Out

'Legolas!' Gimli cried, leaning forward, but the Elf seemed lost in torment, and did not open his eyes.

There was a clatter as the iron coin fell from Aragorn's hand and rolled away, glistening with blood. Gimli picked it up. He wanted to hurl it away into the dark. He put it in his pocket instead.

'Coin feels...hot,' Aragorn said grimly, and showed his right hand; in the torchlight it was red as if he had held the palm out to a fire. 'Knife also. Iron...burns.'

'But how? How can it burn Legolas, or you?' Gimli demanded. 'You are not as that thing is! Iron should be as nothing to you.'

Aragorn shrugged, uneasily. 'Connection…?' was all he said.

Gimli was struck then with a horrible thought. 'His back!' he cried. 'Aragorn, quickly, we must check Legolas' back where I struck the other with the axe. If I hurt the spirit thus, then perhaps...'

Horrified, they rolled Legolas over and bared his back as quickly as they could. To Gimli's eternal relief there is no bloody wound or cracked, splintered ribs bursting through skin, but there was a deep, painful mark running perpendicular across the ridges of the Elf's spine, bruised right down to the bone. Legolas shivered when they touched it, but when Aragorn asked him if there was pain, there came no answer.

They examined Alfy too, and found that the key had also scorched a blistered patch onto the boy's bare shoulder, the skin cracked and red. But the cloak pin had not burned, so it seemed that cloth offered some protection between their skin and the iron. But perhaps that would also lessen the power of the iron to protect them from the evil? That they could not tell.

Aragorn did what he could for all their hurts with the herbs and salves from his pack. It was little enough, but Legolas shuddered with relief when Aragorn fed him small sips of water with dried athelas root mixed in. His eyes opened again and settled on Gimli, and there was a little more alertness and recognition there, and no blame. Gimli gripped Legolas' hand in his own. The fingers were limp and cold, as if the Elf had no strength even to move them.

'I'm sorry,' Gimli said. 'Legolas. I'm sorry.'

Legolas just blinked at him, tiredly. His mouth moved, but any words formed there were imperceptible.

Aragorn sat back. He said nothing, but Gimli could see he was uneasy and disquieted, a mirror of Gimli's own cold dread.

'Aragorn,' Gimli said, low. 'What do we do now? Legolas cannot walk, neither can the boy. The thing that hunt them is still out there. It wants to do something to the three of you, drain your strength, somehow, so it can...can imitate you. I am thankful it merely wants to kill me, but has the dark magic to do all that it desires. We cannot strike it without wounding Legolas, and the iron that protects us will also burn you all. You are exhausted. We have but one torch left, two weapons between us, and no plan.'

'Seems...thus,' said Aragorn, wearily, and then he hesitantly added. 'Although spirit weakened by attack...Driven away. Maybe defeated?'

Gimli snorted. 'Aye, and when is our luck ever that good?' he said.

And as if to prove it, Gimli suddenly took note of something he had been unconsciously aware of for some time. He was still holding the hatchet he had used to strike the spirit, but now it felt wrong in his hand. It was lighter, somehow, than it had felt before. He lifted the weapon to examine it, and saw that the iron of the axe-head was turning from grey to deep rust red. Even as he watched, a fine dust drifted from the metal.

'No!' Gimli cried, but it was too late. As if watching the weight of years roll by in a single moment, clumps of rust began to flake away, then larger masses like clots of dried blood, and within a few moments, the entire axe-head crumbled to nothing, and he was left holding the useless bare haft.

'Oh,' said Aragorn, and they looked at each other.

'We have to move,' Gimli said. 'Right now.'

They wasted no more time in talk, grabbing what gear they could not do without and roping themselves together with loops about the waist. Perhaps it would help. Within moments, they were lifting the injured once more onto their shoulders, Gimli again carrying Alfy, and Aragorn bearing Legolas. The Elf let out a soft exhalation of pain as he was lifted, but made no other sound or word, though Gimli could see he was still awake where he lay slumped across Aragorn's shoulders, his eyes gleaming in the dark.

'Gloinsson,' said Aragorn to get Gimli's attention. Then he gestured to the blade in his belt and said, 'Knife. Wield.'

