Okay peoples, I am back and officially six months late on my updates, as usual. Hah! I AM BACK WITH A VENGEANCE! Let's go!
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Chapter Eleven: Evil Takes Hold
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"Elrohir? Elrohir, please wake!"
Arwen had taken the unconscious twin to their corner, wrapping him safely in her arms. She and Erhia had been trying to wake him for what seemed like hours while the sounds of war reached them from aboveground. Tears were streaking the elf woman's face. She knew that he wasn't dead, but it had nearly scared the life out of her when he'd fallen to the ground. Erhia was so absorbed in his welfare that her hands were white and bloodless from clenching into such tight fists.
"Is he alive? Is he going to live?" she whispered, seeking the elf maiden's eyes with her own, features taut with fear.
"I believe so. But he won't wake, and I feel that something terrible has happened," Arwen answered tersely.
"He spoke of the other one."
The she-elf closed her eyes in pain. He was dead, and she knew it. Their connection had faded along with Elrohir's bond, and there would be no reparation. "He is gone," she answered softly.
"He was so close to him," the woman murmured. There was a short silence as she was lost in thought.
"Gaered... My husband is out there right now. He is mortal, and a soldier. Your brothers are of the Firstborn. And yet I wonder... We are Men, but perhaps our fate will not be unlike theirs." Arwen felt a pull in her heart at these words, so similar to ones she had uttered years prior.
"Estel... Lord Aragorn is my love," she whispered, barely speaking. "I believe in him. I will stand by him, just as you surely stand by your husband."
"Aye," Erhia gave her quiet assent.
"Elladan..." someone groaned.
Erhia's eyes were wide and frightened, and she pulled away as if from a snarling, rabid dog. Arwen looked down at her brother's face, confused at what would make her draw away... and then she saw his expression.
Whoever was looking at her through her brother's features, it was not Elrohir.
The once mostly-blue eyes burned a fiery green that was strangely dark and foreboding despite its piercing intensity, venting only a small part of the raging fire beneath. His lip was curled maliciously, twitching in anger and forming a snarl similar to that of an enraged warg, with small ripples of flesh overlapping in the crease above his nostril. His hair seemed not a glossy brown but flat, nondescript black, and the firelight was giving his face an unusual and unsettling yellowish tint.
Erhia nearly yelped when the elf suddenly rose, sitting up from his waist and rising to his feet. Everyone in the cave-hold who had been shivering in silence from fear of the orcs was now silent due to a different kind of fear.
"El-Elrohir?"
The older man guarding the entrance cringed when the elf neared him, reaching down on the boulder beside him that was stacked with rusted blades and picking up a large, serrated weapon probably stolen from the Uruk-hai themselves. Elrohir looked at the blade as though contemplating whether it would be good enough, or perhaps inflict enough pain. Then his eyes hardened further, and with stiff, almost machine-like strides he began walking up the pathway toward open air- and battle.
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Within seconds, Elrond knew his choice had been made. There was no way he could use Vilya, there were too many lives at stake to do so. But as Gwaihir had stated, there was not enough power in him to bring Elladan back...
...without endangering his own life.
Elrond looked up at the grand eagle towering over his shoulder and their equally intense gazes locked. The wind was picking up, trying to carry away Elrond's hair and clothing while a single solitary feather was whisked away into the dark clouds and lightening flashing on the horizon. through the darkness, the elf lord begged Gwaihir with his eyes to forgive what he was doing, to condone it.
The eagle blinked in surprise. Then nodded, bowing his head.
Lord Elrond of Imladris looked down at his son's pale, unmoving face... and lowered his forehead to touch his child's.
A flash of blue light illuminated the plains for a brief moment before returning them to fields of black.
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Legolas was caught fast within the void.
The hands gripping him had changed form, and the strength that was now ripping at his resolve was overwhelming. He could still see the light, the clouds, the beautiful shore ahead, and for a split-second he could see a familiar face within that sea of light.
"Naneth?"
