Disclaimer: You recognize it, I don't own it.
A/N: YAY! Last chapter done! I have quite a flair with chater titles, don't I? *gag* Now, to cite where everything comes from, right? Subtle Knife- His Dark Materials, Will and Word- David Edding's series, The pointing thingy- Xanth, Changing people's species-Eldarion's imagination, The staff with and orb on it-Louise's imagination. Someone bug her to finish that comic, all right? Anyway, on with the story, and sorry it's so long.
Liz awoke in a place that was nothing like she thought it would be. She was in a bed in a stone room with a desk situated at the far wall with a wooden chair. The room was otherwise very plain besides the bed and desk, except for the window which showed out into a garden which might be part of a courtyard.
Still tired, but having the feeling that she had already slept long enough, she got out of the bed, stretched out her limbs, and went to the door. From the other side, however, she heard an odd conversation which might concern her, and she was beginning to wonder if everything people talked about concerned her in some way.
"I believe it would be wise to not enter her room without consulting her first," an oddly familiar voice warned. But it couldn't have been, she wasn't still-
"Gandalf, she has not awoken for a week," a new voice countered. "It is not likely that she will have suddenly decided to do so now. I do believe that you are being unreasonable."
"Perhaps n'uma," Liz said, emerging from what she figured to be her new room. "Why amin naa here, by the way?"
"I believe I shall let Valuindur tell you why you are here," Gandalf said distractedly. "I believe trouble is afoot elsewhere and it will not want to be abated without the right persuasion." He left down the hall, leaving Liz as confused as ever.
"Essalle Valuindur, I'm guessing," Liz said, trying to get everything in it's right place in her mind. The elf before her stood tall and self important at the moment, a façade most likely for Gandalf that he would give up in a moment. Traditional elven braids weaved through his long light brown hair and his eyes were a cool sea green. With a slight grin she decided that all elves were good looking by nature.
"It is true after all," he said triumphantly. "You have no distinction between one language and the next. I am Valuindur, formerly of Rivendell. You are presently in Isengard where the order of the Nir'Templar Istar is being formed. You must have a great magical ability to have been chosen, you are the only female among our ranks."
"Tanya naa…. Nice," Liz said distractedly. She wanted to leave, to find out if anyone had made it back to their own world. Perhaps just a quick visit to check and see if any of her friends had made it back, then she could come back and find out all about this new order that she was to be a part of. "Namaarie for now," she said with a smile, and then disappeared.
Nicole awoke abruptly, her eyes snapping open in surprise. She knew before she had done so that she was not where she had expected to be. This was not her own world, she was still in the fanfic Middle-Earth; Minas Tirith, to be exact. And there was a small figure peering over the edge of her bed.
"I'm not dead, Eldarion," she said without moving, causing the small boy to jump and scuttle out of the room. She sat up and surveyed the room, finding it to be simple and elegant, like her old one here, except she seemed to be in a different wing. The wing of the Shield Maidens, if she was guessing right, which she usually did now.
Eowyn entered a short while later, being led by the anxious boy. Nicole smiled at his enthusiasm towards such a simple thing as her waking up, though she had probably been there for longer than the short while she remembered. "I think something went wrong with the vial," Nicole said simply to the surprised expression on Eowyn's formerly unbelieving face.
"We were beginning to have our doubts as to whether or not you would ever awaken," Eowyn admitted. "You appeared so soon after you had left, but none of the rest of the Fellowship has returned as of yet. Do you have word?"
"If I'm right and I've been asleep for two weeks, then they should be coming through the gates in a few moments time," Nicole said. "We took a bit of a shortcut and got there much sooner than anticipated. Liz, think then talk."
Liz had appeared from thin air into the room, regarding Nicole with surprise at her words less than a second after her appearance. Ignoring the odd looks she gained from Eldarion and Eowyn, she thought before speaking, though none of her expression was lost in that time. "You stayed here too? What happened? And what was with all of those voices?"
"Nothing went wrong, I don't think," Nicole said. "Remember- wait, you can't. Well, Galadriel said that it would take us to where we belonged. It seems that we belonged here and those voices were deciding that. Only Kathy made it back. How exactly did you find me here?"
"There was this guy in a story who always pointed to the right place no matter what. Amin can't remember essaho, though, nan'ta nae cool because that was about the luume' tanya Xanth went through it's whole…" She paused, looking at the confused expressions staring at her. She smiled, embarrassed, and stayed quiet.
