Thank you so much for the reviews, guys! •gives out cookies with extra chocolate chips•
I had a lot of fun writing this chapter :) I hope you have fun reading it too!
XXX
After Merry had been treated for concussion, the Fellowship travelled even deeper into Moria. It wasn't long before they had reached the bottom of the winding stairs of the left passage, and found themselves with a draft at their faces.
"Let me risk a little more light," said Gandalf. "I keep tripping over Pippin's feet."
And so he lit his staff even brighter, and revealed a huge hall, stretching for miles, lined with carven pillars and arched ceilings. It was so immense, its size could only be guessed.
They all looked on in awe. Sam whistled appreciatively.
"Behold the great realm and dwarf city of Dwarrowdelf!" said Gandalf.
Aragorn smiled in remembrance.
"Ah," he said, "now this is the very place that me and Arwen did it like bunnies for four hours straight. No exaggeration. That woman has the stamina of Samwise Gamgee at a buffet."
They all decided to ignore him.
"Ooh!" said Gandalf, pointing at a nearby room. "It's the Chamber Of Marzipan!"
Boromir raised an eyebrow.
"Marzipan? Are you sure?"
"Of course," said the wizard, blinking in confusion. "What else would it be?"
Samwise Gamgee, meanwhile, rushed past, wide-eyed at the prospect of a room full of marzipan.
Boromir growled, and stalked over to the wizard.
"Where does it say 'Chamber of Marzipan'?"
Gandalf dug in his cloak, and produced a booklet. Boromir snatched it away, and found himself clutching a fold-out map entitled 'An Idiot's Guide to the Wonders of Moria.'
"'Warning,'" read Boromir. "If you arrive at historic Moria and find its halls deserted and littered with corpses, then the dwarves who once inhabited its depths and kept the place safe have long since been massacred. We at the Middle Earth Tourist Advisory Board strongly recommend that you do not venture inside the Mines if said massacre has occurred. If, however, you are reading this after having ventured into the Mines anyways, then this booklet can be rolled up into a point and used to jab any would-be attackers in the eye. If that doesn't work, then you are all royally screwed.'"
They all glared at Gandalf. The wizard just stuck out his tongue, and snatched back his booklet. Then they entered the Chamber of Marzipan, and Frodo grabbed Sam by the collar and dragged him away from the walls, which he was currently licking in a vain search for the aforementioned sugary goodness.
Set in the centre of the room was a stone crypt, lit by a high shaft of light. Gimli's eyes widened, and he ran towards the sight and collapsed to his knees.
"No!" he sobbed. "He was so young!"
They all gathered around the grieving dwarf. Boromir put a hand on Gimli's shoulder. Aragorn glared.
"'Here lies Balin, son of Fundin, Lord of Moria'," read Gandalf, "He is dead then. It is as I feared."
Gimli just cried.
Spotting something, the wizard handed his hat and his staff to Pippin, and bent down to pull a book from the hand of a dwarfen corpse. He accidentally broke the hand off at the bone, and spent several minutes trying to reattach it. No use though. The hand was firmly stuck, still grasping the book. He opened its pages, with the hand dangling limply from the spine.
Legolas turned to Aragorn.
"We must move on. We cannot linger!"
"Well duh."
"They have taken the bridge," he read, "and the second hall. We have barred the gates, but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes. Drums, drums in the deep." He turned a page. "We cannot get out. A Shadow moves in the dark. We cannot get out…They are coming…" For a moment he thought that was all, but then he turned the page and found some more: "They're in. They got in the doors. They're shooting at us. I can't return fire because my hands are full writing in this damned book… Hey, Balin! Watch it with the pickaxe, will ya? Dwarven lords, huh? They're all so self absorbed… Oh crap, someone's just stabbed me. At least I think they have… Yes, I am 100 percent sure I have been stabbed. Oh crap, and now there's a friggin' arrow through my forehead. That is gonna hurt in the morning… Hmm. I seem to be losing a lot of blood. Great, and now I'm dead. So much for that Turner prize." Gandalf turned another page, but found it blank. "It ends there."
Sam yawned.
"I'm bored."
Pippin turned, and saw a corpse, sitting perched on the edge of a well.
"Why don't we play a game?" he said.
"Like what?" asked Sam.
And Pippin nudged the corpse in the chest and cried: "Tig!"
But something happened in that moment. The head of the corpse broke off, and went flying down the well with a great deal of clanging. The body, attached by a bucket and chain, soon followed.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
It all made for a tremendous noise, which echoed in caverns and bounced off rocks. Pippin winced. Legolas sang. Aragorn slapped him.
