Redemption
A Final Fantasy 7/ Lord of the Rings crossover
By: Lazeralk
Standard disclaimers apply.
Once again, ("blah") denotes things said in Sindarin. 'Blah' is the Advents and Cloud sharing thoughts.
0o0o0
The new horse under him had the same strange rolling gait of the first horse, but Cloud was more use to it this time around and didn't mind so much. He still thought bikes were the only real way to travel, but he held his tongue. Elladan had kindly packed his bag for him while he'd been off in the woods on his own and had been good enough to not comment on it when he'd handed it to the wayward blonde earlier that morning. Elrohir was strangely silent about the whole affair as well and it made Cloud only a little uneasy with anticipation. He was waiting for the elves to question his whereabouts and the meaning behind the scene they'd caused that morning.
Kadaj rode along beside him, absolutely beaming with joy. Loz was chattering away about broad sword technique with Elrohir a few paces behind them and Yazoo was urging his own horse a little faster to walk on his other side. Cloud greeted him with a flick of his eyes and hum of warm energy. Yazoo returned the glance, but was silent on his end of their shared mind link. Cloud almost sighed, but he knew that Yazoo would be the hardest to win over.
They were following the river on horseback, Galadriel's foresight having put them on the correct side to be following the fellowship towards Amon Hen by land. The elves that had led them to Lorien had stayed behind; it was only the twins that guided the four mortal warriors towards their destination. Elrohir and Elladan argued in their own language a few paces behind them, heads bent together over the necks of their horses.
Cloud ignored them, glancing at Kadaj who met his eyes and smiled blindingly. He wanted to ask so many things, wanted to know all kinds of things about his brothers, but he dared not ask. They had given him the time and space he'd needed to come to them on his own and would do the same for them.
They camped a half day from Amon Hen that night. With the fire built and a rabbit supper past, they sat in comfortable silence for a time before one of the twins, Cloud could never tell them apart, nudged his bother in the ribs with an elbow and a pointed look. The other twin returned the look but cleared his throat and hesitantly addressed him.
"Cloud, we were perhaps wondering if you would tell us of your homeland? Or perhaps give us a song of your history?" He said, his brother nodding encouragingly behind him.
"You want to know about Gaia?" Asked Kadaj, curiously glancing at Cloud.
"I am not singing anything." Growled Cloud, his expression the most thunderous they'd ever seen on him.
"Tell us about Nibelheim then Nii-san." Demanded Loz eagerly.
"Nibelheim?" said one of the twins.
"My home town." Clarified Cloud, a frown still on his face.
"Oh yes, tell us about it Cloud." Said Kadaj, shifting closer to his only blond brother.
"Haven't you been there yourself?" Hedged Cloud, not really wanting to talk about it.
"Not really, we passed by there on our way to Northern Crater, but we didn't actually go look around or anything." Said Loz.
"Perhaps you could tell us of its history? How was it founded?" suggested one of the twins, Cloud thought it might be Elrohir, since he was clearly trying to help him out. Ancient history seemed a safe enough topic to talk about, especially since Sephiroth wasn't mentioned anywhere.
Cloud thought for a moment and then nodded, licking his lips nervously before he began.
"Well, keep in mind that this is all legend, passed down by word of mouth. It all happened a long time ago." He paused here, looking around to see that they had all accepted his warning. He was slightly surprised to see that all of his brothers, Yazoo included, looked very interested to hear the old wives tales he'd heard growing up.
"Ok, so, the story goes like this. There once was a kingdom, further south than where Nibelheim is today, called Nibelungenlant. Legend has it that the ruling king, called Gjúki and his wife Queen Ode, had three sons and a daughter. The three sons were Giselher, Gunnar and Gutthom, the daughter was called Grímhild.
Ok, so at the same time, in the area that is now Nibelheim, the king had died and left two sons, Schillbung and Nibelung. They were trying to divide their father's kingdom and wealth between them so that they could both be kings, but they couldn't agree on who got to keep what. Then a man called Sigurd, no one knows quite where he came from, approached them. The two brothers asked Sigurd to help them settle their dispute but ended up attacking both him and each other when Sigurd didn't favor one over the other. So, forced to defend himself, Sigurd killed them both and named himself king.
Back in Nibelungenlant, Giselher had inherited the throne and was defending his kingdom from the Huns, a people who came from the southeast of Nibelungenlant. The Huns were let by Atli, who, after defeating Giselher attempted to force Grímhild to marry him so that he would have a claim to the throne of Nibelungenlant. He was killed before he could though, by a young man called Aldrian, who has his own somewhat strange relation to Queen Ode. He's her illegitimate grandson I think. Anyways, so he takes the throne of Nibelungenlant and forces what remains of the royal family to flee the kingdom as to not challenge his right to the crown. All that remains at this point is Queen Ode, Gunnar, Gutthom and their sister Grímhild. They moved north, into Nibelheim, which was still being ruled by King Sigurd.