The face smiled, dazzling, and for a moment he had found his peace. But then, the force holding him ground down anew and he was ripped painfully from the gateway, down, down, spiraling into darkness. No! His last connection to that world had severed, there would be no return.
"NO! NANETH!"
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"NO!"
Aragorn watched in horror as the wall was breached, stone and debris flying in every direction. He was slammed into the ground by the wall of exploding rock, and as he lay there, unconscious, the soldiers hastened to cover the gap.
"To the wall! The wall!"
Hundreds of elven archers and foot soldiers had been sent tumbling from the once-sturdy stone, and now tens of bodies lay piled beneath the rubble or beyond it, some impaled by their own weapons, others with their necks broken or skulls crushed from the fall. Without this needed coverage, the humans were sent scattering in all directions, men running to defend the opening with fear in their eyes.
It was too late, the Uruk-hai were mowing down men and creating a safe passage for their kindred. Cries of triumph and anticipation were heard filling the courtyard behind the Deeping wall, or what was left of it as more and more men fell under the blackened blades of the orcs. Theoden watched helplessly, despair taking over his battered soul for the briefest of moments before he barked out more orders.
"Everyone fall back!"
The call was taken up by the men behind the drawbridge door, and barely in time. The battering ram erected soon after the battle's beginning finally succeeded in splintering the heavy wood, and the Uruks poured into the gateway like ants. A few of the soldiers in the back of the retreating line of Rohirrim fell as the monstrous creatures dragged them back under their feet, running them through or crushing them like insects.
"Aragorn!"
The Dunadan heard King Theoden shout his name, and his eyes opened to a wall of enemy forces closing in on where he lay. Bodies were strewn around him, some blackened from the explosion, others bloodied and broken by the orcs. Weakly the man put a hand beneath him, raising himself up from the ground with difficulty. His leg had been hit in the fall, and that slowed him maddeningly, despite the obvious urgency to retreat behind the inner walls.
His heart contracted at the piles of men and elves lying dead in the path to shelter, but nothing could be done, not even when he recognized a few of the elven faces. How long had it been since the fall? Hours? Minutes? The dead were so many that it seemed an eternity he must have been unconscious, but even more disturbing was the feeling that it had only been moments. Aragorn forced himself to run up the stone pathway into the keep, a horde of Uruk-hai at his heels.
The heavy wooden doors slammed shut just after he managed to limp into the halls.
Aragorn slid to the floor, his injured leg refusing to bear his weight any longer, panting with exhaustion and pain. A hard, heavy truth was lain upon him: they were not going to last the night. Theoden stood above him, armoured and eyes dull with acceptance.
Aragorn's eyes blazed into his. "I will not let it end this way," he spat, every word shaking with vehemence.
The king remained motionless, his face blank.
"Tell them to barricade the doors," he urged him. "Tell them to use anything they can; spears, tables, the throne, anything!"
Still he didn't move.
Aragorn rose, his leg screaming agony, shuddering with the effort. The Dunadan grabbed the king of Rohan by his chain mail collar and pulled Theoden's face directly in front of his own, shaking him roughly. "Don't you hear? They will be inside in minutes!" he shouted. "You cannot let them all die! Think of the families below, Theoden! Think of your men who still follow you! Ride out! Send the evil that causes us such sorrow, such darkness, back from whence it came!"
The man looked startled as Aragorn's blue eyes burned into his with the intensity of a wound. "...ride...?"
"If this is the last of the warriors of Rohan," Aragorn pleaded, the change in his manner as sudden as the outburst before it, "then let them leave a story to inspire all of Middle-earth in their wake." He pulled the king's sword from its sheath and placed it into his hand. The Dunadan's expression was nothing short of shamelessly begging him.
"Do not abandon them, Theoden."
The king stared back at him. The faintest flicker of life shone in the man's grey orbs.
"...I cannot," he whispered.
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"...Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
and all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil;
and wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
and though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with
ah! bright wings."
-Gerard Manley Hopkins
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