A.N.: so... here we are, over 30 chapters in; as many of you must've guessed by now, this is the final stretch towards the ending of the story, though rest assured there are still a few chapters left.
I wanted to thank all those who are still with me so far, with a special mention to those who took the time to review! It means the world to me, as a writer, to know that people are enjoying my work.
And now, without further ado, on with the story!
Chapter 31
The sea – the never-ending ebbing of the tide upon the shore, the soft hiss of water that seeped through the sand, smoothing out its bumps and wrinkles into an expanse as level as the heartbeat of a content man.
The beach lay before her, under her; Naima's boots sunk into the sand, leather darkened by salt water. The odor of brine and seaweed wafted in from the sea, carried in by a lazy breeze that toyed with her hair, tussling her locks in the same loving way that her father used to. Her lips remembered the taste – a salty matrix that evoked memories of endless summers, of ice-creams bought from beach vendors, of carelessness and belonging.
Naima was alone, but neither afraid nor lonely.
The shore was a place of quietude, deserted as far as the eye could see, stretching from one horizon to the other. In her back rose the dunes, gently swaying with marram grass, their hillocks screening the rest of the land from view – and there must be a land, for else where did the gulls fly to, screeching in their one-worded tongue?
Plopping herself upon the sand, Naima pulled off her boots, wincing when she unwillingly scraped against the sores that covered her skin. Gingerly rolling off her socks she averted her eyes, loath to see the extent of the damage, and stretched out her swollen feet towards the breeze.
She had time aplenty, for neither the sea nor the birds knew such a thing as hurry. The waves rolled against the sandy rise, eroding the land one grain at a time. Naima closed her eyes, savoring the familiar sounds and sensations.
When she opened her eyes again, the sun had crept in behind her, casting her shadow towards the distant horizon beyond the sea. Nothing moved, except for the ever-undecisive tides. Nothing, except a white speck upon the rippling surface, straight ahead.
A sail.
Raising one hand to cover her eyes, Naima squinted to better distinguish the approaching ship, but the shimmering air blurred its outlines; her only certainty was that it was heading her way, making course for the beach.
Naima's grandfather, Abdel, had been an amateur sailor, often bringing her along on his escapades aboard the Thetis – a small ketch that smelled of stale tobacco and fresh paint. One of the things he'd taught Naima was that distance was a treacherous thing, once at sea. The rocky outlines of the shore, the lighthouses that stood watch over the coast – such markers often lay much further than the eye believed. No matter how close the ship appeared, it wouldn't be here before an hour or two, sometime before nightfall.
Closing her eyes, Naima leaned back against the warm sand, wriggling her toes in contentment. She'd be here to welcome the ship and whoever sailed it.
After all, she had time aplenty and nowhere else to be.
oOoOoOo
The sun must've set, for Naima was shivering.
She opened her eyes, her surroundings slowly coming into focus. Had she missed the ship? Why had no-one woken her?
Darkness had fallen during her sleep, the moonlight filtering in rays through the clouds, outlining the square tiles of stone that covered the floor.
Stone? A floor?
Naima frowned as the events of the day came back to her, along with the pain that woke in her lower back, her feet and in the cuts and bruises covering her face, her neck and her hands. The aches left her alone as long as she lay still, but soon the position became too uncomfortable to maintain, and Naima had to choose whether to suffer from immobility or movement.
Still groggy from slumber, she hissed as she pushed herself into a sitting position, back against the wall and knees drawn against her, wrapped up in her cloak to ward off the cold. Her breath fogged the air, shimmering with tiny crystals of ice.
Such a peaceful dream…a welcome change from the saddening or outright grievous images Naima's brain had conjured over the last few weeks. A safe haven for her weary mind to rest in, and an escape from a much harsher reality.
She was a prisoner once again.
A prisoner of the orcs, no less, locked up in a cell much less welcoming than those of the elven palace. Naima's suspicions regarding the fortress' state had been confirmed as they'd passed empty hallways and collapsed corridors, the hearths long since cold, the rugs rotten and full of holes. Her current room was nothing more than a large closet, with a narrow window overlooking the moonlight-painted mountainside and a torch stand hanging off the wall.
How long had she been sleeping?
A rumble of her stomach, accompanied by the painful cramping of prolonged hunger, held the answer: too long, her last meal nothing but a sweet memory. Naima's mouth watered when she remembered the taste of bread and the rich, salty texture of stew. Even the toasted gruel the elves liked to serve their prisoners appeared as tempting as a King's meal, as long as it had butter in it. Mmh, butter….
Starvation was a well-known technique of torture, yet Naima was determined not to give in to despair.
Legolas was looking for her.
He must be, along with that killjoy Nendir and his men and, knowing Legolas, it was a matter of time before they came to her rescue. He'd promised to keep her safe, and Naima believed him. How could she not? From the way he smiled at her to the tilt of his head whenever he listened to her endless prattling, somehow fascinated by something so trivial, everything betrayed a devotion Naima had unwittingly sowed and then helped grow.
It wasn't right, to encourage it, and yet again, how could she not? Her own hands yearned to touch him whenever he came within reach, if only to enjoy, through a fleeting brush of her fingers, the rush of elation in her veins, like an addict coming back for a fix.
Where was he?
Hunger and pain addled her senses, playing tricks with her brain. Naima remembered the stars, their once cold light now reassuring, inextricably tied to the wistful look upon Legolas' face, and the swaying of grass. The scent of smoke and snow in the wind, and his light footsteps beside her. When had she lost him?
Naima raked her mind for what came after. For a moment she triumphed: flinc nîn, those were the words Legolas had said, the words she'd forgotten but now remembered. An inexplicable feeling of dread crept down her aching spine.
What had happened?
