Note:

Recap: After Sauron turns her into Lilith, a Nazgûl of sorts, Lily takes back control of herself, flees Dol Guldur, and meets Radagast. They come upon Lothlórien, which is silent and unwelcoming. They then come to rest near the entrance to Moria. Lily enters Moria while Radagast sleeps, meets the dwarf-king Thrór and his companion Nár; they fight, Lily wins, and has to create a new staff. Thrór enters Moria, and Lily and Nár follow him.

It has been roughly a week since Lily awoke free in Middle-earth on Dol Guldur.

Chapter Six

The Black Chasm

Upon the bridge he stood, the dwarf-king, small yet proud before the vast dark hall. Shadows lay thick against the ruins, and the pale light illuminated little. Nár hung back some distance, the dread of Khazad-dûm draped over his heart. And to her too it seemed like a deeper disquiet was creeping along the pillars of her courage forged through years of blood and death and victory.

"Behold!" said Thrór suddenly. "The King of Durin's Folk has returned to Khazad-dûm."

"Shhh!" Lily ran up to him as quietly as she could. Their jargon was influencing her speech by now, maybe even her thoughts, but she didn't think she'd be proclaiming herself like that before anyone or anything any time soon.

He turned to her, his awe swept aside by distrust, and he said, "Begone, witch. Queen or sister I shall not be hindered any longer. If kindness is your quality then give an old king the kindness to be free of any more doubt or torment."

"I'm trying to free you of torment!" said Lily, taking a few steps closer and testing his reaction; he eyed her as if she might kick him off the bridge. "Thrór! If I so wished, I could cast you from the bridge into the abyss below. But that would kind of defeat the purpose of me risking my own life — and Nár too, where is he?" She looked behind her and saw him still before the bridge. "Oh, come on." She looked back at Thrór and saw him already nearing the bridge's other end.

Cursing, she rushed after him, keeping a Shield Charm in mind as her eyes bolted from and to every shadow she thought she saw move.

"Look. Expect nothing of me if you must," she said. "Expect the worst, maybe, but at least for the sake of a quiet hope treat me without scorn or an attempt to put an axe in my head."

Thrór threw her an ugly glance and said, "I will not have even hope."

"Oh," laughed Lily, "oh yes, because there is still a chance all this is some elaborate trap where, for some unfathomable reason, I demand you leave the very place an ambush would be great for!"

"And what would you have me do?" said Thrór, stopping just before one of the countless pillars and jerking around with a wrinkled scowl. "I have no mountain. My people starve in the cold. A dragon has stripped us of our home! Do I not see how it is always the mighty and the safe who are so eager to speak to me of risks and death? Yet I am King and it is my duty and burden to do what I must."

"Mighty and safe? I've been mighty and I've been safe, but I'm neither now before you. Please, Thrór, only death awaits dwarves here, at least for now."

Maybe it was the strange confidence her words held, but the tired, long-burning rage in Thrór shifted for just a moment to allow in a sliver of something else, something less venomous.

"Perhaps there is some foresight on you," he said, "and perhaps not. But until plainer words meet my ears I shall not stop." He gave her another queer glance, and added, "But your insult to me as King has been less than your sister's, so I will not, as you said, attempt to put an axe in your head."

But that was as far as his pleasantries went; he heeded none of her warnings as he explored, his fingers reaching out to touch the black stone of the pillars as though he'd never get the chance again. Nár hovered near the bridge, his eyes scanning every inch of the ruins, broken and shadowed, fine spots for orc archers.

"Nár, what exactly does he expect to do or find here?" said Lily after some time, her voice always travelling too far for her liking, no matter how low she spoke. Thrór seemed to be taking slow, deep breaths with his forehead pressed against a pillar. "This place could be swarmingwith orcs for all we know. Is he hoping I'll kill them all for him? Because that's a stupid hope."

"We have had many long years, as Thrór said," whispered Nár, only a little less tense now with her next to him and no immediate ambush; yet there remained an exhaustion brought on by long decades. "And long have these thoughts stirred within his mind, and the minds of nearly all dwarves. But I fear Thrór is at last treading along the shadow of madness."

