Vault of Nenburgulu
The land was dead. Ash-ridden and cold. The wind swept like a brush through paint, the colours leeched into pale streaks of world-substance.
My feet didn't feel a part of me. I stumbled, one hand in the dust. Everything blurred at the edges as I gasped for air, free hand to my clean, unblemished throat.
Breathe. There. Again.
The senses in my hand buried in the dirt were fading. I leaned back to my haunches and stood, wavering in place. The fingers of my hand opened and closed before my face, the luminescence returning to the tips.
"Huh..." My hand didn't glow before, did it?
Was I dreaming?
I pursed my lips and ran my hands over my face. Being capable of clear thought meant that, yes, I was awake.
To my relief, the glow didn't pierce my eyelids.
The world seemed to tear itself into the wind, disappearing into the dark void just beyond my sight. Like a trick candle, the ghostly flames of a jagged boulder never quite went out, no matter how long I watched it. The flickering didn't seem to cast a shadow, but the ground was lit by an eerie blue glow. After a time, the thought came to me that some time had passed. It didn't bother me.
I don't know how long I stood there. Nothing in mind or view moved or changed beyond the spectral flames that entranced me.
Eventually, my feet began to walk.
It's hard to describe what it was like there, in that shadow of the world. Not a soul came by as I ambled. Only the sound of rushing air came to my ears, loud and hair-raising. My head felt close and stuffy, a ringing similar to the wind blocking everything else out. I raised my hands to hold the sides of my gently throbbing cranium and continued, eyes staring straight in front of me.
There in a shifting patch of light and dark, I found the broken footsteps of an ancient throne. It was empty. Even in the cotton of the dreamwalking, that emptiness had a pressure, unseen eyes watching from a phantom's invisible head, and I bowed my neck as if hinged at the jaw.
There was a carved stone at the foot of the steps, the imprint of a coloured cloth waving as if caught by the breeze that blew flickers from the ends of my fingers.
It called me. I went to it.
Yeah, I sat down on the stool. It felt... right. For about three eternities. Or perhaps three seconds...
At any end, my fate was sealed the moment I obeyed the wraithstone. Something hot and vicious curled into my body, the shock of feeling and pain making my legs kick out as if electrocuted.
"Aa-AA-AAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHH!" My voice rose high, screeching. Yellow and molten red shone through my spectral hands, and I stole a glance down. To my suddenly passionate fear and horror, I saw that the rest of my self could be seen through- and within, a hot, burning brand in the shape of a taloned hand.
The sharp claws of that fearsome gauntlet squeezed closed. I felt a jerk, a pull, and woosh... black, white and blue blurred so swiftly before me that it all ran into one.
Just grey. Grey.
Grey.
But this time, I was awake.
I screamed. Loud, high, the awful yell echoing around me as if reverberating within a cave. The sound should have been lost in the terrible rushing of wind, the void tearing at my legs and clothes, gleefully stealing long strands of blue energy that disappeared into the dark maw left behind me. I was flying. It could have been enjoyable, amazing!
I did feel joy. It blew through me, raising the lethargic dust that gathered on everything in the undershadows. My eyes flickered as my lips spread, teeth bared with thin puffs of spittle. My chest heaved, arms and legs pulled away from the glowing hand that gripped my heart, rippling like ribbons.
I also felt sorrow. Hate. Fear. A loneliness that made the organ frozen beneath that hateful hand shudder. A fierce hope, tight through me like muscle fibres, like pins in a board. It didn't make any sense.
Nothing made sense. It was wonderful... and terrible.
Sharp points ripped beneath me. Were they... what were they? I was high up, flying from one side of somewhere to the end of nowhere else on the end of a monster-sized tug cord. Surely the only thing this close to the sky could be...
I gaped, the crackling pain in my chest ignored. The lines, the silhouettes that carved beneath me! Mountains! Beautiful, untouched mountains!
My eyes prickled painfully.
The seconds passed slowly. It would have been less than a minute, my time of flying- wow, to truly fly- but for my new awareness.
I had been dreaming. Have you ever missed a night or two's sleep, and passed through the day without resting?
