walls and they cheered, blowing horns of their own in a warm welcome.
None of this pleased the orcs.
It didn't please the Witch King either, who was definitely not having the day he thought he was going to have. Faramir remained completely unaffected, the Ring was still not back in Sauron's possession and now here were the horse lords coming to make more trouble. To add insult to injury, we'd also managed to kill another Nazgûl, which put the total of still living – if that's the word that I am looking for – at three.
I didn't know it, but six of them were already dead. Both Thráin and I worried about three of them we couldn't account for, but only because we had no idea they had already fallen in the first big war in the North. So Thráin kept a weather eye out for three Ringwraiths and I was doing much the same.
It still seems strange to me that the history books have written my name down as one of those brave souls who killed one of Sauron's supposedly invincible generals. My name is up there with Tauriel, who killed two, with Aravir, a Ranger who never faltered in the execution of his duty, with Jack, the one who broke the siege and killed a Nazgûl while he was at it, and Thoren, the famous King under the Mountain, who organised the greatest resistance of Sauron since the Last Alliance and also killed a wraith. It's an illustrious company and another was about to be added to our ranks…
Beth
The Witch King took one last look at Faramir, then turned his beast around to face the threat that the Rohirrim posed head-on. That left Beth, Faramir and their squad of protectors in the clear for now. She was however just in time to see the triumphant and somewhat unhinged smile that Faramir bestowed on the Nazgûl before the wraith turned around and took off.
'You have missed your calling,' she told him when she was sure that the Nazgûl was out of earshot. 'You should have gone into acting.'
He'd win prizes by the bucketload.
'That would have displeased my father even more,' Faramir said before the reality of Denethor's death caught up with him. It wiped the smile from his face completely.
'I am sorry,' Beth repeated. No matter what she thought of the man – and her opinions were not very favourable – he had been Boromir's and Faramir's father. Broken and damaged though it may be, it was still a bond. It was not a simple matter of severing it entirely and expecting no emotional fall-out.
'His end was not your doing,' Faramir told her.
The fact that he genuinely did not seem to blame her for that mess both raised him in her esteem and lowered her esteem of herself. 'Perhaps not.' Denethor's choices were his own and at the very least he owned them. 'But I could have foreseen this. The book mentioned it. Apparently it's even one of those thrice-cursed major plot points that we can't seem to avoid.'
'Can they be changed?' Faramir asked.
That one she could answer with complete confidence. 'Your brother is still alive, so I'd say so. But that one took a lot of effort. It's not an easy thing to do.' Well, that was the understatement of the year. 'But for what is happening below that's a good thing, because we are going to win and we don't want to change that.'
'And the Ring?' Faramir asked.
'Will be destroyed.' This she did say with more confidence than she felt. She did wonder about Gollum's part in this, because in her view that was one of those major plot points. It was a view that she had always believed that Thráin shared. Yet he had gone ahead and killed him anyway. Perhaps he truly felt he didn't have a choice in the matter, not after Gollum had run off to inform on the Fellowship. Still, it didn't sit well with her.
I hope to high heaven that you know what you're doing, Thráin!
'Is that not all that we need to know?' Faramir asked.
As a nosy writer Beth disagreed with this on principle. The more you knew, the better it was for all the parties involved. Knowledge meant that she could better calculate the risks. It meant that she knew what was coming and she could prepare for it. That was important. She was the advisor after all.
'Perhaps,' she allowed, unconvinced.
She took up one of her cameras to see if it was still recording. It was. She did not necessarily get a clearer vision of the Rohirrim than she got of the mess down below, but at the very least she could try. Certainly there was no way to make sure that Merry and Éowyn were right where they were supposed to be, but she reckoned that this too was one of those major plot points – there were more of them here today than she'd honestly cared to think about – so this it must get right. It had better.
The Rohirrim did not waste a lot of time. Once they were in position they charged ahead. Some of the noise was carried Beth's way on the wind. She caught faint impressions on clanging armour, whinnying horses and men shouting battle cries. It must be a terrifying wall of steel, horses and sound for those who saw that army bearing down on them.
