Author's note: finally!! A little bit of action…not much, but, anywho, the stage is set! This part begins with a dream sequence (as will many of the other chapters) from the point of view of the injured elf.
Summary: When Rivendell is awakened one night by screams, Legolas, Aragorn, and the twins are plunged into an adventure that very may well cost them their souls as well as their lives and prove how much their willing to sacrifice for friendship.
Rating: PG-13—for blood and intense moments…do not say I didn't warn you
Warnings: not for the faint of heart
Disclaimer: world domination is on my list priorities…but cleaning the house, feeding the dog, and making my dinner comes first.
CHECK OUT my profile to get the link for the TEASER POSTER that I made for this story…
Blue Eyes
By eck
The elves shifted uneasily as they looked up at the hastily constructed stage upon which Feralon was standing. An air of uneasiness seemed to fill the clearing where they were all gathered. They had no reason not to trust the black haired elf, he had been a well standing member of the tribe for years.
His father before him had been the first to lead this band of outcasts from Imladris, the then Eryn Lasaglen, and Lothlorien into the wilderness over two millennia ago, only a few centuries after the Last Alliance. When he had been killed in an orc attack five hundred years earlier, everyone had assumed the young Feralon would take his place.
But instead the young elf, just over a millennia old, had changed his name and left the colony. Word had reached the colony several years later that he had traveled to Orthanc to study under the wizards there.
Feralon had returned only a hundred years ago, four hundred years after the orc attack, and had quickly distinguished himself as a well known member of the tribe. The younger elves were drawn to his charisma and new ideas. But still, there was something in his eyes that the older elves did not trust. Something new, something wild, something deceitful, and something that spoke of danger.
Maruhir stood slightly to the left of Feralon. Only a century older than the other elf, he had been appointed the cora, the leader of the colony, after the abrupt departure of Feralon.
The elves were now looking to him as to judgment on the plan of Feralon. He swallowed hard. He had been a good leader and had garnered the respect and trust of the other elves. They would follow his lead no matter what he said or what his judgment was on Feralon.
The wind whipped sharply through the trees, causing the torchlight to flicker. The mellow lighting illuminated the evening gathering and casting an even eerier feeling among the silent elves.
He took a moment to study the tall elf that was gazing steadily at him, waiting for the cora to approve his plan. Dark green eyes, the color of the forest, seemed to glow in a translucently pale face. Long black hair, slightly tussled by the wind, was framing the high forehead, prominent cheek bones, and small nose. Thin, white lips were pressed tightly together in a semblance of thought but Maruhir though he could detect a hint of smirk in one of the upturned corners. It was all together a handsome face, but it also seemed to be a cruel one that Maruhir believed could look very frightening when Feralon was angry.
Closing his eyes, Maruhir tried to listen to the whispering of the trees but he found that they eluded the grasp of his normally attentive ears tonight. He cast his eyes towards the heavens to gather what wisdom he could from the stars, but even they were covered by clouds this night.
Four hundred and eighty eyes. Looking at him. Waiting for his verdict. Trusting him.
He looked over at Feralon. Something seemed dark and wrong about the elf but he made himself brush it off. He was feeling the threat to his position as cora that was all. His gaze settled on the three or four elves that were always seen near or around Feralon. They looked dark too, but again he brushed it off.
The silence was growing deafening.
At last he nodded though mistrust still lingered like a heavy rain cloud in his eyes. "We will listen to Feralon and abide by his plan," his voice was soft yet it still could be heard by every elf present. As he spoke the words, he allowed his eyes to lock with Feralon's, so it was he alone who saw the twisted sneer that broke out on the handsome face at the words.
The silence broken, the elves began to speak among themselves rapidly. Some looked happy with smiles on their faces at the turn of events while others look saddened or even frightened.
Feralon pounded his friends on the back and received the congratulations from his supporters with put on modesty.
In the clamor, even the elvish hearing could not have heard Maruhir whisper, "And may the Valar help us all."
Maruhir jerked awake from his dream, gasping aloud as his injuries screamed with the movement. Frightened eyes flew around only did he relax when he realized he was still in Rivendell. Leaning back against the pillows, he shook his head with undisguised mirth.
His father had been banished from her a millennia ago and now Maruhir was receiving the finest care Rivendell had to offer. He laughed aloud, not noticing how the sad approached the fringes of madness.
He glanced down at the bandages wrapped around his chest and gasped as all the events came flooding back. He closed his eyes tightly as the images of death shot through his vision and the knife that…
A door opened and a healer entered with swishing robes. "You're awake," said a cordial voice. Then the elf went to the cabinet and withdrew a bottle of an amber liquid which he poured into a cup. "Can you drink something?"
