The statue was beautiful.

Lúthien was staring at it, kneeling in the grass, her white dress spreading around her like the white petals of a flower. She could feel the Silmaril faintly pulsing in her hand, sending small waves of warmth through it. The energy coursed in her fingers in an itchy, tingly sensation, before blooming into the rest of her body.

She couldn't remember how she came to be in this clearing, nor where Huan and Beren were, but she didn't mind at the moment. It seemed all her entire being could not stray its attention from the magnificent yet icy beauty of the statue in front of her, and the silence of the clearing that sheltered it.

It stood there, alone in the center of an unknown clearing lost in an unknown forest she and Beren had come across. The clearing was empty, devoid of any life; no birds sang in the trees, no playful foxes came rustling in the bushes. An eerie silence reigned in the clearing and its surroundings. Only the statue stood, a strange replica of life, forever frozen in stone.

The surface of the statue was smooth despite its age. No names were engraved in the small pedestal that supported the warrior of stone, but Lúthien didn't think she would need one. She thought she had already recognized him, but wasn't completely sure of herself. She was still surprised, for if she was right, the statue must have been a clandestine work; it showed no damages of time, and the figure depicted was completely intact. This warrior's name was forbidden, his legacy spat upon. Loathing ran deeply among her people for him, but Lúthien couldn't bring herself to feel it at this instant. She was too taken aback by the skill of the artist and the heart he had put into this forbidden work, and wondered who could have had the skill to accomplish such a miracle.

Chiseled features were merging together to create the face of the warrior; slightly frowned eyebrows over merciless eyes, high cheekbones, mouth ready to give orders, all of this with such a precision and delicacy that could have had rivaled with any of her people's work today. Lúthien could feel the inflexibility of the expression the artist had wanted to convey, and felt it even more while looking at the implacable face engraved in the stone. Long hair of plain gray were flowing underneath a tall, richly decorated helmet, frozen in one perpetual motion, with ornaments only worthy of royalty. A prince, maybe, but not a king; no diadem circled his head. A cape, which the Elf could only picture of a dark scarlet, came resting on the warrior's shoulder before falling to the ground in a graceful pose that felt so natural it could have been a moment frozen in time. The warrior wore a heavy, strong armor, yet its design was made to accompany his movements in the lightest way possible. The armor was also decorated and bore a coats of arm she couldn't recognize, plastered on the breast plate and the shoulders.

Finally, the warrior was holding a sword, pointing it straight to the sky, as if encouraging his troops before going into battle. Tiny red gems had been engraved in its handle, which shone in the sun like pearls of blood. The blade was thick and bulky, nothing like the light and well-made crafted weapons the Elves of Doriath were using in defense against the Black Armies, giving a grotesque, almost alien impression, and telling a lot about the warrior's fighting style. Such a sword was meant to give powerful, raw blows with pure strength alone, in order to kill in the most efficient yet brutal way. Its strangeness and the power that radiated from it unnerved Lúthien a little bit, and she took her eyes off of the monstruous weapon and the pearls of blood that seemed to be dripping from it.

She returned her gaze on the warrior's face, feeling his name emerging in the back of her mind but refusing to think about it. The Silmaril pulsed gently in her hand in a comforting soft glow.

The statue had been carved in a way allying beauty and strength, lightness and power. It had an imposing presence in the clearing, almost silencing all life around. The artist had wanted to pay a tribute while recreating the most faithful impression of the warrior, and Lúthien found that it was quite well-done. The statue had a princely feeling about it but also a sharp, cutting sensation of menace, embellished in the warrior's grotesque sword and the pearls of blood engraved in the handle, the only jewels the artist had considered worth putting in the stone.

Lúthien couldn't detach herself from the warrior's eyes, wondering about the impressive work of the artist and its strange origin when the statue spoke.

"Thief."

The word boomed in the clearing, pounding against the trees and the grass. Shrieks of alarms rose in distant parts of the forest, and flocks of birds fled into the sky, terrified. Lúthien's eyes widened but she remained still, unable to move. It was as if her mind had gone completely blank.

The echo lingered in the trees, lurking between the trunks, before dying miserably in the depths of the forest.

"Thief."

This time the word exploded directly into her head, shattering her thoughts, but not breaking her trance-like state. The statue hadn't made a single movement; its stony lips hadn't parted, its eyes remained fixed on the sky, but Lúthien had the undeniable feeling that she was being watched. She kept staring at the statue, waiting.

