A.N.: 'when you find italics between apostrophes , it's a though' **' if it's preceded by two asterisks, it's  a telepathic conversation.'

At the foot!

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Chapter Three: Dol Guldur

"The road goes ever on and on

down from the door where it begun.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with weary feet,

Until it joins some larger way,

Where many paths and errands meet.

And wither then? I cannot say." –Frodo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring.

 @ Dol Guldur, Forest of Mirkwood, December 20th of 3018.

"This place is cursed." Hissed Damon, wandering through the fortress of Dol Guldur.

The stronghold was hidden in the very core of Mirkwood, protected by the spiteful spiders. It had every evidence of being abandoned for long, but the evil still lingered the massive stonewalls with a foul feeling that invaded their delicate senses and made them feel physically ill.

"Tell me again why I hate fortifications made of stone?"

"Because you feel trapped. Right now, hiril Arien, I am feeling trapped. This place is evil." Damon replied unflappably. Their telepathic link made them feel twice as sick. The stone hall had lead them to several rooms, the later always looking – and feeling –worse than the previous.

"Do you hear that, my friend?" asked Arien.

"I hear naught."

"Exactly. This place is desert. No living soul in miles. At least, no human-like soul in miles. We have some nice little spiders not far from here."

"Adorable creatures. I wonder if they would invite us for tea." Damon stated with as much irony as he could manage under the given circumstances.

'We would probably be the tea.'

' O Lovely.'

"What have our rangers said? That the ringwraiths had been seen in the open?" Damon inquired after another lengthy silence.

Arien was looking at some torture utensils hooked at the walls with disgust. There were clear marks of dry blood around, and some bones spread on the floor. The smell was nearly unbearable. And they'd been there for almost five days.

The trip had taken a fortnight –they had stopped at some small villages to make discreet inquiries. So far the suspicion was the same any stranger would receive in the imminence of war. But the peasants had stated that Black Riders had been seen some months before, wandering around and asking where was the shire. But what, for the love of God, was the Shire?

"It seems the Nazgûl are something like a dementor." Arien stated.

"Oh joy."

"Isn't it? But Sauron had expressly demanded his minions to take care of the fortress not fifty years ago." Arien muttered, keeping her voice barely audible even for elven hearing.

"So fifty years ago this place was a strategical fortification -"

"The perfect place to attack the both Mirkwood and Lothlórien. And Rivendell is not too far away. After the other realms were taken, it wouldn't be able to resist a full attack. Hell, Lothlórien wouldn't be able to. And suddenly the guy just gives up and retreats? It makes no sense!"

Damon would have answered, if he was not once again lost in his thoughts.

Five days of investigation had taken them nowhere, except for the fact that Sauron had recently just given up the perfect fortress.

If terms of wizarding chess, he had sacrificed his queen. But why?

"We have to find out what the Shire is. And what, exactly, the Wraiths were so eager to get there." Said Damon, at last.

"Sounds like a plan." Agreed Arien. " and if you don't mind, could we get the hell out of here? This place is creepy."

"I think you could rephrase that, but I agree with you." He said, already removing his reduced broom out of his pocket. With a quick engorgio they both were holding racing brooms. "Where to, miss?"

"Hmm… I haven't seen anything close to unusual this side of the Misty Mountains. I guess we just have to follow the path the peasants said the wraiths went."

"That would leave us behind them all times."

"But we're faster. And we're wizards. If in doubt, hex the shit out of them. Or transfigure them into something like … like salt. And them we leave them in a river." She stated, very self-confidently.

"Bad girl."

"I do try."

"West them?" he said, the slightest edge in his voice.

"West."

'We'll be all right, Damon. I'll hex whatever tries to harm us, even if it means to blow the cover.'

'That's not exactly assuring. I guess it's just that I'm so used to being afraid of them that, now that I don't need to, it is strange. Guess I need some time to adjust.'

'Kind of weird to go west after running to east since the beginning of our society.'

'Yes.'

'Come on, now. We have work to do.'

'I don't believe we're actually doing this.'

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@ Bree, December 30th of 3018.

"We'd like to get a room for the night." Said Damon, taking the initiative for himself. They had agreed long before the departure that things would be easier if they traveled together as relatives, and Damon did the talking. Middle-Earth was just not ready to the notion of independent females, and as much as Arien would like to shake some sense into them, they were in a hurry and had no time to waste in revolutions such as that.

'We're kind of busy trying to save the world, here.' She mused, chuckling softly.

'Behave.' Came the stern mental command.

'Fuck off. I'm behaving perfectly well.'

'Language.'

'This is my mind and I think however the fuck I want. If you don't like it, get out.' She answered back, and saw the corners of his lips itching upwards ever so slightly. 'Slytherins. Why o why do bad boys have to be so utterly adorable?'

