Hello! I'm back. Let's give this another go. For anyone who reads this, thanks for still being interested, despite my - sheesh, nearly 4 month? - absence! Hoping you are all well and are enjoying happy holidays, whatever they happen to be. : )
Pain. Blinding pain shot through all of Rowan's body, piercing her shoulder and branching out like lightning through the rest of her. A involuntary scream ripped through her throat and would have hurt had her agony not made her unconscious of everything else. Through her panic, she struggled to remember what had happened.
Weathertop, Strider had said. They had decided to camp at its base, staying out of sight of the Great East Road nearby. In the night, Strider had shaken her awake, and she had known immediately from the unfamiliar expression on his face that she had much to fear. "Get to the top of the hill," he had whispered. "There's an easy way to climb it here. Stay out of sight, especially once you get to the top." She had stared at him, her eyes rather than her voice asking if he would not come with her.
"Go! Now!"
The side of the rocky hill that Strider had pointed to was a surprisingly easy route to the top, almost like a stony ladder, but in her fear Rowan's feet had been unsteady and it seemed to take hours to get to the top. When she was making her last push upward, she had heard the sound of a galloping horse. No, two horses. After pulling herself unto Weathertop's summit, she crawled on her stomach to its edge and peeked over a section of the ruins that bordered it. From the second she saw them, Rowan had known that they were the Ringwraiths that Strider had described. They looked like how she had always imagined ghosts to appear — faceless, covered in black clothing — but they had bodies too real to be apparitions. They looked strong, certainly able to wield a blade. Strider stood in a place that she could not see from the top without exposing herself, and she had seen one of the two wraiths disappear as it headed toward him. The other seemed to begin to circle the hill in the other direction. The first sound of swords clashing had nearly made her cry out in her terror for Strider, and her hands had flown to her lips, pressing against them hard. Rowan desperately wished that she knew how to fight.
She had not listened to the clanging echoes below her for long at all before she felt a deep coldness rush through her, as if her heart had suddenly begun pumping icy water through her veins instead of blood. At the same time, an overwhelming urge to put on the ring possessed her, and Rowan had only barely stopped her right hand before it touched it. Before she had time to wonder at this nearly uncontrollable impulse, she heard an armored foot hit the ground behind her. Whirling around, she had been paralyzed with dread as she saw a Ringwraith on the other side of Weathertop's summit, sword drawn, facing her. As soon as breath returned to her lungs, Rowan screamed, "Strider!" The wraith had slowly walked toward her, taking each step steadily and deliberately, apparently aware of the lack of possible escape routes from her position on the ground next to the ruins. How did it... but she had not had time to finish the thought. The desire to put on the ring, incredibly, grew. Something seemed to be telling her that the only way to live was to put it on, that safety lay in that gold circle against her chest. There was nowhere to run, as desperately as she had looked, and the sound of battle still rose up from directly below her. Panic overtook her, and Rowan had snapped the chain around her neck and put on the ring.
She had been shocked to realize that the Ringwraith stopped moving toward her, and moved its head as if it could not see her. Invisible, she had thought. I wonder if Strider knows. More shocking, though, was how the wraith had changed. It was no longer faceless, but rather had the drawn, hollowed, nightmarish visage of a grand, noble person corrupted by desire. Its eyes, however, were still gone. Rowan had noticed that the noises below her had stopped, and fiercely hoped that Strider had been the victor as she watched the wraith begin to swing and jab its sword seemingly at random as it continued to get closer to where she sat huddled against the stone ruins. She was beginning to feel more strange the longer she had the ring on her finger; it was not only the wraith that had changed, but the entire world had a bizarre, eerie sheen to it, and it made her feel ill and confused. Still, she dared not take it off. Suddenly, the Ringwraith had appeared to know exactly where she was, and Rowan wondered if she had unknowingly made a noise. The point of the wraith's sword had buried itself in her shoulder, and everything had gone white.