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A week passed with nothing but silence coming from the forest beyond the city. A week where the tension was unbearable, and a week in which Anemosi and Gandalf were yet again concealed within the strangely aware room. Merry and Pippin had accidentally stumbled upon it as they roamed through the palace, and retreated back to Frodo's rooms in tears, where they told a stunned Sam and Frodo that the room had "growled" at them as they passed it.

Gandalf announced the seventh night after Lord Radik's death that the Fellowship would leave Siobhangé the next day. He did not explain how, he answered no questions. The only reply he would give to any inquiries was to say that a way had been prepared, and that all should be ready.

Sam was more than ready to depart; the atmosphere of barely contained aggression was driving him to distraction, and he was more worried for Anemosi than ever. Whatever great works had been performed in that secluded room were beyond him, but he knew how they were affecting her, and he hated it. Every moment they could snatch away from the others was spent together, talking softly and laughing as they began to piece together their new life in the Shire. Among the roses in the gardens, it was easy to forget pain and suffering, and he treasured the moments that he spent singing songs from the Shire to Anemosi as she curled up in his arms.
Time passed all too quickly when they were together, whether in the gardens or in her rooms, but their love only deepened the more they discovered about each other.

Others, however, were not so joyful.

Kerra was self-exiled from all those around her, moving in stunned silence about the city and avoiding the eyes of all. She avoided the palace as if it carried the plague, and Tasla found her weeping in her rooms at night, sobbing over the loss of Anemosi, and the loss of innocence.

The rest of the fey were in shock. The Nazgul were merely waiting outside the walls of the city, waiting for a cue to attack, and the multitudes of orcs around them were enough to weaken even the strongest hearts. The majority of the fey did not know that Anemosi was to go with the Fellowship when they left, and they would never know; if any survived the coming battle, they would believe that she had died too. It was a poisonous lie, bitter in Tasla and Kerra's minds, but a necessary one.

The hours passed like magma, both slow and deadly. At night, when even the renowned fey archers were unable to see very far into the forest, the orcs left the remains of the fey warriors who had been caught alone in Ré-Nancet, desperate to reach the city. It was a hideous sight, and one that Tasla prevented Anemosi from seeing. The Lady Radika spent most of that last day locked in the chamber with Gandalf, and the magic that spilled out of the doorjamb was a most potent sort, and any who were caught in its flow were changed in some inexplicable way.

The different tribes of the fey were involved in their own special combat preparations. Those from the city of Seciov, the legendary Flyers, spent the hours caring for the magnificent wings, made of radiant feathers that put the phoenix's plumage to shame. The Triamti, the infantry, practiced their hand-to-hand combat to the point of exhaustion. After all the preparations were finished, however, there was nothing to do but wait in the soul-sapping heat of Ré-Nancet.

A rustling came from the foliage, and a silent warning flew through the city. Everyone of fighting age was called to fight, with only a few parents chosen to protect the children, who were hidden in a warren of tunnels under the houses. The guardians of the young were armed, but for a different defense than the warriors of above, for they could not have been expected to last long against an orc horde. In the event that Siobhangé fell and the fey were destroyed, the children were to be placed into deep sleeps from which there was no waking them. No more of the fey than necessary would be subjected to death at the hands of the orcs.

At the first sign of trouble, the Fellowship had been taken away to the deserted hallway where the secret room awaited them. Anemosi and Gandalf had worked round the clock in a fit of urgent energy to finish their work that lay behind the door, but the hour for escape was coming swiflt and even their great powers did not seem to be able to complete it soon enough. Time was a precious element that they could not get enough of, and the time for departure was drawing frighteningly near.

The battle broke like a nightmare at an unseen command.

With a roar like the gates of hell opening, the first line of orcs smashed against each of the four Great Gates to the city.When the doors, great and ancient, finally fell to the offensive, a solid block of a thousand Triamti were waiting, their blood boiling at the desecration of the most holy of the fey grounds. The two armies smashed together, black on white, corrupt on pure, and their screams mixed in an unholy choir of pain. The Triamti carried with them the battle maces and axes that had thirsted for so long for the blood of the orcs; the weapons whistled in the air as they drove over and over into orc flesh. Despite the expertise that the weapons were yielded with, the Triamti warriors fell to the orc blades in great numbers.

At the very instant that the Triamti were weakening and the orcs seemed to be gaining the upper hand, the Seciov swooped with blood-freezing cries from the spires of the towers of the city. Their wings caught in the air, making a deadly music of their own as the flying warriors streaked down towards their stricken allies. The Seciov carried with them as their weapons of choice what were known to the fey as "perels", tiny spined spheres that burrowed into whatever surface they came into contact with until the victim was dead. The perels were deadly; just one could eviscerate an orc in the space of a few seconds, ripping them apart from the inside out.

Never before had such a defense been mounted in the history of the fey; never before had the houses worked together in such a grand scale. Now, they were fighting for their very right to exist.

The orcs that managed to escape the combined fury of the two fey armies carved a wedge-shaped path into the city, cutting down any fey that stood in their way. The orcs, being, for the most part, fairly stupid, began to believe that killing all the fey would be easy. Unfortunately, they didn't realize that the worst was yet to come.

As the orcs reached the palace and were preparing to batter down the doors, they swung open to reveal the most deadly fey warriors of all: the Vadik, those that had come to the aid of the Fellowship in the forest. Kerra stood foremost in all her violent glory, her hair braided tightly about her head and her eyes glittering with a fire that was an ancient lust for blood.

"Alii-noyre!" she shrieked in the fey tongue as she drew her twin, curved swords. No mercy.

With a deathly roar, she broke the line and dove into the orcs, moving in a blur of silver and crimson as her body whirled too fast to be focused on by any living eye. She had shredded two orcs into bloody strips of flesh before the rest of the Vadik had enough time to answer her battle cry, and then, the fey unleashed a nightmare of their own.

Concealed by the towers of the palace, the non-physical warriors of the fey, the songweavers, chanted chaos down upon the invading armies. Linking hands and breathing in unison, they "thought" death upon the enemies. Orcs found themselves heaved into the air by unseen hands and torn apart by invisible fangs. The Vadik and the Triamti were covered by a rain of black orc blood as the songweavers annihilated any orc they could get their minds upon. The Seciov hovered above the carnage, following any hapless orc that managed to escape the fury of the earthly warriors, and running them to ground with their deadly arsenal of perels.

Victory seemed near; the fey warriors were too powerful, even after ages of hiding away from the world, for the orcs to stand a chance against them. Fate, however, had other plans.

Through the ruins of the Summer Gate, a horde of goblin warriors, riding the slavering wargs, charged into the city. Their screams caught Kerra's sharp hearing, and she raised her bloody face from a shivering orc long enough to see the goblins descending upon them.

The wargs made short work of the fey that stood in their path, with the goblin arrows and spears tearing the Seciov from their beloved sky. The battle was well and truly tied, for even the Vadik were weakening, and would not last against the goblins and the remnants of the orcs.