Gimli did not argue. As much as he did not want to leave his friends without a weapon, it was increasingly clear that Gimli was the only one who would be able to defend them now. Aragorn could not even touch the iron knife without pain, and he had Legolas to worry about. Besides, the man might be limited to expressing himself two words at a time, but he was still Aragorn and he would not be gainsaid once his mind was made up. So Gimli took the knife from Aragorn's belt, and gave the man the torch to bear in his free hand. There was not much life left in it, but they had one spare yet, the last the Legolas had brought. And when that burned out...who knew what would happen?

This time, Gimli kept the knife in his hand. It seemed as if, like the ringwraiths of the Dark Lord all those years ago, the iron could not survive more than one blow against whatever stuff this spirit was made of. The axehead that had pierced it had crumbled to nothing. Now they had one weapon, and therefore just one chance left to attack. He would have to be ready. If Gimli could not kill the spirit in one blow…But there was no use in such thinking. They could only do what they could do. And right now, all they could do was flee.

'Which way?' said Gimli. 'We must find the doorway.' That doorway which led into the burial chamber, the stairs beyond which twisted up and up, the long sloping corridor and the great cracked stone, and then…

Out. The open sky. The sun.

Aragorn turned, looking all around. The darkness beyond the ring of the torchlight was silent and unyielding, and seemed all the more soul-crushing for Gimli's brief daydream of escape. But without another word, Aragorn put his back to the lake and the dark shoreline, and set off walking blindly into the dark, and Gimli followed.

And they walked. On and on, straining their eyes in the weak pool of torchlight, and it was like nothing had changed, as if all the horrors —the lake, the island with its great obsidian chair, the breathless bodies and scatter of pale bones—each moment of terror and grief they had experienced had all been a strange dream, and now they woke again to this reality of relentless night. They wandered aimlessly in the dark, as black and as hopeless as it had ever been.

Sometimes they stumbled, but they did not fall. Not yet. Aragorn was wan in the torchlight, drawn and hollow, a candle all but burned out. Legolas looked almost ghoulish, the blood still seeping from his burned mouth in a black smear across his pale face. His hand at times would spasm and reach but his friends knew not for what he tried to grasp.

At some point they lit the last torch. The old one sputtered out a few last weak flickers of flame, and then went out. Minutes turned to hours, turned to...Gimli did not know. Just step after step after step, and no way to know if they were going anywhere at all, except deeper into this unreal darkness. The voice did not speak to them again, either to corral or threaten or to gloat. It had no need.

They were never going to get out.

Splash.

Gimli froze at the sound.

Water lapped at his boots but he did not look down. For a moment he felt closer to weeping than he had in...he did not know how long. He closed his eyes but the blackness behind his lids was worse than the reality before him.

The lake. Each desperate step of exhausted pain and weariness had just brought them back to where they had begun. The lake. They had been going in circles.

The torchlight flickered and glinted on the water. At the sight of it, Aragorn made a sound like a wounded animal and sagged as if he would fall; Gimli caught hold of him, and together they sank to the floor, slow and awkward, Legolas and Alfy slumping down with them in a helpless tangle of limbs. The torch sparked as it fell onto the stone, but it did not go out. Not yet..

There was no escape. They sat at the edge of the dark water once again, and there was no escape.

'I am sorry,' Gimli found he was saying, over and over. 'I am sorry, Aragorn. Legolas, I am sorry.'

Aragorn hushed him with a nonsense sound, and pulled them all close. Slumped across his legs, Legolas lifted a tremulous hand and Aragorn caught it, chafing the cold fingers in his own in a gesture of useless comfort. There was no comfort to be had here.

There was no escape.

Then Gimli's thoughts fled far from him for a time, despair undoing him in a way fear never could. At length he became aware that Aragorn was making that hushing sound again, and when Gimli looked up, he saw the man was trying to calm Legolas. The Elf was tossing his head weakly side to side, and pulling insistently against Aragorn's grip on his hands. It was barely a ghost of his former strength, but Legolas was fighting nonetheless.

'What is wrong?' Gimli said, his voice felt rough. 'Is he fevered?' In his own arms, the lost boy Alfy lay still and silent as death.

Aragorn did not answer. 'Hush,' he said to Legolas again, and then murmured something in Elvish.

Legolas' gaze fell on Gimli, and there was urgency in his eyes. His cracked and blistered lips moved, and he breathed out a word that Gimli did not hear.

