A/N: Guess who NANO-ed? And wrote over 40 pages in this in a month? And is very, very tired? I didn't quite finish the entire story, but I got pretty close. Hopefully I can get this edited and posted a lot more regularly. This one's a little short, but the next one is about 90% done. This just felt like a natural place to end it. I'll try to get the next one posted by the end of the weekend.


Chapter 12: The Pipes, the Pipes Are Calling

"Lydia! Lydia!"

The Pole had erupted into chaos at the sound of the horn blasts that indicated that this was indeed not a drill. Elves fled their stations and attempted to file into the passageways tucked behind the walls. Bernard pushed past them, struggling against the current as he shouted Lydia's name.

"Bernard!"

The voice stopped him in his tracks but it was not Lydia's, but Judy's. She had shouted to him across the factory floor, somehow making herself heard over the noise.

"Have you seen Lydia?" he shouted back.

"No. She's probably with the wood elves. We need to get to our station."

"I'll meet you there. I have to find her."

Judy grimaced but did not argue as she continued to corral their elves to their hiding spots. Bernard kept at his effort to wade through the crowd, hoping he was not too late.


A metallic cacophony thundered in the valley as the wood elves gathered their weapons and donned their armor. Horses whinnied and snorted in the frozen air, pawing the ground with impatient hooves. Alone in her tent, Lydia caught her reflection in a mirror. Her hair was pulled back in a long braid. Her gray eyes were wide and colorless in her pale face. They reminded her of coins on the eyes of the dead, and she wondered with wry humor if the image was a prescient one, an ill omen that her first battle would be her last and her journey from one grave would only lead her swiftly to another.

Looking upon herself with chainmail draped over her body and plates of armor across her chest and shoulders, she tried not to imagine herself in a silk gown with her torso caged by a whale bone corset. Boning and silk or mail and greaves, the difference mattered little. The armored plates left her feeling as vulnerable as silk, the corset as restricting as the heaviest chain mail. Bound by mortality and expectation then by duty and fealty, she had always felt trapped. She swallowed the wave of emotion and took up her weapons. With her quiver on her back and her sword at her hip, she left the tent and ventured out into the frozen air.


The camp of wood elves was even more chaotic than the crowd inside. Bernard found himself acting as a sort of elvish speed bump as he frantically searched for Lydia in the bustle of armor-clad wood elves. Suddenly she materialized in front of him, armor clad herself, with her hair in a braid behind her head, and a very annoyed expression on her face.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded. "You should be in the tunnels with the others."

"I came to find you." Bernard looked her over, and the sight of her fully-armored sank in for the first time. The sword, the chainmail, they were very real, and Lydia was definitely not playing dress-up. Bernard's heart, which had been beating out a drum roll in his chest, sank into his shoes. "Where are you going?"

Lydia frowned.

"I'm going with them."

"Into battle?!" exclaimed Bernard.

Lydia's frown only deepened. "Of course."

"Why?"

Logically, he knew it was a silly question, but he supposed he could not accept the answer until he heard it out loud. Lydia's voice was level and insufferably patient when she spoke it.

"To protect the Pole. That is what the wood elves are here to do, and I must stand as one of them."

"But why?"

Lydia's head shook in bewilderment.

"I don't understand," she said.

Neither could Bernard. He felt as though they were speaking different languages. Perhaps they were.

"You could die."

He could think of nothing else to say. Lydia looked back at him with a practiced, balanced expression, but a storm of emotions churned in her eyes.

"So could you," she said finally. "So could any of us. We could all die. That's the point. If I'm not to join them, then what do you think was the purpose of bringing me back?"

Bernard threw up his arms. "I guess I don't know."

Her gaze upon him hardened into stone as she fixed him with a steady gaze.

"If you have something to say to me, I would hear it."

Bernard looked at her standing before him in chainmail and plate armor, a sheathed sword at her hip, a bow and a quiver on her back. She was two feet away from him, but it might as well have been two thousand miles for as far away from her as he felt. The last weeks were a blur in his memory now. He heard the dreadful silence of the Pole and the far off drumming that had set his heart pounding along with it. He could think of several dozen things he would like to say, but they had only moments left. He chose none of them and remained silent.