I hate not being able to think. It's like regressing to being a kid again, but worse, because I'm an adult and what I do has consequences. Thinking hard, with the heat of pain and actual fire in me, I realized that I couldn't remember more than what I told you. Something had been lost in the dreamwalking.
And then the hand had pulled me as far as it wished, and we landed.
I hit dirt without a sound. Little rocks and mushy, thick soil dug into my arms and sides as my body tumbled. I skittered to a stop and leapt to my feet, eyes wide as I shook out my limbs and tried to take in everything around me.
Nothing was disturbed by my passing; not a grain of dirt. The heat remained in me, but with a quick glance at my stomach, I saw that the hand was gone.
Free. That thought repeated itself fiercely.
Free. So I hadn't been free before. How would I know that to think it?
I was somewhere new. It was a little easier to see, here, and I slowly turned to stare up. Up. Cliffs. Tall, impenetrable walls of natural stone. The tips of mountains disappeared into the shadowy fog.
They went on, out of sight to both right and left. Behind me, a valley. It was enormous, as valleys go, but I saw something. My heart fluttered.
Bright blue, like the stones and other various objects I had seen. But moving. With a purpose.
It was so small, so far away, that it twinkled like a star. It was beautiful. I knew this with my new awareness, and I smiled, a hand running over my hair to touch the ponytail that had miraculously held in the flight over here.
I can't say that I was fully aware, even then. It was something like waking up, yet still gripped by a dream that I thought was real. I had yet to think further than a 'This is absurd'.
And yes, I don't like how vague this is sounding, either. I hope I'm remembering everything that happened.
The walk was easy, a light jog bracing. It seemed a good idea to go towards the pretty point of light, and the time passed quickly. Shadowy constructs of villages and burnt timbers drew my eyes for but a moment. My heart was calling. I had to go forward.
My foot caught on something. Hands spread to catch my balance, I paused. A coin lay in the dirt. Left to be hidden. A niggle of worry pulled the corner of my lips aside, and looking back, nothing was there.
Nothing to trip me.
I slipped the coin into a pocket. It was heavy, very oddly heavy. The bottoms of my pants brushed the ground.
One step forward, and I stopped again. The ground felt distant, the sole of my foot numb. The red glow had retreated from my arms and hands; only a soft, cool blue, through which the tiny star shone.
Brightly. My arms dropped to my sides. It was brighter. Closer. A wave of light energy rolled from it, the outlines of thickly-set heads and torsos falling into shadow as it grew nearer. A loud cry crackled through the air.
SO. LOUD. A mighty whiplash, washing against me, blowing me back, my ears ringing, bleeding!
And a tall, stately figure stood over me. He shone, a blue sun in the dark twilight, brilliant and fearsomely beautiful. It was as if no mere glance could drink that fire in, no memory deep enough to hold all of that light. His mouth moved, but there was no sound, and I was transfixed.
Wreaths of white metal glimmered on his arms, his brow and on the edge of his sword. Otherworldly flowed the fittings of armour that did nothing to hold in the man's brilliance.
His mouth moved again, and my face turned to a frown as thick scarring and hollowed cheeks were made apparent. Surely this man was an angel. How could an angel look so withered?
His eyes. They were nothing but empty, glowing points that flickered distractingly as he leaned over me. I gripped the dirt around me in a sudden fit of fear, shoulders hunched, as the reality of a spooky glowing man getting into my personal space pulled my thoughts out of the aether.
"Hey!" I mouthed, throat flush with speech, yet soundless. "What the heck are you?!"
The man gave me one more cursory look and stepped back. His face set itself into something unfriendly- something I didn't like- and I almost kicked his shining kneecaps when the spectre vanished.
His essence 'blew' away, sucked into the air like an invisible vacuum cleaner was waiting for an unwary ghost. The absence of him hit my heart first. It shuddered, thumping around like an old car engine, the last dregs of golden light fading into a blackened ring within my centre.
I could feel my mind going. It seemed perfectly natural to close my eyes, to rest my head back and go still.
So dark now. Colder, too, than before, but that may have been the burning out of the hand-brand. I wonder if... spirits... scar...?
An unbelievably warm presence neared. My feet, closest to it, tingled and prickled as feeling flowed back into them. A hiss escaped my lips, echoing into the familiar void as my ears popped and the sound of boots pushing through grass came to them.