The orcs were not in luck. They had at the orders of their commanders organised themselves into lines to deal with the oncoming threat, but that meant that they were now fighting a war on two fronts. Boromir and Gandalf – presuming that they were still alive – capitalised on the situation immediately. The men of Gondor were tired, but now that help was at hand, they found that they could carry on just that little longer. Rohan's arrival had lit a fire under their arses.
It did the opposite for the orcs. True, the ones who now lined up to deal with Rohan's forces hadn't seen any action yet, so they were fresh to the fight. But the sunlight was not their friend in this endeavour. Never fans of it on a good day, now they found that the rising sun was right in their eyes. They couldn't see the approaching army well and they paid for this when the Rohirrim charged without hesitation into the fray. From what Beth could see they had their hearts set on reaching the city via the shortest route available, which in this case meant charging right through the orcs.
It was a bloody slaughter and just for once, the orcs were on the receiving end of it. The momentum of the cavalry carried it far into the ranks of the orcs, who still had the sun in their eyes and were doing as much shielding their eyes as they did shielding their own bodies from the onslaught. Many paid for that with their lives.
Beth angled the other camera to cover the situation in the lower city as best she could, but the quality was not good. She could barely make out individual shapes and it was such an anthill of activity down there that trying to get good quality content was a task equal to trying to get an orc to learn table manners. It just wasn't happening.
Barely had she finished that thought when she could see something distinctive happen. Four large shapes moved in the lower city, making for the gates. Beth desperately wished that she could zoom in, but even without that option she knew what she was looking at. This was Thráin's doing again.
What isn't these days?
A while ago in what must have been a stroke of either insanity or inspired genius, Thráin had looked on a couple of Mûmakil. Most people would have one of two reactions. One: run away and don't look back. Two: kill it. Thráin, who never conformed to people's expectations of him if he could help it had introduced option number three. He had looked on the Mûmakil and decided that he wanted one in order to even out the odds a little.
Most people wouldn't survive the attempt, but Thráin being Thráin had led to the eventual conclusion that he did not have just one of those big lumbering beasts, but four. And, to break with Haradrim traditions completely, he'd also given them names. The biggest of them was now called Teddy – Beth had Opinions about that – number two had been baptised Nori, despite being female, the third Old Stomper and the last of them was Lucky Lady, who so far spectacularly failed to live up to the name she was given. Out of the four Mûmakil captured, she was by far the most accident prone.
Not that the orcs knew this. They were still coming to terms with the novelty of seeing four Mûmakil on the field of battle used against them. Those beasts usually fought alongside them, so this was a bit of an unwelcome novelty. From what Beth could see they scrambled out of the way the moment the Mûmakil thundered through the gates and onto the battlefield.
'I can't bloody see!' Beth complained. This was riveting stuff and she could not see half of what was going on. Now that the battle seemed to be going their way, she really wouldn't mind getting a bit more of a close-up than she'd had so far.
'We can go down,' Faramir said. He looked to the skies. 'I think we played the parts we were meant to play.'
The Witch King had flown off, trying to simultaneously bully his troops into order, terrify the Rohirrim and do something about the sortie from the main gates. By the looks of things, it was not going well at all. On his own he was spread too thin. He could not be everywhere at once. True, a Ringwraith was a terrifying thing to encounter even on his own, but the effects lessened once said wraith was trying to get everything done and be everywhere all at once by himself.
This really wasn't his day.
And if Éowyn does as she's supposed to, it's not going to get better for him from this point onwards.
'Let's.' She did not need telling twice, so she packed up her cameras and followed Faramir through the city further down, their guards trailing behind them. She craned her neck for sight of Eradan, but he was nowhere to be seen. He's sorting out Pippin and the others. He'll be fine. They'll be fine.
It was eerily quiet in the rest of the city. They encountered some soldiers running from storerooms with more weapons, mainly arrows, to supply the troops in the lower city, but most of the action was elsewhere. You'd never think that there was a war on here if it weren't for the sounds drifting upwards.
But there was a war on. The closer they got, the more they heard. Faramir led them through streets and gates until at last they reached the wall that separated the first level from the second. It had taken a beating, but it was in no danger of falling down.
'We will not go further down,' Faramir announced.
Beth was no so secretly grateful for that. This was as close as she wanted to be anyway. By now she had seen more of war than she ever wanted to, but this was her duty and the only thing worse than seeing all the horrors was not knowing what the hell was going on. If given the choice, she'd always rather know.
