Hello peoples! Happy Thursday! I just started horseback riding lessons and tomorrow I get to go again so I am happy. I love horses.

Sorry about the long wait. My history teacher decided to give us a lot of homework. At least history is easy. And I had several other priorities that I had to do before I could write on this. But enough with the excuses.

Oh yeah sorry this chapter is so short.

Disclaimer: I am not Tolkin. If I was I would be dead.

Additional disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I know nothing about medical things except hot to put a band-aid on a scraped knee, and how to perform first aid.

Big thanks to Anyra for betaing and helping me with this chapter. She has been a big help!

And now on to the story.

Chapter 13

Darkness calling (aka: running out of good chapter names, lol)

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When Legolas woke up the first thing he noticed was that he was in a different cell. This one was larger and the floor was covered in straw. A rat ran across the floor and Legolas shivered. He heard the slow dripping of water somewhere.

I hate caves, Legolas thought.

He tried to move his arm, but it was in too much pain. The arm had been popped out of place again. The tips of his fingers had turned black and all the feeling was gone from them. Legolas wondered weather he would ever be able to use a bow after this.

He heard heavy footsteps coming down the corridor. They stopped at his door and Legolas heard the sound of keys in the lock before the door swung open with a screech.

Five men walked in and the last one shut the door.

"What do you want with me? Why am I here? And what did you do with the human?" Legolas questioned, his cobalt blue eyes glaring up at the men.

They all looked around uncertainly until there came some laughter and Legolas saw a sixth man walk from behind one of the larger men.

"We shall answer your questions later. Right now we have some business to attend to." The man said.

The motioning to two of the men he walked up to Legolas. The elf prince looked up defiantly at the man.

"Now, are we going to do this the easy way or shall we do it the fun way? I want you to drink this."

The man held up a goatskin pouch filled with a liquid.

"I shall drink none of your foul brew."

Legolas said.

"Good, good. I always like the fun way."

The two men with the leader came up to Legolas. Two more joined them and they grabbed Legolas by the arms while another took the brew from their leader and forced it down Legolas' throat.

Legolas tried to struggle, but when one of the men twisted his injured arm he stopped. He did however keep his mouth shut so they couldn't force him to drink their concoction. They were quick to rectify that problem however by pinching Legolas' mouth shut and hitting him in the gut. When Legolas gasped for breath they forced the brew down. Legolas gagged at the foul taste, but could not bring anything up. Then the men released him and stood back.

Legolas didn't notice anything at first. Then slowly he became aware of loss of his muscle functions. He became scared and wondered what the stuff was that he was given.

He lay down, or more like fell down onto the straw covered floor. It was then that the leader spoke.

"I see that the concoction we gave you is taking affect. Good, good. Now we can get down to business. But first, Soyer, Livak, go set the arm. It must be uncomfortable for the elf to have his arm out of socket like that." He said it matter-of-factly and it made that truth seem like a weakness.

The two men he had called came forward and took Legolas. He was powerless to resist as one took Legolas in his powerful arms and the other grabbed his arm and jerked it back in place. This was extremely painful for Legolas, and he let out a strangled cry. Through this all the man continued to talk.

"What we have given you relaxes the muscles. It helps when we are working with things that refuse to cooperate. The only problem I have found with this particular brew is that if you give too much it relaxes the chest muscles more than necessary and the person suffocates. This only happens rarely of course, experiments on correct dosage have kept it down to a minimum so it will only relax the muscles enough for the human, or elf in your case, to be made immobile. It will wear off in a few minutes, so I have to talk quickly." The man smiled and paused as he saw Legolas gasp for breath.

Legolas felt like his lungs were on fire. Every breath was a struggle as he took in the precious oxygen his body needed to survive. He had long since stopped hearing what the man was saying, concentrating only on taking his next breath. It was getting harder by the second.

So this is the way I am going to die, Legolas thought right before his world went black.