"Something like it, yes," said Lily, watching as Thrór stood before a passageway a moment, reading something on its arch, and then walked into the darkness. "He's not going in too far, right —?" But then she remembered what Radagast had told her: Dwarves hold a love for treasure, and dwarves who are without it for decades, most especially the king of these despondent people, may go to great lengths to regain their old glory. "Unbelievable."

"I do not know if I may venture so deep," said Nár, seeing Thrór vanish as if for good. "The shafts which allow sunlight are difficult to create, and are not worth the effort deeper down. Without light we will be swallowed by darkness, and I — I fear I can no longer endure any of the harshest of terrors." And on his tired, aged face crept a fright he could not hide, and he said, "I fear my death lies in that shadow."

Lily clasped Nár on the shoulder, her heart aching again for the dwarven people, and said, "Stay here if you want, and I'll go."

Something stirred in Nár's face then, maybe courage, maybe distrust, but in the end he walked with her to the passage's entrance, a hand gripping his axe handle tight. There was no light within. Maybe the dwarves had better eyesight in the dark — they surely must, if she thought about it — but no eyes without magic could see through this pitch black.

Magic. She had used it already just outside; what harm would a little light do when they'd probably make more noise fumbling around in the dark? Is that what Thrór was doing now, stumbling and tripping over skulls because he couldn't see anything?

"Can you see better than a human woman in the dark?" she said.

"Dwarven eyes are better, yes," said Nár quietly, "but I shall not go ahead of you. It is too dark and you are the mightier."

"Very well," sighed Lily, holding out her staff, and hoping for the best, whispered, "Lumos."

A pale light spilled forward, illuminating the passage and throwing into sharp relief a skeleton in dust-covered, deteriorated armor. Lily shifted the light brighter and moved forward, keeping her steps gentle and her ears attentive. Behind her trailed Nár. The air here was more stuffy and shallow.

As they walked through the hall, Lily brought to mind any spell that could be useful here. The best would be some charm or transfiguration, something that required only one casting; though transfiguring a bear was probably beyond her with this staff… which left either a Shield Charm… or some magical weapon. She knew one, too. Stella Lumensis.

She believed it a creation of Dumbledore's, having found it in his copy of Secrets of the Darkest Arts, in notes with floral handwriting about the different kinds of spells he had tried to use to destroy a Horcrux. She had never cast it, but Dumbledore had written its description as something of a luminous sword taken from the energy of the cosmos. Whatever that meant.

It had been also noted for its use in cutting cleanly through what the caster willed it to. And in tight corners such as these, a sword-charm that could move through walls would allow for greater mobility and only one cast spell.

After a stairway upward and around a corner, they came out to a large square room with scrolls and books on shelves and in holes and scattered across the dusty ground, lit only dimly by light from a shaft above their entrance. Thrór stood hunched against the center altar-of-sorts, reading from some old tome.

"Mazarbul," said Nár, his fingers brushing aside the dust on some script written on metal on the wall. "This is the Chamber of Records."

"Death comes for us in the shape of shadow and flame," said Thrór, sudden and loud, his head bowed over whatever text he read. "It came from the deep, and it slays all dwarves before its path. Already we have lost thousands, and King Durin VI is dead." Then he slowly closed the tome shut with a thud. "Those were the last words of Khazad-dûm."

Lily approached him carefully, the dust around her feet spreading with each step, and said, "Then perhaps we should leave. Whatever that death is — let's not be here when it arrives."

"If it arrives, you mean. The Fall of Khazad-dûm was eight-hundred-years ago," said Thrór, resting his hands on the altar and sighing. "None have walked through these halls in decades. Perhaps centuries."

"And yet I'm sure I saw figures in the shadows of the ruins watching that bridge," said Lily, stepping closer. "Really, what do you have to gain? Treasure? Is your life worth treasure that'll never reach the hands of the dwarves you're king of?"

"She speaks wisdom," said Nár.

"Thank you!" said Lily, looking back at him, but then Thrór was pushing past her, forcing her back a step.

"You are young, witch," said Thrór, taking in the rest of the chamber in a manner of making sure he hadn't missed anything. He glanced at her. "You do not yet understand the apathy of age. What is it to me if I die today or in a month or year?" Then he turned and walked toward the western exit of the room. "I have lived a long life, and as of late I have felt nothing but despair."

