In Which Everything that Can Go Wrong, Goes Wrong.
(Or In Which We Wreak Havoc In Middle-earth)
by Mako Shadows
Diclaimer- We don't own Middle-earth yet, but I have a plan. First we'll give everyone nice rich chocolaty brownies, and then not give them Milk until they give us Middle-earth. Oh! Now why'd I tell you that! Now you'll do it before I can. Aaaww shucks!
Chapter Three: In the Mines of Moria.
~*~*~*~
Last Time
Real welcoming.
~*~*~*~
"Soon, Master Elf, you will enjoy the fabled hospitality of the Dwarves. Roaring fires, malt beer, ripe meat off the bone! This, my friend, is the home of my cousin Balin. And they call it a mine. A mine!" Gimli said as they walked into the pitch black unknown.
Mako was a little leery of going in the mine. There were probably holes and pitfalls galore that her sister would no doubt find without any trouble. Gauntlet always told her that she could take care of herself but... then she'd do something like walk close to the edge of a cliff. Besides Mako knew her mothering got on her sister's nerves.
Boromir lifted his torch up high to light the area and it illuminated a dozen or so skeletons. "This is no mine. It's a tomb."
Mako turned and retched, she'd never seen real live dead people before. Her sister never had either but apparently it didn't make her retch. Mako sighed as she wiped her mouth, Gauntlet did want to dissect a cadaver. Luckily for everyone Gauntlet showed remarkable tact and didn't start to poke the skeletons with a stick.
"Goblins." Legolas snarled as he picked up an arrow.
"But Lego that's an arrow." Gauntlet said.
"We make for the Gap of Rohan. We should never have come here." Boromir said and they started to leave the mine. "Now, get out of here. Get out!"
The Hobbits who were huddled at the door. Started to shout. Mako turned and saw that a giant krakken-type creature was attacking them. As the others rushed forward to save them, she reached around and grabbed her double-ended halberd off her back, and pressed a switch on it to extend it to full length, just as her sister went tearing by.
"Whaddya suppose it'll do if I poke it?" Gauntlet shouted as she reached for the bar of metal attached to her belt. Gauntlet pressed a switch and it extended into a full-length trident.
Mako and Gauntlet joined the fight against the Watcher in the Water. Her sister doing exactly what she said she'd do. Mako watched as her sister ran gleefully out to the monster and stabbed the end of her trident into its' eye. (Not the pitchfork end, the other end.) One of the Watcher's tentacles knocked her to the opposite end of the lake.
"Gauntlet! You idiot!" Mako screamed as she was dragged into the mine with the others now that they had rescued Frodo.
The Watcher did not immediately attack them, in fact it had turned around, distracted Mako thought by her sister. Then something came hurtling through the air and landed inside the dark mine. Aragorn pulled Mako back from the entrance just as the Watcher pulled it down.
~*~*~*~
"We now have but one choice. We must face the long dark of Moria. Be on your guard. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world." Gandalf said grimly.
"But what about my sister? We can't just leave her!" Mako said upset to say the least.
"We knew the risks when we chose to come on this journey." Boromir said.
"We didn't chose to come!" Mako yelled.
"Oh! My head hurts!" A voice said just outside the circle of light.
"Gauntlet!" Mako shouted as she leapt forward and hugged her sister.
"Get off Mako! I hurt!" Gauntlet said as she slowly got up. Mako looked at her sister critically. She was soaking wet and covered in grime. Dark bruises were already starting to form on every exposed part of skin, and Mako thought every other part of her body. Her eyes weren't focusing either.
"When will you learn you aren't immortal?" Mako asked.
"When I die." Her sister shrugged, picking up her trident which she had managed to retain during her adventure.
"It does not look as if she broke any bones." Aragorn said.
"I didn't. My bones never break. They're way too strong and dense for a little fall like that to break them." Gauntlet growled as she walked a few steps gingerly.
"Quietly now. It's a four-day journey to the other side. Let us hope that our presence may go unnoticed." Gandalf said as they set out at a fair clip. Gauntlet managed to keep up although she had a vacant look about her.
~*~*~*~
They came to a hole in the floor after an hour or two. They stopped and rested while Gandalf and Aragorn discussed what they were going to do and how Gauntlet was going to get across. Gauntlet solved that problem by getting up, examining the gap, and jumping it without warning anyone what she was going to do.