That silence hung heavy like a padlock on the door that stood between them. Lydia paled only a little and closed her eyes. The key in the padlock twisted. When she opened her eyes, they were as watery as a rainy day, but they hardened in an instant to match the cold metal of her armor or the sharp steel of her sword. She shed no tears. Her jaw clenched as she gazed at him.

"Very well then," she said. "Farewell."

She spoke her final word in a language his mind had forgotten, but his heart understood every syllable. Turning on her heel in a stiff about face, she mounted her horse, rode out into the ranks of her fellow wood elves, and did not look back.


Bernard watched her until she disappeared into the blur of steel and chainmail that made up the elven regiment which undulated before his clouded vision like a metal wave. Blinking tears away, he turned and walked back inside. The cold twin hands of dread and regret twisted through his insides as snow began to fall.

"Minariel!"

Gilrohir's shout rang out. He had called for silence amongst his soldiers as they formed their ranks, and his sharp eyes had easily noticed the absence of their youngest member.

"I'm here," said Lydia as she took her place between Elrodan and Orëna. An infuriated glare was all the reprimand they had time for, and Gilrohir continued shouting orders to the small regiment of wood elves.

"Wipe your face, Minariel," muttered Elrodan gently.

Lydia had stared straight ahead of her for almost a minute, paying no heed to either Gilrohir's words or the steady rivers of tears that flowed out her eyes. She sniffed and passed a hand over her face, but the moisture had already crystallized in the frozen air.

Lydia shifted in the saddle and waited. Pushing all other thoughts out of her head in preparation for what was to come was as easy as pushing a granite slab across the ground. She looked out across the horizon where the sun shone in a bright glare against the snow. As she blinked in the brightness, her elven eyes spotted a dark line cutting across the white like a pen stroke. Lydia was not alone in spotting it. Their horses were bred and trained for battle. Many of their sires and dams had met the Erlking and his forces on the battlefield. Yet they had seen little of battle themselves. Some of the youngest wood elves too were almost as inexperienced as Lydia was. A horse whinnied, and a few stamped their feet. Armor clanked as a couple of elves fidgeted in their saddles. But each one of them held their position, gritting their jaws and steeling themselves for the coming hours, and none fled.

The dark line drew closer, until it stood before the line of elves like a massive hedge, ten feet high and unfathomably long. Leafless vines twisted into each other in a tangled mass slick with wet mud. Broken branches jutted out in haphazard spikes. Ants, beetles, grubs, and snakes crawled in and out of the muddy orifices in such numbers that the mass was lousy with them. The mass groaned with its own weight then creaked to a stop before the line of wood elves.

At Gilrohir's command, the elves drew their arrows and fired a warning volley into the mass. It did not fall. A few wood elves chanced a look at their commander, but other than a slightly bent eyebrow in consternation, he did not betray any emotion toward this failure.

The mass burst apart. What was once a thundering, rolling, groaning clump of dead and writhing matter suddenly became hundreds of humanoid monsters, each standing about ten feet high. None were identical. Some were more branch than anything else, like a long dead tree brought to horrifying life. Others were mud taken shape, covered in sprigs of grass clumped together like hair. A few had grubs and spiders burrowing in their eyes, and Lydia marked that such animals could survive in this frigid landscape. Perhaps whatever twisted magic had given the approaching giants their life had also kept their parasitic inhabitants alive as well.

"What are those creatures?" she wondered aloud.

"The Erlking has rebuilt his army," said Elrodan solemnly. "They are monsters of mud, wood, rock, and grass. He has taken the fertile things of the earth and twisted them."

Lydia shook her head in horror and disbelief.

"But that's not what I saw," she wondered to herself. "That's not the creature from the wood."

Elrodan turned sharply and looked at her.

"What did you say?"

Lydia did not have time to answer. The creatures, now free of each other, were hurtling toward them, gaining momentum with each thunderous step.

Gilrohir gave a harsh shouting command, then another. The elves drew their swords in unison, and a single metallic clank sang through the air. Another commanding cry and their horses sprang forward in formation, barreling toward the rapidly advancing line of leviathanous monsters to meet them on the bare plain of snow.

The two armies met. The forces slammed together like cars in a head on collision, and for the first time in the memory of any of its inhabitants, battle erupted within the boundaries of the North Pole.


A/N: I find out tomorrow if I have to have surgery. Wish me luck. I'll post an update with the next chapter. I hope you all had a nice fall and have a nice restful holiday.