"Eldarion, could you please inform your mother that our guest is awake now?" Eowyn asked. The boy left the room, still wide eyed and amazed from Liz's sudden appearance in the room, and practically fled down the hall to what sounded like a huge commotion being caused from elsewhere in the fortress. She smiled after him, imagining the look on his was much the same on her own. Listening more carefully to the commotion, and remembering what Nicole had said earlier, she managed to figure out what it was probably about. "I do believe that the Fellowship has returned."
"Llie ilnae back yet?" Liz asked, remembering to go through her words midway through the sentence. Pausing, she took a breath and tried again. "Sorry, they aren't back yet? We got there in about two days…"
"With a portkey," Nicole reminded her. "The full journey is actually a lot longer. Plus the problems travelling through orc lands without being seen. Besides, it was probably harder for them because of the civil wars that broke out over that last battle. And we will have company in three… two… one…."
Eldarion quickly entered the room, followed closely by is mother and father and a number of hobbits. Aragorn somehow managed to gape with dignity, while the hobbits simply gaped at Nicole and Liz.
"After all that-We forgot to get an exit from you-and you didn't even go back?!" Pippin stuttered. "Orcs-trolls-everything! And you're still here?!"
Nicole and Liz managed to hide smiles at their surprise, as did Arwen and Eowyn. "You'd think they weren't happy to see that we didn't fall to our doom back there," Nicole joked to Liz. "We stayed here because it was decided that we belonged in Middle-Earth, though Kathy did go back. Would you rather have me stuck being kidnapped by the government and the rest of them put in an asylum because we talked about coming here and I kept predicting the future?"
No one responded, partially because none of them understood what an 'asylum' or 'government' was. All they knew was that it was probably a bad thing and that they should probably have not been so against their arrival here.
"They would have put everyone in one of those things?" Liz asked, remembering to check her wording before speaking and recognizing the word. "I expected it for me, but everyone else remembers how to act in that world and how to keep their mouth shut. I should be the only one destined for a little white padded room…" She let the thought trail off, suddenly very glad that she did not turn up there.
"You would have been first," Nicole told her. "Then Janet because she would be heart broken over Legolas. Then we all would go through psychiatric evaluation and the government would find me out and take the rest of them away. Kathy wouldn't have escaped that fate if we had gone back with her."
"We're sorry," Merry apologized for everyone. "We didn't know-"
"Well, at least Kathy is back there," Nicole said. "She won't say anything because they'll convince her it was all a delusion caused by an infection of her wound and she'll more or less forget what happened.
"Hey, Janet's still here, right?" Liz asked with an idea swimming through her head.
"Yeah," Nicole replied. "She's in Mirkwood. Why- oh. Ask him before you go to make sure, though. And everyone else is in former Rivendell."
Liz smiled and turned to Eldarion, kneeling so that he could ask him. "Can Mithrandir karna edan e'a edhel?"
The young prince smiled mischievously, knowing that he was being listened to and it was going to somehow cause something to happen elsewhere. "Uma," he replied happily.
"Diola lle," Liz thanked before disappearing before their eyes, leaving the majority of the company in the room confused over her plans, and others who knew were smiling as though a great justice was about to be served.
Janet's eyes snapped open at a feeling that something was not right. For one thing, this bed was definitely neither her own nor a hospital one as it was far too spacious. For another, the room had the smell of one situated near a forest, which hers did not, and would not unless they had moved over the last while and she had not been informed. Granted, it could have happened, but she highly doubted it.
Sitting up and looking curiously around her she found it to be a room that had fallen into disuse, a layer of dust developing on countertops and empty bookshelves. There was a window just to her left, her bed pushed right against it, showing a beautiful forest that seemed to have an aura of mystery about it. Dodging between the trees seemed to be elves, but could they really be? Or was this all actually a hallucination because she wanted to stay so badly?
Coming to her feet, she looked around the room, touching the things in it and accidentally hitting her leg on the side table carelessly, emitting a sharp cry of surprise. So she was not dreaming after all. But that meant that she had landed somewhere different, maybe another world that she would not recognize. Or, hopefully, she had remained in Middle-Earth and could now be with Legolas. Hopefully.
Growing bored of wandering the room, she approached the door to leave when she heard someone come towards her. They were muttering to themselves in English, or Westron depending on where she was, about how they should just forget about this particular part of the establishment as it went to so little use and was only checked in on once a month.
Janet pressed herself flat against the wall beside the door as it swung open, and hid silently as the girl went to work. Once her back was turned, Janet slipped out of the room and into the halls to explore and try to find out where she was. The girl was right, this part had gone entirely to disuse and Janet encountered no one as she wandered.
