Here is the second Macbeth chapter. Finally. *wipes forehead* that _took_ a
while! This is a bit rough; it will be fixed... Reviews are appreciated.
I'm not quite sure when in the story this is all set. I've seen both movies and I read the books before they came up with the idea to make movies out of them... but that was a while ago, and I was plenty young enough to maybe miss a lot, and I _know_ that I don't remember all that I should.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but Maria, Anaheit, and the idea Zarabeth being the goddess of the Sues. Why do I like yelling at Sues? I don't really. But it's part of the story now, and an important part, because it's going to cause the ending... Oh, news: I have a plot for this one. THIS HAS A PLOT. It's amazing. You can't tell, not really, but it's there and when it's over, I'll write it up. This thing would make a _lot_ more sense if y'all were telepaths, you know.
Anyway, what am I babbling for? Read it!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gandalf faced the woman in the elvish forest. Her beauty faded a little, and her face grew a line or two... in the dark evening, few woodland creatures called, perhaps not wanting to risk prompting the ambivalent anger seething between the trees.
"Zarabeth." Small lightnings no longer trailed from his robes, and the White Wizard looked like nothing more than a man, tired of anger.
Ravenhaired arrogance stood incarnate. No blond she, the now-goddess was not interested in talk. "Gandalf... What a... pleasure." A sneer made her face a parody of beauty, a risqué mask of contempt. "Girl." Anaheit started. She had risen from the bench, and was watching the drama in the center of the clearing warily.
"What."
"You were saying?"
Anaheit is... human. Female. And doesn't respond well to bitches. "Oh, goddess, I ask a boon of you." She's had three universes to learn to keep a straight face. Zarabeth is looking triumphant.
"Get your bloody ass out of this place, before I barf." (Credit due to ElvenRanger. That Elrond idea is _fun!_)
"Why, you!!!" And then Q shows up. Finaly.
%Hello, dear.%
A look of shock crosses Gandalf's face. "_You._"
%Who are _you?_" A bald man in a uniform not meant for this world stands glaring.
Zarabeth quietly begins to fade...
"Oh, no you don't!" Q snaps his fingers, and she is solid again. That angers our favorite wizard.
"Don't you touch her that way, you fool of a Q!"
Anaheit, unnoticed by the triangle, slips away into the darkness..
~*~
In a tree, Legolas stirs. He looks at a paper-thin "arrow" in his hands. Silently, he slips out of the tree and walks away into the night, his quiver riding on his back and his bow in hand.
~*~
The next morning, several things are discovered missing, and others to be in places they should not. For example: in the morning light, a well- dressed elf found a pile of arrows at the base of a chronically worried tree.
Silverware, engraved with precious runes of healing, was found missing from Elrond's table. (Healing. Yes. Explained later.)
Gandalf was discovered lying stunned on the ground, bruised as if from a fistfight and magically drained. In the same clearing was found a human, bruised, battered, and smirking. And since these are elves, it was one incredibly unhappy tree that led them to be able to piece together the incredible story.
~*~
Last night, apparently some things happened. First, the two men had a magical fight in another realm while trying to chase after Zarabeth. Then they had caught her, agreed long enough to imprison her permanently in a nearby tree, and then had a fistfight.
Both found it more than a bit ironic that, entangled in the roots of the maple, there was a bench of mountain stone, carved by dwarves in some dark hall many eons ago. On it was engraved the words, "Eternales Dormantes a Amour," which reads, "You Are Forever Asleep to Love." They were in a language that this world had never heard of, that Q knew from a starship captain's history books and Gandalf from one over-educated Mary Sue a looong time ago.
"Latin," Q said, before delivering a final roundhouse, "tells all."
The wizard ducked, rose fluidly, and toppled his opponent with a finger. "Poor tree." Then both fell asleep, and the night echoed to the sound of crickets, two sets of snores, and one sad maple with a crow perched in it.
~*~
A/N: The Latin is not from Macbeth, it is from my imagination. If I had my Latin dictionary, I would do it right.
~*~
That still didn't explain the silverware or the missing Prince Greenleaf. Or the fact that Anaheit was first missing for the fist half of the morning and then unusually quiet and well behaved. Not that anyone noticed... Gandlaf was being wizardly and Legolas was gone. Q had vanished and the crow had curled up on Elrond's arm and seemed to be having a grand time being petted by the worried king.