The warmth grew. I breathed again. A shadow stood where the light had once been. A shadow with a face. A very concerned face.
"My lady? Are you- how- are you hurt?"
His voice was loud. My poor head!
But it was good. The whispers of shadow and dreaming were silenced when he spoke. A curdle of light and heat boiled up in my heart, and for the first time in this awful place an unwitting hollow in me was filled.
It was like coming home. Like a hot cup of tea.
The shadowed figure came closer, a dirty hand reaching to touch my forehead. It gently stroked a hair from my face, and the trail left behind flared with something unknowable, foreign to the dead world. I watched with wide eyes as the man- and yes, he was a man, not a shade- performed some ritual with a finger at my throat, on my wrist and an eyelid held open. Everything was practised movements and economy. No gesture was wasted.
His eyes were blue. They were cold. I drew my chin back from him as the man tried to tilt my face up and his hand instead went to his side.
My throat twitched. Feeling the pull of muscles, sudden soreness twinged over my back and into my forearms as I pushed myself to my elbows. I tried to speak; failed. Tried again, and the dryness clung to my voice as it hadn't done when I spoke to the wraith.
"H...hi."
The man's brow cleared, a light smile bringing some life back to his stony visage. "Hello."
A glass of water would have helped. I swallowed, painfully, and sat up further. My new acquaintance stood, a cape swishing behind him, and the hard edges of a pommel and sword protruded from his belt.
"Wh-who are you?"
"I would ask you the same," the man replied evenly. He seemed ill-at-ease to be standing still, shifting from boot to boot. "You are- are you, uh-"
A new, colder voice pierced our mutual confusion. "Dead?"
The light had returned!
I gazed at it, at the luminous figure, the beauty of its glow. Light and shadow played before it, the core of its body a dark that only intensified the outer shine. Everything else fled my mind. There was only the- the- the pretty...
"Celebrimbor."
The dark man's spoken word cut through that intense draw on my mind. The world seemed a little out of focus, and I shook my head, strands of whitened hair tickling my nose. Pressure pulsed through the air in a new stream of energy, brushing over the hairs on my arms, ticklish and distracting.
It came from the warm man. It felt negative, sour, at the core a strong stroke of pride. Like... disapproval?
They looked at each other, grim and silent. The faint glimmer on the edge of my sight beckoned in that silence, and I pushed back fear to stand with them. The darker man stepped back, giving my less-than-graceful rise some room. "Dead? Is that supposed to be a joke?" The milky white orbs of the bright one and the frozen eyes of my new friend moved to rest on me. I nibbled my tongue and cast down my own eyes. "Be-because, that's- not funny."
"Of course not," the warm one said, shifting as if to approach but keeping a few feet between us. "I am sure that he did not mean offense."
The bright man approached until he towered right over me. This close, I could see how his skin was torn, pulled and stretched over bones, the hollows in his cheeks as pronounced as his deathly white pallor. The urge to look into his light did not grow stronger with close proximity. "What," the pallid wraith slowly said, "Are you? Are you of Men? An agent of Sauron?"
I blinked and cocked my head. How surreal, to hear 'Sauron' in a place so far removed from my living room. The darker man stepped in to gently push his friend out of my space, and I realized with a little grin that they weren't so different in height after all.
Beneath the thick leathers and cloak of the warrior man, his shape matched that of the bright fellow. Slender, tall and well-built for carrying their rustic weaponry, they could have been brothers.
A kind of nobility hung over them, but only the shining man wore a crown.
"Oh." The one who questioned me had tightened his lips, hand going to grip something on his ghostly belt. "No, I'm- I'm not a friend to Sauron. Buddy."
"Bu...ddee?" His bewildered voice rang through the reaches of the undershadows, so out of place in our dark surroundings that a smile lifted my face again. "I do not know of this word. From whence does it come? In what language?"
"You are a woman, are you not?" the scruffy one asked, brow pinched over clouded eyes.
My hands set on my hips and I looked from one to the other. "Do I look like a man?" There seemed to be nothing but questions with these two.
"Yes."
"No."