Letting out a heavy breath of frustration, Lily moved to follow him —

"Witch," said Nár from behind her, and to stop her momentum she grabbed the stone wall as she passed the archway, pulling herself back. She turned her head and said, "Yes?"

"I do not know your name," said Nár, "but I shall stay here, I think. My old heart is not so lacking in fear, and I may learn much here."

"I understand." She gave him a soft look and added, "And it's just Lily."

"Do not journey too far then, Lily," said Nár, "and keep the King safe."

A nod and then she was off, chasing after Thrór with light still spilling from her staff. Whatever might lay in wait in the dark would surely see her coming; yet those who live in the dark likely do not need light to see and sense intruders.

"Thrór!" she hissed when she found him. "I am really running out of patience here —"

"When have I asked for your patience?" snarled Thrór, his old fire aroused again. He threw her a look of disdain before he disappeared through another doorway, this one leading out to an open, vast blackness.

Lily rushed through too, holding her staff up high and moving it quickly from one side to the other, illuminating the great hall to check for threats. It was all quiet and still, aside their footsteps.

"What's even the point here?" she said. "Are we just going to wander from hall to hall until — what, exactly?"

"At worst, nothing," said Thrór.

"Really?" said Lily in disbelief. "That's the worst thing you can think of happening here?"

Thrór met her eyes, weary and without hate now, and said only, "There is also death and torture, but neither do I find as wretched as going back to my people with empty hands."

"Then let me make sure you don't — I know a good deal of magic, I can help —"

"Thrice have I said it," said Thrór, "never shall I pay the price for the goods of Lilith — nor her sister," he added, catching her open her mouth to argue.

Lily closed her lips and stared at him incredulously as he continued his search for — what, a miracle?

So it went, the two of them indeed wandering from hall to hall, forge, living quarter, whatever. She half-expected at any moment for an arrow to come flying out of the darkness and into her heart, before she could cast any spell against it. If she had her wand, she could've easily cast one of several protective spells on herself and Thrór for permanent protection, but alas, she was too frightened of her staff holding some spell-limit of sorts.

The deeper they went, however, the sturdier the staff in her hand began to feel — and the more she envied Nár. But her strengthening staff brought forth some thoughts to distract her.

In her world they had largely used a butchered Latin for incantations, among other languages old and new, yet the truer the language described the spell the wilder it became, and the harder it was to focus it; too much of an incantation and the whole thing fell apart. Magic had no limits, really, but wizardkind did. But here! Here in Khazad-dûm dwelled thousands of years of dwarven history, where the words of dwarves drench the walls and corridors and on the pillars and on the ceiling.

And her staff, still shining with the same strength, of wood on the mountain, soaked in the water of the lake, with the hairs of the king of the dwarves — she hadn't planned this at all. Yet she thought she could make a spell cast with this staff even stronger…

"Could I ask for something?" she said suddenly to Thrór as they left yet another dead-end with nothing worth even looking over. In these areas the simmering dread lessened, though the air remained stale and thick in her nostrils.

"That depends on the question, obviously," said Thrór.

"What're the dwarvish words for starlight sword?"

Thrór froze nearly midstep, and when he turned his head his gaze was cold. "The secret language of the Dwarves is not idly spoken among other races."

Lily thought that was sort of stupid, but didn't say it. Her feelings leaked onto her face anyway, and Thror's lip twisted further before he turned around and walked away, deeper into shadow.

"Ugh," groaned Lily, shuffling after him, "it'd be just three words, Thrór, for a spell that I think I could empower with your words. It'd be a spell for our protection."

"Starlight sword?" Thrór scoffed, his eyes judging her up and down and back up to meet Lily's gaze. "You'll likely impale yourself with it."

It was annoying that it kind of hurt that he'd say it so mean like that. For an hour now they had traipsed through Moria — and by traipsed, she meant the both of them: Thrór was, at the very least, quiet and careful with the way he went around. As such, there was only silence as he went off again to explore some new hall.

