Legolas sat on the hood of the Mercedes while Aragorn searched in his car for the city map that he had but rarely ever used.

"The sky is lightening, Aragorn," he said. "Dawn is coming rapidly." He closely inspected one of his arrows.

"I know, I know." He was going through a stack of paper from the glove compartment as he said so. "Ah! Found it. Stupid thing was clenched between some flyers in there." He discarded everything else and spread the map on the hood of the car, beside Legolas.

The Elf closed his eyes and called up the glistening map in his mind. He opened them and tried the best that he could to match the images up.

"So much has changed," muttered Legolas. "The fields, mountains and forests have changed quite a bit."

"That's what several millennia does to the land," Aragorn said knowledgeably. "It's called evolution."

Legolas looked at him and chuckled softly. He proceeded to match the coinciding landmarks of both the map on the car and the ithildin map.

"The map was located around here," he muttered and used to the arrow to point to the cliffs in the forest. "The river used to flow southwest but it flows northwest now. This valley must have been filled with water until it dried up a a while ago; it's a park now." He adjusted the map and the distance between him and it to find a manageable perspective. With one eye closed, he slowly lowered the arrow on the map. "Right there."

"Perfect," said Aragorn. He retrieved the rest of his weaponry from his car trunk. "But, if you damage my car in any way, Legolas, I may have to hurt you." He gave his close friend a good-natured grin. "You got that?"

Legolas returned a wry smirk and got onto his motorcycle. Aragorn strapped on his weapons and got on behind him.

"I got it," replied Legolas, "just as long as you return the favor." He slid on his helmet and revved up his bike. He turned to look at Aragorn. "You ready?"

Aragorn could clearly see the eagerness to once again ride the motorcycle in his blue eyes and just laughed. "Yes! Just go, damn it!"

With the moon shining so brightly, the BMW seemed to melt into its surroundings. Everything on the streets looked like they were made with liquid silver. The clouds that passed by overhead flickered the dawn and moonlight and threw the beams into sharp relief. It was truly surreal to see such an ethereal light to be poured upon such a demonic environment.

Once again, they parked a few blocks away from their destination in an inconspicuous alley so they wouldn't attract any of the local wildlife. Aragorn examined the map as Legolas made sure that his bike was well hidden.

"Turn left, he says," said Legolas. He hid his helmet behind some trashcans. "And so I did. Where did we end up? On the other side of the city." With a grin on his face, he tightened the straps of his gun holster and quiver.

"You should know by now that I follow directions by sight," said Aragorn as he tossed the map into a nearby garbage, "not by what a fucking map says. Come on. It's just down the street."

They quietly made their way down the city streets while the sun peeked between the tall buildings of downtown. They made little noise running down the sidewalk, leaping over fallen newspaper stands, lampposts and covered dismembered body parts, and between scattered decaying bodies.

In the morning sun, the streets of downtown didn't look any better than it did during the night. The buildings were still ravaged and could now be seen how truly damaged and vandalized they were in the sun. Shattered glass that fell from dozens of floors above in the skyscrapers littered the streets. They passed by a devastated building with shards of glass in front of it and had to pause in disgust at what lay on the glass.

It looked like the woman had been thrown out of the window from one of the higher floors of the skyscraper. Her skull was smashed open, showing that she had landed headfirst. Like all other bodies lying around the street, the body was ripped and torn.

But what made them stop and look was the fact that she was mercilessly ripped apart. One leg was still attached but only by a few threads of sinew. The other leg was fully torn off and was scattered around as nothing but bones and shreds of muscle. Her arms also lay elsewhere away from their owner. One was a few meters away from the body and, like one of the legs, was reduced to nothing but bloodstained bones but was still intact. The other seemed to have been missing. What was most horrifying was the image of the woman's whole jaw that was entirely ripped away from her head.

"Oh, my god," Aragorn moaned after a moment of walking. He pointed to the ground in front of them. The woman's entire arm, which was missing several chunks of flesh and a couple of fingers, was lying in their path.

Trying not to retch himself, Legolas guided him around the severed arm and down the street. Also trying desperately not to look at any more bodies for too long, they finally came to the last intersection before their destination.

"You sure it's just around the corner, Aragorn?"