My cheeks flushed. How... how very dare he! My teeth bit down on my tongue, corners of my mouth held firmly down, but the light in my eye was not hidden so easily. The shadowed man shifted his weight as I glared at them, glancing at tall, bright and handsome with a peculiar lilt to his mouth.
"Are you not aware of what has been done to you?" the shining man asked, greaved arms crossed. "Do you not see? I can certainly see through you." His friend gave him a startled glance at those words.
"What... what's happened? What's happened to me?" A tension in my throat strangled my other questions.
The bright one gestured to me. "You are a spirit." My heart thudded. "Dead." His face was set in stern lines, no sympathy left for me. "Bound to walk forever between life and death."
An empty clang resounded through the undershadows and into me. Dead. I was dead. My hands twinkled through the air, blue particles flying from them as I brought my palms to my face.
The fields surrounding us were green. Reddish sprouts and branches curled in wild patches across the grasses, bare rock showing its bones like jutting teeth across the landscape. The blind hollows of the spectral man were fixed on me. Icy blue shone with a terrible kindness and compassion from the dark depths of the ragged man's face.
All of this was strange. I could see... everything. Through my hands. I suddenly knew, in my heart that sluggishly beat every ten seconds, that this wasn't a dream.
"I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead."
Repeating it was bittersweet. Truth to guide me, but an awful thing to know. My eyes fixed on the bright one. My lips lifted in a snarl.
"Really? 'Trapped forever between life and death'? Who taught you your- *sniff*- bedside manner?"
He actually had the audacity to look offended. His friend's befuddlement developed into a paralysed smile, chin twitching beneath his stubble. A hysterical giggle worked its way out of me, and I sat down on the spot. Not that I didn't appreciate a good joke, but- I was dead. Dead.
So... where was I?
This couldn't be it.
"I suppose this isn't heaven," I mused, picking at the ground. My fingers passed through blades of grass that I didn't think had been there before. "Not quite," the dark man offered, coming to sit beside me. He seemed to have overcome that weird aversion the two shared for me.
The bright one, his head a shiny mess of lights from my perspective on the ground, clicked his tongue. I blinked and he was gone.
"What is your name?" The warm tones of the dark one's voice drew my attention back to him. I felt very little in the absence of Mr. Fireworks- no loss of breath, no sudden cold. In fact, heat and feeling spread right through to my toes with the other man lingering so close. He didn't seem aware of how I clenched my fists and flexed my feet, the prickling of blood moving through them a welcome distraction.
"My name doesn't matter now, does it?" My fingers pulled on a taller selection of grass stalks. Tiny barbs on their leafy undersides caught the skin of my glowing hand, and I started. The dark one watched from behind a curtain of greasy black hair.
He tapped a finger on my foot and withdrew with a bright smirk. "My name is Talion. I am a ranger of the Black Gate. Now, who are you?"
"Call me Caspar, the friendly ghost," I muttered, hiding a smile with a quick scowl. The ranger didn't seem taken in by that, brushing his hair back and resting a hand on his knee. I stared straight ahead, the hairs on the back of my neck twitching like antennae. He was definitely staring at me.
"Caspar. That is not your true name."
"But I am a friendly ghost," I pointed out, finger waving between us.
Talion drew his head back, lips pursed. I could see the corners of his lips trying not to rise. "Perhaps."
His gaze transferred to the lands ahead of us, stretching from just under the lip of rock at our feet into the distant, shadowy horizon. My sight was increased. Stunted, dead trees loomed against the raging darkness at the edges of my visible world, where only the void had once been.
None of my feeling, my senses, existed beyond this place. Could there be something important here that gave me some kind of... of extra strength? I didn't feel any stronger. Perhaps more present.
An effect of time? Come to think of it- and I so enjoyed that combination of words- what little evidence I'd seen of other sentient beings had been very old. Even the dark man, Talion, wore an oudated piece of iron as a weapon. His clothes weren't machine-spun, but handwoven and unique. If tattered in certain places.
The question was... well, there were many questions. "Talion?" His face was turned away, an odd orange glow in silhouette around him, but I thought that he was listening. "Where am I? What time is this?"
"We are in the lands of Mordor," the man intoned. His grip tightened on his pommel. "Within the reaches of the Dark Lord, who lingers beyond past defeat."
Being within the 'reaches' of anyone, dark or not, set my teeth on edge. "And... the year?"
