To my reviewers:
Songbreeze1125: Thanx for the reviews (both of them), and for telling about my posting error. I'll fix that as soon as I can. :) Anyway, glad you liked the story, and I hope that you'll keep on reading (and reviewing)!!!!
anon: Glad you enjoyed the story. Stick it please, and keep on reviewing!
Lauren: thanx for the review. I'm a genius? Really? I don't plan on leaving the story unchanged though. I'll be editing and revising stuff over and over again. Anyway, I'm glad you like the story.
Actress-Anales-4: hey, thanx for the review. Don't worry, Angel is fine. . . but will get a little pissed in this chapter at a certain blonde guy from Gondor coughBoromircough for being sexist. . . anyway, stick with the story please and thanx again.
And I know that Wyatt is half whitelighter, half witch, so he should be a witch and can't really be a true whitelighter for the Charmed Ones, but let's just say he is, okay? Besides, my fanfic, my rules.
Here it is: the predictable chapter that everyone knows by heart. I'll be going by the movie version since it's a bit more interesting and a lot shorter than in the book.
Ch. 3
The Council of Elrond
The next morning Angel was sitting at the council. On either side of her was Elrohir and a woodland Elf who had introduced himself to her as Legolas, son of Thranduil, the King of Mirkwood. This Elf added to her uneasiness. He was way too hot for her comfort.
Angel sat uncomfortably aware that many of the people at the council were looking at her with curiosity. And she knew what they must all be wondering. She herself did not have the slightest clue why Gandalf wanted her here at such an important meeting. Angel looked up and saw that a tall man with shoulder length blonde hair was watching her. Their gazes locked for a few seconds until he turned away, embarrassed. Angel compressed an irritated sigh. Another sexist pig. Typical.
"Strangers from distant lands. Friends of old. You have been summoned to answer to the threat of Mordor. Middle-earth stands upon the brink of destruction. None can escape it. You will unite or you will fall. Every race is bound to this fate – this one doom." Elrond looked over to Frodo, one of the hobbits Angel had met last night at dinner. "Bring forth the Ring, Frodo."
Frodo rose from his seat, his fist clutching something. He set a gold Ring on a stone pedestal at the center of the circle of chairs.
Angel raised an eyebrow and bit her lip to overcome the impulse to laugh. This council was about a gold ring? But apparently, this ring seemed to have a greater effect on the rest of the council members, because they began to whisper among themselves.
The sexist pig stood up with a strange, almost hungry, glint in his eyes. "It is a gift. A gift to the foes of Mordor! Why not use this Ring? Long has my father, the Steward of Gondor, kept the forces of Mordor at bay, by the blood of my people! Are you lands kept safe. Give Gondor the weapon of the enemy. Let us use it against him!"
Angel still couldn't understand why this little piece of tacky jewelry played such an important role.
A man with dark shoulder length hair replied, "You cannot wield it. None of us can. The One Rings answers to Sauron alone. It has no other master."
'I wonder who Sauron is," thought Angel. 'Sounds sort of like the Source.'
The son of the Steward turned to him, a slight look of contempt on his face. "And what would a Ranger know of this matter?"
Beside her, the Prince of Mirkwood stood up. "This is no mere Ranger. He is Aragorn, son of Arathorn. You owe him your allegiance."
Boromir's voice carried a trace of sneering as he said, "Aragorn? This. . . is Isildur's heir?"
"And heir to the throne of Gondor," added Legolas.
Aragorn sighed and said, "Havo dad, Legolas."
The Elf hesitated a moment, then took his seat.
"Gondor has no king." Boromir looked over at Aragorn before sitting back down. "Gondor needs no king."
"Aragorn is right. We cannot use it," agreed Gandalf.
Elrond had a stern look on his face. "Then you have only one choice. The Ring must be destroyed."
One of the Dwarves rose from his seat and strode toward the Ring purposefully with a battle axe in hand. "Then what are we waiting for? Yaaaaah!" He brought down the axe on the Ring, but was suddenly thrown backwards to the ground. The axe shattered to pieces.
