Part 3

"I suppose that there are many things I wish to ask you about…" Thranduil said thoughtfully, strolling around the tree and to the bookshelf. His pale hand hovered over the spine of each book there and he realized that they were all of different languages and origins.

"Things such as where you came from, why you are here…what made you the way that you are."

"I think there is one issue that must be dealt with first and foremost." Legolas said as he sipped wine from his metal cup. Thranduil turned and looked at his son, wondering what fresh can of worms he was trying to open now.

"And what issue is that?" Baradeth asked kindly as she leaned against the kitchen doorway.

"The bodies." Legolas leaned forward in his chair, his elbows sitting on his knees while his now empty cup dangled loosely from his hand. "They couldn't have all just conveniently dropped dead on your back porch."

The house was quiet for a few moments.

Thranduil thought his son's approach to be rather simple and crude, almost offensive in how forward it was, but he could not disagree with Legolas. It would be nice to know exactly how those dead creatures outside came to Baradeth's forest, which was so far away from any town or city, and die. The king worried that if it was outright merciless murder in even one case, then he would have to arrest the elleth. The last thing that Thranduil wanted to do was bring her into Mirkwood and make her stat where his people resided; not when she brought so much death into her life.

"I am afraid that I agree with my son. If you are as big of a threat as you seem to be, then you will have to be held in custody and pay for your crimes." Thranduil carefully watched her face as he said this, trying to find any hint anger or fear. He was impressed when he saw nothing other than reasonable understanding.

"I figured as much." Baradeth sighed. "Well, would you prefer to be told the longer or the shorter explanation?"

"Longer." Thranduil said at the same time that Legolas demanded "Shorter." The king glared at his son as Baradeth grinned and waited for them to come to a decision.

"The longer explanation, Baradeth, if you wouldn't mind." Thranduil said with a tilt of his head. Then he spitefully said "And please, don't leave out any details." while looking at Legolas.

"I promise not to, dear king."

The elleth began to slowly pace back and forth as she spoke. The king sat down and listened with keen ears as she began her tale.

Baradeth told them that she unintentionally fills anyone's mind and heart with such darkness that they forgot who they are, and that even the kindest soul could become a murderer if they came face to face with her. It was not a voluntary thing, quite the opposite actually, but it needed to be dealt with. People came to Baradeth's forests either with intent to kill her after hearing a story about the creature living there, or they accidently got lost on their travels and came across her, when they would unexpectedly also try and kill her.

The first few times this happened, about a hundred years ago, Baradeth had just played dead and let the person go on their way. The people who had supposedly killed her, though, would wander around her house and mutter to themselves in regret of what they'd done. Sanity soon left their minds, sometimes from the grief of being a murderer, other times from how good it felt to kill.

She decided that she could not let those people go back to their houses after having done what they did, worried that they might kill once more because of her. So instead she tried to scare them off.

"When I first became Baradeth, the creature in the forest, I was given a power." She told them. "I could…move things with my mind and control the animals around me to do my bidding. I was able to throw shadows into the night so that only darkness was left. At first, using my odd powers worked and scared off anyone and anything that came near.

"I had a good five years to myself where I was not plagued by my worry. That's when I built my home actually," Baradeth said fondly as she looked at the walls around her, "with the aid of my new abilities. These walls carry as much magic in them as I do…but that's a story to be told at a different time. My brief moment of rest and relaxation was ended when drunken bets were made and people came to me yet again to prove their strength to one another. They flew into my forests like migrating birds, searching their hardest to find me.

"I may have frightened them, chased them off with the aid of wargs and giant spiders, but they always came back. For the twenty years I'd lived here, I had yet to kill a single person; up to the moment when my hand was forced."

A sullen shadow fell upon her face then and made her eyes darken and her mouth curve downwards in despair. She told the king and prince of the different ways that people tried to end her for good. A group of ten dwarfs had found her, tied her down and gave her strange medicines, so that they might find a way to forever rid the world of her.

By these dwarfs Baradeth had been burnt, boiled, beheaded, pulled apart, minced, massacred, carved, cleaved, poisoned, dissected, and much more.

"Oh, dear." Thranduil muttered with slight concern in his voice. He had a very distraught expression as he listened to her tell her story, and couldn't help the painfully tight clench in his stomach. His hate for dwarfs seemed to constantly grow. The elleth continued her tale, too caught up in her memories to even hear the king.

She tried to escape many times, but each time she did she was given more of the wretched poison which stilled her muscles. For days, she lie in her yard and let herself be tortured by these dwarfs, her screams and cries for mercy echoing reaching into the mountains, before she could take no more.

