Still don't own Legolas or any of Tolkien's charcters, and certainly not R.A. Salvatore's creations. I just borrowed them. I'm gonna give 'em back!
Bruenor Battlehammer Do'Urden slowly came back to consciousness feeling like one, giant, bruise. His head hurt, and no amount of blinking seemed to be clearing the blur in his vision. He was lying down. The air around him was close, like he was in the mines, but heavy with moisture. It was off somehow.
He could feel it against the skin on his chest. His armor and mail had been removed, as well as his tunic and shirt. He tried to sit up, but a hand pressed him back down. A blur of fair skin and pale hair came across his vision. "Mick?" he said, the name coming out as a bare whisper. "Is that you? Son o' an orc, me ribs an' head be hurtin'," he added to his cousin, only to stiffen as the face gazing down on him came into focus. The eyes were silver-gray.
Bruenor jerked away, jarring his injuries, but ignoring the pain as he sought to put distance between him and this stranger.
He fell. The other elf reached for him, calling out in a language Bruenor didn't know. He hadn't realized he was in a tree. A really, really tall tree.
He closed his eyes, waiting for impact, when he heard a familiar roar, the scrape of claws, and suddenly he was incased in the all-familiar limbs of Guenhwyvar before they struck the forest floor in a roll. She had broken his fall.
"Guen," he said, burying his face in the cat's neck. She was purring, rubbing her head against his curls. "Ye're alreet, lass?" he asked, his slender hands barely discernable against her black fur as they lay reverently on either side of the cat's face. Emerald eyes met emerald eyes, and she smiled at him, before licking him from his chin to the crown of his head. "Aye, I'm alreet, girl. Me head jus' hurts fit to split is all," he told her. He stood to his feet, allowing the cat to roll to hers. She nudged him gently in the ribs. He grunted. "Aye, they hurt, but I don't think it's bad," he told her, running his hands down the length of her.
"Ye didn't hurt yerself now, did ye? Savin' me black arse from fallin' out o' the tree," he said, returning to face her. The wheezing puffs of breath she blew in his face didn't alarm him. He knew she was laughing at him. "Yeah, yeah, laugh i' up," he told her with a grin. "An elf fell ou' of a tree." He buried his face against her soft hide again. So glad for a familiar face, especially since his senses told him that they were completely surrounded by armed and ready elves.
Bruenor searched his memory, trying to pinpoint how they ended up in an unfamiliar—and dare he say creepy—forest with a bunch of elves. He remembered getting tossed off a ledge by a drow-made monster, his grandfather screaming for Guen to catch him and go home. Something went wrong though, when Guen tried to take them to the Astral plane.
He heard the elves speaking to one another, but didn't understand any of it. He didn't understand where he was, how they got there, or what these elves were saying. It was for the best that he didn't understand the words of the elves though. He might have struck out at them at their insinuations.
"Legolas, what if he's a new type of orc?" Evorlis asked, careful not to use his prince's title in case this creature was the enemy and it could understand them.
Legolas' eyes slanted toward Evorlis, indicating he had heard the other Captain, before returning to watch the strange elf with the giant cat. "Do you feel malice or shadow around either of them?" he asked his warriors. When none of his warriors answered, the prince added, "Neither do I." Legolas then approached the oddly similar pair. Two pairs of vibrant green eyes turned to watch his approach. The slightly lighter shaded gaze of the elf was far more wary of them now than the cat. The panther just observed his approach expectantly. "We mean you no harm," the prince said in Sindarin.
The dark elf arched a snow-white brow at him. "I didn't catch a lick o' that," he replied.
It was Legolas' turn to arch a brow. The stranger seemed to be speaking something akin to the tongue of men, but the wording was strange. "Do you understand me now?" he asked in Westron. Legolas watched as the guarded look on the elf's face eased to one of relief.
"Aye," Bruenor answered. "Now ye be speakin' words I understand," he added. Legolas' eyes widened slightly as he realized why the Westron seemed so odd coming from this elf. The dark elf spoke the language with a very heavy dwarven brogue.
"You speak Westron like a dwarf," Legolas said matter-of-factly, wincing slightly as he realized the insult to the elf. At least, any elf he knew would have been insulted. This odd elf seemed to take the statement as a compliment. He grinned. The expression brightened his whole face, adding to his features a touch of mischief.
"I thank ye," he said. "I think. Wha's Westron?" He stepped away from the cat toward the elf, only to halt his approach as he heard blades drawn and bowstrings grow taunt. "Me name's Bruenor Battlehammer Do'Urden," the dark elf said, seeming uncertain about approaching to offer his hand to the fair-skinned elf now. "I'm no' like other Drow," he added.
"What is a Drow?" Legolas asked, signaling his warriors to stand down as he moved to close the distance between them. He watched as the exotic elf's eyes widened in surprise.
"Ye've ne'er saw a Drow before?!" Bruenor asked, suddenly anxious. He ignored the elves for now and turned back to Guenhwyvar. "Guen, where in the nine hells are we?!" he asked her. He felt panicked. None of the landscape around him was familiar, there were surface elves that had never seen a Drow, and the ledge he was tossed from was underground, not even on the surface. Yet, here he was in a forest. Looking back at the elf he also noticed something else.
He glowed.
Not his eyes in the infrared, but all of him, making the infrared in the clearing unnecessary with all the elves surrounding him. "Mum, da, Grady, where?" Bruenor fell to his knees, completely at a loss of what to do. He felt Guen lay beside him, nudging his side, and he draped his arm over her.
At least Guen was with him, but for how long? He didn't have the statuette. His grandfather did. How long could she survive in this world, or plane, or whatever it was, away from the Astral plane? He wondered as he looked at her. Could she even go home from here if she were wounded or tired? Would she fade away and leave him there alone? Bruenor felt the elf move closer and kneel near him, but he only had eyes for Guen. She was his anchor to home.
And she could be taken from him at any time.
"Are you in pain?" the elf asked him.
Bruenor looked at him then, but the image was blurry. He realized there were tears standing in his eyes, as well as a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with his injuries. "I'm lost," Bruenor told him, his voice sounding small, even to his own ears. "I do no' know where o' how I go' here," he added, his hand clenching tightly onto Guen's scruff. He felt his lip tremble as an image of his mother came to mind. "An' I do no' know how to go home from here."
Legolas saw the sheen in the odd creature's eyes, and knew it for what it was. He wondered how old this elf was. He had to be very young. Old enough to be a warrior, but young enough to cry for home. "We will help, if we can," the prince told the dark-skinned elf. He wondered if he could keep his word once they brought these two to his father, but he wanted to try. Something about this elf made him want to try.