"Yeah," he said as they turned the corner. "According to you and the map, it's right there…" He pointed to the building that ended that street and they both froze in surprise.

The office building with the giant light sign that said "Strickland and Grayfield" stood silently at the end of the road like a weary, time-worn man waiting for a hero to come and save his homeland. Most of the floors still had electricity and their windows were mostly intact.

"What the hell?" breathed Aragorn. He looked at Legolas, who was also staring at the familiar building. "Are you sure you read the map right?"

"Dead positive," Legolas said seriously. "Let's go. If the map says it's in there, I'm going in; I don't doubt it." He shed his long, dark coat and carefully stashed it out of sight. "I think there was more to our fathers than we had originally thought." He adjusted his ripped, blood-flecked shirt that was originally a t-shirt, wrapped a long piece of dark fabric around his left wrist and waited for Aragorn.

But, all he did was stare back confusedly. "What? Why'd you take off your coat? Aren't you cold?"

Legolas sighed. "Don't you remember when our dads dragged us into the office to 'learn'? No? Okay." He hung his head when he saw the blankness of Aragorn's face. "The security is state-of-the-art in there. They were constantly updating security from the market. I know they said that it was still insufficient but I did research once and found out that this office's security can rival airports and maximum-security prisons combined. I took off my coat because it's easier to move without it and it makes a hell of a lot less noise when I'm in minimal clothing. And no, I'm not cold; I'm kind of chilly."

"Ah," Aragorn said, "I see. Good point there." He took of his own jacket and tightened the straps of his quiver and holsters over his dark-gray t-shirt, which was also ripped and torn with a sleeve missing. The other sleeve was holding on by a few threads so he just tore if off and wrapped it around his right wrist.

Together, with what Legolas could see inside, they devised a plan on how to search for the Light of Earendil in the thirty-floor building. As silently and swiftly as they could, they set towards their fathers' company.

They searched the ground level windows for any missing or cracked panes of glass and found one near the back. Slowly poking their heads around the windowpane, they saw a trio of Neos and an Orc casually mingling near the doorway to the main lobby. Judging the way both the Orc and the Neos were restlessly bored, it was highly unlikely that the boys would have been able to pass by them unnoticed.

Without a single sound escaping the backroom, they managed to kill the whole group. Legolas had taken Aragorn's dagger, silently rushed in and sliced the Orc's throat open, assassin-style. Aragorn was right behind him, Anduril withdrawn, and killed two Neos at the same time with a single stroke through their necks. The final Neo barely uttered a squeak when Legolas buried the dagger into its skull. The whole ordeal took a few seconds.

"This is a good dagger," said Legolas. He twirled it in his fingers before giving it back to Aragorn.

"It is."

They entered a luxurious lobby with bows drawn. The vast hallway was eerily empty. The varnished redwood walls were barely marred with anything but minuscule scratch marks and all but one of the overhead lamps that omitted a soft, golden light were functioning.

"Definitely creepy," muttered Legolas. "Almost nothing's damaged in here and it's empty, too."

Both of them lowered their bows and walked down the deserted lobby with their footsteps echoing in the cavernous room. The large company emblem that sat behind the main floor security desk dully shined at them as they approached.

They had always wondered what the company's symbol had meant, but never quite figured out what it was. Legolas looked at it with a vague sense of unknown familiarity before diving behind the desk in search for something.

"Looking for the electronic key card?" Aragorn asked over the desk. He heard a murmur of assent from somewhere behind it. "Try opening the middle file drawer and snapping open the left side of it."

Legolas opened the battered drawer with a little difficulty but was able to find the hidden compartment on the left face of the drawer. Inside was the spare master card key. "How the hell did you know that?"

"Hey, I spent a good amount of time behind that desk watching those TVs there. I actually learned quite a bit about the security camera system in here."

"Oh, good. That'll definitely be handy. But, we've got to go to the top floor first." He carefully pocketed the card in his pocket and strode towards the elevators. He saw Aragorn's slightly confused and skeptical expression. "Well, you don't want to take the stairs, do you? That's a pretty big climb."

"No, no." He pushed the button and waited. "Why are we going to the top floor? You think the Light's up there?"

"No, but the building's blueprints are up there." The elevator bell dinged and they stepped inside. "I remember looking at them in Dad's office with you."