Baradeth called upon the wargs, the giant spiders, the snakes and the ravens to help her, but the hammer-wielding dwarfs only swung their hammers and swords, killing every animal that came near them. Then, in a last effort to be rid of these torturous dwarfs, she called to the orcs of Mordor, to the trolls of the mountains, and to the goblins living in their tunnels for help.

"You turned to the enemy in your time of need?" Thranduil asked.

"Of course I did, I had to." Baradeth mumbled. "The enemy was the only one that didn't try to kill me."

The orcs arrived first, snarling and spitting and squealing as they fought with all of their might against the dwarfs. Axes waved through the air and swords clashed together, but one of the dwarfs snuck from the fight and went to Baradeth to set her body on fire.

By the time that the goblins showed, the dwarfs had been cut down to half of their original number, the orcs were all but destroyed, and the elleth was a blackened form made from ash and charcoal.

Then the trolls came stomping into the scene and what was left of the dwarfs dwindled away until there was nothing.

The creatures surrounded Baradeth's body and waited for her to come back to them, and when she did, they treated her as if she were their queen. The orcs complimented everything about her, the goblins knelt before her and kissed her feet, and the trolls gave her a pat on the head.

"Wait a minute." Legolas interrupted. The elleth blinked quickly in surprise, as if she'd forgotten that others were there with her, and raised her eyebrows at the prince. The king seethed at his son's rude intrusion, his jaw clenching.

"Yes?"

"If your story is true—"

"It is."

"Then how can you be standing before us? You say you were tortured and torn apart so horribly, even to the point of being ignited like a stack of lumber. If this is so, then how are you still able to tell us this story?"

Baradeth looked at her hands as she wrung them together.

"I assume that I cannot be killed for the same reason that I do not have to eat, sleep, or relieve myself; I am dead." She waited for a response of some sort. Baradeth thought that Legolas or Thranduil would doubt her, or maybe believe her and be so upset by information that they took their leave. They did not though; they did look rather surprised and somewhat disturbed by what she said, but they did not leave nor claim her to be a liar. For this the elleth was thankful for, and decided to continue without explanation.

"I will tell you the story of how this came to be once I've finished the tale I am currently telling, if you would like."

Thranduil bowed his head and asked her to proceed.

"I was confused during this time. I had been much more innocent and naïve then than I am now, and could not understand why such terrible things had been done to me. I looked around me and saw blood and fire, weapons and bodies lying any which way I turned. The dwarfs—creatures I had been once told were funny little things that liked to sing and dance about—they were all stacked up to have their dead bodies join the burning pile."

Baradeth's expression was one Thranduil had not thought he would see her give. Her face drooped, her eyes tried to water, and her face paled just the slightest. Baradeth's mood seemed to effect the environment as well, for the candles began to dim and go out until only the one nearest to her was left ablaze. A twist filled his stomach and throat which hurt enough for tears to arise in his own eyes. Gloom was the only word which could come to the king's mind while looking at the elleth before him.

"I was numb. My body and mind stood still in hopes of making sense of what was happening, but it was a rather difficult thing to do. All I could really do was wonder if those dwarfs would had ever stopped torturing me, even for a moment. Maybe they would have taken be back to their home so that even more of them could do even worse things to me.

"Then an orc came to me doused in blood, some of it his own and some not, and he drooled over my feet like a dog. He and the others were wanting to eat the dead, for it would be a shame to let all of that fresh tasty meet go to waste. He swore up and down that if they had full bellies and a night of rest in my comfy little field, then they would go find where the dwarfs lived. They would destroy their homes, kill their families, and set fire to the town."

"Disgusting filth." Legolas seethed, the metal cup still in his hand straining under his angry grip. "Tell me you slaughtered every one of them."

"Legolas." Thranduil snapped at his son. "One more word from you and you will spend the rest of the night in your tent. You were not brought along so that you may aggravate Baradeth and I with your interruptions."

The corner of Baradeth's hinted at a grin and she spoke, cutting off whatever Legolas was going to say.

"I did slaughter them."

The king and prince looked at her.

"You see, they had already started to eat not only the dwarfs, but their fallen friends as well. They ripped the flesh from the bones and chewed through the fat and muscle, giggling while they ate their enemies and comrades at the same time.

"They were selfish savages; true murderers that knew of nothing other than death and despair. I asked the orc in front of me for his sword, which he handed over without a single question, and I beheaded him. The others were too busy eating to notice or care as I mowed them down one by one. More lives were taken and more blood was spilt. The trolls helped rid me of the goblins and orcs, and for this I let them go back to their mountains to hide. Daylight was not far away though, so I knew they wouldn't make it before being turned into stone."