"Gauntlet! Why in hell'd you do that?!" Mako asked glaring at her sister.
"I wanted to see what was on this side. Besides Gandalf and Aragorn were worried about how I was going to get over, so I just decided to show everyone that I'm fine and don't need any help." Gauntlet said cheekily.
When they camped that night Aragorn wanted to take a closer look at Gauntlet's injuries. When he examined her in the dim light from Gandalf's staff he saw that most of her bruising was already gone. The only bruises that remained were the ones that had been a sickly yellow- green earlier.
"You heal remarkably fast." Aragorn said.
"I know," Gauntlet nodded, "it sucked as a child. I could never keep my shiners for more than a day. It's funny that way. I heal real fast and Mako heals slower than average. Does anyone want to play Go Fish?"
Gauntlet, Mako, Pippin, Merry and Sam played Go Fish until Gandalf took the cards away and told them to go to bed.
~*~*~*~
"The wealth of Moria was not in gold, or jewels, but mithril." Gandalf said as they were walking through the mine the next day. "Bilbo had a shirt of mithril rings that Thorin gave him."
"Oh, that was a kingly gift." Gimli said.
"Yes, I never told him but its worth was greater than the value of the Shire." Gandalf said.
"You've got to be kidding me." Mako exclaimed, "You value a piece of metal more than people's lives!"
"Mako, I think he means the worth of the Shire minus the people, you know only the material possessions. And on our world everyone values everything more than human lives. So talk about the pan calling the kettle a pot."
"Gauntlet don't you mean the pot calling the kettle black." Mako sighed.
"Same difference." Gauntlet shrugged.
~*~*~*~
"Ugh. I have no memory of this place." Gandalf said as they came to an intersection.
"Wanna play Rock, Paper, Scissors to chose which way to go?" Gauntlet asked. Mako sighed and hit her upside the head. "Hey what was that for?!"
The Fellowship sat around while Gandalf put on his thinking hat, which didn't look much different from his regular one. It was getting boring real fast and it didn't look like the situation was going to be remedied anytime soon. Mako watched as her sister gathered a small pile of rocks and fell back onto what was fast becoming her favourite hobby, 'Let's throw pebbles at Legolas'. Mako watched with interest as his hands began to twitch and he began to mutter something under his breath which sounded suspiciously like 'calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean'. Seeing as her sister didn't need any help getting herself in trouble, Mako looked around at the other members of the Fellowship.
Pippin and Merry were having a 'conversation', Aragorn and Boromir were sharpening their swords... again. Did they do anything else. Sam was just sitting around and Frodo was watching a pair of glowing eyes. Wait a minute since when was there glowing eyes? Mako thought.
"Gauntlet!" Mako hissed, "Do you see those eyes?"
"Huh?" Gauntlet said dropping her rock. "What? Oh, those eyes. Yeah I saw them the day before yesterday. Creepy aren't they? Doesn't make hardly any noise when walking, that's why no one else noticed him. I saw him when I was gathering rocks to throw at Lego. He hissed at me! Can you believe that? Hissed! At me!" She finished indignantly.
"Why didn't you tell anyone?" Mako demanded. Gauntlet shrugged.
"Ah! It's that way." Gandalf said.
"He's remembered." Merry exclaimed as they got up.
"No, but the air doesn't smell so foul down here. If in doubt, Meriadoc, always follow your nose." Gandalf said as they walked through the tunnel.
It was a dark tunnel with more than a bit of dust and Mako was sure that there were a spider or two lurking just beyond the light waiting to attack her. They were probably huge banana spiders.
"Gauntlet!" Mako hissed, "I think I just saw a spider!"
Gauntlet rolled her eyes and stood still, waiting for everyone to pass by her. As soon as they had she let her adjust and set off to kill any spider unfortunate enough to set up a web here. Gauntlet had no problem with spiders, she used to put flies and other bugs into their webs to make sure they had enough to eat. But her sister was just a little antsy around them. After looking around for fifteen minutes and not finding any spiders Gauntlet went to catch up with the others.
"Did you kill all the spiders?" Mako asked. Gauntlet nodded. If she had said there hadn't been any spiders Mako would still be seeing them in the shadows, but if she said they were dead she couldn't.