~*~
*flashback*
Hindered by the darkness, Anaheit stole through the trees, aiming for the dining hall. She had heard about the enchanted silverware from the elf children, and she guessed what they were for. Reaching the hall, she looked about, seeing nothing. She reached for the door... And a tree limb smacked her hand.
She muffled her exclamation to a grunted verse. *talking to trees.* "I'm trying to _help_ him! How far do you think he'll get without those damned runes?"
The tree considered it for a moment. It moved aside.
Regretting the wasted seconds, she searched hurriedly for the enchanted utensils, passing by a frying pan and an eggbeater, (a/n: yes, from the enchanted forest series) she found the drawer she was looking for. *Washing dishes is good for you.* She pulled out two sets of them; knife, fork, and spoon.
Out the door, she ran for the path through the trees that she remembered led west, towards Rohan. After a few minutes, she heard a noise. It occurred to her how _dark_ the forest was. *I didn't make the choice. I can still be eaten.* She stopped, and was immediately grateful. Slowing her labored breathing, she thought she heard whistling up ahead. It was amazingly in tune. She approached slowly, knowing that there was no way she could possibly sneak up on the prince while he was awake. Finally, after what seemed like hours, he stopped, and she heard the sounds of a camp being made. She sat down on the hard ground, determined to wait. The trees above her head whispered to her through the light pre-dawn breeze. Dawn was not far away. When she was about to doze off, a leafy limb descended to her shoulder and tapped her awake.
~ now... ~
"?? tired."
~ now! ... ~
She crept forward. Careful not to disturb him, she opened the prince's bag and slipped in the two sets of silverware. Then she sat down against a tree root and waited for him to wake.
~*~
Anaheit had crept back into the city under cover of the excitement of finding the two battered men. Most of the elves were off gawking at the bruised Gandalf, and with the trees helping her to remain undetected, she made it back to her little treehouse unseen.
~*~
*flashback*
Legolas was tired in mind, body, soul, and spirit. *Rohan.* Finally, the gray light of predawn and the worried rustling of the trees convinced him to stop. *Just a short rest.* He was unconscious almost immediately.
His dreams were many and confusing. In one of them, Aragorn rode at the head of a horde of men, as they passed through a forbidding door. He could make out words faintly.
"The Paths of the Dead."
"We shall be, if we do not ride it."
The dwarf Gimli, seated on a horse much too large for his stout figure, groaned. "I do not like these halls, Strider."
Legolas frowned. Gimli afraid of passing underground.
Another dream intruded. He was witness to a great mage-battle in some strange place... Mordor, it looked like. Gandlaf hurled energies at a bald man in an unlikely outfit... then ducked a levanbolt that could have destroyed him. Instead it annihilated the soot-stained tower behind him, and Gandalf smiled triumphantly.
"You do good always, Q! Your curse!"
He strained to hear the reply, but this too was fading. "Damn that Picard..."
Distantly, Legolas remembered the confrontation in the clearing, and wondered who Picard was.
He saw two hobbits and a creature deep in Mordor, staring with foreboding at lightning roaring ahead of them. He smiled as he heard Sam say, "Oh, I _wish_ gandlaf was here." The lightning hit a tower and it exploded in fragments. Over the wasteland, a furious voice called out, "Damn you, Jean- Luc!"
Slowly, he woke, and the urgency washed over him anew. Groaning, Legolas rolled over and tried to stand. A leafy branch caught him before, tangled in his bedroll, he could fall. He saw a young girl sleeping against a root of the tree that held him, and winced. He could _not_ explain Anaheit to Aragorn. *Neither of them would understand too well, I think. Mary-Sues are notoriously bad about that.*
~*~
A/N: the rest of that scene can wait. I need to get some other stuff down. May come back to it later.
~*~
Gandalf, if no one else, eventually remembered the problem of the non-Sue who might now be one anyway. *If she finds out, she may do something foolish.*
*Foolish? I can't, remember, I'm beautiful and intelligent.*
"I'm sorry, Gandalf. We have no more steeds. The girl will have to walk." Elrond was busy organizing a battle plan, and Shadowfax not allowing Anaheit within meters of him was a bit secondary.