'Magnetism.'

'Now you're behaving just like Ron Weasley.'

Butterbur, the manager, looked at them in awe. One could tell they hadn't seen elves in a long, long time – and mortal men cannot distinguish the difference. The other people in the Inn – unusually little for the time of day (or more precisely, night).

Mortal men like to hang around in groups. They enjoy drinking alcoholic drink and talking of nothing of importance with friends at the end of a hard day's work. But the inn hardly had five customers.

'Weird.' Arien said again to Damon's mind.

'How so?'

'The pub is deserted.'

'And?'

'Mortal are always in the pub. It's their favorite pastime.'

'With so other things to do…'

'Prejudice, get off this body that does not belong to you!'

'Fuck off!'

'Language…'

" 'Tis was a long time since one of the fair people has last been seen. And here! At the Prancing Pony! Requesting rooms?" the manager blurted in absolute disbelief.

'Tell him we got lost at our party, that there's too many foul things out there and you didn't want to –'

"This is indeed very unusual for us, my kind sir." Damon immediately began saying, without even flinching. It was really good to have a slytherin with you in times like that. "However, we were attacked on the road and got lost from our party. I am not alone, as you see, and couldn't risk the safety of my dear sister –"

'Don't elaborate too much. That's the first sign of a liar, they give too much away because they don't believe themselves.' Snapped Arien to him, as her face gave nothing of the dialogue they were having to the stupefied mortal. Many other men started gathering at the inn, brought by the rumors of strange folk – the fair folk!- staying at the establishment.

"I'm afraid it has been a bit too much for her. We'd like to have some rest and a meal before we resume our traveling." Damon finished his speech. Gods, he was that damn good. Arien herself almost believed him.

And it was not as if they didn't look alike, Damon's coloring was a bit colder and smother, as his hair was burgundy and his eyes pale blue, but the basic was there.

Pointy ears, reddish hair and blue eyes. No reason to suspect they were not siblings. And it was not as if they could say from looking that Arien was a good nine and a half thousand years younger. Little details.

'A bit too much for me?'

'Shut up.'

"Oh, of course, your sister. We have a nice room over here at the first floor, or it could be on the grounds if you don't mind…" the man went speaking off as if he had lots of important things to say and wouldn't live any longer than two minutes.

"Could you get someone to take care of our horses?" spoke Arien at last. Butterbur rapidly commanded one of his younger assistants – a Nob or Bob or something like that – to lead the horses to the stables.

The room was clean, had two very comfortable beds, two wooden chairs and a fireplace, along with a small table where they found a couple of towels and some water for refreshment. The manager left them to themselves with the promise of dinner being brought up in half an hour.

Within fifteen minutes, the whole bar was filled with curious people who were trying to catch a glimpse of the 'elves'.

"At last." Whispered Damon in Antarian, as he fell noiselessly on the bed near the door. The other, next to the window, was Arien's.

"Get a nap. I'll wake you up when dinner is here." She said, sitting in a very old, very uncomfortable chair by the table.

When Nob (or was it Bob?) knocked on their door, forty minutes later, Damon woke up to find his friend already refreshened and changed. "I missed the fun!" he said in the language of Antar, and Arien stuck out her tongue at him.

"You may come in!" he said, still laughing.

The young man went inside with the tray, staring at them the whole time - he nearly dripped the contents of the trail on the table.

"Thank you." Said Arien, and gave him a silver coin.

"You should have let him kiss the hem of your dress, arwenamin." Damon teased, after the man had closed the door behind them. "Or better else, your feet!"

"You're hopeless."

"I'm a slytherin."

"Don't blame the house for your very own faults." She shot back, but with affection. Their constant bickering was a welcome stress-reliever and a funny way to pass their time. "You should go down there."

Damon arched one dark eyebrow at her.

"It would make the day of our host. And you could get some valuable information."

"How would I know how to behave among mortals?"

"Elves are not supposed to have much contact with mortals anyway. And I'll be guiding you from up here. Just don't take too long, you know I get tired easily."

"I could get a Comyn with some practice." He taunted her again.

"None would know the way, my dear. Or the patterns of behavior. So shut up and oblige."

"You're really bad, baby."

"And you love it."

"What happened to that girl you claim you had been? The one that couldn't bring herself to give a direct order to anyone without feeling awkward?"

"She had to deal with the Antarian bureaucracy for forty years to have the castle built. Then she had another bunch of bureaucrats on her backs waiting for her to make a mistake and at last, but not least, she had two queens on her neck. That must have given her some backbone."

"I better go then."

"Brilliant, Sherlock."

"What?"