'What says he?' Gimli said. 'Aragorn?'

Aragorn ducked his head, miserably. 'Out,' He replied, and looked more broken than Gimli thought he had ever seen him. Not only that they would perish in here, unable to escape from this horror, but that Aragorn had not even the words to explain to his injured friend why they could not leave.

But Legolas seemed not to be waiting for Aragorn to explain. He mouthed the word he had said again and again, and his trembling hand came up. This time Aragorn made no move to catch it, and the Elf's hand curled, finger extending.

He was pointing at the torch.

'Out,' he whispered again.

'Legolas…' Gimli murmured. 'That is the last torch, 'tis true, but it will not go out for a while yet.'

Legolas made a minute motion that might have been a shake of his head.

'Out,' he whispered again.

'You are saying...the torch should be put out? But we need the light, Legolas. It keeps the spirit at bay. Without it, it will attack us in moments.'

'Out.' Legolas gestured at the torch again.

'But why?' cried Gimli. He looked at Aragorn, and the man seemed just as uncertain. 'You make no sense, Legolas. Your mind has been confused-'

'Out,' Legolas insisted. Then he closed his eyes, but he was not falling asleep, for a moment later he opened them, and looked at Gimli, then at Aragorn. Then he closed his eyes once more, and slowly opened them. Looked at Gimli, then at Aragorn. He was trying to tell them something, something so important he would use the last fragments of his strength to do it.

'...Understand,' said Aragorn, but it was clear from his expression that he was saying he did not.

Frustrated, Legolas raised one trembling hand higher and higher, until he reached Aragorn's face. Then he deliberately laid his palm across the man's eyes, covering them.

Realisation dawned. 'You are saying we must not see,' Gimli said.

Legolas slumped back onto the floor, exhausted but seemingly relieved. His hand fell back into his chest and came to rest there, limp.

Gimli met Aragorn's eye, uneasily. They had done all they could while in this place to keep the torches burning, and now Legolas would have them put out their only light? It was madness, surely. They knew the light kept the thing that hunted them at bay. How could Legolas possibly think they could defeat it while blind to its every move? But perhaps that was not his intent. Perhaps they sought not to best the spirit but to use its advantage to their advantage. Legolas had been long in the spirit's grip; if any knew how to navigate this nightmare world, it would be he. This place, wherever or whatever it was…it made no sense when they tried to look at it. The light showed it too featureless and unreal, too incomprehensible in its dimensions. Perhaps it could not be observed or felt in a way that they could understand. Maybe the only way to move through this dark place was by not attempting to see within it.

Or maybe there was something else at work here still. Legolas had indeed been long held by the spirit's power, and ever had it tried to deceive them with his voice. Who could say that this was not another deception? Even now there was a chance Legolas was not free of its evil grip. Perhaps it made him say these words, using him as a subtle tool to worm into their confidence, to break his friends' last defences. Could it be even now that Legolas was not truly Legolas?

But it did not matter in the end. Trick or otherwise, sooner or later the torch would fail. The darkness was coming and they could do nothing about it. At least if they put the touch out themselves the moment it happened would be of their own choosing. And maybe, just maybe, they could pass unseen in the dark. And in the end it all amounted to one thing. Did they trust Legolas?

Of course. To the death, and beyond it.

Gimli looked at Aragorn and saw the same thoughts had been passing through his mind, and he saw too the moment that the man reached the same conclusion.

'Well?' said Gimli, gruffly.

Aragorn gave a little sigh. 'Aye,' he said.

Legolas' eyes closed. The hand that had been lying scrunched up on his chest flattened out, fingers spread wide over his heart. It was but the faintest echo of motion to an Elvish bow of gratitude but they understood the gesture nonetheless.

It did not take long to make ready. Aragorn took off his leather coat so they might use it to smother the torch; at least then the torch would stay dry enough to relight later, if they had the chance. Then it was just a matter of rounding up their packs and weapons, checking once more that the rope which held them lashed together was strong, and lifting up the two injured. Alfy felt heavier than ever he had before, an almost unbearable weight. The sons of Durin were strong and Gimli's endurance was very great. But even he could not keep going forever. He looked at Aragorn and saw that he too had little left in him, weariness and pain drawing him wire-thin with tension and trembling control. They could not last much longer. One final push and it would all be over, one way or another.