After walking for what seemed a year to Mako, they came to a stop. Gauntlet wasn't paying attention as she was scouring the ground for pebbles, and crashed right into Legolas. After picking herself up she muttered something almost under her breath that sounded like 'sorry'. Mako blinked. Her sister never said sorry, she had a policy against it. 'If I do something I'm not going to feel sorry about it, because if I do, then I know that I knew I shouldn't have done it in the first place.' Rather confusing until you ran it by yourself a few times.
"Let me risk a little more light." Gandalf said making his staff brighter and holding it up higher. "Behold, the great realm and Dwarf-city of Dwarrowdelf."
"There's an eye opener, and no mistake." Sam said awed.
"Looks real draftee to me." Gauntlet remarked.
They walked through the Dwarrowdelf chamber until they came to a room that connected to the chamber. Gimli let out a strangled cry as he saw the sarcophagus, and ran into the room before anyone could stop him. The others rushed in after him.
"'Here lies Balin, son of Fundin, Lord of Moria.' He is dead, then. It's as I feared." Gandalf said as he read from the sarcophagus. Gimli knelt before the tomb and wept inconsolably. Gandalf gave Pippin his staff and hat.
"We must move on. We cannot linger." Legolas said with quiet urgency.
Mako stood quietly near the Hobbits and watched what was going on around her. Gauntlet stood as far away from Gimli as possible, looking very uncomfortable. Tears always made her uncomfortable. The Fellowship listened to Gandalf as he read from the Book of Mazarbul. As the others listened to Gandalf read, the eternally curious Pippin, found something interesting to investigate. He turned the an arrow embedded in the Dwarven skeleton, and ... KABANG! It fell down the well, startling the others.
"Fool of a Took! Throw yourself in next time, and rid us of your stupidity." Gandalf shouted angrily as he snatched back his staff and hat.
"Hey! Leave Pip alone! You meanie!" Mako shouted at Gandalf.
"Woah! Channelling Rinoa there, weren't you? Don't do that again, little sister. I don't think my ears are up to it, eh." Gauntlet said rubbing the gooseflesh off her arms. In the deep a drum began to beat. Frodo half-pulled Sting from its sheath and it glowed blue.
"Orcs." Legolas hissed.
Boromir rushed to the door and was narrowly missed by an orc arrow. Aragorn shouted that they were to stay close to Gandalf, and rushed of to help. Legolas soon joined them and they used axes to as a makeshift bar for the door.
"They have a cave-troll." Boromir said 'enthusiastically.'
The door was not enough to keep the cave-troll out and it and what seemed like hundreds of orcs soon let themselves in. Mako put her halberd at ready and her sister brought out her trident. Gauntlet caught up in it all, grinned wickedly at her sister.
"What do suppose it'll do if I poke it?" She said, pointing at the cave-troll, and not waiting for an answer jumped enthusiastically into the fray. Mako not wanting to die, like her overenthusiastic sister, kept to the smaller orcs.
Gauntlet rushed up to the cave-troll and rammed her trident into it's thigh. And she found out what it would do if she poked. It swung its arm around at her and sent her flying into a wall. Mako glanced as her sister picked herself up and jumped right back into the battle, this time sticking to poking orcs. Mako thanked the gods that her sister apparently had a bit of common sense knocked into her by the wall.
Mako turned and watched helplessly as Frodo was stabbed by the cave-troll. Now Gauntlet got to see what happened when you poked a Hobbit. The Fellowship renewed their attack with ferocity, and soon the bad guys were vanquished. The Fellowship stood around Frodo who they thought was dead, when he stirred.
"He's alive." Sam gasped.
"I'm all right. I'm not hurt." Frodo said weakly.
"No, of course not, you were just smashed up real bad and knocked out for awhile but you're absolutely hunky-dory." Gauntlet said sarcastically.
"You should be dead. That spear would have skewered a wild boar." Aragorn said softly.
"I think there's more to this Hobbit than meets the eye." Gandalf said sagely.
Frodo slowly unbuttoned his shirt and showed them his mithril shirt.
"Mithril. You are full of surprises, Master Baggins." Gimli said in awe.
"To the Bridge of Kazad-dûm!" Gandalf commanded as they once again heard orcs.
~*~*~*~
AN- Next chapter: The bridge and Beyond