He led her up a tower into a room nearly at the top. 'Will this serve?'
It most certainly would. The tower offered views in all directions and down here she was a lot closer to where it was all happening. She'd no longer have to zoom in to breaking point. Here she could simply do the job Boromir had entrusted to her.
This is something I can do.
Knowing that took away some of her restlessness. The fear had also mostly gone. The battle was at last going their way. Victory was beginning to look like a real possibility, not just something that only existed on the pages of a book. It's all going to work out.
As she thought it, she knew she believed it now. It was not in her nature to believe anything without hard evidence. She was not ever going to have Faramir's blind faith in things she couldn't see, but she was not so much of a fool as to refuse to believe something that was so obvious.
Several things had changed whilst she had been on her way to her new vantage point. The Rohirrim had made considerable inroads into the orc army, but now at last their progress was coming to a bit of a halt against the overwhelming orc opposition. They were suddenly fighting for their lives.
This is not looking as good as it did half an hour ago.
The Minas Tirith side of things was however looking decidedly brighter. Now that she could properly zoom in and still expect to see something, she took some pleasure in recording the rampage the four Mûmakil went on. To her relief and horror she found Boromir on top of Teddy. Of course, where else is he going to be? He's not going to ask anyone to do what he hasn't done himself first. That's the kind of man you married, Andrews, like it or not.
'Boromir is alive,' she reported to Faramir. 'He's on one of the Mûmakil.'
Faramir nodded, visibly relieved and visibly frustrated. Sitting out the war on the side-lines was probably not what he thought he was going to be doing before it all happened. Then again, him not taking part was book stuff and Beth would much rather that the reason for it was that he was playing this part than that he was dying.
Another change for the better.
It was good to remind herself once in a while.
She checked once more to see if all was going well and then left Boromir to his own devices in order to track down the Witch King. He was not hard to find. Beth found him trying to terrorise the Rohirrim out of their wits, utilising that bloody despair magic of his. From where she stood she could hear his screams. He also commanded his beast to pick up Rohirrim, haul them up a ways and then drop them. Beth had seen that up close, but it wasn't any prettier from a distance.
For all she knew this might have been going on for some time. She did know that if those two men over there had anything to say about it, it was not going to go on for very much longer. The movement of the two of them drew her eye and then her camera. They were somewhere near the Witch King and from the looks of them they had a plan. They'd manoeuvred their horses to stand still side by side. They themselves climbed up to stand on the saddle, swords in hand.
'What are they doing?' Aravir squinted and shielded his eyes in order to see better.
'Standing up,' Beth replied, who at least had the benefit of being able to zoom in. 'Other than that, not a clue.'
They didn't have to wait too much longer to find out. The beast descended again, clearly with the intent to grab a few more poor souls in its claws to use as makeshift projectiles to pellet the Rohirrim with. The two men were having none of it. They reached out before the beast could. With one hand they grabbed a paw and then they pulled.
'What the hell?'
Surely that was not going to do them one bit of good. The beast was much stronger. And true, if it had been their intention to pull it down to the ground, they might not have succeeded, but that was not their real intention. It just wreaked havoc with its balance just long enough for the men to bring up their swords and stick it in between the plates of armour. The beast let out a pained roar that even Beth in her tower could hear loud and clear and then it crashed.
Men and horses leaped out of the way. Both of the daredevils got clear, but one of them lost his helmet in the process.
'Bloody hell, that's Théodred,' Beth realised. What in the world did he think he was doing? This was a kind of recklessness that she was used to from Thráin and his friends, not Théodred, whom she had pegged for being altogether more sensible. Then again, he was friends with Boromir.
He didn't get up right away.
'Just run away, you moron,' Beth hissed, though of course he could not hear her. 'Go!'
Théodred didn't go, but the Witch King did come. He strode up to the fallen King of Rohan, probably with every intent to kill him for having the audacity to kill his lizard. He never actually got round to it. A figure in armour and helmet moved between the Witch King and his intended victim.
Beth held her breath. This is it. This was a scene from the book coming to life before her very eyes and just for once, it was one she really wanted to see.