Soon, there was nothing more to prepare. Gimli crouched to keep Alfy balanced on his shoulders, and took up the iron knife ready in one hand and in the other held the torch. Aragorn, bearing Legolas, stood shoulder to shoulder holding the leather hide, ready to smother the torch and put out their last light. His face in the flickering light was sombre.

'Any last advice?' Gimli asked of Legolas to lighten the tension a little, and Legolas seemed to consider for a moment. Ten his trembling hand came around to Aragorn's face and he pressed the palm against the man's mouth.

'Quiet?' Aragorn guessed. Barely perceptibly, Legolas nodded.

Perfect. As if this would not be hard enough, now not only did they have to attempt this blind, but also mute and silent? Gimli huffed, but there was nothing to be done.

'Well then,' he said, raising the torch. 'Let's get on with it.'

Aragorn nodded. He leaned forward, holding the leather out. Gimli lowered the torch down, hovering above the cloth. The three friends exchanged one last look. Gimli felt the soft brush of Legolas' fingers against his shoulder, and he gripped the Elf's hand briefly, a quick, wordless comfort.

Then Aragorn smothered the light.

Darkness swallowed them up, complete and all consuming, like a heavy blanket thrown across the whole world. They stood side by side, pressed by the darkness, barely daring to breathe. To Gimli, every sound seemed magnified, each shift of cloth a jarring clash and every beat of his heart a war drum. They stood and waited, waited for the thing that stalked them to seize upon them in the dark, or to snatch one of them away, knowing all the while that when it did they could do nothing to defend against it. And yet, despite their helplessness, still they waited, a long time, but no voice spoke and Gimli felt nothing but the burn of the air in his lungs, the press of Aragorn's shoulder against his, and the weight of the unconscious child on his back.

At length, Aragorn's hand came to Gimli's elbow in the dark and squeezed, quickly. If they were going to move, it had to be now.

They struck out into the darkness side by side, and step by slow uncertain step. Blackness pressed in on their eyes, and silence rang heavy in their ears, tolling its nothingness like a bell. Gimli found himself shuffling one foot uneasily in front of the other, holding his breath for fear of letting out any sound. The unseen floor seemed to rise up unexpectedly beneath each footfall, and though he tried to place his feet silently the way he had often seen Legolas walk—toe to heel, toe to heel—each step seemed abominably loud and he flinched at every clank and thud, heart labouring with fear. Beside him he felt Aragorn swaying unevenly, heard the man's stilted, exhausted breaths as he too struggled for silence with every step. They groped their way through the darkness, utterly blind. Utterly helpless.

Then someone spoke from out of the dark. Not the stolen voice of Legolas, but one that was less beloved and less familiar, but no less chilling when the child's voice whispered:

'Where are you?'

They froze, holding their breath. Legs trembled with the exertion of stillness; they dared not even turn their heads towards the voice lest the movement betray them with sound. The thing in the darkness was hunting them, but it could not see them, nor hear them. Not yet.

Something moved. A soft scrape, unseen but close. Too close. Gimli felt a cold sweat begin to prickle on his brow; he sensed something moving around them in the dark. Then in a singsong, playful tone from their left, the thing in its child's voice said,

'Where are you? I'm going to find you!'

Movement again, like a stirring breeze, and then in the darkness further off the soft sound of slow footsteps.

Then utter silence consumed them again.

For what felt like an eternity neither Gimli or Aragorn dared to move, every muscle tense, pulses racing and ears straining into the dark. But the voice did not speak again, and they had to go on. So they forced themselves, tiptoeing forward with unsteady steps onwards into the crushing void of this unnatural night, into a darkness and a fear deeper and more visceral than any they had known. The darkness was eating them alive. Would it never end? Would they ever-

Thud! Clatter!

Something skittered away into the dark, rattling loudly as a boot kicked it to roll away across the unseen floor. It sounded like wood on stone; a sudden drawn out echo of sound from something real, loud and shocking and out of place.

Even as he began turning instinctively towards the noise, Gimli remembered in an instant the burning plank that Aragorn had thrown out from the doorway, so long ago, to illuminate the path beyond.