This is where it gets a little tricky.
Sigurd had heard the tale of Brünhild, a famous Valkyrie who had been cursed to a mortal life by Odin and imprisoned in a tower of shields. She lay in an enchanted sleep surrounded by a ring of fire that no one but her true love could cross. So he set out to rescue her and did actually manage to cross the ring of fire. He fell in love her immediately and promised to marry her. He set off back to Nibelheim to both prepare for the wedding and to find a wizard, leaving Brünhild behind in the tower. He could cross the ring of fire, but she could not. He was hoping the wizard would be able to free her.
At this point, Queen Ode and her children had arrived in Nibelheim and Queen Ode, who was a powerful sorceress, decided to marry her daughter Grímhild to Sigurd. So she gave Sigurd a magic potion that made him completely forget about Brünhild. Sigurd then happily married Grímhild. Queen Ode, having secured a place in the royal family of Nibelheim, then set out make Brünhild the wife of her son Gunnar. However, because Gunnar was not Brünhild's true love, he could't cross the ring of fire. So Queen Ode convinced Sigurd to do it for him. She used her power to make Sigurd look like Gunnar, who then crossed the ring of fire and told Brünhild that Sigurd had forsaken her for another and that he had come to rescue her. So, Brünhild married Sigurd, but believed she had married Gunnar.
Queen Ode then destroyed the ring of fire and Brünhild was set free. She and Sigurd returned to Nibelheim where Sigurd and Gunnar switched places. Brünhild and Grímhild both bore their husbands children. Then one day, Brünhild and Grímhild got into an argument over whose husband was better and Brünhild boasted that Gunnar was the better man because it was proven that he was her true love, as he had crossed the ring of fire successfully. However, Sigurd, who now remembered his love for Brünhild, revealed the truth that it was actually him that she had married. Brünhild, enraged at being made of fool of, and hurt that her real true love had not only forsaken her but had deceived her into marring Gunnar, swore revenge. She tried to goad Gunnar into killing Sigurd, but Gunnar refused to kill his brother by marriage. Remember that Sigurd had married Gunnar's sister Grímhild. So Brünhild went to Queen Ode and had her make a magic potion that would induce rage and fed it to Gunnar's younger brother Gutthom. She then sent Gutthom to kill Sigurd, who actually succeeded. However, once Sigurd was dead, Brünhild realized what she'd done. That is, she'd caused the death of her one true love, and in her grief, she flung herself onto his funeral pyre and died. Gunnar then took the throne and his family ruled Nibelheim for generations.
And so it is said that the people of Nibelheim are descended from the children of the royal family of Nibelungenlant, King Sigurd and the Valkyrie Brünhild."
Silence followed the conclusion of his tale and Cloud shifted nervously. His audience seemed to be deep in thought.
"What happened to Queen Ode? Was she ever punished for her meddling?" asked Elrohir.
"Who exactly is Odin? And what is a Valkyrie?" said Elladan.
"Ah, well I don't know about Queen Ode, but Odin is an Æsir and the king of Asgard and there are all kinds of stories about him. Asgard is one of the nine realms, where the gods live; the realm of mortals is called Midgard. Odin turned the souls of shield-maidens into Valkyries who hover over battlefields and collect the souls of fallen warriors. They then escort them to Valhalla, another of the nine realms where they live and train to fight for the gods at Ragnarok. Ragnarok is the battle prophesized to end the world and end the age of gods." Said Cloud.
"Where is Nibelungenlant?" asked Loz.
"Eh, sort of north of Gongaga and east of Cosmo Canyon." answered Cloud.
"So Midgar was named for Midgard?" asked Kadaj blinking curiously.
"Yes, although Midgar was destroyed and the new city build from its ruins is called Edge." Said Cloud.
"I knew that." Kadaj snapped, and then looked immediately apologetic.
'Sorry Nii-san.' He whispered in the blonde's head. Cloud smiled at him, letting him know without words that there was nothing to forgive.
"And Midgar is?" asked Elladan.
"It's the capital city of our country." Answered Cloud evasively.
"You lived there too, right Nii-san?" said Yazoo, his face mocking.
Could stared at him, then nodded. He didn't want to talk about his time in Midgar either. Instead, he sent a quick, considering glance at the elven twins.
"You know, my people also have stories about elves." He said, knowing that it would gain their interest and prevent Yazoo from digging into his issues with Sephiroth and Shin-Ra.
"You do? What kind of stories?" demanded Elrohir, looking slightly suspicious.