"Ah, well then." Gandalf was hardly surprised, but still he had hoped... he would hardly admit it, but he was still feeling a bit drained from last's night's... battle. (author dies laughing)
~*~
Gandalf finds Anaheit carving arrows, with a bit better success rate this time. He decides not to mention it.
"Anaheit."
"What the hell do you want?"
"Do you still wish to be called by that name?"
"Yes." *Gandlaf the Grey, of the Misty Mountains and the Dragon. Great. Well, at least I know he's not senile.*
"Quite correct. Who _are_ you?"
"Here? Anaheit."
"Your life has been interesting, hasn't it?"
"May you live in interesting times."
"I have. And do."
"The Inferno is easily the most read book of the Divine Comedy."
"Do you trust me to transport us to my tower?"
"Hell, no. Let's go."
~*~
After a magical trip that bothered her not a tall and drained the wizard out of all proportion, the two talk late into the night.
"An adventure? I wouldn't be any help. Or at least not until I get some... sleep." (Author is flamed by all readers of Three Days. No, I don't mean it.)
*A Mary-Sue who would rather die than be one would be _useful,_ as long as it could be kept from her. "Perhaps you could be. It is late and we are tired."
~*~
Anaheit retires and sleeps the sleep of the sues; she falls asleep immediately and has pleasant dreams.
Gandlaf looks in on her room late at night; he is worried that she will steal _his_ silverware... it is similarly engraved, and he still has no idea of what she used it for. However, she is deeply unconscious, and appears in no hurry to wake up.
Softly, so as not to wake her, he speaks. "...And I another/ So weary with disasters, tugged with fortune, / That I would set my life on any chance, /To mend it or be rid on't." He wonders briefly why Legolas thought that his new mage-student was married to Shakespeare. *Perhaps she is.*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is more. There will always be more. A final argument with the computer spellcheck, and I'll give it away to your tender flames...
This is, at the moment, all that I have time to do. Errors pointed out will be fixed when possible, just like last chapter.
The references to three Days are marked by loud authorlike snickers... can't miss 'em. If you haven't seen it, go look! Admission free to the public.
I'm not quite sure when in the story this is all set. I've seen both movies and I read the books before they came up with the idea to make movies out of them... but that was a while ago, and I was plenty young enough to maybe miss a lot, and I _know_ that I don't remember all that I should.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but Maria, Anaheit, and the idea Zarabeth being the goddess of the Sues. Why do I like yelling at Sues? I don't really. But it's part of the story now, and an important part, because it's going to cause the ending... Oh, news: I have a plot for this one. THIS HAS A PLOT. It's amazing. You can't tell, not really, but it's there and when it's over, I'll write it up. This thing would make a _lot_ more sense if y'all were telepaths, you know.
Anyway, what am I babbling for? Read it!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gandalf faced the woman in the elvish forest. Her beauty faded a little, and her face grew a line or two... in the dark evening, few woodland creatures called, perhaps not wanting to risk prompting the ambivalent anger seething between the trees.
"Zarabeth." Small lightnings no longer trailed from his robes, and the White Wizard looked like nothing more than a man, tired of anger.
Ravenhaired arrogance stood incarnate. No blond she, the now-goddess was not interested in talk. "Gandalf... What a... pleasure." A sneer made her face a parody of beauty, a risqué mask of contempt. "Girl." Anaheit started. She had risen from the bench, and was watching the drama in the center of the clearing warily.
"What."
"You were saying?"
Anaheit is... human. Female. And doesn't respond well to bitches. "Oh, goddess, I ask a boon of you." She's had three universes to learn to keep a straight face. Zarabeth is looking triumphant.
"Get your bloody ass out of this place, before I barf." (Credit due to ElvenRanger. That Elrond idea is _fun!_)
"Why, you!!!" And then Q shows up. Finaly.
%Hello, dear.%
A look of shock crosses Gandalf's face. "_You._"
%Who are _you?_" A bald man in a uniform not meant for this world stands glaring.
Zarabeth quietly begins to fade...
"Oh, no you don't!" Q snaps his fingers, and she is solid again. That angers our favorite wizard.
