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Anemosi was watching the battle impassively from a hidden window near the secret room she had prepared with Gandalf. Sam could not watch the violence, and he had been forced to leave her side almost immediately as the bloodshed nearly made him vomit. Aragorn had tried to draw her away, but guilt over her impending departure held her to the window.

When she saw the goblins, she screamed, her voice shattering the tension.

"No!" Aragorn whirled from his place down the hall to see her scrabbling to crawl out the window.

"Anemosi!" He barely grabbed a slender ankle before she had escaped. "You cannot go!"

"I must, you fool! Let me go!" She struggled wildly, twisting in his grip. "I must help them!"

"Lady!" Gandalf's voice made her freeze. "It is almost ready; there is no turning back now!" She looked at him with such sorrow and pain in her eyes that the old wizard stopped. Merry's brow creased as he watched her allow herself to be pulled back into the room. What was this "it" Gandalf had mentioned? He was about to ask when a peculiar light came into Anemosi's eyes, and she turned back to the window.

"If I cannot join them, I will summon others who can!" Without warning, she ripped Legolas' dagger from where it hung at his waist and slashed her wrist with it. Sam cried out and ran to her side, but she barely flinched, and gathered up the luminous blood in her hand and scattered it out the window on the wind.

"Riut tjojullé!" she shouted, and within seconds an answering rumble echoed from the rainbow foliage of Ré-Nancet. She smiled grimly as she gripped her bleeding arm to stop the flow of blood. "They are coming!"

*They?* thought Pippin in confusion, but just as he was opening his mouth to speak, a roar slammed heavily against his ears, almost knocking him backwards with percussive force. The ground below them, where the battle still raged, exploded in a shower of earth, blowing orcs and goblins to pieces as the great beasts of dark shadows, the Shadok, clambered out to aid the fey.

Merry felt a chill winding up his spine as he saw the creatures that had carried him to Siobhangé that long-ago night as he lay swimming in pain. In the light, their true form became apparent: silky-pelted, with narrow heads and spindly legs that ended in three-clawed paws. Unlike the wargs, these beasts had more weapons than just claws and teeth; they had their own potent magic, allowing them to disappear and reappear within seconds in different places. The seemingly fragile limbs had the strength of mithril, and the Shadok made short work of the goblins that had survived their explosive arrival.

The tide of battle had yet again turned, but the Fellowship was grew afraid when they heard the sounds of combat entering the palace. Anemosi turned to Gandalf with wide eyes.

"Is it ready?"

Gandalf shook his shaggy head as he ran his hands over the door to the secluded room. "Not yet..."

Anemosi roared in frustration. "We have no time!" Leaving her place by the window, she shoved Gandalf out of the way, despite the huge difference in sizes, and slammed her hands against the door. "It must be ready!"

She began to chant, her voice rising and falling in a cadence that pulsed in all their hearts. Her eyes darkened and the glow of her skin seemed to fade as she poured all of her power into readying whatever lay behind the door.

Sam watched in impotent horror as she drained herself, forcing herself to eject all her energy into the secrets behind the door. Her voice was lost in the tumult as the agent behind the door awoke and started to move, pressing against the door and struggling to be freed. Below them, the floor was shaking as the battle moved inward and up within the palace.

All other sounds were lost as the now-familiar shriek of the Nazgul split the air the Fellowship breathed. Frodo gripped the Ring in a freezing cold hand, hoping with all his being that Anemosi's work was finished before the Ringwraiths arrived, but the more of herself that she put into her workings behind the door, the more it seemed to need.

Sam could take no more of watching her suffer and with a groan he forced his way through the maelstrom of power that flowed around her and tried to pull her away from the door. Locking strong arms around Anemosi's waist he pulled, but as he watched, her fingertips grew into the surface of the door as if her fingers were roots to a silver plant. She screamed in pain before the contact broke, and she fell back into his arms, panting and sobbing as she turned to look at Gandalf.

"Now, Gandalf! We have to go now! They tried to stop me...they nearly broke me!" Gandalf's lips parted in protest, but the sounds of battle were too close, and the shrieks of the Nazgul seemed to come from behind him. He heaved himself to the door, grasped the handle, and pulled it open.