An exchange took place between the figure – it must be Éowyn – and the Nazgûl. At the very least it was not impressed with the appearance of this lowly soldier, so he brought up his sword in an almost lazy gesture.
More fool him. Evidently he had not seen Merry – then again, in the sea of constantly moving bodies neither had Beth – because he went down on his knees after a blow from behind. Éowyn wasted no time. She removed her helmet, confirming that it was indeed her and then stabbed the wraith unceremoniously in the face.
Elvaethor
'You are healing well, Master Elf,' the healer declared once he had taken a long look at the wound. 'Your Lady of magic knows her business, I am sure.' He said this in a tone that suggested that he knew nothing of said business and even less of magic, but that in this case he reluctantly approved of both.
Elvaethor suppressed a smile. 'That is good to hear, Master Healer.'
Indeed it was. He had no intention of sitting out the war at the side-lines. He understood why Thoren had sent him away. His injury prevented him from taking up a sword when it was most needed. He was more hindrance than help. Yet he could not shake the feeling that in leaving he had erred most grievously. His heart was restless within him, warning of a danger he could give no name to.
'You will be up in no time at all, I shouldn't wonder,' the healer said, fixing the bandages into place. 'You take your rest, Master Elvaethor.'
There was nothing else for it. Elvaethor had been sentenced to the back of a wagon by another healer with an equally gruff and unyielding disposition and he was told explicitly not to move without his say-so. Dwarvish healers were like that, hard and brusque on the outside, but with infinite care for the ones that had been entrusted to them on the inside.
He leaned back and willed his body to heal. His heart called him elsewhere, warning almost constantly. It had started yesterday, strong and clear, something he could not ignore. Something had gone awry with his friends. They were in some great danger, but he was nowhere near to help them fight it.
He couldn't.
It wasn't long before he heard voices, well-known voices. The caravan of wounded never stopped moving, but his friends came closer all the while until at last Cathy climbed into the wagon. 'Hello, my friend,' she said, smiling widely. 'Hold on, I've got to help my uncle in.' She reached out behind her and helped Ori in after her.
For a moment, Elvaethor had no words. 'My little lady! My good friend! This was not where I thought to look for you.' When he did find his words again, it was all he could tell them.
'We are on a mission of the utmost importance,' Cathy announced. She thrust a document into his hands. 'See? Signed and sealed into law.' Despite the circumstances in which she found him, she was smiling widely. 'Go on, take a look at it.'
He humoured her. Despite his keen sight his mind failed to comprehend what he saw before him the first time he read it. It took a second time and then a third before he truly realised what it was that he held in his hands.
'Well, that's the first time in living memory that you've been speechless,' Cathy grinned at him. 'Never thought I'd live to see the day and the way I heard it you almost didn't live to see it either. Duria's going to bend your ear about that when we get home, you know. It's a special privilege she has, you see, now that you are officially our brother.' She smiled wider still.
He had chosen this. Not so long ago he had spoken of it with Thoren, who extended brotherhood without hesitating. He even joked then that the official documentation would already be in order by the time they returned home.
Home.
He turned the word over in his mind, tasted it, explored it. Elvaethor found he liked the sound of it. Mirkwood had not been his home for a long time, even before he bid it farewell to follow his heart elsewhere. His choice was made and the dwarves had welcomed him. Yet he had been a guest in their halls.
No longer.
Home.
'I am beyond words,' he confessed.
'Well, we'll have to remedy that,' Cathy pointed out. 'Have you ever heard of a dwarf who didn't know when to shut up? Apart from my dear uncle here?' she added before he could point out the obvious flaw in her reasoning.
'I am sure that I will recover the gift of speech soon enough,' he assured her, because other than Ori very few dwarves did not have an opinion on everyone and everything. He looked at the document again and drank in the words. They were there, in both the Common Tongue and the Khuzdul that he did not speak.
'You'll have to learn our tongue,' Ori said, as though he had read Elvaethor's mind. 'It's mandatory.'
This, more even than the words, brought it home to him that he now belonged in a way that he had not for centuries. The dwarves had opened their doors and their hearts to him these past eight decades, but he was denied the knowledge of the Khuzdul. That remained a gift only bestowed on their own.
That was what he had today become.
He reached out for Ori's hand, overcome once more.
