A/N: Well, here is the next chapter that I have typed up. Hope you enjoy it! I hopefully will get the next one typed soon!
Chapter Three
The sound of the cadence preceded the arrival of the enemy of the city, and the people feared it's coming, knowing not where this person had come from. Chaos was breaking out everywhere as news traveled through each of the seven rings of the city: the Back Road was taken. There was now no escape - the people were trapped.
The rain had stopped a while ago, but King Eldarion had not given any sign that he noticed as he paced the lawn in front of the citadel, deep in thought.
He heard the confused cries of his people echoing below him, and he knew he must get to them before the enemy did.
"Why don't we just kill her and get it over with?" Talantir asked. "Not that I'm like that or anything," he added. "But Mithrandir's plan is near impossible! If we go out there and kill her - POOF! It's done!" Talantir explained uneasily.
"Many that live deserve death, Talantir." Eldarion said softly. "And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?"
Talantir shook his head. Eldarion sighed.
"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety." The King explained. "Even the wise cannot see all ends."
The Elf sighed, running a hand through his damp hair, looking up at the sun.
"if she wasn't our friend, would you think otherwise, Eldarion?" Talantir questioned. "Just curious." he added quickly.
The Man sighed, watching the Enemy get closer and closer to the city. The only way he could tell which dot was the Enemy on the field 2,000 feet below was by the way all of the millions of dots that were Yrchs parted to let the single dot pass.
"Nay, my friend, even then I would not be able to say yea. For then she may not be our friend, but she would still be my sister."
Talantir stared at his friend in disbelief. "What?" he managed to ask after a moment of staring blankly at the king.
"Asira is my sister." Eldarion said with a sigh, watching the grounds below him.
"Now you tell me?" Talantir managed to gasp. "I've known you since you were five, and you never told me, nor did I ever see your sister in the palace. And now, you're four and eighty years old (though only seeming two and forty due to the Elven blood that courses through your veins), and now, only now do you manage to tell me that SHE'S YOUR SISTER!"
"Shhhhh!" Eldarion hissed. "Calm down!"
The Elf stared at him in bewilderment. "Calm down? Calm down?!" he cried. "Do you know how much trouble this little tidbit of information could cause? Does Mithrandir even know?"
"Of course he knows, Talantir." Eldarion said. "Which is why he recommended I remain as far away from her as possible - both now and when I was young...though I didn't listen very much when I was young..." he added as an after thought.
Talantir plopped himself on the bottom step of the citadel incase he would fall over from this attack of new and surprising information.
"Young?" the Elf repeated.
"Mithrandir had advised Mother and Father to circumscribe any contact between my sister and I. To this day I still do not know the answer as to why, but my parents complied and she went to live in the fifth ring of the city when we were five."
"We?" the Elf repeated wearily.
"Yes, we. Did I not tell you? Asira and I are twins."
Talantir rolled his eyes, exasperated. "Great, just what we need to make this war harder. Now she'll definitely have the upper hand in this battle!"
Before the king could reply, a servant came clambering up the steps that lead to the lawn that they were standing on. Forgetting about chivalry, the young man went straight into babbling about nonsense.
Talantir stared at the servant in utter confusion, but Eldarion smiled and held up a hand to silence him.
"Events are best told in chronological order, Hilden." he said lightly, and the servant nodded his head reverently.
"My Lords, he has come!" he gasped.
"Who has come?" Talantir asked wearily from his spot on the stairs.
"Th-the w-witch k-k-k-king!" Hilden managed to stutter, and both the king and the Elf gasped.
"Are you sure?" Eldarion asked, hurrying back over to the wall.
"Yes, milord. The Lord of the Ulairi has returned! We are doomed!"
"But the White Lady of Rhonovian destroyed him in the Great War!" Talantir whispered. Looking very pale and worn. "How can he be back?"
Eldarion said nothing as he looked back down on the fields of the Pelennor. There stood a solitary black dot from which it seemed a centrifugal force was sending all of the other dots far away from it. The Lord of the Ulairi had indeed returned.
"What are we going to do now?" Talantir practically whined. "If she has the Ulairi under her control, we really have no chance against her!"
"Calm down, Master Elf!" barked a voice coming from the doors of the citadel. The three people spun around to see the old wizard coming down the stairs.
"Do not despair. If we follow my plan," he eyed the Elf. "No matter how impossible it may seem, we may win this war."
The servan nodded his head vigorously before quickly bowing and rushing back down to the other rings of the city.
Eldarion looked back out to the field below him, solemnly watching the constant flow of the Yrchs against the walls of his city. But he would not yet despair.
Mithrandir walked past the Elf and over to Eldarion. But he was hunched over, as though he had chronic back pain, or was carrying a great load.
"Do not worry, Eldarion." Mithrandir said, putting a comforting arm around the king's shoulder. "You will win this war, just as your father won the Great War."
"That was over 200 years ago." Eldarion countered as he continued to watch the flow of the carnivorous creatures below. "This is now. My father's Enemy was not his brothers. Yet mine is my sister. I would do anything not to hurt her, yet to win this war, I will end up hurting her anyway."
"She cares for you no longer." the wizard said. "She has changed. Asira no longer sees you as her brother, but as her own Enemy. Someone in her was of getting what she wants."
"She has changed, but I have not. Long years have passed since I last played with my sister when we were ten or so, even when you wished us apart. When she left, I waited for her to return. Now that she has, I still see her as my sister, no matter how she may see me."
"And that s only how I can expect you to feel." Mithrandir said. "But we must stick to The Plan." and with that, the wizard walked off, passing a hand through the cascade of water falling from a fountain he walked past in the middle of the lawn.
As soon as the wizard left, Talantir walked over to his friend.
"So, what are we gonna do?"