Eventually, he told me- and to my mixed relief and disappointment, the knowledge did not help.
"Third Age? I'm definitely not at home anymore," I mumbled, neck bowed. Though my heart beat again, and the cold had been chased away, a weight laid over my shoulders. It felt as though my hips and legs were being pressed into the earth. A prickle of pain in my chest made me wince and shift, bones heavy as lead.
"Caspar..." Talion started slowly. His accent rolled like green plains over the last 'ar'. "Do you know how you came to be here?"
Did he mean here, as in how I had- died? Or here, in Middle Earth? What kind of crazy world even made those questions possible? Lord of the Rings wasn't real!
And I wasn't dead! I couldn't be. I was here.
A tired sigh blew from my lips. "According to you and your pretty friend, I died. Right?"
He huffed. Something in the sound was cooler than the ranger's usual warmth, but I saw the flash of teeth as he grinned. The smile sparked one in me, too, and I looked out into the shadows with forced indifference. His murmur was drank in by my attentive ears. "I wonder if he would take that as a compliment, or take offense?" Talion answered his own question with a half-shrug and continued. "You are a spirit, Caspar. No living Man can claim as such. And," the man added, "I refer to your kind, my lady. You are no man; but you are of Man. Do you understand?"
"I... I understand. I think." I scratched my head, and found the actual feeling of skin under nails delightful. "You're saying that I'm human?" The ranger nodded. "...And you're 'of Men' too, right?" He assented, a little warily this time. "Then how about your friend? Man?"
"No. He is an elf, of a greater and more virtuous age," Talion said. A kind of coldness settled on his brow, his chin sagging an inch into the tattered furs on his chest. "Or perhaps was. Still," the ragged man said, standing so quickly that I flinched at the movement, "I have need of his power, and he is willing to lend it. I could not ask for a better friend."
A hand reached down, resting at eye level. It was a limb that had seen better days, dirt caked under the nails and calluses so thick that they likely had their own protective pads. I hadn't seen a better offer of - just - help in all the time I'd spent as a wandering undead - and I took it without thinking.
He hauled me to my feet, and we stood there, arms linked by clasped fists. Talion offered me another grin, shook my arm and released me.
I rocked back, stunned by everything the ranger had just done. It... I'd felt power. Raw, indomitable power, blazing up my shoulder and renewing the crackled agony of the brand in my core. Such... power. I licked my lips.
Something, a niggle in the middle forefront of my mind. It woke me back from that strange daze. "Elf?" My voice was disbelieving. Like... oh, wait.
Middle-Earth.
"Right. Elf," I said weakly. "I, um. I thought you said, uh... um, 'Nelf'. And I've never heard of that. What a weird word!"
It was almost worth the deep regret and shame to see Talion actually double-take. His stance had been so graceful, so proud from the moment he had appeared, and to see him almost trip at one of the silly things I'd said filled me with a kind of reverse pride. Talion recovered quickly.
"You are a wily one, but time is short. Will - where shall you go, lady Caspar?" His voice lifted in lilt my borrowed name.
My feet felt heavier, and I held a hand to my middle, eyes falling to his feet. Good question. And I knew what the answer was, but... would he accept it? Could I say -
"Talion." The. Elf. He was back. The light played over his armour, which must have been elven too. It did look elegant in the swooping lines and fine gilding, but I wondered at how such a pretty piece of smithing would stand up to actual fighting. The bright one stood side-on to me and spoke into Talion's ear.
Hisses and whispers rang through the shadows. They seemed to have lessened into a kinder twilight. The sharp esses squealed tinnitus. I rubbed at my ears.
The man and elf turned to look at me, and a terribly, wonderfully brilliant point of light erupted behind them. My hands did nothing to shield me from its heat, its fury and power, as I could see right through them, but they went up reflexively anyway.
It was hot! It was so hot, blazing like a distant firehand, shining directly through me!
But it didn't hurt. My shaking arms slowly fell back to my sides, and I gazed in wonder as the sun rose beyond distant mountains and lit the world with beauty. Such light. How had I never seen how essential it was to see the sun?
"Caspar?"