One of the axe shards came flying towards Angel. She threw her arms up to shield herself, and the shard suddenly stopped in midair. She had frozen it by accident. Angel's heart stopped. If anyone had seen. . . She looked around to see if anyone had noticed the piece of metal suspended in midair, but everyone's concentration was on the Ring. Angel breathed a sigh of relief, plucked the shard out of the air and let it drop to the ground with a dull clatter. She then turned her attention to the Ring, and drew a sharp intake of air. It was unscathed. How had that happened? It should have been smashed to pieces.
The calm voice of Elrond shook her out of her thoughts. "The Ring cannot be destroyed, Gimli, son of Glóin, by any craft we hold here. It was made in the fires of Mount Doom. Only there it can be unmade. It must be taken deep into Mordor and cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came. One of you must do this."
Silence followed Elrond's statement. Finally, Boromir's scornful reply broke the quiet. "One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its Black Gates are guarded by more than just orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep, and the great Eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland riddled with fire, ash, and dust. The very air you breath is poisonous fumes. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly."
"Have you heard nothing Lord Elrond has said? The Ring must be destroyed!" retorted Legolas.
"And I suppose you think you're the one to do it!" snapped Gimli the Dwarf.
"And if we fail, what then? What happens when Sauron takes back what is his?" asked Boromir irately.
.
"I will be dead before I see the Ring in the hands of an Elf!" Gimli sneered.
The Dwarf's snide comment had a chaotic effect on the Elves at the council. They stood up and began shouting, ignoring Legolas who tried to keep them back.
"Never trust an Elf!"
The rest of the council with the exception of Frodo, Elrond, and Angel, leapt to their feet and started arguing amongst themselves. Elrond shook his head wearily, while Frodo stared at the Ring with an almost pained look on his face.
Finally, he left his chair and walked forward. "I will take it!"
At first no one seemed to hear him.
"I will take it!" repeated Frodo, this time louder.
The arguing ceased all at once as everyone stared at the hobbit incredulously.
"I will take the Ring to Mordor." He paused before saying, "Though. . . I do not know the way."
Gandalf walked over to Frodo, placing a hand on his shoulder sympathetically. "I will help you bear this burden, Frodo Baggins, as long as it is yours to bear."
Aragorn walked forth. "If by my life or death I can protect you, I will." The heir of Isildur knelt down. "You have my sword."
Legolas stepped over to the hobbit. "And you have my bow."
"And my axe," added Gimli.
Boromir of Gondor joined the group. "You carry the fates of us all, little one. If this is indeed the will of the Council, then Gondor will see it done."
From behind a clump of bushes, a small figure sprang forth. "Hey! Mr. Frodo's not going anywhere without me!" It was Sam Gamgee.
Elrond was wearing a wry smile. "No indeed. It seems hardly possible to separate the two of you, even when he is summoned to a secret meeting and you are not."
"Wait! We're coming too!" Merry and Pippin ran out from behind a pair of pillars. "You'll have to send us home tied up in a sack to stop us from going!"
"Besides, you need people of intelligence on this sort of mission . . . quest. . . thing," added Pippin.
"Well that rules you out, Pip."
"Nine companions. . . so be it. You shall be the Fellowship of the Ring."
"Wait." Gandalf walked over to Angel. "I would like to make one addition to this fellowship." He looked down at Angel. "The Lady Angel shall be joining us on this quest."
It took a few seconds for the words to sink in. "I – join – what?!" shrieked Angel. "You want me to go with them?" She looked at Elrond for support.
Elrond was frowning. "I do not perceive why Gandalf asks a lady to go on a dangerous quest. After all, she is only a girl of eighteen, not even full grown yet."
'Hey, I'm legally an adult,' thought Angel with annoyance.
Boromir stood up angrily. "She is not even of age yet! Do you mean to send a maiden of this age on a mission that is near hopeless?"