"Janet!" a voice said from behind her. Startled, she jumped around to see Liz there, smiling and surpressing laughter at her fright. "So, lle stayed vithel."
"Liz, don't do that!" she hissed at her, though she smiled at the sight of her anyway. Her appearance meant that, if they were not back home, then they would be in Middle-Earth. She now refused to accept the alternative of some alternate universe. "And think before you say anything, I didn't understand that."
"Sorry," Liz said after a brief pause. "Just happy to see that you got stuck here too. Only Kathy made it back, and a good thing too. Apparently back there we were all destined for an insane asylum. Except Nicole. Something about forced government recruitment. Anyway, glad you stayed!"
"Same here," she said. "Always nice to know that we were almost committed. Now, there's a forest outside and elves in it. Is this Lorien, Rivendell, or somewhere else?"
"Mirkwood," Liz answered. As she saw Janet begin to brighten up, she decided it best to go through with this as quickly as she could. "Take me to the nearest exit, probably a window, and tell me why you love Legolas on the way," she demanded.
Janet obliged and started back to her room. Amazingly, her list of reasons did not begin with the fact that he was hot or that she had been obsessed over him since seeing the movie. Those, in fact, did not come into play until they were nearly at her room, her listing off reasons such as how he was great to be with and he would let her live her own life and have her own adventure rather than making her stay at home to watch children that he did not yet want.
The room had two guards searching it and the girl who had come into the room complaining about the section being abandoned looking at the bed with a slightly scared expression on her face. She looked to the bed, still ruffled from when Janet had removed herself from it and it seemed to cause the girl trouble. The three of them spoke to each other in elvish that Liz only vaguely now remembered; Sindarian.
"This place might have once been abandoned," she said slowly, making sure she got her words right, "but my friend has been staying there for two weeks." All eyes were now drawn to her and Janet and the guards looked as though they were about to take up arms.
"Come on, Janet," Liz said, taking her by the wrist. "I have a little favor to do for you." She leapt up and Janet came with her as they flew over the heads of those in the room and out the window. They landed softly on the ground below and looked up to give those looking down at them a smile and wave.
Liz began searching the forest floor for something and managed to find it as an alarm went up from where they had come from. She fixed a large rock onto the end of a branch that could operate as a walking staff, allowing tendrils from the end of it to hold it in place. There was a faint glow around it and it transformed into an elegant wizard's staff with a white crystal set in it which looked quite like the one that rested on her forehead.
"What are you doing?" Janet asked curiously as Liz turned back to her.
"Making it so that the King in there will have no real reason to object to you," Liz replied after a moment with a smile. "And so that we cannot be arrested when the guards catch up to us. They don't arrest elves for trespassing, after all."
"Wait, you're going to make me an elf?"
"Well, just physically and the whole long life thing. Same personality and everything else, except now you get to do a couple extra things like hear really far away and live in trees if you need to. Basic little stuff like that. You up for it?"
When Janet promptly shook her head no, Liz smiled and took up the staff. She seemed to distend with power and a strange light came about her. There was a soft and deep murmur from her and the staff moved in her hands, the tip weaving through the air in a predetermined pattern. There was a loud crack and Janet was engulfed in a burst of light.
The guards were upon them when the light subsided to reveal Janet, slightly different than before. She was elven now, a little taller than before and holding herself more elegantly, though that was only a farce for the time being. She waited for the reaction of the guards to decide if she had changed.
*You are both under arrest,* the commander of the guard said, looking at the two of them. He was however, quickly taken aback by them. *Was it not an elf and a human that made their way out of the window? I believe we have been slightly mistaken. Please excuse us.* Hurriedly, they took their leave, leaving Liz and Janet to try and hold straight faces.
"Want to see?" Liz asked, seeing the odd look on Janet's face.
"Yeah," Janet said excitedly. Liz managed to produce a mirror by changing her staff and making the crystal become the glass. Janet looked at it carefully, but failed to see it. "Umin edhel," she said. "To quote what you once said at the beginning of this whole thing. I don't look like an elf at all."
Liz puzzled over the matter a short few minutes and then realized what had gone wrong. "This spell allows you to keep your original soul, that of a human, and therefore that is what your reflection will show. Now, don't you think it time you finally met King Thranduil? Trust me, you'll do fine, and he'll get used to you eventually."
Janet smiled and nodded. "Thanks for all this," she said as she turned. "Fell free to come by whenever you want." Another thought occurred to her and she turned back to bring it up with Liz, but she had already disappeared again. With a bit of a shrug, she went to meet the king, hardly able to contain the ideas in her mind for proving the King correct about her wildness.