Silence reigned. They all breathed a sigh of relief, whilst Legolas quietly sobbed.
Gandalf slammed the book shut. "Fool of a Took! You and your bloody Tig! Throw yourself in next time and rid us of your stupidity!" He snatched back his hat and his staff.
But their relief was short-lived. Drums echoed in the deep. Pippin gasped, and looked towards the well. The scream of orcs was heard in nearby tunnels.
"Frodo!" said Sam in horror, indicating the hobbit's sword. Frodo pulled it from its sheath. It was glowing bright blue.
"Orcs!" cried Legolas.
"WE KNOW!" they all screamed.
Boromir rushed to the door, and jumped back to avoid being hit by a flurry of arrows.
"Hey!" he shouted. "Now that was just rude!"
Aragorn rolled his eyes.
"Get back!" he shouted to the hobbits. "Stay close to Gandalf!"
The hobbits gave the aforementioned wizard a rather worried look. He was perched atop Balin's tomb, reading the Book of Marzipan like a newspaper, smoking a pipe, and complaining about the current state of affairs surrounding the Goblin's Republic Of Perpetually Inexplicable Narrative Gimmicks, or G.R.O.P.I.N.G for short.
"They have a cave troll," said Boromir. "COOL!"
Aragorn rushed forward to help push the doors of the chamber shut. It was proving difficult however, since Boromir kept poking his head out, asking for an autograph.
In the end he cracked him on the head with his own Horn of Gondor, and proceeded to bar the door with weapons and pieces of wood. Then they all stood back and drew their swords.
Gimli kicked Gandalf from Balin's tomb, and then tried to climb up, but his stumpy arms and legs were proving a hindrance.
"Err, Aragorn?" he whispered. "You don't suppose you could toss me up, do you?"
Aragorn raised an eyebrow.
"Isn't this exchange meant to be in the second movie?"
"Oh for Eru's sake!" cried Gandalf, lifting up the dwarf and plopping him atop Balin's tomb. "He's just gonna fall off in a second anyways..."
Gimli cleared his throat, and then yelled: "Let them come! There is one dwarf yet in Moria who still draws breath!"
"Actually," said a voice. They all turned to see a dwarf slumped against the far wall, covered in blood and wounds, and yet still very much alive. "I seem to be living in a state of perpetual agony and not actually, well, dying. Don't suppose one of you could do me a favour and PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY? Kthanxbye."
Sam rolled his eyes, and walked over, brandishing a saucepan.
"Ok," he said, "but this is the last time!"
And he cracked the dwarf over the head, and sent him up to dwarf heaven, or down to dwarf hell, depending on how his creator looked upon that one drunken night…
Anyways, there was the more pressing matter of the dozens of orcs and the cave troll – "LiekOMG! Can I have a picture?" "Shut up Boromir." – to deal with.
Legolas and Aragorn both strung their bows and took aim. Legolas huffed and drew out another arrow, so that two were poised upon the bowstring. Aragorn huffed, and drew out two more arrows, so that he had three on his. Soon they had both crashed to the floor, brought down by the weight of enough arrows to bring down an Oliphant, or y'know, Samwise Gamgee after eating an entire buffet.
"JUST SHOOT ALREADY!" screamed Frodo, who was seriously questioning his lack of health insurance.
And so they did, and killed a few creatures before the rest burst through the door.
And with a "For Gondor!", an "Elendil!", a couple of "For the Shire!"'s and a miserable "I'm getting too old for this," from Gandalf, the fight was on.
Legolas shot one orc as it rushed him, right between the eyes. And then everyone brandished their swords, or their axes, and engaged the creatures in close combat. Gimli hacked at many from atop the tomb. Aragorn sliced the head of another clean off, and then, in full battle fury, he let out a tremendous yell and jumped again into the fray. Boromir noted in the back of his mind how sexy that yell had been as he too hacked and parried their blows.
Then there was a rumbling, and the huge cave troll smashed through the doorway and roared at them. It was a huge, hulking beast, with grey cracked skin and bulging eyes. Legolas took aim and shot it in the shoulder. The creature growled in pain, and then attempted to squish Samwise Gamgee with its mace, but the hobbit crawled between its legs and escaped.
Turning its attention to Gimli, the troll swung twice, and hit both the tomb and a fleeting orc. Gimli stuck out his tongue at the creature, but was then sent flying as the mace fell again and smashed the tomb beneath him.