Lily watched him go, and for a moment seriously considered just leaving him, but while he knew nothing good about her, she had seen and felt flashes of the last several decades of his life. And she had no idea how to get back; they had gone too deep. So she trailed slowly behind him, her mind on magical theory and incantations: a deep understanding of the theory of a spell, and magic in general, could allow for a greater flexibility in the incantation, if not a full removal or overall of the words (which were not meant to be much more beyond a small tool for focusing a spell).

At the end of this hall stood tall a great metal gate, and through the bars was a long darkness her light could not reach the end of.

Thrór gripped a bar on each gate and tugged hard. The gate barely moved. He tried again, and again, the clanging not even that loud, then he stared at the metal as if his eyes could command it open. Lily let out a sharp breath of frustration, and he turned to her at the sound and said, "Could you not open this gate?"

Lily's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, really, now you want my help?"

"I ask only for —"

"You don't get to ask for anything," snapped Lily, "not after dragging me through this ungodly pit —"

"That I did not ask for," said Thrór swiftly. "It is you who decided I needed protecting. But as you are here, is there not a simple spell that… that…" And his voice trailed off, an uneasiness creeping into it as he slowly turned his head back to the pitch-black beyond the gate.

Lily shone her staff-light past him, illuminating the long hall beyond.

"It's nothing," she said, her tone gentler as she saw the disquiet etched in his eyes.

"No," said Thrór. "Look."

And she looked again, and there, at the very border of her pale light, stood a figure in the shadow. Her heart nearly leapt to her throat.

Thrór took a step back, the blood draining from his face and his fingers wrapping themselves tight around his axe's handle. It seemed regret, at last, found its way into the old king's heart.

Lily took a step forward, pushing the light further in, and she nearly took a step back in fright. Revealed for a moment was an orc: man-high and built with muscle, its skin grey and littered with scars, and its hair thin and sparse, the strands reaching past its gnarled mouth. There was no other word but hideous. Even the armor it wore was designed in the most twisted way, looking as though parts of it were embedded into the orc's very skin.

"It is a lone orc," said Thrór, somewhat in relief.

Then the orc's voice boomed out, deep and harsh, "Who dares come thieving in the shadows of my kingdom?"

And before Lily could stop him, Thrór sprung forward and said with fury, "Your kingdom? Since when was Khazad-dûm, built by the Dwarves, any kingdom of any orc?"

A dark laughter rang out, and the orc said, "Built by the Dwarves once, but it has been long since they have inhabited Moria. Now I am king. Tell me, beggar, who is your companion? What magic or craft does she wield?"

Thrór spat, "Beggar —?"

Lily stepped forward, letting her staff-light spread wide and high, and she said clearly and loudly, "I'm a witch. And I'd advise you to hold your tongue. King Thrór is right: this isn't your home. Who are you to claim it as such?"

The orc stayed silent, his features unreadable from the distance, and the only sound between the three of them was Thrór's heavy breaths.

Then the orc said, "I am Azog, Master of Moria." And as he retreated into the shadows, he added, "And we will see soon whose tongue will be held, witch."

But Lily had enough experience with orcs and their threats, and without hesitating she took another step forward and pointed her staff through the bars of the gate.

"Accio!"

The spell hit true: the wood under her fingers tightening, the orc came skidding along to the gate, huffing and incoherently shouting in surprise, and then her palm was on his forehead, her fingers latching onto what they could around his skull.

"Legilimens."

The world around her vanished as she was flung into a hellish haze of memories: there was great fear of Lilith among the orc-peoples; the rumor among them was that she had visited other strongholds in the Misty Mountains. And she had bent them to her service with ease, the rumor had said. But this orc and the others had not seen her.

Ripping through his tainted mind without mercy, she shoved aside all the killings and rapes and torture he'd witnessed and participated in. He was Azog, Azog the Defiler, and he'd done more than enough to earn the name.

When she was finished, there was nothing left of his mind, and the orc fell to the ground with rasping breaths and wide unseeing eyes.

"Looks like it was yours," she said coldly. Then she trailed her gaze across the length of her staff, appreciative, then to Thrór, who stood still, staring. "I read his mind and obliterated it: there are thousands of other orcs further below. And I've just more or less killed their king. I have no idea how well this staff will hold up against that many. I'm done arguing with you, Thrór. If I have to put you to sleep and carry you to the surface myself, I'll do it."