I didn't see which of them spoke, and it didn't matter enough to listen for their voices. My shoulders shrugged as I spread my arms and drank the sunrise in. "Warm... how've I ever gone without it?" I wondered.
They turned and watched with me as an incredible streak of gold wove as a ribbon through the clouds. The orange glow I'd seen on Talion's face, the light on the elven armour... now I knew where it had come from. And now I could see it.
I could see it!
The blue one looked back to me. It was as if he physically could not emote happiness or anything remotely kind. A sick feeling in my stomach accompanied his lack of expression. Still, the elf didn't seem deliberately nasty. Perhaps I was misjudging him.
"Spirit," the bright one intoned, the air trembling with his strange echoes. "I offer you one chance: follow and aid in our mission, or fall behind and perish as another victim of the plains of Ud n."
"We do not wish for your suffering," Talion said, stepping in front of his friend. "And though our road is long, and fraught with dangers, you would not - fade - with us."
"I would not allow it," the elf growled.
"He has explained what would happen if we were to abandon you."
"A fate worse than death."
"Wait, wait." They were speaking without taking a break for either to breathe, and the switchovers were starting to run together. "What mission? I - I mean, you two are nice and everything, but -"
"Do you wish to fade into nothing?" the bright elf snapped. "Or perhaps you believe the dark lord would be a more reasonable ally?"
Talion nudged his ghostly friend, and the wraith arched his head back like a snake, fury written in the lines carved in his cheeks. The ranger made a placating gesture. "She does not know the Enemy we face."
"But she has felt his touch," he answered irritably. They looked at me, below my chin, somewhere above my stomach. If blood was still running to pink my flesh, I would have blushed at the attention. "His mark has already seared this one. Sauron does not let his prey go free without purpose... or without reason."
"Explain," I drew in a deep breath, "what lordy you're talking about. Please. Sauron?"
"The dark lord. Surely you know of him," the bright elf said off-handedly. His friend was watching me with careful eyes. Mine met with his, and they widened, the blue glittering.
"She doesn't know."
Now they both were surprised. I shifted on my feet and clasped my fingers behind my back, avoiding their gaze. What I knew of this - situation - had been greatly overshadowed by my apparent death. To learn something useful, get my undead bearings, it would be easier not to mention that Sauron was no stranger to me. What better way to understand the context of this world than to get it through the eyes of a couple of natives?
Well. On second thought, describing an elven ghost and a ranger as 'natives' didn't feel quite right.
Indigenous Middle-Earthians?
The glow surrounding the bright one's face had not been difficult to pierce in the darkness of that realm. He seemed thoughtful now. Pensive. "Ah."
Talion's face was lifted into a strange twist of bitterness and discovery. "Were you - perhaps, not well -educated, my la- ...friend?" He spoke carefully.
I bit back the sour gurgling in my belly. Don't speak in anger. Keep a kind outlook. He called me stupid.
"Talion," the elf huffed, eyes alight with a brighter feeling than I'd seen in him. "She has forgotten. As did I."
And now I'm forgetful?!
"Oh." The dark ranger nodded, rubbing his chin in a way that covered his lips. "Of course. My apologies, lady Caspar."
First breaths puffed through my nose in violence. The next came easier. Alright. He said sorry. Now it was my turn. Had I reacted poorly? They didn't seem to have noticed anything. The ghost was standing in front of me. The light of dawn shone through him, a warm twinkle in his dead eyes.
"My name is Celebrimbor," the wraith intoned. "You were once living among Men, but now, there is no link between you and this realm of flesh."
"You already mentioned that I was dead, thanks, Que- Cyele... brimbow," I said evenly. A strangled sound came from my right.
A spark of - of cold, of icy heat, a burning mark - awoke in the skin of my shoulder. The bright hand of the bright elf rested there. His milky orbs stared just before my face. I felt all at once distant. And present. The edges of my self were suddenly apparent, and I felt an odd shiver as the lines of my body wavered like rippling water.
"Caspar," he husked into my ear, a cool touch of strange breath. "The knowledge of your past is not lost."
I couldn't move. Something in his voice... a fear stayed my feet, frozen to the earth with their cold shafts of bone. Not lost. We could find it. "Together," Celebrimmb told me in a penetrating whisper, "the gaps in your memory could be filled in. The mysteries of the void, open to you."