'Sexist,' thought Angel irritably.
Many of the people who had before been listening quietly now rose up to speak in outrage.
Gandalf waited patiently for everyone to quiet down and explained carefully, "You will all understand my decision in due time, but that is not now. Angel has more to her than meets the eye, do I not speak truly?"
Angel gaped and did not answer. Did Gandalf know about her powers? If he did, how did he ever find out?
"Gandalf, I question the purpose of this request," said Elrond. "yet I trust your judgment. But be aware that you are risking the Quest and the fate of Middle-earth. I would ask now why you chose a lady of eighteen summers, of all the great warriors of Middle-earth, to join the Fellowship, but I deem it be useless to ask."
"Okay, I haven't the slightest clue why you want me to go with the Fellowship," said Angel. "I have never touched a sword or bow in my life. I've never even seen one up close until lately. I can't fight!"
"And yet you were able to ward off a band of Orcs on your own with a small knife," said Elrohir.
Angel blushed furiously. "Yeah, okay, I did. But that was just random stabbing, you know?" She looked over at Gandalf. "And I do not have more to me than meets the eye," she lied through her teeth.
Gandalf merely smiled.
Kendall riffled through the Book of Shadows until she found what she was looking for. "Okay, I've got it. The spell to go back in time." She looked at her brother and Wyatt. They were sitting at the same table, but glaring in opposite directions. Ever since last night, they had been ignoring each other.
Kendall sighed and said, "Hey, you guys, I've got enough on my hands without you two doing the silent treatment to each other."
Wyatt looked at her sweetly and said, "You found it?"
Kendall rolled her eyes. Both of them were willing to talk to her, but not to each other. "Will you two just quite being so pigheaded and cooperate? We are not going to get anywhere like this."
Wyatt took no notice of her comment. "Okay, let's go then. But remember the promise."
"I know, I know," said Kendall sharply. The Elders had made them promise that they wouldn't try to take Angel back. And they could only stay long enough to tell Angel what was going on and decide who was going to stay in Middle-earth. It wasn't safe leaving earth without at least one of the Charmed Ones for too long.
Being forced to promise not to take his sister back had only exacerbated Adrian's anger.
Wyatt and Adrian stood up and walked over to Kendall, who was holding the Book in her arms, carefully avoiding eye contact.
Together, they recited the incantation:
A time for everything
And to everything its place.
Return what has been moved
Through time and space
Their surroundings were shifting. Soon they were no longer standing on the wooden floor in the kitchen, but in a wild forest. Kendall looked around at the trees, still grasping the Book of Shadows.
"So where are we now?" she asked, turning to Wyatt.
"The question isn't where, it's when," replied Wyatt as he took in their surroundings. "If the spell went right, then we should be in Middle-earth, in the same time realm as Angel is. Now we just need to find her."
"We should have brought a map and crystal to scry with," said Adrian. "Well I guess we have to do it the hard way now."
"No, even if we did have a map, it would be pretty useless. It would be really outdated," said Kendall. After a few seconds of thinking, she snapped her fingers. "I've got it." Kendall flipped through the Book and pointed to a spell on the top of the page.
" 'Spell to Bring Oneself to a Sister'," read Adrian. "Who knows, it might work."
Lead me back from whence this came
Help me help my sister's pain.
The forest around them disappeared and the trio found themselves in a brightly lit room. Leaning against the railing of a nearby balcony overlooking the valley stood Angel with her back towards them.
"Angel?"
Angel turned around. Angel's expression was a look of wonder and slight confusion at first, but swiftly turned to ecstasy. She ran and flung herself at them, squealing in delight.
"You came! You came! You came!" she shrieked as she squeezed them all in a tight teddy bear hug.
Kendall laughed. One thing that had not changed for the last eighteen years was Angel's spontaneous outbursts. "Hey chill, little sis."
Angel pulled away at last, grinning from ear to ear. "How did you do it?"
