--- ---
Smeagol led the way through the shifting shadows into the Lair of Darkness. Obeying their orders, he led them through a path that would be most obscure to the Darkness and most of its creatures.
"Come, Hobbitses!" he called back to them from the top of a small rise. "The Fellowship must be quick and soft as shadows. They must keep up if they wants to get right into the Lair." He then went a small way ahead to make sure nothing was in their way.
"Smeagol is good," he said to himself happily, "Smeagol is helping Master Hobbit and his Fellowship. Smeagol will be freed soon from the Darkness. No more pain. No more screamings. Maybe... maybe no more Gollum!"
He gasped in fear at the sudden rise in his voice. He immediately fell silent and listened carefully. All he heard was the faint scrambling of rocks caused by the Fellowship.
"Smeagol must keep quiet or He'll hear us," he said quietly, "and He'll come with Orcses, Uruks and scary, filthy, biting Neos! We must be silent. We must be shadows, precious, or the Dark Master shall come for us. We don't wants that, no. All He's done for us is give us small, tiny fishies to eat after we have done so much work for him. The Master is evil and we don't wants to be with it anymore, precious. We have the Hobbit master with us again.
"But Hobbit Master is mad at us. Mad because of the Ring and his finger. Mad at what we did, he is.
"No! Master is mad at Gollum, not Smeagol. Yes, Smeagol is good. Smeagol doesn't wants to hurt the nice Hobbit Master, even though he has changed. The whole Fellowship has changed. The scary Elf from the nasty woods of Mirkwood is a nice Elf.
"Even the fat Hobbit has changed..."
"Smeagol! Where are ya, Smeagol? We can't see that far into the dark, you know!" Sam and Gimli called down the tunnel.
"Smeagol is here! Smeagol is here!" He came back into sight running back on all fours. "Hobbitses must hurry up or else hungry Neos and Orcses will come for you."
"I am not a Hobbit," growled Gimli, "I am a Dwarf. Our races are quite different, got that?"
"Big, hairy Hobbit."
Sam could only just hold back Gimli while the others managed their way up the rise.
"Be thankful, Smeagol," Sam said to him while keeping a firm hold on the Dwarf. "You don't need to worry about this guy killing because of his bad temper. I can hold him off now 'cause I'm only a couple inches shorter and we're about the same size!"
At that, Gimli snarled at him and stopped trying to get Smeagol. While the rest of the Fellowship climbed and assembled on the rise, Smeagol sat quietly, crouched on the ground. He silently watched the members of the Fellowship with his large, luminous eyes.
"Is the Fellowship all here? Good! Then follow Smeagol now. Come, come. Fellowship must follow Smeagol."
Following his Smeagol's footsteps behind Frodo and Sam, Legolas felt sadness and amazement for the two Hobbits. He wondered how such gentle, peaceful souls could be so consumed with hatred and spite for a single being that was helping them into the Lair. At any given time, they were happy, peaceful and even content if they were fed with sufficient food. Now, they were suspicious, angry and hateful.
"Well," he thought to himself, "every being has to have a Light side and a Dark side. Eru knows Smeagol does. I suppose Frodo's and Sam's Dark sides show when they see Smeagol or Gollum."
Smeagol led the Fellowship through dark, narrow tunnels, sinister-looking rooms and corridors that felt like rotting, putrid death lived within the stone walls. The main things that broke the silence were the sound of their own echoing footsteps and the occasional despairing wail that wasn't quite real nor was it fake. Each step they took plunged them deeper into a cold feeling of hopelessness.
"Down here, masters. This is a shortcut Smeagol uses." He circled and settled on the other side of a manhole. "Orcses don't know it. Uruks don't know it. Not even Gollum knows it, precious. Only Smeagol uses and knows about it. Now Master Hobbit and his Fellowship can uses it."
They debated on how to make sure the reliability of the manhole and the contents inside of it. In the end, Gimli and Aragorn lifted the round cover off quietly and they all looked in. Nobody could see anything but level stone floor a few meters below.
"It's a little dark, isn't it?" commented Sam. "Where is this, anyway?"
"This is an empty roomsies," Smeagol said knowledgably. "It connects right with the Dark Lair, it does."
"Someone has to make sure that it's truly empty," said Gandalf. "The last thing we need is another ambush on all of us and raising an almighty uproar."
"Yeah," agreed Aragorn. "Legolas, go."
The Elf stared at Aragorn for a moment of complete and numb amazement at the thought that he would volunteer him. That feeling quickly turned to reluctant willingness and the stare turned into a piercing glare.
"I'm coming to haunt you if I die," threatened Legolas.