Thrór only said, "You are of some use then. Fine."

Then they were off, the both of them walking swiftly through the halls, the shadows cast aside by her light. Some quiet dread began to creep up her arms as they silently — as silently as they could — navigated their way back up. The navigation was more Thrór, really, given she would've had no idea how to find the exit.

Along one tunnel a sound came to Lily's ear, too distant to tell if it was metal against metal or the shriek of some creature. Thrór continued on, perhaps too far ahead to have heard it. But then another came, and several more after it, and there was no mistaking it: there was a whole host of orcs far behind them somewhere, shrieking or laughing.

"Run!" she said, and she and Thrór picked up their pace until they were nearly sprinting, their footsteps no longer quiet but hopefully still enough so to not inform the orcs of their precise location.

A rolling, hollow boom came from somewhere further away, like a heavy hit against a great drum. Then a horn, loud and blown with the fervor they heard in the screeching rage of the coming orcs. Soon the walls began to tremble.

"How are they doing that?" said Lily, panting as they turned a corner and rushed up a set of stairs she recognized from earlier; they were still far away from the exit.

"Who knows what foul machinery the goblins have constructed in their presence here ," said Thrór.

Cries of fury and for death began to come from beneath their feet, dulled by the stone but recognizable. She had not forgotten the Dark Tongue. Once they reached the end of this hall they became shriller. Closer.

"Behind us!" cried Thrór.

Lily threw her light and gaze over her shoulder. Indeed they were there at the far end of the hall, having caught up or found some other path as a shortcut.

She and Thrór flew through a doorway and into a passageway, and there Lily struck a wall with her staff, her spell exploding like a harsh clap of thunder, cracking the black stone and sending the ceiling behind them tumbling down in large pieces. That entrance was blocked now, at least.

As soon as they burst free from the passageway into another hall, however, they were beset again. From another passage on the south side spilled forward another group of goblins, armored and armed with an assortment of spears and swords and shields. They would meet in the middle of the hall if they continued toward the eastern exit.

"Thrór," said Lily in a panic, her eyes darting over the hall in search of another escape. There was only the northern exit left.

But Thrór said, "A dead-end there, I would bet. We must fight!"

The two of them slowed, and the orcs spread out, ready to encircle them, snarling and screeching, the sound grating to the ears.

Lily lifted her staff up high, the light so bright it blinded the orcs, and hoping for the best she cried aloud, "Stella Lumensis!"

From her staff and about it sprang a faint glow, like moonlight through a fog.

Lily let out a harsh noise of disbelief and despair.

"Thrór — the words — the Khuzdul words —"

Thrór grunted, hesitated, the orcs beginning to surround them, then bit out, "Ithtir ithrun. Those are the words — ithtir ithrun."

And putting together all the theory she knew and veneration she felt for the dwarves, Lily rose her voice to a scream: "Ithtir Ithrun!"

The spell recast, and conjured now was a great sword of light, shining blue-green with rolling waves of a luminescence with sparkling stars. All around them stopped, and Thrór too was for a moment stunned. Lily kept her staff up, the glow washing over her wrists and to her elbows. And she laughed, and the orcs cowered.

Time-honored were the halls of Khazad-dûm, and dwarf-honored was her spell, mighty and unfaltering with the blessing of the king. One bold orc broke from the others, charging forward spear-first. Lily gripped her staff and thrust it forward to meet the orc head-on, and the spell-sword disintegrated the spear and cut through the orc's armor, splitting open its chest and then up through its head as it collapsed.

Blood painted her face, and a long-buried part of her was surely protesting in horror, but in the present she didn't care. These same creatures, devoid of even the capability of love, had spent weeks if not months happily torturing her; they had not been the same orcs, no, but every orc-mind she glimpsed held nothing but cruelty and sadism, as though they were corrupted on a fundamental level.

Then came the waves of them, the orcs crashing into each other in their rage to reach them, but hopelessly: her staff and its spell-sword cut down all but those few that managed to dive aside, only to be axed by Thrór. It was too easy. But the orcs only realized the futility themselves when the cave-troll came, and was swiftly cut down by its knees and then its neck as it fell thundering upon the ground. Then they all fled, howling and chittering. By that point she and Thrór had strewn about great piles of corpses and limbs.