Kendall shrugged casually with a smile. "Oh, just a simple spell to bring us to our sister."
Wyatt looked around at the room in slight wonder. "Where are we exactly?"
Angel sighed and ran a hand through her sleek jet black hair. "I'm not sure how to explain this, but we're in a valley called 'Rivendell.' In a world called 'Middle-earth.'"
Kendall and Adrian exchanged looks. They had been right.
"Rivendell?" asked Kendall.
Angel smiled brightly. "That's what they call it."
"They?"
"The Elves." Angel saw the perplexed look on their faces and added quickly, "They're nothing like the Elves back in our world, though."
Kendall raised an eyebrow. "Who are these 'Elves', and why are you with them?"
Angel tilted her head to a side as her smile faded. "Kendall, they're not evil. They're like angels."
"And how do you know?" asked Kendall skeptically.
"I can see their auras."
Kendall, Wyatt, and Adrian stared.
"I'm not kidding," insisted Angel. "Besides, since we're in a different world, you have to consider the possibilities."
Kendall bit her lip. "Angel, we're not in a different world."
"What do you mean?"
"We are still on earth, just a couple thousand years into the past."
The youngest Halliwell didn't answer for a moment. "In the past? But how did that demon create a time portal out of thin air?"
"The demon? You mean Belthazor?" asked Kendall. She waited until Angel nodded before going on. "You saw him create a time portal?"
"Yeah, but I didn't know it was a time portal though."
Kendall fixed an icy stare at her younger sister as she asked suspiciously, "Angel, how come you saw him create a time portal?"
Angel blinked, not knowing where Kendall was getting at. "Well, I was going to the humane center, and the demon attacked, and he tried to escape through the portal, and –" Angel cut off abruptly, glancing at her sister. Now she understood the purpose of Kendall's question.
"And you followed him?" asked Kendall coolly.
Angel hesitated before nodding meekly. One thing that she could never learn was to recognize Kendall's suspicious questions and hold her tongue before she ended up revealing something that would get her into trouble.
Kendall sighed. She wished Angel wasn't so reckless in her actions. But she had a way of acting on spur-of-the-moment impulses. "Angel, you need to know when to hold back."
Angel lowered her gaze to the floor. Kendall wasn't the type to lose her temper. She was far too calm a person for that. But whenever she talked to Angel that way, it made her feel like she was five years old again.
"But even if she hadn't followed Belthazor, we would still have the same problem we do now," Adrian defended his sister.
Angel's head snapped up. "What problem?"
Kendall waved her hand dismissively. "Wyatt, why don't you answer that question?"
"Well, it seems that the demon Belthazor created a time portal to lure you into Middle-earth. That would break the Power of Three in our realm, which would make it easier for them to attack any of you separately."
"So? Then let's go back," said Angel as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.
"It's not that easy. The time realm he decided to throw you in is when there was a war going on, and this war was going to decide whether the Dark Lord Sauron would enslave Middle-earth."
'Sauron? Aragorn mentioned him at the Council.'
"Belthazor aims to twist fate by helping Sauron. If he succeeds in changing the past, our world will be enslaved."
Angel opened her mouth, but Adrian, knowing what she was about to suggest, interjected. "And if one of us stays here to counter Belthazor, that would leave all three of us vulnerable, and without us, earth doesn't stand a chance."
"And if we all stay here, that would jeopardize our world," added Kendall.
"There's one thing I think you guys should know," said Angel. "I went to a council a few hours ago. It was about the war and a ring. I think that the ring is what will enable Sauron to enslave the world. A fellowship was chosen to go on the quest to try to destroy it, and –" Angel cast a quick glance at her sister. "they want me to go with them."
Silence followed her statement.
"Why?"
Angel shrugged, and remembered what Gandalf had said earlier. "I don't know why, but one of them seems to know that I'm a witch."
Adrian looked at her intensely with hazel eyes. "Why do you think that?" he asked sharply.