They were within throwing distance of the doorway that led out of this place. The doorway where the burnt remnants of the door had fallen, charred wood and splinters lying amidst those great bands and hinges of…iron.

A weapon. An escape. They were close. They were so close.

Right behind them, the voice said, 'Found you!'

'Run!' Aragorn cried, even as they both vaulted forward into the blackness.

Gimli felt something touch his back but he did not pause, slashing wildly behind him with the knife even as he charged on. He felt Aragorn at his side, heard him gasping and his footsteps slamming onto the stone; no use for silence and secrecy now. The thing behind them let out a noise like a shriek of rage, but they were away, barreling forward blindly, hoping against hope-

His frantic dash ended suddenly as Gimli slammed into the stone of a wall. Aragorn impacted beside him but there was no time to be stunned; they threw out their hands either side, frantic, feeling for any sign of the doorway…

A breath of cool air on his face, and Gimli's hands found an edge in the stone, and beyond...an opening.

'Here!' Gimli yelled.

'No,' said the voice of Aragorn, just steps behind, cold and flat and so utterly chilling. But Gimli did not pause even one second to heed it; he dragged the real Aragorn in by the rope that tethered them, and then he was pushing the stumbling man through the gaping space into the blackness beyond. Gimli threw himself after, feeling the brush of stone he could not see close in on both sides, and then they were through into a different darkness. Clumsy beneath their burdens, they tripped and stumbled over broken debris strewn across the floor until they reached another wall and put their backs to its firm comfort. The air stank of smoke and the sounds echoed loudly all around, but the stone at last spoke truthfully, telling that they were now enclosed, now within walls. The vast limitless nothing they had wandered was bounded once more, and some of Gimli's measureless terror was curtailed along with it.

Gimli gasped for breath, shaking in his fear and exhaustion. This was the room with the wall of tombs where they had first been separated. It must be. Had they escaped, then? He heard Aragorn shuffling nearby, movement echoing loudly, and Legolas's breathing too was audible, shallow and uneven in the small space, but no voices were to be heard, either real or unreal. It was still so utterly dark, too dark even for Gimli's dwarven vision, but perhaps they could hope the spirit had been halted at the threshold behind them, no matter that the door no longer stood. Perhaps they had indeed escaped, for somewhere in this room there had been stairs. If he could but find them, they could get out.

Then, like the snapping of a trap, something changed. Gimli felt himself pressed back; back and down. A terrible pressure began to build in the air like a thunderhead down a mountain side; In the darkness Legolas gave a breathless gasp of pain, and Gimli heard Aragorn groan.

Something else was in the room with them.

'Aragorn! It comes!' Gimli tried to shout, but the words seemed slow and clumsy in his mouth. They had to fight, they had to…

Aragorn fell heavily against him, unable to stand. 'The hinges!' Gimli choked out, grasping at the man. 'From the door, there-'

Then the pressure tightened its grip again, and Gimli lost Aragorn in the darkness. The crush of the very air forced Gimli down to his knees, his hands weakened and the iron knife fell from his limp grip. He heard it clatter away into the blackness. Then Alfy's body was slumping from his shoulders, falling to the floor, limp and cumbersome, heavier than the heart of a mountain. Gimli could do nothing to slow it.

'Aragorn!'

Gimli fell forward onto his hands and knees, reaching out. He could see deeper shadows within the darkness, feel movement of the air. 'Aragorn!' he choked out, again. 'There's iron here on the floor, get-'

'No,' said Legolas' voice.

'Stay back!' Gimli said, as loud and fearless as he could. He groped for the knife, but did not find it.

'Feed us,' hissed the thing that was going to kill them. 'Free us.'

Then Aragorn, the real Aragorn, cried out from somewhere to the left. 'Light!' he said, and his voice sounded weak and far away. 'Light, Gi–'

He was suddenly cut off.