Ori shook it with enthusiasm. 'Welcome to the family, my friend. I shall be honoured to instruct you in the language if you'll take me for your teacher.'
'I could think of no one better suited.' Not many who did not know Ori would suspect that he was one of the bravest souls to draw breath. He looked gentle and unassuming, nose often stuck in some book, glasses on his nose. This gentle countenance however masked a spine crafted of the finest steel. Here was one who would rather not fight, but when called upon he would do so with a courage that would put many a warrior to shame.
'You do seem overwhelmed, my friend,' Ori observed. 'But surely this can come as no great surprise to you?'
It both was and wasn't. 'I know that I chose friendship and allegiance when I made my vow,' he said, searching for the right words and hoping very much that he found them. 'Thoren told me that I was a fool in thinking that this was all that I chose.' To his friend, his brother, it had seemed like the most obvious thing in the entire world that he had chosen kinship with the dwarves. It was an offer they would take him up on, Thoren warned with a smile.
'Thoren can be very wise at times,' said Cathy in tones that suggested there was many a time when her brother was not so very wise. 'Sounds like he knew what he was about this time.' She grinned at him again. 'You are pleased? Really? You're not just saying it so that we won't feel hurt, are you?'
This he could answer without reserve. 'I am truly pleased,' he informed her. He was. It was like coming home at last. 'You gave me a place to belong at last.'
She turned that over in her mind. No doubt it would not be long before she followed it up with another question. He was not proven wrong. 'Have you belonged before?' she asked. 'Truly belonged, that is, not just because you lived with your people or because you thought that you should feel like you belonged?'
It was a good question. It was a question the likes of which he expected from her as well. From the time when she was a lass of about six she had asked him questions he often would not or could not answer. Some he could only answer after giving it a great deal of thought. This was one such.
'Not for ages,' he replied at last. 'But once, yes, I belonged. But that time is long gone and buried, Cathy, as are the people who made me belong.' They had been taken in battle and blood many years ago, while he remained.
'Well, that's another thing you'll have to learn to get used to then,' she said lightly. Perhaps she'd sensed she stumbled over something hurtful. Like her mother before her she usually had no great care for folks' sensibilities, but she made exceptions for those dearest to her. 'Be warned, we're all prepared to do our duty in that regard.'
Only dwarves could give such gifts and make them sound like threats instead.
'I shall bear it with a good will,' he assured her.
'Hold on, we have visitors,' Ori said. He had stuck his head out of the wagon for a moment while Cathy delivered her speech and so could see more of the world than Elvaethor. He pushed his glasses up on his nose to see even better. 'That's Thranduil and Tauriel.'
'What?' Cathy poked her head out as well. 'But they are supposed to be at the front. Oh, dear Mahal, Thranduil doesn't look so well. Hang on, I think they've seen us. Yes, they are coming here.'
The warning in his heart rang out stronger. He had not been wrong. Something dreadful had happened. Neither Ori nor Cathy had made mention of Thoren. Yet his sister only seldom went anywhere without him these days.
The cold hands of dread clenched around his heart.
'I must stand,' he said.
Cathy took one look at his face and decided against protesting.
So he faced his former King on his feet. The wound still pained him. It often left him dizzy and short of breath, but he would stand now. The news that they were about to receive could not be good. His heart pounded a warning over and over again. The last time he felt such a strong foreboding was in the weeks leading up to Thorin Oakenshield's death, when he knew what must come to pass, yet he dreaded the event with every fibre of his being.
'My lady.' Thranduil dismounted and made a shallow bow to Cathy. He had never done such a thing before.
Wrong.
Elvaethor sought out his sister, but she avoided his eyes. Yet the truth was in the things she could communicate without words. Her face was pale and haggard, her eyes all but hollow, her hands not steady. He read the truth there before Thranduil spoke the words that knocked the ground out from under them.
Thranduil bowed his head. 'My lady, I must bring you the gravest of news. Your brother was taken by orcs yesterday. He was gravely injured then.'
The cold intensified until he could not help but shiver. In vain he searched his heart for the surety he had felt when Thoren had been believed dead before. All he found was a sense of loss so deep that it felt as though he faced into a black abyss.
'But alive?' Cathy insisted.
