"After spending so much time in my care, I am surprised you have returned so quickly…"

There have been many tricks and red herrings fed to him here, in this tower, but that is far from the cleverest. He's not a complete fool.

He knows he never left.


Laerdan's sword is a burning brand almost to match his eyes as he leads the charge. Angmarim are reappearing almost quicker than he and the Rangers can slay them, but Lorniel is dragging him away from the battle and he can't quite see clearly.

"Let me go. I can still hold a sword—"

It's a strike against this argument that she's capable of holding him back, but that's hardly relevant.

"You dying would be rather contrary to the whole point, you know." His daughter's voice is low and intent with concentration, and it's this familiarity that makes his teeth grit at the memory years later. That Mordirith had gotten far enough into his head to copy Lorniel with such precision—

"I am astounded, almost, at your aptitude for learning… A productive lesson. You may look into the palantír."


He never knows, in the thick of it, that he is dreaming. The group sometimes changes, but a few are near constants. Laerdan, aflame with the fiery purpose that had driven as long as Golodir has known him. Perhaps Halbarad or Daervunn, panting a hasty explanation that the Rangers have made it through the barricade, that the siege is breaking —


"Watch carefully now. I'd hate for you to get it wrong…"

(Ten years, they tell him later. He knows better than to believe it.)

(Another it'd been only two, then forty in yet another. Once, centuries had passed and Laerdan was the only one to come.)

"Go on now. Your turn."

He never knows it's a trick, in the thick of it.

"Father! Finally— come on, it's this way—"

Sometimes it lasts months, others days or even hours, but it always convinces him.

Once, it'd been a year.


They burst through the gate in a stream of movement— building up to a force that seems almost invincible even against the trolls.

"Aim for the eyes!" A shout draws his attention, and Daervunn grins when he catches his eye.

"Long time no see," he says lowly when next they meet on the battlefield. "A little warning, next time?"

Reinforcements out of Esteldín save their lives, but they are beaten back to Gath Forthnír all the same. The caverns are nearly bursting with the amount of Rangers it holds, but many had fallen in the retreat. Halbarad's command group was trapped and decimated, and Daervunn now leads the men of Esteldín. He hears no more of light-heartedness from the man, but he is hardly alone in his grief.

Their location is known now, but with more people and the hope of reinforcement from Rivendell they hold the caverns yet. Any retreat to Esteldín will fail anyway, Trév Dúvardain have closed the passes south.

It's a long, desperate defeat. Months turn and seasons change, and one by one they are killed. News comes— the force from Rivendell was trapped in Nan Gurth, and if any now live no one knows. That any rescue attempt would fail is obvious.

(Laerdan tries anyway. His body is barely recognizable when the goblins send it back.)

At last they come out in force for a final stand in the far north of Himbar. They won't survive very long, but better a fall in battle than a return to slavery. It's Artain who says it aloud. Golodir doesn't speak at all these days.

The Rangers had stopped wearing their stars into battle a month ago, as their enemies had begun to take twisted enjoyment in stealing them. Those who still can wear them now though, and they're the only things well-kept about them.

(The first time the Angmarim had worn these defaced trophies, Daervunn had seen red. He fell to an arrow he hadn't seen.)

The fight rages on to the last man— literally. Forget one by one, they're falling in droves now. Areneth, who'd been newly sworn at their departure, dead before the passage's gate. Nethraw, who'd never been as enthusiastic a student of the sword as of lore, killed in the first hour.

(Corunir, a man he barely knows, shoving him from the path of a sword and taking it himself.)

It's him and Lorniel at the end, and later he'll think these moments the worst. Back to back, almost to Gath Forthnír again, fighting on the steep passage's slope. An arrow arcing down almost slowly to hit her shield arm and knock her off balance. It's not fatal, not even close, but she'd standing too near to the edge already —

Despite the futility of it, he's never regretted turning his back to the enemy to catch her arm and drag her away from the fall, even though it meant being shoved himself. He never hits the ground.

"Almost, almost… You nearly got away with that one. Perhaps if you manage to survive one I shall let you go in truth… Try again."

He wakes. He wishes he didn't.