The cold in my shoulder set in, and my fingers went numb. It felt as if it hurt, but I couldn't move, and it was distant. Only the bright lord's voice, a line of light in the shadows that encroached upon us, held me upright.
"Only follow, and obey. We must end the dark lord. Sauron will be destroyed."
Yes. "Yes." Destroy him. He was the bad guy. Evil deserved to be ended. All I had to do was-
Was...
"O...bey?" My feet were as solid blocks of stone, but they moved. I rocked, still as a statue, the white gauntlet shifting from me just a little -
And I yelped. Feeling flowed back into my arm, the blood stinging like a horde of biting ants crawling under my sleeve, and I shook it furiously. The elf moved back to avoid my limp fingers, and I looked up at him, rubbing the deadened spot where he had touched me. Something...
I felt like I should trust him.
"Celebrimbor?" The cautious words from the dark man - Talion - played through the darkness that ringed the three of us like little hopeful rabbits. It was a weird analogy, and I wrinkled my nose even as I thought it. "What did you do?"
The wraith appeared to lift his nose without actually moving his head. Clearly, he thought himself above answering a question. I watched him with a small smile on my lips. What a character.
"He just answered a question I had. That's all," I said in Celebrimbor's place.
The Man watched me, still as a hunting snake. The darkness beneath his brow hung heavy. His gaze switched to the ghostly one walking from me, and the elf disappeared into the void with the snuffing out of flame.
A rush of suffusing heat and a strange longing flowed over my core. The two were different, separate, but nonetheless strange, and I hugged my middle tightly.
Heavy treading on soil echoed through the earth and up through my feet.
"This is great," I whispered to my toes. "Now I have a purpose. Now I know why I'm here. This is a test, right? I just have to pass, and then it's off to heaven. Is that what you want from me, God?"
A dark presence in front of me paused as I spoke. It enclosed the distance between us with two hands. One on each shoulder.
Light - warm. Soft. A ring of night fled, and suddenly, I could see again. Talion. His face was creased, eyes bright with a gentle concern. His features were far finer than expected for such a man. "I know of the wraith's tricks," the dark ranger said, my sleeves bunched under his tight grip. "And he may have done something - that you or I cannot understand. But he was right about Sauron. Gondor cannot stand under such evil, and it is the last defense between he and the realms of Men."
Gondor. Sauron. Men, for that matter. With all of the odd, fluctuating emotions and the niggle of aversion at the touch of the bright one, I was quite tired. Weary of being held under sway of two strange individuals.
There was something in the ranger's face that kept me from retaliating. Yet I still pushed his hands from my arms.
He remained close. Perhaps answering my questioning look, or simply continuing, Talion gestured to the cliffs behind us with a nod. Black hair fell over his eyes. "Nothing will hold the dark lord back for long. He can only be conquered, and then... and then we may all rest."
In peace. The dull speech of someone longing for the next thing. I eyed him, suddenly alert to the despair that must cling to him like his own second shadow.
Poor guy. He was nice. I didn't think he deserved to feel like. Like that.
Maybe he was waiting for heaven, too.
"I want to help," came from my throat, tongue still shaping the words as my face screwed up into a very strange look of surprise. "What can I do to help?"
His gaze met mine. Cold, icy blue, like two frozen ponds. Yet they still burned; and not with elven cold fire, no. A powerful spirit of victory and righteous glory lit the ranger up from within. I don't think he was aware of it, of how his eerily dark silhouette spread the light wherever it went.
I don't even know how I saw it. But there it was. Clear as a fish slipping through muck. Energy of something good rippling through the tearing darkness of the void.
"Come with me."
And we left.
Hello. This will remain a one-shot for now; I have other plans, but they may or may not come to fruition.
This resulted from the video game Shadow of Mordor. Though unrealistic (of course) and not remaining true to every part of Tolkien's stories, its portrayal of the spirit world and how that interacted with the physical world interested me. I was fascinated with how Celebrimbor's character was revealed, and decided to write about it.
I hope you enjoyed the Fang of Coe one-shot. Please be aware that at any point, I may complete another part to it.
Thank you for reading, and I ask any of you with writing experience to provide me with points on where I can improve.