Maruhir nodded and hesitantly sipped the bitter liquid. "What is it?"
"Something to fight the infection in your wound. Rest now."
As the elf spoke, Maruhir's vision went blurry and he found himself falling into the deep oblivion of sleep. Normally he would mind being drugged in such a fashion but this time he was grateful. Perhaps the drugged sleep would keep him from seeing all the dead bodies again and again and hearing their final screams again and again.
()()()()()
"Lord?"
Elrond glanced up at one of the members of his guard. "Yes?"
"We found something interesting on one of the bodies. We thought that you might like to see it." The guard reached to shuffle through one of his pockets for a moment before drawing out a small leather cord with a silver pendant attached to it. "We felt something dark about it but we could not tell exactly what it was," the guard explained.
Taking the pendant, Elrond immediately felt his fingertips burn slightly with evilness held in the pendant. He forced himself to keep a hold on it, as he turned it over to examine it.
The guard watched him closely.
"You say the elf you found this on was dead?"
"Yes, Lord Elrond."
Deep in thought, Elrond continued to study the medium-size pendant, trying desperately to block the feel of the evil darkness that seemed to be emanating clearly from it.
It was simple pendant. No intricate marking covered any of the sides. It appeared to simply be a block of silver hanging from a cord. Except for in one small corner where something was written in flowing elvish script.
Bringing it closer to his face, Lord Elrond squinted at the tiny letters. When he did make it out, a slight chill coursed through his body as he remembered his conversation with the injured elf the day before.
Feralon…
()()()()()
Legolas moved silently through the forest, his blue eyes alert for any danger that might come his way out of the dark forest. His mind was solely focused on moving with as much silence as he possessed.
The trees whispered softly to each other, wondering where this child of the Illuvitar was going as the sun set in a beautiful myriad of colors behind the western line of forest. The trees' branches bent out of the way of the elf and their roots sunk deep into the earth to prevent him from tripping in any way.
The elf felt his heart grow weary as he came nearer to the bloody site of the murder. Irrational fear seeped into his tense muscles and made it hard for him to breathe at all.
The trees also seemed closer together, almost as if they were clinging to each other for comfort. Their whispers were no longer happy, they seemed dark and fearful. Foreboding hung on every branch and draped with every cluster of dripping moss; it permeated the air, striking fear in the heart of the elf.
Legolas was not sure what had drawn him to the murder site. Something about it bothered him, and he was not positive as to what. Slipping past another thick bush, he remembered the scene he had first come upon when he, Aragorn, and the twins had ventured into the clearing two miles out side of Rivendell. At first all he could see was the graphicness of the murder but now thinking back on it.
Now the trees screamed for him to go back, desperate to protect him from the grisly site that waited for him a few yards away. They screamed of the murder thir branches had seen, the horror that they still remembered.
Stepping into the clearing, Legolas was immediately noticed that someone, probably at the command of Lord Elrond, had had the decency to take remove all the bodies, instead a slight mark—not visible to a human eye—was at each spot where a body had lain.
No birds twittered in the air, the entire area had an air of forced sobriety around it. The wind whispered the cries of blood and the clouds covered the sun in respect of the area.
Stepping lightly, and careful to avoid the spots where bodies had lain, Legolas moved to the area near the middle of the clearing.
Immediately, he noticed that the bodies seemed more frequent here, closer together. Still he forged on. Then he found what he was looking for, the thing that haunted every nightmare he had about this.
A cluster of large stones lay spread out across in the center of a ring of body markers. Blood was splattered on the majority of them and a few of the stones were split in half by what seemed to be sheer force.
Legolas knelt down before them, allowing his skilled eyes to travel over them—reading signs that most would pass over as unimportant. Reaching out a hand, he allowed it to rest on one of the larger stones near the center of the circle. And then fell backwards as the stone screamed a vision at him, a flash of blood, a flash of light, and a face with frightened blue eyes.
He landed on his backside, supporting his weight on the balls of his hands, and stared up at the clouds desperately trying to catch his breath. His heart was pounding over what he had just seen.
Rocks do not speak to you, a part of his mind tried reason logically while the rest of his mind twirled around the vision, trees and plants and grass and even flowers speak to you. Rocks speak to dwarves, not elves.
But I saw it! Another part of his mind screamed back. They spoke to me!