The darkness surged up and consumed the sound, and Gimli did the only thing he could; he fumbled at his belt for the torch, and then he ripped away the leather cloth that smothered it. No need for flint now, for the oil was still warm, and when the air hit the embers once more the flames blazed up like a ball of lightning. It was, in that moment, a light more brilliant than Eärendil's glass, more blinding than the searing light of the sun, and Gimli had to shield his eyes as they burned and scorched. But through the dazzling light he made out shapes: the walls, the blank dark mouths of the empty alcoves going up and up, Legolas lying upon the floor, and, in the centre of the tomb, Aragorn falling back. Over him loomed a shadow, something akin to the shape of an Elf, but somehow hollow and intangible, a form of smoke. But even as the torchlight blazed and touched upon it, the empty shape began once more to congeal, forming from its nothingness textures of green cloth, of long pale hair, of white, bloodless skin…

Gimli let out a cry, one of dread and of vengeance. He scrambled forward, the torch blazing in his hand, and with the other he reached for the longest piece of iron he could see amongst the wreckage, one of the great bands which had held the ruined door on its hinges. Wood still clung to it in charred black lumps but Gimli cared nothing for that; he ripped the iron free and surged towards the thing that was holding Aragorn on his knees, pale fingers gripping the man's face as if they would tear into the flesh. Gimli barrelled forward, and swung wildly. The blow went wide, but the spirit flinched. It turned away from its prey with a snarl, its claw-like hands jerked back from Aragorn's head. The man fell back to the ground, but the spirit was coming towards Gimli now, twisting the stolen face that it wore into a grimace of hate and rage. Gimli swung again, and this time struck a glancing blow across the shoulder, or where a shoulder would lie if this thing had such mundane features as joints. Vibrations jarred all the way up Gimli's arm, for the spirit was now rendered not as a shade but as a thing of substance, and as real as if he had attacked the wall itself. The thing shrieked, but even as it did, from across the chamber there came a choking cry of pain.

Legolas.

Gimli nearly dropped the iron, for he had forgotten somehow, amidst the panic and terror of their flight, the true horror that still awaited them. They could not break free of this thing, this relentless evil, without destroying it; that was clear. But the only weapon he had against it was iron, and the burn of the iron upon its form visited the same pain back on the one whose reflection it had stolen and held in thrall. Any pain, any damage he caused the simulacrum would mirror straight back onto Legolas.

Gimli could save Aragorn. He had to save Aragorn, and Alfy too; what choice did he have? But saving them would mean inflicting terrible hurt onto his dearest friend. Perhaps even to death.

Across the chamber, Aragorn struggled up to his knees and looked at Gimli, his face stricken. He had to have realised the same, for he looked at Gimli and shook his head, over and over, stern and pleading all at once. Aragorn always thought there was another way, a better way. But what other way was there? Kill one friend to save another…that was no answer at all. But there was nothing else left.

The thing in front of Gimli was still reeling from the blow of the iron, though it did not clutch at the wound like a being of flesh in pain. Its hands merely hung at its sides, pale fingers curled like the claws of a beast. Instead of blood, black wisps of smoke curled from the gash in the fabric of its form, as if its very insides burned in hellish darkness. A hissing screech issued out from it, though never from the open mouth. It turned its bitter eyes onto Gimli, they pierced him like a spear, and he knew then it would not stop, it would never stop, until it had what it wanted and they were all destroyed.

He had no choice.

Gimli glanced back once in silent apology towards where Legolas lay beside the boy. There was no time for words, and there was nothing he could say. Legolas, he knew, would understand this of all things, perhaps better than any of them he understood sacrifice.

He gripped the torch in one hand and the iron in the other, and with a final battle cry, bore down on the spirit once more. This time Legolas did not cry out in pain as the blow struck, and his breathless gasp of exhausted agony was almost lost beneath the scream of the wraith. Gimli gritted his teeth, drew back, and struck again, and again, and then he shoved the iron hard against the thing's bare skin.

The spirit hissed and shrieked. It flickered in and out of substance like a shadow when clouds pass across the sun. But Gimli would not let it slither away, he pressed hard with the iron, and it writhed and hissed. Then, without warning, it jerked to the side and twisted free; it leapt for the torch but Gimli forced it back again with a wild swing. Then the spirit turned towards Aragorn. The man was on his knees, holding fast between this thing of evil and their fallen friends, but he had dragged one of the heavy hinge pins over and was holding it up before him like a talisman, held in the corner of his cloak. The man was defending the wounded, but so too had he cut of the escape for anything that walked in the seen world.

But with that thought, just as Gimli was feeling again a glimmer of belief that perhaps they still could make it, the wraith flickered…and was gone. Gimli spun wildly, holding up the torch.