Baradeth pushed off of the archway and strolled to the window in the kitchen to gaze out of it. The images from that night were as fresh in her mind as they were when she first saw them; things far more horrible, more gruesome than what was there now.

"The ground was sticky with blood and organs, and I had many bodies to dispose of, so the fire didn't stop burning for weeks. I collected anything useful I found, but the rest was set aflame. From that day on, I've warned every person that's come to kill me that they would die if they did not leave."

The elleth turned and looked at Legolas and Thranduil.

"No, they didn't all just conveniently drop dead on my back porch. Every single body you saw in that yard was one doomed to die the moment that they set foot in my woods. I warned them all of their fate should they stay, they all attacked me some way or another, and they all paid for it. For I am not an evil creature that kills without purpose…I am merely someone who learned the hard way not to let anyone take advantage of me."

Baradeth walked to the fireplace and carefully took the pot of boiling water back to the kitchen where she poured some into a glass and tipped a teabag into it.

"I will leave you to decide my fate." She sighed and carried her steaming cup of tea outside.

The elleth sat on her porch and watched the campfires below her glow in the setting sun. She did not drink her tea, for what use did a dead body have for such a thing, but simply held it in her hands and let the memory of its taste and smell comfort her.

Thranduil and Legolas looked at each other for a moment as they sat in their chairs and thought deeply. They each reviewed the situation from multiple points of view in attempt to deem if she was a criminal or not and asked themselves and each other many questions.

Was she at fault for whatever magic made others hate her so much that they wanted to kill her? Or were they at fault for attempting murder? If what Baradeth said about the people who did think that they had killed her, and wanted to kill again, was true, then was she in the right for stopping such a thing from happening?

…

It was nearly an hour when Baradeth walked back into her home to find Thranduil and Legolas sitting in the exact same position. She grinned only slightly and stood in front of the dying fire to warm her hands, even though she could not tell the difference between hot and cold.

"So tell me, almighty king Thranduil and darling prince Legolas; would you imprison me for my self-defense?"

Legolas and Thranduil stood from their chairs and faced the elleth, Legolas seeming to be strict in his stance while Thranduil was ever so graceful in his.

"It has been agreed," the king said, "that if you keep your murders a secret, then so shall we. Our soldiers will say not a word of what they have seen here today, for if our people had confirmation of this, they would surely demand that you be punished. That is not something that I think you deserve."

"What do I deserve, then?" Baradeth asked as she gazed into her fireplace.

Thranduil strode forward to stand directly behind the elleth and laid a kind hand upon her shoulder.

"You, my darling, deserve respite so that you may redeem yourself; prove yourself to be a good person."

These words were not what she had hoped to hear. She had wanted to know that she deserved forgiveness, that none of the killings she'd done were in any way her fault. The words that the elven king spoke, though, were not as kind as Baradeth wanted. In fact, these words sounded as if they had dark potential; almost hinting at manipulation in a way.

Had she not told him but an hour ago that she would not be taken advantage of? Maybe they weren't devious at all though, maybe Baradeth only thought so because she was used to it.

She turned to the king, his hand falling from her shoulder to be held with the other in front of him. And it was there, in his steel colored eyes, when she saw that he was indeed just as scheming as the orcs can be.

"And how would you have me redeem myself, king?"

"Legolas," Thranduil said as he turned to his son, "go and find yourself something to eat. Baradeth and I must talk in private for a moment."

The prince frowned, not liking being left out, but left anyways.

Thranduil turned away and casually walked to the shelf holding, what he now knew to be, books of the people she had slaughtered over the years. If he looked close enough he could even see bloodstains on the spines. He began to play with one of the many rings that sat on his finger as he thought of his next words. With his eyes still reading the names of the old novels, the king turned his head and spoke over his shoulder.

"Tell me, darling Baradeth…what would it take for you to tell me the secrets of the enemy?"

The elleth's intake of breath was not great or obvious, but the king heard it none the less and knew; Baradeth was the elleth that he had thought her to be.

"Secrets?" Baradeth laughed. "To tell you a secret, I must first have one to tell, dear king."

Thranduil turned and walked purposefully towards the elleth. She stepped back slightly as grew nearer in an impending way.

"Would you like gold; jewels and riches beyond your wildest dreams? If need be, I shall deliver them to you Baradeth. All you must do is tell me what you know."

"Thranduil, I do not know of any secrets." Her tone was less amused now, but this did not stop the king.

"Solitude, then, would surely please you. Wouldn't it be enjoyable not to worry of horrible creatures trespassing on your land ever again? It would give me such a relief to keep you from having to add to the already long list of the dead. A law to keep anyone from bothering you further can easily be made, if you should wish it."