Carefully, he plunged his head upside-down into the room. A quick glance around with his Elf-eyes told him that the room was indeed deserted. Righting himself, he dropped silently into the room and darted into the shadows for protection against surprised foes. After a moment of hearing nothing but the breathing of his companions above, he crept out into the middle of the room with his hand near his handgun.
It was a completely featureless room with one wall straight and industrial- like. Gradually, sloping down, the walls and ceiling turned into hewn rock.
In the middle of the room was a single TV on a simple stand and an old, musty armchair. The sound was off but the screen was on. Static remained the most constant image and it set a strange white glow that flickered across the armchair and the rough rock in front of it. Every so often, a different image of destruction would briefly show across the TV screen, breaking the static. The images never stayed for more than a split second and appeared at irregular times.
Curious and disturbed at the same time, Legolas slowly made his way to the changing TV. Strange, blue-silver beams of light streamed in, some from small, high windows in the industrial wall, others came from openings too high and bright to see. They seemed to fade as they splashed across Legolas as he walked to the TV.
Orange fire and smoke. Static. Static. A man with an arrow and blood sticking out from his heart. Static. Scattered claws and skulls of Orcs and Neos. Static. Static. Children dead with dried blood at the base of their skulls. A woman sprawled on a wall with dozens of knives in her. Static for a second. Fire. A tortured face. Bloodstained clothes on a child. Blood. Burned trees. Shattered swords, broken staffs. Dead Fellowship. His own empty eyes. A shriek growing louder and louder in his ears. A shadow. Darkness.
"Legolas!" A whisper came from above and behind.
A quiet gasp escaped from him as he whirled around to look at the owner of the voice. Frodo's concerned eyes met his own but Frodo was looking at him upside down from the manhole.
"Are you okay, Legolas?" Frodo whispered to him. "Is everything good?"
Legolas took a quick look back at the TV.
Constant static.
"Y-yeah," Legolas said slowly, slightly unnerved by what he saw. "I-I'm fine, it's fine. There's nothing here except a broken TV. You can come down."
With amazing dexterity, Frodo flipped his whole body through the manhole and dropped down to the ground very much like a cat. Above him, Merry and Aragorn noticed and meowed softly at him before they climbed down one by one.
As they all dropped into the room, Smeagol paced around their legs nervously. Being the fourth being to drop from the manhole, he had to wait for the rest of the Fellowship to come. He bounded to the entrance of the room and listened carefully for any noise. Luckily, the noise level was next to nonexistent and the screeches of the Neos were very distant.
A loud crash was heard when Gimli literally fell to the floor because he slipped.
"Shh!" Smeagol turned and put a finger to his lips. "Fellowship must be silent to succeed in their mission. We do not wants to be found out, precious! Elveses must keep the hairy Hobbit quiet."
Gimli growled as Legolas helped him up. He despised being called a hairy Hobbit.
Perhaps he sensed the glares aimed at him from Gimli but Smeagol immediately started creeping down the hall from the entrance. When he saw that he was not being followed by the Fellowship, he went back to retrieved them.
"Come, good masters. Smeagol will lead you safely now. Smeagol knows the way very well. Very well." He led them through more half-industrialized tunnels. "We are very close now."
The hallways were like the room with the television. One side was straight, smooth and looked like it was manufactured like concrete though it was immediately connected to the land. Over their heads, the hall structure became rougher and much more raw until, on the other side of the hall, the rock was roughly and crudely cut out. More beams of the strange light as well as the occasional dull electric light bulb shed light and shadows throughout the halls.
They crept around corners, went down hundreds of stairs with sheer drops into pits of fire and darkness and through the maze that the Master created. Obeying Smeagol's requests, they stayed speechless except for absolute emergencies and blended with the shadows with their ancient Lorien cloaks.
Eventually, they came to another deserted hallway but this one had a distinct red glow at the end that radiated behind an elegantly carved door. The golden-red rays pulsated from the cracks between the door and the floor. Forgetting all pride and dignity, Smeagol cowered behind Sam and Frodo's legs with fear when they came close to the door.
"The heart of the Darkness is behind that door," Smeagol said hoarsely, as if his voice was being taken away. "The Dark Master lies in the Lair behind that door, precious. He is waiting to swallow the Light Holders."
"He's waiting for us?" Frodo repeated incredulously. "You've been leading us into the Lair knowing perfectly well that He's WAITING for us?"
Smeagol squealed and attempted to fight back when Legolas bent down and held him forcefully on the wall. A white silver knife was a centimeter from his throat as a pair of intensely angry Elvish eyes glared at him.