~*~

Several hours later, a very flushed Damon enters the room at the first floor to find a very tired Arien. "They were here. Three months ago."

"But three months? They could have killed half the continent with that much time."

"They were here after someone called Underhill. But the men down there told me he was also called Baggins, or so said a hobbit that claimed to be his cousin."

"A hobbit? What is a hobbit?"

"Something shorter than a dwarf. Barlinman butterbur says they were quite abundant this place some time ago, but now they live mostly –guess where?"

"No idea."

"On The Shire!"

"So we finally found it! Where is it?" Arien whispered, taking a journal and a Dict-O-Quill out of her backpack. Damon started whispering, in Antarian, all the men at the pub said about the mysterious quartet of hobbits that came to the Prancing Pony a few hours before the Nazgûl broke in the city.

"Okay, so here we have it," she said, when Damon shut his mouth. "these four hobbits came in here, in the middle of the night, from the shire. Hobbits don't travel this far these days, and their coming was highly unusual. During the night, they associated with a ranger, whatever that is, had their rooms attacked by the wraiths–but they were not there; they had their horses stolen and left at dawn. What could we say from that?"

"They probably knew they were being chased. And one of them was positively hiding his identity." Damon ventured.

"AND the wraiths were after them. So they were something so important, Sauron had his most feared lieutenants after them. Even if they had to leave his perfect fortress."

"But these hobbits, they are nothing that special. I didn't had to feign a curiosity over the race, but all they told me is that hobbits are peasants by nature, they are smaller than dwarves, love to eat and have hairy feet." Damon protested.

"'Tis getting more and more curious. Where did they go from here?"

"The ranger took them into the wild." Damon said, and both groaned. A trail that old would be impossible to track down.

"And that ranger, what do we know about him?"

"He's known as Strider, but nobody knows his real name. He's part of a group that goes up and down patrolling the roads."

"They told you all of that?"

"Nay, some of it I had to read." He sighed. Mind reading is a tiring exercise, no matter how much experience you have; and even more when you're doing it to several people simultaneously. "Let's get some rest. We have till dawn before we have to think of anything."

And they slept, exhausted.

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@ Hollin , South Path, January 8th of 3018.

** Gandalf stood at Frodo's side and looked out under his hand. 'We have done well,' he said. 'We have reached the borders of the country that Men call Hollin; many elves lived here in happier days, when Eregion was its name. Five-and-forty leagues as the crown flies we have come, though many long miles further our feet have walked. The land and the weather will be milder now, but perhaps all the more dangerous.'

'Dangerous or not, a real sunrise is mighty welcome,' said Frodo, throwing back his hook and letting the morning light fall on his face.

'But the mountains are ahead of us,' said Pippin. 'We must have turned eastwards in the night.'

'No,' said Gandalf. 'But you see further ahead in the clear light. Beyond those peaks the range bends south-west. There are many maps in Elrond's house, but I suppose you never thought to look at them?'

'Yes, I did, sometimes,' said Pippin, 'but I don't remember them. Frodo has a better head for that sort of thing.'

'I need no map,' said Gimli, whi had come up with Legolas, and was gazing out before him with a strange light in his deep eyes. 'There is the land where our fathers worked of old, and we have wrought the image of those mountains into many works of metal and of stone, and into many songs and tales. They stand tall in our dreams : Baraz, Zirak, Shatyr.' (…) **

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@ Weathertop, January 10th of 3019

"For a trail this old, it wasn't really hard to find." Gloated Damon.

"You're getting so very full of yourself." Retorted his partner in crime.

"But it was! I guess it was because this road was abandoned. See : here you have the imprints of the horses."

"But the hobbits lost their ponies at Bree. So this must be ..."

"Either a group of travelers that have nothing to do with this, or the wraiths. Most likely the last, as they were in Bree that day and probably went after their prey." Finished the slytherin.

They were standing upon a hill, in the middle of nowhere, miles and miles of deserted land before them. Surely, it seemed no one had set foot on those lands for decades. The horses were securely transfigured on their pockets – the trail was too old and light to be risked with them walking over it.

"There was a watchtower around here somewhere." Arien said.

"Well, there had been nothing here for quite some time, I'd say. If I didn't know you were here three thousand years ago, I'd say you were hallucinating!"

"I haven't come here, my mother told me about the Tower of Amon Sûr."

"You mean ... that ruin over there?" Damon pointed at what could or could not have been a building some millennia ago.

"There's only one way to find out." She said, running up to the ruins.

There. The ruins of Amon Sûr had plenty of trail to read. Footsteps imprinted on the dusky ground, leftovers of a unfinished meal – rotten - , a campfire, and even some inscriptions on the ground.

"Damon! Over here!" the she-elf cried.

