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"Sam?"
"Yes, Mister Frodo?"
"How long have we been walking, Sam?"
"Uhh... It's been almost four hours, Mister Frodo."
"Oh. Thank you, Sam."
"It's no problem, Mister Frodo. It's never a problem if you want to ask me anything."
Frodo chuckled. "I know, Sam."
Through the fake door, the Fellowship had been walking down dark, rough tunnels that echoed faintly with snarls and shrieks. Their feet were becoming numb and their surroundings were becoming more and more refined so they decided to stop for a small break.
Merry, with Pippin still close by, was sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall with his scythe propped against his bent leg. Gimli was sitting nearby, his neck arched to look at the architecture around them.
"These tunnels are creepy enough to send chills down your spine for all time," Gimli said lowly, eyes still on the tunnels around him.
"It's all rough but sort of refined," said Merry, looking around, "kind of like a sort of logic in chaos. But I know what you mean about these tunnels. Freaking scary in here."
"The style in here's kind of like the damned pits of Mordor. But the reinforcement's more like modern tunnels. See: the tunnel's like a tube instead of squared with pillars for support. Strange blend of architecture."
Once they had resumed walking, Frodo and Legolas, who had grown closer after the Elf had injured his leg, were leading the way. Gimli walked with them and the others following close behind. After a couple more hours of walking in the dark, Frodo jerked as if he was hit in the shoulder.
"Frodo," said Legolas concernedly, "what's wrong?" He looked into the Hobbit's eyes and, in the pale light from Gandalf's staff, saw that the blue pools in his eyes had grown dramatically along with his pupils, making it look like Frodo had black marbles for eyes. "Frodo!"
"I can see... light," whispered Frodo, eyes staring straight through the dark shadows of the tunnel and his hand still gripping his left shoulder. "It's faint, dull. But it is there, no doubt about that. We're coming to the end of it."
Sure enough, after a while of walking, a weak light started filtering through the shadows. They watched it grow bigger as they continued through the tunnel but it didn't grow stronger by too much as they went towards it. As they walked closer and closer, Frodo's pain gradually ebbed away.
They came out of the shadows to blink and squint into the sudden flood of light from the outdoors. They saw that they were on a bridge hanging between the giant masses of land that was the main part of the city to a tall, thin stone mountain. At the end of the bridge was a gigantic iron door.
When Sam was about halfway across the bridge, he gave into his temptation and peeked over the railing down to the ground. It was like an entirely different city had developed within their own. For miles beyond his sight, industrial-like houses and refineries lay around the tall spike of stone like a horrible blanket. The only thing that brought his senses back to the bridge was the sound of Pippin skateboarding past him to the rest of the Fellowship.
"Come on, Sam. Don't want the Neos to get you, do you?" Pippin said as he passed with a smirk.
"So how do we get in?" questioned Merry. "Say a password?"
"This is not Moria," said Gimli, "these creatures wouldn't have the brains to think up of something as exquisite as the Doors of Moria." His expression flickered as he thought of the architecture his old race had made.
"Maybe we should just try and get in first," said Aragorn. "I don't think the door's locked, since we're the only ones in the city who actually gives a shit about the dying Light." Without any more hesitation, he tried pushing his way through the doors. Even with everyone else helping him, the doors wouldn't budge.
As they stood back to examine the doors again and to catch their breaths, Frodo noticed that two vertical, protruding bars flanked both sides of the split between the doors. With a hunch, he wiped away some of the grime under one of the bars, read the Tengwar script and let out a resigned scoff.
"Huh?" Gimli mumbled. "What?"
Frodo gripped one of the two bars and muttered in reply, "Pull."
He gave a great heave backwards and the door opened a small crack with a loud groan.
"Pull," Legolas scoffed at Aragorn before he and the others went and helped Frodo open the door properly. A long, spiraling tunnel met them with various, scattered, sinewy skeletons lying around the edges of the path.
Pippin was the first to edge into the spiraling corridor and look around. In the dim light, he grasped for the wall and dropped his skateboard onto the ground with a clatter.
"Hey, Pip." Merry came through the crack of the door but was having a bit of trouble getting his scythe through. "Be careful, will you? That slope doesn't look too friendly."
"Mm, yeah." He put his foot on his board to stop it from sliding down the path.
Outside, a pair of hands shifted the scythe suddenly and sent Merry stumbling backwards because of his futile efforts to pull his scythe through. He lost his balance so much that he staggered right into Pippin, making him put both feet on the skateboard and start sliding down the spiral.
"Waaahhh! Merry!" screamed Pippin.
"Pippin! Oh, crap."
Trying not to panic, Pippin streaked down the smooth spiral with his skateboard wheels clattering over every stone they rolled across. Keeping his wits, he wound his way down the passageway, veering left to right and sometimes right over bones, limbs and fallen equipment.
As he spiraled down, the torches and light fixtures grew stronger, shedding more light around him and showing the stone slide its true worth. The shadows flickered across the walls and reached for him as he passed by. The indistinguishable corpses that scattered the path steadily grew more detailed and showed bodies of humans and skeletal remains.
Right when he reached the bottom of the spiral, something shot out from the side near the ground and grabbed his skateboard. Screaming, he flew a few meters, rolled roughly across the ground and hit the opposite wall with quite a bit of force. His whole body ached from his little flight.
"Silly Hobbit," hissed a voice in the shadows.
With his head pounding, he slowly pushed himself high enough to look around. "Who's there?" he asked hoarsely.
His skateboard was rolled across the small distance to him, to his surprise. A small figure hobbled into the pool of light.