'I cannot tell.' The answer was in the tone in which the words were delivered. Thranduil did not believe. 'He lived for a short while. The Enemy tried to exchange him for our surrender. He himself urged us not to.'
The words rang true. They tallied with what Elvaethor knew of the dwarf who had become his brother. All for the war, all to give Thráin the time he needed. His own life was worthless compared to that. He had not believed in hope, not for himself. Long and hard Elvaethor had argued against it. Now he was proven wrong at last.
The truth tasted bitter on his tongue.
'He lived then,' Cathy pointed out.
'He was badly hurt, dying.' Though the tone was mild, the words were not. 'The orcs were not gentle with him. When they dragged him away after, I could no longer tell if he breathed or not.'
Tauriel stood behind him, still as a statue, frozen and cold. All the colour had drained away. Even her fiery hair looked drained and dead.
Elvaethor reached out a hand to her. 'Sister.'
She looked him in the eye. 'What does your heart tell you?' she asked.
For all their sakes Elvaethor took care in examining what his senses told him. The worrying thing was that he could no longer make any sense of what his heart said. It spoke so loud and in so many voices. Most of them were howling with grief and anguish. Others screamed denial and despair. He sought for the calm voice amidst the chaos, the one that had never before let him down.
It was silent. Just when he needed it most, it let him down at last.
He closed his eyes and bowed his head. 'I cannot tell.' It was shame as well as grief that made him avoid their gazes.
To his consternation his own hands were no longer steady. He was short of breath as well and he tasted the salt of his tears on his tongue. They flowed freely now, without restraint. They were no longer under his control. He had been given the greatest of gifts and then dealt the gravest of blows in the span of an hour. How could he feel all of this at once? How did he yet stand? How had the force of this not made him burst at the seams?
Cathy spoke first. 'Then I refuse to believe it.' She looked and spoke as if she would gladly fight whoever dared to challenge her on this. 'Until someone can show me the dead body of my brother, I shan't believe him gone.' She drew herself up to her full height and looked Thranduil in the eye. 'We have thought it before and we were wrong then.'
'Yet then Elvaethor knew the truth that we did not,' Thranduil pointed out.
'Even the best of us are wrong sometimes.'
'He believed himself not long for the world.' Tauriel spoke softly. It was grief given voice. If Elvaethor's heart was yet capable of breaking, it would have broken there and then. As it was, there was nothing left to shatter. It had already broken into so many pieces. How many more times could it break before he was lost forever?
'He believed he was going to die the first time, then the second time,' Cathy argued. She waved her finger in Tauriel's direction in a manner oddly reminiscent of Dori. 'Yet when all was said and done he showed up hale and whole. I won't believe it this time, not without evidence. And neither should you.'
He saw his course clear. 'Then I shall obtain it.'
Four pairs of eyes turned in his direction, but it was once again Cathy who gave words to what they probably all thought. 'You what?' For a moment there she sounded very much like her mother.
He repeated his earlier statement, but elaborated this time: 'We must know one way or the other.' He himself needed to know. How could he mourn when he was not certain? How could he hope when all argued against it? Dwarves trusted in what they could see, hear and touch. Today he had become one of them, so he would do as they did. It was the only way, the only lifeline that kept him from caving.
I made a promise to you, my dear friend, he thought, addressing his thought to the one who was long gone, but who he believed still kept a close eye on her children regardless. I shall keep it as best I can. For a promise to an old friend and for the sake of the kin that had chosen him, he would ride.
'Well, you'll not be going alone.' None of them had heard or seen Dáin Ironfoot approach. They only noticed them when he spoke. 'If it's my King you're going after, I'll come.'
He could not deny him.
'You will not go without me either,' Tauriel said. The mission had restored but a little life to her eyes. It was desperate and feverish, but it was better than the desperate grief that had come before.
He could not deny her either.
So, new point of view in this chapter. Did you expect it? Did you like it? My reasoning was that Elvaethor is now officially a part of this family (and he knows it) so it's only right that he gets a say as well. I hope it was a nice surprise for you.
Next time: the Fellowship ventures deeper into Mordor. Beth realises an oversight on her part. This may not be a disaster.
Thank you, as always, for reading. Reviews would definitely make my day, so feel free to leave one.
Until Sunday!