The movement was tiny, and Lúthien's eye didn't quite catch it at first. She felt that the pose of the statue was different in a minor, smaller way she couldn't detect. She didn't see the shadow on the clearing moving, slowly, millimeters by millimeters. The sword and its grotesque blade gently rotated in an extremely slow way that was barely visible to the naked eye. Nonetheless, Lúthien wasn't human and her elven eyes soon perceived the unnatural movement of the weapon that had so much disturbed her. The sword started elevating, stony gray against the emerald of the trees, cutting through the sun's disk, when Luthien realized that the statue was looking at her. The Silmaril in her hand pulsed more rapidly, and pain started to spread in her palm as she calmly gazed at those dull, expressionless eyes that were now resting upon her. The warrior's face was fully turned now and the sword kept rising, the sun shining on the bloody pearls of its handle.

The voice echoed again in unintelligible, twisted words, but only in her mind. It was a shapeless sound, distorting itself in her thoughts, invading every corner of her head. The Silmaril felt like a living heart in her hand, sending wild rays of energy in her frozen body. Luthien couldn't speak as she stood motionless in the clearing. Electricity had spread in the air and a strange, abnormal tension had risen, which she could feel in each of her bones.

The sword kept rising and had now pierced the disk of the sun. Rays of bleeding light, colored by the gems, had swept over the grass of the clearing, and the shadow of the blade kept moving, again and again, until it was above the warrior's shoulder. Lúthien suddenly realized that the warrior was preparing to give a blow, but she remained still. The information passed in her mind, broke among the shapeless voice's whispering and faded from her head. She could only stare at the pearls of blood, the stony blade which was going to crush her skull, and-

"Lúthien!"

The world swung as she was violently yanked to the side, crashing into the grass. She caught a glimpse of gray dashing past her, and a monstruous noise boomed in the clearing. The tree where she had stood under minutes before exploded in sharp splinters, lacerated by the sword of stone which had drawn a bleeding scar of worms and insects into the flesh of the earth.

The shock and the pain in her ribs reawakened Lúthien a little, and her eyes met Beren's worried ones. She realized he was talking to her, judging by the movements of his lips, when finally the sound came back a little in her ears, dismissing the otherworldly voice in her head.

"We have to go!"

She barely had the time to answer him when she was swung onto a grayish mass. The mass shifted and moved, before turning its head and barking loudly in her face. Lúthien finally recognized Huan's warm yellow eyes, which were staring at her with the same mixture of worry and fear that Beren had had in his. Beren jumped on Huan's back behind her, and the hound sprang through the ferns like a gray dart. The sword crashed again, right next to them, and slashed through an old fallen tree.

The movement and the colors flashing before her eyes finally broke Lúthien's trance-like state, and fear hit her like a stone. It was as if all of her body's reactions, mental and physical, had been delayed and were now coming back to hit her at full speed. Huan sensed her renewed, fresh terror and accelerated, his paws wildly beating the earth underneath.

Pain suddenly stung in her palm, and Lúthien opened her hand. The edges of the Silmaril seemed to have sharpened and were now mercilessly cutting into the fragile skin of her hand, which was now bleeding profusely. Lúthien frowned, stunned by the change of the stone and its aura which seemed now almost malevolent, when another tree groaned before miserably falling onto the ground, drowning in the rich soil of the forest. She looked back and saw the nightmarish face of the statue flashing through the trees, its head lost among the green cover of the leaves, the sword effortlessly cutting through wood. Quakes shook the ground as the work of art kept advancing.

"Thief!"

The word burst out like a dart, directly aiming at them, and this time even Beren and Huan felt it. Beren's arms had tightened around Lúthien and he stared in wonder at the nameless warrior that was coming toward them, amazed.

"I thought I had lost you again," he said in the cacophony of sounds. He turned to look at her, his eyes wide. "Why did you leave?"

"This I do not know," Lúthien sadly answered, although she had a precise idea of how she had come to be in the clearing.

The shadow of the sword loomed behind them, and Huan jumped just out of time to avoid its blow.

"Faster, Huan," Lúthien whispered as she bent toward the hound, her fingers lost in the gray fur.

The dog flickered a torn ear and accelerated so much he seemed to be flying over the earth. Soon the breaking sounds of the fallen trees faded, and the statue disappeared from sight. Never once did Huan slow down as they left those woods, abandoning behind them the cursed statue of Fëanor.