"Explain yourself," Legolas said lowly. A hidden growl lay beneath his voice, speaking much more than what he had actually said.
"Please don't hurt us," begged Smeagol. Tear-soaked eyes darted to Legolas' eyes and his deadly knife.
Anger still flaming within him, Legolas lowered his weapon but maintained a very firm grip on Smeagol. He repeated, "Explain yourself."
"Dark Master has waited for Fellowship for a very long time," began Smeagol. "Very long time. He tells us of dreams that scare Him. Dreams filled with threats to the Darkness. Dreams that blind with nine beams of shining light. He knows you were coming, precious. He knows that you come but he doesn't know WHEN."
"That still does not justify what you did, Smeagol," said Gandalf. Smeagol didn't reply. "Speak!"
"The path Smeagol leads! The path!" he said quickly. "The Fellowship must be wondering why the path Smeagol leads them is so quiet and dead. That is because the path is well avoided by the Dark creatures. No one comes down because they're all scared."
"Scared?" repeated Gandalf. "Of what?"
Slowly, Smeagol pointed to a shadowy path that led a small way apart from the main hallway they were in. They turned to look in time to see Aragorn walk into the hall.
"Aragorn!" Gimli called down the hall.
Aragorn had a strange feeling as he walked down the hall. It was a feeling of familiarity yet the feeling felt oddly corrupted. He felt lured by this feeling down the hall and it grew stronger with every step he took. Even the echoing of his footsteps sounded slightly distorted.
After a moment of walking, he was standing in front of a severely marred door. He delicately traced his fingers along the slashes and immediately felt as if his very spirit was shaken. He gasped, withdrew his hand and stood back.
Looking at the door properly, he saw a startling design under the destruction. It was a design that he knew very well.
"Designs of the Calaquendi," he whispered. With a small nudge, the door silently opened.
Inside was a dull light bulb hanging despairingly over a solitary wooden chair. The chair sat in the middle of the small pool of light that the small overhead lamp created. The wood of the chair was thick, old and heavy. On appearance, it was very handsome wood but the feeling of absolute chaos and darkness cast a very noticeable shadow of anguish that had overthrown its beauty. It was bolted to the floor, as if the being sitting in it could lift it easily and splinter it against the wall. The cold metal chains and braces were scattered across the room, barely attached to the chair itself. Whatever being that was bound in that room was clearly powerful and needed to be caged in.
Yet, despite the enormous feeling of torture and chaos in that room, Aragorn could feel a small wave of something vaguely familiar. He tried to remember what it was from, but his mind could not recall.
"Aragorn!" His name rang down the hall and reverberated in the room. "Aragorn, what's going on? Is anything wrong?"
"No," he called back as he left and closed off the room, "I'm coming."
"Are you sure you're all right, laddie?" Gimli asked him as he came back out of the shadowy hall. "You look a little shaken up."
"I'm fine, Gimli, thank you," he replied, still pale.
He was then quickly told of Smeagol's little secret. At once, he looked over and noticed a scowl upon Legolas' face. Behind Sam was a very frightened Smeagol who kept looking fearfully at Legolas.
"Do not anger the Prince of Mirkwood," Aragorn advised Smeagol, "it may very well be the last thing you'll ever do." This earned him a smirk from the prince himself.
"Through the door," Smeagol muttered again and again, "we must go through the door. Come, master Hobbits." He tugged at Sam and Frodo's jean legs towards the ominous door. "We must go through the door, masters."
Silently, Frodo walked forward and opened the door wide enough for them to squeeze through. With his shoulder staring to irritate him, he went through the door.
At once, the sounds of the damned abyss rushed at him with screeches of Neos, clanging of machines to make weapons of war and the constant yells and growls of Orcs and Uruk-Hai that were all too familiar to him. A faint ripple of heat rose up to the level they were at and carried the stench of smelting and filth that stung his nose. His eyes adjusted to the sudden change of environment and saw the heart of the Lair for what it truly was.
The glow of red fire and bright, yellow lights covered the main cavern of the Lair. As he went closer to the edge of the platform, he could see a huge field of strange pods that grew out of the ground. His shoulder ached a little more but he could see that there were things growing within each pod. Writhing, growing pods with developing Neos, Orcs, Parasites, Uruk-Hais and giant Hunters lay close together to make the field look disgustingly alive. On the side nearest to him, which was the busiest, there was a gigantic tank filled with vile-looking liquid. There was a valve that controlled the release of it.