Angel locked gazes with her brother. "He was the one who suggested that I go with them. And something he said makes me think that he knows about my powers."
Adrian's scathing look made her add hastily, "Hey, don't worry. It's probably nothing."
"More often than not 'nothing' means a big something for us," replied Kendall.
"There isn't really anything we can do. We haven't got much choice."
Angel looked at each of them before asking meekly, "Well, since all the choices we have are equally bad and they want me to go, maybe I should just –"
"No," Adrian cut across her curtly.
"Adrian, you're doing it again," Wyatt said without trying to hide his exasperation.
Adrian shot him a venomous look that would have paralyzed almost anyone else, but Wyatt was accustomed to his cousin's death glares.
Angel looked from one to the other and tilted an eyebrow. "Guys, what's going on?"
Adrian and Wyatt cast each other malicious looks, then glanced back at Angel, who seemed to have brought them back to reality.
"Nothing," they muttered in unison.
Angel turned to Kendall with a look that plainly read: "Is there something I should know?"
Kendall shrugged and said, "This is something just between the two of them. I think that we girls should stay out of this."
Angel nodded. "Gotcha." She adopted an expression of seriousness. "So, as I was saying, since we don't have any better plan at the moment, maybe I should just go with the Fellowship and try to prevent whatever Belthazor aims to do."
Adrian scowled but said nothing.
"Now, Angel, under normal circumstances, I would tell you to put some more thought into a decision like this, but like you said, we haven't got a better plan of action," said Kendall as she crossed her arms. "I'm not sure about this, there's so much at stake here."
"When I was talking to the Elders, they told me that they wanted Angel to stay here," said Wyatt. "And they say that they have a reason behind it, why they want her here out of the three of you."
"What, so you're saying that there's more at risk than the past, present, and future?"
"According to the Elders, yes."
"Then I guess that makes the decision final," said Kendall pensively. She knew that they were walking straight into a trap, but what else could they do? "Angel, I want you to keep a low profile for a while here."
Angel looked confused. "Why?"
"Don't do anything you can't explain," continued Kendall. "We don't have a clue how the people here would react if they knew you are a witch. They might treat you like a goddess or they might burn you alive."
"Okay," said Angel. Leave it to Kendall to think of these sort of precautions.
"There's another reason as well."
Angel looked up.
"You don't want to attract the wrong kind of attention. If Sauron finds out that you have powers that would aid him in reaching his goal, you'll have his whole army out to get you. Use your powers as long as they don't expose you."
The youngest Halliwell nodded gravely.
"And Angel, think before you act. I know you have a way of acting rashly," advised Kendall with a slight note of teasing at the end.
A slight blush was the only answer she got.
"And I think that concludes my lecture," Kendall finished. "We'd better be getting back to the present," she said, flipping through the Book of Shadows. She stopped on a page and her hazel eyes scanned through the words. "We need a piece of paper and pen."
"Got it," said Adrian. "Paper. Quill," he called, holding out his hand. A snowy white quill and piece of parchment disappeared off the night stand beside the bed in a flash of blue-white light and rematerialized in his palm. He quickly scratched the words "November 26, 2026" on the paper and set the quill down. He handed the paper to Kendall and cast a final look at Angel. "Good luck, little sis."
Kendall shifted the Book in her arms and held out the paper in front of Angel. "A little assistance, please?"
"Yeah, sure." Angel held out her hand as a red-orange fireball formed in her palm. Kendall dipped a corner of the paper in the dancing flames and the paper caught fire. As it burned she, Adrian, and Wyatt chanted the spell:
Hear these words, hear this rhyme,
We send to you this burning sign.
Then our future selves will find
In another place and time.
Angel sighed as they vanished. She really wished that she hadn't been the one chosen for this mission, but there was no fighting it. She picked the quill up and set it back on the night stand. Then she lay down on the bed without bothering to change into one of the nightgowns that the Elves had left for her. Living the life of a Charmed One never bored her.