Then a hand was laid on his shoulder
He jerked up, drawing one of his knives in one smooth motion. Spinning quickly on his heels, he flipped the knife in his palm and brought it up to rest on the person's neck.
Calm gray eyes looked at him. "It's me," the young ranger informed softly. "Do not fear, mellonamin." He reached up one hand to touch the hand holding the knife, rubbing it in a soothing motion. "It's me."
Legolas let out a long shaky sigh and rolled back on his haunches as he sheathed the knife. "I-I-I am sorry…I was distracted."
The young man gently smiled at the words. "Elves do not easily get distracted, Legolas."
Legolas forced a smile and a quick nod to appease his friend. "Which brings me to the question, Estel, why are you following me? I thought you were brushing your horse!"
Aragorn smirked in return. "And I thought you were taking a walk through Father's gardens."
"I was."
"Really."
"I just got…" Legolas hesitated unsure of what to say.
"Lost? Come now, Legolas, you can't expect me to believe that. You got distracted? That's almost as hard to believe as the first one." Aragorn shook his head at his friend. "What are you doing out here?"
Legolas sighed. "Something bothered me about," he waved his hand around to demonstrate, "this. Something just wasn't right about how all the bodies were laid and I think I was right."
Aragorn looked around the clearing. "I can't see it, mellonamin."
"Do you see how all the bodies lay so close together here?"
Aragorn nodded.
"Well, if you were to walk further in either direction, they are going to get more spread out. The largest concentration of bodies seems to be around these stones." Legolas watched his friend for understanding for a moment and then turned back to the stones he had been studying before. "What can your ranger eyes tell you about the significance of these rocks, Estel?"
Even though Aragorn was still a mere eighteen summers old, he had been trained by the best of the elves as well as some of the rangers that lingered in the surrounding area.
Obediently, Aragorn knelt and rested his eyes upon the scattered rocks. "It seems that they were all concentrated in the center in some sort of formation…" his voice trailed as he reached out to touch the stones.
Legolas opened his mouth to warn him. "Aragorn!"
Startled, the young man turned to look at him with his hands resting still on the stone in the very center. "What is it?"
His breath escaped him in a whoosh as Legolas stared at Aragorn's hands. "Nothing. I thought…never mind."
Aragorn looked skeptical but accepted the explanation. "It looks like some sort of explosion at the top of the rock formation caused these rocks to fly outwards and some to crumble inwards."
"Are you able to tell what kind of rock formation it was before the explosion?" Legolas had been able to guess all that his friend said to this point. He hoped that he would be able to deduce the form the rocks before the explosion for he had failed to do so.
Aragorn cocked his head to one side and then rose to walk around the rocks, pausing to examine certain angles more closely. Finally, he knelt back down by Legolas. "I think it was some for of an altar. Though I'm not sure why such a thing would be at this camp. Elves are not normally given to practicing their worships in the manner of sacrifices."
Legolas nodded in agreement. "That is true."
"Then what do you make of this?"
Eying the stones warily, Legolas remembered his previous encounter with them. Then he closed his eyes and listened to the warnings the trees were screaming desperately to him. "I feel something dark in the air and in these stones. The trees speak of fire and blood and I am afraid to touch the stones for even now I can feel the evil that they have known."
Aragorn watched Legolas closely, concern in his eyes. The elf was paler than usual and the man thought he could make out a little bit of trembling in the normally firm and steady limbs. "Legolas?"
The elf opened his eyes but he did not look at Aragorn. His gaze was directed towards the forest. "Let us leave this place. Something dark and evil is approaching and I have no wish to discover what it is."
Obediently, Aragorn rose to his feet silently, watching Legolas out of the corner of his eye.
Resisting the urge to flee the area as fast as his feet would take him, Legolas followed the ranger out of the clearing. His senses were alert, the slightest rustle made him jump slightly and heavy on his mind was the dark presence moving through the forest somewhere behind him.
The trees were moaning the dark presence coming, their leaves shivering in the slightly warm air.
Legolas himself shivered and urged his friend to walk a little faster.
But by the time they had gotten within sight of the city of Rivendell, despite Legolas and Aragorn's best intentions, both were in a dead sprint towards the towering gates.
()()()()()
The dark presence watched the man and the elf flee the clearing with cool, careful eyes. When they had at last disappeared into the trees, he slowly stepped out into the opening.
He stepped on feet as light as Legolas' and his blonde hair waved slightly with every step. Walking to the stones they had crouched before, he knelt and reached out a hand to touch them as Legolas' had done.
As the rocks showed him the images of fire, blood, and frightened blue eyes that looked like his own, he wept.
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