Tearing his eyes away from the horrendous sight, he looked towards the right and saw giant flames with dozens of Orcs and Parasite-controlled humans slaving around them. He could see painful third-degree burns on many of the humans working and felt great sadness when he saw little children with the snake-like Parasite tendrils wrapped around their necks. The platform of fire was directly opposite from where he was standing and was slightly higher than the field of pods, which was ultimately higher than the ground level but lower than his niche.
A sudden growling and snarling from below him startled him so much that he jumped and fell to the ground. Vicious shadows danced on the ground below him and the long dagger-like claws of Neos flailed.
"Holy shit," he said to himself under his breath, "we're right above a Neo cage. What the hell did we get ourselves into?"
"Frodo!" whispered Sam's hushed voice. He came to his side and helped him up. "Are you all right? You're not hurt, are you, Mister Frodo?"
"No, Sam. Not yet, at least." He watched the last member, Aragorn, come out of the door but noticed a certain absence. With a hard tone embedded in his voice, he said sharply, "Where's Smeagol?"
"He's not with you?" Gandalf asked. "He didn't come out with you two?"
Frodo and Sam shook their heads. They both thought that they were alone when they entered the cavern. But, they were quick to notice that neither of them took a backward glance to the door since they crossed the threshold. Sam said, "Maybe he did come out with us and we didn't see."
The ground under them shook violently and an ear-splitting roar came from the cages beneath the ground. Deep cracks issued from the edge all the way to the door behind them. A familiar scream of surprise was heard to their left.
"Smeagol!" Frodo said in anger. He briefly saw his frightened eyes before Smeagol scrambled away up then flight of stairs. "Smeagol!"
The ground shook again and even deeper cracks appeared in the rock. Boom. Rocks and stones began to crumble in the cavern they were in with the Dark creatures screeching and yowling in a frenzy under the layer of rock they were standing on.
Frodo darted across the shattering ground and up the stairs in pursuit of Smeagol.
"Mister Frodo!" Sam sprinted after him, sword drawn and cloak swishing behind him.
"Sam, you fool!" Gandalf cried out. He tried to follow the two Hobbits but another huge vibration started to totally crumble the floor beneath their feet.
Rocks from the ceiling started falling around them and shattering the now- fragile stone floor, dropping huge chunks of granite into the cage below them. Neo jaws snapped up at them and tried to dig their teeth into their legs but the rock was still too high. With another pound of a nearby Hunter, the whole platform shuddered and dropped. The Neos were literally inches from tearing at their skin.
"Gandalf!" Legolas grabbed the elderly wizard and pushed him to the edge of the crumbling area to the hall to the right of the door. "Go!"
Just then, a multitude of stones from the floor fell faster than ever. Merry and Pippin quickly hopped and ran across the falling stones and jumped to the edge of the unharmed hallway. A rock slipped down from right under Merry, causing him to fall.
"Aaah!" he screamed.
Pippin's hand shot out and grabbed his wrist tightly. He kicked sharply to keep the Neos at bay while Pippin and Gandalf pulled him up.
"Aragorn, look out!" Merry yelled to him.
Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli were racing against time to escape from plummeting into the cage full of live, hungry Neos. They took large, long strides to jump from one rock between crevices to another towards the edge of the platform that opened to the rest of the Lair. Split-second timing and swift footing were crucial for them to make it to the edge.
Without thinking about what other horrors could have been waiting for them beyond the edge of the cage, the Three Hunters leapt from the very edge in time to escape from falling and being mauled by Neos. Luckily, only the ground was rushing towards them after taking their jump.
They hit the floor after falling seven, eight feet from the air and rolled and flipped to get their feet firmly on the ground. Aragorn and Legolas managed the feat with the ancient grace the Numenoreans and Elves had. Unfortunately, Gimli and his race had never possessed such grace and he survived the fall with more bruises on himself and his pride.
In the time of five minutes, there was a huge, gaping hole in the Lair of Darkness that distinctly separated the eight remaining members of the Fellowship.
Frodo and Sam had run up the stairs to find the creature, Smeagol. Gandalf, along with the young Hobbits Merry and Pippin, who had taken the Horn of Gondor from Sam and firmly tied it to Pippin's side, had been pushed down a hall by Legolas to escape the deadly fall into the Neos' cage. The Elf himself, Aragorn and Gimli had fallen to the main floor outside of the cage and had no way to rejoin the wizard and Hobbits.
As the noise from various creatures grew louder and louder, Merry and Pippin heard something that would be etched in their minds forever.
"So it begins," said Gandalf. "The final battle of the Fellowship and the fate of the Light of the world will soon be decided."
--- ---
Sheep: Wow... Long chapter again. Damn.