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Aragon was awoken out of his slumber by Kancarch's whine. He then heard a lot of people rushing down the hall. They were talking, but Aragorn could only understand a few words. The few he could make out made his blood run cold.

"Elf..." and "dead..." were among them.

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Elladan woke to the sound of scurrying feet. Right away he knew that something must have happened.

He jumped up an quickly rushed to his brother's side. Glorfendel was there talking to Elrond in hushed tones. Elrohir was still breathing, to Elladan's immense relief.

"Elladan, Glorfendel tells me that he is not sure Estel and Legolas are dead."

Elladan's eyes were wide. He turned to Glorfendel

"How do you figure that?" He asked.

"We searched the area and found no remains of either of them, but what we did find was quite interesting."

"What was it?" Elladan asked, excitement showing in his voice.

"It's not much, but we found a pit, like the ones dwarves use to catch large animals. One of the men went in there and found several bodies. They look like they were killed with Elvin weapons. We also found this."

Glorfendel held up the ring of Brahir.

Elrond took it and held it to his chest.

"Estel" He whispered.

Glorfendel nodded.

"We also found a trail deeper into the cave, some of my men are following it."

"I want to go," Elladan spoke up.

"We have enough men, and wouldn't you rather be by your brother?" Glorfendel questioned.

"I want to go!" Elladan insisted.

"Here I do nothing but it and watch. I want to be doing something. Your men are not as good at tracking as I and I want, I need, to find my brothers." Glorfendel noticed how he said brothers instead of brother and inwardly smiled knowing how close Elrond's sons were to the prince of Mirkwood.

"But what about Elrohir?" Glorfendel questioned.

Elladan sighed. "If there is any chance that Estel and Legolas are alive,
he would want me to search, and I would wish the same if our places were
switched."

"You cannot go," Elrond replied.

"But Ada-"

"You cannot go. I will not lose another son."

"Ada, I have to go!"

"I already said no and I mean it. Glorfendel men can find them easily
enough themselves. You may be better than them, but they are still good
enough."

"Ada, at least hear me out, please!"

"How many times do I have to say no? You are not going and that is final!"

Elladan was silent for a few seconds, then sighed. "Ok, Ada, I shall stay here with my brother."

"Good," Elrond replied with a nod.

'But since only one of my brothers is here, I must go find the other one so
that I may stay with both of them,' Elladan thought to himself.

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Replies to reviewers

Star-stallion: Good. What's a story without killing at least one character?

Have you ever noticed how we hate it when others kill off characters, but love to do it ourselves?

Glad you liked my banner. It was very time consuming, but it was fun to do.

Celebrean: Christmas, fun! Starts singing" We wish you a merry Christma-" Muse: Stop singing, you will hurt their ears. And besides, it is not Christmas, it is still hot outside, and you are singing Christmas songs? Interesting. Starts singing again "I am dreaming of a white Christmas" Muse: Great, 'cuz you will be in an insane asylum by then.

Here is Legolas, sorry for killing him. I just couldn't help it, I was reading about muscle relaxants and just had to test one on Legolas...

Mornflower: That's ok. Sorry about the long wait. I got very busy. Thanks for the nice review.

Hyperactive Forever: Yes he can. I love picking on poor Elrohir. We didn't see him much in this chapter though. I think it is worse for Elladan, because he has all that guilt heaped on him. At least he now knows he didn't lose Estel or Legolas.

Anarya: Who says I wont kill someone? Mwahaha! Yes, I know. I think I will be something that doesn't require good English, like a vet or something. I love animals and they don't care how you write. Elrond is grumpy. Wouldn't you be if your youngest was missing, your oldest ran off to find him and your only kid at home was almost dead? I think I accidentally got the wrong version uploaded; the other one is aligned correctly. Can't fix that now though. I cannot access anything from that program. I'm glad you like the dragon. It was the hardest part.

Read and review. Please! I want to hit 85 reviews this chapter.

Namarie,

Astievia