Panting slightly, Lily said, "Come on, before they bring more or something else." She hung her staff loosely, the spell still active, and wiped the blood from her forehead, brows, and over and under her eyes. "I can kill orcs all day long, but I'm not willing to risk going up against anything magical. And I'm getting tired."

"Aye," said Thrór, looking around wide-eyed. "You've felled at least a hundred."

They ran through the eastern exit, at last nearing the Chamber of Records.

"Your magic," said Thrór, heaving and lagging behind.

Lily slowed with him, and said, "What?"

Thrór planted a hand on the wall, flinching when Lily's sword went right through him as she turned around. "Careful!"

"What? Oh. No, it won't hurt you. The spell's smart — it won't cut through anything I wouldn't want it to."

Thrór watched her as they both caught their breath, an indecipherable glint in his eyes.

"I have heard tale of the sorcery of Men," he said at length, standing straight and moving again, east, "but even those who told us the tales had never seen nor met any sorcerer, or I suppose sorceress." He glanced back at her as they walked. "And I would not call these things lost arts, for it is said that Man-sorcery was always rare and mostly unheard of. Among the Dwarves it is so, too. Yet your magic is beyond even the tales I have heard, and far beyond the small spells our few dwarf-casters know." There was a brief silence as he slowed and his eyes clouded with woeful memories. "Or should I say knew… They are gone now, perhaps. Whence do you come that Lily and Lilith both could learn such crafts beyond our comprehension?"

Lily sighed, partly for exhaustion and partly because she didn't wish to answer that question. But he deserved honesty, and she said, "A land far from here, where witchcraft was not so rare." Before he could add anything, she patted his shoulder and gestured down the hall, saying, "Come, let's leave this place for now."

"Very well," sighed Thrór.

They continued. No sound came from behind them. It seemed the orcs had truly abandoned their attempt at revenge. She kept her spell active anyway. Every step they took brought them closer to the Chamber of Records where Nár waited, and yet every step they took brought a simmering dread closer to her heart. Something felt wrong.

Her worry was not without reason: they turned a corner of a corridor into a new hall, and at the end of it flickered an orange light, as though a fire had been lit around that far corner. And indeed, the nearer they drew, the more obvious it became. A smell of smoke was in the air, and the sound of a flame crackling reached her ears clearer.

Turning this corner, a hall of fire awaited her. It were spread over the floor, on the walls, the ceiling even, all burning on nothing but stone.

"What is this?" murmured Thrór, shifting around with unease.

"I don't know," said Lily.

"It isn't a trap you set that has gone off by mistake?"

"No…" Lily extinguished her sword-spell, then the flames. They passed through without harm, but again with every step toward the Chamber of Records she felt an ever-building dread. Something else had been here, had walked through these same halls and left a path of fire. The question was: were the flames a natural trail of this thing, or was it a warning, or worse: a lack of care for the evidence it left behind.

Everywhere in this accursed city the stone sat still and stiff, but here it was worse. There was the unmoving nature of stone and then there was this, so similar to the walls of Dol Guldur: frozenpast a rock's endurance, not with any spell, but with the very presence of a malice so great and evil that no words could ever really describe the depth of the dread. The hairs on her arms and neck and legs had risen the whole time she had been here, but now they stood straight and rigid, as if the tiny muscles beneath her skin were preparing themselves for the fight of her life. She had felt no dark magic like this back home; for however evil some magic had been on Earth, none of it had seemed quite as… as… as discordant.

By the time they reached the entrance to the Chamber of Records, the shuddering she had been fighting this whole time was at last breaking through, and Thrór's face was pale like snow in the firelight. Hers was no doubt the same.

"Nár?" called Lily as she entered. There was a murmuring behind the altar. She came around it, fingers and palms tight against the wood of her staff. The weight in her chest grew as the words became clearer. They were not English, or Westron as it was called here, nor any other language she could recognize. But they seemed repeating.

Nár sat on the ground, hunched and head in hands, the edges of his fingertips pale from how hard he pressed them against his temples.

"N-Nár?" said Lily.

Thrór stepped forward, speaking in what seemed to be the same language — Khuzdul, she guessed. There was no response from Nár. He muttered the same words again, not taking in anything around him.