Certainly he's never been the most diligent student of lore, but every Dúnadan worth his star can recite the history of Arnor backwards and forwards, and he knows the palantír the moment he sees it, and he knows how it works. Mordirith tells him anyway, as if speaking to a child.

"You do not believe me, I see, but look for yourself— stone does not lie."

It doesn't, but when you're never certain if it's real stone or a dreamed stone it doesn't have to.

"I can see that you have learned nothing from all my patient instruction… Come now, Golodir, let your lessons continue."

The infernal tugging with which Mordirith has been dragging him around all morning draws him forward now, toward the black stone on its pedestal. He glares darkly at it, knowing this for yet another torment the false-king has dreamed up.

The image is a blurry one, but clear enough to recognize. The main cavern of Gath Forthnír has truly changed little, though it is now lit with torches in sconces. The brief fear the sight incites is impossible to shut down, but still he ignores it. Of course Mordirith knows where Gath Forthnír is. There'd never been a chance of him not knowing. The people coming and going through the cavern are by far the most indistinct details, and he is not able to identify anyone he knows before the picture changes again.

The images are on the stone, in the stone, and in his head all at once, a war in fast-motion speeding by…


"You see, Golodir, over the long years of this age, many have tried to resist Angmar..."

It's always disorienting when he wakes. No matter how many times it happens he is always fooled, and it's always a shock to be abruptly dragged out of it. This time, however, he appears to have been dragged straight from one dream into another. He's aware of this one, though, so it must be one of Mordirith's ****ed 'lessons' rather than a false vision.

Before him in Carn Dûm's throne room stands a man. Tall, dark-haired, and with a noble bearing, he could be any stereotypical Dúnadan save for the inexplicable crown upon his head. The man is a statue, neither breathing nor moving, and is dressed for war, with a shield on his arm and a sword in his hand. Metharan reads the runes flaming on the sword's blade. They're outlined, as if to make a point.

He squints. The man looks nothing at all like Arvedui.


Annúminas, overrun with Angmarim and great hulking creatures he doesn't recognize, dressed in hide with wolves at their heels. Ram Dúath, the land they'd once guarded, a warren of goblins hundreds strong. A barricade had been built in the company's wake, an implacable wall he sees dozens of Ranger try to assault and fail, more dying until they at last give up.

Fasach-larren, and Aughaire, where the peaceful Trév Gállorg dwelt, being attacked again and again. They cannot stand long— not like this —

(A lone man, dark hair, grey eyes. Staring up a looming tower.)

The vale they had been briefly trapped in on their passage north, Imlad Balchorth as the company was calling it, is far more vast than they had assumed. Leagues of putrid corpses and fetid waters, and Angmari sorcerers striding amongst it all, calling spirits up one by one and giving them homes. The bodies of Trév Gállorg resisters and slaves alike are shipped in by the wagon load. An army of the dead is amassing.

(An Elf slips in through the defenses, once. Mordirith laughs as if the sight of him is amusing, but Golodir watches with bated breath as Laerdan enters Dolendath and is lost from sight. Days later he returns to Gath Forthnír with a few rucksacks and darkened eyes.)

Nan Gurth, the maze of canyons and wargs that Golodir has never seen in life, is a popular place for his captor to steer the stone's line of sight. Emissaries from the length and breadth of Eriador: Dourhands of the Western mountains, goblins from the high reaches of the Misty Mountains, and merravail from the dark caverns. All are gathering, and the massive army stretches the mind to comprehend.

"Legions are readying and some have already been sent. The Ettenmoors are all but mine, and the Lone-lands already are… Would you like to see?"

The visions are almost too quick to process, and half of them are places he cannot recognize.

A fortress in the hills, full of men who seem to be of Bree descent. They are fighting a squadron of Orcs who seem far larger and stronger than those he has seen. "Uruk-hai," his captor and guide responds.

Amon-Sûl held by enemies, with watch-fires burning on its heights. Firelight on a desperate face.