"You are not listening to me, Thranduil, I do not know any secrets!" Baradeth hissed in exasperation.

"Perhaps you are sick of this solitude you've been forced to endure, my darling Baradeth."

The king reached up and carefully moved a strand of silver hair behind her ear before taking her cheek in his hand. His thumb ran softly over her white, chapped bottom lip and he moved even closer, enough so that Baradeth wished to be elsewhere.

"It would be understandable for you to want the company of another. I am sure there are many that would be more than willing to marry such a gorgeous elf such as yourself—"

"Enough!" Baradeth whispered, taking the king's hand and shoving it back against his chest. "Even if I did hold secrets of the enemy, which I don't, do you honestly think they would just let me give them away? Hm? Did you not think that whoever it may be—because it certainly isn't me—that knows of Sauron's plans would not be thoroughly monitored at all times?"

They stood there with less than a foot between them and looked into each other's eyes; steel against ice. Baradeth tried, with all of her might, to make the king just think and realize that the subject of Sauron was not one to be lightly spoken of in her home. All that Thranduil could think of, though, were of ways for them to do just that without sparing their lives in the process.

"There would be no possible way for…whomever it is that knows of such secrets," he paused, catching himself before he could say "you", "to speak of the enemy?"

Baradeth's eyes squinted, wondering if Thranduil was playing at the game she thought he was, and tilted her head inquisitively. The king nodded his head for her to answer him, and the elleth figured she should take a shot at it.

"Not one single possible way."

She nodded her head as she spoke, and recognition filled Thranduil's eyes. His chin lifted just the slightest as he stepped back and regained his kingly composure.

"It seems that I was deluded, dearest Baradeth, and I apologize for my misbehavior. I shall go and take up dinner with my son now to leave you to your books. I bid you goodnight." Thranduil turned and left, swiftly closing the door after him, before Baradeth could say another word.

She briefly wondered if he knew that they were only being listened to by Sauron's allies, not watched, therefore giving them the only way they could communicate about such things. There had been that look of comprehension in Thranduil's eyes, leading Baradeth to think so, but the manner in which he left made it seem otherwise. With a stressful sigh Baradeth began walking up her stairs when she stopped and thought about what the king had said.

"Leave me to my…" Looking down and to her left Baradeth saw something sitting on top of her bookshelf and quickly knelt down to snatch it up and give it a closer look.

The king had left behind one of his rings.

…

"Why did you do that?" Legolas asked, suddenly appearing to walk next to his father.

"Do what?" Thranduil asked with a stony face as he stepped into his tent.

"Make me leave so that you could speak alone with Baradeth."

Thranduil sighed as he moved the maps from their table and went about finding ink and paper.

"You are not yourself, my son," was the king's only answer. He found what was needed and sat at the table to begin writing.

Legolas sighed, watching his father curiously, but did not deny or question him. He knew what Thranduil said was true, and could only hope that whatever was happening to him would soon be put to an end.

"Neither are the soldiers. They are spreading rumors about Baradeth and hoping that they will get to kill her. Some are already planning an ambush." The king sharply looked up from his parchment.

"You mustn't let such a thing happen, Legolas."

"Me?"

"I cannot worry about the soldiers, not now, for I have many other things to deal with. You will keep them in line, I trust?" Thranduil assumed as he looked down to the note he was writing once more.

"If it is your will, then I shall do so…although I worry if I will try to stop them or join them."

The king sighed and held his head in his hand, forgetting all etiquette what told him to sit straight and keep his elbows off of the table. His quill scratched roughly as he scrawled across the paper, his hair occasionally falling in the way.

"You are a clever boy, Legolas. Impulsive and ignorant, but clever. I believe that you will know what the right thing to do is, so long as you keep your head balanced neatly on your shoulders. Now leave me and settle any minds that turn to rabble."

Legolas staid only a second longer, watching his father as he wrote, and wondered if leaving him to be in charge of the soldiers was a good idea. Then he stepped out and quickly went to work shooting down any thoughts of violence.

To my dearest Baradeth,

I know that you are the elleth what snuck into Mordor to try and take the ring from him and I know that you have been horribly cursed for it. I do not care about why you did it or if you would be interested in doing so once more. All that I wish to know is what you managed to learn about the enemy whilst in their midst.

I understand that asking you for such a thing puts us both in danger's way, but I must be prepared if Sauron is to ever rise again. I ensure you that telling me such things will one day benefit us both. If this is not enough incentive then, pray tell my beautiful elleth, what is?

-Thranduil