The Rings were 'conscious' in their own sense of the word for the entire time, listening to the voice that decided their fate ask, "Yes or no," to many who had no idea of what they were answering to. When they arrived in their destination, they kept their masters safe from the elements and creatures that would make them prey. They talked amongst each other, often about how nice it was that their masters had found an alternative use for them than telling the future, not to mention that they had kept them all together.
When the girls finally did awake, they at first thought that they had landed in the forest by their school. The ground they rested upon was covered in soft green foliage, oddly none of which had landed on them. They got up in confusion, looking about for everyone else and finding that they were alone here, wherever here was. They knew the forest well, however, and thought that they could find their way to a path easily.
And where do you all think that you are going?
Nenya asked them all.
Ignoring their startled reactions to the voice suddenly appearing in their heads in a place where things like that never happened, the Vilya continued. Thirty votes for you all going back, twelve for splitting you up and only one or two going back and then thirty one for all of you staying.
It's strange when you think about it, Narya put in. None of those whatever-they-were seemed to have any idea what they were voting on. Now come on, walk to your right for a while and we'll hit Rivendell.
"But wasn't Rivendell…" Leigh asked as she got up and began to oblige the request of the ring.
"Destroyed?" Ruth suggested. "Me too."
The three of them walked without saying much, trying to decide whether the fact that they had stayed here was a good thing or not. It was much nicer here, and much simpler, but they still did not truly belong here in their minds. They missed their families still and had so many aspirations for the future where they had been. Then again, here they would have a great respect and the power of the rings.
They came eventually to the remains of former Rivendell, a piles of ashes and toppled stones littering the ground. As they wandered through the wreckage, they found that the foundations of many of the buildings near the edges of the city seemed to remain intact and there were places that were merely blackened from the fire and not burnt down at all. There were a few three-walled houses that showed most of the possessions within were relatively untouched except by smoke and falling ash. The true devastation was only at the heart.
"Vendui!" a cheerful voice said behind them, quite out of place in their gloomy surroundings. The sudden breach of the near silence caused them all to jump and turn back to see Liz who, seeming slightly embarrassed by her outburst, was still smiling cheerily and had her hand on a staff. Oddly, none of them remembered that particular accessory from before and did not know when she could have possibly acquired it.
"English!" Leigh reminded her. "We don't know Quen… yeah, whatever it was. And where did you come from?"
Ruth looked to Leigh with a slight smile. "Well, when a girl and a boy love each other very much or are intoxicat-"
"I know that!" Leigh squealed, her hands reflexively coming to her ears. She pulled them away upon seeing Louise and Ruth so near laughter. "How did you get here? Happy now?"
"I just apparated," Liz answered, sure to think before she spoke. "Or transported, I'm not sure. I just visited with Janet in Mirkwood, but I woke up in Isengard less than an hour ago. It's been two weeks."
"Janet's still here too?" Louise asked incredulously. "Did anyone make it back? Nicole or Kathy?" Wait, we've been asleep on a forest floor for two weeks?"
"Yes, yes, Kathy and yes," Liz answered with a smile, counting the answers on her fingers. "Rivendell is different from what I remember."
"You remember Rivendell?!" Ruth asked, utterly shocked at the words.
"Yeah," Liz said slowly, both for emphasis and to ensure nothing got messed up. "I know the story of Lord of the Rings and the descriptions of Rivendell were never like this. I saw it too, in a movie, and it definitely was not in ashes."
Ruth slumped visibly as Liz surveyed the wreckage and began to go through her repertoire of spell potential to quickly bring it back to it's original splendor. There were many to fix relatively small damages without problems, and a few for larger ones that did not fall into this category. It was beginning to infuriate her to no ends at not finding something that could ease this, though little could be done with spells of a few simple words…
A thought struck her then, and a story that she had never come to finish for various reasons. But this could wait for a bit. Her stomach growled, soon followed by the growlings of the other's. "Food sound good to anyone else?" she asked lightly.
"Chocolate if anyone has any," Louise said. "Or anything else filling from back home."
Liz thought less than a moment, all of the possibilities still fresh on her mind, before an idea struck her. "Join hands," she requested, holding hers out. "I have an idea to get some."
Not quite trusting what they were getting themselves into, they joined hands and trusted to Liz to guide them. They hardly knew what had happened when they found themselves deep in the woods. They broke hands and looked around, oddly recognizing their place as the place where they had landed when they had first arrived. Wandering around to be sure it was truly the place, they wondered what had brought them here.