"Damn!" he thought. "Stupid Gandalf and his inexplicable foresight."
Gandalf, meanwhile, was dancing about, slaying orcs with the pointy end of 'An Idiot's Guide to the Wonders of Moria'. It was proving to be rather effective.
Legolas managed to catch the troll's attention, and ducked the chain it swung towards him, which wrapped about a pillar. Then he ran across its length, jumped onto the troll's head and shot it from above.
"Well, I never!" it cried. "How rude!" And Legolas paused a moment, as the troll pulled the arrow out of its cranium and chucked it to the floor. "Why in the name of the Istari did you just shoot an arrow into the top of my head? That is so rude!"
Legolas sweatdropped.
"I-I'm sorry, I was only following the script."
The troll folded its arms.
"Well, did it ever occur to you that there might have been a misprint? I mean, it's not exactly model behaviour to go around shooting people in the head with a bow and arrow, now, is it?"
Legolas paused.
"…I suppose."
"I mean, did it ever occur to you that I might not be the bad guy here? I could just be some poor child separated from its mother, enslaved by orcs and tortured and beaten until it was ravenous and ferocious and prepared to smash anything in order to get a small cameo in the most successful film trilogy in the history of cinema!"
"What about Star Wars?"
"Screw Star Wars!" And the troll bellowed in fury, grabbed Legolas by the hair and threw him unceremoniously across the room. There was a ripping sound, followed by a girlish scream and a thud.
"What did you do?" mumbled Legolas, incoherent, as he picked himself up and put a shaky hand to his head. "Did you…? DID YOU JUST PULL OUT SOME OF MY HAIR?1111"
Everyone in the chamber stopped dead. Everyone except Sam that is, who walloped someone on the head with his skillet before noticing that the battling had stopped.
Aragorn straightened up beside the hobbit, rubbing the top of his head and scowling.
"Sam, you are a complete idiot."
The fat hobbit grinned.
"Sorry, Mr. Strider, sir, I was thrown for a moment by the dirt and the rags."
In the corner, Legolas had dissolved into tears over the loss of his hair. It was a moment before everyone remembered that they were in the middle of an unnecessarily stunt-laden action scene, and resumed their battles.
Unfortunately for Mr. Baggins, he found himself facing off against the cave troll. And since everyone was rather too busy to save him, (ingrates!) he found himself in the middle of a rather deadly game of hide and seek. He had never been very good at the game as a child, and today was no exception.
The troll hoisted him into the air. Frodo promptly plunged Sting into the troll's hand and proceeded to fall on his head.
"Wow," he gasped, his eyes wide. "I actually got in some offense!"
"Don't worry!" cried Aragorn. "I'm rushing over to heroically save you, thereby boosting my right to become King and reducing your likeability as a character!"
And he grabbed a spear, and stuck it firmly into the troll's squishy belly like a kebab. The creature did not look too kindly on this action though, and sent Aragorn flying into a pillar. He lay stunned, and Frodo could not rouse him.
"Five more minutes," the ranger murmured, rolling over and pulling his cloak over his head.
Which left the troll free to gut Frodo like a catfish. Again.
And they all just rolled their eyes, and kept on killing. Merry and Pippin leapt onto the troll's back and stabbed it from behind, and it threw them off, yelling about the proper rules of combat, and how it was very cowardly, not to mention rude, to stab one in the back as such.
That was until Legolas marched over, his eyes blazing, and proceeded to shoot it in the mouth. It fell to the floor, thoroughly dead. So much for the rules of combat.
Everyone ran over to Frodo's lifeless body (except Legolas that is, who was frantically trying to scrub troll's blood out of his tunic and reattach his hair).
"He's alive!" said Sam, turning the hobbit over.
"I'm alright," said Frodo, gasping. "I'm not hurt."
"You should be dead!" said Aragorn.
Frodo looked confused.
"Am I not?"
They all groaned.
"Let's please not steal lines from that movie."
Legolas beamed.
"I play a pirate."
Gandalf stepped forward with a twinkle in his eye: "I think there's more to this hobbit than meets the eye."
And Frodo revealed the mithril shirt that he wore beneath his clothing.
"Mithril!" said Gimli, drooling at the mouth. "You are full of surprises, Master Baggins."
There was silence for a moment, and then the faint cries of orcs travelled to their ears.
"To the bridge of Khazad-dûm!" said Gandalf. He stopped and scratched his head. "Now which way is that?"
And they all groaned. Again.