"Stupid Hobbit rolls down on his board with wheels," grumbled Smeagol, "screaming, clattering all the ways down. Wakes up the Master's lair. Hobbitses are supposed to be quiet, tricksey little creatures, precious."
"Gollum," whispered Pippin, a tone of disgust peeking through. He started to slowly get up onto his feet.
"No! Not Gollum. We are Smeagol, precious! Smeagol is nice to the Hobbitses and their friends. Let us show you." Eagerly, he bounded to Pippin and helped him up. "See? Smeagol is nice." He gave Pippin a hopeful, semi- toothy smile.
Pippin was saved from replying by a strange scraping noise that was increasing in volume every second and a familiar voice coming down the pathway.
"Move it!"
Both Pippin and Smeagol rushed to the shadows in time to see Frodo, Merry and Legolas come sliding down the slope on Uruk-Hai shields. Just before they hit the bottom of the slope, they all tried to stop and illuminated the room with showers of sparks caused by the sudden force of the metal against the stone. But, Frodo and Merry couldn't stop in time and were sent careening into a wall. A few seconds later, Sam came sliding down and added to the pain.
"Aaah!" yelled Frodo, who was at the bottom of the pile. "Damn it, you two are really heavy! Get off!"
"Master!" Smeagol ran over and helped all three Hobbits to their feet. Then, he circled Frodo like some sort of demented dog. "Is Master all right? He isn't hurt, is he?"
"I'm fine, Smeagol," he mumbled. In an instant, he realized who he was talking to and adopted a look of intense dislike. "Smeagol! How dare you show your face to me again!"
"But, Master... nice Master..."
"What do you want, Smeagol?" Sam asked roughly. He took a little offense to Gollum and Smeagol's lack of gratitude and disrespect to the food he gave them.
"We wants to help the Fellowship," he said quickly. "We don't wants to hurt anymore. We wants to help the Nice Master destroy the Master so that we can be free." He looked right into Frodo's eyes. "All we really wants now is to be free. The Precious is gone. We wants to be free."
The expression of hatred that was plastered on Frodo's face faltered at Smeagol's apparent sincerity. Without taking his eyes off Smeagol, he asked, "Can we trust his words, Sam?"
"I don't know, Mister Frodo. He could just be lying to us again, the little stinker! But," he added, "he seems to be serious."
"That's what he was like when he ambushed us in Emyn Muil! Everything he told us, everything he did was to ultimately get the One Ring! Gollum, if not him, probably has some sort of plan to kill us all!" He looked at Sam seriously. "You were right about him, Sam. He's completely rotten and a villain."
"Master must believes us! Only Smeagol is here. We tolds him to leave and never come back and he did! But we wants to be completely free from the Dark Shadow, free to catch all the little fishies we wants."
"This time we must believe him," said Legolas, stepping forward with the Uruk-shield in hand. "I see only truth in his eyes; there is no deceit I can see."
Smeagol cowered from Legolas as he came forward. He was forever tainted with Darkness because of the corruption of the One Ring and sensed the intimidating power Legolas had as an Elf.
"Smeagol," Legolas asked gently as he knelt in front of him, "how will you help us? What do you think you can do for the Fellowship?"
"Smeagol," he said, "Smeagol knows the Lair. Smeagol can help the Fellowship sneak in like sneaky little shadows. Even scary Elveses can become a shadow within a shadow with Smeagol to help."
Legolas paused and looked as deep as he could into his eyes. He didn't touch Smeagol nor did he force him to look, but they locked eyes with each other for several moments. During that time, the princely Elf seemed to be peering into Smeagol's very soul. Something seemed to change behind Legolas' eyes after he was finished and got up.
"Okay, Smeagol. I believe you."
"You... you do?"
He nodded. "I see nothing for me not to believe."
"Are you mad, Legolas?" Sam exclaimed. "He's a traitor! He'll lead us from here through to the very heart of Hell, he will! Once we're there, he'll leave us there to die and rot or get eaten!"
"We're going to the heart of Hell anyway, Sam. We need to get there unnoticed and I believe that Smeagol will be able to lead us. If our deaths await us in that dank pit, then so be it, as long as we succeed in our mission."
There was no anger in his voice towards Sam or anyone else but there was a strong sense of duty in the way he said it that was made clear that his words were final. They were going to see the mission out to their deaths if it was needed.
"And Smeagol..." Legolas said, not looking at him.
"Yes?" he answered meekly.
He whipped out one of his long knives and pointed it a few inches from Smeagol's face so quickly that everyone there only saw a vibrant streak of white silver flash in the air.
Smeagol gasped in fear and stayed as still as he could with his huge eyes focused on the slender Elvish knife straight in front of him.
"If you or your other half betray us," warned Legolas, "you shall feel the pain of the weapons of a Mirkwood prince. Mark my words." He slid his elegant knife back into its sheath.
"Smeagol will try not to hurts or betray the scary Elves and its Fellowship. The scary Elf has made himself clear. Very clear. Yesss."
"Don't call me a scary Elf," he said with a glare.
"Nice Elf. Nice Hobbitses."
At that point, they could hear Gandalf, Aragorn and Gimli making their way closer to the bottom. Gandalf's staff steadily clunked onto the floor which mingled with their low voices and the rustling of Gimli's armor. They waited silently for them to come down so they could move forward.
"Legolas?" Pippin tugged on the hem of the Elf's frayed tank top under the Lorien cloak.
"Yes, Pippin?"
"I'm hungry. Do you have any lembas left?"
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