Liz's arms swung around, her fingers guiding her away to her destination. Louise, Ruth and Leigh followed curiously until she seemed to intercept an invisible wall. She held out her staff, letting it change flowingly into a knife with an odd blade of a metal none of them had ever actually seen before. It almost seemed to be alive. She let it pass slowly through the air at eye level until it caught something. She made a downward cut and a window opened to another world, one that they all recognized.
They peered through the back of the vending machine to their school where a group was gathered around it, anxiously waiting to get their item from the machine. When the window opened from Middle-Earth, there were screams and most of them cleared out as quickly as they could. All but one.
Kathy stepped curiously up to the machine and looked through to see her friends crowded around the window, trying to decide what they wanted to take. "You…" she began, but the words died on her lips, not knowing how to respond to seeing them again.
"Kathy! You're better, I see," Liz observed, though she wasn't quite sure if a cast and crutches were any improvement to the staff and hobbling. "How is everything over here?"
"It's been a week and reporters are still trying to figure out what happened to you guys," she informed them. She went on to tell them about all of the theories about aliens and kidnappers she had been hearing. "You're still over there. What happened, didn't it work?"
"It worked," Liz tried to explain. "We all ended up where we belonged. We just belong back here, apparently. So, how's everything else? How long were we gone for?"
"Four months I think, but I know we were there for nearly a year," Kathy replied after a studied silence. "And you are still gone. No one believes what I'm telling them, even though they keep asking what happened."
"Don't even bother," Louise told her. "No one's going to believe that we got pulled into a fanfic world and helped destroy the ring again. Just forget about us and don't tell anyone anymore."
"Now, I think we have all we need," Ruth said cheerily, taking the last of the items out of the vending machine. Time for us to go back to former Rivendell. Bye Kathy, tell our parents we miss them."
With that, Liz closed up the window, not a trace left. Kathy stared at the space at the back of the machine, not sure what to think about what had just happened, but sure to follow their advice of not telling anyone further. She heard the sound of footsteps approaching and hobbled out as quickly as she could.
Liz smiled back at her friends, who focused now on the horde and tried to forget the opportunities that had just opened up for them. Liz went to pick one of the more colorful packages up curiously and found that her wrist was promptly caught in Leigh's hold. "What happened to your fingers?" she demanded.
Indeed, her pinkie and ring finger on her left hand had disappeared. She knew why full well and let the knife change into the staff again, her fingers promptly fading back into existence. "Side effect," she explained simply. "We should get back to Rivendell, I think I can get it back if I really try."
They made their way back the same way they had come, by teleportation, finding themselves just at the outskirts of the city. With a shakily confident smile, Liz stuck her staff into the ground before her and took a few steps back, taking calming breaths and gathering her will. Nearly a minute later, after the bearers of the ring had dissolved into chatter, she let out a loud command of, "Rebuild!"
The effect was immense and loud to those with magic. The sound of the magic was deafening and Louise, Leigh and Ruth had to cover the ears to save their hearing. Far away at Isengard, they knew from the noise that something big was happening elsewhere and that someone would soon be sent to investigate the matter if someone was not already there.
Rivendell itself came together, the ashes forming strong wood and anything needed to build it simply came. In moments the rubble and ash that had been present in the heart was replaced with great monuments that were once there. It was almost as though nothing had ever happened, except for the fact that it was completely devoid of life and the cheerful atmosphere that used to emanate from it.
Liz was nearly at the point of collapse from the exertion of the task. She stumbled forward and leaned heavily on her staff, her head swimming around in circles and making her dizzy. "If you need me, I'll be in Isengard," she said just before she disappeared from sight.
"Well," Louise said, a little confused. "That was interesting." She picked up a handful of the vending machine merchandise and headed towards the main citadel, leading the way for the others. They could wait there until the rest of the elves returned.
Liz woke a day later in her bed in Isengard. She got up and looked around to ascertain that it was not a dream. A new wardrobe for the day was laid out on the foot of her bed and she changed into it, unusual as it was. Her staff was leaning against the wall in the corner but it had changed. No longer was it simply a crystal that rested there, but an orb was held firmly in place by a tangle of metal vines.
She surveyed her room as she slowly went to the door, looking at every detail that she could make out. As she took her last look before turning out into the hall and closing the door behind her, she smiled and gave an approving nod. "Amin naa home."
A/N: Thank you to everyone for reading and reviewing. I hope you liked it and everyone go review and tell me how much you all loved/hated it and then go outside now that it's FINALLY NOT CRAPPY! J