A/ N

Firstly- Mucho Thanko for the reviews, for always and forever they will be sincerely appreciated. But I won't bribe you to write more…….looks around well I would if I had anything worth giving, unfortunately I don't even own my flat, its rented. Would anyone like a small yellow lighter?

On that note of not owning anything I have to also say

Disclaimer: you guessed it, I am not actually Tolkein ,and therefore anything that bears a slight resemblance to his work is his and not mine. surprising eh?

So, merrily on we trot

The Niin-mor was beginning to take effect. That much was clear to the orc on her left hand side as he roughly secured her wrist and arm with the thick leathered buckled bindings. Good. He had wondered when they went to retrieve her if they had perhaps gone to far. She seemed on the brink of death, and her mind quite addled. No good to anyone then. Well not entirely true, there was meat on her yet.

He banished that thought from his mind as soon as it appeared, knowing full well that The Master wanted her for more than just a spit roast. This pure, putrid, creature had a very important part to play, and he Shuklagl, had been giving the chance to aid in her creation. He didn't know if he was excited or revolted.

He grunted as the particularly stiff strap he was working on finally slipped into the notch, and stepped back, glancing at The Mouths progress with the ornately decorated wooden chest behind him. The heavy pinewood lid had been lifted back, revealing the thick velvet covering of the inside, and from within this his master was retrieving fist sized hunks of black rock. He paused when he felt Shuklagl's eyes on him, but did not turn his helm to face him, he was above such things.

"Yeeeees" he rasped. It was disturbing how absolutely threatening he could make that little word, it seemed to crawl all over the room, scuttling like a bug around his servants who were stood all about the torch lit tower chamber, questioning, daring, willing them to distract him any further from his task.

Shuklagl cleared his throat. Being the most high ranking soldier in the room he felt it was his duty to speak on behalf of all those gathered, even though personal experience warned that when The Mouth, his master, took that tone of voice it could cost him his life. Or worse.

"She has been properly secured my lord" his words seemed no more than a snarl, but He knew that such inflection that would indicate respect for authority could not be found in an orcs words, all they knew how to do was snarl. He had put up with it for what seemed like a millennia.

The tarnished silver of his headgear was stroked with the deep amber glow of the torches and threw gaping shadows across the wall as he turned his shielded face to rough hewn wooden platform she lay anchored to. Burnished leather straps strained against every shallow rise of her chest. Her limbs, frail though they were, were also secured. Her arms above her head so that her that prominence of her ribs against the frailty of her skin seemed doubly so. He was struck at how small she actually was.

The bones of her arms so minute, they were like a birds, her fingers delicate, her cheekbones, although far too severe in her hollow face to be considered attractive, high and straight. Her skin was a sickly milky white, but his fingers remembered the silkiness of it when he had touched it earlier. Even in her depilated state, he could see her potentional. Yes. What she could become.

One by one the five hunks of black rock were placed around her, one just above her head, on the wafer thin skin above her heart, just beyond the reach of each hand, and down by her feet. He lowered each one so reverently and so slowly that Shuklagl began to wonder if they would ever be done with this. He didn't like it, this, this mysticism. It was all too, well complicated was not the word. His job, his purpose was to kill and do hard labour, he didn't like being involved with anything you couldn't see to stick a hunk of metal through.

The Mouth's mouth was now stretched wide in his oozing snarl that passed for his smile. He was excited, it had been a long time doing any proper summoning, or anything like this for that matter. When he was young and a man that had been his forte, his purpose, it had been that which had brought him to the attention of the dark lord, and his rather suprising skill which had secured his high status and standing with him to this day.

Nothing moved. Even the flicker of the sputtering flames seemed to still. They stood in this deafening silence for what seemed, at least to Shuklagl, an age. The orcs arrayed around the room, like him, were trying not to breathe and kept throwing furtive sideways glances in the direction of their master, who stood beside the slab of wood the girl was secured to. It looked as if he'd fallen asleep, with his head lowered on his chest, and Shuklagl almost had to stifle a laugh.

Then it began. It started as no more than a whisper, and then became a low guttural murmur, steadily rising in volume and pitch. The wind began to sing through the thick stone walls. With a slow sinouisity that was almost painful to watch He raised his arms and head. The long black folds of his garb snaked their way to the floor and pooled upon it, rustling upon the flagstones.

She began to struggle, her her body convulsing with some unseen tide, her face a contortion of pain. And then, it was no longer unseen. Shuklagl saw. With cold dread and disbelif he witnessed the blackness that began to swirl around the walls, that the slow monotanaus rising and falling of that shadow. It passed over her as a wave, lapping over her face and limbs only to withdraw once more, to sink back into the very walls so that it could return with increased velocity.

Shuklagl now shook with the vibration of His masters unearthly utterance, it was if a whole army's chant filled the room, a full bodied choir of faceless voice with the song of the storm as its accompaniment. For not only could he hear the wind, he could feel it, the room churned with the force of it.

He watched with horror as the shadow leapt up and not only engulfed the girl, but his master as well, sifting and out his body like great knives, sifting through cloth and skin, smoking into his face which was now spread wide with the intensity of his shout, his voice, now a roar so as to be heard over the wind, feverish, almost strained.

Then, his hand, which until this moment had been flung wide, suspended in the air, began to make to the slow journey, guided by the snakey tendrils of shadow, to above the girl, who ,on feeling this (for her eyes were closed tight in pain), began to scream. He turned his wrist round, so that the palm lay facing her navel, and then began to stroke the air above her. With every invisible carress her body strained against her bindings, trying to meet his hand. It beacame a claw, which strained and pulled some invisible thread from within her very core.

Something erupted within in her, and the dark cloud that was swirling around her,surged into her every pore.

The straps snapped, the Mouth was thrown back against the wall, and the thunder of the wind ceased so instantly it was as if it had died.

The only sound Shuklagl could hear in that instaneous deafening silence was his own laboured breathing, and he realised with shame that he was cowering against the wall. With trepidation he brought his eyes back to the table. She was still there. Sprawled across the splintered wood. And she wasn't breathing. Wasn't moving…

As he sat paralysed he watched in horror as something snaked its way from, from inside her. It slithered out from the small indent of her navel, an inky blankness that moved across her skin like ivy, crawling up her abdomen concaved from starvation , coiling beneath and around the curve of her small breast, then around the the top of the other, over her shoulder, and up to her neck, as if it would throttle her. And there it stopped. Stopped writhing, stopped moving. And became no more than a mark. As if it was painted on. But Shuklagl knew different. Shauklagl had seen it. That was the mark the shadow had left upon.

And just as he began to think that it was the mark of death, that it was to show that the black void had claimed her for eternity, her eyes snapped open.

And they, like her skin, were filled with the black inkiness of that terrible power.

And his master began to laugh.