"Don't you touch her that way, you fool of a Q!"
Anaheit, unnoticed by the triangle, slips away into the darkness..
~*~
In a tree, Legolas stirs. He looks at a paper-thin "arrow" in his hands. Silently, he slips out of the tree and walks away into the night, his quiver riding on his back and his bow in hand.
~*~
The next morning, several things are discovered missing, and others to be in places they should not. For example: in the morning light, a well- dressed elf found a pile of arrows at the base of a chronically worried tree.
Silverware, engraved with precious runes of healing, was found missing from Elrond's table. (Healing. Yes. Explained later.)
Gandalf was discovered lying stunned on the ground, bruised as if from a fistfight and magically drained. In the same clearing was found a human, bruised, battered, and smirking. And since these are elves, it was one incredibly unhappy tree that led them to be able to piece together the incredible story.
~*~
Last night, apparently some things happened. First, the two men had a magical fight in another realm while trying to chase after Zarabeth. Then they had caught her, agreed long enough to imprison her permanently in a nearby tree, and then had a fistfight.
Both found it more than a bit ironic that, entangled in the roots of the maple, there was a bench of mountain stone, carved by dwarves in some dark hall many eons ago. On it was engraved the words, "Eternales Dormantes a Amour," which reads, "You Are Forever Asleep to Love." They were in a language that this world had never heard of, that Q knew from a starship captain's history books and Gandalf from one over-educated Mary Sue a looong time ago.
"Latin," Q said, before delivering a final roundhouse, "tells all."
The wizard ducked, rose fluidly, and toppled his opponent with a finger. "Poor tree." Then both fell asleep, and the night echoed to the sound of crickets, two sets of snores, and one sad maple with a crow perched in it.
~*~
A/N: The Latin is not from Macbeth, it is from my imagination. If I had my Latin dictionary, I would do it right.
~*~
That still didn't explain the silverware or the missing Prince Greenleaf. Or the fact that Anaheit was first missing for the fist half of the morning and then unusually quiet and well behaved. Not that anyone noticed... Gandlaf was being wizardly and Legolas was gone. Q had vanished and the crow had curled up on Elrond's arm and seemed to be having a grand time being petted by the worried king.
~*~
*flashback*
Hindered by the darkness, Anaheit stole through the trees, aiming for the dining hall. She had heard about the enchanted silverware from the elf children, and she guessed what they were for. Reaching the hall, she looked about, seeing nothing. She reached for the door... And a tree limb smacked her hand.
She muffled her exclamation to a grunted verse. *talking to trees.* "I'm trying to _help_ him! How far do you think he'll get without those damned runes?"
The tree considered it for a moment. It moved aside.
Regretting the wasted seconds, she searched hurriedly for the enchanted utensils, passing by a frying pan and an eggbeater, (a/n: yes, from the enchanted forest series) she found the drawer she was looking for. *Washing dishes is good for you.* She pulled out two sets of them; knife, fork, and spoon.
Out the door, she ran for the path through the trees that she remembered led west, towards Rohan. After a few minutes, she heard a noise. It occurred to her how _dark_ the forest was. *I didn't make the choice. I can still be eaten.* She stopped, and was immediately grateful. Slowing her labored breathing, she thought she heard whistling up ahead. It was amazingly in tune. She approached slowly, knowing that there was no way she could possibly sneak up on the prince while he was awake. Finally, after what seemed like hours, he stopped, and she heard the sounds of a camp being made. She sat down on the hard ground, determined to wait. The trees above her head whispered to her through the light pre-dawn breeze. Dawn was not far away. When she was about to doze off, a leafy limb descended to her shoulder and tapped her awake.
~ now... ~
"?? tired."
~ now! ... ~
She crept forward. Careful not to disturb him, she opened the prince's bag and slipped in the two sets of silverware. Then she sat down against a tree root and waited for him to wake.
~*~
Anaheit had crept back into the city under cover of the excitement of finding the two battered men. Most of the elves were off gawking at the bruised Gandalf, and with the trees helping her to remain undetected, she made it back to her little treehouse unseen.
~*~
*flashback*
Legolas was tired in mind, body, soul, and spirit. *Rohan.* Finally, the gray light of predawn and the worried rustling of the trees convinced him to stop. *Just a short rest.* He was unconscious almost immediately.