"What's he saying?" she said.

Thrór did not answer. He kneeled beside Nár and took a hand into his own, murmuring something against Nár's knuckles. Nár didn't seem to hear a word. Lily's heart twisted.

"Can you pick him up?" she said quietly. "We need to go. We need to go now."

Thrór slid an arm under Nár's knees, and another through his arms and around his back, and hoisted himself up with a grunt. He turned to her and said, "Indeed… It was a mistake to come here with so few in number."

A flicker of frustration flew through her as she said, "You didn't have a few in number — you would've only had yourself in there, and you'd be dead now if I hadn't come with you. We left Nár here alone, and God knows what happened to him. This was a mistake, like I said!"

The muscles in Thrór's face twitched and hardened, and with a nod he said hoarsely, "So it seems."

The old fear swept into the room, slowly, creeping along the walls and across the ground and climbing Lily's limbs. Thrór didn't notice as he adjusted Nár in his arms; she seemed sensitive to this.

"Thrór…"

He looked up, forehead furrowed above his thick eyebrows.

"Something's coming," whispered Lily.

His eyes widened and he shifted Nár in his arms again before hurrying to the eastern exit. From the western door approached the nameless terror. Lily rushed to it and slammed it shut — no doubt whatever this thing was already knew they were there — it had to — for she knew it was there.

"The words for seal door, Thrór!" she said, but he had fled too far already. And the nameless terror was close now, turning her insides colder the nearer it came. "Oh God" — she held her staff to the door — "Colloportus!"

The spell wasn't of her usual strength, but the door sealed nonetheless, the space between the door and its frame closing with conjured stone.

She stepped backward, feeling the blood drain from her face as the presence reached the door, standing just on the other side. For a moment she stood frozen, unable to move until the silence shuddered. Then a great force was set against her spell, against her, as though a thick tendril of something sinister had traced the spell to the caster, then —

Everything around her shattered. The door burst, her staff splintered, and her mind unraveled. Lily was thrown backward, hard, the air sucked out of her. On the ground she looked up to the doorway before her, stricken with a screaming fear.

In the doorway loomed a tall figure, shadow cloaked about it, though in its hands and on its head like a crown billowed flame, yet its face remained utterly black. There were no eyes visible to her, but she could feel its gaze on her skin like stinging wasps, and the malice in it took away any breath she sucked in.

Upon the threshold it stood, its unseen stare a signal of doom, drumming against her senses so that she could barely keep herself together. Then, its judgment came: a red-hot sword leapt into the air and came hurtling down upon her. Lily fell flat on her back, head against the altar, hands raised to perform a Shield Charm — but there was no need. The flaming blade dug into the altar instead, the heat of it nearly suffocating. Then the sword rose again, slowly, as though this thing had all the time in the world to butcher her.

"Aguamenti!" screamed Lily with her hands up, and from them burst jets of water. The fire extinguished, hissing as gallons of water dropped splashing on the ground. The shadow around the being grew. Scrambling backward, over the altar split in two, the heat of the stone burning, she cried aloud, "Lumos!"

The shadow swallowed the light, and the light from the high window only just barely revealed the thing of shadow and flame turned shadow and slime. Throngs flew forward from its other hand, wrapping around her legs and pulling her back toward it. She twisted and her fingernails scraped the aged stone. When she was pulled to the altar, she turned and planted her feet on the side of the altar, her knees buckling as she cast a Banishing Charm upon the broken stones.

Like snakes dropping dead, the ends of the whip loosened as large rocks struck the being. As she turned around to flee, they snapped back, lashing her forward onto the ground again. Pain sprung up all over her back, and her hands and wrists as they caught the ground. She turned on the spot, trying to crawl backward so as to not die by a demon unseen. It had leapt atop the altar, watching her. Blood pounded in her ears and dust clouded her nose.

Fire returned to its hands, and then blazed behind its head like a mane as it jumped down and came before her. Holding her palms outward, Lily screamed out a Shield Charm, and it worked — a spherical shield shone — and the flaming sword broke right through and carved her chest wide open, incinerating her insides and setting her heart ablaze. And before she could think or do anything beyond gasping in horror, she choked on her boiling blood.