'Where did it go?' he shouted. 'Aragorn!'

Aragorn was struggling up to one knee, clutching the iron shape. He was shaking his head; he could see nothing.

Gimli turned back, and there were the stairs in the corner of the room, the stairs that led out of this tomb. Hope surged in him. 'It's ghost, or whatever it may be. We can go. Right now, Aragorn, let us get the others and-'

And in an instant it was right in front of him. Less than a step away were those false, unseeing blue eyes, a dull glimmer of pale hair rising like a phantom, white limbs reaching out for him…The iron fell from his hand and Gimli fell beside it, back into a devouring darkness, falling and falling through a smothering, choking, blinding cold that crushed the air from his lungs and beat like a drum against his labouring heart. He fell and fell, sickeningly helpless as the thing smothered him with terror and with night.

But before he felt the impact of any ground, or felt his last breath leave him, the world heaved and spasmed, and Gimli was hurled back onto firm stone as if he had been spat out from the maw of some beast. All around there was a wailing noise like a fierce wind howling between barren and desolate rock. Gimli staggered to his feet, surprised even to still draw breath. The torch lay on the floor nearby, spitting and hissing, and the firelight glinted on the iron bar he had dropped. Gimli snatched it up, even as he looked around trying to make sense of why he was not dead. Last time Aragorn had saved him, but the man now was sprawled on the floor, forcing himself up on shaking arms, and his expression was no less bewildered. He was staring at the spirit.

It stood not far away, and it was screaming. The thing staggered and reeled, and as it turned Gimli saw a great rend through its torso; black smoke was pouring out of the wound and pooling around its feet. The head was thrown right back, gold hair flying, and the ghoulish face and gaping mouth tilted up. The scream went on and on as if the thing was shrieking out all of its malice and rage to unseen skies, far above.

But then, something across the room moved, something right on the edge of the dark. The torchlight flickered across the figure of a kneeling Elf, slender and fair headed, draped in cloth of green. The real Legolas looked up and gave Gimli a faint smile. Then his hand fell away from where it had been clutching something at his chest, and silently, he crumpled onto his side. The spreading stain of blood across his torso looked black in the dim light, featureless but for the glint of the iron knife buried in his body.

'Legolas!' Gimli cried, but the sound was all but lost in the screaming of the ghost, and besides, it was too late. Legolas had done the only thing he could to harm the spirit, forcing the iron deep into the centre of it and poisoning the thing that possessed him from the inside out. He had taken the burden of that terrible choice.

The spirit's cry began to warp and twist, turning into a shriek that grew in pitch and volume until it was like a blade of sound splitting the darkness. Then the thing itself began to contort, its limbs grew misshapen and distorted as if it was losing control over the form it had stolen. The skin peeled and fell in chunks, the imitation of cloth and hair flowed away, and the mask of Legolas's features dissolved like smoke. All that remained was a dense mass of deeper darkness, a clot of thickened shadow, rancid and sickening.

As the last fragments of that false image crumbled away at last, the real Legolas drew a great heaving gasp like he had been rescued from drowning. Fresh blood bubbled up, but he was free.

From somewhere nearby, Aragorn cried out, 'Now, Gloinsson!'

Gimli paused not a moment more for doubt or grief. He raised the iron bar like a spear and, with a mighty heave, thrust it deep into the heart of that shadowy mass.

This time there was no scream. This time, consuming silence flowed out like a tidal wave, dragging them all beneath the heavy press of its utter soundlessness. Gimli thought he was shouting, but not a syllable could be heard; he saw the black mass of the spirit grow jagged and splintered as if cut through by shards of glass. It convulsed and twisted violently, unable to escape its own agony or the iron which pierced it. The silence rolled out, crushing them down with the flood of it, tumbling great boulders of dead and noiseless air over them, each as cold as the grave. Aragorn had crawled to Legolas, and Gimli saw him curling over the Elf, unable to do anything but hold on against the battering storm of this silence; hold on to each other and pray.

And then, like the collapse of a dark star, the entity which had haunted them so ruthlessly folded in on itself. It writhed one last time and then, with a soft sound like a soap bubble bursting, it was gone. The iron bar which had pierced it clattered to the floor, and even as it hit the stone, it fractured into pieces.

The dust blew away.