"So why didn't you memorize them?" He asked tauntingly. "Too much for your brain to handle?"

"We were six!"

Aragorn scoffed. "More like six years ago! We were, like, ten!"

"We were six!" Legolas insisted as he pulled an arrow into his bow. "Six or seven, I'm not that sure which."

"No, we weren't." He, too, readied his bow. The elevator approached the twenty-fifth floor.

"Were too." Twenty-six.

"Were not." Twenty-seven.

"Were too!" Twenty-eight.

"Were not!" Twenty-nine. Their bowstrings creaked as they drew them back.

"Were too!"

Ding. Thirtieth floor. The doors slid open and two arrows shot from the elevator and pierced the hearts of a pair of orcs.

"Not!"

They simultaneously put away their bows, withdrew their respective blades and exited the elevator. In exact rhythm with each other, they fought and slew the small group of Neos and Orcs. One after another, their blades flashed in the fluorescent lighting, rarely skipping a beat. The near-perfect coordination between the two boys stunned the remaining Orcs for the slightest instant before they all lay dead on the floor.

"Neo," Aragorn called with his bow drawn and aimed in Legolas' direction.

He moved just quickly enough to see the arrow shoot by and pierce the attacking Neo's skull. He yanked it out and tossed it back to Aragorn before starting to retrieve his own arrows.

"Thanks, Aaron," he said as he collected his arrows. "But we really were six, seven at most."

"Were not, Leo!"

They cracked identical, mischievous grins and gave each other a few rough scuffles before going down the hall to their fathers' personal offices, laughing the whole way.

Again, the hallways were relatively unharmed, save for a single door at one end. It was battered and beaten with the metal practically ripped to shreds. Like a lot of doors they had seen outside of the building, this one was also barely hanging off its hinges.

"The fire exit," Aragorn muttered. "That's how these damned creatures ever set foot in this place. There's one on every floor, right?"

"Yeah," Legolas said distractedly. "Look; burn marks on the floor and blood trails leading away. Peculiar, isn't it?"

"Very..."

After making a pact to try not to burn the building into a smoldering pile of rubbish, they made their way around the floor to their fathers' private offices. Along the way, they continued to wonder why so little things had been disturbed. Everything looked like the whole floor had just gone out to lunch.

Legolas swiped the key card through the last electronic lock. He was quick to notice more burn marks around the door and on the floor. "Weird. What do you think did that?"

"I personally don't want to meet whatever it is that's doing that." He followed Legolas inside and carefully locked the door behind them.

Inside, like every other room in that building, was covered with a thin layer of dust and looked like it was just waiting for the day to start. The decorations of the company managers' office were similar to the ones in the main lobby in the way of its regality. Windows stretched from the floor to the high ceiling, letting the sunlight pour inside. The office carried both of their fathers' desks and documents; a sign of their own open honesty and trust with one another.

But something about that huge, familiar room was slightly out of the range of normal. They sensed, rather than see, hear or feel, the mysterious entity within that room. They just decided that the feeling was an effect of the surrealism of being in a place from their present childhood and started searching the office for the building blueprints.

"There's just something about those windows that's really annoying me," Aragorn said, frustrated. He paused behind his father's vast desk to look at the windows. "It's this feeling that's just gnawing at me."

"I feel it, too," Legolas said darkly. He was currently going through the cabinets under the bookshelf that occupied an entire wall.

A leather-bound book lay hidden behind some boxes inside. To Legolas, it would have been completely unnoticeable if it didn't look as if it was stored away hastily. He took it out and realized that it wasn't hiding behind some boxes but was just wasn't stored behind the wooden lining properly. Another hidden compartment, it seemed.

"This kind of makes you wonder how many of these things there are in this place," Legolas said to himself. He turned the book over to see what it was about and gasped in surprise.

"What?" called Aragorn. "What is it?"

"It-it looks like a journal. Written by your dad," he said breathlessly, still trying to comprehend what was lying in his hands.

Aragorn had no reply nor could he figure out why it was so shocking. That was until Legolas held it up in a good light for him to see. He could then understand why he was so stunned and also stood still, paralyzed with shock.

"It's bordered with Elvish inscriptions and has the emblem of the White Tree of Gondor!"