Trestlebridge in the south of the Downs, burning. Blood staining the floors in Tinnudir Keep. A war raging in a deep forest, armies of Angmar pitted against Rivendell's last defense. Riders in black, filing into a burning town. Goblins amassing in the marshes east of Bree…

"I have already won, dear Golodir. This is your last defeat."

The stone spits him out with a suddenness that sends him stumbling back.


At first he doesn't understand when they drag him to a cell not his own, but it's hard not to when the battered figure within is so familiar. "Oh, **** no."

"Golodir!" Laerdan's eyes widen fractionally, the rough equivalent of screaming curses on the taciturn Elf. "My friend, we thought you were dead!"

"Not at all," The masked bloodsworn chain him to the wall opposite Laerdan, just out of reach of the only other friendly being he's seen in however-long-it's-been. Despair claws up his throat with claws of iron, but the feeling is too familiar to be debilitating. "The only dead around here are the hosts."

As if summoned, the wraithly beast himself appears at the door. Laerdan's gaze narrows with utter hatred. "Speak of the devil."

Mordirith merely laughs softly— a laugh that high-pitched should be funnier than it is, he thinks sourly— and enters the room with a dramatic sweeping motion. His red hood is down today, but the full-face helm remains, sharp contours appearing distinctly pleased.

"Shall I do the honors, Elf-lord?" Mordirith asks, "Or shall I fetch my champion to do so herself?"

Even later, awake and lucid, Golodir still doesn't understand the vindictive glee in the words, or the stark white of Laerdan's face at the question.


"No."

He can't see, can't breathe, and he knows it's a dream but he can't—

Someone is shaking him, crying and sobbing and shaking insistently. "Captain," the person is saying. "Captain, we must—"

He doesn't care, and wants to say so. He doesn't care what senseless agony Mordirith wishes him to feel further, for this is enough, this is all he can bear and far more than he can bear. Choking sobs creep up his throat, and he is unable to say a word.

Mordirith could have killed him, could have killed them all and this would be over. If this had been real, the rescue would have failed and he could rest, finally. But the wraith has had the last laugh, and his triumphant words as the door slammed prove that he knows it.

This is a nightmare, he realizes, crumpled beside the cooling corpse of his daughter.

This is a nightmare, and it is not over yet.


"Where now are your words, False King?" Adrenaline has swept away the despair, and the burning grief now is driving him forward, not back. Dúnachar in his hand blazes with reflected fire, at once marvelously light in his grip and a grounding weight. Cold light gleams on Mordirith's full face helm and mask, piercing the fog the wraith has drawn around himself. The metal flashes and burns away with the smoke. For the first time, Golodir looks upon the face of his tormentor.

"I," says the crowned man from the visions, skeleton visible through burning flesh, "am more justly a king than he who sits before my throne."

It's reflex, more than any conscious thought on his part, that drives the burning blade forward into the barred face.

Mordirith falls back, not as a corpse will but as a howling gale that abruptly subsides. Golodir stumbles forward, catching himself before he falls. The raspy voice when it fills the room sounds breathless, almost. "Well done," it purrs, "but the light of forged steel is not enough. I leave you now… Perhaps, Golodir, we will meet again."

These ominous words and their like he has heard time and again, but now they have no hold on him and he laughs, foreign though the feel of it is. "Base coward!" Raising Dúnachar, he sees that the blade, though burning still, is snapped several inches down from the tip, having broken within the wraith.

The shout echoes once then dies, and the only sound is Corunir stumbling to his feet somewhere behind him. The taste of life, sweet and bitter and impossibly real, floods his senses, and for once he cannot taste blood.


It is hours after they have dragged themselves back to Gath Forthnír, hours after the sun is gone, that he is finally left alone. Laerdan has led him to his old room, but been called away, and now there is nothing between him and his thoughts.

The conflicting certainties— that this is all dream, that it is real — both have vanished with Mordirith, and now he sits cold and empty on the lone chair beside the frozen hearth.

"...perhaps if you manage to survive one I shall let you go in truth…"

He stays there long into the night, and sleep never comes.


metharan - a butchered translation of 'last-king', mostly because the ACTUAL translation of 'last-king' is 'arvedui', and i wasn't about to do that. feel free to drop a review!