His dreams were many and confusing. In one of them, Aragorn rode at the head of a horde of men, as they passed through a forbidding door. He could make out words faintly.
"The Paths of the Dead."
"We shall be, if we do not ride it."
The dwarf Gimli, seated on a horse much too large for his stout figure, groaned. "I do not like these halls, Strider."
Legolas frowned. Gimli afraid of passing underground.
Another dream intruded. He was witness to a great mage-battle in some strange place... Mordor, it looked like. Gandlaf hurled energies at a bald man in an unlikely outfit... then ducked a levanbolt that could have destroyed him. Instead it annihilated the soot-stained tower behind him, and Gandalf smiled triumphantly.
"You do good always, Q! Your curse!"
He strained to hear the reply, but this too was fading. "Damn that Picard..."
Distantly, Legolas remembered the confrontation in the clearing, and wondered who Picard was.
He saw two hobbits and a creature deep in Mordor, staring with foreboding at lightning roaring ahead of them. He smiled as he heard Sam say, "Oh, I _wish_ gandlaf was here." The lightning hit a tower and it exploded in fragments. Over the wasteland, a furious voice called out, "Damn you, Jean- Luc!"
Slowly, he woke, and the urgency washed over him anew. Groaning, Legolas rolled over and tried to stand. A leafy branch caught him before, tangled in his bedroll, he could fall. He saw a young girl sleeping against a root of the tree that held him, and winced. He could _not_ explain Anaheit to Aragorn. *Neither of them would understand too well, I think. Mary-Sues are notoriously bad about that.*
~*~
A/N: the rest of that scene can wait. I need to get some other stuff down. May come back to it later.
~*~
Gandalf, if no one else, eventually remembered the problem of the non-Sue who might now be one anyway. *If she finds out, she may do something foolish.*
*Foolish? I can't, remember, I'm beautiful and intelligent.*
"I'm sorry, Gandalf. We have no more steeds. The girl will have to walk." Elrond was busy organizing a battle plan, and Shadowfax not allowing Anaheit within meters of him was a bit secondary.
"Ah, well then." Gandalf was hardly surprised, but still he had hoped... he would hardly admit it, but he was still feeling a bit drained from last's night's... battle. (author dies laughing)
~*~
Gandalf finds Anaheit carving arrows, with a bit better success rate this time. He decides not to mention it.
"Anaheit."
"What the hell do you want?"
"Do you still wish to be called by that name?"
"Yes." *Gandlaf the Grey, of the Misty Mountains and the Dragon. Great. Well, at least I know he's not senile.*
"Quite correct. Who _are_ you?"
"Here? Anaheit."
"Your life has been interesting, hasn't it?"
"May you live in interesting times."
"I have. And do."
"The Inferno is easily the most read book of the Divine Comedy."
"Do you trust me to transport us to my tower?"
"Hell, no. Let's go."
~*~
After a magical trip that bothered her not a tall and drained the wizard out of all proportion, the two talk late into the night.
"An adventure? I wouldn't be any help. Or at least not until I get some... sleep." (Author is flamed by all readers of Three Days. No, I don't mean it.)
*A Mary-Sue who would rather die than be one would be _useful,_ as long as it could be kept from her. "Perhaps you could be. It is late and we are tired."
~*~
Anaheit retires and sleeps the sleep of the sues; she falls asleep immediately and has pleasant dreams.
Gandlaf looks in on her room late at night; he is worried that she will steal _his_ silverware... it is similarly engraved, and he still has no idea of what she used it for. However, she is deeply unconscious, and appears in no hurry to wake up.
Softly, so as not to wake her, he speaks. "...And I another/ So weary with disasters, tugged with fortune, / That I would set my life on any chance, /To mend it or be rid on't." He wonders briefly why Legolas thought that his new mage-student was married to Shakespeare. *Perhaps she is.*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is more. There will always be more. A final argument with the computer spellcheck, and I'll give it away to your tender flames...
This is, at the moment, all that I have time to do. Errors pointed out will be fixed when possible, just like last chapter.
The references to three Days are marked by loud authorlike snickers... can't miss 'em. If you haven't seen it, go look! Admission free to the public.