[A/N- I don't own the Lord of the Rings. It belongs to the most revered Mr. Tolkien. The PPC belongs to the mighty Jay and Acacia. The most wonderful Miss Cam created the color urple, so she owns that. I own nothing, but you do, yay (that's great), now you can't sue.]

The Lands of Midlearth

By: DDR Freak

Chapter 1—The Land of the Mary-Sues

Morgan awoke to pain. Lots of pain. She found herself bound, gagged, and lying in a puddle of goop on a stone floor. She opened her eyes. They didn't open very much. Both her eyes were swollen almost shut. Morgan tried to sit up, but her battered and bruised body didn't respond.

The room was dark, cold, and slimy. It was the typical evil dungeon.

Oh, joy, Morgan thought darkly. This looks peachy. Once I think about it, this whole place seems remarkably cliché…

Then, it hit her. Where would one find an evil looking, cliché dungeon?

No. No. No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no…

BOOM!

At that most opportune moment, the large, imposing, evil-looking wooden door swung open, rebounded against the wall, and swung shut again. The whole aura of evil was successfully smashed to little bits. It was opened again. A girl walked into the room.

Oh, shizzit…

She was graceful, beautiful, and perfect. Her dark hair flowed down to the floor, then became platinum blonde, then fiery red…

Gak…hair…changes…color…eyes…pain…burning…

The girl laughed.

"Welcome to my laire," she cackled, somehow pronouncing the misspelling. Morgan attempted to roll her eyes, but they started to yell at her to stop hurting them. They threatened to turn her in for eye abuse.

The girl cackled in her cheesy evilness, then raised her arms over her head.

"Ishy wishy bibble bobble icky icky icky neoooow wum ping!" There was a flash of urple light, and the last thing Morgan saw before she fainted (again) was the face of the Mary-Sue that was her captor.

When Morgan awoke, there was no light. She was lying on an uneven stone floor. Her standard PPC uniform was gone, replaced with a long dress with way too many frills. She was not bound, and could freely move about. The bruises had disappeared. The entire affair put her at ill ease.

Creeeeeeepy…

She sat up, and looked around. Looking was completely pointless, since there was no light to see by.

Hey! I can see more with my eyes closed!

Morgan crawled in a straight line, hoping to find a wall. There was a wall, and her head connected with it very painfully.

Oh, shizzit…

She stood, feeling the wall as she did so. It was smooth and cold, and there was a disgustingly sticky moss growing up it. It left a glutinous residue on her fingers. Grimacing, she wiped them on her dress. She felt along the wall as far as her hands would go. In her mind, it was necessary to know the perimeter of the room, but she couldn't leave her starting position without losing it immediately. Then, after dismissing a strange feeling of déjà vu, she tore off a piece of her dress, and then stuck it to the moss. She tore another, and put it higher on the wall. Then another strip, stuck in right angles periodically on the line. Thusly, the strips couldn't possibly be missed.

With careful steps, she felt along the wall. She counted one hundred paces in the full circuit.

Two paces per yard…so, roughly, fifty yards.

Something comparable to suspicion and anxiety began to creep its way into Morgan's already exhausted mind. The feeling of déjà vu returned, and was repelled with less ease than before. Something was wrong.

This is weird…not just weird, but creepy weird…this is vaguely familiar…

Gathering the scattered remnants of her courage and resolve, Morgan began to walk the width of the room. She walked gingerly at first, for the floor was treacherous with slime, then more firmly after a few steady paces. She had scarcely walked ten paces when the hem of her torn gown twisted around her foot. She stepped on it, and fell violently to her face.

She lay there for a moment. After the shock of the fall had left her, she found that her chin was resting firmly on the slime-covered floor. But, the rest of her face rested upon nothing, and she felt a chill, clammy vapor from below! There was a large, circular hole in the middle of the room. Once Morgan wrenched a piece of masonry from the edge, she cast it into the abyss, and listened as the fragment reverberated off the edges of the pit. An oppressive silence reigned for several seconds, until it was broken by the splash of water far below. There was a brief flash of gray light, like the swift opening of a door, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. It was then that Morgan realized the doom that had been prepared for her.

'I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated myself upon the timely accident by which I had escaped. Another step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more. And the death just avoided, was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me.'

Terror as such she had never felt filled Morgan. She recognized her doom, the very one that had been written so long ago by Edgar Allen Poe!

The Pit and the Pendulum! Someone's been reading too much Mr. Poe!

Gray light suddenly flooded the chamber. Someone stood in a doorway that issued the light. Morgan was pulled from her position through the door, and into the gray light of dawn.