The memories evaded her grasp. Naima managed to capture one, pulling on a thread: the shadows cast by looming stones, shadows that moved….
She gasped as the events unfolded before her eyes like a recording. A crunch. A moan that could've come from her own lips as the pain that crushed her chest stole the air from her lungs. Legolas falling, skewered by a sword, and a scream that shook her body, sundering her world into wrath and sorrow.
Legolas, dead.
Digging her nails into her arms Naima rocked, weeping, as she relived her loss once again. A world without him was too absurd to endure, the same pleasures she'd dreamt of but moments ago now insignificant in comparison to a single look upon his face. A world too immense and hostile to allow her survival, where every breath was a torment since she couldn't share it with him. The tension in her muscles revived her injuries and the pain flared up, overwhelming her until she sobbed in both agony and anguish.
Flinc nîn. Those were the words Legolas had called Naima before he died; words she'd never hear again, nor know the meaning of.
She'd known ever since she'd met him there were things she'd never get to discover – whether he furrowed his brow when he kissed, and the noises he made in his sleep. How he braided his hair, deft fingers arranging the silky strands without even looking…. Her own locks wouldn't get the chance to grow out long enough for him to try.
Now that Legolas was gone, Naima would never learn new words from him, nor hear him pronounce names from Earth with that lilting accent of his. She wouldn't teach him jokes, nor see him use his bow for fun rather than war. His favorite dish, his favorite season – both would remain a mystery, and Naima could only guess about his favorite color – green.
So many little things she'd missed out on, so many moments worth living…they were lost to her forever, as was Legolas…
…All of it because she hadn't listened.
oOoOoOo
Naima refused to ever dream again.
Be it the gentle dreams of sails and shores, or the now overwhelming dreams involving Legolas' life, she would rather her sleep remained empty, confined to its simplest purpose: to let her mind rest so that the body could function for another day.
Function – that was Naima's own purpose now, for as long as she lived. Function, think, act – all with one goal, to prevent Azog and his Master from ever setting foot to Earth.
Wiping her runny nose on her sleeve, Naima untied the strings that tied the pouch to her belt and pulled out the generator. The level of isotope hadn't diminished, the puncture obstructed by a crust of dried liquid. Under different circumstances, Naima would've rejoiced, but now, as long as the instrument was in a state allowing for repairs, the risk of Azog using it was too great.
She had to destroy it, but how?
The stones that paved the ground were too heavy to lift, too closely set to dislodge with nothing but her fingers; all Naima managed was to break a nail, cursing profusely in the darkness as she sucked on the throbbing appendage and contemplated her other options. Had the alloy that composed the hull not been specifically designed to withstand pressure, she could've tried to smash it against the wall. All she could hope to achieve, however, was a great deal of noise that would attract the attention of any orc in the vicinity.
A no-go, then.
The window faced the mountain, too narrow for Naima to see whether a parapet ran below where the generator could land, should she decide to chuck it out. Azog's sheer luck was infuriating; he'd left her with the device without even knowing she could've used to escape, and yet she couldn't, simply because the damn thing was just the right degree of broken to refuse to work precisely when Naima needed it to.
Tired and frustrated, she slumped against the wall, huddling in a dark corner as she cradled her misery. If she didn't manage to destroy the generator, Azog would win. If she did succeed, however, he'd kill her in the worst of ways to punish her for his failure.
A lose-lose situation if Naima ever saw one.
A better scientist would've managed to mend the generator and return home to warn his peers about the threat the Master posed; no doubt that such a feat was well within Finley's abilities, while he still lived, but fate had decided to keep Naima instead. A better scientist would've found a way to circumvent the need for an energy source altogether, to bend the laws of physics to his will, drawing equations like so many magic spells.
But the laws of physics were as unyielding as the cliff the fortress stood upon, unlikely to change simply because Naima wished them to. To open a portal strong enough to transport her mass from one point to another, she needed energy, period. The generator had been built to use the least space-consuming form of it – nuclear power, condensed in the form of an isotope. Without any source of light or heat, the other forms were also beyond her reach.
She may as well jump on it with both feet and hope it worked.
Jump on it….
Naima gaped, raising her head to contemplate the ceiling as the thoughts formed in her mind. Not light, not heat nor radiation, then. But what about speed?
Driven by an intense urge to write it down and check her hypothesis, she crawled towards the window, where the floor lay covered in a thin layer of snow blown in by the wind. Beneath the snow, the stone was flat and white with frost.
Eklund's equation was as deceptively simple as it was elegant, composed of two parts that outbalanced each other in their purpose to shed light upon the principle of portal activation. On one side, the resulting intensity, and on the other….
Scribbling frantically on the frost with the tip of a small stone, Naima muttered to herself as she wrote, uncaring for the cold that seeped into her hand and knees. The energy required was a combination of both the input power and the speed of the object to be transported. In everyday use, the latter tended towards zero and the former was dispensed by the isotope.
Quickly estimating the amount of energy that could still be provided by the traces of cobalt inside the chamber, Naima determined that a small, albeit weak portal, could be generated no matter what. She inverted the equation to calculate the speed required for effective travel, before sitting back on her heels to contemplate the results of her work.
Fifty meters per second – slightly less than the speed that any object reached during a free fall. A speed achievable if one was to, say, jump off a mountain towards a portal lying below.
The person in question would have to show a great trust in her calculations, and a greater even trust in the state of the generator, and yet who was Naima if not an explorer? Why dare step into the unknown, yet fear to meet it at full speed?
Dusting off her hands on her thighs, Naima looked around her, then to the narrow slit that pierced the wall in front of her. All she could hope to squeeze through such an opening was an arm, perhaps a foot and two-thirds of a calf, but no more.
She had to find another way to escape her cell.