"Your people, Nii-san?" said Kadaj with a look between offended and curious.
"Nordic." Answered Cloud with the hint of a grin, eyeing Kadaj's very non-nordic silver hair and cat green eyes.
"Your Elf stories?" pushed Elladan.
"Ah, well, the word actually started as 'alfar' but I'm pretty sure it means the same thing. There are all kinds of weird stories about them, but I guess I could tell you one for tonight. You probably won't like it though." He added with a grin. The twins frowned but urged him on anyways.
Cloud spent the rest of the night telling them about how a mortal woman discovered that her baby was a changeling, switched for her own child by the alfar, and how she brewed beer in an acorn and got the changeling to admit what it was through surprise. She then found her own child returned to her and the changeling gone. The twins criticized the story harshly, saying that the Eldar would never do such a ridiculous thing.
As the group settled down into sleep Elrohir reflected that they should make Cloud tell stories more often, as he had laughed twice that night and smiled more in the one night than he had the entire time the elf lord had known the moody blonde.
0o0o0
"This is not good." Said Loz as he studied the base of a tree at Amon Hen. Elrohir moved to join him and grimaced in distaste. The corpse of an orc lay on ground, a wide cut, opening like a gaping mouth, spilled black blood and thicker things from the beast's gut.
("Brother!") Called Elladan from a few yards away. He and Yazoo knelt by another tree, their faces grim. The trunk of the tree and the ground around it were splattered with a red-brown liquid that could only be the blood of one of the Fellowship they tracked.
("Please let it not be Estel.") whispered Elladan to himself.
"A day or so old, at most. We're catching up." Announced Yazoo, his voice cold, his face impassive as he surveyed the blood and the now chilled corpses of several orcs that lay in the clearing. Elrohir shot him a look as he laid a hand on his twin's shoulder.
"Which way now?" asked Loz as he came to stand beside his brother.
"Did they keep going? Are we going to follow them?" asked Kadaj as he too wandered over to join them. Cloud tracked a few sets of foot prints past them towards the sound of rushing water, blood dotting along the trail. Frowning, he made his way back to his party as the elves had a whispered conversation in their own language.
"There's a fairly wide trail of footprints heading that way." Said Kadaj, pointing in the opposite direction of the river that Cloud had found.
"A wide trail?" asked Elrohir.
"Yeah, a pretty big group, thirty maybe."
The elves deliberated for a moment, then decided that they would follow the wide trail.
"These are probably orc tracks, but they lead almost directly south of the Limlight." Said Elladan as they walked.
"So?" said Loz.
"South of the Limlight is Rohan, where we were headed anyways." Answered Elrohir.
"Orcs are headed towards Rohan from here? I though your scouts said they were going to Rohan from Mordor? Isn't that in the wrong direction?" asked Cloud.
"Yes, it is the wrong direction. Thirty is a fairly large group for orcs. They usually only travel in bands of six or seven. A group this large must be here on orders from Mordor, but to what end? Are they the only large grouping this far north of Mordor? Were they sent against the Fellowship?" asked Elrohir anxiously.
"I thought Sauron wasn't supposed to know about the Fellowship." Said Kadaj.
"He's not, but he's Sauron. He has his ways of knowing such things I'm sure. Gandalf once said he thought Sauron could sense the presence of the Ring. Surely he's noticed that it's been moving steadily towards him." Said Elladan.
"We'd better get a move on then. What if this group of orcs is meeting up with the army your scouts saw? We might not make the battle at this rate." Said Cloud.
The trees thinned into open plains as they moved. A large forest loomed in the distance to one side, but the plains continued around the forest as far as their eyes could see. The forest was a dark and menacing thing, even from their great distance. Cloud could feel the ever-lingering grips of his customary depression growing stronger the longer he stared at the black trees.
"The tracks lead towards the woods over there." Reported Yazoo.
"That's Fangorn Forest. We'll go straight across the plains to Edoras. We'll make better time I think. It will be a week or more to cross the plains, it we take the straightest path." Said Elrohir, urging his horse into a quick canter. The others were quick to follow and there was no more conversation for the rest of the day as they rode hard across the plains.
0o0o0
End Part 12
Information for this chapter comes from the Volsunga Saga, The Tale of Brünhild (The Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology), and Der Nibelungenleid. I know some of the references are somewhat incorrect, but I wanted to bend the old myths to fit FF7 and picked the genealogy that was simplest, since all three sources conflict on who was related to who and in what ways they were related. The changeling story comes from the Grimm fairy tales.
As always, I thank you for your patience with me, this story seems to be growing more fickle with its inspiration all the time. No promises for the next chapter though, but I think there will be more storytelling…
Thanks to all my reviewers! You make me want to keep fighting to finish this story.