Together they ruminated about the signs before them. An elfish letter, a cirth, the equivalent of the Westron for G, followed by 3 risks. Not far from there they found marks of someone crawling on the ground, and dried blood.

"This is not pretty." Whispered Damon.

"Do you think he died?" her voice was barely a whisper, as if the wraiths were still around, ready to jump on them.

"He might have. Seems like a rather naughty wound for me. See the blood?" he ran his fingers one inch above the marks. "these footsteps are chaotic. But it may be a fair guess to say they took the wounded guy - a hobbit, as we can still see the footsteps of the mortal here."

"They are all mortals, Damon. And for all that we know, we may be as well."

"I used to believe that. But I lost that faith a long ago. When my parents stood healthy and ever-young many thousand years after what it was considered the age we'd die. Do you think it may have been a revenge from the elves? To torture us like that?"

"Mom would never do anything like that with us. She was really scared because of that."

"She may not have known. She may have believed it."

"She did believe it. Everybody did - she was Comyn, Damon. She'd know if it was just a plot."

"She was a Comyn! Tell me more about it."

"Damon! - tracks, blood, wraiths, hello?" she sang, annoyed. Damon understood and walked along the tracks, going to the far end of the platform, where he looked ahead to the meadow.

"Do you know what's the only place where they could have seek refuge?"

"Let me check my map." She said, grabbing her bag. Damon did not wait.

"Rivendell."

"Fuck!"

"Exactly. We can't go there."

"What if…" Arien wondered, her voice with a far-away quality that indicated she was thinking.

"What if what?" urged Damon.

"Storms."

"What does that mean?"

"That means we are going to Rivendell." She said, with an air of defiance that used to get the ruling board of Antar on their guards. Damon knew it couldn't be anything good.

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@ Rhudaur valleys, borders of Rivendell, January 20th

Rain poured from the sky as if an invisible deity was throwing whole bucks full of icy water down on earth. Now and then thunders roared and lightning bolts illuminated the dark-gray firmament. Every wild creature was safely hidden in their lairs.

"Handy trick, that one. How come you never taught us?" said Damon, wet to his bones. The ice-cold wind didn't help much to their comfort, but they went ahead on the road nevertheless. On horses –they didn't want to risk an elf looking at them on brooms, no matter how unlikely the possibility was.

"I didn't learn this one at Hogwarts, it's something I just do from time to time, when I'm very, very sad."

"Creepy. But we are most likely destroying the tracks."

"I know. But that's the best I could come up with." She retorted, angrily.

Searching a trail in an elven realm wasn't easy – and it was even harder when there was a storm pouring down, and the trail was supposed to be many months old. The renegades were aware they could not linger – the elven lord would definitely be suspicious by now, if he was not absolutely sure. There would be search parties soon.

"Come here, leroni!" cried Damon, and Arien urged her horse near the renegade.

A pin. A pin from a horse shoe. they have left that way.

"Where does this road go?" she asked.

"This is no road. There's nothing on these lands, but the Misty mountains on the east."

"Back to where we started. Just great."

"Let's follow the path. You'll need to stop this storm, if we have any chance of seeing anything." He argumented.

"Okay then." She said, and immediately the storm began to fade, slowly. "but we have to hurry. In a couple of hours, this plateau will be filled with elves."

"So our little hobbits spent some time at the house of Elrond. Interesting." Damon whispered, talking mostly to himself.

"What do you think it means, Damon?"

He raised his head and smiled –a real lady-killer smile, complete with charming glitter in the pale blue eyes that made him ten times more dangerous. "Either our hobbits were equally as important to Sauron as they are to the elves, or at least to Elrond; or our ranger is very well-known at this realm and welcome to the point of bringing wounded strangers in, or both. Possibly both."

It was her turn to smile. "I see. That's why Sauron sacrificed his queen – and other people know of the importance of these hobbits as well. We have the rangers, and now the elves of the house of Elrond. Things just get more and more interesting by the minute."

"You know, I'm starting to regret our isolation. Seems like Middle-earth is a hell of a fun nowadays."

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A.N.: I used phrases from Titanic and MIB II (what a culture … Lol!)

** this was a direct quotation of the books. I believe the name of the chapter was 'the ring goes south.', of The fellowship of the ring. And also the chapters where they are at Lothlórien.

I may have overestimated their intelligence, but however , Arien worked at the intelligence department in the war against Voldemort, so I guess she's good with investigation and stuff. And Damon is a nine and a half thousand years slytherin. (does it sounds reasonable to anyone else but me?)

Leroni is a Darkover term for 'witch'. In the series it doesn't literally mean witch as in witchcraft, but as in rocket scientist- someone so brilliant she (it's a female term) can do anything through her psychic powers. Here it is used as in someone who haas great knowledge.